The Scene

Put on your dancing shoes and share the love this Valentine's Day weekend by supporting a great cause. Fashion, art, and music clash in tomorrow night's celebration of creativity and the arts at Performance Works on Granville Island.

Held Saturday February 12th at 8:00pm, the EVOLUTION Fashion | Music | Vogue Ball promises to be an outlandish, romantic and glamorous gala fundraiser for the benefit of A Loving Spoonful, one of Vancouver's nearest and dearest charities.

"There will be four fashion shows from Dita Von Teese's corsetiére Melanie Talkington of Lace Embrace, and eco-chic wedding gown designer Patty Nayel of Pure Magnolia. James Serino will be debuting his collection Electric La-La-Land and Art Institute students will showcase haute couture inspired gowns," says Kei Baritugo of BoldLove Communications. She, along with dance and choreography extraordinaire Jojo Zolina, are co-producing this event with renowned fashion journalist, Guy Babineau.

Myth: Today is my lucky day; I know I'm going to win.

Fact: There is no magic in gambling. No thought or feeling that you may have will help determine whether you win or not.

It's Saturday night at Edgewater Casino. The casino offers literature on problem gambling published by the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. You get it at the welcome desk. The statements above come from  a brochure called "myth busting". I found it wedged behind a raffle for a Canucks jersey. With the province planning to relocate the Edgewater Casino to B.C. Place next year, and having written fourteen articles on the issue to date, I went with two of my colleagues from VO to have a night of fun at the casino.

Edgewater Casino looks out across False Creek from Plaza of Nations. From the sea wall, it's discreet but visible. The building, made entirely of glass, reflects the grey wintery water. But as Anja and Zi-Ann and I walk along the street that runs past B.C. Place, we almost miss it.  "There it is," Zi-Anne says. She points back from the road to where the only casino in downtown Vancouver awaits, hidden behind Gossip night club.

When  Maclean's published "Too Asian?" students at UBC started talking and a number of professors used the article as a teachable moment.

But as far as I know there was only one professor at UBC who challenged his class to respond to the Maclean's piece creatively. 

When Dr. Ray Hsu threw down the gauntlet before his Asian Canadian writing class, there was a collective desire among his diverse students (and I was one of them) to do just that: respond. And to do so as a group.

But how? We bandied several ideas about, but realized that everything we'd come up with would all take a lot of time, too much time. But none of us wanted to just let it go. It's not often that a professor offers you a chance to do something you really want to do, and for class credit, after all.