Photo Phriday - 2015 01 02

Happy New Year, and here's to an interesting road ahead!  I took this photo in Zion National Park when I visited in 2008.

As a New Year bonus, here's a song!  The Bouncing Souls also hope you find Better Things in 2015, and they played this at their NYE show here in Denver.  What a fun way to ring in the new year!

A Cool Canadian Capital City - Iqaluit

I'm very fascinated by remote and 'extreme' locations.  It intrigues me to consider what daily life is like in a place so vastly different than any place I've lived.  I'm from Pennsylvania.  To me, PA is pretty "normal".  There aren't many extremes (no extreme hot or cold, no extreme light or darkness).  It's a pretty reasonable place to live, with four separate seasons and a variety of weather. It's also got a good mix of densely populated areas and sparsely populated areas.  Pretty normal, not too extreme.  So let's talk about a more extreme locale...

Nunavut!
In 1999, Nunavut packed it's bags (not literally) and quit being part of Canada's Northwest Territories to become a territory of its own.  Nunavut spans nearly 1,932,255 sq kilometers of land, and around 20% of its nearly 30,000 people live in its capital, Iqaluit. To put that into perspective, if each member of Nunavut's population had 1sq km of land all to themselves, they'd fit entirely on Prince of Wales Island.  With land left over.  Also, Prince of Wales Island is just slightly smaller than Taiwan, and Taiwan is home to over 2.6 million people.  Hmm. 

Here's a map of Prince of Wales Island, so you can compare it to the rest of Nunavut.

View Nunavut and Prince of Wales Island in a larger map

So if everyone in Nunavut went to a party on Prince of Wales Island and ended up wanting to stay there (nevermind that it's uninhabited), Nunavut would still have more land than ALASKA available for the polar bears and muskoxen and birds and other cool stuff.  Just THINK about that!

Anyway, I think the population density alone is a huge factor for life being vastly different up there.  You know, that and snow.  And polar bears.  And muskoxen. 

MUSKOXEN!?!

Did you know they're related to sheep?  Baaaaa.

Speaking of Nunavut's cool critters... Their license plates rock!  They kept the same license plates when they separated from the Northwest Territories.  Which means that their license plates are shaped like POLAR BEARS!!  Here is a way cool sample, courtesy of Wikipedia and Flickr:

Roar!

Ok, enough about Nunavut.  It's time for Iqaluit! 

Iqaluit!

Iqaluit is Nunavut's capital city, and it is home to somewhere around 6,000 people.  Your college may have had more people than that.  Mine didn't.

While English and French are the official languages in Iqaluit (and Canada in general), about half of the population in Iqaluit predominantly speaks a non-official language, such as Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut, which are among the Inuit languages.  According to the wiki article, Iqaluit means "place of many fish" in Inukitut.  Here is a stop sign in Iqaluit!

Don't you wish your alphabet was that cool?

The 4-way stop diagram rules too!

Iqaluit was also featured in a White Stripes video!

Let's Visit!

Now that you know some of the reasons I'm fascinated by Iqaluit and its bright yellow airport, let's visit!  You can fly there from Montreal and Ottawa!  The Nunavut Tourism website has lots of suggestions on awesome things to do there.  For example, we can go on a number of Arctic Odysseys!


Stats & Data from Statistics Canada.  :)

Снова в СССР / Back in the USSR

Last Saturday night I decided it was time again for a trip to Tunes in Hoboken. I love Tunes because they have a pretty big selection of $1 CDs, and I think you know by now that I'm addicted to music. Anyway, after sitting in traffic forever and paying way too much money to a bunch of jerks* to park in their shady lot, we got to Tunes... about 30 minutes before it closed.

After finding a bunch of CDs I wanted I decided to look through the vinyl section, as I recently acquired a record player**. Of course I looked for some cool Beatles stuff, but then I looked under Paul McCartney. Then I saw it. The Russian album. Снова в СССР. Was this the 1994 international re-release? Nope, this was the original 1988 LP only available in Russia. The album jacket? All in Russian. SO AWESOME!



Some Background Info
In 1988 Paul McCartney released this collection of old school rock & roll covers with the intention of it only being available in the former USSR, since for so long the Beatles' music had been banned there. In 1991 it was re-released internationally because apparently everyone outside of Russia wanted to hear it too. In 1994 it was released on CD.

By the way, "Снова в СССР" translates to "Back in the USSR".
The cover art was done by Linda McCartney.
On the international re-release they spelled it wrong (СНОВА Б СССР) and used some Cyrillic letters that look like Latin letters to spell Paul's name. Evidence:

A Few Personal Notes
I loved this CD as a kid, and remember listening to it on the way to a family vacation in Ocean City, MD.

My aunt's cousin was living in Russia in the early '90s and was nice enough to bring back a copy of the original LP for my dad. I'm not sure where that copy got to, but I'm pretty psyched to have my own original copy now. And for only $8!

"Crackin' Up" was my favorite song on the album, and you should go listen to it on last.fm. :)

Footnotes
*The jerks at the parking place in Hoboken earned $0 in tip money because the one guy almost ran my friends over with my car. Way to go, winner!

**As for my record player... it doesn't work. Apparently the motor in this one is on the fritz too. Great. I'm going to go steal my dad's now. :)

2.5 Song Commute

First off, no one commented on my last post requesting info on cool stuff to do in FL, so I'm now forced to follow through with my threat: maps. Lots of maps. They're coming. Beware.

[Drastic subject change]

I woke up this morning to a beautiful day.

View from my bedroom window.

Usually I opt for something energetic to wake me up and get me psyched, but today I opted for some relaxing music for my 10 minute commute to work with the windows down. 2.5 songs is probably a more accurate measurement than 10 minutes.

My first song of choice for my 2.5 song commute? "Some Things About Me" by Steve Poltz. Since he's awesome, you can download it here. I first heard this song at a show at the World Cafe back in March. Good times, fun show, I love this song.

My next song in my 2.5 song commute was "Impala", also by Steve Poltz. This song is pretty cool, and I particularly like the lines:

Everything today is so high tech
Why can't we just park by the lake and neck

I don't remember what the .5 song was, but who cares. I had a great commute today. :)