Tag Archives: Ottawa

Ottawa, part 2

Now where was I? Ah, right. Ottawa.

Alright, so, picking up where we left off, with me reading Cryptonomicon in the hotel lobby. After I got checked in, there was a meet and greet sort of thing and then a boring lecture about some kind of economics, whatever. There was a lot of this kind of uninteresting stuff, which I’ll be referring to, as per official Fulbright policy, as “cultural and academic activities”. There are some pictures here, actually of the whole weekend, so you could follow along there if you want.

After the cultural and academic activities, I had the fanciest meal of my life to date at a restaurant called the Courtyard, I think. The worst part was that it was so close to delicious but they had to fancy it up. The meal I had was essentially steak and potatoes, but instead of potatoes it was a potato and leek puree, and they gave me about 15 mL of the stuff. Yes, I thought about it in terms of millilitres. It spread out across my plate and got cold before I had even figured out what all the rest of the crap on my plate was. It was:

  • A very large, whole mushroom
  • A single baby carrot
  • Crispy shallots
  • Gravy, I guess? I’m still not sure about this.

Anyway, the steak was excellent because they couldn’t come up with a way of ruining it, and I managed to push the rest of it around enough to pass it off as eaten. My other beef (ha!) with this meal was that it took longer than an entire Lord of the Rings movie to happen and I was very tired. There were three courses plus a period of about half an hour before they gave us anything but bread and wine. Oh! They gave me wine. It was neat, like I was a full professor or something. The waiter would come around and be all, “White or red, sir?” and I would look at the labels like I was trying to figure out the vintage but really I was trying to make sure my mouth stayed closed while I thought. I went with red because it seemed to be the most popular. I thought this whole thing was odd at the time, but I was sitting next to the lovely woman in charge of paying for this whole affair, Fulbright’s Director of Financial Something Something or whatever it was, and she explained it to me. Apparently, in years past they’ve had problems with people ordering expensive cocktails and things with their meals, so they just preempt it by sending wine around at intervals. Clever folks. We walked back to the hotel after the meal, which taught me something about Ottawa: it’s freaking cold.

The next morning we met at 8:00 (!) for more cultural and academic activities. Skip ahead to the afternoon, when we went to the Museum of Civilization, which was interesting but veered dangerously close to cultural and academic activities territory. These totem poles were cool, though.

Once we were done here, it was about suppertime, so we of course did not have supper. Instead, we went back to the hotel to put on our fancy clothes and go see Mr. David Jacobson, the American ambassador. I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures there, but rest assured, he has extremely nice digs. You could play like three simultaneous games of baseball on this guy’s yard. He was actually one of the cooler people I met on this trip. He has magic fire crystals next to his fireplace, the ones that turn fire all different colours. It seems like the higher up you actually are, the less interested you are in superfluous fanciness. Maybe there’s something to that, but I promised to cut back on the speculation and rambling, so I’ll leave it at the ambassador is a cool guy. Another fancy meal ensued, but this one I liked because it was in a revolving restaurant. It was hard to get any good pictures, but it was really neat and the food was less pretentious than the night before, and I was once again amused by and appreciative of people treating me like some kind of high-level diplomat: calling me sir, giving me wine, asking for my opinion on things. Mostly they wanted to know what I thought about the Internet once they found out I was a computer scientist. I told them I thought it was pretty cool.

Next morning, at an even more ungodly hour, more cultural and academic activities. The first fun thing we did was later on, when we went to Parliament for a tour. This was cool and also actually interesting, but they made me take off all my buttons. You know, the ones on my bag. I think “War is over, if you want it” is what put them over the edge. But I did think it was overkill to make me take off, for example, my “Have a great summer!” pin. Didn’t seem that subversive to me. Let it be known, Canada: Parliament wants you to have a terrible summer. Anyway, the tour was interesting, and I got to see Elizabeth May’s seat, way, way back in the corner:

Also of interest was the library of Parliament:

Apparently, they have a book in here worth a million dollars. It purportedly contains life-size, detailed drawings of all of Canada’s birds. I wasn’t totally sure I believed this, for two reasons: 1) There are a ton of birds in Canada, but mainly 2) I didn’t see any books that were 4 feet tall, so I don’t know what pose the heron was in but it must not have been a typical one. Oh, I forgot: before that, we went to the National Gallery of Art or something like that, which had some cool stuff. My new favourite artist is Monet.

So after that it was suppertime, which meant we were headed back to the hotel to not eat. Instead, we went and played a hockey game, which was by far the most fun we had all weekend, and then we had pizza and beer (a.k.a. human food) which was the second most fun thing. It boggles my mind that they do this every year and still spend so much time trying to come up with good cultural experiences. Play some hockey, eat some pizza, drink some beer. Canada. It was good to be back.

Good morning, this is Kafka Taxi, how may we help you?

I’m really starting to think of myself as a hip and cool person, travelling around and becoming a distinguished gentleman and scholar. This weekend I went to Ottawa to be told how great I am, and I was thoroughly convinced.

Fulbright Canada, the benefactors of the Killam Fellowships program, to whom I am deeply and eternally grateful, put on annual seminars for all the students and researchers they’ve given money to. My understanding of the situation is that Fulbright is funded heavily by the Canadian and American governments, who like to see pictures of things in order that they may be proven to exist. Unfortunately, Fulbright is not in the business of, say, building bridges or delivering refrigerators. Fulbright’s goals are more abstract: things like learning, cultural awareness, and open-mindedness are all fine things to put in brochures, but somehow, Fulbright needs to find a way to take pictures of them. To this end, Fulbright gives us all a bit more money to fly to Ottawa in the fall (and Washington in the spring, but that’s down the road a ways yet) and participate in “fall orientation”. Fall orientation consists of a lot of meetings and fancy dinners and speakers and panel discussions, none of which are terribly interesting but which are easy to take pictures of and suggest some degree of intellectuality, thus comforting the powers that be and protecting Fulbright’s income streams in the years ahead.

My adventures with fall orientation began dispiritingly early last Thursday morning, around 4:30. I, being a responsible, think-ahead kind of person, had called for a taxi in advance the evening previous, and was disappointed to find it not where it had promised to be, that is, outside my dormitory. Calling the taxi dispatcher, I was assured that I must be mistaken and the taxi was, in fact, in exactly the same place as I was – outside my building.

One of the things I’ve learned about America is that there is a very high degree of respect for authority in all its forms. Campus police, for example, the object of ridicule and occasional pranking at Dalhousie and UPEI, are genuinely feared here. I think this is because the campus police actually do have some legal power here, although I still haven’t had it explained to me clearly. Being caught by campus police doing something contrary to university regulations leads to being “written up” or “referred” or even “documented”. Clearly, the threat is of a descent into a Kafkaesque quasi-judicial system that even a business student could not fill out enough forms to escape. I do my best to avoid the campus police.

Anyway, this respect for authority comes across in more subtle ways as well. A person presented with clearly false information will assume it is true as long as it bears the stamp of an authority figure of some sort. Securities are purchased based on good ratings given by ratings agencies that have a vested interest in the success of the securities. “Authority” is trusted even to the extent of causing the near-collapse of the global financial system, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that a tired taxi dispatcher wasn’t quick to properly assess the assertion of his high-tech taxi tracking system – the details of the operation of which I was not able to find out despite repeated questioning – that this taxi was directly outside Terrace 3, Ithaca College. I would have thought, though, that he would have been able to come to the conclusion without my help that that information, in combination with my telling him that I was directly outside Terrace 3, Ithaca College, was an obvious contradiction of the laws of either physics or normal human behaviour. After a few seconds of waiting, though, I decided he had had long enough and was not going to get there on his own.

I informed him that I was not standing on top of, lying underneath, or intersecting the taxi. I inquired once more as to the nature of the taxi tracking system and was once more rebuffed. I asked if the system might possibly, in some way, ever in a million years, be mistaken. He mulled this over for several seconds, attempting to radically change his worldview, and finally made a deep “Hmmmmm” sort of noise that I naively interpreted as sudden comprehension.

“Where are you, again?” he asked. At that moment, the taxi pulled up. I said a hasty, no doubt deeply confusing goodbye to my friend the taxi dispatcher, and got in.

Now, reviewing this blog post for (maybe obviously) the first time, I can see that it rambles a little bit, clouds the narrative with unnecessary musing, and could be a little too colourful in its literary style. I can also see how that could be annoying to readers. However, I have spent a full 35 minutes writing it and I’m not about to just delete all that. So, in the interest of balance, the rest of the post shall contain no musing, speculation or time-wasting of any kind. My ride to the airport was uneventful and reasonably priced. My flight left on time in the morning without major incident and I arrived safely and punctually at the Lord Elgin hotel in Ottawa. I walked around Ottawa for a couple of hours, got tired and returned to the hotel lobby to read for 45 minutes while I waited to check in. The book was Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I recommend it but offer no comment.

I like my way better. This whole post has gotten boring and dreary. It is also as much as I feel like writing for the moment. Next time, we’ll explore fancy meals, long walks, and infringements on my freedom of speech.