November « 2007 « Les Twarog Vancouver Real Estate and Condo Blog

Archive for November, 2007

Nail-sensitive flashlight for women has shrill alarm

Saturday, November 10th, 2007

Sun

Lightning-Strike Personal Protection System

Energizer Energi To Go Instant Cellphone Charger

StealthSurfer

Dell XPS M1730: The Beast

Lightning-Strike Personal Protection System, $80

From Brite-Strike, the makers of powerful flashlights that double as defence products comes a model designed for women. While we are not advocating you rely on its patented tri-strike crown as a weapon to fend off attackers, it can shine a brilliant white light and sound a 100-decibel alarm. With a glow-in-the-dark switch taking it from high to low to strobe functions, it’s tailored for the finest of manicures with a special cutaway to allow women with long nails to operate it. At 10 centimetres, it’s small enough to slip in a pocket or purse and works on one AA battery. www.brite-strike.com.

Energizer Energi To Go Instant Cellphone Charger, $28

For those times when the lights go out just as your cellphone battery dies. Or for other off-the-grid emergencies, these cellphone chargers come in various versions to power-up a range of cellphones including most Nokia, Palm Treo, Motorola, Sanyo, LG and Samsung. Two lithium AA batteries provide automatic power to run your dead phone, with most ready to operate within 30 seconds of plugging them in. The price includes the reusable charger, the phone tip connector and two Energizer e2 lithium AA batteries.

StealthSurfer, $150

Surf the Web anonymously with this mini flash drive that works even over a WiFi connection. The drive lets surfers browse the Web with encryption masking their IP address and protecting their data from interception. Billed as an identify theft protection tool, it is aimed at protecting users from increasing attacks in which Web predators try to cash in by collecting personal information and financial data like passwords and credit card numbers. Key-sized, it plugs into a USB port and can be used when you’re surfing and shopping on any computer.

Dell XPS M1730: The Beast, from $3,000

When money is no object in your virtual gaming world, go for “the Beast” billed as Dell’s “mobile gaming stud.” We’re guessing that puts it in the testosterone division of the 2007 gift guide. If you count yourself as a gaming stud, you’ll appreciate the AGEIA PhysX Accelerator and the next-generation NVIDIA SLI technology with two x16 graphics channels for the latest 3D experience. All with a 17-inch widescreen UltraSharp WUXGA display with high resolution (1920×1200) and full high-definition 1080p support. Otherwise, may we direct you to a tamer, more basic notebook starting at a fraction of the price.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

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Areas along Fraser sinking at startling rate, study warns

Saturday, November 10th, 2007

Scott Simpson
Sun

Startling new research from the Geological Survey of Canada shows that Vancouver International Airport and other large facilities along the lower reaches of the Fraser River delta are falling below sea level much faster than previously imagined.

The airport could find itself more than 130 centimetres below the high-tide mark in the Strait of Georgia by the end of the century — and research indicates that low-lying land along the Fraser as far upstream as Maple Ridge and Langley are also sinking.

Studies this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict a sea-level rise of about 16 centimetres by the end of the century due to global warming — water expands as it gets warmer.

The difference for communities along the Fraser delta — and a handful of coastal venues in Canada — is that they sit on soft land that is sinking under its own weight.

When you couple rising seas with sinking land, you get a double whammy in terms of future threats to urban development as the ocean’s high tides creep farther inland.

The data shows that the weight of a building is the critical factor — single-family homes aren’t facing the same kind of impacts, according to Stephane Mazzotti, a Sidney-based researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada.

In a telephone interview, Mazzotti said the Fraser delta is “subsiding” at a “background rate” of one to two millimetres per year — compounding a global average sea level rise of 1.6 millimetres per year, or 16 centimetres by 2100.

But Mazzotti said the average number belies greater impacts in some areas of the delta that bear a heavy load of human activity — even where methods such as preloading construction sites with large amounts of earth are expected to settle them prior to construction.

“Some areas are experiencing faster subsidence — up to five millimetres per year and higher — due in part to heavy construction loads,” he said.

Mazzotti and his research group base their findings on several measurement techniques including laser surveys, global positioning measurements and radar satellite images.

They’ve singled out the airport as a site of greatest impact because it’s big and easy to pick out on a radar image, and have similar findings for BC Ferries’ Tsawwassen terminal and the Roberts Bank coal port.

Mazzotti said the group has results for “most buildings in Richmond and Delta” — but hasn’t identified them individually.

The subsidence phenomenon is restricted to low-lying areas along the lower Fraser that are young in geological terms — less than 10,000 years of age — and rely on dikes for protection.

They’re sinking because they are cut off from the nourishing loads of sand and gravel that the Fraser used to deposit on them each year before the river’s edges were bordered with dikes.

Areas with older geology, in the Fraser uplands, aren’t affected by subsidence, Mazzotti said.

“In an untouched delta the surface of the delta is going down but at the same time there are floods that will bring in more sediment so that the average level is kept about the same [in relation to] sea level,” he said.

“Once you put some dikes around it’s still compacting but you don’t provide the extra sediments so that the actual surface is going down.”

He said the group is planning to submit its work for publication in a scientific journal, and has already discussed its findings with Delta, Richmond and Metro Vancouver.

Municipal officials have known for many decades that the Fraser delta is sinking — the Geological Survey released a report in 1973 saying that Richmond was “slowly sinking into the sea,” according to Vancouver Sun archives.

That report suggested the island city was subsiding at the rate of about 30 centimetres per century — and did not foresee rising oceans or local impacts such as a faster rate of sinking at the airport.

The next phase of the survey’s new project will be to examine the behaviour of dikes along the Fraser and the Strait of Georgia foreshore to determine if they are also sinking relative to sea level.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

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New-home price inflation slows

Friday, November 9th, 2007

But housing starts up despite shortage of skilled trades, higher labour costs

Derrick Penner
Sun

The rate of inflation on new-home prices in Vancouver slowed to 6.1 per cent in September, according to Statistics Canada’s housing price index.

Statistics Canada released the report Thursday, which tracked a deceleration of housing inflation over 10 months. September’s rate is lower than the 6.5-per-cent year-over-year inflation recorded in August.

Nationally, Statistics Canada found that contract prices for new homes had increased 6.2 per cent at the end of September compared with the previous year.

Cameron Muir, chief economist for the B.C. Real Estate Association, said there are some factors that are converging to ease the cost pressures that builders have faced. Contractors are now better able to coordinate their resources and operate more efficiently.

Prices for building materials have stopped rising so quickly due to the collapse of the American housing market, which has reduced demand. Lumber prices, for instance, are much lower than they were last year, Muir said.

“We’re certainly seeing builders able to ramp up production over the last two or three months,” Muir said.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. also released its report on housing starts Thursday which showed a 52-per-cent increase in new-home construction in October, compared with the same month a year ago.

Builders started work on 1,907 new homes in October, compared with 1,256 in the same month a year ago.

“That’s positive for consumers out there not only because it gives them more selection, but it eases the pressure on new-home prices,” Muir said.

The housing-starts report showed that 79 per cent of all new Vancouver housing starts to the end of October — 13,325 of 16,787 — were multi-family condominium or townhouse projects.

However, builders still face significant cost pressures from rising land and labour costs, which Muir said they will ultimately have to pass on to buyers.

Peter Simpson, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association, said skilled tradespeople are still in short supply, “although we’ve had some cases where some people are available now.”

“We haven’t seen a lot of [buyer] push back [on prices] yet,” Simpson added. “But we’re concerned about it, because higher price [increases] mean more folks out looking for homes are in danger of not being approved for mortgages.”

Simpson added that the number of multi-family projects being built reflects the shift in what people can afford.

“There is a [price] ceiling for everybody,” Simpson said. “Once that ceiling is reached, you’re either out of the market, or you lower your expectations.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

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Housing market buoyant

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

The growing number of residents who are 55 and over will provide a solid demographic underpinning to the health of the condo market

Sun

Healthy economy, low unemployment and steady interest rates all contribute to the continued strong demand for housing.

A report released Monday by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV)states that total residential sales reached 3028 units in October 2007, an increase of 11.2 per cent compared to 2,722 sales in October 2006, and a 2.3 per cent decrease compared to the 3,099 units sold in October 2005.

Property listings remain relatively unchanged compared to last year’s levels, with 4,819 active listings at October month-end, compared to 4,862 last year.

“This is only the fourth time in 25 years that sales have surpassed the 3,000 mark in the month of October,” says REBGV president Brian Naphtali. “What we’re seeing is a buoyant market fueled by strong demand from both first-time and repeat buyers.

“The economy is healthy,” Naphtali says. “There’s virtually no unemployment. Interest rates are steady. These are all factors affecting the continued strong demand for housing.”

According to Multiple Listings Service® (MLS®) data, sales of apartment properties increased by 17.4 per cent to 1,368 sales in October 2007 compared to 1,165 sales in October 2006. The benchmark price of an apartment property in Greater Vancouver, calculated by the MLSLink® Housing Price Index, is $371,418, up 11.4 per cent from one year ago.

Sales of attached properties increased by 11.7 per cent in October 2007 to 527 sales, compared to 472 sales in October 2006. The benchmark price of an attached unit is $454,645, up 10.8 per cent from a year ago.

Sales of detached properties increased by 4.4 per cent in October 2007 to 1,133 sales, compared to 1,085 sales in October 2006. The benchmark price of a detached unit is $730,022, up 12.2 per cent from last year.

The growing number of residents who are 55 and over will provide a solid demographic underpinning to the health of condo markets in British Columbia‘s two largest cities, according to recent data by Genworth Financial Canada.

Genworth’s Summer 2007 Metropolitan Condominium Outlook report forecasts condominium prices in Vancouver and Victoria will post average annual increases of about 3.8 per cent and 3.5 per cent, respectively, from 2008 to 2011. Vancouver‘s average resale condo price is forecast to rise from $314,471 in 2007 to $365,491 by 2011, while in Victoria resale condo prices are expected to climb from $264,471 in 2007 to $302,603 in 2011. Victoria, at 30 per cent, boasts the highest percentage of boomers per capita of the eight cities covered in the report, while this segment makes up nearly one quarter of Vancouver‘s population. “These cities historically have attracted individuals over age 55. With their favourable climates and natural beauty, both are desirable places to retire,” said Peter Vukanovich, president Genworth Financial Canada.” In the past decade alone, Victoria‘s over 55 population has risen nearly 22 per cent, while Vancouver had a dramatic 37 percent increase. This target demographic for condominium apartments will help maintain demand in the region and ensure steady price growth.” Census figures release in July by Statistics Canada show the number of Canadians aged 55 to 64, many of whom are approaching retirement, is at a record high of 3.7 million. In British Columbia, developers are responding to the aging population and keeping condo starts in line with demand. Starts will cool this year and next in both cities, as rising inventories of new units accumulate. In the short term, starts will dip, as builders will attempt to lower their inventories of unsold units, then trend upward gradually through 2011.

“There’s no doubt that boomers have played, and will continue to play, a significant role in the B.C. condo market,” said Neil Chrystal, President of Vancouver based Polygon Homes, one of British Columbia’s leading condo developers. “It’s a lifestyle choice for boomers who are downsizing and who have so many options to enjoy the great outdoors in retirement rather than spending their time on maintenance and upkeep of homes.” The Summer 2007 Metropolitan Condominium Outlook reviewed resale condo markets in Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria. All eight markets registered price growth in 2006 and are forecast to continue to grow this year and through 2011.

Genworth Financial Canada issues reports on Canada‘s housing market in spring, summer and fall; and on Canada‘s condo market in winter and summer; all in conjunction with the Conference Board of Canada.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

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Growing pains aside, Me & Julio has promise

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

This sibling to Lolita’s on Davie lightens up stodgy Mexican comfort food

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Shelome Bouvette shows off some special dishes at Me & Julio, a new Mexican restaurant on Commercial Drive.

They had me at “Now Open.”

With some new restaurants, I’m jelly and I’m in there with mouth wide open before giving it a chance to iron out wrinkles.

Me & Julio was one of them. On day four, ready or not, I was there. It’s because M & J is a close relative of Lolita’s South of the Border Cantina on Davie Street, one of my favourite casual restaurants.

,” but it’s not really. It’s not tapas; the food isn’t carefully sculpted nor does it sit strikingly on a virginal white plate. Rather, it’s homey, comfort food that knows not how to primp or preen. What’s different and what I like is that chef Shelome Bouvette lightens up the stodge that often weighs down North American Mexican food. She does it with lashings and layerings of bright vegetation — it could be a mantle of pickled and julienned cabbage over the halibut taco or huge nests of mesclun greens or yummy salsas.

Or it could be bright, humming notes like lime crema fresca or turmeric yellow pickled green papaya or grilled pineapple slaw or agave honey dressing on spinach. These bright notes are happy notes.

Not all dishes were wonderful but I do like the collage of savoury, sweet, sour and salty flavours, all dancing around.

The down side to this abundance of greens and fruits and veggies is that sometimes you’re not getting a lot of the protein element. For example, my halibut taco, while delicious with the beet-hued pickled cabbage slaw and mango salsa and lots and lots of green, was short on halibut. And the same with the calamari salad — lots of greens and spinach salad and white beans but not generous with calamari.

These rock’n’roll plates of flavours isn’t surprising. Before she started up at Lolita’s, Bouvette was day chef at Bin 942, where flavours are bold and forward. Bouvette met Lila Gaylie, another owner, at Bin. (Her brother Jaison is the other in the ownership triad.)

When I first visited, the place was already jumping and, as they say in the biz, in the weeds. After an hour of nursing our drinks in the stemless wine glasses, we wished we’d had a bite to eat before we went. The food was omigosh-slow coming out of the kitchen. But hunger and impatience didn’t drive me to bite anyone’s head off — the music was great (tends to be upbeat, like reggae) and the servers were appropriately apologetic and looked like they would grovel if we needed them to (even though they all wore tough-girl tattoos). The place was buzzing, but not to the point where you had to yell like a hockey fan to converse.

So yes, the service was incredibly slow and the server forgot to bring a glass of wine, but it wasn’t a bad place to hang out. A second visit proved much smoother and the joint, again, was hopping.

The food is a festival of flavours. (Entrees are $16 to $20.) Sopa de tortilla is made with roasted tomatoes and held chicken, pasilla chili, fresh cheese, tortilla strips and on the side, a delicious cornbread; panela cheese with a chili’d mushroom saute, cilantro and pepita pesto crostini and lots of greens was an earthy dish; seviche habanero with scallops, wild sockeye and halibut in pomello-citrus marinade, blue corn tostadas, guacamole and pickled papaya featured fresh seafood, albeit not glistening with moisture.

The sasparilla-glazed baby back ribs was the best. It came with jicama and pineapple slaw and smoked gouda and cascabel mac and cheese. The fall-apart tender meat was deliciously sauced and the salad lightened the heavy load of meat and cheese. The grilled flat-iron steak, however, was chewy — not rubbery, but certainly exercised the jaw. The Malbec and roasted shallot demi glace was lovely, the agave honey candied beets a nice aside although the horseradish and avocado mash was mysteriously mild.

Me & Julio hearkens to the Paul Simon song, but Julio is also the Spanish word for July, the month in which both Lolita’s and M & J were leased. It’s a great add to a street already teeming with affordable restaurants.

– – –

ME & JULIO: MODERN MEXICAN KITCHEN AND CANTINA

Overall: 3 1/2

Food: 3 1/2

Ambience: 4

Service: 3 1/2

Price: $$

2095 Commercial Dr., 604-696-9997, www.meandjulio.ca

Open 5 p.m. to midnight daily.

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.

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Your personal information has been stolen: Do you have the right to be notified?

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

Sun

Privacy experts often advise people that, in order to avoid having their identities stolen, they must take control and be extremely careful about how and to whom they reveal personal information.

That’s good advice, but if you keep a bank account, or buy anything from clothing to health care services, you will inevitably have to give up some control, to divulge certain personal information.

That means the businesses that possess your personal information should also be subject to stringent regulations and should take all possible measures to prevent your information from falling into the wrong hands.

And to be sure, most businesses do take their responsibilities seriously, and are subject to various legislation, from the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) to British Columbia‘s Personal Information Protection Act.

Yet security breaches do occur: Several high-profile incidents — involving Winners, HomeSense and CIBC’s Talvest Mutual Funds — have occurred in recent months.

When such breaches happen, the primary concern is whether the organizations that suffer the breach should be required to notify individuals who might be affected. While more than half of U.S. states require mandatory disclosure in such cases, and include financial penalties for failure to do so, the only Canadian legislation with a similar provision is Ontario‘s Personal Health Information Protection Act.

Consequently, Industry Canada, which is conducting a review of PIPEDA, has launched public consultations. Industry Canada itself has advocated a requirement to disclose certain breaches of privacy, but only those where there is “a high risk of significant harm to individuals or organizations.”

Many privacy experts and consumer advocates consider this problematic because it could set the bar for disclosure too low. Further, it could give organizations considerable discretion to decide when to disclose breaches, which is worrying given that organizations will naturally be reluctant to publicize the fact that their security measures have failed.

The consequence of this position, warn privacy experts, is that individuals might never know that they’re at risk of identity theft despite taking considerable precautions to protect themselves.

On the other hand, some privacy experts, including B.C. Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis, have argued that there is no evidence that the strict mandatory disclosure requirements in U.S. legislation have proven to be cost-effective in reducing the risk of identity theft.

There are, after all, a variety of models that could be followed. Legislation could require disclosure whenever an unauthorized person has accessed databases containing personal information, or only if there is reason to believe the unauthorized person has actually acquired personal information, or only if there is a significant threat of identity theft.

Similarly, there are several models concerning to whom disclosure ought to be made. Some experts suggest that organizations ought to disclose all breaches to their clients, while others suggest that organizations should notify a provincial or federal privacy commissioner if a relatively insignificant breach occurs, with the privacy commissioner determining if individuals ought to be informed.

Clearly, this is an issue about which there are many different views. But just as clearly, virtually everyone seems to agree on a few basic points, points that should be included in any amendment to privacy legislation.

First, it’s essential that Canadian privacy legislation include some provisions for mandatory disclosure of security breaches. Second, the requirements must be backed up by the ability to levy significant financial penalties against the businesses that fail to disclose the information.

Third, whatever threshold is chosen for disclosure, it must at least be an objective standard, so that organizations aren’t given so much discretion that they can effectively exempt themselves from the requirements.

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Variations on a couscous theme

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

Tunisian cuisine includes wonderful mussels, chicken tagine

Mark Laba
Province

From left: Chico Pavon, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Draoui and Zouheir ‘Zico’ Draoui of Carthage Café present chicken tagine (left) and Carthage brochette. Photograph by : Arlen Redekop, The Province

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day but it probably took the Romans only half that time to completely sack a city. Well, it took a little longer when it came to Carthage but they finally got it on the third try. And now, lo and behold, a Carthage Café has opened in the middle of Little Italy. Talk about irony.

Paid a visit with my old psychoanalyst, Dr. Zongo, who was relating to me his new theory of psychoanalysis through his patients’ approach to corn on the cob and their biting patterns while stripping corn niblets.

“How much they leave, how much they don’t, are they meticulous, are they sloppy — I’m telling you, this new theory is going to make Freud look like a hayseed from Saskatchewan.”

for couscous?” I ventured.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to keep my eye on you over dinner. You’re already a borderline case ,so I may be able to find a correlation between your couscous consumption and your unbalanced state of mind.”

We settled into a room that radiates warmth and evokes an exotic setting, befitting a restaurant that specializes in Tunisian cuisine. Wood furnishings have an ancient quality, heavy red drapes over leaded windows and smatterings of tiling conjure up night-at-the-casbah imagery and various tchotchkes of North African origin, both brass and clay, flicked by the shadow-play of candles, all work upon the brain to ready it for the edible journey.

To test the waters we began with an appetizer of Doigt de Fatima ($7.50) or “the fingers of Fatima.” A classic Tunisian starter, named for the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter whose hand wards off evil, these spring-roll pastry tubes filled with cheese, beans, tuna and eggs were very tasty and the accompanying salad of diced tomato, cucumber and onion bedded down on butter lettuce was refreshing and had a bit of zip from the herbal dressing. I’m not sure if spring-roll dough is the classic way to prepare Fatima‘s digits but a little improvisation is not a bad thing.

From there on, it’s mostly variations on couscous, except for the wonderful mussels with three sauce options and a few other seafood dishes. If you try the mussels I highly recommend the cumin, spicy harrisa, white wine and olive-oil broth.

I laid siege to the Couscous Carthage ($18.25), a daunting citadel of steamed couscous, merguez sausage, braised-lamb shank and chicken with big hunks of veggies like zucchini, potatoes, peppers and carrots, the whole shlimazel finished with a light touch of tomato sauce. The merguez was particularly inspiring and the chicken was delicious but I felt the lamb could’ve been more tender. Dr. Zongo tore into his lamb-shank couscous with the abandon of a Roman legionnaire sacking a city and had no reservations about the lamb texture.

On a non-couscous note, try the chicken tagine with saffron sauce or the steak frites and start with a classic French onion soup or Coquilles St. Jaques. For dessert try the rosewater baklava or the tart of the day.

“So, what can you tell about me from my couscous remnants?” I asked Dr. Zongo.

“You’re disorganized, bipolar and you’d better floss your teeth.”

REVIEW

Carthage Café

Where: 1851 Commercial Dr., Vancouver

Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-215-0661

Drinks: Liquor license is in the works

Hours: Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-11 p.m., Sun., 4 -11 p.m., closed Mon.

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Archive for November, 2007

Areas along Fraser sinking at startling rate, study warns

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Growing pains aside, Me & Julio has promise

This sibling to Lolita’s on Davie lightens up stodgy Mexican comfort food

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Your personal information has been stolen: Do you have the right to be notified?

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Variations on a couscous theme

Tunisian cuisine includes wonderful mussels, chicken tagine

© The Vancouver Province 2007

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