The Brown Knowser

I've been drinking Sunsplit IPA from Dominion City Brewing for a few years now, and it's one of my go-to brews, especially when I'm in a restaurant and pub and find it on the beer menu (mind you, I haven't been to many restaurants and no bars since COVID-19 hit, in March of 2020, but I remember those days with fondness and longing). So when Dominion City released the next incantation of this hazy, juicy pale ale, I was more than intrigued. And I was also pleased that this east-Ottawa brewery had released a handy phone app from which I could order it. The app, available for both Android and iOS users, makes it very handy for ordering your favourite brews. And currently, Dominion City is offering a 10-percent discount code for your first order with the app. I hope more breweries create apps to make ordering beer so convenient—not that ordering from a Web site is complicated, but I've never ordered from my phone before because I find negotiating a Web site on a s...

This one is much shorter. On Wednesday, February 16, 2022, I walked along the beach in Akumal Bay to the touristy part of the town of Akumal to find an ATM. The next day, DW and I were planning an excursion to the Akumal Natura Rescue centre and we needed cash for our taxi and for a tour of the grounds. Up to that point, I only had a handful of 20 and 50 peso notes, which we used to tip the maid, bartenders, and servers at the resort. I didn't have enough cash to pay for our excursion. I found an ATM at the Oxxo convenience store, withdrew my funds, and made my way back to the beach. But before I could reach the shores of the bay dark clouds loomed over head and emptied themselves over the town. I sought shelter under a small canopy, near an art shop and waited for the storm to let up. So far, on this trip, the weather had been great and any rain came and went within five to 15 minutes, and this storm, though with the heaviest rain I had seen on the Mayan Riviera, was no except...

Last month, when DW and I were in Mexico, I wrote a post about an animal rescue centre that we visited. You can read about it here . If you don't want to read about it, I have finally put together the video clips that I shot while we toured the centre. It's the longest of my Akumal vacation videos on my YouTube channel but I think it's one of my best (it got DW's thumbs up, and she's my biggest critic!). It's 26 minutes long so please watch it when you have time to kill. If you're ever thinking about visiting the Mayan Riviera, I highly recommend spending an afternoon at Akumal Natura Rescue. There's a lot to see, the guides are engaging (if you get Jano, tell him I say hello!), and your pesos go to a worthy, non-profit cause. I'll have a much shorter video to share, tomorrow. Thanks for watching. If you like the video, please hit that thumbs up and consider subscribing. I'm working on three more videos that I shot last summer but never fo...

When your kid calls you and says she needs you, you don't ask why. You just go. Our kid has struggled a bit through her first year at university, living on her own and trying to make new friends. And I get it: Toronto is a huge city and she's in a highly competitive program. Add on the pandemic and the constant protests that happen around her neighbourhood, and yeah, it's stressful. But she was also under the weather, with what seemed to either be a nasty head cold or spring allergies, and she was unable to sleep properly through the week. As a result, she missed a bunch of classes and she was feeling defeated. Hence, the call to Mom and Dad on Friday. I got some pressing work items out of the way and jumped in our car, making some very good time on the highways (only one quick pee break) and pulling up to her residence building before 2:30. I called her several times, unsuccessfully, in the hour and a half before I arrived, hoping that she would eat something from her resi...

The following passage is a rough-draft excerpt from my upcoming novel, Gyeosunim , the sequel to Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary . Be warned that there are spoilers and you may be missing some context. Passages are in no particular order and are subject to change. June 5, 1988 Photo: Google My head fell forward and then snapped back, awakening me with a jolt. I was still in the chair, still in the cold, empty room. A small window, far too small to crawl through and at the top of one of the walls, showed me that the sun had set some time ago. Light from nearby street lamps gave the room an eerie amber glow. Other than that light, I was in utter darkness. I must have fallen asleep some time ago, when the grey light from an overcast sky offered better illumination. I was hungry and my lips were shriveling. It had been hours since I had eaten and my captors offered me neither food nor water. My grumbling stomach, mixed with the coldness of the room, had done a good job of dampening my spir...

I look at some old photos of myself and I think that I haven't changed much. When I found this photo of me, lounging on the dock at my in-laws' cottage, I think that it couldn't have been that long ago. But then a couple of things strike me: I haven't worn that shirt in more than a decade. I bought it in Thailand, in 1998. But a few years after wearing it, I accidentally put it in the dryer and it shrunk to a size that wouldn't have fit me at my thinnest. I haven't seen it in more than 15 years. Same goes for the sunglasses. I haven't seen them in years. I think they were broken at some point. I'm reading a book without reading glasses, something I haven't been able to do in more than a decade. While my hair style hasn't changed much in the past 20 years, I certainly have more grey in it. And there isn't any in this photo. The photo was shot in 1999, in the summer that DW and I returned home from our two-year stint in South ...

Nearly nine years ago, I wrote a blog post about some of the celebrities I've met in the past. These were entertainers that I met before the Internet and social media made it much easier for a celebrity to notice that you existed. The famous folks that I listed in that post crossed paths with me because of an internship that I did with the Ottawa Citizen when I was finishing up my Journalism program at Algonquin College. But these are not the only celebrities that I've met. Since then, since even before the days of Twitter, there are a few people that I've had the honour of rubbing shoulders with, so to speak. Dan Ackroyd Photo: Google In the mid to late 1990s, I was a big wine aficionado, taking the sommelier program at Algonquin College, learning all I could about the nectar of the grape, and hanging out with like-minded wine lovers. I met and became good friends with Perry and Astrid, who worked in the wine industry, and I would help them at various events, pouring w...

Because the mask mandates have been lifted in Ontario as of today, I decided that I would get my hair cut before, on Saturday. I didn't know what my local barber shop was planning to do and I needed a cut, anyway. I had only been going to this barber shop since last fall, when I was desperate for a decent haircut. I hadn't been to a barber shop in almost a year, opting to cut my own hair, and it showed. I looked awful: shaggy and uneven didn't even begin to describe the mop on my head. I was never really happy with the place I had gone to, previously, and so I decided to try a barber shop that was fairly new in Barrhaven, having only opened about a year before the pandemic. Not knowing what to expect, I randomly chose someone to cut my hair. It couldn't be worse than what I had been doing to myself. As it turned out, the barber was a lovely and charming woman who did a fantastic job. It was the best haircut since early 2019, when my regular barber moved out to Casselman...

In 1997, DW and I took a vacation to China , which was a hop, skip, and jump from where we were living at the time, in South Korea. For me, it was a bit of a dream come true. When I was in elementary school, my classmates and I learned about the Great Wall of China. It was hard for my young brain to comprehend just what a colossal undertaking its construction would have been. Averaging from six to seven metres tall and four to five metres wide, the roughly 3,500-kilometre wall took more than 2,500 years to build. It's said that for every step you take, while traversing the wall, someone died while building it. In grade school, as we created and presented a project on the Great Wall, I thought that someday I would see it for myself. As I got older, in my teens and twenties, I began to believe that it was just a dream and would never be realized. And then I moved to South Korea and the dream seemed doable. When we visited the wall, DW and I were with a group of ex-pats on a chartered...

I don't have to wait for Dry January to go for a non-alcoholic beer. Sometimes, I just want to have a drink without getting drinky . When DW and I were in our local Loblaws, over the weekend, we found ourselves down the beer and wine aisle when all we were looking for was sparkling water. Naturally, my eyes fell to all of the colourful cans behind the glass refrigerator doors and I thought, "do I want to pick something up while I'm here?" "Nah," I replied to myself, "I've got plenty of beer at home. I don't need anymore booze." As I moved further down the aisle, away from the fridges, I saw more beer, in boxes, lining the shelves. I saw a familiar non-alcoholic beer label, from Partake, and recognized several of their booze-free brews that I tried when I participated in Dry January , in 2020. I saw their pale ale and their IPA. I was happy to see their stout and was tempted to pick up a four-pack, but then I saw a style that I hadn't se...

We always feel this way after a vacation: we want to travel again, and soon. But if the pandemic has taught us one thing, we don't enjoy being in crowds. Travelling to resorts has been good. We're able to keep our social distance and stay outside for most of the time. We were able to enjoy lounging on beaches or swimming in the sea, away from people. Tuscany, 2009. But I miss vacations where we explored city streets, wandered the terrain between towns, and explored the countryside from a vehicle. My big trip of 2022 was supposed to take me to Iceland, to drive the Ring Road and explore the waterfalls, mountains, geothermal ponds, volcanoes, and black beaches. I've wanted to go since my first day of my virtual challenge, last year. I wanted to go, so much so that I was willing to push out our trip to Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, which was cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic. That trip is indefinitely on hold, though we plan to do it as soon as the pandemic is...

... and we're not out of this yet. Not by a long shot. Anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers. Governments who are ruled by the economy, rather than science, eager to open all businesses, loosen or lift restrictions. We'll still be at this, next year. We may be done with COVID but COVID is still not done with us. Sure, we're better than we were two years ago, or even at this time, last year. Many of us have happily, readily received our vaccinations and will continue to get the boosters, as is required and responsible. We have understood that belonging to a society means that we do what is right, is for the better good. Being a member of society means thinking of others, not just ourselves. One week from today, Ontario plans to lift mask mandates. For the Toronto District School Board, I've seen reports that unvaccinated teachers can return to the classroom. In which universe does this make sense? Has the virus given up? I'm planning to continue wearing masks indoors. I limit m...

When I was in my early 20s and worked in a camera store , I thought I knew almost everything about photography. First of all, I was studying photojournalism at college, where we learned all about shutter speed, aperture, and ASA, and how they all worked to capture the correct amount of light, clarity, and depth of field. I learned all about composition, to shoot for the greatest impact, to tell a story with a single photograph. And I learned how to develop film and print images, and how to manually dodge and burn (though, I actually learned a lot of those skills because of my best friend's dad , and by being a photographer for my high-school yearbook). Working in the camera store, I got to play with a lot of different cameras and read lots of books by the pros. When a representative from Nikon, Canon, Minolta, or Pentax dropped in the store, I gleaned a lot of information about creating special effects and getting the most out of each camera. Yeah, in my 20s, I thought I was hot...

It started as a tongue-in-cheek post on Twitter. The very next day, there was an unexpected knock at my front door. As I descended the stairs from my home office, DW was already standing at the door, talking to a man with a paper bag. The man said he was from Broadhead Brewery and bade me a happy birthday. Naturally, I thanked the good folks at Broadhead for taking my tweet seriously, and a couple of days later I actually made the trek out to the east end of Orleans to thank them, face-to-face, and pick up 12 more cans. It was my first time to their brewery since they had moved their operation from their old digs in the south end of Ottawa, on Auriga Drive. It's been years. I was told that they selected the beer to send to me based on past online orders. I tend to go for their limited Taproom Series, 174 (named after the highway that cuts through Orleans and runs past the industrial park where Broadhead is situated, along with Stray Dog Brewing). They also included a fruity saison...

Well, no sooner had yesterday's blog post dropped when I finally got most kinks out of my YouTube video of our resort and published it. If you're looking for a relatively quiet resort—that is, no party animals but with a good night life—and you don't want to be at a huge resort that's cram-packed with people, I highly recommend the Akumal Bay Beach and Wellness Resort . It's about 90 minutes south of Cancun, between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, and the bay is home to where sea turtles come to feed. If you've seen the video I shared in yesterday's post , you've seen the coral and sea life. If you want a Mayan Riviera getaway, take a look at this video. I plan to make two more videos of our Mexican vacation: one, of the animal rescue centre that we visited, just outside the town of Akumal; the other, an overview of our entire stay, with some video that won't appear in the other three videos. Stay tuned.

In the week that DW and I spent in Mexico , we donned our snorkel gear each day—sometimes, a couple of times a day—and went into the bay that was just a few steps from our resort. From February 14 (Valentine's Day!) to the 19th, we spent several hours exploring the grassy patches and coral reefs, in search of marine life. We were not disappointed. Each time we snorkeled in Akumal Bay, I took my trusty Insta360 One X , in its dive case and on a metre-long stick. While I would always be on the surface of the water, I could extend my arm and the camera straight down, in front of me, or to the sides (I dangled it behind me, once, as I swam, but the video footage wasn't great—just flippers and lots of bubbles). I was careful to keep my distance from the sea life. In post-production, I could zoom in on a subject so that it would fill the frame but the camera was never closer than a metre or two (making me more than a metre, further away). I was able to capture footage of so many ...

There is no disease more seemingly indiscriminate than cancer. And there's nothing worse than when it affects a child. This May 1, I'll be joining many Ottawa cyclists in riding to raise money for the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario to create better treatment options and find new cures so that more kids survive cancer. To that end, I've created a Web page to raise money for the CN Cycle for CHEO. It's a modest goal that I've set, at a mere $250. I've already chipped in 20 percent of that goal, so I'm confident that I'll not only reach that goal, I'll far exceed it. But I need your help. Please go to my page and give what you can . I'm planning to ride the 70K route. I've been on my spin bike nearly every day since mid-November, so I'm confident that I'll be able to complete this distance. Just as confident that you will help me. Thank you!

The news of the past week in Ukraine is simply heartbreaking. You don't need to have bloodlines to feel for people whose lives are being upturned purely to satisfy the ego of a madman. Give what you can. Help, however possible. Stand united.

Because my birthday had fallen on a Monday, in 1973, my mother arranged for my birthday party to fall on the Saturday that preceded the actual date. Forty-nine years ago, today. I remember a lot of people who attended that party in the garden homes on Bowhill Avenue, in Nepean: Billy, Gary, Suzie, Ann, Valerie, Alan, Stephen, Kirk, and Ricky. I look at the old photos and some names elude me now. My sisters, Holly and Jen, were there, of course. Being my birthday, I had to be the centre of attention. Being the middle kid, I sometimes felt as though I wasn't getting as much attention as my siblings, so when my eighth birthday party came, I wanted everybody to pay attention to me. When the music started up, I started singing. But not only did I sing along with the record, I grabbed the microphone for our tape recorder and swaggered around the room, serenading my guests as they danced around me, the unplugged mic cord dangling below. Dressed in bell-bottom, brown slacks with a matchi...

It's a bad day for me when I only cover a distance of five kilometres. I call those lazy days, and even though more than half of those kilometres were covered on shoeshoes, in deep snow, when at times I actually ran, I feel that I hadn't accomplished much. On a typical day, I cover between 30 and 40 kms, by walking and on my spin bike. But this past Sunday, after visiting our friend on his farm and snowshoeing the nearly three kms of trail that he's carved out, I spent the majority of my day, sitting on my arse, transferring video clips of our trip to Mexico from my cameras onto my phone. And watching TV. I'm currently undertaking another virtual challenge, covering the length of the Great Wall of China. With Sunday's dismal 5K, I had covered just over 560 kms, taking me to the mountains just to the north of Beijing. Monday's marching around the house and after-work spin added another 35K. I'm less than 30 kilometres from Badaling, where, in 1997, DW and I a...