African Children's Choir

Two nights ago we took in our first real cultural event since arriving to Montreal: a performance at a nearby church of the African Children's Choir. The choir is comprised of children from Uganda aged seven to eleven and each child in the choir has lost one or both parents to poverty or disease. Their mission is to raise awareness of poverty and to help feed, shelter and educate destitute African children. Kassie really got into the dancing which accompanied the singing, as both were truly inspiring if not a little exhausting to watch.

Bull's eye

Dan's done it again. In his latest book, Bulletproof Web Design: Improving Flexibility and Protecting against Worst-Case Scenarios with XHTML and CSS (New Riders), Dan Cederholm has provided us with practical, real-world examples of website conversions culminating in standards-compliant, cross-browser sites that are bulletproof. In a nutshell, he advocates, and shows us how to design, flexible websites that:

• provide the user with greater control
• are scalable, to any text size, amount of text, not to mention window size and resolution
• incorporate images to create highly aesthetic user experiences
• are functional when both images and CSS are removed
• are easy to edit, update and maintain.

Perhaps the best piece of advice he gives relates to a web designer's take on a new project. He urges us to choose optimal markup from the start and strive for the most compact and meaningful solutions.

For a review of Dan's previous work, see my post entitled Web designers rejoice.

Land of the loonies and twonies

I made it, folks. I'm back in the "land of the loonies and twonies", as a friend put it years ago when we left Budapest for Canada. So far I'm loving the fine weather, numerous good cafes, and particularly the sight of shoes lined up by the front door — a sure sign that you're in a Canadian household. No more do I need to argue with hosts before removing my footwear or attempt to cajole servicemen into baring their soles before entering my home.

Top ten list of things British

Below is my top ten list of things I'm going to miss once I leave jolly old England (three days and counting):

1. old manors, castles and ruins—Kassie's fed up but we adults can't get enough
2. lovely little endearments— in Canada I'm not likely to be called "luv", "petal", "blossom", "mate", and certainly not "duck"
3. tripping over my English—I enjoy being confused by nouns like "jolly" and expletives such as "crikey", not to mention meeting amused, indulgent faces when I say things like "shrimp", "parking lot", "highway", "pants" and, lately, "movers"
4. charity shops—countless shops selling second-hand books, clothes, videotapes, you name it; also a great way to get rid of stuff
5. shopping on the High Street—who needs shopping centres or malls
6. coffee mornings—I'm sure I'll meet friends regularly for coffee in Montreal and Toronto too but I doubt we'll put a name to it
7. public footpaths—for those who fancy a walk through fields without threat of prosecution for trespassing
8. public transportation in the country—growing up in the country myself, I imagine I'd never have attempted to drive (and thus made the world a much safer place earlier on) if I'd been able to catch a bus to take me into the city
9. pub meals—particularly lamb dishes
10. the Brits' love of everything Canadian—even those who enjoy our company can't figure out why we'd leave such a fantastic country as Canada.

Most of all, of course, I'm going to miss each and every one of the friends I made while living in the charming town of Nantwich. You know who you are, guys. See you all in Canada. (Just don't come all at once, please!)

On the demise of snail-mail

Royal Mail is pretty good. It's not unusual to post something first-class and have it arrive nationally the very next day. Naturally, sending mail overseas takes longer; for instance, to Canada and the US, about a week. Rather than write letters to my daughter while she is miles from me, with news that will be old by the time she receives it, I decided to write her a story and send a page each day. So imagine my surprise when she received page 4 three days after I mailed it, then two days later pages 2 and 3 (which were mailed together), and finally the next day page 1! Thanks to the peculiarities of snail-mail she was forced to read the story backwards.

I don't know how it'll work this week. Obviously I should have emailed her the pages, as I do with just about everything else. Take, for instance, our removals folks: they send us forms by email, which we complete using a word processing package, then email back along with any scanned documents required. England may have a stellar postal service but is it truly necessary in this day and age?

Ragging on one's profession

It's inevitable, isn't it? Get a few workmates together and what do we do...rag, rag, rag. I attended a party on the weekend — a truly wonderful party in which I met more writers, published, unpublished, and just about published, than I have ever met before. But what did we end up doing? Complaining about the pay, the politics, the seemingly contradictory demands of sales and marketing and our art. Yet with two chapters left in my latest novel, I cannot stop. I trust neither will the others. Writers by definition write. There is no other recourse.

Katrina's legacy

Many of us have lost jobs, watched the ceiling cave in, crashed our cars, and/or waded through flood waters. Life has a way of reminding us that it is all too precarious. Yet nothing can prepare us for a natural disaster, its ruthless brutality that by definition spares no one, not the wealthy or the powerful.

Early today the first consignments of aid left the UK for the flood-ravaged regions of the United States. On the weekend the first of the Britons trapped in New Orleans returned home with tales of pillage, rape and murder. I wonder how long it will take before we hear tales of heroism and self-sacrifice. Surely society, or civilization for that matter, is not that precarious.