Visiting Vancouver for CHI 2011

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So begins the month of travel. Copenhagen - Vancouver - Rio de Janeiro - Copenhagen - Nantes - Boras - Copenhagen. May 7 to June 20. A bit mad but isn't that always the case? Vancouver has been the first leg of the journey so that's where we'll start this story.

I arrived in Vancouver after a very long trip - leaving the house at 7am and arriving in Vancouver at 4am Copenhagen time. Then going straight to dinner with family, sushi, but of course, and then on to the conference beer/presentations night at Steamworks Brew Pub. It was a great night even though my body was fighting me every step of the way. I was a zombie at sushi and trying to make conversation and catch up with my family was a bit hopeless but after the sight of beautiful artistic sushi, the smell of vinegar seasoned rice mixed with soy sauce and wafts of wasabi and green tea, and the bodily shock of ingesting so much salt in the form of the soy sauce I was back to normal(ish). At Steamworks, I met with Mona who was doing the workshop on the weekend of the conference. We quickly made a presentation to introduce ourselves and what we do (see it here: ) and it was so much fun, everyone loved it! 😊 I really liked hearing about the projects people were doing, a lot of interesting things such as "Not in California Roll" sushi, which glows in the dark due to genetically modified fish, as a statement about food modification. Fun stuff. Nick and Amanda joined us and we found a free bar for the conference go-ers. This proved to be too much for my extremely exhausted body though so we took a tour of Granville street before heading home. Sunday was mother's day and we spent the day having breakfast and then going downtown, me to the conference to say hi and my mom to a bead show. We had a nice dinner and relaxed, going to bed super early because I was super tired.

The conference was busy! I've never attended a CHI conference before and while I was impressed with their ability to pack a LOT of talks into every hour and coordinate them into appropriate subjects so too much running around wasn't necessary, I was extremely disappointed by their 'event' skills. There was no atmosphere; instead, around 2000 people milled about during coffee breaks, narrowly avoiding spilling coffee on each other as the once very posh conference center began to mirror a mosh pit at a concert. Conversations were all across the board, robots, interfaces, GSR, methods, all things I was interested in but for all my ability to network like crazy, I could not get a handle on this crowd, and as I learned, no one could. It was too big to single out someone or a group of someones to start saying hello. The one trick which seemed to work was, in desperation to put down the hot cup of coffee you'd just poured, find a nearby table (of which there were maybe 15 for all the people there) say "excuse me", dump down the coffee, and start random conversation about how hot it was, or how much you needed the caffeine. I was not alone in this method, and met the only people I ended up meeting this way. The conference did have an intriguing little device which looked like a tiny hand which you wore as a necklace and could 'high five' other people with to exchange contact information. Brilliant, but socially awkward, "hi! let's hi-five!" does not work well in a huge crowd where you can barely hear people, there are lots of different accents going on and not everyone knows 'hi-five'. So... please CHI work on the atmosphere, give us an excuse to interact dammit! I did see a lot of great talks though and met some fun people including the Human Aquarium folks, who made a box with a glass fronted panel that artists sit in and sing and play music, and the audience should touch the glass to create audio effects. Nicely done with Max and Ableton and a fun installation. I also met a girl working on interactive corsets wanting to create a 'gut feeling' for someone when someone else was thinking of them so that's a natural collaboration waiting to happen. 😊

Overall though - the conference just exhausted me, it was too much information, talk after talk after talk and then home, friends, family, working on the Brazil details, saying hello to loved ones, and barely finding time for sleep. Outside the conference, things were more relaxed. Friday was a quiet day, my parents and I had a small ceremony for my grandmother, she died recently, in March. She had been sick for a very long time and so it wasn't a surprise, and to be frank, I'm glad her suffering is over, she had many, many sicknesses all piled on to one another and I felt terrible for her. Each letter I received was filled with pain, and she was unhappy about her physical state. I think she really wanted change, a new body perhaps... come on technology, catch up! In the end she went quickly and peacefully and my mother's regret is that she didn't give my grandma the chocolate she asked for (she'd been diabetic for a long time and had said, if it's all ending, give me lots of chocolate) because we thought she was getting better. She was cremated and had a proper Roman Catholic ceremony and mass at her church, which she would have been very impressed about. My parents got her a beautiful pewter urn and found her rosary and her autobiography and some beautiful photos and we put those in with her. Her final resting place is a beautiful country-side funeral home, which is more garden and lake than funeral setting, with birds singing, bright sun shining across large fields and my grandma, placed in her own room in marble housing, with her name written in gold letters and her years of birth. She gave me the best advice that I follow to this day "always wear nice underwear, just in case something happens". Brilliant. She was much loved and is very missed. After this small ceremony, my mom and I had a day together. We went to a spa (thank you Groupon) and had facials and massages. Amusingly, there were two woman - that's not the amusing part of course, but one who was desperate to get a sale out of my mother and fussed over her, telling her what was happening, how, ingredients, effects, everything, extra massage, and mine... nearly silent, completely incapable of answering direct questions. "What kind of enzyme is in the facial?" "Well, it has the enzyme, and it also has Vitamin C. Vitamin C is good for your...blahblahblah" 10 minutes about Vitamin C. "Okay, but which enzyme is it?" "Well enzymes are..." and an explanation of what an enzyme is. Sigh. Finally we get to the massage part. 15 minutes. I have a choice of scalp and neck or shoulders and arms. I choose the second since I'm sore in the shoulders but would love the scalp massage, ah well. I get an arm massage, and ... a touch on the shoulder. Like, a pat. Like, there, there, too bad for you. We remedied this by first laughing about it and then going to a sake tasting on Granville island followed by some crafts shopping and general gawking at all the stalls and goods and tasty foods. We had a wonderful day and it was great to spend time with my mom. Friday night brought me the happiness that can only be had with the Richmond Night Market. Ben and I followed our ritual of arriving, eating everything in sight, and spending the rest of the time walking off our food-comas wandering the stalls searching for deals and fun demented finds. I came very close to buying Anime contact lenses and gave up in the last minute, vowing to spend my money somewhere more meaningful. We had a fantastic in-trunk conversation following the night market and went our separate ways around 2am, typical Benessa style. 😊 Following a glorious Saturday night dad-bbqs-steaks night on Saturday, there was some much needed outlet shopping in Seattle with my friends (a beautiful moment while driving of realizing, a Russian-Jew, an Anglo-Greek, a Pole and a German/Scottish in the car, all with strong ties to our various backgrounds, and yet, all Canadians) and a quiet night at home afterwards. Monday was the Return to the On-On, a favourite Chinese restaurant that I've gone with my parents to since I was very young. My dad and I went and ordered War-wonton soup, a wonton soup with everything but the kitchen sink in it, and had 'beef and greens' and bbq pork. A return to my childhood. I then went to visit Magda and Al's new place and have a fantastic girl-talk night with my dear friend. Tuesday found me having dinner with my dad on the porch, a perfect moment of sunshine, my dad mowing the lawn in his new Politi (Danish police) shirt, the dogs running up and trying to lick me with no success, and a great dinner with a conversation about what makes you happy, and following your heart with my dad. After this we went to his 'hang out' an RV repair shop run by his friend George, and populated by guys of all backgrounds, Filipeno, East Indian, who cook excellent food and play snooker on the table they bought and put up above the repair shop. It's truly the 'hang out' place and what a nice bunch of guys. After watching a game and gathering the idea of the rules, my dad and I teamed up, and beat, his friends. I'm not entirely sure they didn't let us beat them but it was a great father-daughter win nonetheless. Wednesday was my last day and we spent it running around, my mom bought me a hair cut which turned out great, and I picked up some stuff from the VPD store and saw Priscilla once again, if only for shopping for 15 minutes. We had planned to have lunch at the Fairmont downtown, fancy and lovely and all but as time was stolen from us, we ended up at Tokyo John's. This is my sister's favourite sushi place and is in her neighbourhood so it was perfect. The whole family gathered, once again, "for the last meal together this year" as my mom put it without explaining herself, much to the waitress' distress, and we had a fabulous sushi feast. My mom and sister headed off to their jobs and my dad took me to Queen Elizabeth park, a beautiful park in the city which rises up above Vancouver and looks out over the mountains and the downtown core. I can't believe I've never taken Dzl here, what was I thinking? It's gorgeous and we spent some time wandering around, taking photos and buying jellyfish for me. 😊

Wednesday night was the final gathering, pizza, dear friends, and goodbyes once again. Thursday morning brought a flurry of last minute packing, the ritual of sitting down and reflecting before leaving (a Russian thing I got from Ben's family) and out the door, to the airport, sitting at Tim Hortons and being amused as my parents fiddled with their smart phones, (oh what is the world coming to, that I, the daughter, hope for conversation as the adults play with the technology?) and then a strongly withheld need to cry covered by hugs and bon voyages as I went through security and off to Brazil. Thank you to everyone who made my Vancouver trip wonderful.

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