Birds Of British Columbia Part 6: Great Blue Heron

I found this magnificent bird in a pond at Stanley Park in Vancouver. This is my first encounter with a great blue heron.

Birds Of British Columbia Part 5: Swans And Ducks

I don't see swans and ducks often enough in Penang. Meeting them is always a joy. 

 

Birds Of British Columbia Part 4: Sparrows

Hiding in the bushes were these little sparrows.

This is the white-crowned sparrow.

This is a golden-crowned sparrow.

Birds Of British Columbia Part 3: Geese

Canadian geese can be vicious birds!

Birds Of British Columbia Part 2: Cormorants

These are double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus). They were seen hanging out at Coal Harbour. Thanks to the folks at the Flickr Bird Identification Help Group for helping me identify this bird.

Birds Of British Columbia Part 1: Seagulls

While in Canada, I got to do some bird photography with North American birds! The first bird I noticed was the seagull, which I had never before seen in real life. They were larger than I expected! After a while the novelty of seagulls wear off though.

Vancouver On Video

This is my last day in Vancouver, so here I have a short video of my trip here. Tomorrow I leave for Alberta, where I'll meet up with my friends and have the second part of my Canadian adventure.

Walking To Granville Island

After the conference was over, Noldy and I decided to walk over to Granville Island to check it out. After all, according to Wikipedia it was named "One of the World's Great Places" by the Project for Public Spaces. That sounded intriguing enough to us, so off we went!

The walk was scenic, as we got nice shots of Vancouver as we walked and walked.

To get there, we had to cross this very long bridge. It was quite a long walk, and it was already late evening as we reached halfway across.

This is a view from the bridge.

We had reached the other end of the bridge when the golden rays of the setting sun hit this dome.

Here's Noldy!

This is me as we arrived at Granville Island.

Sadly, we couldn't find any establishments open in the evening. Whether it was due to us not being able to find anything, or if things really do close early in the evening on a weekday is up for debate. However, I was there, and I have the pictures to prove it!

More Adventures In Vancouver

Ah, beautiful Vancouver! Here are some more photos I took, out and about on the streets.

I'm in Canada!

This is the Vancouver Art Gallery, which I now regret not visiting. I didn't have the time, with the conference and all. Also, I had caught a mild flu and was struggling with attending the conference sessions, and they were tiring me out.

This is me near the Vancouver Art Gallery, during a conference break. It's very near the hotel where the conference is being held. You can see my USENIX name tag.

This is Howe Street, in the area where I was staying.

You can find many establishments for food and beverages here, from various cultures. It's a very metropolitan city.

Here's a restaurant that sells Indian food.

OSDI 2010

This is the reason I went to Canada: The 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation. This is the first time I've attended a systems conference. There were attendees from top universities and major tech companies. This is one of the most cutting-edge systems conferences in the world, and here I was. It felt unreal.

So the past three days have been awesome. It was cool to finally meet the people who wrote all those papers that I cited a long time ago. One of the things I found out was that published work represent old research, and the hot-and-current stuff is something you find out only by attending this kind of conference and talking to people. The most useful sessions were the posters and discussions, where there was a lot of interaction with other researchers.

In the midst of the conference, I spotted Andrew Tanenbaum, the author of my favourite textbooks. Sadly I didn't get a chance to talk to him (no chance of this happening).

Stanley Park

Stanley Park is a park next to downtown Vancouver (where I was staying). It's one of the loveliest places in the world with a zillion points of interest. Okay, maybe it's more like twenty (according to this map anyway), but I didn't even have time to visit them all! Seagull, Noldy, Pingu and I spent most of our time at Vancouver Aquarium (which is inside Stanley Park), but afterward we walked around the park. Here are some of the photos I took there.

The trees! They're so beautifully red!

A trolley from the Vancouver Trolley Company wheels past us. You can go on sightseeing tours on these (we didn't, though).

Salmon! Mmm, salmon.

More Canadian trees.

This is the Lions Gate Bridge, which we saw as we walked down Stanley Park seawall.

From across the shore, you can see giant piles of sulphur on the opposite bank.

This sculpture is called "Girl In A Wetsuit", and was done by Elek Imredy. It was inspired by the Little Mermaid sculpture in Copenhagen.

These are some of the totem poles you can find at Brockton Point in the park.

Here are some more totem poles.

These totem poles are a major tourist attraction at the park.

Next we set off to the Lost Lagoon, with a big sploosy fountain in the middle. After sitting there for a while, we set off to look for dinner.

Vancouver Aquarium Part 4

Finally, I made a video of the cool animals I saw at the aquarium, complete with a waltzy soundtrack.

Vancouver Aquarium Part 3

The dolphin show was the highlight of my trip to the aquarium. The three pacific white-sided dolphins they have here were rescued from being entangled in fishing nets. Their names are Spinnaker, Hana and Helen. Apart from being valuable for dolphin research, these three are trained to do acrobatics. Nothing brings out your inner kid than the sight of a somersaulting dolphin.

Vancouver Aquarium Part 2

Here are pictures from the Aquarium trip. The first picture is a sea lion, and the ones after that are beluga whales with their trainers. Adult beluga whales are white, but younger ones are grey in colour.

The Vancouver Aquarium has a Belugacam available on the web if you want to take a peek at these guys.

Vancouver Aquarium Part 1

The Vancouver Aquarium is a very large centre that exhibits a variety of marine life. It is located inside Stanley Park. There are dolphin and whale shows, which were my favourite. I have a ton of pictures from the aquarium, and I'll be posting them here in four parts.