Vancouver

July 9, 2020

Isn’t in fun when your credit card info gets compromised, and your card gets cancelled… and you have to notify all 38 different auto-billers of the new card number… such a great use of time. Kudos though, to VISA and MC, whose AI fraud-detection these days seem to work quite well. Instantly flagged were $1,000+ online purchases at a number of high-end fashion retailers. Not quite in character for me.

I got sort-of wrongly accused of credit card fraud one time… I was in Calgary, and just before flying home, I filled up the tank of the rental car at the airport gas station before returning it.

Upon landing in Vancouver, I picked up my car from the parking lot and filled it up with gas at that little gas station wedged between the entrance/exit roads to YVR. This was 20 years ago, before pay-at-the-pump was a thing. In fact, before pre-paying for gas was a thing.

I filled up my tank and went inside, and gave the guy my card. He ran it… and his expression changed.

“Uhh… it didn’t go through”.
“Oh, that’s weird… should be fine… I just used it.”
“I’ll call VISA.”
“Sure… actually, don’t bother… here, I’ll pay cash.”
“Yeah… umm… I’m going to call them.”
“Seriously, don’t bother… here’s the cash.”

But he wouldn’t take the cash, and he wouldn’t return the card. And then I started wondering what little message must have popped-up on his machine… Fraud alert? Destroy card? Call police?

It makes some sense… buying gas 2 hours apart with the same physical card… at two gas stations more than 1,000km apart… ok, that’s fair. We got it quickly resolved… but, in fairness, that should have set off some alarm bells.

You know what else sets off alarm bells, but doesn’t get resolved so easily? Disney World in Florida is opening up this weekend.

Trust me, I am well-aware of the financial problems this pandemic is causing. I’m very familiar with plenty of economic forecasts and cash-flow projections that, at present, have zeros for top-line revenue. Do you know how many companies have zeros up there when they’re planning their budgets? Zero. Because, without revenue, you don’t have a business.

Surviving to live another day has been a well-discussed topic, but I’m not going to write about government incentives or job losses… I’m just going to talk about Disney. Disney is a public company, so they have to disclose a bunch of information, and one of the things they disclose is how much cash they have in the bank… defined as cash, or highly-liquid investments that could be redeemed on short notice. Here’s how much cash they’ve had over the last few years:

2017: $4.0 billion
2018: $4.2 billion
2019: $5.4 billion

Up to March 31, 2020: $14.3 billion

I don’t have a clue where that new $9 billion came from. Maybe they bought lots of shares in Zoom. It doesn’t matter… what matters is… that there are a lot of struggling companies that can’t afford to take a hit, but Disney isn’t one of them. They could most certainly afford to sit tight for bit… especially when Florida is seeing record numbers. Like… scary record numbers. Florida has a little more than half the population of Canada. Since July 1st, Canada has had 2,500 new cases. Florida has had 60,000.

At the risk of sounding a little too socialist… hey Disney, pay your people to sit around for another month or two. You can afford it. But your local hospitals can’t afford what you’re about to impose upon them. They already can’t… 56 Florida ICUs are at capacity, 35 others are at less than 10% availability… as Dr. Henry would tell you, “This is not the time.”

It’s easy to ring alarm bells. But it’s seeming difficult to get the right people to hear them.

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Day 97 – June 21, 2020

Many years ago, well before my ownership of horses entitled me to free parking, I found a great place to park when going to Hastings Park or the PNE.

All of the PNE lands are bordered to the north by McGill Street, and to the north of McGill street is New Brighton Park. And whereas parking at the PNE was $10, parking at New Brighton was only $2. There was a guy there, orange vest and little pad of paper, wad of cash for change if needed… he’d take your two bucks and let you in. It was a bit of a hike, because you had to walk up, and all the way around.. but no big deal; it saved a significant amount of money, especially if you added it up over time… and this went on for years.

One day, the PNE called up the City of Vancouver and said to them, hey… your guy at New Brighton… he should be charging more. And the City of Vancouver replied… what guy? And so unravelled what can only be labelled as an excellent example of opportunistic creative entrepreneurship… or simply, a scam.

Scammers come in all sorts of shapes a sizes… an infinite array of criminal opportunists. A very common one these days involves scam emails. Nigerian princes with fortunes to hide, Powerball winners with millions to give away, ex-army officials with bricks of gold to launder… an endless list of creative criminals.

I have an email address — fake name, fake address… that I use exclusively for mailing lists and subscriptions where I want to read content, but not interact. They don’t need to know who I am. As you might imagine, this email address has become polluted with spam…. and scam emails. At least one a week… some version of “I have millions of dollars to send you; please send me some small amount of money so we can process it”. I sometimes reply with one sentence, and it turns into a conversation until they eventually figure out I’m just wasting their time. But two relevant stories… one was years ago… here’s what happened:

The guy (in Nigeria) wanted to send me a gift card with $200,000 on it… but needed me to send him $50 to pay for shipping it to me. That there are people who would fall for this baffles me. But anyway, I said to him… sure… I sent you the money… here’s the Western Union MTCN number… and made up a string of digits. He wrote back and told me he went to WU and tried to cash it in… but the number I’d sent was no good. It was only 9 digits, and the MTCN should be 10. Oh… I’m sorry, you’re right, I missed a digit. Here’s the correct number… and I just added an extra digit in the middle of it.

He wrote back two days later, angry that he’d once again gone to WU, and been rejected. I told him I’m so sorry… looking at it now, I think I said 4 to one of the digits, but it’s probably a 9. Bad handwriting from the WU clerk.

Two days later he wrote back… very angry. He’d gone again, been rejected of course, and been told that if he shows up again trying to scam WU, he’d be arrested. Then he gave me a whole sob story… how he’s an old man, he has to take a bus 90 minutes into Abuja to get to Western Union, he doesn’t time for this and so on. Oh… I felt bad. Poor scammer.

So I got an official WU form and filled it out with great precision. Even the handwritten MTCN number, with a digit that could be either a 4 or a 9. I made it look official, put some official time stamps and everything on it. It was a real work of art. Then I sent him an angry email, with a scan of my masterpiece… saying… listen you idiot, I’m not sure if you or the Western Union people are the brainless ones. Here’s the official paperwork I got when I sent the money. Take this to WU… and go get your money and send me my giftcard. Jeez.

Well… I never heard from him again. And there are a few possible scenarios, one of which is he’s in jail. I hope so. One less scammer preying on gullible people.

The second story is happening right now, and I’m not sure what to do. I recently answered one of these scammers with a sort of “I already sent you the money” email. Note… this is an excellent way to engage… because if they fall for it, they’ll think they’ve got “a live one” on the hook. I sent that message, and it turned into a back-and-forth, but what happened recently was this… I told her I’d send the money again, and she said great… and sent me all of her banking info. Real name, real home address and bank account info. Huh… now what. Call the cops? FBI? Ship her a glitter-bomb? Blackmail her? So many possibilities!

The vast majority of the time, the scams are all about money. Follow the money, and you will find the scammer. But once in a while, it’s about something totally different.

Such was the case last week and yesterday, with a bunch of teenagers using TikTok and other social media, and totally scamming the Trump presidential campaign. It fooled everyone, including me. I thought there would be hundreds of thousands of people crowding downtown Tulsa, because we were told how much interest there was in that rally. They had expected to fill 22,000 seats inside, and an extra overflow of 40,000 outside. In the end, the inside had a little over 6,000 people. The outside was cancelled.

Ironic of course, that the rally was to pay homage to the biggest scammer of all. And interestingly — perhaps appropriately — this rally might actually end up being the beginning of the end. There’s only so much people can take, and every time Trump goes off-script, all bets are off. He’s said many stupid things “off the cuff”, when he switches from the teleprompter to his brain, and usually the damage control can take care of it. But this time? Even his own people had nothing. They served up the lamest of the lame excuses, the one that works ok in grade 1… when you don’t quite get it… when you’re still refining your sense of humour. When Jimmy has dipped Cindy’s ponytail into paste, thinking it’s funny. But it’s not, and she’s crying… so Jimmy serves up the good old “I was just kidding”.

Well… what are they going to say, to remove the Trumpian foot out of his mouth? There’s nothing to say. “I was just kidding” isn’t going to fly; not because it’s not funny, but simply because he wasn’t kidding.

What Trump said basically was… “My reelection is so much more important than all of you, that I really don’t care if you all die… well, ha ha, not all of you… but let’s not go crazy testing you all… because we will see numbers that will make me look bad. So let’s just slow down this testing, and pretend things are not as bad as they are.”

That’s a heavy dose of reality for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. The guy you’ve been defending for more than four years, telling you, in your face, literally… it’s ok if we don’t know you’re all sick. That’s not as important as my re-election.

Maybe, just maybe… some people will wake up and see… that they’re being scammed, by the greatest scammer of them all.

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Day 95 – June 19, 2020

Perhaps the craziest coincidence I ever heard of was this: Many years ago, long before cell phones… there was a guy… let’s call him Bob, who worked somewhere downtown, and parked his car in the same reserved spot, in the same multi-story parkade — for years. His spot was near the booth at the entrance, where the booth guy worked many years as well… so the two got to know each other quite well. Always a good morning and good night on the way in and out, and sometimes Bob would stop to chat.

One particular evening, the two were chatting when the phone in the booth rang… which was unusual; there were never many incoming calls. The booth guy said excuse me to Bob and took the call… which was a wrong number, someone looking for “Bob”. As a joke, the booth guy handed the phone to Bob and said “It’s for you.”

Bob laughed and answered the phone…. “Hello…” — and was met by the voice of his wife, asking him to stop at Safeway to pick up a few things because they were having some friends over for dinner. An astonished Bob said sure honey, whatever… but wait… how did you reach me at this number? Turns out the wife had mis-dialled… turns out Bob’s office number and the booth number were very similar, and she’d simply dialled the wrong number… and found who she was looking for anyway. A crazy coincidence.

My crazy coincidence story is not quite so crazy — but it’s pretty good. About 10 years ago, I was in a meeting — one of these big board room meetings, lots of people, lots of lawyers. I was a little early, so I walked in, picked a spot and sat down. I looked around and with a few minutes to spare, doodled a bit and, for fun, started doing some mental math on how much this meeting was costing someone…. that guy is $300/h, that guy is probably $600/h… and that’s one of the partners… I wonder what he bills out at…

Anyway, as I sat there idling my brain, some lawyer sat down next to me an we introduced each other, and get to chatting… he was older… maybe 15 to 20 years older than me; idle chat, turns out he’s from Vancouver, turns out we grew up in the same neighbourhood… and, turns out we grew up on the same street. I ask him where, he says between X and Y streets…. Hey, me too! Which actual house? He gives me the address and… yeah. Wow. The house I grew up in. The house my parents bought in 1974 from a guy… I remember the name… something like let’s say Dr. Smythe… yes, same last name as this lawyer. My parents bought the house from this guy’s dad, so now we’re talking about the house itself and, of course, his bedroom… became my bedroom. How’s that for a crazy coincidence.

Want to know something that isn’t a crazy coincidence? The 4,000 new cases in Florida yesterday. The overcrowded Florida ICUs. The Apple stores, recently re-opened, now shutting down again in a number of states (including Florida), because of alarmingly high rising numbers. Also not a coincidence will be the fallout from tomorrow’s campaign rally in Tulsa.

Whereas in the past, we’ve been able to figure out by careful analysis what “super-spreader” events occurred, leading to massive breakouts… this is the first time we’ll be able to proactively predict one. The volatile, crowded mix of Trump supporters in a closed environment? No masks and lots of yelling? This is COVID-19’s dream scenario. It’s so scary, even if you’re watching from away on a screen… wear a mask.

Oklahoma has a population of 4 million. B.C. has a population of 5 million. No B.C. numbers today, but yesterday… Oklahoma had 450 new cases. B.C. had 8. Let’s re-visit these numbers in a couple of weeks… curious what we’ll see. Oh, big spike in Oklahoma… that’s kind of surprising, right? Hey, remember that rally… think it’s related? Nah. Just a coincidence.

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Day 87 – June 11, 2020

I grew up not too far from Oakridge Mall™… it used to be my go-to mall… but, just like the changes that have transformed Vancouver over my lifetime… the same thing can be said about that mall. It’s presently undergoing a massive renovation, and I’m curious how it’ll all look once it’s done. Until they started the renovations, it was still a go-to kind of mall. Great little hole-in-the-wall sushi place, great foot reflexology place, David’s Tea™ , Radio Shack™/The Source™. Renovations or pandemic; they’re all gone.

For those who’ve been around long enough, you might remember two things about that mall, and others that had a Woodward’s™ … things you haven’t thought about in years, but I’m about to remind you. Both have to do with the Woodward’s Food Floor™ , the ancestor of Safeway™. First of all, at a counter at the front… the best frosted malts on the planet. The most well-known bribe imaginable… kids don’t want to go shopping? Offer them a WFF frosted malt. Done deal. I’ve never been able to find anything like those; a Wendy’s Frosty™ is the closest thing, but it’s not the same. Who knows what gave it that intangible incredible taste. For all I know, it was mixing the malt with the non-biodegradable styrofoam cup that it came in, the kind where it makes that delicious scraping sound as you try to reach every last molecule of yumminess. If anybody reading this knows of a place locally that makes really good frosted malts… please… tell me!!

The other thing was the Parcel Depot™ — which sounds like something out of The Jetsons™ if you’re not familiar with it. You’d buy your groceries, which would always we be bagged by some kid… into paper bags. But instead of just handing you a shopping cart full of bags… or maybe schlepping them out to the car for you… what he’d do is put them in giant plastic tubs. Each tub had a number painted on it. Each tub also had a ratty-looking plastic shingle with the same number. The bags would go in, and the shingle (or shingles, if it was one of those massive haul sort-of trips requiring multiple bins) would be handed to the shopper. And then… the magic. The tubs would disappear underground, on a mysterious conveyor belt that took them into the abyss.

Actually, it wasn’t the abyss… it was an island in the middle of the parking lot, the Parcel Pickup™ where you’d drive the car, pop the trunk, hand the shingle to some other kid who’d find the appropriate tub that had magically materialized in said island… and load your trunk. Incredibly futuristic, in hindsight.

Around 30 years ago, I had this friend… who was dating a girl who was a hairdresser. She was really nice, and would cut my hair for free. I had to drive out all the way to New West, but so what… free haircut! And then, one day, they broke up. He was sad. I was sad too, because I lost my hair hookup. He’s laughing right now because he’s reading this. Hi Andrew.

And so, around 30 years ago but a few weeks later, I happened to be at Oakridge Mall™ and realized I desperately needed a haircut, and there was a hair salon place there. It was called Raymond Hair Design™ , located roughly where BMO™ and The Apple Store™ are today. I wandered in, asked for a haircut… I didn’t have an appointment of course, so they hooked me up with whoever was free — turned out to be a very nice young (we were all young back then) lady who cut my hair and did a great job with it. Good enough that when I needed a haircut next time, I went back to the same place and asked for her. And this went on for years, until one day she told me that she and a few of her co-workers were starting-up their own place… maybe I wanted to follow her there. Of course… where? Near Broadway & Granville. For sure… so for the next few years, that’s where the haircuts took place. And then one day, she said she’s going out on her own… she found a little place and signed a lease… maybe I wanted to follow her there. Of course… where? Near Broadway & Granville. Aren’t we near Broadway & Granville right now? Yes, indeed… it’s a couple of blocks away. Great.

So the haircuts moved over to the new place for several years… a kind of dark, below-ground little spot…but it did the job… until one day she said she’s moving again, to a bigger and brighter spot. Great, I said… where..? Near Broadway & Granville. Yeah…isn’t that where we are right now? Indeed… just a couple of blocks away. Heh, ok. See you there. And that’s where the haircuts moved to… and that’s exactly where I was a few hours ago, for the first time since February 24th. I typically cut my hair every few weeks… it grows quickly. It’s been 15 weeks…

I must say, I was really happy to go there. My hair desperately needed it, it was really nice to see her and catch up, and, of course, the feeling of restoring normality that comes with all of that. It was weird… we were the only two in the entire salon, she was wearing a mask… but still… so, shoutout to Jenny — she’s reading this too. I can’t seem to find the best frosted malts on the planet, but I found the best haircuts 30 years ago, so I’m sticking with it.

Speaking of sticking with it… you know, I can’t sign off without some sort of pandemic correlation… that seems to be *my* TradeMark™… but this one is easy… like I said, for us around here who’ve behaved relatively well, so much so that our numbers are allowing us the steps toward normality… this is the sort of reward that comes with it. It’s not a lot, but like many things we used to take for granted, it now comes with a new appreciation. I suppose like oxygen… it’s not a big deal and you never think about it… until the moment comes where you can’t get any. Suddenly, it becomes a very big deal, very quickly. Haircuts aren’t life-or-death, but neither was most of the life we were all accustomed to… it’s just nice to be heading back in that direction. Like I said, Stick With It™ … we’re getting there.

 

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Day 86 – June 10, 2020

Back in 1992, I went to a rock concert — Metallica, at the Pacific Coliseum… the Black Album tour, arguably their best. A very memorable concert, but before the show… something just as memorable…

Back in those days, like today, you stood in line to get checked by security before going in. Back then, they weren’t looking for guns or knives, though of course those would be confiscated… they didn’t even care about drugs. But alcohol, and the bottles that would house it — that was the big no-no. My friend and I were good little boys, so no concerns. We waited more than 15 minutes for the line to slowly snake its way to the doors, but we finally got there… and then this happened: My friend went in first, and the security guy frisked him…. and frowned. “What’s this?”, he asked…. “Huh?”, says my friend…. “Oh… oh shit… uh… oh boy….” and reaches into some lower hidden pocket of his relatively thick winter jacket and pulls out… a grenade.

Not a live grenade, of course… just a $5 army-surplus “hey, that’s pretty cool” sort of grenade. I imagine if this were today, some undertrained overzealous security fill-in would scream out “GRENADE!!” and there would be pandemonium. But back then…

“Yeah, I’m afraid you can’t take that in with you.”

“No… no, of course not. I’m so sorry. I…”

“You’ll have to check it.”

“… check it?”

“Yeah, coat check… go in, turn left… far wall, there’s a coat check… leave it there.”

“…”

“…”

“…. Ok.”

So in we go, turn left, go to the far wall to the coat check… he puts the grenade down on the counter. Coat check older lady doesn’t bat an eye… she picks it up, tapes a number to it, gives him the corresponding number, and puts the grenade on the shelf behind her. He hands her $1. Surreal.

After the epic concert, we’re herded out along with the rest of the unruly mob… and we’re far from the coat check, on the other side of the building. “What about your grenade?”, I asked him, as we approached the exit. His response strongly implied he wasn’t too interested in retrieving it.

Every time I see a grenade (which isn’t too often, notwithstanding the Bruno Mars’s song 10 years ago), I think about that grenade. I wonder what became of it? Did it sit on that shelf for a while? Did it make its way down to the Lost-and-Found? Is it still in some “Forgotten stuff people have left behind” pile in some basement storage room? It probably made its way into someone’s home, and when that person is asked where it came from, I wonder what they say.

This is the sort of story that wouldn’t happen today. Even here in Canada, where we’re a lot more chill than south of the border, but still. At one point, I suppose it was ok. These days, no way.

While I’ve been around, Vancouver has gone through three growth spurts, timed with three relevant events… Expo’86, the late 90’s handoff of Hong Kong back to China… and, more recently, the 2010 Winter Olympics. All of them brought lots of people to the city… and many of those people liked what they saw, and decided to stick around.

Those three events shifted the identity of this city… growth, diversity… some degree of “world-class”ness… creating different versions of time and place. Context. A grenade today on a U.S. city street during a protest? Serious problem. 30 years ago at a concert in Vancouver? Not so much.

It’s interesting how I always manage to tie-in some distant historical curiosity of my life and make it relevant to this present-day pandemic. And, more recently, tie it into the societal changes that are occurring. There’s no magic in my writing… it’s just the simple fact that history repeats itself, more often than we think. In concrete terms, pandemics have been reappearing for as long as man has been around. So have protests. And concerts. Same old stuff, dressed-up to be relevant as the flavour of the day. And whenever these days, you’re finding yourself thinking, wow… this is unimaginable. This impossible. This can’t be happening.

Yes, it’s imaginable, possible and it’s happening… again. Because it’s happened before. And it’ll happen yet again. It might look different… H34N87. COVID-68. Civil unrest because the [X] people are sick and tired of the [Y]’s people treatment of them.

We are living in interesting times, but let’s be clear… we’re not that special. Most people have lived through their generation’s versions of the same things. The key aspect is… did they learn anything from it? Have we learned from what they’ve learned, or are we doomed to make the same mistakes?

Yup… some rhetorical questions answer themselves.

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Day 64 – May 19, 2020

These little walks down memory lane, like yesterday’s piece on Mt. St. Helens, always seem to stir up something else… that I likely haven’t thought of in ages. Indeed, yesterday’s piece started off about a Sunday morning, with me describing how I was just sitting there reading… and nobody has asked me what I was reading, but I will tell you anyway… it was the stock-exchange listings from the previous night’s Vancouver Sun. And if you’re wondering why is an 11-year-old kid was reading stock prices on a Sunday morning 40 years ago, I’ll tell you…

Our grade-6 teacher had created a very cool one-month project. We would all get to buy and sell stocks, all starting with a virtual $1,000, and he would track it on a big chart in the classroom. Every day, we would submit our “trades” — buy this many shares at this price, sell this many at that price. He would do the math and track everyone’s profit/loss. We would submit our trades every morning, along with where we’d gotten the price — The Vancouver Sun or The Province.

There wasn’t really much research that could be done on it… at best, you’d have day-old news to contemplate, and anyway, we were in grade 6… who’s doing any sort of real research, and even if we did, to what end… whatever we might come up with would already have been built into the stock price. But it was a fun exercise, and of course, it grew very competitive, watching everyone’s graph-lines wiggle up and down from day to day. For the most part, people were picking stocks by names that sounded good, or maybe familiar. By the end of two weeks, a few lines had started to separate upwards… and I wasn’t one of them, and it was bothering me. And it didn’t seem like lucky guesses. These guys knew something.

As it turns out, indeed they did; their fathers were stock-brokers or somehow involved in business where they had access to better information. My dad was a mining engineer, so at best he suggested a few mining companies that were exploring for gold… but they weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. I needed to find an edge.

Arbitrage is the simultaneous purchasing and selling of an asset, where the buy price is lower than the sell price, so the transaction generates an instant and risk-free positive return. The most common place where this takes place is financial markets, where, for example, a certain stock may be listed on multiple exchanges. If you have instant access to both markets and notice that shares of ABC are offered for $10⅛ on one and being bid at $10⅜ on another, you buy the cheap one, sell the expensive one, and deliver the cheap ones to the guy that bought the expensive ones. This all happens instantly, and while making ¼ on that transaction may not sound like much, it certainly adds up when you do it 1,000 shares at a time, multiple times a day. There are armies of supercomputers trying to do this continually, all day these days, and to some extent, that serves a useful purpose… it keeps prices in check. As soon as an opportunity arises, some arb grabs it instantly, and the advantage is gone.

And what I had stumbled upon a few days earlier was this… perhaps an opportunity for manual arbitrage, though at the time, I did’t even know that word… all I knew was that, on the same day, the prices listed in The Vancouver Sun were different than The Province. Why?

As it turned out… The Sun was an afternoon paper… it’d always show up around 5pm. The Province was an early-morning paper, always there by breakfast. In our home, we got both. And here was the thing…. by the time The Sun needed to go to print to make it for afternoon deliveries, the stock markets weren’t closed yet. The price listed in The Sun was the day’s mid-morning price, taken at… 11am? Noon? Not sure, but certainly well-before the 1:30pm market close. The Province the next morning had the closing prices from the previous day… and so, differences in price. And by scouring for prices that were higher in The Province, I could “buy” them with yesterday’s lower price and hope the upswing held long enough that I could “sell” them at a higher price. Not all stocks that went up in that last hour of trading stayed up, all through the next day, in time to sell them… but something like 80% of them did, which is staggeringly-high, well-beyond any typical financial wizardry from even the best analysts.

My wiggly line started heading north pretty quickly after that, much like the Mt. St. Helens ash plume… and with almost as much vertical force. Within a week, I’d caught up to the competition…. and just kept rolling… which led to the teacher asking me to stay after school that next Friday. “OK, what’s going on here?”, he asked. Of course, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut… I was so proud of being so clever and figuring out this loophole. I spilled everything. “Do you think that’s fair?”, he asked me… and my simple question back was, “Is it against the rules?”

From there, we had an interesting discussion about The Rules vs. The Spirit Of The Rules. What rules? The stock market is a game where you’re trying to win, and to win, you have to out-think someone else. Where in the rules does it say I can’t do this? Yes, I realize this isn’t possible in reality, but this is not real. It’s a game, and I found a better way to play it.

And after that, although I think he was impressed by my resourcefulness, he changed the rules. All trades must be submitted in the morning, using that morning’s quotes from The Province. End of advantage, and I ended up losing because one of those other guys sold everything, and put it all onto one particular stock which shot up on the very last day. Because asking daddy for inside information is ok, but figuring out how to play the game better… is not. Yes, I’m still bitter.

So… there are rules.… some rules, archaic and irrelevant, are meant to be broken. Some rules, for the greater good, need to be adhered to. Then… there’s that grey area of bending rules. Today, here in B.C., the rules have changed. We have had rules in place for more than a couple of months, and they have served us well. So well, that many people will insist we never needed them, and that is very wrong. Either way, as of today, with our rule changes, it’s one step forward towards a return to normal.

On the assumption that the people who make these rules know what they’re talking about — and, given their success, they certainly do — we should follow them. Indeed, our local rules and implementation thereof have become a model not just for Canada or North America, but the entire world. For populations of 5 million plus, we are number one. I would really love to see us stay there. Some people will break those rules. Some people will bend them… but I suggest, let’s try to stick to them. And if you think you can’t stick to the rules, at least consider the spirit of the rules. It’s not just about you. The stakes are a lot higher than those wiggly lines on a large paper chart from 40 years ago. Look at the wiggly lines on the charts attached to this post, especially the yellow one. Especially today. That is success. That is a win. Let’s all do our part to keep it there. Let’s keep rolling.

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Day 63 – May 18, 2020

Forty years ago, to the day… May 18, 1980, I was lying in bed reading… a lazy Sunday morning… reading, and listening to LG73. I had a window open, so the loud boom shortly after 8:32am was very audible. It rattled the windows. What the hell was that, I thought to myself? Nothing like a car crash, and everything else was silent outside. A distant bomb? Those teenagers across the back lane that always seemed to have a stash of firecrackers? I finally decided it must have been a big tree that fell over. Not that I’d ever heard a tree fall over near me… but then again, I’d also never heard a volcano 300 miles away blast 1.4 billion cubic yards of ash 80,000 feet into the sky.

But that’s what happened that morning, when Mount. St. Helens blew her stack. What’s interesting about it is that nobody was expecting it, and it came as a complete surprise. How could we ever have prepared for it?

Yeah, that’s complete nonsense. Experts from many disciplines had been well-aware of the strange rumblings around Mt. St. Helens for months… there had been a small earthquake on March 20th, the first of thousands over the next eight weeks. There had been 16,000-foot ash plumes. There had been fresh craters. There had been sightings of magma. While things got quiet again in late April and early May, there was an increasing bulge on the north face that was growing by 5 feet per day. On May 7th, things started firing up again, and the bulge’s growth became worryingly inconsistent. Geologist David Johnston, camped 5.5 miles away, dutifully kept measuring and reporting his findings. The last of those reports was at 6:53am. His last words, captured shortly after 8:32am by a nearby ham-radio operator were, “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” — a message to his fellow USGS researchers, at the University of Washington in Vancouver, WA., that never made it. Two miles away, Gerry Martin, a radio operator tasked with observing the volcano for the state’s department of emergency services, saw what had happened and what was coming. His last words were, “It’s going to get me, too”.

There were only 57 deaths attributable to that eruption, and I say “only” because that number could have been higher — into the thousands. Indeed, it was scientists — I repeat, scientists — like Dr. David Johnston, an expert in volcanoes, and numerous other researchers… who pleaded with authorities to keep the area closed — an area very popular with campers and hikers and visitors to nearby lodges. For the most part, people listened.

One of those who didn’t was a man by the name of Harry R. Truman — not to be confused with former president Harry S. Truman — who refused to leave, despite numerous pleadings, suggestions and finally, orders — to do so. He owned and operated the Mt. St. Helens lodge, right at the base of the mountain, near Spirit Lake. For months, he was told to leave. He dismissed the danger and he dismissed the scientists’ claims. Even though he was being woken up continually by earthquakes and could see plumes of ash shooting up… he was heard saying things like, “the mountain has shot its wad and it hasn't hurt my place a bit, but those goddamn geologists with their hair down to their butts wouldn't pay no attention to ol' Truman."

By then, the state had set up a restricted zone well outside the perimeter of the mountain, and it infuriated them that people would ignore it, in many cases to interview ol’ Truman, putting themselves in significant danger.

Truman was alone in the lodge (with his 16 cats) that Sunday morning. It’s likely he died instantly, from heat shock… his body vaporized… before the lodge and everything around it was engulfed by 150 feet (half a football field high) of volcanic debris.

In the weeks preceding the eruption, there was a lot of noise from a lot of people… open the mountain, open the campgrounds, think of the economy, we need the tourism, we’re willing to take the risk, it’s our right as free Americans, etc etc. All too familiar words these days. The parallels between these two situations, 40 years apart, are many.

There are some notable differences too. At what point does the government’s (or society’s) role in trying to keep people safe… cross the line? That fine line is being tested these days — between freedom, and the perceived benefit of the greater good. History is full of people running towards impending disasters, like ignoring evacuation orders at the base of an impending volcanic eruption, or running to the beach to take some cool pictures of the expected tsunami, or visiting a tribe of cannibals to spread the word of Jesus, or thinking you’re ready to summit Mt. Everest because you can do the Grouse Grind in less than 45 minutes. More power to you, I suppose — as long as your narcissistic desire to show the world how invincible you are… doesn’t take others down with you.

If Truman wanted to die in his lodge (he was 83), perhaps it’s his right to do so. He wasn’t hurting anyone else (aside from his 16 cats). And perhaps that’s the biggest difference of all, the issue some people have a hard time understanding… that sometimes, it’s not just about you.

Looking at the numbers across Canada… lots of recent green days… and, especially here in B.C., it’s time to take things to the next level… bring on the openings… but where it goes beyond that is entirely up to all of us, collectively. This can be slow, steady and predictable… or not so slow, not so steady… and somewhat less predictable. The rules have served us well so far; let’s stick with that.

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Day 62 – May 17, 2020

Queueing Theory is a fascinating branch of math that deals with the science behind… queues, as in line-ups. First of all, let’s take a moment to admire that word… queueing… how often do you see a word with five vowels in a row?

When it comes to line-ups, there’s more to it than you might think. The variables used in analyzing queues involve things like how often do new people show up to join the queue? How often is the person at the front getting pulled out of it? How long does it take to process and then get rid of that person? How long is too long? …because arriving people may see a long line and just say forget it.

The red velvet rope that delineates where to stand plays an important psychological role. If you arrive, and the queue extends past the end of the rope, you might think the line is too long, and bail….but if there’s lots of room and the rope extends way back… well — it can’t be too bad, right? Straight line vs snaking line? Should you be able to see the whole line, or should some of it be hidden?

Nightclubs play a balancing act… perhaps you’ve been to clubs where you wait outside a while, finally go in, and the place is half-empty. They make you stand in line to appear busy… to attract others to come…but, of course, if the line is too long, you may be dissuaded to wait… it’s a fine… line.

Some of it is fancy math, and some of it is just social engineering, but fundamentally, there are right and wrong ways to do queues. Like, what’s better… 6 independent line-ups for individual bank tellers, or one central line-up that sends the person at the front to the next open window? That one is a no-brainer… pretty-much everywhere that can support the latter has switched to that model. It’s not necessarily better for an individual who might luckily pick the fastest line, but it’s the fairest… and from a psychological point of view, that keeps everyone happy because it’s balanced. It’s very aggravating to be standing in a slow-moving line while everyone else is moving around you. And if you picked that line, part of you is thinking you “lost”.

I think about that whenever I’m stuck in a bank line-up… that this is the best way to do it, and it could be a lot worse. How much worse? Allow me to describe what’s possibly the worst way to do it…

In Copiapó, back in the day, here’s how it worked… one day, I was told to run to the bank… here are some papers, some forms… just go there and hand them over; they’ll know what to do. And go now, and hurry, it’s 11:45. Doesn’t the bank close at 4? Yes, but you need to be there before noon — go!! So off I went to the bank, a couple of blocks away.

There were four tellers open, and each with a few people waiting, each with its own line-up. I joined one with 2 people ahead of me… like, who knows, right? Go with the shortest line, of course. But as I’m standing there waiting, time is ticking and ticking… and the people around me all seem to be getting more and more agitated. Grumblings of “what’s going on” and “hurry up” and so on. Whatever, I’m up next, but as soon as the person ahead of me is done and leaving, the teller pulls up a “closed” sign. In fact, all 4 tellers do it at the same time. It’s exactly noon, and it’s lunch time. Much groaning from the people all around me… but nobody moved, so neither did I. And I watched, as she pulled out a paper bag. From it, a sandwich, an apple, an orange Fanta and a paperback. And I stood there, for exactly 30 minutes, watching her and her co-workers have their lunch, simultaneously. She ate her sandwich, she ate her apple, she drank her Fanta. During that, she read her book as if there weren’t a crowd of people, me at the front of it, staring at her during the entire time. And at exactly 12:30, she put all that way, removed the sign and it was back to business. My thought at the time hasn’t changed: there can’t possibly be a worse way to have organized this.

Most places that can afford the space have moved to the “single lineup feeding into multiple spots” model. In that model, it’s best to leave the decision-making to the very last minute… everyone is in the same queue, and as soon as a spot opens up, the next person, which by definition is the person who’s been waiting the longest, gets it. Sometimes, that decision point has to be made earlier, and that tends to unbalance things. For example, airport security… you’ll often be thrown into a single long line, at the end of which some person will look around for what looks more open, and send you to that security screening area (one of 6, let’s say) which will already have its own line-up. Depending on many things, you may end up 10 minutes ahead or behind the person that was next to you.

Line-ups have been around forever, but different cultures treat them with varying degrees of respect. And in some cultures…

Yeah, speaking of airports and speaking of Chile… when you fly down to South America from Vancouver, you have two choices… go through the U.S., or don’t. Which means either flying through L.A. or Dallas…. or flying through Toronto. From a hassle point of view, a no brainer. Avoid the U.S. and TSA and security line-ups and all of that. But there’s one part of the trip that you have to see to believe.

We’re all used to respecting queues, like when boarding a plane… Zone 1, Zone 2, etc. We all get into that little set of chutes and wait for our turn. But if you’re in Toronto, flying down to Santiago, Buenos Aires or Rio…. all bets are off. There is no semblance of respecting any sort of queue. It is an angry mob that’s standing, jammed and jostling, for an hour before boarding. Forget the children and families first, forget the elite status business class VIP whatever. None of it matters. But one thing those Latin American cultures do respect is the elderly… so what you will see in front of the mob are wheelchairs. One or two? No… try 30, most of them with surprisingly mobile people once it’s time to board… oh, don’t worry, they say as they miraculously rise from their front-of-the-line chair, I can take it from here. I’ve asked the gate agents about all of this, and it’s very simple, especially since it’s a late-night flight and they just want to get home: “We don’t even bother anymore”.

One thing we’ve all gotten used to these days is finding queues where we never had them… especially grocery stores. Queues that tell you where you can stand, and where you can’t. Big Xs on the ground and arrows to point you in the right direction. A visit to many groceries these days is a moving, one-way queue — first in, first out, no going back. It’s evident to me, that in some cases, not a lot of thought went into it initially, and that’s fair. Everyone is trying to figure things out as they go along, and most people don’t have an arsenal of queuing-theory formulas at their disposal. Even before all of this, the supply/demand for cashiers at Safeway wasn’t dictated by some supercomputer. The cashiers themselves see things suddenly getting busy and just page someone to come help. And when things get slow, that person disappears to the back. That “busy-ness” has now moved to the outside of the store, which in many ways is a better place for it.

Ultimately, that’s the way we’re all doing it these days; just go with what works, and course-correct it as needed. And for what it’s worth, as time has gone on, certain things seem to have improved… as you’d expect. People have realized when it’s “good” to go, which self-balances things. People have realized if they can make their shopping trip efficient, it helps a lot. No aimless wandering up and down aisles… plan ahead, know what’s where, and do it all at once. Far less time wasted. There are now many things in place that didn’t exist until recently, and will likely stick around when things are back to normal… just one more thin, silver lining to the big cloud of the day: this pandemic is making parts of our society much more efficient.

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Day 57 – May 12, 2020

One of the most interesting times in my life was a year away from school, Vancouver, and real life in general as I knew it. I packed my bags in the late Summer of 1987 and headed down to Chile, returning in the late Spring of 1988. I wasn’t here for the Calgary Olympics… in fact, I missed them entirely because where I was had no T.V.

Where I was… was in a town called Copiapó, in northern Chile, in the middle of the Atacama desert. No T.V., one radio station, one very old movie theatre, three questionable restaurants, lots of dirt roads. It’s grown a lot, both in population and modernity, but back then, it was like living in the 1930s. There were telephones, but not many. My phone number had 4 digits.

The relatable aspect these days was the culture shock of going from what we’re used to around here, to that — literally overnight. It’s the same sort of jarring impact life around here has recently given us. As tough as it was down there, especially initially, you get used to it… and over time, it seems normal. Those three questionable restaurants… well, they seemed to have gotten better over time.

One of them was Chinese food, and it the first couple of times, it was awful. The next few, not so bad. By the end of my time down there, it was among the best I’d ever had. Same thing with another hole-in-the-wall restaurant, where the food was awful to begin with… and it ended up being my favourite. By the end of it, they’d named a dish after me… where I’d described to them how to cook giant clams… by soaking them in white wine, then coating them in garlic butter, smothering them in parmesan cheese and baking them. Squeeze a lemon over all of that at the last minute. Certainly not my recipe, but they’d never heard of it. Deeeeelish.

But as much as you get used to it, you remember your old life… and you miss it. The one thing that made it all palatable is what, in common terms, is called an “out”. “Outs”, like in poker, where after the flop, your hand is behind and you need some help — but you’re not dead yet. Perhaps the only chance you have is to pair that King in your hand with one of the last two cards. As far as you know, there are three Kings left in the deck. You have three outs. When you have a crappy but well-paying job… and sometimes you’re close to just saying to hell with it… because in the back of your mind, you have a “anytime you want to join us, just call — start tomorrow” job offer pending in the background, there’s your Out. In baseball, quite literally, as long as you still have some outs, you’re in the game. It might be the bottom of the 9th with two outs and nobody on base and you’re down 10-0… but you still have an out. Many teams have come back to win games from exactly this situation. As long as you have an out.

Down there, my Out was that I could, with little more than a couple of week’s notice, find myself on a plane back to Vancouver. Knowing that Out existed made things tolerable, no matter what. It was there if I needed it, and the peace of mind that came with that… made all the difference.

As distant as they are, we have Outs here. Many of them. They’re not on the near horizon, but life will eventually get back to normal.

For the moment, we’re stuck in this new-normal, and that’s what it is — for now. I’m actually sick and tired of the dystopian “new normal is here forever”, “your life will never be the same” bullshit-scare-tactic click-here-to-read-more stories. They’re awful, pandering to our worst fears. Trust me, things will eventually get back to normal. There will be restaurants and operas and music festivals and beaches and hockey games and race tracks and graduations… with full crowds. It’ll be more than 10 days from now and less than 10 years from now. We can refine that range as time goes on… call it within a one-to-three year window before things are back to totally normal, with hopefully some remnant changes that make sense now and make sense in the future.

And when things are back to normal, we will look back at this time and think… yeah, that sucked. As used to it as we got, as new-normal as it was, it was nothing like the real thing. Indeed, that’s what went through my mind when I came back from Chile and went to one of our local Chinese restaurants. Truly, there was no comparison. But that in no way diminished the fact that what I got used to, at the time… it had its moment, and it served its purpose.

In baseball, when you hit into that final out, you’re Out. In poker, when your opponent flips over his cards to reveal a hand so strong that nothing can help you, it’s called drawing dead.

Nobody around here — not you, not me, not society — is drawing dead. We have Outs. Let’s continue to play our cards right, like continuing to do what we’re doing — and we’ll win this thing.

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Mr Mercer – Day 52 – May 7, 2020

There is a Canadian alternative rock band from Tsawwassen called 54-40, named after the longitudinal line of 54’40°… where in the 1840s, U.S. President James Polk wanted the border. That whole dispute is a long story on its own, but suffice it to say, “we” won — otherwise, places like Prince Rupert, Terrace, Prince George… and everything south of that — would be American territory. A tiny part — the southern tip of the Alaska Panhandle — is all that’s left of that line.

That 54’40° line is very far north of Tsawwassen, but just south, literally bordering it, is the 49th parallel, the agreed-upon resolution to the aforementioned dispute. Another long story, but the short of it was that west of somewhere, the 49th parallel would define the Canada/U.S. border. It was a lengthy back-and-forth, and pretty-much the last thing settled was the exception of the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Before that, the border sliced right across it, but that didn’t make a lot of sense, and it was the final concession granted. But nobody noticed till after, the tiny (less than 5 square miles) little peninsula that’d been chopped off and isolated… and when they did, they just decided to leave it for another day. Probably the U.S. would just cede it back to Canada, and that would be that, right? Wrong.

And that is why there is a tiny U.S. enclave, completely landlocked by Canada. It has an official border crossing, and while its residents are officially living in the U.S., it’s Canadians who make up the vast majority of visitors, to buy cheap gas and access “Suites” (really, just P.O. Boxes) to take delivery of items that won’t ship to Canada, but will to the U.S. Ironic, of course, is that all of those goods must go through Canada to get there.

Way back when, that border crossing was little more than a formality. Those 54-40 guys rode their bikes in and out of there and barely waved at the border guard. You could go down to the beach, draw a line in the sand, and jump back and forth between countries. Before 9/11, you didn’t need a passport. And while technically, you’re supposed to declare everything you buy down there, apart from liquor and cigarettes, nobody cares. But, on that note, funny story.

At some point in the late 80s, I was flying down to Chile to visit family. My uncle and aunt who lived down there smoked a very unique brand of smokes that was only available in the U.S., so he asked me to bring him “as many as you can”. I told him that it would be way over the limit and the duty on it would be ridiculous, but he said not to worry about it. He’d pay me back everything. And furthermore, if I did it right, I could get those duty payments back when I left the country with the cigarettes.

So a couple of days before my flight, I headed down to Pt. Roberts, went to that one big gas station/store and picked up all of the “Now” brand menthol cigarettes they had. Seven cartons (not packs — cartons) — so 70 packs of cigarettes. I think 1,400 cigarettes is probably over the “out of the country for 20 minutes” limit, but I had no intention of smuggling them — I was going to be paid back, whatever it was.

The look on the guy’s face was pretty good though… anything to declare? Yeah, cigarettes. How many? Seven cartons. That got him to sit up straight. He made me pull over and get out. He looked at my backseat, packed with cartons. He looked at the receipt. He told me to come inside. So I went into his tiny hut. There was a hockey game playing in the background, on a postage-stamp-sized black & white TV. His first question was, “What are you doing?”

I explained the whole thing to him, how I’m happy to pay the duty, how all of those cartons would be leaving the country in 48 hours, how I don’t mind paying, but I want to make sure I can get that money back. Yes… he said, that’s all correct. OK.

He pulled out a huge stack of paper. He let out a big sigh. On TV, Tony Tanti scored a goal. He picked up the pen, put it down, looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Do you promise me you’re taking all of these out of the country?” “Yes!” “Ok, get out out of here”.

Apart from the technicality of it being part of the U.S., it may as be Canada. This friendly American enclave is a great place to “live” in Canada but still “live” in the U.S., if you know what I mean. For residency purposes, many Canucks and Grizzlies have lived there.

Back in grade 10, a new band teacher showed up — Mr. Mercer — fun, jolly American guy, who lived in Point Roberts, worked in Vancouver, and proudly announced how he paid taxes in neither. Music was a big part of my life, so I spent a lot of time in the band room, and was having lunch there one day with some friends when a couple of guys in dark suits showed up looking for Mr. Mercer. I guess they eventually found him, because he was never seen nor heard from again. Staff wouldn’t talk about it, except to say he’d had some legal issues and wouldn’t be back. Nice guy — I hope the Club Fed he was thrown into wasn’t too bad. And as an interesting coincidence, to loop things around, a few of those school bands I played in was alongside a guy called Dave Genn… who in 2003 joined 54-40 and has been their lead guitarist ever since.

And speaking of looping things around… way back in the day, we used to go down to Pt. Roberts to a place called The Breakers… it was a happening place in the early 90s — always a fun experience. I was usually the designated driver for such outings, but on this particular night, I’d had a bit too much… so someone else took the wheel. We all piled into the rickety VW van for the trip home, being loud and obnoxious as you might imagine, but as always, getting quiet at the border. We drove up to the border crossing little hut, that night inhabited by a tired-looking near-the-end-of-his-career border guard. The old guy stuck his head in the window and looked back at us, all staring at him.

“You boys been drinking?”, he asked.

“Well — they have, but I haven’t”, replied our driver, pointing his thumb back at us.

“OK, off you go, drive safe.”

And that was that… back to whooping and hollering… but suddenly (queue the Twilight Zone music), things didn’t look right. It’s a straight line from the border to highway 17, cutting straight through Tsawwassen, but that’s not where we were. We were on some winding road in the middle of a forest. What just happened?

We’re all screaming “You idiot!” “Turn around” “What are you doing?” “Where are we?” — but on we go… and suddenly… more Twilight Zone music… up ahead is the same border crossing we’d just crossed 10 minutes earlier. Don’t ask me. I mean, obviously, he’d somehow turned left, then left again, and entered Point Roberts through some back road… and we’d looped back and… here we were.

Now we were terrified. “Stop!” “Don’t stop!” “Pull over!” “Don’t pull over, that looks suspicious!”. Well, we drove straight up to the same little hut, same old guy. And he stuck his head in the window and looked back at our petrified faces.

“You boys been drinking?”, he asked, with the exact same tone as before.

“Well — they have, but I haven’t”, replied our driver, giving the same thumb gesture as before.

“OK, off you go, drive safe.”

The rest of the (careful) ride home was silent.

What’s the deal with Point Roberts these days? Is that border all locked up like the rest of the 49th? There’s no hospital or pharmacy down there, and American citizens are not allowed into Canada except when it’s essential. I couldn’t find much about it, but I have to assume a medical emergency would count as essential. Unless you’re symptomatic, then what? I hope the have it figured out. Especially since 99% of the money spent in Pt. Roberts comes from Canada, and that’s dropped to near zero for now.

Point Roberts is part of Washington State, and there’s not much bad to say about Governor Jay Inslee’s handling of this difficult situation. President Trump told him, “You’re on your own”, and they’re rolling with it. I hope that includes a plan for Point Roberts.

Yes, it occurs to me there’s not much tie-in here with our present pandemic except this: this whole topic of Pt. Roberts came up because of the wonky Detroit/Windsor border, and how different Ontario and Michigan are in handling things. I’ll once again go on the record to state my appreciation for our local neighbours to the south. We, here, have a lot more in common with our American counterparts than they do over in Ontario, something that will become more and more relevant as things open up. B.C. and Washington are in agreement on most things, and on the same page about how phased re-openings should look. Works for me. And them.

 

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