One of my early postings on this blog was about attending the International Festival Of Authors, where I saw D. Coupland and C. Hitchens interviewed and read from the latest work respectively. Well, it's soon to be that time again and this year I'm eschewing the returning Coupland reading from his new novel Hey, Nostradamus! in favour of a double bill of William Gibson and Margaret Atwood reading from their latest volumes. I haven't read Pattern Recognition yet but I enjoyed Oryx And Crake. The previous evening there's an interview session with Gibson that I'm attending as well as one with Irish playwright and novelist Sebastian Barry, who garners great praise from the literati and whose Widows Of Sherkin I also enjoyed...

If anyone still visits this infrequently updated spot, you'll be pleased to know that it may get busier soon as I'm moving back downtown, away from SUV-laden suburban tedium. Gigs, gigs, restaurants, books, food, drink, gigs, art, sights, sounds, photos, culture, impressions, opinion all may be recorded.

Maybe I should get a cheapo PDA seeing as I'll be commuting for longer now and I could do writin' as well as readin'?

After reading this a while back, I resolved that I had to give Bikram Yoga a go. And so I did, yesterday. The 1st session is tough, tough, tough in the heat. Having done some kung fu and tai chi in the past, yoga is quite strange in that it involves merely holding postures rather than going through a sequence of steps in a form. Due to lack of fitness and being more habitaued to cerebral rather than physical pursuits, I just got a glimmer of the potential it has to offer but once it was finaly over, it did feel wonderful and I'll definitely be going back to hone my mental and physical concentration and strength!

Good article in The Guardian by Naomi "No Logo" Klein on how we've sold our economic soul to the US but at least the rest of society may be moving in the right direction...

For the past week or so, your humble occasional blogger has been the proud owner of one of these, namely the Olympus C-730 Ultra Zoom digital camera. I'm now armed with 256MB of "film" and a fledgling knowledge of camera basics. So expect lots of photos any month soon!

I was interested to learn that the definition of a heatwave (here at least) is "a period of at least 3 days with temperatures above 30 deg. C". One is on the way!

The difference in latitude between Toronto and Ireland makes a very noticable difference in summer. Our sunset is earlier - about 9pm with sunrise at 0530. So, now long summer nights but plenty of long summer mornings!

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