Adventures in YYZ: Busking for CHANGE with Raine Maida

On September 21, 2010, Raine Maida was joined by dozens of musicians on the streets of Toronto. This was the third annual Busking for CHANGE event, held on International Peace Day.  They set up shop on busy corners, concentrating on the well-monied financial centre, and used their voices and musical skills to drum up support and awareness for War Child Canada. Passersby were also encouraged to donate their change (and higher denominations) to the campaign.

Here's a video I took of Raine Maida, performing Innocent:

He's an amazing live performer.

Photo essay: Fall 2010 travels - A transfer in Florence

This is the second part of a series of posts on my fall travels in 2010 to several cities in Europe. The first part was my iPhone cache of photos. Here we leave YYZ and arrive in FLR, after a bit of an adventure in BRU. (Will we make our transfer, or won't we?)

Bye-bye Pearson!

iPhone cache: Fall 2010 travels

We visited Cinque Terre in Italy, Nice in France (side trip to Monaco), Barcelona in Spain (side trip to Tortosa parador - recommend!).

I just activated my phone the day I left for this trip. I didn't know how to use it or have any apps, etc. I mostly used it to take pictures of maps and schedules so we could use them as pocket maps. If you're interested in maps and public transportation systems around the world, here are a few pictures:

Map of Manarola in Cinque Terre, Italy to find Trattoria Dal Billy. (BEST meal of trip of amazing meals.)

 

Where our cash goes (Canadian version, eh!)

I saw an interesting infographic on the average US spending (commented on by yesiamcheap.com, and heard via @brokeinthecity), and just happened to be looking at the same data for Canadians. It's not as pretty, but here it is:

Just call me Master

I found this old (2006) post that I changed to draft for some reason:

Apparently I am iNTj, which stands for Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging. According to Carl Jung, I am a moderately introverted, intuitive thinker, with a distinctly judging personality. Reading further to find out what D Keirsley thinks about this rare subset of the population (less than 1%!), it appears that I am what is called a "Mastermind". ^_^ The whole "NT" group is called the Rationals, which include the Engineer, the Mastermind, the Inventor and the Field Marshal (the first two being introverts and last two being extroverts).

If the Mastermind category fits me best, I am quite self-confident and very judicious, and therefore can be quite decisive (e will laugh/scoff at this...). I can formulate coherent and comprehensive contingency plans. Although not eager to take a leadership role, once in this position, I am highly pragmatic. MM Heiss says that I know what I know, and I know what I don't know. I am both a perfectionist, and realistic. I tend to be even-handed (could this be the Libra factor playing out??) in recognizing the contributions of others, but also recognize and go for opportunities for myself as they are presented. (cool.) Unfortunately (for e), romantic relationships are my Achilles heel, since I have little patience for small talk or flirtation, as well am extremely private in nature.

So four and a half years later, I get the same result of INTJ:

Introverted	Intuitive	Thinking	Judging
89	62	12	67

I really need to work on my extroversion.

It's all very interesting. To read more about iNTjs, you can click here or here. To take the test yourself, click here.

Refresh!

Once again, it's been a while since I've posted anything here, and an even longer time since I've posted anything with real content.
I want to get back into the writing groove, so maybe a resurrection of this weblog will help me to shape my words and phrasing better IRL.

I plan to try to stay apolitical -- goodness knows there's enough politicking heads without my personal opinions thrown into the fray. [Of note: There is a very similarly-named blog with highly-charged content in the political realm. I have zero affiliation with that blog.]

I might cover the interesting sights and sounds of Toronto, cities I have visited, places I have eaten at, cool stuff that I have found online in the form of food, fashion and entertainment, and anything that is of general interest to me: the non-profit sector, the state of Canadian healthcare, social and new media, reading up on personal finance, books I'm reading and whatnot.

Here goes!
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