Updated: Never — Philip's Blog

09:39 EDT

Bjoern and I synchronized with Tiff last night to find what turned out to be only liquids. I was reminded of the fact that "Kilkenny" is pronounced slightly differently depending on the way you turn your head to look at the Atlantic ocean.

Before heading to the pub, Tiff tried to entice us into the fine passtime of climbing on the roofs of abandoned buildings and spending the night there. Bjoern and I decided to remain on terra firma but I did rather enjoy taking these two pictures:

During the year away from Canada, I had managed to completely forget about the Ottawa homeless community. The memories came back rather quickly. While we were drinking a beer, a homeless lady wondered if we might possibly have some change. Without checking, we knew that of course we did not and informed her of this. A couple of hours later, she returned, asking if we'd had a chance to get some change yet. This demonstrates a kind of consideration not generally found among the homeless. Again, we had no change.

On my way from the pub to the residence, I walked past the homeless shelter where one of its denizens was being gently helped into a policecar by a uniformed gentleman. Nothing particuarly unusual about this, except for the fact that there were a half dozen scruffy people standing around helpfully reminding the officer that they would not be impressed were he to resort to "excessive force". In many other countries I've visited, scenes like this would involve shouting and other unpleasantness. Not in Canada of course! It's like the Switzerland of North America. :-)

As a special treat for my visitors arriving here through Google Images, I took another couple of pictures in the annual "beer through a straw" and "girl drinking beer" series. Enjoy!

Today, I plan to get some shopping done. Perhaps I will also be helping Dan scout for devsummit rooms. It turns out we're going to be rather a lot of people. This will be interesting. Some sightseeing will probably also be in order.