My Olympic experience
Filed under: B.C. | Tags: Cypress mountain, Olympics, slalom, snowboarding, Vancouver
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Bags on seats at Cypress Mountain
Feb. 27, 2010
By Alison Bate
It’s Saturday morning and my sister Gill and I are hanging out over coffee in my little cottage, listening to the rain beating overhead and enjoying being dry again.
Yesterday we spent the day up Cypress Mountain watching the women’s snowboarding live at the Olympics.
Huge buses from California took us up the local mountain; all of us ready to sit in the rain, the fog and the wind for five hours. We waited in a plastic warming hut for a couple of hours, reading the papers and chatting with a Seattle couple, before climbing up endless stairs to the giant stand.
The whole day was like sailing in winter – revelling in getting cold and wet while having a great time. By the end of the day, instead of bums on seats, there were bags on seats: all of us in the stands wearing billowing see-through plastic bags over our clothes…not exactly a fashion statement.
The Europeans were the main stars in the parallel giant slalom (our event), and in the end, a Dutch woman came first, followed by a Russian, and an Austrian. The Dutch were standing on the benches cheering madly when she won.
It was all very exciting though, especially at the end, with the knockout stages. Canada had a couple of faint hopes, but I managed to be taking a pee break when the best Canadian hope had her run (as Gill kept pointing out afterward!).
Bowen Island’s Olympic moment
Filed under: B.C. | Tags: B.C., bowen island, Olympics, Queen of Capilano, Snug Cove, torch
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Marching down the road to the dock, Bowen Islanders prepare for the Olympic torch ceremonies the day before the big event.
By Alison Bate
It was dark and sleepy as I drove down to Snug Cove at 5:30 a.m. yesterday, but every house had its lights on.
I parked the car, offloaded my bike and pedalled across the cool damp field to Snug Cove. I passed walkers with their headlights on as I trundled across the boardwalk and left it outside the library.
“It’s like waiting for the bus,” I heard, as I stood outside the library, surrounded in the dark by hundreds of fellow islanders, many wearing red and white or the Olympic red mittens – none of which showed in the dark. It was chilly, and we were all huddled up, waiting for something to happen.
“Ooh, there it is,” and we looked up the road to see an orange wobbly flame, with a huge crowd of people walking behind it, ghosts in the dark. “Why are there two flames?” asked someone in the crowd. The flame or flames seemed to disappear from view somewhere near the General Store, and we resumed our waiting-for-the-bus positions. Read more »
Memories of Bint el Sudan
Filed under: Sudan | Tags: Africa, Bint el Sudan, Bush Boake Allen, Muslim, perfume, Sudan, W J Bush & Co.
Leave a Comment By Alison Bate
In the recently-published article about my grandfather and Bint el Sudan, there wasn’t room to include all the information and memories I collected about the perfume.
Here, then, are some of the emails I received about Bint el Sudan, starting with the present, and followed by memories of those working in the U.K. company of Bush Boake Allen.
View from Khartoum
Alawiyya Jamal, a Khartoum-based humanitarian officer, told me that no Sudanese wedding perfume is complete without Bint.
She adds: “While preparing for my nephew’s wedding, I found it also comes as an atomizer for everyday use. Personally it is one of my favorite smells, not only as in the perfume mix but also a daily freshener.
“The other use is that it is sprayed on broken down sandalwood for the bride and married women. It is also used on the pieces of the acacia seyal wood with white powered musk as scent. The wood makes the perfume last longer and improves its smell.
“When used with the Acacia wood, it is used to scent the house, bed covers, and for those who can not afford the sandalwood, they use it as an alternative to perfume the tobes (the brightly-colored sari-like clothes worn by many Sudanese women), dresses and cloth.”
Bint el Sudan, my grandfather. . .and me
Filed under: Sudan | Tags: Bint el Sudan, canada, IFF, Kemsing, Khartoum, Omdurman, perfume
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My grandfather E.E.Burgess, left, and another W.J. Bush agent in Africa
On a trip that took me to Africa, I found my grandfather’s lasting legacy—the continent’s signature scent—in a market in Sudan.
This story “The Bint Formula” is in the December 2009 issue of Reader’s Digest Canada magazine, now on sale.
Online tips at Bowen Island writing festival
By Alison Bate
I learned about Freemiums and Long Tails on Saturday while moderating a panel at the Write on Bowen festival on Bowen Island, near Vancouver, B.C.
As traditional media outlets struggle to make money on the web, panelist Lisa Manfield said Freemium was one way for companies to adapt. Freemium involves promoting services by offering basic features for free, but charging a premium for extra features.
Manfield, managing editor at Orato.com, also gave a great workshop on Writing for the Web on Sunday. She teaches web writing for Simon Fraser University’s Writing and Publishing Program, and managed to pack an incredible amount of useful information into a short time. Read more »
Ancient Kashgar destroyed for “safety reasons”
Filed under: China, Travel | Tags: China, Culture, history, Kashgar, Kashi, mosque, Uyghur
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- Uyghur men in Kashgar souk
By Alison Bate
When I visited Kashgar just over three years ago, I was disappointed at first.
The road in from the airport passed concrete roundabouts and boring buildings typical of the modern Han Chinese city. There was even a giant Mao statue close to the bus station.
Kashgar's Id Kah Mosque in winter
While Kashgar – or Kashi as the Han Chinese call it – is inside China, people don’t visit the city to see its Chinese culture.
Like me, they come to see the ancient Silk Road city famous for its Uyghur market, rabbit-warren streets, donkey carts and the largest mosque in China.
Sun’s up! Time to put the kettle on
Filed under: Travel | Tags: biking, chang, Lhundrub, solar energy, tea kettles, Tibet
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Tea kettles in Lhundrub
By Alison Bate
Watching Brad Pitt in “Seven Years in Tibet” the other week, I idly wondered how any movie about Tibet could be so boring.
Tibet’s so striking, and there are so many surprises around every corner, that making a boring movie about the country should be impossible. But it did trigger a couple of my favorite memories while biking with my sister around Tibet in 2006.
Early one morning, we were in the small town of Lhundrub (Chinese name: Linzhou), east of Lhasa. We watched in bafflement as a local Tibetan woman carefully placed large kettles of water on what looked like makeshift satellite dishes. Read more »
Winter in Urumqi, one of the world’s most polluted cities
Filed under: China, Travel | Tags: China, Environment, pollution, Teaching, Urumqi, Uyghur, Xinjiang
Comments (6) The Toronto Star recently listed China’s Urumqi as one of the Top Ten worst places to live in the world. The reason? Pollution. The list prompted my strangely fond memories of coughing and spluttering through winter in Urumqi while teaching English there between 2005 and 2006.
By Alison Bate
Back street in Urumqi
The local government has closed all the major roads downtown until noon, and told the residents to clear the streets. No snowplows here or salting and gritting of roads. Just hordes of people attacking the ice. It’s dirty and grimy, full of soot.
After a token effort, the stall-keepers huddle round tiny coal-fire tin cans, the men wearing Chinese army overcoats and Snoopy sheepskin hats with long earflaps. Only the Uyghurs selling kebabs look warm, with large old-style barbeques for cooking the mutton. Read more »
What if a containership ran aground on Nootka Island?
Filed under: Maritime | Tags: B.C., containership, Environment, marine, Nootka Island, oilspill, pollution, rescue tugs, shipping, tugs
Leave a Comment By Alison Bate
When a ship gets into trouble off the remote west coast of Vancouver Island, there are very few rescue services around.
The province relies on a commercial tug in the area being able to help out. Currently, major seagoing tugs carry electronic tracking devices so they can be located in real-time on computer charts. This information is provided to US and Canadian Marine Vessel Traffic Services to refer to if there is an emergency request for tug assistance. This is known as a “tug-of-opportunity”.
Apart from the fact that there may not be a tug capable of holding a large ship cruising by at the right time, there are several other flaws in this arrangement. Read more »
Tug escort rules vary in B.C.
Filed under: Maritime | Tags: B.C., Environment, Kitimat, marine, oilspill, pollution, shipping, tanker, tugs
Comments (1) By Alison Bate
I must admit I was a little surprised not to get a straight answer from Transport Canada at first about the number of tug escorts traveling with condensate tankers into Kitimat.
I assumed it was clearly set down in the legislation whether tankers carrying this kind of hydrocarbon mixture required tug escorts and, if so, how many.
After all, set rules are laid down for laden oil tankers passing through Haro Strait. They are required to travel with tug escorts, as are laden crude oil tankers leaving the port of Vancouver, typically from Kinder Morgan Canada’s Westridge Terminal in Burnaby.
