Blog RELAUNCH 3.0

After coming back from my trip to Japan, I honestly can't tell you where the time disappeared to. December was a busy month, but not because of pre-Christmas shopping and the like. I was applying for various reporter jobs locally and across Canada (the best time to do so because everyone else is in Christmas mode), doing my regular youth editor responsibilities, and was asked to be on a youth planning committee for a large community event at Canada Place on May 7.

Upon retrospect, all these things took up a LOT of my time; the planning committee work in particular since a friend of mine and I spent days coming up with ideas and a proposal to present to the committee we had just been asked to join. I also started working on a website for another friend of mine who is a very talented performing artist and composer/musician. We will be working together on an Earth Charter video targetted for completion at our May 7 event at Canada Place. I also played photographer for a good family friend to take their family's portraits. They wanted to take the photos because the patriarch of the family was in declining health. He passed away peacefully on Tuesday, February 22 at the age of 86. He was one of the most fun, and upbeat person I'd ever met who always had a great joke to tell and had an extremely warm and caring personality. I consider his family who are my parents' age and their kids to be an extended part of my family, and his infectious humour will be greatly missed. A blog of messages from those who knew him is available here: http://gordoncammackmessages.blogspot.com.

In other news, the committee work started taking up almost all my time, because a few of us were responsible for contacting other community organizations doing work around sustainable development and promoting sustainable living in Greater Vancouver. I must've talked to and emailed over 50 organizations since December, with many of them doing great things in the community.

January rushed by as we focused on organizing a community networking workshop where we invited community groups to the SGI Canada Vancouver Culture Centre to network and share with each other what we are doing to promote sustainability in the Lower Mainland. It was a very successful event with adults and youth, with a lot of encouraging connections being made.

In January, I also heard back from one of the interviews I had with a local Vancouver daily newspaper, and was invited to come in to work as an temporary reporter for March - April, and from July - August. It is one of the most exciting journalism opportunities so far in my career, and one I am excited to begin and do my best in. I have had the great support of many instructors and professionals in the field whom I consider very influential mentors in my young career so far, and I am determined to justify their faith in me.

I honestly can't believe February is almost over, but it zoomed by like anything. The time flew by, mostly because the beginning of the month is usually very busy for me when it comes to my editing responsibilities for the youth section of SGI Canada's magazine, when I have to do the page layout and editing of the photos and text. But aside from that, I also had to help out with my girlfriend's mom's flowershop for Valentines Day--an annual tradition I dred like the plague because of the amount of physical labour involved. This year was surprisingly not as bad as the rest, mainly because there were more people to spread out the job. But what probably made February fly by was the fact that I got sick for two weeks in the middle of the month. I got better a few days after Valentines Day, just in time for the much anticipated trip to Whistler with a few friends.

Despite the terrible skiing conditions in Greater Vancouver, Whistler wasn't as bad as I thought. The resort staff did an excellent job at ensuring a worthwhile time on both Blackcomb and Whistler mountains with many of the usual runs open for business. The conditions weren't great, but were good enough to have a great time on the mountain.

So, that's my life the past few months since my last post. I start at the daily newspaper on Monday, so I'm not sure how frequent my posts will be, but there will be posts as I relaunch yet again my blog.