My name is Jocelyn, and I am a twentysomething graduate student at SFU, in the Global Health Program. I'm short, blonde, and chatty. I swim a lot, like road trips with my dad, meeting new people, and have a profound obsession with apple chips. My name is Jocelyn and this is my blog.
I moved into East Vancouver almost this time last year. I can’t believe it will be so soon that I’ve finally stayed in one apartment for longer than a year! This is a record I haven’t broken in 7 years!
I was excited to move into “the city” (from North Burnaby) when my new “first job out of grad school” position mandated I get closer to work so I didn’t spend 3 hours on transit each day. As a child of a Metro Vancouver suburb, New Westminster, I’d always seen Vancouver as this high-fashion, fast-paced den of crime and chaos. Oh, and of course, gorgeous mountain views.
In the roughly 9 years since I moved out of my parents’ home, I’ve lived in 11 separate places, none of them in Vancouver. I never had a reason to. I was comfortable in Surrey, Maillardville (Coquitlam), and North Burnaby because I had built-in communities of friends and church family there. There was no real transition for me as I went from roommates with one friend to the tenant of another (though some might suggest that the fact that I never stayed in any of these places more than a year might mean that things were less smooth than I portray).
I guess I was just ready for a change. I admired my friend S&P’s home, so close to Starbucks and a green grocer - even better, close to Donalds, the favourite market of the East Van Intellectual. I had already begun my transition from vehicle to public transit, and my mindset from mass market to local food. The solution was Vancouver, but no apartments were to be had in the much-sought-after Commercial Drive area, where the homes are largely old with many stairs, and the apartments are dives or very expensive. I searched for more than a month, finally finding a place by accident in a predominantly Asian and Italian neighbourhood of Renfrew/Collingwood. At the time, I was disappointed to not be closer to the “action,” but I truly love my place and my neighbourhood now.
One of my gripes about the area when I first moved in was that there were no decent gathering places for anyone under 65. The Renfrew Community Centre boasted a pool, microscopic weight room, and tai chi classes, with a library upstairs and a senior’s centre across the street. More Tai Chi takes place just 8 blocks away at Renfrew Park, where I can see the seniors gathering every morning on the baseball diamond to go through their motions together.
The closest thing to a “gathering place” [Read more →]
Roots Olivia Bag
The Roots Olivia Bag is made in Canada from 100% Prince Leather. One main compartment and a top magnet closure. One exterior zipper pocket. A lined interior with a zipper pocket and a two-compartment slip pocket. Stable handle and removable/adjustable shoulder strap. Dimensions: 13.5″(L) x 14″(H) x 3.25″(D). Handle drop: 8″. Shoulder strap: 24″ - 42″.
While I wasn’t looking, my plants were getting down and dirty, doin’ the nasty, stamen to pistle. It seems that overnight, flowers have opened all over my container veggie garden. It won’t be long before signs of the fruit of their forbidden (okay, biologically imperative) passions become obvious: tomatoes, squash-of-unknown-variety, bell peppers, snap peas, white beans will all be visual evidence of their dirty deeds (I can’t wait!).
My Squash-of-unknown-origin is a flagrant exhibitionist:
Squash-of-unknown-origin
My sweet innocent tomato sextuplets (Steve, Stephane, Esteban, Stefano, Stephanie and Stenvne) have daintily shown their… ahem, organs, for the first time:
Tomato Plants on display
Meanwhile my green pepper plant is busy in a contest with his red-pepper cousins to prove at last that size does matter:
Green Pepper competes for size
Over in their semi-shade under the picnic table, my snap peas get a bit handsy and have to be tied up (snap peas are apparently vine-like and need some structure to avoid them becoming a big tangle):
Snap Peas Get Handsy
And the lettuce - well, it’s completely out of control!
Lettuce has lost control
But… my veggies want what’s being served over in my landlord’s garden:
Landlord's Roses
(To see the whole garden minus sexual innuendo, including the white bean plants not flowered yet, see the slideshow:)
Wow, well it’s been a big month for media coverage for me:
I’ve had my first academic journal article, Does ratification of human-rights treaties have effects on population health?, published in the June 9th issue of The Lancet, a prestigious UK medical journal (interestingly, I found out it was finally published through a press release sent out by SFU’s Media and Public Affairs department, which will go up on the SFU People site next week.)
I was featured as part of an in-depth story about the Pain Centre at St. Paul’s Hospital in an article, Healing a Life Interrupted (see page 20 of the PDF version - I’ll post a scan of the colour version this week) in Promise magazine, a publication of St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation.
I was interviewed for a fun segment in the clever BBC radio show Ouch!, called “Vegetable, Vegetable or Vegetable:” “A clever disability interpretation of the parlour game Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.” Ouch! is a tongue-in-cheek look at the world of disability from politics to current events, to humor and performance - and everything in between. I volunteered myself to the subject of this month’s Veg, veg or veg game and they ended up interviewing me from my New York City hotel room! You can hear Ouch! #40 streaming online or by downloading the podcast from iTunes (my segment is from 13:05 - 20:10 - but do give the the whole episode a listen).
Finally, I was interviewed for an hour-long radio special on the USA public broadcaster, National Public Radio, by KQED San Francisco NPR affiliate station’s health reporter Sarah Varney. Obama’s push for health reform hits the senate this month, and I’m told that the US airwaves are currently overrun with inaccurate and inflammatory attack ads about the dangers of a public health system like Canada’s - sponsored by the US health insurance industry lobby - and featuring Canada’s own Dr. Profit, former CMA president Brian Day**. Varney was in Vancouver interviewing for a special program set out to report the truth about the current state of the Canadian system (and Canadians) as compared to the American system. She interviewed my family doctor, Dr. Duncan Etches, about the innovative model of care that he helped to pioneer at the UBC Family Practice Centre, and Duncan gave her my name as a knowledgeable patient who could speak about their own experiences with our system. I was flattered - and really thankful to be able to have a chance to discuss the system which has played a huge role in my health and wellbeing. I don’t have specifics on this show yet, but listen in to NPR through the KQED website on June 16 and 18, when Health Dialogues is usually on in the third week of the month; Thursday 8pm, Friday 2am, Saturday 2pm (this is on the KQED NPR affiliate - make sure you have KQED’s own Listen Live stream open at one of these times to hear it - or tune in to their podcast the week after the broadcast.)
An unfortunate consequence of being the youngest sibling in a family with a 13-year age gap between oldest and youngest is that I didn’t get much time to know my grandparents. My relationship with both paternal grandparents was awkward at best: I was a loud, gregarious and stubborn kid (you don’t have to remind me that nothing much has changed…), which didn’t mix well with my 80+ year-old grandparents who seemed to demand quiet, civil conversation and for me to eat what they put in front of me. I looked for adventure, food that wasn’t overcooked, and to get what I wanted.
I remember my grandfather primarily as a moody, sullen, giant of a man. The fact that he had Parkinson’s disease - only known to me then as a tremor in his hand, I know now it affected his mood and frustration - mattered little to me at the time. His grumpy outbursts and impatient demands seemed unpredictable and mean-spirited, and I was impatient and unforgiving. I gave him a wide berth whenever we visited. Grandpa T. passed away when I was in elementary school, and Grandma T passed away after a long, slow decline when I was 22.
Today for the first time in years - having made my peace long ago with the fact that I wasn’t close to either of my paternal grandparents - Grandpa T is on my mind. This week I think I finally did something that he would have been really proud of and interested in, and I’m a little sad that he isn’t here for me to tell him about it. The publication of my very first academic article in the high-impact British journal, The Lancet, would have interested my Grandfather, a career fisheries biologist, and the only other person in my extended family to have gone to graduate school. I’m glad to have celebrated this accomplishment with my family, but it really takes a science geek to understand how incredibly important publications are, and how amazing it is to have an article in the Lancet at all. Grandpa T likely would have been that person to understand the full degree of this accomplishment - and in my imagination I see it as finally giving us something to talk about.
It occurs to me, however, as I write this that if you are the kind of person who is open to “random acts of family,” then you will never want for family members of all sorts, regardless of who biology gave you. I am lucky to have seemingly acquired a sort of Grandfather-mentor in a retired Army doctor and WWII veteran we call Dr. Jim. Dr. Jim turned up in my dad’s conversation group right around the time I went back to finish my degree in science and was considering a career in public health. We bonded over long talks about science and the nature of health in poor countries. He was a public health physician with the Army in Korea, and his many stories about how he used community councils and the children’s stories to help him introduce various public health interventions were told to me over the course of several years, many visits and endless cups of coffee, sitting side by side in comfy chairs by the fireplace at the Next Chapter.
Dr. Jim saves up articles for me to read out of his army medical journals - sends me books and articles from his wide reading, and seems to study up on the things I am learning in my graduate program in public health… so that when I visit we can “talk shop” and he could tell me his stories one more time. He has never remarked upon the delay in my graduation from my Masters, and his confidence in me as a professional never seems to waver. Most telling of all, Dr. Jim came to my university graduation - sitting for hours outdoors in the fall, waiting for the short moment when I would walk across the stage with my degree in hand.
I haven’t always put aside the time I should to honor Dr. Jim’s contributions to my life, but as soon as I found out my publication was finally published, my first thought was, “I can’t wait to show it to Dr. Jim.” If academic articles had a slot for dedications, this one is for him.
This post originally from TenthtotheFraser, a hyper-local blog about New Westminster, BC.
R-L: Jenn Arbo, Will Tomkinson, Jocelyn Tomkinson, @ Brooklyn Bar N Grill, Columbia St.
Last night I joined @gnb, Hollie, @duckbeaver and two of my co-editors from Tenthtothefraser, Jen Arbo and Will at a “Burger and a beer” fundraiser for the Royal City Farmer’s Market, at the Brooklyn Bar and Grill on Columbia Street in New Westminster.
Chuck Puchmayr’s band was playing, the weather was good, conversation was nice, and we met some great people - like Loren the apple farmer, a vendor from the market who drove all the way out from Abbotsford to attend the fundraiser. Several New West celebrities were there, including our newly elected MLA Dawn Black, Mayor Wayne Wright, and councillors Jamie MacEvoy and Jonathan X. Cote.
TenthtotheFraser’s own Jen Arbo seemed to be a bit of a nexus in this crowd - a passionate RCFM supporter and new vendor, she’s also been recently appointed as the Market Managing Coordinator. Congratulations, Jen! Will worked the crowd in his signature way, prompting Jen to remark that his Twitter name should be @Willhepolitic? - a rhetorical question given Will’s longtime threat to run for office.
Hey friends - what do you think of this site? I heard it just launched, and I’m curious about it - what do you think, do Christians need their own social networks? will it be useful? is it niche?
Part of me thinks it’s just another way to re-brand mainstream innovations in a kitchy “christianese” way so that we can say to the world, “hey, we have that too!”
It’s been way too long since I posted on this blog - amazing how paid work can make hobbies more difficult.
I just got back from 6 days in New York City with my friend (sometimes known as S&P) and it was a fantastic experience. I have been meaning to cross-post our NYC blog, JandJmeetNYC, to this blog but until then, go check out the trip:
