Duncan's Archive

December 2008

It's been too long since I updated this site and a lot has happened. In May we made our first visit to Japan in more than 4 years. We had a great time visiting old friends, seeing old places, and just being tourists, (although being a tourist in Japan is much more enjoyable when you speak Japanese). It's a strange sensation to return to a place where we spent so much of our lives, but which is now so far from where we live. I took more than 700 photos, some of which I'll post here.

Having cha (dim sum) with Kinnosuke Naruoka in Vancouver.

Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto. This is one of Kyoto's most famous temples and is usually packed with students on school trips.

The area around Kiyomizu-temple is one of my favourite parts of Kyoto because (for obvious reasons) there's not much vehicle traffic.

Here we are at our favourite tonkatsu (pork cutlet) restaurant, Katsukura, in Shizuoka.

Tonkatsu is one of my favourite Japanese foods. In this case it's part of a set menu that includes a couple of shrimp (in this case), rice, tonjiru (miso soup with pork and vegetables), pickles, cabbage (the Japanese cabbage is much sweeter than Canadian cabbage), and tonkatsu sauce mixed with sesame seeds you grind yourself.

I had a chance to visit Tokoha University, where I worked for more than 13 years, and meet my former colleague, Fukushima-sensei.

At Matsumoto Castle with our friends the Kurosakis. I'd visited the castle a couple of times before in the late 1980s when I stopped in Matsumoto before heading into the Japan Alps to go hiking.

Whoops! We hit a time warp. Here's a photo of me in the fall of 1990 preparing to climb Tsurugidake (just behind my left shoulder) in the North Japanese Alps.

I visited downtown Shimuzu where I lived for 2 1/2 years in the late 1980s. I came across this warning that the lane ahead was closed. The multiple signs, plus the worker with a yellow flag, ensured that no one missed the message!

A local fish shop in Shimizu. Lots of great sashimi -- we had maguro (tuna), scallops, and red snapper.

We also went to my niece's wedding in Sequim, Washington right after we got back from Japan.

Scott and Marissa making their entry at the wedding.

I worked for much of the summer, having taken a good chunk of my holidays in May. One of my major work projects this summer was a re-design of the library home page, the results of which you can see here. I did, however, take some days off so we could do some some things as a family such as go to the Pacific National Exhibition and Harrison Lake.

December 2007

I've been working at Trinity Western for about 10 months now and am beginning to feel at home in my work situation. I worked most of the summer, covering for colleagues who were on holidays. My duties involve 22 hours on the reference desk in the library -- answering research questions in person, on the phone, via e-mail, or through instant messaging. I also do 2 hours of virtual reference on a project funded by the provincial government called AskAway. It is a cooperative effort by librarians at all the post-secondary institutions in British Columbia through which we provide a reference service where students can log in via computer and get help finding the information they need for their research projects. It can be challenging as I have no way of knowing what kind of question I'll get. One week I had a student from another university contact me to say there was a strange man in the library who seemed to be looking for something to steal.

My duties also include information literacy which involves teaching students how to find information, evaluate it, and cite it. I will be teaching a course in Research Strategies to graduate students in the spring semester. I also make Flash tutorials that instruct users in how to use some of the databases to which we subscribe.

I'm discovering that while home ownership has its advantages, it also takes a lot of time. We have a huge plane tree in our front yard that produces an enormous amount of leaves. It provides lovely shade in the summer as it blocks the western sun from hitting the house in the evening, but the leaves are a downside. I bought a leaf vacuum, which does a good job of sucking up the leaves and chopping them up so they don't take up as much space.

I still cycle to work, even on rainy days (but not in the snow). I have a good set of rain gear and fenders on my bicycle, so it is not as unpleasant as it might sound. One advantage of cycling in the rain in Canada as opposed to Japan is that here the temperature drops when it rains, so I don't have to worry about getting too sweaty in my rain gear.

The library display table at Orientation Week.

April 2007

Since my last update, things have changed a lot. After 6 weeks of commuting from UBC to Trinity Western University (120 km round trip), we've moved to Walnut Grove, which is located in Langley township about 5 km from Trinity. I am working 20 hours a week as a contract reference librarian. This involves answering questions from students and faculty at the information desk in the library. I also do virtual reference where I answer questions from college and university students across British Columbia via the Internet.

When I interviewed for the job at Trinity in December, theymentioned that there was also the possibility of a full-time position beginning in mid-August, with the job being posted in April. In March, my boss told me they had received funding approval for the position and that he was arranging for me to have an interview. As far as I know, they didn't interview anyone else and offered me the job the next day. I will begin full time May 25th. My official position is Assistant Librarian, Reference and Information Literacy. The reference part means working on the information desk in the library and heading up the AskAway virtual reference service at Trinity. The information literacy part of the job title means I will be in charge of providing library instruction for students.

N M Alloway Library at Trinity Western University

I'm excited about the new job and the challenges and opportunities it provides. My parents will be joining us in Langley in mid-May. They are selling their place in Red Deer and we will share the house in Langley, although we will maintain separate households.

I made a quick trip to Red Deer near the end of March to go through a couple of trunks and a large number of books from my distant past. I managed to get rid of both trunks and most of my books. While there, I was able to get together with my brother and sisters and their families.

Here we are at my sister Laurie's place in High River.

Painting Brendan's room (yes blue is the new colour)

The move went smoothly thanks to help from friends and relatives. My back was fine and didn't require a trip to the hospital in an ambulance for morphine shots like the time we moved to UBC.

We don't have much furniture yet, so we're living in about 3 rooms. We have ordered furniture and it should arrive some time in April. We're keeping busy doing minor renovations and painting.

December 2006

After a number of months of uncertainty (about whether to finish in December or April), I have finished my Master of Library and Information Studies degree and have a job. I'll start part-time at Trinity Western University as a reference librarian on January 8. The job has the possibility of becoming full time in August.

As a result, our Christmas holiday is going to consist primarily of looking for a house and packing. We're looking for a house with a ground-level entry (i.e., with two stories, but without a basement), so my parents can live in a suite in the lower level while we have separate living quarters on the second floor. This should allow them to live independently for longer than if they were completely on their own. We will probably live in Walnut Grove, which is part of the Township of Langley, about 40 kilometres east of Vancouver. It is relatively close to where Debbie's parents live, so we will be able to visit them with little difficulty.

We are all excited about the new job, relocating to a new place, and the friends we know we're going to make.

We went out to eat for my birthday with Debbie's parents. Here I am with Mother Fung and Brendan (we actually remembered to take a picture before we ate all the food).

August 2006

The weather this summer in Vancouver was wonderful. Unfortunately, I spent most of the summer working in the library at Simon Fraser University. It's an excellent library and the work was interesting, but it was also a 90 minute bus and skytrain ride across Vancouver and Burnaby. Needless to say, I got a lot of reading done. We spent a couple of weeks in Red Deer with my parents in August. I did a lot of cycling with my brother who also lives in Red Deer.

I'm entering what could be my final semester. I'll have enough credits to graduate by Christmas, but if I don't find a suitable job, I'll stay in school and wait for the end of Brendan's school year. I'll be working part-time at Woodward biomedical library again this year.

My brother Ev's 50th birthday celebration.

At Red Deer's Bower Ponds.

In front of my boyhood home in Enderby.

May 2006

I've finished my courses for term 2, including a "professional experience" course where I helped the Library Tech program at Langara College move a course from the classroom to WebCT. It was interesting, but I had a hard time getting the information I needed from the 3 instructors.

I took a course in preservation where I learned about how much can go wrong when trying to preserve various materials from deteriorating. Things such as the acid in paper that gradually destroys it, magnetic and optical media that gradually becomes unreadable because of deterioration or because you no longer have a machine that will read it, and dyes in photographic prints that shift over time. It made me realize how fragile much of the record of our culture really is.

I also took a course in indexing. Part of the requirements was to create a thesaurus. I worked with two other students and developed this Web page to display our thesaurus.

This summer I am working at Simon Fraser University Library as a co-op student. It has a very good reputation and I'm finding it challenging working in a library that serves all academic disciplines at the same reference desk. At UBC I worked in a biomedical library, and rarely get questions about government or legal information. It's about an hour-and-a-half bus/Skytrain ride away from the UBC campus where we live, so I'm getting lots of reading done this summer. SFU is atop Burnaby mountain and quite close to where Debbie's parents live.

Here I am at work at SFU Library.

The SFU Library on the right.

Camp Charis near Chilliwack (no the girls aren't ours).

A photo from about 25 years ago when I was teaching at a Salvation Army high school in Zambia. I called it my "William Booth look" after the founder of the Salvation Army (who actually had a much more impressive beard).

Here I am cooking during a hike to Chimata with Ken Klippenstein, an MCC teacher from Lusaka (1983).