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Cottage

This weekend I finally got the chance to get away from the city and up to the cottage. Although the weather wasn’t what I hoped, it still turned out to be a good time.

Meg and I arrive on Friday, both having a long weekend. It was overcast, but I did get some time to get a few minutes of sitting out in the sun.

For dinner, we made lemon chicken skewers with grilled Zuchini and Portabellos. Meg made an awesome salad too that we put on the portabellos.

Saturday, we woke up pretty late. Meg wasn’t feeling 100% so it was nice to sleep in. We had breakfast and were in the sun for a bit. Then some friends came over and we had a barbeque, drank some beers and had a swim. The water was freezing cold. I am not sure if the freezing temperature helped or hindered my ability to make children, but damn was it cold.

Later in the night, we hit up a fire, drank some more beers, Evan and nat showed up with some King Cookies and we ate some smores:

Japanese Baseball

‘Monster movie’ baseball game posters
10 Jun 2009
The Chiba Lotte Marines might suck, but their game posters rule. Sighted at JR Kaihin-Makuhari station, these retro movie-style posters depict the home team heroes defending the city from attack by villainous monster opponents.

My Life in Post-It

Well, if you haven’t seen or heard from me in a while, I have been working out in Toronto. My jobs pretty cool, and I am doing alot of design work. I’ve been learning adobe suite alot. Here is what my life basically looks like, as represented by post it notes:

Tom Wood’s Garden

I can’t take credit for all the hard work put into make this garden beautiful, but I can take credit for the photos.

Every year my Dad goes all-out on doing the front and back garden and each year it turns out great.  This year I decided to document the garden with some photos and a small “virtual tour”.

Tom Wood Garden 09 from Justin Wood on Vimeo.

Blogs are better with…

Neon colours and cool videos.  Don’t beleive me? Check out The Cool Hunter. So if they get to have fun with it, why can’t I?

Okay here I go with 2 cool videos I found the other day.

(HD) Kanye West – Robocop (1988 import version) from Myk Dawg on Vimeo.

DJ Shadow – This Time from Myk Dawg on Vimeo.

School – Finito

I have completed my term at Sheridan College and am now starting my co-op work term at covermaster on May 4th.  I got a car to drive out there.  

There you have it folks, I am officially a Toronto commuter.  I can’t say I am too thrilled about the commute but covermaster should be a great opportunity!

Until then its a week of relaxing and driving around in the Mazda-rati.

Its beautiful out today

Which makes me feel like embedding this:

Boards of Canada – “Dayvan Cowboy” from Diaspro on Vimeo.

Almost Done

Its my last month at school, and I have to say I am glad it is almost done. I have learned so much in the past few months but the daily commute to oakville has been a serious wear on me.

After commuting to McMaster for 4 years, I can say that this commute is much more stressful in a number of ways.

First, its longer. It usually took 30mins to an hour to commute on the HSR to Mac. If I got the be-line it dropped me off right on off at my house. Now, I spend between 1-2 hours commuting home. Here the deal:

Step 1: Get a ride to the bus station @ Barton / Nash
Step 2: Take the Bus from Stoney Creek – Burlington
Step 3: Take the train from Burlington – Oakville
Step 4: Take the bus from Oakville Station to Sheridan.

Now I have these all timed pretty well at this point, but sometimes I hit rough times where I have to wait 20mins here , or 20 mins there. Lets say I have to work late at school, the train comes every hour or so, which is absolutely fucking crazy. Combined with running for trains/buses to transfer can add up to one seriously stressful time from point A-point B.

Although I really enjoy the train leg of my journey sometimes, one thing I really miss about taking the HSR is simply going through Hamilton’s downtown core. Public transit seems at least a bit more bareable when you are treated with a number of landmarks. Hamilton has some really nice churches, and I do have fond memories of gazing out of the window while avoiding the “Hamiltons finest“. Passing the dilapidated and deserted buildings in Hamilton’s east end was not pleasing, but it did instill me with a sense of urgency that something must be done to save Hamilton’s downtown core. Oakville has none of this gritty charm. Its bleak, boring and overpriced.

This year’s Stoney Creek- Oakville commute takes me over the Skyway in the morning. Here I am constantly reminded of how the rest of Ontario views Hamilton, from the outside looking in. I see the large coal deposits and burning flames of Dofascoe and am reminded constantly of who I am and where I come from – at least from the perspective of others. For those who have not been exposed to Hamilton, this is the initial image it conjures: an ominous industrial eye-sore with a yellow smoke clouds constantly billowing out from it. Dirty, hard labour, stinky!

It has been great to go to Oakville and see how other parts of Ontario envision my hometown after being so involved through going to McMaster and working for the City of Hamilton. Mentally, this commute has been difficult at times, but I try to remind myself to stay positive and this great quote popped up on my igoogle the other day:

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

Seneca

So one more month. What have I learned? Maybe that out of all the difficulties of commuting to Oakville I am happy I have a stronger vision of what I want from the city I am looking for a job in. Taking public transit is fine with me and I generally prefer it from driving but I would like to live somewhere that has a more efficient transportation system and hopefully in an area where I won’t have to commute AS far. Nearing my one year mark of living in Japan, I know I wont have any bullet trains coming my way in Canada anytime soon, but hopefully I can make an improvement on a 4-step journey.

What I have been up to

So I know I haven’t been able to post amazing travel experiences or wacky stories, but I am going to take the time to post something I have been working on lately.

I just finished a marketing project from school which actually turned out to be a lot of fun (but lots of hard work.  We did a 40 page plan for the Art Gallery of Hamilton.  Through this, I created an advertising campaign for the gallery, “Art Inspires Life”.  Its a series of print ads for transit bus shelters.

I am not really a wizard in photoshop, but I think they turned out really well.