Getting to Vancouver, Canada

Well after a false start (3 hour delay at Melbourne airport) and 32 hours I arrived at Vancouver -a bit tired but also excited about the trip ahead.

With the long delay at Melbourne airport before I even got started I had a lot of time to think and to get bored. As I wandered around the shops looking at all the gadgets I found myself having some internal dialogues about how useful it would be to have the latest noise reducing headphones or a 160gig iPod to listen to music or to catch up with all those interesting radio shows I miss.

Then I was reading some more of Richard Louv's book (Last Child in the Woods) and came across a pertinent quote from Edward Reed, an Associate Professor of Psychology, "There is something wrong with a society that spends so much money, as well as countless hours of human effort - to make the least dregs of processed information available to everyone everywhere and yet does little or nothing to help us explore the world for ourselves." (p64)

So instead of buying an iPod (I don't even know 40,000 songs for goodness sake), I made a decision to spend this trip, and hopefully after the trip as well, being in the moment.

Instead of putting on headphones to take me to somewhere else, I want to fully experience my surroundings here and now.

In keeping with this theme it is interesting to note the different ways people respond to flight delays. Personally I want them to take as much time as they need to make sure my plane is ready to fly. Some laugh off the delay but others demand answers and free stuff as compensation.

I also had plenty of time on the flight to read and a magazine selling stuff online on behalf of the airline caught my attention. It is amazing the stuff you can buy! For example you can buy a thing called iWear (I don't think it is sold by Apple but I think the latest marketing tool is to put an i in front of everything - maybe to piggy back off the iPhone?). This iWear is a pair of sci-fi looking glasses with built in headphones and a built in TV screen which they claim is the equivalent of a 150cm HD screen. This gadget connects 'wirelessly' (I think I just made up a word) to your portable DVD player. I hope I see someone wearing a pair of these when I have my camera handy because the guy in the advert was desperately trying to look cool, but frankly he wasn't pulling it off.

There was also a thing called "The Indoor Dog Restroom" so your dog can pee indoors. It looks like one of those synthetic grass mats you practice golf on and apparently it holds 2 gallons (8 litres) of pee - nice.

I will keep my eye out for any other interesting and quirky things to buy and report on them here.

It is time to go and have a look at Vancouver. Talk to you soon.