Hamster wheel

Sometimes I think about all the people working out across America (and now Canada), their feet going in neat ellipses, their hands reaching up and down, up and down. I think about how they're moving but not actually going anywhere, and I think about how the image is downright Sisyphean: repetitive movements that have no purpose but to exert the mover, like rolling a rock up a mountain only to have it roll back down. (Come to think of it, Sisyphus must have had a great quads.) Some people (say, Dante) think this is the essence of Hell (where Sisyphus was): doing something over and over again whether you want to or not.

I think the pervasiveness of gyms must be a sign that we're living in an age of excess. We have so much extra energy (in the form of calories) hanging around our bodies that we have to go somewhere and do something to get rid of it. I never hear this argument brought up in all the environmental chit-chatter going around: Are gyms a waste of energy? Aside from the energy it takes to light and cool these cavernous spaces, there's all this energy people are expending, often to overcome the resistance of machines powered to resist them.

Every now and then, I hear of efforts to put this energy to use. The easiest way is obviously to bike, run, row, or whatever-you-do-in-the-gym your way to and from work, to and from errands, wherever the default would normally be "drive". With the suburbanization of our cities, though, and people living farther away from their places of work, I can see this often isn't practical.

Some engineers and would-be engineers have also tried to harness this energy by hooking up machines to other machines. Take these students from MIT, for instance. They're powering their laptops by biking. An interesting idea, though it's hard not to think of that scene in The Matrix where Morpheus talks about humans being used as batteries and holds up a Duracell.

But beyond these considerations, the main beef I have with gyms is that I think they actually undermine, yes undermine, the public welfare. As long as exercise comprises activities dissociated from our everyday lives -- monotonous activities at that -- it's always going to be something we can either do or not do. Drive to the gym, wait for a machine, strain and grunt for thirty minutes while people stare at me? Or stay at home and eat Cheetos? Hmm, that's a tough one.

Riding my bike to work, I can ride with either less intensity or more, but I can't not ride (unless I pay money to wait for then ride an overcrowded city bus, that is). I might sometimes skimp on the push-ups or sit-ups in the morning, but there's only so much I can skimp on a four-mile bike ride, especially when it's effectively my only way to get to work. What I'm advocating is this: Exercise as necessity, not just convenience. We need more than bigger, fancier gyms. Or actually, maybe we need less.

An American Thanksgiving in Canada

Instead of home in Texas, an Asian food court just off the UBC (University of British Columbia) campus.

Instead of my parents and brother, a fellow postdoc, PB from Germany.

Instead of turkey and stuffing, three items (drunken chicken, Chinese cabbage, and broccoli with rice) for $5.75.

Instead of a slice of pumpkin pie, a pint of Canadian beer.

Instead of a warm snooze afterward, a cold bike ride back to the apartment.

Here I am in Vancouver, B.C., a million miles from home, on the third Thursday in November. I sit at my laptop, think of all I love south of me, embrace them in my thoughts, and wonder, What am I doing here? Do all expats feel this way?

Things you see along the way

If you ever move to Vancouver as I have, here are some things you might see along the way:

Mount Rainier outside your airplane window as you descend into Seattle:


The La Quinta motel where you stay with your parents the night before you drive into Canada, reflected in the window of your rental car:


Your dad figuring out the lay of the land from a map you bought at a secondhand store:


An obelisk marking the boundary between the U.S. and Canada:


Your first street sign to Vancouver which you'll have plenty of time to look at during your first traffic jam in Canada:


Your parents waving to you after you drop them off in Seattle the next day and get on the shuttle back to Vancouver:


Your feet on a Canadian sidewalk wondering if any sidewalk ever looked as unfamiliar as this:


The road ahead which though unknown was chosen by you and therefore yours to follow:

An aside

Two weeks ago I moved to Vancouver, and like most who move anywhere but back home, I felt out of sorts, not myself, and light in the wallet. It's been hard not to carry that feeling into work each day. I'm enjoying the research projects I've got lined up here at the University of British Columbia, but I haven't been able to "lose myself" in them yet. I'm held back by baser matters.

Biking now, for instance, I see the savings whereas before I just enjoyed the ride: savings for my pocketbook (cheaper than riding the bus, certainly cheaper than owning, insuring, and gassing a car here) and savings for the environment. (Vancouver's greener than anyplace I've ever been -- at UBC you're responsible for emptying your own office trash.) Another upswing is that I'm healthier than I've ever been. Putting in at least eight miles on the bike everyday, I've got steel for muscles in my legs. With my habit of using the hardest gear I can take, I figure I'm burning at least 500 calories a day during my commute.

I'm also watching what I eat closely, not just for the nutritional benefit but because it's cheaper too. I'll typically have granola and soy milk in the morning then zap some oatmeal and top it with beans for lunch. Dinner's usually something along those lines too. I'm trying to eat for less than $5 a day, and in the process I've become a granarian. I've made some other changes as well: Instead of coffee, tea. Instead of meat, legumes. You get the idea.

There's a cold, hard calculus to my life that wasn't there before. But I guess that's part of becoming an adult -- here I am at 31 -- taking a stark look at your life sometimes so you can forget about it at other times.

Mission:Impossible, pt. 4

[On a personal note, I'm back. Apologies for the longest break I've ever taken from the Blues, over a month now. In that time I packed up my things in Michigan and headed for Vancouver, British Columbia where I'll be for the near term. As a public service, I'm going to now finish these over-ambitious posts that I'd planned on international calls in quick fashion.]

The first option for making international calls has to be calling cards. Signs trumpeting their existence, along with rates listed down to tenths of a cent precision, are one thing I've found common to all grocery stores catering to foreign nationals. Asian, Indo-Pak, Middle Eastern -- it doesn't matter. If you find a store selling food from that region, you've also found a place where you can buy a card allowing you to call that region for 3.8 cents a minute.

I was almost set on buying one of these cards. I pictured going to Canada, buying a calling card there, and punching in 30 numbers just to call my parents in Texas for 2 cents a minute. But what would my parents have to pay? Where would the call appear to be coming from? And how much use would I get out of a Canadian phone plan otherwise?

I thought there must be better options out there. I went back on the Internet.

After more searching I found that the "card" part of "calling card" was dispensable. On some websites you can buy virtual cards which comprise code numbers you enter to route your call through who-knows-where for cheap. Here's one from a company called UWT, short for United World Telecom. It's a terrible name -- "United World" manages to sound both menacing and generic, like it's the cover for a crime syndicate in a Die Hard movie. I wasn't about to give these people anything.

But through this website I did learn about a second option for making international calls: the callback service. If "virtual calling cards" are shady, callback services seem twice as much so. You know the scene in movies where the mistress calls, gets the wife instead, and hangs up? That's what comes to mind. The idea is that you call a number, access some service that calls you back, and then call the real number you want to reach. Did you get that? You know what that makes you? The other woman! You have to love it when the one-question FAQ is "Is callback service legal?" and the answer is a link to an FCC ruling. That's not exactly "yes," is it?

[To be continued...]