Undefined Blog: Post of the Year

Click here for the 2010 Post of the Year. For 2011, I think it's obvious that my epic (as in long) omnibus Food for Thought post would take the cake:

I try to communicate in this blog like a series of book chapters or continual lectures sans the academic formality with each post, using a continuous transition motion of sorts from one post to another. While I did foreshadow an epic omnibus post yesterday, for the purposes of this post, please read The Storm Before the Calm and Moral Victories in their entirety before proceeding.

While I may be an educator, I'm also a student. I know many of you didn't bother with a careful reading of the lengthy posts in depth, as "reading in its entirety" means normal reading, "reading" means skimming, and "skimming" means jack squat. If you've made it this far, like a hypothetical 1/16 marker on the Grouse Grind, thank you for the patient poise.

I could challenge all my stalkers and invite possible political opponents to search for attack ad-worthy tidbits on which to bash my character, but I suppose it's difficult to sift through 901 pages according to the Blog2Print tool, up from a cumulative 595 pages in November 2010. Apparently that's over the maximum number suitable for printing, so I'd have to head to another publishing company. Arguably duller than objective textbooks to many people aside from myself, it's probably a waste of time and money, with gigantic net losses.

I'm not much of a fan of textbooks, but due to its absolutely mandatory nature for my American politics course beginning on Monday, I went to Chapters in the early afternoon and searched in vain for my two textbooks even though the website listed them as available last night. I had more success finding numerous copies of the featured Canucks at 40 by Greg Douglas.

Briefly spending five minutes skimming the content of the book, there was a brief acknowledgement of the Stanley Cup Final riots and the subsequent clean-up effort. Wooden boards still surround a portion of the bookstore, prompting witty comments not unlike the following tweet: "@LeftCoast_Blog: Chapters downtown having windows broken. Looters were unfamiliar with merchandise in the store so they moved along."

More practical for merchandise is London Drugs, the first place by which I stopped to buy toothpaste after stepping off the Skytrain with "City of Blinding Lights" by U2 blaring from my earphones. I could've bought some sort of canned food item and participated in the Five Hole for Food event in one of three small caged pens with a surprising number of adults, but I decided to directly donate the change to a beggar instead.

As stated in Food for Thought, beggars can be intriguing people. No, I didn't share an awkward 40-second hug, but the beggar joyfully exclaimed, "I love you!" as I turned to walk down the street. Aside from the small caged pen with many participants, the real reason for skipping the Five Hole for Food event was to diminish my fashionably late time to the VANCOUVER RIOT: Let's Talk About It event at the Alice MacKay room in the Vancouver Public Library, the location where I delivered my Thoughts of a Hobo rant to a similar-aged audience at the Central Library book camp.

The only time I recall visiting that room aside from the book camp adventures in 2004 and 2005 occurred in December 2008 for a YouthPolitik conference. I'm still on its mailing list, so that's how I found out about today's event. I'm probably getting old, and as much as I romantically envisioned my attendance as a life-changing esteemed educator to the younger generation comprising of members from Vancouver District Students' Council, I merely wanted some sort of audience avenue for my The Storm Before the Calm and Moral Victories pro-educational restorative justice rants.

The audience didn't only consist of students. Also in attendance were city councillors George Chow, Andrea Reimer sporting a #2 "Reimer" t-shirt, Heather Deal, Ellen Woodsworth, Raymond Louie; NPA city councillor candidate Bill McCreery; school board trustees Patti Bacchus and Mike Lombardi; and Vancouver West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert.

Mob mentality, personal experience, post-riot reconstruction, and the face of Vancouver formed the four pillars of discussion in the riot forum. While a wide variety of views were shared, I'm glad the youth participants generally held civil pro-constructive viewpoints, compatible with my own "soft" on crime political agenda and in contrast to suggestions, albeit stated in jest but still reflective of a destructively vitriolic sentiment, for rioters to perform menial tasks such as clipping grass with scissors in light of budget cuts for parks.

Proving that learning is a lifelong experience, I mentally waded intently through ideas ranging from the preparation rather than prevention angle, the need for Olympic-style civil volunteerism, a media shift to sensationalize positive events, Metro Vancouver engagement due to the fact that a large proportion of arrested rioters, circa 90%, hailed from outside Vancouver, and the shredded utilization of "WE LOVE VANCOUVER" boards as processed instruments of jewellery and memorabilia, sold in a charity auction with proceeds benefiting affected small businesses.

Of course the last idea was a point of contention. I'm personally against this proposal due to the erasure of history but I'm also against the counter-proposal of leaving the wooden boards up in perpetuity on Granville Street due to the vulnerability of vandalism after the novelty of scribbling positive notes has eroded.

At the same time, I don't believe in giving in to hooligans and malevolent actions. The perfect constructive middle finger involves all five fingers in the air while rocking to events like the Vancouver 125 Summer Live celebrations at Stanley Park. Similar to having a spoil of riches and lineup depth, the dilution of festivals due to their abundance is a vibrantly excellent method of fun community engagement beyond "boring" conferences.

I clearly wouldn't classify today as "boring," at least from my elitist wannabe sport sociology scholar perspective. I enjoyed the forum and I would've loved to have more open discussion of the whole, but by the time that occurred, we were already half an hour over time and Raymond Louie significantly shortened or seemingly rushed through his closing speech.

I personally found the late-running forum convenient. After rejecting Gorilla Food due to its stuffy ambience, though I'll probably visit one day to take something to go, in order to wait for Nuba to open, I killed 25 minutes of time with a friend at Dressew, a fabric and thrift shop for all sorts of hats and cheaply made $6.99 tuxedo shirts.

While I stated earlier that learning is a lifelong experience, so is forgetfulness. Ironically the only quote I remember from that Dressew adventure is when I told my friend, "By the time I blog tonight, I will have forgotten everything you've taught me about threads and fake flower crowns." I couldn't feign elitist connoisseur knowledge at all unlike the testing of couches, as the only fashion I understand aside from the aesthetics of hockey jerseys is to show up fashionably but still efficiently late from time to time.

I'm not necessarily a food connoisseur either and this blog, aside from a Restaurant Recapitulations section, is not one of traditional foodiness where the emphasis is on food and food alone. Perfectly seen by what you've just read, my blog description states that I can and will rant about politics, sports, and the politics of sport. Food is not mentioned but I can and will rant about food as well, aptly the cause of the title of this post. I have pictures too, but of relative poor quality compared to my photography friend's DSLR.

With my 2.0 megapixel camera, I didn't bother taking a picture of the ambient features, though Nuba aside from overhead piping due to its basement location, has seemingly changed from the last time I visited. I don't know if Nuba staff hired Gary Chang, but the restaurant felt more spacious. The corner where my friend and I sat felt less cramped, perhaps due to the installation of a plush booth seat or the grateful realization that we were not tethered outside while wearing, from what I observe, both overalls and a skirt:

Luckily the food itself did not restrain its flavours like a leash. We shared "La petit feast." The following picture features hummus (beige creamy organic chickpeas blended with garlic, lemon, and tahini on the far side), tabouleh (the green salad consisting of parsley, tomatoes, green onions, and burghul in a lemon-mint dressing), pita bread, baba ghanouj (beige creamy blended eggplant pureé with citrus tahini on the near side), homemade pickled vegetables, and a glass of Hester Creek Pinot Gris. Everything was eclectically delicious, even the crispy sweet flavour of white wine.

Counter-clockwise from the top-right corner, the next picture features fattoush salad (Greek salad with roasted pita chips thrown in); najib's special (deep-friend cauliflowers) and falafel (deep-fried chickpea balls); avocado, hummus, and tzatziki dips; and vegan stew, mjadara (lentils and rice), two blocks of Macedonian feta, avocado chunks, and a plethora of olives. I ate ten olives alone and enjoyed them. There's probably too much dipping sauce for this particular dish.

On the far side is Turkish coffee tiramisu and on the near side is tarty nectarine-filled yogurt. I traditionally eat a more refined texture of savoury homemade yogurt, so the sweet flavour is a welcome change. The tiramisu is nevertheless more tasteful though.

Between two people, everything totalled $61.43. For the high quality of taste and creativity in dishes, Nuba is clearly worth that price and I will renew my recommendation without hesitation. Unlike the place where I watched Game 7, Coco Rico Cafe, the knowledgeable service staff members at Nuba were prompt to requests but there was absolutely no pressure to order every three minutes even though the restaurant became packed half an hour after we arrived.

It should be noted that the recommendation renewal isn't merely a spillover effect from a successful forum earlier today, just as the not recommended rating is truly not a spillover effect from a terrible Game 7. The spillover effect cannot be tied to something trivial like blaring U2 music either, as the Canucks prominently use "Where the Streets Have No Name" as their pre-game entrance song.

But to conclude this constructive, positive-filled post on a heartwarming note by invoking U2 just as I did in Moral Victories, I'd like to feature the following video to complement my compliment-filled day with the following article by Jordan Chittley:

Adam Bevell has seen U2 play more than a dozen times, but Saturday's show was a different experience as the blind fan went from audience member to band member. Bevell, who is from Arizona, travelled to Tennessee to see U2. During the concert his brother-in-law scrawled a sign that read, "Blind Guitar Player. Bring Me Up." Bono must have seen Bevell standing in the front row because at the end of the show he invited him on stage.

"I had no idea what was going on because in my mind they had left and walked off stage," he said to KPHO, a CBS affiliate TV station in Phoenix. "Instantly, I was lifted over that front rail and hoisted on stage by the security guards. Before I knew it, I could hear Bono's voice saying, 'What do you want to play man?'"

Bono asked Bevell what his wife's name was so the father of four could dedicate the song to her and then Bevell began strumming. After a couple seconds, Bono started to sing along to the chords of "All I Want is You". Little did Bevell know, but his night was about to get even better. After he finished playing, he gave Bono a hug and then handed the rare green Gretsch Irish Falcon back, but Bono handed it back almost immediately.

"He said, 'I want you to have it'," says Bevell. "I said no way. For me, it was just an out-of-body experience. I was there, but I was floating."

"Even still talking about it, I get emotional because I know how much it means to him," said Bevell's wife, Andrea, to the station. "I don't know how else to describe it," said Bevell. "It was one of those moments that was just magical."

Positive news, a nice change.