Vancouver, home of the protest

It’s no great secret that Vancouver’s a left-leaning city, or at least has a very vocal left wing minority. There’s committees, groups, and parties that represent the usual narrow spectrum of idealism: homes for the homeless, abolish poverty, stop the Olympics, stop police brutality, stop the war (doesn’t matter which one), open more hospitals, and so on. It’s good that people believe in something and want to speak out about it, but personally I am tired of the anti-Olympic sentiment of activists in Vancouver. Essentially, for protesters here the Olympics are the scapegoat for the ills of our society: if we weren’t hosting the games, we’d have treated all the junkies, eliminated hospital wait lists, provided free tuition, and we’d be driving space cars to work that run on leftovers from your fridge. Last week while on a lunchtime walk, there was a group of perhaps a dozen stereotypical lefties protesting something outside a police convention. I didn’t stick around to find out what their current crusade was, but naturally a placard read something about “No Olympics”.

This really has to stop. Honestly. The Olympics are past the point of no return; they’re coming, and even if they weren’t, that money would not be used to cure the homeless problem. Move on to something else.

Here’s a concept for the kids with a grudge to bear: get a job that pays a lot. Use the money you earn to lobby politicians — they don’t speak to punks in army boots and rats-nest dreadlocks. Politicans answer to money. If lobbying doesn’t work, become a politician instead. But don’t run on your idealist nonsense, otherwise you end up as the Green Party. Accept the fact that our world runs on capitalism, that cars run on gasoline, and people get addicted to heroin. These “problems” can be eased, but not fixed.

In case you’re wondering where I put myself on the political spectrum: I’m nowhere. I don’t support enough of either the left or the right wing to think I belong to either. Lately I see the world in terms of idealism vs. realism. It is great to have ideals, and to believe that things should be and can be better. But ideals have to be tempered with realism, the acknowlegement that things in our world are not going to change at the drop of a hat, and that for every person that sees an issue as a problem, there’s another person to whom that issue is an advantage. At the end of the day people need to be realistic about their problems and their proposed solutions. And “stopping the Olympics” is not realistic.

The Final Options

To follow up with what was mentioned in last week’s TWIG Notes, passing probation at Riptown also coincided with the expiration of my remaining stock options from EA. How stock options work is confusing and almost impossible to explain in layperson terms, so I will try not to describe it. The relevant bits of this subject are as follows: I sold the options that were worth something, and after taxes withheld and exchange rates, I netted about $1800. I had an equal number of options that had zero net value; I could have purchased them for roughly $20 000, to be sold at my discretion at any time. Since I don’t actually have $20 000, and if I did I sure as hell would not spend it on EA stock, those options are lost forever.

The fact that I had a large number of options that were of zero net value to me, after three years of working at EA, is a farce. You see, EA grants options as a way to entice people to stay with the company. The longer you work at EA, the more options you’re granted. The problem is, options are granted at whatever value EA stock is at when they’re given to you in your contract. The fact that I had options that were essentially worthless, and quite honestly would have needed more than another year to be worth anything, is insulting. If anything it is a disincentive to stay with the company; it’s a carrot dangling on a stick, with the trust and hope that the company’s value will increase.

In the past, EA’s stock value has increased. A lot. However the last three years — during which I was employed there — the value has essentially flatlined. EA is still an industry juggernaut, but to me it’s turned into a juggernaut the way Microsoft dominates the computer software industry, where they remain at the top but have nowhere else to go. It’s a prediction based entirely not on fact, but I believe EA’s value on the stock market is approaching its asymptote, if it were a logarithmic function. That’s fancy speak for “it’s not going up anymore”. This statement is based mostly on my own disgruntled feelings towards having stock that was worth nothing.

Granted I did “profit” $1800 off my options, but spread that out over the three years of work I did at EA and it amounts to $600 a year: a weak reward by any account while working for a company that sells three billion dollars worth of games per year. For those of you who are wondering, that money will go towards our wedding, a new bed, or a mountain of cocaine that I will snort on Christmas Day.

TWIG Notes VI

I was doing really well with posting this month, until this week. Thus it’s time once again for This Week In Garrett, an often unentertaining look at the week gone by.

- I passed my 90 day probation at Riptown. This isn’t terribly momentus or special, but it’s hard to believe I’ve been there three months. It honestly feels longer than that. It’s still difficult adjusting to the lack of lunching with colleagues; at EAC, since we were trapped in the Burnaby Penal Colony, everyone lunched together in the cafeteria. At Riptown, everyone eats at different times and there’s rarely an effort to gather the troops and eat at the same place. I think one of my goals will be to start initiating lunches with those I work with.

- A month from now is my 29th birthday, which will be marked by the second annual trip to Hastings Racetrack to bet on the horsies. It was loads of fun last year, and I’ll be sending out an open invitation again soon. If any readers will not be in town on the May long weekend, let me know in your comments. I’m still unsure whether to schedule it on that weekend or delay it until the following one.

- As my mother is in town for the weekend, we went to see the production of Stomp. We had seen it last year too, with mommy, and our attendance this year was a last minute arrangement. Stomp is entertaining and impressive, but I’m going to try to never see it again. Instead I’ll be waiting for Monty Python’s Spamalot to come to town.

- Wedding invites were sent out last week, and should either be in recipients’ mailboxes or will be arriving very shortly. We’ve already received compliments on their design, which makes the month-long creation process feel like it was worth it. When people ask “where did you get them done?”, it’s probably the best compliment we could get, since we got them done all by ourselves.

A New Hope

So just when rental hunting was bringing us down, we took a look at an apartment in the West End of downtown Vancouver. The place was a block away from the beach, and another block away from Stanley Park, and was pet friendly. Did it have a yard? No. Did it have two bedrooms? No. But it was quiet, very reasonable, and the West End is a very nice place. So we put our names into the hat, and while we don’t have a better chance than the fifteen or so other people who want it, it’s made us think of another option when it comes to apartment hunting. There are a lot of pet friendly places in the West End, and while none are going to offer us a thousand square feet, maybe that’s not the most important thing. Really, we need storage space more than anything; if we moved into an apartment the same size as our current one, as today’s viewing was, but had ample storage for boxes/Christmas decorations/more boxes, we’d be quite fine. Plus, living in the West End would be an actual legitmate reason to buy a scooter.

Which brings me to the next big chore before our wedding: selling stuff. I currently have a 25″ TV, a DVD player, a Sega Dreamcast, and a Mazda Protege that all need to go in the next couple of months. If any of my dear readers want to buy, or know someone who would buy, such items please let me know. Sorry no layaway plans are available.

Layaway! We also went looking for wedding bands this weekend. One jewelry store had a pushy older man who wanted us to buy his “excellent quality” rings on layaway. Seriously, he wouldn’t stop harping on about it. I have to say, pushy salespeople are an instant turn-off for me when shopping. I’m fully aware that I’m wishy-washy in the purchasing department, but as soon as someone turns on the “let me explain our payment options a dozen times” I want to leave and never come back. Anyway, while my future wife knows what she wants in a ring, I really have no set ideas. Honestly, the ring I liked the most was a stainless steel junk jewelry one at Le Chateau. So it makes me think, is it more important to have and wear a ring that I like but is cheap, or should I be buying a semi-precious metal one for multiple hundreds of dollars because that’s what’s expected? Is being classy more important than getting what I like? Good thing I chose my current lady friend, because she’s what I like and classy!*

*comments like these mean she’ll bake me cookies in return.

The Co-Op Option

So here’s the rundown on the co-op apartment/townhouse we looked at yesterday. It’s located in Burnaby, near the Production Way (SFU) Skytrain station. There’s actually an entire hidden-from-view co-op community there, with lots of trees and walking paths. The unit itself was a two bedroom split-level, and they had installed new carpets and linoleum on the floors. Overall it was fairly decent. The negative factors: co-ops are full of little kids, which I don’t care for one bit. They also foster a “get involved with your neighbours” atmosphere, which while probably a very good thing, isn’t really what we’re interested in at this point in our lives. Tie in the fact that the share price (ie. deposit) is $2000, and we’d need to buy a dishwasher and all curtains, it meant that to move in would mean a hefty amount of money to spend in a year when we’re paying for our own wedding.

In the end it felt like the co-op met a lot of criteria we wanted or needed, primarily a place that allows pets, is clean, and affordable. But at the end of the day, we weren’t in love with it and didn’t walk away saying to each other “we need to live here”. In some ways I wonder if we’re being really picky — and we are — but I don’t want to move somewhere just because it satisfies a checklist of features. I did that when I bought my car, and that turned out to be a mistake.

So the hunt continues, although both my lady friend and I are growing a bit weary. We still haven’t heard from the rental agent we met last month, which is disappointing, because I think that’s our best bet in finding a place that we’ll feel good about moving into.

Post-Vacation Post

Over the holiday weekend, to celebrate the birth and ressurection of our lord, we packed up the bags and the dog and headed to Victoria. One of my friends lives just outside the CRD, in Sidney. He and his wife recently bought a rancher on an acre of land, and the house is currently in the middle of its fixer-upper stage of life. The weather was pretty good: overcast and damp but not cold and not pouring rain. Our dog lost all manners and jumped on sofas, barked at the two dogs owned by my friends, but we all enjoyed the mini-vacation.

Anyone who knows me even slightly knows that I want to live in the Capital Regional District, that gardeny and arbutusy tract of land that stretches from Esquimalt to Brentwood Bay. Many people also ask why I want to live there, since Victoria in general is an “old person town”. Well, it is an old person town, for the most part, but I’ve never really loved living in the Lower Mainland. I’m not a big city person, and I don’t much care for the problems that the Vancouver area has going for it. In terms of cost of living, in the recent past Victoria had always been slightly more expensive than Vancouver, and now it’s safe to say that Vancouver has met or exceeded the provincial capital on the rental scale of non-affordability. On the whole, though, I like the laid-back feeling Victoria has; places are still closed on Sundays and the twisty, confusing roads have a certain charm to them. So, in the medium-term, Victoria’s a goal.

This just in: tomorrow evening we’ll be checking out a place in a co-op we applied at almost eight months ago. I shall refrain from any further comment on this until we take a look.