Tonight I’ll be handing out candy to little kids as they come to the door. There’s part of me that wants to yell, “I’m from Iowa. Rawr!! Fear my knowledge of agriculture and strange ways of pronouncing common everyday words!! Grr!!”

There are a lot of people out and about playing dressed up. I think the strangest thing was the city engineer with some sort of hose and mask of some sort stuck in a manhole outside of someone’s house nearby the apartment. I can’t even be sure what it was. There’s bound to be more as I head downtown in a little while.

The time shift is playing games with me as well. It feels so much later than it is, but up here, there is that much less daylight in the day. Being above the 49th parallel, it’s a bit of a different world. It’s almost four in the afternoon, and the sun will be gone in about an hour. On the flip side, the sunlight will stick around till about ten at night come summer. There’s so much give and take to this city. For anything negative, there’s a wealth of positives.

I’ve been realizing how little I understand about the world lately even though I like to consider myself a person who has a fair amount of knowledge about what’s out there. Granted that I didn’t know everything to begin with, but I’ve often considered myself as someone who is fairly educated about the world. The only problem is that the more you learn, the there is that you truly don’t know or understand. At the same time, even if you learn things, there is a vast difference from being able to understand the fact that which you have just absorbed. You can only do that from experience.

Everyday I’m learning something about the world I live in. I’m doing my best to do all I can to better my knowledge about this country. It’s not easy, but I find that if I just keep asking questions, the answer is bound to pop up. You can’t stop there though. You have to keep asking to get other people’s version of the history. With so many sides to a story, how can you be sure that everything you have learned is the truth? It’s amazing how that circle goes. The more I learn, the more I thirst to know more.

Halloween in Vancouver is vastly different from what I have been used to. In fact, outside it sounds like a war zone. Fireworks are going off all over town. Some of the explosions are massive in sound. In fact, I think there are some people waring against each other nearby. You hear the pops, laughter, and then loud voices. All of this is happening just a matter of blocks from downtown. This is where I live. It’s nuts and insanely entertaining all at the same time.

I spent today going around the remainder of the lower mainland that I haven’t seen yet. Rebecca took me to White Rock where you can look across the water and see the states on the other side. It’s the closest I’ve been to the border thus far. The feeling was pretty odd to see Washington state within sight. Somedays I really have to remind myself that I’m in another country even though that border is so close. I still get laughed at for mistaking certain locations, directions, and layouts to the city, but what can I do? I’m not from here. I’m still learning.

I’d like to see any local from around here get dropped into the middle of Iowa. More so, let’s see how they’d do in about two or three months.

I’ve had a lot of time to catch up on the world of podcasting during my downtime here. In a sense, it’s been nice to get a grasp on what’s been going on with the medium since its inception nearly a year ago. It’s interesting to parse through the directories and listen to some of the things out there. So many people who just got the setup to work, was excited enough one day to just do something, and come to the conclusion that now they can do it, but what the hell do they talk about? It’s really not easy. This isn’t about having a niche. It’s just about having something to say. If you don’t have that, you don’t even have anything for anyone to listen to you and decide that you’re not worth their time.

I saw an exhibit of vanity through geekness the other day. A girl walking down the street was checking to see how her hair and make-up looked as she was heading to her destination, but it was the way that she did it that struck me. Her little mp3 player seemed to glitter in the sunlight as she rose it to her face. Thing is, it offered a wonderful reflection for her to inspect herself a little closer. So many companies are trying to sort out how they can integrate cell phones with portable music players and so on. Maybe this is an untouched market.

Right now, I’m on a holding period until I can officially work. Until now, it’s all been more of an unpaid internship type of roll just so I can check out what the company does and how it operates. The wait is killing me though. I’m more than capable of keeping myself entertained in the interim, but not having something to do on a daily basis is torture. It also has something to do with not earning my keep. Not having that day to day responsibility that depends on whatever it is that you are supposed to do in order to keep the ship floating smoothly.

I think the typical person of my age and stature would fill his or her time with mindless self-indulgence in watching movies and sleeping in late. Now I won’t lie and say that I haven’t done these things during this downtime, but it’s happened not very often. When I do, I feel lazy to the extent that I’m letting more than just myself down. There just has to be something that I can be doing or working on in some way shape or form. It’s probably why I have been posting here as much as I have been.

There’s also something to be said about feeding my mind. Making sure that I don’t let myself get rusty and feel comfortable with my current situation. It’ll be a whole new experience making the daily commute to get to work everyday regardless what shape I’m in when that day arrives. I’d just like to be prepared for it as much as humanly possible. More so, I just want to start earning a paycheck.