Canadian Street Naming

Canadian cities oftentimes include street names that cover provinces, trees, (always) Broadway and various British historical figures. During my last trip to Vancouver, when I was looking up a way to get to my friend’s place, I found this curious little item: between Main and Cambie streets there are a bunch of successive streets named after Canadian provinces. From East to West they go: Quebec Street, Ontario Street, Manitoba, Columbia (presumably British Columbia), Alberta Street and Yukon. Everything is swell and sound until we realize that Alberta and (British) Columbia should’ve switched places. Someone must have done poorly in geography class, or simply tried to be cheeky. Either way, a fun fact about Vancouver.

Filed under: random facts , canada, cities, fun, fun facts, vancouver

New Slang

I just got my daily dose of awesome via TrendCentral, which in my opinion is the best trend-watching and relevant service out there. All you marketers better get on the end of it. I dream of going to their Trend Schools in New York or L.A. In the past, I have narrowly missed them, but not next year! Interestingly, I started practicing hatecation last fall by eliminating the words “hate”, “don’t like”, “can’t stand” and constructing my sentences differently.

RECESSION-INSPIRED SLANG
Povo (po-vo)
adj. Spawned from the increasing popularity of new HBO series Summer Heights High, the Aussie slang for poor has infiltrated the vocabulary of recessionistas everywhere
“Caroline, I can’t go out to dinner tonight: My pay cut has left me totally povo.”

RELATIONSHIP SLANG
Ex-hole
n. Your ex boyfriend/girlfriend who dumped you via Post-it/text/drop-off-the-face-of-the-earth-disappearing-act and who is now flouncing around town with a new love interest
“I bumped into my ex-hole this morning – she said she was so sorry that she cheated on me, blah blah blah. I wanted to puke.”

Hot Room
n. A social setting that involves a mix of people whose relationships to each other are, well, complicated
“I was sitting next to my current flame and then my ex-hole walked in with his current girlfriend, who I had a falling out with in high school – total hot room!”

DIGITAL SLANG

Geequals
n. Two people who are equal in depth of arcane knowledge
“I knew I had met my geequal when Frank showed me his Star Wars light saber iPhone app.”

Myselfish
adj. A term used to describe people’s need for recognition and self-fulfillment via the Internet. This is accomplished with incessant Facebook status updates and TMI-Twitter feeds, and serves the purpose of making one feel important and/or noticed
“My friends consider my need to Twitter detailed accounts of my trips to Trader Joe’s, the gas station, and my opinions on anything, really, to be annoyingly myselfish. I consider it shameless self-promotion!”

THIS YEAR’S REHAB
Retox (ree-tox)
v. To go back on your New Year’s resolutions and do the opposite of the goals you set for yourself
“Instead of following my resolution to get fit this year, I decided to retox and take up cooking classes instead. Oh well, no one follows New Year’s resolutions anyway, right?”

Smashed Potatoes
adj. Drunk, inebriated, similar to the term “hot mess”
“Sorry I bailed without saying good night, but I was smashed potatoes.”

STREET SLANG
Hate-cation
n. Taking a vacation from being a hater where you are committed to not saying anything bad about anyone or anything; synonymous with “moral cleanse”
“Whatever, I know you have an opinion but just can’t speak your mind because you are on a hate-cation.”

Obama/Not Obama
adj. London street reporters proclaim that our new President has become synonymous with “cool”
“Yeah, that is so Obama!”

Alt-worthy
adj. A term used to describe people or things considered to be cool or trendy
“The pop-up art gallery on Elizabeth Street is alt-worthy.”

Filed under: the world eh , fun, fun facts, funny words, marketing, trends, word

More on Europe

Berlin was such a satisfying sight when it came to the roads (among many other things) – all the cars were either Mercedes, Audi, Opel or BMW. I saw ONE Ford and shivered to the bone. What’s a Ford doing in Germany? What kind of a nitwit would buy a Ford when they can buy a probably better Audi for that price?

Another note on Spain – Ibiza island is full of roundabouts. At first it was sort of tough on a scooter, but then we eased into it and found it much more practical than lights or highway exits. Roundabouts! I’m so happy that my Ibiza experience was just as wild as it was chill. Master of balance ze Karina.

I’ve been thinking about Hemingway a lot here, his Spain. I was trying to pick up one of his book to read since I am in Spain and I love reading books set in locations which I am traveling through. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything super intriguing of his (and I couldn’t deal with reading so much about bullfighting, considering Barcelona was the first city in Spain to protest against bullfighting or bull running). Instead I got Faulkner’s Light in August. It sounds quite promising; I spent several hours in a cafe yesterday reading it.

Hey, I just arrived in Bunol! Going for La Tomatina. Tomatoes, here I come!

Filed under: random facts, simple life, the world eh , 2008, Berlin, Europe, fun facts, literature, mobile, Spain, travels, trip

Lobster Trivia

So, as it turns out I am obsessed with lobsters at this moment in time. Luckily, on Mondays I can enjoy it for $20 at the Ultra Supper Club (which is a place I wouldn’t usually go to).

Lobsters are very low in saturated fat and carbs, whilst high in protein! As a matter of fact, it’s a perfect item to include in your diet – it’s even better than chicken or lean pork and all that. If you eat 3.5 ounces of lobster meat (minus the butter!) you’d be getting 93 calories. That’s less than the calorie content of chicken of the same serving.

Lobsters can be cannibals! Blue lobsters occur once in every 3-4 million lobsters! They all turn red in the end though The largest lobster ever caught was over 44 pounds! It takes lobsters 5-7 years to grow to legal size; 3 pound lobster is about 15-20 years old. Takes a while. Unfortunately, no one has yet figured out a way to raise lobsters in captivity (much less make profit from such operations), hence no lobster aquaculture. Keep paying high prices!

How to eat a lobster.

Atlantic Canada Lobster Promotion group provides us with a very interesting nutritional comparison chart here – lobsters seem to be the best choice if you can afford to eat them on a daily basis.

PS. Wow, geez, during my lobster research I found the Nutrition Data website – check it out, it’s pretty hardcore when it comes to everything you want to know about the things you consume!

And with this I go to sleep!

Filed under: random facts , food, fun facts, lobster

Peculiar city names

Andy and I were talking on the phone tonight, and the conversation stirred in the direction of his opinions on the town in which he lives. He’s in Arcata, California, and he mentioned Eureka, California and its list of disadvantages.

I got slightly distracted (just a little, Andy!), and thought of how someone got the idea of calling a place “Eureka”. What’s with the Archimedian streak? Then I started laughing quite a bit at the thought of some nitwit leaping into the air, squeaking “Eureka!”

Andy, however, shared an even better insight – Truth or Consequences, New Mexico! Whoa, I must say. The town bears the name of an old American quiz show. Towns with names like these definitely have a higher place on my dislike of some North American city-naming traditions (I have a penchant for discrediting towns with names such as Paris, [insert states] or Moscow, [insert state])

Did you know?! -> Carl Friedrich Gauss, echoed Archimedes when in 1796 he wrote in his notebook, “ΕΥΡΗΚΑ! num= Δ + Δ + Δ”, referring to his discovery that any positive integer could be expressed as the sum of at most three triangular numbers. Thx, wiki!

Filed under: simple life , archimedes, cities, eureka, fun facts, funny words, gauss, names, truth or consequences