Archive for May, 2004

One month of golfing

May 31st, 2004

My post-undergrad golf vacation has been great, so far. In May, I played 20 rounds of golf at South Muskoka. My golf game was weak at the beginning of the month, but it improved in the first two weeks. Mid-month, I fought my swing and set-up a little bit and posted some poor scores (length of swing and ball position). Recently, I'm swinging and putting well.

Playing almost every day is a new experience for me. Since the grounds crew changes the pins every two days or so, I've played the same pins many times. Interestingly, the added knowledge of the course hasn't affected my score too much.

I've also tracked a few aspects of my performance: strokes, putts (less than 10 feet and more than 10 feet) and greens in regulation. To date, here are my cumulative stats:

Average score 91.33 Lowest score 82
Average putts 34.41 Highest score 100
Average greens in reg 4.36

I think I'll post updates about each round. Little golf narratives to practice my creative writing skillz.

3 comments »

Posted in Golf

Kinsella blasts Liberal strategy

May 26th, 2004

Warren Kinsella is really ticked that Mike Robinson tried to link Stephen Harper to the National Alliance. Worth reading for a few reasons.

2 comments »

Posted in Politics

give me a break . . . “proprietary marks”

May 10th, 2004

"The RCMP, which carefully guards its image, asked Friends in a letter to withdraw the ad." This "protection of image" is tiring. Doesn't the RCMP have something better to do? Lame.

2 comments »

Posted in Politics

Liberals condemn Earnscliffe Party’s tactics

May 8th, 2004

This infighting amongst Liberals is funny. I think strategists are misunderstanding the issue. It is media people who don't approve of religion, not regular people. Pushing too hard on this issue will backfire.

2 comments »

Posted in Politics

A pony for every child . . .

May 5th, 2004

"They're being hoisted on their own petard," Churley said. "They came close to promising to give every child a pony, and they knew . . . they weren't going to be able to keep these promises."

2 comments »

Posted in Politics

Brief history of my grad school decision

May 3rd, 2004

Some buildings at Queen's University

I decided to go to grad school because I want to live in a new place, keep learning in an academic environment, and have an additional credential to increase my earning potential. I decided to take a Master of Public Administration degree because I want to work in the public or non-profit sectors and I think such a programme provides a credential that would increase my earning potential—and my skills and performance—in these sectors.

» Read more: Brief history of my grad school decision

7 comments »

Posted in Autobiography

Read The Da Vinci Code

May 3rd, 2004

At University of Waterloo, I read many books, most of which I did not read for pleasure alone. Reading, which for me was once a hobby, became an analytical technique. Of course this is just how these things go.

My mother has always recommended books to me. Her interest in books is probably the most significant influence on my own interest in books (though she has never shared my interest in Dragonlance novels!). So I did not hesitate to read The Da Vinci Code, which she enthusiastically recommended to me.

I was not disappointed.

The Da Vinci Code is an excellent, highly metafictive thriller. That is, it is a good mystery that confronts itself as artifice. It is also intensely concerned with religion, power, art, history and the relationship between men and women. Not since Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose has a thriller handled these topics so well.

To read The Da Vinci Code is to read a story of the most potent symbols of Western civilization. Such a tale could devolve into hackneyed metaphors and stifling style. But Brown keeps it fresh—makes an established genre seem new again (even to this cynical reader!). His book is a worthy descendant of Eco's. You should read it if you enjoy mystery, secrets and the search for truth. Otherwise you should probably read the newspaper.

P.S. I read this book in one sitting, cover to cover. Can't remember the previous book that I read like that.

4 comments »

Posted in Reviews

Queen’s in the fall

May 2nd, 2004

I've decided to take the MPA programme at Queen's University, starting in September 2004. The 2004 MPA Policy Forum, Embracing the Urban Frontier: Capitalizing on Canada's Cities, made me feel as though the Queen's MPA programme is the right programme for me.

I attended the first three panel discussions: fiscal capacity of cities, cities as engines of integration and constitutional capacity of cities. The first panel was very interesting. Former mayor of Kingston, Helen Cooper, chaired a panel comprised of David Pecaut, Enid Slack and Tom Courchene. The panel focused on the means by which municipalities can raise revenues. Enid Slack, in particular, talked about the various different kinds of taxes available to different levels of government. Tom Courchene compared Canadian cities to German cities to show how expenditure per capita was much higher in German cities.

Throughout the whole conference, a few ideas were proposed:

  • Flowing through some or all of a tax collected by the federal government to municipalities (the gas tax, for example).
  • Revising provincial legislation to allow muinicipalities to levy non-property taxes, especially elastic taxes, such as income tax (hotel taxes were also mentioned)

See this paper by Enid Slack for more about property taxes.

The conference, and especially Mayor David Miller's lecture, was great. I might write more about his talk later.

5 comments »

Posted in Autobiography