boora.ca

New Egypt

Raj — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:47:20 +0000

Back when I was living in Pembina Hall, I lived with several Egyptians and they spoke of their home with pride in their people, but not in their leaders. I’m happy for them today. I wonder if they were in the square.

Social vs Religious Observation

Raj — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 01:40:55 +0000

This afternoon, CBC Edmonton played a story about a Muslim family from Egypt who are going to be celebrating their first Christmas here in Edmonton. One segment of the story explores what other people think about the family celebrating Christmas, wondering if they are converts or aren’t “really Muslim”. The father mentions that what they are celebrating is the social element of the holiday, not the religious element.

This is exactly what many “something”-Canadian families do. They adopt the social aspects of the predominant culture’s celebrations, while incorporating their own elements. In my home, we don’t celebrate the Christian elements of Christmas (though, if invited, I’d like to see what Mass is like for the various denominations that my friends belong to is/are like), but gladly sing the songs and I will encourage my daughter to sing them all. After all, singing the songs of another group can only help increase understanding and acceptance of others. This is of course reciprocated by my friends who participate in events like Diwalli.

So when I see things like this happening in the UK, one really has to wonder – is it really the duty of good people of any group to attack the celebrations of another? How schoolyardish or medieval is that? And it isn’t only that group, there are plenty of groups that believe that the way they believe the world to be is the only way to be. This is something that as to change (though it likely won’t).

So even though I have worked for the last ten years or so to improve education through integrating technology to improve teaching through improving communication, part of me is thinking we are missing something. I think what we have missed is sharing the songs and stories of our various backgrounds. Starting as young as possible and associating those songs and stories with positive interactions. In this way, perhaps we can increase the understanding needed within our society and create an inclusive, pluralistic world that might be ready to use technology to gather and share the songs and stories of people further away. With that in mind, I leave you with this song from The Irrelevant Show.

Grey Cup 98

Raj — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 03:37:44 +0000

Well, we were at the top of the stadium, couldn’t be further from the field. But we were high enough to almost reach out and touch the Snowbirds and CF18s when they blew by, the later on full burners. Part A of Grey Cup bucket list item done.

1000 logged kilometers

Raj — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:33:08 +0000

They say that the gift of 1000 paper cranes is supposed to grant the folder a wish, or to grant long life or recovery to the recipient. If, to do well, folding a crane would take me 4’45″, then I would have now put in the same amount of time to fold all those cranes as it has taken me to run 1000 kilometers since Aug 14, 2009. Why that date? Well that is the date that I actually started “investing” in running. Getting gear that was for running first and other things after that, rather than getting things that could be used for running.

I must say, that over the last six months, all those cranes/km have helped me heal some – and I’m hoping that the karma from this can help others around me who are hurting and myself heal further as well – and perhaps, it will help with a wish as well. Some might say that this is bunk, but I’ll retort that the running or the folding may have nothing more to do than to demonstrate dedication. If one can focus energy for that long on one project, it is likely that other projects will be achievable with greater ease.

Canadian Derby Half Marathon

Raj — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:22:36 +0000

Well I finally have an officially clocked half marathon in the books. Coming in with a chip time of 1:44:03, gun time of 1:44:09 and a watch time of 1:44:04. I would say that I did not too bad. I had some hip issues for some unknown reason – they never really bothered me before, and I may have been able to do a few other things to help my time, but for a first time out at a race with all the adrenaline, I’d say I did not too bad.

Now that I’ve moved from Nike+ to Garmin, I can do more than share the graph, I can essentially share the entire experience, so here it is… my race:

You may have noticed that I no longer have Nike updates going out and my little Nike running avatar isn’t gracing my pages anymore, having been replaced by a Daily Mile widget. I’m liking Daily Mile, in part because the community aspect is more active and also because it is cross platform, being able to suck in data from Nike and Garmin. You can also add in other activities manually.

With this race done, and some photo gig bookings, I’ve got the majority of my New Year’s resolutions done. I’ve got gigs outside direct connections (two friends that I’ve yet to meet in my LBR post parlance), I’ve completed the two races that I wanted to and the third item on my list I have forgotten… so it’s either one of those that can’t me milestoned or it was just tossed in. Either way I’m pretty happy all things considered.

If you want to see the official results, I’m number 201 on the list.

Almost there!

Raj — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:29:51 +0000

Courtesy of sunface13

Well there are two things that I wanted to to do as part of my New Year’s resolution. One was run an official 10km, and the second a Half Marathon. Well the Little Big Run is in the bag, and the Canadian Derby Half Marathon is coming up this weekend. I’ve looked high and low for a good map (they have one on the site, but it isn’t really “portable”, despite it being a PDF), so I cooked one up via gmaps-pedometer. You can download the gpx file or you can also take a look at the map here. The file and link are approximate, so keep that in mind when/if you use them.

Green Fields

Raj — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:20:26 +0000

Well after another few kicks to the teeth, I think I have to take a little break and heal up (perhaps literally today after breaking my sandal running across the street) before trekking out into the world of long term stability again. Fate may be telling me that I have to start from a green field and create everything from the ground up. If this is the case, I have started to do a few things like that, so hopefully some of those seeds that I put in the minds of others will start to grow soon. In the mean time, I’m at another place with a green logo… save this time it looks like the Riderss logo.

4G eh?

Raj — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:11:53 +0000

Spammers must think us bloggers are real dim lights when they start signing off their spam with “Sent from my iPad 4G”. Really… they must be in a real strong area of the RDF.

WP3!

Raj — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:34:26 +0000

Well, this update went much smoother than the other WP updates that I have done. At one point I was looking at running both this site and the blog site from within the same WP, but I don’t think that would work. It will be too much of a hassle for me to figure out how to ensure it works and to get everything moved over properly. I might very well try on my test domain, but for now, I’ll be keeping that which isn’t broken, running as is.

Out of Isolation

Raj — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:05:27 +0000

It looks like my story in the Edmonton Journal has come out of isolation as well and has been syndicated across the Canwest/Global/canada.com system. So I’ve seen it in papers from Vancouver to Montreal often with people asking questions about either the Nike system or motivation along the way. I guess I can now think of myself as a national running micro-celebrity And hey, I’ve put in my application for the Nike Running Correspond, so if anyone from Nike is looking/reading Hello! BTW, this image is from Edmonton Journal freelancer @wallytee (begging forgiveness!).