Brianna and I have been reading "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua. In the book, Chua recounts how whenever the family would get back from a trip her mother-in-law, Florence, would always ask her granddaughters what colours they saw and what odours they smelled. This made us think about what colours and smells we'd remember from Vancouver.

We both agreed that one of the major smells we'd remember from our time here is marijuana. The sickly sweet, pungent aroma of burning Mary Jane seems frequently to waft over well-used pedestrian thoroughfares here. Therefore, being on foot as we often are, we get many whiffs of the stuff. On a related note, the marijuana lobby seems to have some pull in Vansterdam - you often hear of events promoting its legalization, read articles about it in the paper, or see planes pulling banners advertising for "Sensible BC" - a pro-mj organization (see photo). To me the name of this group seems ironic because while I don't know everything about marijuana, I know it impairs memory, which is an important thing. 

Banner reads: "Marijuana Referendum: Sensible BC"

When thinking about the colours of the city, green immediately jumped to mind. Trees seem to just spring up out of the ground here. Not just any trees mind you, but pine trees. If you were to imagine Vancouver as a garden in which buildings are the plants that you deliberately put there, and trees are the weeds that just appear of their own accord, Vancouver would be overrun by weeds. It seems like every spot that doesn't have a building on it (and there are lots of these spots) has a pine tree. It's very beautiful. There are also lots of vegetable gardens even in urban areas, like this one:

Guy: "Hmm, my organic Kale is looking a little wilty. Better feed it some more recycled nutrient paste..."

Anyway, speaking of colours, we had a chance to see many this week on a trip downtown. Just in time for Pride week, Davie street (kind of like Oxford street in Sydney, or whatever the main gay street in Utah is) had a multicoloured crosswalk installed, which I can be seen standing next to here:

We also saw lots of colours on this wheel-of-fortune, which Brianna skillfully won a free coffee and 50% off haircut from:

 The main reason for our trip was to see one of the three "Honda Celebration of Light" fireworks shows. Three fireworks shows were put on on three different nights by the UK, Canada and Thailand. We arrived quite early and while waiting for the show to start were entertained by the banner-pulling marijuana plane, and also this much cooler one:

Then we saw the actual show, and it was everything a fireworks show should be. For example, notice how at the finale the choreographers did not hold anything back:

So that was a fun day. Also this week, we bought this car...:

1995 Toyota Corolla

... and saw this cat taking shelter from the blazing Canadian sun:

Finally, Brianna passed her International Studies course with flying colours, only has a couple more subjects to finish for her degree, and organized another Relief Society harvest of the communal garden. Yeah!

Till next week, love to everyone.