.....

2015-01-27T11:23:00.000-08:00

i'm possibly tired of being pink. and so i've made a wordpress home, a consolidated blog with everything i've published on other blogs i masquerade under.

http://thetinygirlinred.wordpress.com/

i'll probably hold fort here and there, though. the more personal posts will lurk here, i think.

well, see you somewhere!

2009-05-12T07:08:00.001-07:00

organizing life:

writing
- finish journalling
- write article?
- write more katherine

webwork
- catch up on website/uploading bookcovers
- make gicnews blog
- hitotoki Toronto

reading
- read jessica's book
- read atonement
- read the witch of portobello
- read les belles images
- read guernicamag, the walrus

language learning
- ch. 2
- review verbs and nouns

others
- clean house thoroughly
- start sketching!

2009-05-05T19:44:00.001-07:00

Unless A Grain of Wheat Bernadette Farrell

Refrain: Unless a grain of wheat shall fall up-on the ground and die, it remains but a single grain with no life.
Verses:
1. If we have died with him, then we shall live with him; if we hold firm, we shall reign with him.
2. If any one serves me, then they must follow me; wherever I am, my servants will be.
3. Make your home in me as I make mine in you; those who remain in me bear much fruit.
4. If you remain in me and my word lives in you; then you will be my disciples.
5. Those who love me are loved by my Father; we shall be with them and dwell in them.
6. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; peace which the world can-not give is my gift.

Be Not Afraid

You shall cross the barren desert,
but you shall not die of thirst.
You shall wander far in safety
though you do not know the way.
You shall speak your words in foreign lands
and all will understand.
You shall see the face of God and live.

Be not afraid.
I go before you always;
Come follow me,
and I will give you rest.

If you pass through raging waters in the sea,
you shall not drown.
If you walk amid the burning flames,
you shall not be harmed.
If you stand before the pow'r of hell
and death is at your side,
know that I am with you through it all.

Blessed are your poor,
for the kingdom shall be theirs.
Blest are you that weep and mourn,
for one day you shall laugh.
And if wicked men insult and hate you all because of me,
blessed, blessed are you!

2009-04-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

life on a monthly basis

bite-size goals for this month (THE REST OF APRIL):
- présent de l'indicatif & impératifs & gender: no mistakes
- get to 300 characters
- 1 article - around 15th each month
- Hitotoki Toronto -> send in something!
- read 1 more novel, 1 more children's lit
- website to figure out

that's that for april so far. it feels like it's very little; and there's so much MORE i want to attain.

2009-02-04T22:31:00.000-08:00

I have plenty of faults.

The self-esteem thing is definitely an issue. I think, in a way, most of my faults come from low-self-esteem.
I hold grudges. That's the downside of having a good memory, because you just don't forget (and thus forgive) the crap people give you. The sting just doesn't go away.
I'm really sensitive/touchy. I feel hurt all the time even though I know someone might not've meant to hurt me, I still interpret it that way, and THEN I hold a grudge against them for it too.
For a lot of things, it's my way or the highway. It's not that I think I'm always right, but even when I'm wrong I still want to do things my way.
I'm a snob. I can't stand people's bad taste in food/clothes/books etc.
I get jealous easily, too. I get so envious sometimes that I end up avoiding good friends because I'll inevitably compare myself to them when I talk to/see them.

I also procrastinate, am always late, am a slob, etc.; but I know I can change those if I really want to, so they're less crippling than my emotional/self-esteem issues.

---

My jealousy and my things-used-to-be-so-much-better depression is pretty bad. It actually kind of makes sense (to my twisted mind) to be jealous of people who are going through milestones you've already passed: I feel both protective and bitter when I see someone graduating from high school etc., or travelling to a country I've been to and loved, I mean, I'm happy for them, but then I immediately wish I could turn time back and have my own joy and excitement of that moment back so I'm jealous. And THEN, since I know I can't get that perfectly happy moment back, I get depressed.

I think a lot of my peculiarities have seeped through from my mom and grandmother, too. I'm not blaming them, I find my faults crippling but it comforts me to know where it comes from... I guess because then I know that my grandmother's dealt with them, too. It is a daunting legacy.

2009-02-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

I've kept diaries since I was 10. I'm really glad I did because I can be very nostalgic and it tells me a lot about myself to read over old entries. I used to write in them every day, but I don't anymore... these days I document myself in an array of blogs, emails, and only occasionally in a pen-and-paper journal. It feels good whenever I can write, and can organize and clear out all the thoughts in my head, so to speak, but I really don't do it often enough.

The good and bad thing about blogging is that blogs aren't diaries. The blog convention is article-inspired, with titles and topics and tags, and so are at best a snapshot of life. Even bloggers who write daily are encouraged to focus on an area of dissertation or two, or otherwise they title their post "random".

My blog really says very little about what goes on in my daily life or what I am doing... but it contains what I think. So in that sense it shows who I am, but only partially.

Blogging is nowhere near as comprehensive or expurgatory as "traditional" diary entries, where I would evaluate the entire day's events and sum up my thoughts and feelings. Blogging and twittering are the products of the spur of the moment, probably the best we can make do with in our modern life, but still, it's only make-do.

2009-01-29T08:40:00.000-08:00

I posted this a few days ago in response to someone's dilemma, when a girl asked for help on message board because her best friend might be suicidal.

Honestly, it's been a really long time since those teenage days when my friends and I emailed each other and answered pleas for help. It was hard just to get into that tone where you're positive and judicious, and not just blunt and snarky, as one is so apt to be as an intolerant and short-fused adult. But I couldn't bring myself (as some of the others who replied) to tell her to just TELL an adult, and I felt so politically incorrect about it. I had no idea how old she was, and maybe I wasn't deciphering her message clearly enough, maybe she just wanted someone to give her courage to tell an adult. But I've been brought up on a sleuth of fantasy literature about making choices, and in my - utterly rational world - I can't conceive of jumping into something without surveying the consequences. I can't condescend to someone on the grounds of age, and not give them their chance to take full responsibility for their decisions. No-one is too young to try to think for themselves. Besides, when I was thirteen - or ten - telling an adult never solved my problems. It has always been something I had to figure out for myself, even when I was young. Maybe that's just me. I wanted to die when I was nine, and no one knew, and I'm still here. And maybe I'm really unqualified because there are still days when I want to kill myself, so I'm really actually a mess, but seriously? I can't see how the concern of parents and teachers would've made things any better for me, and I *can* imagine how it might have driven me over the brink.

My best friend's parents "hit her", in her own words, and I'm glad I was never bound by strict morality to tell an adult. I knew her parents and looking back, I don't think they were violently abusive, but even if it was more severe than I can guess, I wouldn't feel right if I had tattled and caused her to go into foster care. She made me promise not to tell, because she feared that very thing. And who's to belittle the fears of a ten year old, or the integrity of a promise and of friendship, and how can someone really be qualified to tell her that she would be happier in some other life with foster parents than with the parents she really loved? It's hard to say what's ultimately better for someone, and few people aren't scarred in some way by their childhood and familial ties. Even as a child, I'm sure I had some undefined sense of my convictions. And then, I don't know how my friend's life turned out, but so far as my imagination stretches, I think people can't get out of their own skin, and if someone is by nature tragical, no amount of kindly love or good parenting can change the fate they are determined to create for themselves.

I can sense how this can be very controversial, and my feelings and raw convictions are ill-expressed, but I harbour no anger towards laws for foster care or a guardian's right to know whatever concerns their child's well-being. But I remember being a child too vividly to relinquish the thought that it's okay not to tell your parents everything. What I desired most as a child was trust, and the space to do things when I'm good and ready to, and I will always be an ardent defender of that.

Well, here was what I wrote.

---

I think it's a good sign that she knows she can talk to her three best friends about this. Work with your friends to get her (and each other) through this. Be there for her; hear her out whenever she needs to talk, make sure she knows you value her advice and opinion too (sometimes it helps if the reaching out isn't all one-sided), and do fun things together to get her mind off her problems. Let her know you love her and really care about her, and that she's needed (by friends and family).

If there's an adult you trust, it never hurts to talk to them and get their opinion and advice. It also helps to have someone who's mature and reliable to fall back on, because it's not easy handling confidences like this on your own.

I thought I'd say that telling an adult doesn't always solve everything, though. I've had thoughts about suicide in my early teens, and so have some of my close friends growing up for various reasons, and I guess we got through okay. I don't want to belittle the problem, though: when someone says she wants to kill herself she should always be taken seriously. I guess whatever you do, you'll have to trust your friend: trust her to be strong enough to handle all her issues, and trust her to understand that you really care about her and have her best interests at heart if you decide to tell an adult.

Go with your instincts here: if you feel like she really needs outside help, or even if you're feeling overwhelmed by what she's saying, get help. See if there's an adult you know whom you feel comfortable talking to, and if not, approach a counsellor or a hotline. Ask her if she wants you to go with her when she's talking to an adult, or be around when she decides to call a hotline, like muppets says.

Does your school have guidance counsellors? Mine had, and you could talk to them on your own or go as a group, and everything you said was completely confidential-- as in, they won't tell your parents or any other authority figure, unless they think it's necessary and then only with your consent. Sometimes my best friend and I would go together and talk to them about various things, for example in the same session my friend would talk about her parents getting divorced and I would talk about my self-esteem issues (it's less intimidating when you're with a friend), and the counsellor would give us tangible advice on what to do about it.

What I found always helped me as a teen and even now is: journalling (or blogging, or writing poetry, or writing myself out, because sometimes you have to figure things out for yourself), books I could turn to, music. It might be cheesy but there are some really helpful (true) stories in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul for suicide, self-esteem, family and relationship problems etc. It also helps to know that other people have gone through similar situations before, so talking to real-life people who can relate or reading about how others have dealt with it (online, in articles, even in fiction etc.). You might also want to check out organizations like these ones:

To Write Love on her Arms
The Yellow Ribbon Project

I hope that wasn't too confusing. Take care, and my best thoughts are with you and your friend.

2009-01-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

my mom doesn't really "spring clean", she cleans regardless of the seasons.

but one of my favourite childhood memories was spring cleaning day at my best friend's house. i remember rummaging through her garage attic, listening to stories about bats and raccoons that sneaked in, setting up the pond in the garden because the geese (which stopped by annually) would be arriving soon. we swept the yard and cleaned the pool. her house is on the edge of the suburban development, almost in a large ravine, and this nearly "countryish" life was all so exciting and novel to me. we found the rope to hang up the tire swing, and felt very proud of ourselves because we threw the loop of the rope onto the tree "all by ourselves" without her dad's help. we finished off the night by sneaking sips of her parents' liquer.

2009-01-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

11:35:01 PM Me: hello you!
11:35:11 PM E.: hello to you too!
11:35:17 PM Me: how are you?
11:35:32 PM E.: mmm...let's just say that 22 is my least favorite age so far. how about yourself?
11:36:02 PM Me: oh yes, i have not enjoyed most of this past year.
11:36:33 PM E.: well, you are not alone.
11:37:20 PM E.: on a scale from 1-10 with one being the best and 10 being the worst, this year gets a 6.5.
11:37:51 PM Me: hahaha! now you're making me want to rate all the years of my life.
11:38:34 PM E.: well, you might as well. we love to rate! put numbers to everything. objective > subjective. well, i disagree, but who am i
11:39:25 PM Me: oh, dear. so you're saying that this year is objectively bad?
11:41:18 PM E.: yes, i guess. but anyway, i just hate it because i'm confused. i have not lost any limbs or anything. it just seems a little out of reach. everything's foggy. what's your dilemma?
11:42:05 PM E.: that's why i've been absent a lot
11:42:32 PM Me: i keep wanting to turn time back. but that's not very practical. but see, i'd give last year a 10 out of 10, and this year is... maybe a 5, so ... um, it sucks.
11:43:39 PM E.: i would give my 21st year a 10. and if everything would have gradually become less than stellar, i probably wouldn't have noticed, but since it just seemed to happen overnight, i noticed, and i didn't take it well.
11:43:51 PM Me: yes, exactly.
11:43:57 PM E.: ah, so you understand! aw, miri. not a 5. what are we gonna do?
11:44:18 PM Me: climb back up, i guess.
11:44:25 PM E.: i lost my climbing gear
11:44:29 PM E.: now what do i do
11:44:41 PM Me: grow wings
11:44:56 PM E.: oh boy. looks like i'm going to be down here for awhile.
11:45:08 PM Me: i know, it seems difficult.
11:45:43 PM E.: i lost my confidence. i don't know how. it was just stolen. maybe i should report it missing.
11:46:00 PM Me: me too. maybe we could put out lost and found ads.
11:46:05 PM E.: or turn to self-help books. gah! call be bridget jones.
11:46:09 PM E.: *me
11:46:29 PM E.: that can be your job. you're the artistic one.
11:46:39 PM E.: i'll handle the phone calls and rewards.
11:46:48 PM Me: hey! :p
11:47:18 PM Me: well, i'll draw the ads if you finance the purchase of the self-help books
11:47:28 PM E.: it's under control.
11:47:33 PM Me: sounds like a plan
..

12:00:21 AM Me: and yes, i'm pretty picky. i've turned my nose up at jobs, so i guess i need to buy an elastic band and tie my nose down?
12:00:29 AM E.: i think i became full of myself. just a little. and perhaps for the only time in my life i was ever really confident. so, it was only natural that i was struck back down to my former state.
12:00:44 AM Me: i've been having that theory, too.
12:00:47 AM E.: ah, now that's the spirit! made me laugh, anyway. :)
12:01:44 AM Me: i've been trying to convince myself that it's good for me to feel like crap. well, maybe not good for me, but good for keeping that ego in check.
12:02:03 AM E.: just when you think you've hit bottom, it turns out that there was further to go. that's my personal favorite part of the whole mess. but honestly, i'm ready to turn this beast around. today i feel up to it. tomorrow, i will probably curl up with a blanket and hide from the world. we'll see.
12:02:47 AM E.: yeah, but the ego was kind of fun. and i wasn't really bad....just happy confident. people noticed, you know? now they notice, but they notice its abscence.
12:02:57 AM Me: yeah, i know.
12:03:05 AM Me: i thought people liked me better when i was confident, too.
12:03:11 AM E.: i feel the gossip. except it is quite possible that the majority of it exists in my head
12:03:55 AM Me: which really doesn't help when it's the other way around, cause you have even less confidence when other people go "you've gotten really shy. what happened?"
12:04:19 AM Me: i can't feel gossip, but i get paranoid that there is gossip.
12:04:57 AM E.: well, i think that's what i meant. there isnt anything to even say really. just that i seem...distant. other than that, i'm not very exciting.
12:05:46 AM Me: yes, i feel uninteresting, ignored because i'm uninteresting, and completely unmotivated to change that.
12:06:17 AM E.: i'm probably flattering myself to think it's even worthy of conversation. haha. ah well, might as well go completely mad. ~x(

...

12:38:43 AM Me: i think i'm ready to end our slightly bitter conversation about life. i think i need chocolate (ironically, dark chocolate) and maybe sleep.
12:39:18 AM E.: nice irony. i agree. sleep it is.
12:39:28 AM Me: goodnight!
12:39:38 AM Me: thanks for commiserating. :)
12:39:59 AM E.: oh, anytime
12:39:41 AM E.: sorry i couldn't be of more help, but as you know by now, you feel it, i feel it!
12:40:33 AM Me: yes, it does seem to work that way. something amazing needs to happen to one of us, that's all. ;)
12:40:53 AM E.: ooohhh. good thinking. now that doesn't sound so hard, does it?
12:41:10 AM E.: i think we can manage one miracle.
12:41:16 AM E.: between the two of us.
12:41:19 AM E.: i'll keep you posted
12:41:35 AM Me: yes, that seems much better when you put it that way.
12:41:51 AM Me: well, i'll get started on tracking down that miracle. :)
12:41:53 AM E.: for now, dear friend, it's good night and to hoping that there's a better tomorrow.
12:41:55 AM Me: goodnight!
12:41:58 AM E.: me too!
12:42:00 AM E.: goodnight!

there you go! i'm hunting for a miracle, because they happen to be buy-one-get-one-free. anyone seen any around?

2008-12-31T01:30:00.000-08:00

I used to write myself ten-year letters, written on one birthday to be opened a decade later. I got one yesterday, written from myself-at-fourteen-to-myself-at-twenty four. Here is how it begins, no doubt largely derived from the Emily books I borrowed the idea from:

Dear twenty-four,

When you open this letter, will you find a procession of ghosts: puppets of long forgotten or ignored memories? Will I seem like some half-happy phantom of your past, whose yet rosy hopes and ephemeral dreams you would give much to have? Will each and every one of my predictions and queries hurt you? Or are you a humourous, happy, lighthearted lady who will laugh at my childish bitterness? No, you will not. We made a pact of it years ago, didn't we? We promised we would never - well, you would never laugh at me, your little old self. So more likely you will read my letter like one reads a known-by-heart story - the way I re-read my favourite books, for example. You will rest your eyes on every line gravely, slightly curious. Sometimes a chill will pass over your heart at mention of something you have failed to become., or ceased to care about. On the other hand, if perhaps any of our dreams have come to pass, you will be very happy I've noted something about it here, won't you? ...

So there you are! I was quite eloquent at fourteen - sometimes I wonder if I've improved at all in vocabulary or writing style in all these years. I still wax poetic and I still punctuate my sentences with dashes and exclamations. On the other hand, even if I haven't changed in character, I feel miles away from my teenage self: too old and jaded to see the world through rose-tinted lenses, but too loyal to my old ideals to give them up.

2008-12-12T21:20:00.000-08:00

lost, not found. aching for a life in another world.

2008-11-18T03:12:00.000-08:00

M steps out of the shower.

J (growls): Aghhhhhh

M (gasps and shrieks): ahh!

J, laughing as ever: that was good

M smiles. How'd your shopping go?

J fairly glows as he leans against the counter, buttering a bagel for a midnight snack. I had such a good time. At half past eight the stores were closing, half stayed open until nine, but I couldn't get any shopping done in that half hour.

M looks apprehensive as is her habit. She curls her bare toes under the long edges of her pajamas, in t-shirt and bedclothes she looks dimunitive, she is a child.

So I sat down in a coffee shop, and these random people started talking to me. They were so nice! (here is voice raises in his usual elation.) They took me for a tour of London.

Just random people? M.'s face lights naturally in a smile-in-response.

Yeah, they're students at the university of london, over there. They walked me home.

Their street and the campus they had discovered the other night flashes into her mind vividly, for M. has a photographic memory. But she is imaginaing the scene now - J. in a warm coffee shop, hands over blue Nero cup. Probably poised shyly on a brown faux-leather seat, looking somewhat cold, pitiful, childlike, and interesting in his mixed British features. That attracts the group of British students' attention. She cannot imagine herself ever in the same situation, with the same results. There would be awkwardness, curious glances, indecent attraction. But she asks practically:

"Do you have contacts for these people? Can we hang out with them?" she is good at gleeful excitement, after all she is full of it.

"Yeah! Now I have four British friends" and he numbers them off on his large, capable fingers.

She later learns that they are not at all British, "but Australian, something else, and Irish"...hailing from Glasgow "which is in Scotland." she corrects J. with a smile, as if her geographical superiority gives her a better claim to their friendship! She also learns that they are "really intelligent", historians/economists, artists, and a writer. Already she feels sealed of the tribe, and wishes they would be her friend, and wonders why they weren't her friend first.

They talk too of trivia - these two good friends, of querying Notting Hill where M. states her expectations the romantic gate scene with a touch of girlish contrition in her voice, J. recounts the historians' account of fascist revival in Germany, M. quickly recalls debates on racism and bits of news she has heard but in J.'s manner you hear a note of inadequacy. "I didn't know much of the the topics" he implied, but it didn't bother him.

"People are so friendly here." J. is still fairly basking in happiness, you can tell they are both children by how easily they are made happy and how their happiness lingers. "This is a good city, maybe it's because it rains so much. I love the rain, it brings me luck."

M.'s face darkens again - the rain has not brought her much luck, she has been wet and uncomfortable she says. How the men love rain! But she wonders jealously why her omens are absent - the wonder-world of snow that has always made her believe - strongly, silently, in - she did not know what. She only knew she always felt a certain faith and content under a purple sky - "Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by."

"But it doesn't top Toronto?" she queries.

They launch into their favourite architectural debate. J.'s large, noisy hands gesture animatedly as he describes the pedestrian landscape and the wonders of each district. M.'s eyes furrow, and she argues "But the scale isn't right for a pedestrian experiences. The streets are too large and wide, the skyscrapers too tall, there are large empty spaces and stretches of uninviting streets between one landmark to another. I never like to walk in Toronto." And she knows it is a sentiment she has felt since her girlhood, since her parents complained of the deceptiveness of seeing something and the time it takes to reach it. Across bitterly cold, wide open plains!

And she avers, "I still think you love Toronto because it's your first city. This doesn't beat New York for me, but I'm sure I'm biased because it was the first place I was by myself. New York was just so much fun..." she trails off in that sweet tone of remembrance.

Then she realizes it is not enough for J., so she tries to find architectural merit as justification. "In cities like New York and London you can just walk on forever, and not notice how far you've gone... there is always something to hold your attention. Whereas Toronto so quickly peters into nothingness... the bit at Union under the tunnel... west queen west at the railway bridge..."

"But they're changing that. Liebskind's building something at Union... they're surrounding the big parking lot at Air Canada center..."

It is not enough for M., but J. is excited by the change - "We'll see it happen. That interests me more than here, where everything is in place..."

M. is not convinced - it took them ten years to build a stunted subway line, she argues, the waterfront will take years before it is realized and create havoc and distress in the meantime. The architect in his eagerness neglects the immediate users in his vision, the children growing up between the scaffolding. The sawdust still thickens the air for them. She had grown up close enough to Toronto to call herself "of" it.

"But that's what's so fascinating about here - reading the palimpsest of history written over one another, how each epoch made breathing room for him(her)self in a rigid structure. Whereas in the 'New World' each man has been alloted his square on the grid."

Finally J. goes to sleep, peaceful and perfectly happy with his day's labours. She has had a day of labours too of the more wearisome sort, making appointments with the social security office, the phone and internet companies and the landlord, because nobody else would take initiative, and she feels indignantly unjustified and unappreciated. She lies awake for a long time with a cold stomach, running over the conversation and the conversation imagined from the conversation in her head. She prays for her own deliverance.

2008-11-14T04:32:00.000-08:00

BLOG READERSHIP:

something made me wonder, recently:

who's reading my blog out there?

I remember that when I had started blogging - in my teens - I had actually gotten a blog because my high school friends had, and that in some ways, especially for those of us who were shyer and more literarily inclined - we had gotten to know each other better through our blogs.

Most of the time these days, though, I'm far more interested in topic-based blogs - eg., celebrity-news blogs, harry potter blogs, recipe blogs, book logs, etc. - than the livejournal types. But occasionally I stumble on an old friend's (real life or online) blog, and seized by nostalgia, I read up on perhaps a full year's worth on posts... and then I feel creepily stalkerish, because I read but I don't always comment.

2008-11-14T03:56:00.000-08:00

I have this inability to drain the last drops of my cup. As in, if I'm having a mug of hot tea, by the time I get to the last drops, I just don't want it anymore. If I do drink it all up, I feel insanely full.

Help!

2008-11-14T03:55:00.000-08:00

Do you learn better in a group or by yourself?

I used to have to learn in complete isolation - i.e. hole myself up in my room with a textbook, but college has taken a lot of that out of me.

I like learning "in a group situation," because it keeps me motivated. I love in-class discussions. But I hate group projects - they're a royal pain, because everyone always has a different opinion and you spend half the time trying to come up with a compromise. That being said, it depends on the group - I've had a couple classmates who are amazing to work with.

And of course, that depends on what you call a "group" - I would probably never get the chance to participate in a huge, couple-hundred people lecture, but ones with say - around 40 students or less, or seminars with maybe 20 students are great.

We also had giant study groups in first year of college, maybe 30 students would plan to hang out in the lounge the night before an exam, and air out all our last-minute questions - much better than cramming, and it was a lot of fun - and a lot easier to talk, sitting crossed legged on the floor and sprawling all over the couches.

Do you think that interactive learning online can help shy students, who fail to engage in the classroom?

Hmm... I'm shy, but I never had trouble talking in class. If I'm interested in a topic and I know something about it, or have questions about it, I can talk a blue streak.

On the other hand, in all the online courses I've taken, the course bulletin boards (also for marks) were pretty dead. People posted to get marks, but didn't really interact. There was in no way the same amount of activity we'd have on the forum.

Places like this forum, other message boards, blogs, etc. help me with shyness because I'm talking to people I don't know. I'd be more hesitant to share my opinions if there was someone I knew in real life on here, so I can imagine that if there was a class bulletin board online, there would be the same social tensions online as in real life. It'd be sort of like facebook.

Do you think technological advances help you learn? Are they a distraction?

The internet definitely helps me learn. I learn lots from being on the forum and reading what others have to say. I learn lots via googling, especially if I'm in a place where the library isn't very extensive. I like it best because it's easy to pull together information from all different sources - for instance, maybe this isn't the best example, but I can easily read news coverage on the olympics from the american, canadian, chinese, etc. perspectives to get a more well-rounded opinion.

One thing I LOVE: being able to email teachers and professors. It's beautiful to not have to work around professor's office hours, or to have to go all the way there to ask a question, especially if it's out of your way. And I like being able to submit assignments online. I like saving paper, and I like having the extra hour to work on my essay instead of stressing out about printing it (I didn't have a desktop printer when I was on campus, and the printers in the computer lab were always jammed.)

If a teacher puts their power points or lecture videos online, are you less likely to attend class?

If the prof is a good lecturer, I'll go to the lectures no matter what. That's what I'm forking out thousands of dollars for-- a great learning experience, not a great internet connection. If the lectures are horrible and the material online is identical to the lectures, I'll find a better way to spend my time. But that goes for non-online stuff too - if the prof merely reads out of the textbook for the whole hour of his lecture, I'd much rather stay home and read the textbook myself.

Most of the profs I had who happened to be fantastic lecturers also belonged to the elder generation (and stereotypically) were computer illiterate, so they didn't put things online. Those who did would put on powerpoints with images but no text (by the way, powerpoints without text are much more effective, in my opinion; because then your students would focus on listening to you talk as opposed to trying to copy down all the notes on the screen), etc. ... so you were still better off going to class.

What about for younger learners? Were computers used as a learning tool when you were a kid? Did you find other "technological" media - eg., watching education videos in class, playing CDs (if any of that was done at your school) helpful?

We had computers in the school library with CD-ROM encyclopedias. We also had math games that we could play on during indoor recess, if it was raining outside. And we had this kid's publishing software that we could write our storybooks on, and print them out. It was fun!

We watched a lot of videos in class in high school. We watched the Magic School Bus in science class, the Simpsons in english class, lots of documentaries, and some movies. I liked movies, as long as they were good and we had meaningful discussions afterwards (for instance, we watched Bicentennial Man in philosophy class, and had a great discussion on ethics afterwards). It was painful if it was, say, the 1970s version of Macbeth. I hated it if it felt like if the teacher was just showing a video instead of explaining something him/herself. We watched corny science shows where people tried too hard to make science look cool, with uber enthusiastic voiceovers and with flashing letters saying "science rocks" every so often on the screen. In geography class, we watched documentaries from the 80s where people had bad hairdoes, and it made me cringe. Videos like that make me less interested in a subject.

Do you think the way people are being taught has, or will change drastically? How do you think people be taught, say, 50 years into the future?

Well, I know a teen who goes to a virtual high school.

I think cyber-learning could be cool - balanced with a lot of field trips and lab/workshop type experiences. Maybe the money that would be invested in a traditional "classroom" could be put to that. For example, instead of having weekly lectures, you could have the teacher/prof meet up with students regularly to discuss (whether in a set meeting point in the school, or in various places relevant to the course) what was put online. And maybe "online schools" could have a giant orientation week-type field trip at the beginning of term, so that students can put a face to a name on screen.

hmm, i don't know. Maybe they'll broadcast wifi "knowledge" waves and information will seep into our brains effortlessly

2008-11-14T03:53:00.000-08:00

What's considered "made from scratch"?

At the far end of the "from scratch" scale is pre-made canned food, heating up a frozen pizza or shepherd's pie, cooking instant noodles. That gets 0 points and does NOT count as from scratch.

On the far end is using home grown vegetables, dairy and poultry - that gets 5 points, but most of us don't have the luxury of living on a farm; and you'd be very limited food-wise if you could only rely on your own produce. I mean, if you live in a northern climate, you'd probably never get... a fresh, home-grown coconut. But hey, a pina colada in Canada is never going to taste as good as one in Puerto Rico, so being as close to source as possible does get the best points. Wink

So we all fall somewhere in between.

Here's my scale (and warning, I'm a food snob, so it's harsh.)

The next best thing to growing your own food is buying fresh ingredients, and making something out of them. So, for instance, you can buy fresh tomatoes and make tomato paste, and you can get buy fresh basil and chop that up, you can get flour and make your own pasta, you can get beef and grind it up yourself. That gets a 4 in my books - and I know that's not perfect, but it's still amazingly impressive

That's still pretty time consuming, though. So I grant you that you can get store-bought pasta, maybe pre-ground beef, maybe pre-made sauce. But there still has to be an element of preparation and a margin of failure involved. This gets a 2-3 depending on level of difficulty/complexity. For instance, you could buy the lasagna noodles but you'd still have to layer the lasagna, yogurt, ground meat, cheese, etc. If you boiled pasta and opened tomato sauce but you still made the tomato sauce your own by cooking it up with eggplant, cheese, basil, red wine etc. ... that counts too. I think most of our "from scratch" dishes fall into this category.

On the other hand, if you just boiled the pasta and just opened the sauce and dumped it on, with no fresh ingredients (or even cheese!) added, that gets a 1. If you open a box of cake mix and just add eggs and milk, that also gets a 1 - because it's more or less foolproof. It's not as foolproof as popping frozen pizza into the oven, but it's as close to prepackaged as you can get.

Of course, it's tough - some things are inherently easier to make from scratch than others, and maybe there are no inbetween steps. Like, toast. Actually, I think toast does too. Wink If you bought the bread and toasted it/ate it as is, you get a 1. If you make a Pb&J sandwich of it (buying the PB & the J) you'd get a 2. If you made a sandwich with lettuce and tomato and grilled cheese etc., or a croque monsieur, or french toast.. you'd get a three. If you baked the bread yourself you'd get a 4. If you harvested your own flour you'd get a 5.

So that's my ranking system!

2008-11-14T03:52:00.001-08:00

A new girl in my tenth grade class had a fake boyfriend/husband. She would forge love letters from him to herself, get herself fake christmas presents from him, email us photos of their day at Canada's wonderland - except they'd be photos of "scenery", i.e. no one recognizable was in them. It would have been well and good if she didn't insist that her boyfriend went to our high school, because we never saw any guy pay particular attention to her, and then she spun a story about how they eloped in New York. I often wonder why she bothered: we were all happy enough to be her friend without the fake boy.

This is different, but someone once mistook me for her boyfriend's ex. I was really shy then, and although I corrected her, we were in a loud place and she clearly didn't hear me and kept on addressing me as "Cecilia" (the ex). I had to leave soon afterwards, so I still wonder if she thought I was fake.

2008-10-20T19:53:00.001-07:00

I was thinking of how different people like to talk about different things. For instance, I have a friend who is wonderful at telling stories, especially about everyday things and people. If you were to ask her how her day was, she would recount it for you in a narrative that draws you right in to what happened. One incident involving a mutual friend could lead into a very emotional whole backstory about the said friend's relationship with her ex, for example.

My dad, on the other hand, is much more factual. He likes to tell you the current price of gas, the weather forecast, that you have a dentist appointment next week at 3pm.

Some people I know rarely elaborate on how they're feeling upon being asked "how are you?" even if they've had an eventful day. One of my friends had absolutely nothing to say about his vacation in cuba except that "good, i'll put up photos."

Some people who are generally quiet can talk a blue streak if you ask them to explain, say, the causes of the civil war, or how to cook risotto, to you.

Where do you fall in? Any other observations?

2008-10-20T19:48:00.001-07:00

I went to school in asia in gr. 1 and part of gr. 2, and we went to school in (rather sketchy sounding) white vans!

The vans were private and weren't affiliated with the schools as far as I knew. I attended a semi-private school "in the middle of nowhere" i.e., up on the mountains in a big city, so there was no public transport near enough. The bus driver ladies - I think - had their own vans and charged a yearly fee for shuttling students from door to door. Different ladies ran different routes, depending on their customers - but they tried to get customers from the same area. There were around 15 kids per van, from gr. 1-6... and it seemed like seniority got you a better seat. There was a sixth grader who got the passenger's seat, beside the driver, and she promised I would get it when I "grew up." There were only two first-graders, and I was one of them, so we were squeezed in wherever we could be - I actually think the bus was illegally overcrowded, because me and the other first grader had to sit on a little ledge that the driver had custom-built into her van, while the older kids had "real seats". The ledge was padded and covered in blue corduroy, but I remember the blue used to leavee stains on my kilts.

2008-05-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

i've lived in all sorts of wacky ghetto places, and yet i can't seem to think of a single wacky story about them.

OH! i thought of one.

our bathroom has a skylight, and we added a vent onto it one year. i was thirteen then, and had just begun to stay home alone while my parents were at work. i loved taking long baths after walking home from school, through the windy autumn dusk - for the sun set early in fall. well, as i began to turn on the dimmer lights and ventilator in the bathroom, i heard wild flapping noises. i thought it was just the wind. houses can creak very noisily in the wind. i undressed and climbed into my bath, singing. at one point i lay down and gazed at the skylight as i love to. there was BLOOD streaking down the sides of the skylight.

i screamed but of course no one was home to hear me, so i ran out and locked myself in my room.

my parents came home and cleaned up the mess. of course, a bird had been trapped inside the vent. i had killed the poor thing when i turned on the light and fan.

2008-05-17T21:33:00.001-07:00

In the Emily books, Emily writes a ten-year-letter to herself, written on her 14th birthday and to be opened on her 24th birthday.

I copied her idea when I was a pre-teen and I wrote several ten-year letters to myself. I was rummaging in my room tonight and I found them - I should have opened them on my last two birthdays. I'm surprised that I forgot to. I vaguely remember what was in them, but now I find myself lacking the courage to open them. It feels too sentimental.

2008-04-27T16:01:00.001-07:00

i feel like it never rains but it pours

- coffee with a classmate passing through the city
- organized last minute drinks with an old friend and a visitor
- made two new friends; especially one who is a friend after my heart
- free sushi
- lazed about at pub with good friends
- long night of drinks and chatting with a new coworker
- cheap flight, easy trip to the airport
- went to a very fun housewarming party; much eating, dancing and giggling
- mojito mocktails - delicious!
- touching moments of farewell
- eagerly organizing more good-bye get togethers - i.e. stressful anticipation

2008-03-18T10:02:00.000-07:00

hymns brought me such comfort in childhood, that i cannot scorn their poppiness, their clichedness. part of the beauty of catholic hymns (and catholicism) after all IS that, contrary to stereotypes, they are contemporary and so adaptable to popular music. the words and the rythmns and words are ... "so dear to my heart."

Here are recent favourites, already bound up with memories.

Glory And Praise
Glory and praise to our God,
Who alone gives light to our days.
Many are the blessings He bears,
To those who trust in His ways.

We the daughters and sons of Him,
Who built the valleys and plains.
Praise the wonders our God has done,
In every heart that sings.

In His wisdom He strengthens us,
Like gold that's tested in fire.
Though the power of sin prevails,
Our God is there to save.

Every moment of every day,
Our God is waiting to save.
Always ready to seek the lost,
To answer those who pray.

---------

Give me joy in my heart, keep me praising,
Give me joy in my heart, I pray,
Give me joy in my heart, keep me praising,
Keep me praising 'till the break of day.

Chorus:
Sing hosanna, sing hosanna,
Sing hosanna to the King of kings!
Sing hosanna, sing hosanna,
Sing hosanna to the King.

Give me peace in my heart, keep me praying,
Give me peace in my heart, I pray,
Give me peace in my heart, keep me praying,
Keep me praying 'till the end of day.

Give my oil in my lamp, keep me burning,
Give me oil in my lamp, I pray,
Give my oil in my lamp, keep me burning,
Keep me burning 'till the end of day.

Give me peace in my heart, keep me resting,
Give me peace in my heart, I pray.
Give me peace in my heart, keep me resting,
Keep me resting 'till the end of day.

----

The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.

My soul He doth restore again;
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
Even for His own Name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,
Yet will I fear no ill;
For Thou art with me; and Thy rod
And staff my comfort still.

My table Thou hast furnishèd
In presence of my foes;
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows.

Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me;
And in God’s house forevermore
My dwelling place shall be.

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/m/lmysheph.htm

O Lord, you are the center of my life
I will always praise you
I will always serve you
I will always keep you in my sight

Keep me safe O God, I take refuge in you.
I say to the Lord "You are my God,
My happiness lies in you alone,
My happiness lies in you alone."

O Lord, you are the center of my life
I will always praise you
I will always serve you
I will always keep you in my sight

I will bless you, Lord, you give me counsel,
And even at night direct my heart.
I keep you, Lord, ever in my sight
Since you are at my right I shall stand firm.

O Lord, you are the center of my life
I will always praise you
I will always serve you
I will always keep you in my sight.

And so my heart rejoices, my soul is glad
Even in safety shall my body rest
For you will not leave my soul among the dead,
Nor let your beloved know decay.

O Lord, you are the center of my life,
I will always praise you
I will always serve you
I will always keep you in my sight.

You will show me the path of life,
The fullness of joy in your presence,
At your right hand, at your right hand
Happiness forever.

O Lord, you are the center of my life,
I will always praise you
I will always serve you
I will always keep you in my sight.

http://cnytr.blogspot.com/2004/06/first-there-was-ave-maria-singles.html

1.
Here in this place, new light is streaming,
now is the darkness vanished away.
See, in this space, our fears and our dreamings,
brought here to you in the light of this day.
Gather us in - the lost and forsaken,
gather us in - the blind and the lame.
Call to us now, and we shall awaken,
we shall arise at the sound of our name.

2.
We are the young - our lives are a mystery,
we are the old - who yearn for your face.
We have been sung throughout all of history,
called to be light to the whole human race.
Gather us in - the rich and the haughty,
gather us in - the proud and the strong.
Give us a heart so meek and so lowly,
give us the courage to enter the song.

3.
Here we will take the wine and the water,
here we will take the bread of new birth.
Here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
call us anew to be salt for the earth.
Give us to drink the wine of compassion,
give us to eat the bread that is you.
Nourish us well, and teach us to fashion
lives that are holy and hearts that are true.

4.
Not in the dark of buildings confining,
not in some heaven, light years away,
but here in this place, the new light is shining;
now is the Kingdom, now is the day.
Gather us in - and hold us forever,
gather us in - and make us your own.
Gather us in - all peoples together,
fire of love in our flesh and our bone.

http://rockhay.tripod.com/worship/music/hereinthisplace.htm

As The Deer Pants For The Water
(Hymn)

1. As the deer pants for the water,
so my soul longs after You.
You alone are my heart’s desire
and I long to worship You.
You alone are my strength, my shield,
to You alone may my spirit yield.
You alone are my heart’s desire
and I long to worship You.

2. I want You more than gold or silver,
only You can satisfy.
You alone are the real joy-giver
and the apple of my eye.
You alone are my strength, my shield,
to You alone may my spirit yield.
You alone are my heart’s desire
and I long to worship You.

3. You’re my Friend and You’re my Brother,
even though You are a king.
I love You more than any other,
so much more than anything.
You alone are my strength, my shield,
to You alone may my spirit yield.
You alone are my heart’s desire
and I long to worship You.

Sing to the mountains
sing to the sea
Raise your voices
lift your hearts
This is the day the Lord has made
Let all the earth rejoice

I will give thanks to you my Lord
You have answered my plea
You have saved my soul from death
You are my strength and my song.

Holy holy holy Lord
Heaven and Earth are full of your glory

This is the day the Lord has made
Let us be glad and rejoice
He has turned all death to life
Sing of the glory of God

----

and finally, the one that is bound up with one of my earliest memories, my father holding me and singing into my ears at st. paul's. i didn't know there was an english version.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God,
and his righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you;
allelu, alleluia

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, allelu, alleluia.

Ask and it shall be given unto you,
seek and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you;
alleu, alleluia.

2007-12-31T22:57:00.000-08:00

the windows are glowing pinkly with a snowstorm. the old sense of peace; a true winter's night as i know and have loved. time stands still. something very old, some part of myself that is dear to me, returns to enfold me. what a way to greet the new year!

2007-12-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

i had the most bizarre and cinematic dream.

a girl and a boy had been assigned a month's stay in a historic building.
they sought the address throughout the city and arrived at an old medieval building. it looked like it was falling apart from the outside - vandalized, wood chipping off the gate - and they couldn't figure out how to get in. the guy pried the door open, while the girl rang the buzzer.

an ancient lady brought them in. she kept repeating how it was very dusty, very dusty. the entrance was dim and cobwebby, but she led them up a set of spiral stairs that seemed to get steeper and more ceaseless as they mounted. it was cleaner, whiter and brighter, but dustier. only at long last did they arrive in a semicircular tower.

it was a shrine full of relics. photographs of mothers and babies, icons of mary and jesus. (i even saw in my mind "special effects" of some of the madonna and child paintings inscribed on the faded photos.) sealed chests and maybe even a coffin or two. the girl fingered a black lace corset and teased that it was very suggestive, but the ancient lady hushed her. she explained that it was a ritualistic dress, and the chamber was a room for childbearing. she then recalled the gruesome tale of the many mothers who had abided here, and their unfortunate deaths.

would the girl really stay? it was a few months' binding contract, but though they had been assigned the room she could choose to leave now before she signed. the girl was resolute: "yes, she would stay."
was she sure? none... of the mothers had survived childbirth, the ancient lady threatened ominously... none but herself.
but the girl was sure - she would bring her child to fruit in that gleaming white chamber.

the months passed and the ancient lady took care of her, surly and crossly. one day she realized that she had forgotten to slip a jade ring on the girl's fingers.....

*cues suspenseful music*

and there i woke up. i never found out what the girl's fate was

2007-11-23T16:21:00.001-08:00

there's a difference between shyness and quietness. shyness is being afraid of saying what you'd like to say. quietness is reserve... actually not wanting to talk about certain things, keeping developing thoughts to yourself. not wanting people to know everything about you.

i was painfully shy a few years ago; i've grown more or less out of that (i have phases too) but i've discovered that i'm still reserved. my tendency to be quiet is innate.

(then there's also pride - not wanting to ask people for help or advice, not wanting to be pitied... i have a lot of that too.)

2007-11-23T16:20:00.002-08:00

I believe there are certain landscapes - usually the landscapes you grow up in - that you grow attached to, and have a personal meaning for you. Although you may visit many beautiful places, they never "mean" as much to you as your "internal landscape." The sight of them makes you homesick.

For example, I had a roommate who grew up in Romania and loved the mountains. We went to the Alps almost every weekend. Having grown on relatively flat terrain in southwestern ontario, i think mountains are beautiful but i don't care for them as much as she did. i can live without them, and don't really get excited when i see them on the horizon.

my own is the snow on barren maple trees and dark pines.

2007-11-23T16:20:00.001-08:00

Some of us can recall the exact time in which we reached certain
milestones on life's road--the wonderful hour when we passed from
childhood to girlhood--the enchanted, beautiful--or perhaps the
shattering and horrible--hour when girlhood was suddenly womanhood--
the chilling hour when we faced the fact that youth was definitely
behind us--the peaceful, sorrowful hour of the realization of age.
Emily Starr never forgot the night when she passed the first
milestone, and left childhood behind her for ever.

-- ch. 3 - In the Watches of the Night, Emily Climbs

Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my
character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that
it's what it should be. It's full of flaws."

-- An Interlude, ch. xix, Anne of the Island

For years and years, ever since I was around 10 years old (incidentally when I began reading Anne) and first defined certain ambitions and desires, I have felt like I was stationary. Externally life changed: I learned about different subjects, had sufferings and joys, lived in different places, but I still felt like I was essentially the same person. I felt very much like I was a child, idealistic about what I wanted to do and about people and relationships. The intensity of emotions - the selfish wanting of something very badly, and the inevitable disappointment - caused me grief, but it was the only way I knew how to live. The grief would repair itself after a good cry. It was a volatile, but (let us daresay with the snide condescension of the old and wise) somehow very secure world.

Unlike Emily to whom life changed overnight, I can't put my finger on what when or how it vanished, but recently i've come to realize: I am an adult now. The shelter has dispersed somehow; this is life, this is the real deal.

(of course, the intensity of realism can be just a phase too...)

I think the changes show up mainly in how I deal with people. For one thing, I find that I judge people more quickly; not negatively, but more decisively. I can tell if I'll get along with someone shortly after I meet them: if we have some common ground to begin with or not. I guess that's what "Miss Stacy" means by "our characters being formed." And most surprisingly, I find that I can be civil and friendly to people I don't like or respect. Hypocrisy for the society's sake...

It awes and distresses me at the same time: this ability to hide and pretend. I used to sulk for days after I'd get in a fight with someone; and make-up dramatically but thoroughly; now I pretend nothing has happened fifteen minutes later and I try to forget. I used to tell people I was angry with them right out, similarly I always made a point to earnestly tell the people I really loved how much I appreciate them, now I'm afraid of doing either. I make the same small talk with my closest friends as with complete strangers, and complain about the weather just because every else is doing it. It's amazing what we give up for the sake of making life seem like it's running smoothly. I don't know if it's a good thing.

2007-11-23T16:18:00.001-08:00

life vs. school

somehow, maybe ironically since school is supposed to educate children to become functioning adults, it's always seemed to me like there is a rivalry between real-life and school. some people hate school (because it's time consuming, expensive, or seemingly irrelevant to the "real world") and can't wait to be done with it. others love learning (or the nice little bubble of living as an idealistic student and not having to worry about the reality.) plus, there's the stereotype that the little nerd with big glasses studies all the time and has "no life."

do you like school better, or life better? which do you find easier?
are school and life polar opposites?
in your experience, are people who are good at school not necessarily good at life?
can you be good at both school and "life"?
is there anything wrong with loving school?

---

i've always been more or less your stereotypical nerd, and given the choice between studying or going out the night before a test, i'm most certain that the guilt and perfectionism in me would make me study. i've always seen myself as being "good at school" but socially awkward/not so good at life. (i'm sure there are other bookworms on the forum who can relate.) i feel alive at school... i feel like i'm using my brain... in a way i never feel when i'm working full time and dealing with the mundane tasks of everyday life.

that's why my world falls apart when i do badly at school. even though they say "grades don't mean anything", i still feel betrayed because i loved it, and despairing because if i'm not good at school, and life was always inferior to school, then... everything sucks. most of my friends who don't do as well in school as they'd like to, shrug it off by being indifferent and counting the days til they graduate. but if i don't really anticipate real life with glee, what can i do?

i guess i'm just wondering why i (and most people) treat real life and school as two completely different experiences.

2007-11-23T16:15:00.001-08:00

i think i've had many defining moments, in different respect.

the moment i read (and began to love) anne of green gables was one of the most defining. i learned to love to read (which is something that still brings me immense pleasure), and anne strongly influenced my viewpoint on life. i pretty much became who i was (internally) in the course of my obsession with aogg.

next to that, my relationship with my ex-boyfriend is pretty defining. i grew emotionally in ways i'll always refer back to.

my high school years were very defining in that, in retrospect, they were a period when i learned to love learning. it's a side of myself i've discovered, and will revisit time and again. i grew mentally.

in a different way, my current university years are again defining because i'm learning in "baptism by fire" to be independent and to be socially initiated. i figured things out for myself. i feel old.

2007-11-23T16:14:00.001-08:00

Architecture used to be the means of mass communication before the printing press was invented. (According to Victor Hugo anyways, who says that books have killed architecture.) eg. if you were a roman emperor, you'd build a triumphal arch with engravings of your battles to tell your citizens you won, as opposed to publishing it in the newspaper. if you were a priest you'd carve biblical scenes on your churches because people couldn't read the stories themselves. Once printing came around, literacy increased.

One can similarly say that the internet has usurped the utility of books, but if there is a parallel the new medium should also entail a new literacy - just as people learned to read words as opposed to pictures when books came around, with the internet people are learning to read multimedia (photos, blogs, videos) and often multiple authorships.

So if magazines are replaced, I don't think it's being replaced by publishing the same content in digital format, but by collaborative sites like youtube or blogs or even this forum. Blogs are a sort of alternative magazine because they're the voice of anyone, not necessarily a trained journalist. Blogs and forums and message boards are also interactive and allow discussion.

We've actually created a new cultural need: not the need magazines address, which is that of distributing "official" information (most magazines and newspapers have a political bias) for individual awareness and reflection, but the opportunity to publish individual thoughts and creative ideas. Everyone has a say on the internet. The internet is a great place for alternative culture and small amateur independent operations to start up (and grow big if that's where their ambitions lie.)

That shouldn't replace getting your information from official news sources or professional articles. It's a different category of "source." The stuff you read on the internet is in a way not as credible as an official news sources, in other ways more "true" because it lacks a single bias (you'll have multiple biased opinions instead) and it's representative of what real people think.

2007-11-23T16:13:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about this a lot, lately.

This may sound misanthropic, but it seems to me that sometimes people tend to take advantage of the young and inexperienced.

I can think of two specific instances where this happens:

1) In a retail/public service situation, where the service staff brush you off or ignore you in preference for clients who are older in age. Whereas, if you were accompanied by a parent, they would serve you politely.

2) In a more "personal" relationship; eg. at work, school, home, where authority figures (your boss, your professor) criticize in a way that is emotionally hurtful. For instance, one of the greatest and most contradictory insults i've received from an employer was "you should have had the confidence to do this without consulting me," when clearly his expertise was necessary; and if i hadn't asked he would have equally blamed me for not asking and clarifying. Professors (and some parents i know of) bully their subjects by telling them they are inferior to other students, and by playing favourites.

Of course it's a competitive world of the survival-of-the-fittest. (the fact that I work/study in a field full of arrogant people who never like to admit they're wrong doesn't help.) so how do you survive?

2007-11-23T16:12:00.001-08:00

"ghost stories are only good when they're first hand." fortunately i've never had a first-hand experience, but i'll try to recount all the people i've met who have claimed to have some supernatural occurence in their lives.

scary story #1
when they moved into a house in halifax, my fourth grade teacher had three rambunctious kids under the age of ten. she would constantly hear her kids making noises upstairs. "put the soccer ball away, don't play that indoors" she'd tell them; even into the middle of the night she scream at them to stop running around. her kids always denied that they were running or playing sports inside the house. nevertheless she never failed to hear someone running around. she couldn't help but think that her children were not telling her the truth.

some years later, plumbing work had to be done in the basement and the plumbers ripped apart the floor. there was no tell-tale heart, but they did find a tiny baby's shoe. my teacher recalled that she had seen a similar shoe in the attic. she put them together: undoubtedly the one from the attic was the right foot, and the one in the basement the left of the same pair of shoes. the sound of footsteps stopped.

scary story #2
or rather, potentially spooky story, along the same theme of hidden objects. Smiley because a friend of mine moved into a house in toronto, where there existed a large, heavy concrete and metal safe - probably dating from the 1800s. it was far too heavy for the movers to move out of the house, too heavy to even move out downstairs. her father had this manic idea that as a piece of antique, something inside must be immensely worthwhile. he tried to crack the code, but in vain. so he took to drilling through the vault. he acquired some sort of drill and began to chip away at the safe. the safe was (probably part of a bank) and compartmentalized into little drawers. he filed away at it until midnight and beyond, and made it through 5 or 6 rows of drawers. they were ALL empty. it was very disappointing.

more importantly, he had made a *huge* mess on the floor. the safe, minus its drawer-entrappings, was still too heavy to move downstairs. what could they do with a half-broken vault? they built a wall around it, hiding the box inside a wall.

you can only imagine what someone tearing down the wall in the next home-renovation project might think: mysterious antique box, sealed inside a wall... what lies inside? Wink they've since sold the house, with the secret untold.

scary story #3
i once worked at a community centre with a woman named susan. she's a native american, but has fair skin and hair, much to the joy of her mother who was happy her daughter could pass herself off as white. but though susan didn't look aboriginal, she certainly inherited some traits from her nature-attuned ancestors: for one thing, she could divine water. divining is one of the techniques that marvel me: how only certain people, holding a forked twig, can tell where water is to be found in the ground suitable for making a well, according to whether the twig is magically drawn towards the ground or not. she also had another spiritual connection: very soon after her marriage she moved into a house with dark oak cabinets. it was an old house; and she couldn't help but see faces on the cabinetry. everyone else merely saw the grain of the wood. it was only sometime later that she discovered the house had been used for the underground railway smuggling black slaves out of the u.s. to freedom in canada; and somehow susan knew that the faces she had seen were... you guessed it... faces of the slaves.

*flesh creeps.*

2007-10-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

i was away on the mediterranean seaside for the weekend, which was very good. today was a sort of extended weekend because we didn't have classes. my friend and i decided to walk the appian way, an ancient roman road strewn with tombs and old ruins. as we walked along it i realized i had read about it in a novel, long ago. the novel was called "quo vadis", and i read it because l. m. montgomery had written about it in her journals. in the novel, st. peter runs away from rome to avoid the fate of many early christians - death - , and is confronted by a vision of jesus asking reproachfully, "quo vadis (where are you going?)". a love story involving an arrogant roman falling in love with an early christian girl also stems from the story. it was a very memorable book, and ever i experience ultimate joy in finding the places i found in literary imagination.

2007-07-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

HP7 "i loved it... thought she did an excellent job."

i really marvel at how jkr played on our suspense.
-> from the epilogue (with its quote about death) the question is: who's going to die? which of harry's friends will live on, only in memory?
-> from the first page: you wonder, is snape bad, is snape bad? was i wrong? and you don't find out til the very end.
-> the seven potters - so fearful one of the kids will die
-> ron leaving; i didn't think the trio would be parted... ok and i KEPT fearing ron/hermione would die; SO happy when he came back. one of my fav. parts
-> ron/hermione disappearing at the end.... i was hovering between that they were dead / had gone off to snog.... love that they thought of the chamber of secrets

things i loved:
- that harry didn't "do it all alone" - ron, hermione and neville all got to kill a horcrux (and neville.. nagini)... that was really my favourite detail of all
- neville - love how he finally came into his own once he was out of harry's shadow... i would LOVE a book/fanfic on neville's year at hogwarts.
- elf magic / goblin magic... so intriguing, hope there's something on that in the encyclopedia/ on mugglenet
- lily/snape of course
- what a perfect atmosphere for harry to revisit his childhood home at christmas eve... calm but... full of expectancy
- dobby and kreacher... (did i mention his steak pies sound good?)

things i never expected:
- that dumbledore had such a past; that rita skeeter would be agog to unearth it (love jkr for satirising all the publicity that goes with a great person's death). i knew he'd play a role but i never expected a should-harry-trust-dumbledore internal conflict... very complex, very well done.
- that the barman of hogsmeade and dumbledore had a connection - loved that
- that snape'd be headmaster - always thought it would be mcgonagall
- xenophilius lovegood being such a .... hypocrite (understandable, fatherly love but)
- kreacher - never thought he would turn good!
- always wondered where harry/james' invisibility cloak came from, love that there's a backstory
- lupin/tonks having a kid

things that made me laugh:
- dudley's belated "affection."; the wizards' confushion. ch.2 is hilarious!
- harry's warning krum off ginny "she's seeing someone. big bloke, don't wanna mess with him."
- when hermione convinces harry they're coming for sure; her ultra preparedness for their journey - betwitching her parents, all the books, all the pre-reading... oh hermione... love her love her
- aunt muriel... awful but humourous, oh people like her exist!
- releasing and flying off on the gringotts dragon... typical harry unintentionallly glorious departure

didn't like:
- ginny's minimal involvement (aka minimal snogging... but really)... i just wish she had a larger role; i guess keeping her apart from all the action makes her seem more normal and pure and good.
- lily/snape. ... love/hated it.... as in.... now i wonder what attracted lily to james potter.... what does petunia keep wanting to say to harry anyways? that snape loved lily?

2007-06-30T13:43:00.001-07:00

am reading Jung right now who writes that throughout human history people in various cultures have been intuitively aware of a spiritual dimension in themselves... hence the similarities of rituals and symbols and symbolic hero figures in various religions...

so the question of (or problems criticized regarding) christianity aside, humans seem to have a tendency to worship something. the earth, their own human ability, a tree in their backyard that they call sacred, stars, messages in their dreams... bizarre in prosaic terms but not an invalid feeling... "everyone" at some point makes a "leap of faith" about their existence and the nature of the universe, believe something will bring them goodness and joy, believe somethings are immoral. in other words, "religious feelings" (not necessarily affiliated with any organized religion) seem to be part of human nature.

Mark Twain writes:
"Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane -- like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell -- mouths mercy and invented hell -- mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!...” -- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

this seems to be the jist of twain's quote, as i understand it:
christianity is irrational because God, who is professedly omnibenevolent, created evil and lets us suffer. it is hypocritical of him to do this, and still expect us to worship him.

we all know from experience that we suffer, that there is (some amount of) good and evil in the world. that's a fact from which we can start. a world of pure goodness is not something we are familiar with, in other words only a fantasy to our knowledge at this point. idle to wonder why God didn't create a perfect world (eden / heaven) when we have no idea what a perfect world constitutes.

so we suffer and we have moments of surpreme joy. what do we make of it?
- we can believe that the suffering is meaningless and vain. in which case what do you live for? if you live for the moments of joy then you do believe in joy or pursuing joy (which is good... or "God")... if you live in pain and continue in a downward spiral of pain then... good luck to you, there's no exit, unless you kill yourself and die
- or, we can believe that there is goodness and happiness (God or heavenly state) we can strive towards, and the bad stuff will bring about some goodness (whether by a pattern of cause and effect or fate if you will, or just by making other things seem better by comparison)

twain's saying that "god made us" doesn't make sense, so i'm basically flipping the equation around and saying "we made god" because we seem to need to.

of course that doesn't answer the question of why is it in our nature to need to "have a God" (or have a spiritual side). no more than it answers the question of "if God made us, why did he make us?"

well what came first, the chicken or the egg? i dunno, but it still seems to me like there IS a chicken and an egg.

2007-05-21T16:29:00.000-07:00

Are there certain topics that are so close to your heart, that you can't bear to talk about them with other people? Or are you always open about sharing your feelings and favourite things?

----

For example, sometimes I have a hard time discussing books I really, really love with those who don't share the feeling. I'm lucky to have a roommate who is an avid reader, but our literary preferences vary - I adore classics, modern and historical, while she tends towards miscellaneous contemporary authors. But because it's rare to meet a person who loves reading with passion, I rave about what I'm reading to her. I also get very excited when the reading lists come out for next semester, because they're always filled with classic texts (leg. homer's odyssey, thomas moore's utopia) that I've always wanted to read. She obviously doesn't have the same taste, so once she said sarcastically "I'm glad it makes you so happy." "The sarcasm rather hurt - I must've been too eager for sympathy.

Once we chanced to talk of AoGG and I mentioned that they were my all-time favourites. But I couldn't bear to talk about it - of course my friend said that she liked the first few books and could care less about the rest of the Anne series, it was a perfect fairytale storyline. Fair enough - but somehow it always hurts more when a good friend doesn't understand why you love something so deeply, and knowing that I didn't dare probe into AoGG and lay bare my heart.

(But should I have? Shouldn't my love of something be strong enough so that I can stand up for it in a disagreement?)

Or even, when I lent another friend one of Charles Dickens' books. I love Dickens - I love the way he writes and his sense of humour. But my friend made fun of it after he finished it, and I felt like my love for it was tarnished.

Tonight we had a dinner party and I was telling an endearing childhood memory about my grandmother and how she reacted to a certain situation. My friends, whose family background must've been a bit different from mine, thought the way she behaved would've been scarring to a child. But I wasn't scarred, I was proud of my grandmother for what she did, and it... hurts to be misunderstood.

---

Sometimes I hate conversation because it makes you so vulnerable. I wonder if it's worth sharing favourite things and run the risk of their being mocked, or if it's better to "keep them in your heart, where they remain beautiful"

2006-09-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

i've woven many dreams as a child and i will never stop weaving them. they've changed as i grew up. not to what someone tells me they should be, but rather, they've changed with me... and in the sum of things grown bigger, to include new interests and loves.

i am (or was) very happy but it never feels like the happiness stays. i find myself at crossroads all the time, and sometimes i get very tired at how much effort it takes to stay happy... and i wonder if i'm really happy. then, i'm filled with nostalgia for childhood days when i was happier in some ways than i am now, and less happy in other ways.

i don't have what i wanted, or thought i wanted as a child. i do have some things i didn't ask for, and like. there are still a lot of things i am unsatisfied with, but haven't ceased to hope for.

would i go back if i could? that's a scary question. there are things that i wished had happened differently. but i wouldn't want to give up the good things that have happened since, if i turn back time for a couple of years.

i think what i want most is ... to know what life will be like. to know. who i'm going to marry, where i will work, what my kids will be like. the security of knowledge would be such a reassurance, as in, 'i'll never have to worry about it anymore.' but alas, i know i can't know what life holds - and that's what makes living interesting.

2006-08-31T11:39:00.000-07:00

and the grand european tour encore, this time i go on my own, without knowing a soul...

up up and away.... the first lap of the journey

after packing to my favourite music of the season, bishop allen "but i know he means... if you feel like dancing, dance with me" and lingering msn goodbyes we drive to the airport and find the airline queue easily, for these departures and arrivals have now become routine. i didn't get a window seat, but when the man at the window left for the toilet my irish neighbour and i eagerly overtook his vacant seat, pressing our faces agains the small pane to see the lights of the city beneaht a perfectly clear sky. we traced the coastline marking our final farewells to north america. i am delighted when the window seat passenger offers me his seat, he relishing the extra aisle space on the crammed seats of a cheap flight, i adoring how i could lean agains the window and carve out my own space in a miserably un-private setting.

four flight transfers gave me ample time to read Ayn Rand's very engrossing Atlas Shrugged. i love Rand's striking characterization and clear writing.

Helsinki (helsingfors)

finally i arrive in helsinki, unprepared and without an address! (i will never do that again. i thought i was more prudent than that, but i get lazier every time.) ever frustrated at the layouts of medieval cities, i wandered east, west, south, south-east, back and again before finding the hostel. i was grateful for the late sunset as 8pm faded into 10pm and i felt no qualms wandering unknown streets. (item: i have never seen a city so clean, so tramp-free, so .... non-sketchy. strong social-safety net, i suppose.)

i am struck by how Finland closely finland resembles Canada - a pine grove we hiked through was 'the haunted wood,' glittering lakes fringed with long thrushes could easily be the 'lake of shining waters.' it's also very flat, which looks just like ontario or PEI to me. i laugh at myself for having gone halfway across the globe to a place that looks 'just like home.'

i was hopelessly bewildered by the street signs in finnish and swedish, and didn't pick up a word except 'yes, no, and thank you.' i was also bewildered by why the signs all had different animals on them, and how they were held by turtles

the helsinki harbour amazes me with its plethora of all kinds of ship - tiny little wooden boats to the zoo, sailboats that looked like a piece out of LMM's victorian days, and large cruise liners that could very well be a city in itself, or a skyscraper turned sideways.

=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Suomenlinna.jpg/798px-Suomenlinna.jpg>Suomenlinna was one of my favourite places and i went there again and again, to lie on the rock beach, to explore the old fortresses and feel like i'm in a page of lord of the rings. my friend and i painted daydreams about living there - for people really reside on the chain of islands, amidst a historical sea-fortress from the 12th century.

Magnum 'Strawberry White' ice cream is the most delicious things i ever tasted. like a hagen daaz with white chocolate coating and strawberry ice cream inside!

i was elated to learn that helsinki's night-of-the-arts occurred during my stay - i had loved paris' nuit blanche, an all night wander the streets everything's open museums are free night. but alas - it fell on the night after we were all too tired to do much. the next day i tried to take a train trip to neighbouring Turku with a friend, but couldn't afford the double price because student discounts only applied to Finnish students.

the wheels of the bus go round and round and round... the second lap of the journey

i flew to london and took the bus to amsterdam. word of advice from a seasoned traveller should you ever take a long bus trip: put your hand luggage on the seat next to you! i didn't and someone chose to sit next to me, even though there were plenty of other empty seats. i was miserable because i couldn't stretch out over the two seats and sleep.

we crossed the border at Dover - the white cliffs of dover i had always longed to see ever since banished King Lear roamed them in storm and insanity.

the tunnel under the english channel was very interesting - the bus boarded a train which took us through the tunnel. talk about boxes in boxes! i'm glad i'm not space-claustrophobic.

i had a most interesting conversation with the american girl in front of me, re: her efforts (and hence her reason in europe) to help victims of the sex trade in Muldova. her stories were quite awe-striking (i coined that phrase - it's awe-inspiring except it's not inspiring, just awful, but fills you with a sort of sinking appreciation for how good you have it.) i learned a lot, and i hope she publishes her findings.

i like bus rides better than plane rides because you meet people. and see places. we went through lille, antwerp, rotterdam and den haag. i worked the designs for a building in lille last year. i have romantic notions of antwerp based on a ww2 book i read in my bookworm past. rotterdam and den haag have always been in magazines i perused at school. it was good to at least have 'been there.'

Amsterdam

there are many ways to explore a city. you can get yourself a guidebook or a map of attractions, you can research (aka google) all the things you want to see, or you can let your instincts guide you and form raw perceptions of a place. given 3 days (and sheer laziness to plan aforehand!), i took the last route and decided to 'get to know the city' for myself.

i don't know how well i got acquainted with amsterdam, but i liked it instinctively. one of my first thoughts was 'i wouldn't mind living here!' it looks like a city that has been lived in... it's so full of signs of human inhabitation - streetsigns and stairs and balconys and shutters and canopies and potted plants and bikes and boats... what bliss it would be to have a canal at your doorstep! it's densely populated but 'human' in scale... the dimensions of the streets and buildings are 'just right,' not 'too big' or 'too small.'

it rained and poured and had ... hardly a diamond sunburst before it rained some more on my second day. i found myself retracing my footsteps on my first day - it was hard to go very far without being stranded by storm!

the dutch family i stayed with took me on a trip to the lake the day after. i liked that most of my short trip - the countryside is beautiful with gleaming lakes and canals plentiful. we reached marken via a land-bridge with water on both sides, reminiscent of a drive i had in PEI national park two years ago. we had dinner on the opposite side of the lake, and at twilight the water met the sky in one unforgettable hue of dream-blue, one could not tell where the water ended and the sky began. it was such a beautiful image.

ps. the dutch make good peanut butter
pps. put chocolate sprinkles on your breakfast toast and yogourt kids! you won't regret it.

the third lap of the journey

i took what the bus company told me was the last seat on the bus to vienna. i was clever enough to hog the seat beside me with luggage and sweaters. i HAD IT TO MYSELF the whole umpteenth hours of the trip! the bus didn't seem very full. it was uneventful, but i gratefully slept a lot. and arrived in Wien (Vienna), was chagrined to have to wait half a day before the previous tenant returned his keys so i could move into my very sweet dorm room in a sadly sketchy area, and sleep some more. and that's what i've been doing a lot of since: sleeping, after a month of gallivanting. what did i say, i like to hibernate.

2006-08-03T21:57:00.000-07:00

in a listmania these days... as time runs too quickly for narrated thoughts to catch up. here is an update, as it was in demand. :Þ (point form to catch it all loosely, and not to overwrite inappropriately. and, it's much easier to write when one knows there is an audience.... translated, meaning, i wish you guys would comment.)

summer highlights
- end of term movies, cake-baking, barbecue, pool, potlucks, parties, and a moment of realization — staring into the galtditch, feeling spring breezes against our faces — that summer is here!
- more: surprise birthday parties, admission interviews (to think it was only three years ago! what fun to see reflections of ourselves in nervous quirky first-year-to-be's.) sleepover and movie attempts with maryam and jordan
- finally having time to finish reading war and peace!
- travelling between toronto and cambridge with my boss the bee'sknees: catching up with bill and gabe, john armstrong, watching movies (50 first dates) at gabe's and making pancakes
- victoria day fireworks with frances and jordan
- caroline, jordan, maryam, nu-ri, marianna coming to volunteer for pb's art installation. and consequent extreme hyperness recorded in still and video footage. :b. meeting upper-years who i've heard of but never previously seen.
- rainy day candy store expeditions with jordan
- movie premiere with christine, mike, sushi dinner by coincidence with joel and sebas
- liana's birthday @ cuban restaurant, meeting "the class we never see", running into TA christine, and first year
- running into timea on the subway home, maryam on the subway to work
- olympic island festival with mari, sebas, mike, joel, katie, millie
- reunions with urania and stephen @ waterloo campus, resulting in iced cap after bubble tea after italian soda
- west queen west dinner and drinks
- maryam & i competition work-dates-turned-girly-gossiping
- visiting the kids i used to give drawing lessons to, discovering they're OLD (i.e. grade 6, grade 9!) but still as cool and fun as ever. and they still love me, which is all that matters. :)
- joel's birthday party. good music, fun people.
- movie with the ex after x years. (yes, pun intended.) if you ever read this, you're one cool weirdo zombie.
- red tea box and magical park adventures with jordan
- emotional trauma over jo and maria's misadventures, sicknesses
- seeing pko for a moment at my distance ed exam

and that brings me up to date! thank ye all for havin' a hand in making my summer 'speshal'.

2006-07-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

in nostalgia mode....
... i used to have a "best day of the year" record for every year but then college came and every day was such a blast that they became hard to keep track of. i kinda miss that old euphoria.

i like making lists
here are my milestones, as far back as memory lies....

age 9 - playing make-believe games my crush's house, reading and falling in love with literature
age 10 - my first love note.
age 11 - my friend's new years/birthday party, pizza/skating/sleepover
age 12 - my godsisters' visit
age 13 - exploring my best friend's backyard creek and ravine, finally succeeding in hanging her tire swing on a tree.
age 14 - um. scoring a kick@ss school average? learning to love painting, sculpting, writing more than ever before.
age 15 - summer school & new, dear friends thereof.
age 16 - overloading my school schedule? and still getting kick@ss grades somehow. those were the days. late nights on the phone.
age 17 - best day: school club meetings followed by montreal trip and canada day fireworks. also: prom planning, prom dress shopping after cn tower run, reuniting and bonding with an old lost friend.
age 18 - last day all nighter/party/sleepover fest at leadership conference
age 19 - hiking and rockclimbing all around the Gaspesie, almost getting not stranded by the tide thanks to my outdoorsy friend, finding seashells, learning to skip rocks
age 20 - new york, summer, paris ... twas all a blast, i cannot pick. possibly moving in and the first day back at school, seeing everyone again right after new york.

2006-05-07T20:27:00.000-07:00

do you tend to listen to the same songs over and over again?

looking back, there are songs i associate with times and sentimental memories - by virtue of having been excessively played - way back to the embarassing teeny-bopper days.

-----------------
in reverse chronological order

currently
now at last - feist what makes winter lonely... now at last i know
hide and seek - imogen heap crop circles in the carpet sinking feeling
marching bands of manhattan - death cab for cutie if I could open my arms and span the length of the isle of Manhattan

sept-dec 2005 [in paris]
such great heights - iron and wine everything looks perfect from far away... come down now they'll say
magic hour - the fruit bats and little stars are cars at turnpike gates
all i ask of you - phantom of the opera say you'll share with me one love one lifetime, say the words and i will follow you

summer 2005 [at school]
new slang - the shins i was happier then with no mind set
here i dreamt i was an architect - the decemberists i built this balustrade to keep you home, to keep you safe

jan-april 2005 [in new york]
piazza new york catcher - belle and sebastian life outside the diamond is a wrench
lovefool - the cardigans romeo and juliet soundtrack mama tells me i shouldn't bother that i ought just stick to another

sept-dec 2004 [at school]
beauty queen - tori amos you showed me the meadow and milkwood and silkwood and you would if i would but you never will
moon river - watched too many audrey hepburn movies two drifters off to see the world there's such a lot of world to see
someday we'll know - switchfoot/mandy moore someday we'll know why samson loved delilah, one day i'll go dancing on the moon

summer 2004
only hope - switchfoot/mandy moore sing to me the song of the stars, of your galaxies dancing and laughing and laughing again
a world without you - emma bunton
i hate everything about you - three days grace

summer 2003 (after high school graduation)
time of your life - green day so take the photographs and still frames in your mind
to where you are - josh groban are you gently sleeping here inside my dream
love letter to myself - faye wong
melodies of life - and who'll the echoes of stories never told

OAC (2002- 2003)
the road to mandalay - robbie williams everything i touched was golden everything thing i loved got broken on the road to mandalay
god put a smile on your face - coldplay don't ever say you're on your way down when god gave you style and gave you grace

gr. 12 summer 2002
you belong to me - jason wade fly the ocean in a silver plane see the jungle when it's wet with rain just remember til you're home again you belong to me

gr. 12 (2001-2002)
sleepwalker - wallflowers let me in let me drown or learn how to swim just don't leave me at the window
wherever you will go - the calling when i'm gone you'll need love to light the shadows on your face

gr. 11 summer 2001
something like you - nsync but just like grains of sand love slipped through my fingers
american pie? - madonna /don maclean - and in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.

gr. 11 2000-2001
oxygen - spice girls you're the breath that i take you're the smile on my face
i don't know you anymore - savage garden we can go sit on your back porch talk about anything it doesn't matter, i'll be courageous if you can pretend that you've forgiven me

gr. 10 summer 2000
for you i will - monica if there is a mountain to move i will move that mountain for you
everything i do i do it for you - brandy look into your eyes you will see what you mean to me

gr. 10 1999-2000
i turn to you - christina aguilera for the arms to be my shelter through all the rain for truth that will never change
kiss me - sixpence none the richer Swing, swing, swing the spinning step you wear those shoes and I will wear that dress

gr. 9 98-99
i'm sensitive - jewel but maybe if we are surrounded by beauty someday we will become what we see
pigeons and crumbs - natalie imbruglia where did it go the bluebird i should follow
left of the middle - natalie imbruglia chasing the same lines over the old ground

2006-02-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

i sang happy birthday along with the rest of my class to a friend at midnight, had cookies, fell asleep, and got back from chicago in the wee sma's.

went back to my apartment, drank leftover water and read a little, and fell asleep.

woke up at 10am and phoned my mom to leave her a message, so she came to drive me home for reading week. we went out for lunch, and chatted all the drive home so it didn't seem long at all.

i unpacked and started doing laundry, and am stressed catching up on unopened mail and MUCH studying that i am not up-to-schedule for at all, at almost 11pm. ARGHHH!

2006-01-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

i went home last night, so i woke up in my "east gable room" (it really is!) at my parents' house. i had fallen asleep reading The Blue Castle, and my mom came in to tell me it was snowstorming. the white dusting outside my window was the perfect excuse to sleep in: snow always makes your bed seem much cosier. :]

even when i was awake, i decided merely to grab Christmas with Anne from my bedside bookshelf and stayed cuddled with short stories for a good two hours.

then i went downtown to get art supplies and take photos of Toronto in the area around Kensington Market to the Fashion District. i got ideas for what i could do my assignment on, and as a reward, i went shoe-shopping. :]

lunch was ready when i came home, after which i went to bulk barn and got ingredients for making a hot chocolate mix. bulk barn is always so much fun to go to, with all its baking goods and snacking goods and spices.... being in there makes you want to bake, eat, verily like a kid in a candy store.

we drove then to my friends' house in guelph, had dinner and fondue and hilarious conversation, and came back here to my university just now.

2006-01-06T11:56:00.000-08:00

i wore a pretty dress i found in my mommy's closet today. it's a white, striped sheer shirt... like a long shirt/jacket, but flares at the end and goes past your butt to become a dress. it has buttons along the front, a shirt collar, and a thin sash at the waist. it's SO pretty! i ripped a few stitches trying to get into it, though... cause apparently my mom used to be skinnier than me! she made it for herself when she was in her teens or twenties. =)

i had a lecture and group meeting this morning.

i went to an all school meeting at lunch, where there was lots of exciting news. at the end of the meeting, a prof whose view of me (or lack thereof?) has always ressted somewhat uneasily on my mind, handed me a packet. apparently i'm a ta for his class.

i responded to a few crucial emails and found that my tuition did go through.

then i researched while chatting with my friend and group partner, i finished reading Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, a book for this semester (of which the story is alluded to in a minor description in one of my favourite books!) and went to my friend's house for chocolate fondue. i met the new exchange student from australia, we went grocery shopping squawking like a crowd of idiots, i sliced bananas and slit them just so that i left all the banana peel intact, so it still looked like a regular bunch of bananas, but they were all empty! it was fun. and chocolate fondue, melted over a homemade stand of tin can and candles, was most delicious. biggrin.gif

2005-12-19T11:55:00.000-08:00

This weekend was good as well. It's my roommate's last weekend in Paris. We decided to go to the Catacombes, underground tunnels where skeletons were transferred from overflowing Paris cemetaries in the 17th (or 18th, or so) century. It was creepy, and astounding.

We were invited to dinner that evening at my friend's grandmother's, so we went to a flower shop to pick out beautiful wine-red flowers for a bouquet. We also got wine, bread, and cake, and walked in carolling "We Three Kings" since we were bearing gifts. Dinner was lovely with lobster and a russian salad decorated with pansies. I learned that night that pansies were edible, and ate many of them just because it was so much fun to eat a pretty flower! The feast was complimented by six 20 year olds' profound discussions on growing up and the loss of innocence and trust, physical blindness and deafness and how we would cope were we to find ourselves in such a scenario....

The next day, we slept in and left for Musée d'Orsay after long breakfast chats on physical attraction vs. personality. On our way, we walked through Tuileries, a botanical garden on old palace grounds beside the Louvre, where we bought delicious chestnut crepes to snack on. We crossed a very pretty double-levelled bridge across the scene to the museum, where many, many impressionist works are kept. Afterwards, I went to an art and design bookstore and spent hours looking through books unwearyingly. My roommate had to drag me away for dinner.

We went home to watch a surprisingly hilarious French-Canadian movie (La Grande Seduction). The power went out at midnight, so on a whim my roommate decided we should go down to the storage rooms (called the "caves") in our apartment building's basement. It's a really old building, so the caves look like a medieval dungeon, with a spiral stone staircasse down, cobwebs and exposed wooden beams, and the antique keys to open the weathered barn-wood doors. (i'll post pictures). I was quite thoroughly frightened, so to counterbalance that, we stayed up until 3am drinking tea, reminiscing and playing cheesy spice girls music! it was fun but... i'm sleepy.

inbetween all of that, i tried to make progress on reading Darwin's Origin of Species, and i love it....

2005-12-15T14:27:00.000-08:00

Year-in-Review

January counted down to 2005 stranded in the subway en route to downtown Toronto... street performers everywhere were donating their proceeds to tsunami relief. flew by myself for the first time (after a whole day of flight delays... cheap airline tickets i.e. jetsgo), to work as an intern in new york (on 5th ave. and broadway!), spending my exciting month exploring manhattan and brooklyn for the first time (boxing day sales everywhere, snowstorms shutting down the whole city, fries store, the strand, MoMa museum free on fridays)

February discovered a fun museum to volunteer for, where the combination of nice people/ fun work ended up as one of my favourite memories of new york. met the project manager of the architect whose lifework inspired me to study architecture. friend flew down for surprise visit.

March ballet lessons in old church in Gramercy, and got put back on my original project at work alongside the new, less-exciting one. got to work directly with my original "boss", an inspiring, eager mentor.

April left new york with memories of strudels, sunny central park, a beautiful new camera, and giddy excitement a coworker who gave me contacts for future work with famous architects.

May back at school with the semester starting in full swing - ecstatic reunions, lovely new roommate, field trips galore up north and to the states in the first week, endless projects requiring lots of all nighters, fun nights of making chocolate fondue with tealights inbetween

June camping / pavilion building trip in northern ontario, marshmallows roasted over cedarwood bonfires, muhitoes and more alcohol and stars and mosquitoes and citronella candles; downtown job interview day after an all-nighter with giddy shopping/movie-ing planned for afterwards

July mailed off portfolios for internship hunt far and wide around the world. play rehearsals, play props, play production of Shakespeare Abridged. final project deadlines did not bode well. harry potter & HBP book-on-tape keeps me awake for all-nighters. internship hunt got more and more pressing, with job possibilities in tokyo, holland, paris, germany.

August where did the summer go? dinner with profs, end-of-term barbecues, talent shows, parties, movie nights, time to sit around and watch honours thesis presentations, group study sessions, 10 hour exams. reluctant to move home and leave my beautiful summer term behind. days at home to read and reunite with old friends.

September Paris bound. pretty apartment with classmates; gorgeous rooftop views and many movies to watch. wine and baguette and cheese picnics in parks and at the Seine. works for high-end design architect in outskirts of Paris; work is frustrating. draws at the Louvre.

October nuit blanche - all nighter of events throughout Paris; stayed up to see sunrise before the Eiffel Tower. work gets more frustrating - furniture design. Musee Rodin (where the sculpture the Thinker is) is so beautiful, and makes me finally start drawing carefully again. friends visit from London; we go to Versailles. roommate and I go to Monet's garden

November two holidays, work slows down. finally ends work at one agence and starts at another. cake from a certain bakery is yummy. goes to boss's lecture at a certain architectural association. first snowfall in Paris coincides with snowstorm in Canada. fun weekend when friends visit from Rome, more fun when we meet for dinner with new friends from la sorbonne.

December working in the shadow of the Notre Dame makes me feel alive. fun lunch-hours walking in the footsteps of Cosette in Les Mis, or prowling through designer stores. Musee Picasso is inspiring. friend's uncle gives me voice lessons, which is wonderfully enlightening. lots of xmas shopping, souvenirs, and lots more of Paris still to see, and time is running out ... tick tock tick tock!

2005-12-11T11:54:00.000-08:00

i love it when little beautiful moments make a good day even more memorable.

i woke up early, was bored because my roommates were still sleeping in, so i went to grocery shop by myself. it was bright and sunny out and i had a hard time finding a supermarket that was open, but i stumbled across a beautiful home furnishings store(Habitat, and i always enjoy looking at home products and just daydreaming of what i could have in a future "dream home." then, i bought cheese pitas and hummus that were a little too expensive, but very good. i went home to wake up my roommates and one of them came with me to see a museum called Villa Savoye. i was afraid we would get there late, but we made it just in time (an hour before it closed) and it was the perfect time to see it, because the view from the windows at sunset was so beautiful. the fall colours (yes, the trees are still red and gold in france) and a hazy silver moon hanging in the sky were really memorable. then, we went to Lafayette to look at expensive clothes. i didn't buy anything there, but i bought fabric and ribbon from the fabric store close by, which i'll use to make teddy bears. when we came home, my other roommate had a friend over for dinner. i decided to clean our messy apartment while they cooked, and found christmas candles in the process, so we lighted those for dinner. we had a good dinner together of steak and pasta, baguette, cheese, chocolate, oranges... and we watched Chicago afterwards, which is such a fun movie it put me in a happy, chill, dancy mood. smile.gif

2005-06-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Patience is a virtue

i just don't know where's the balance between patience and proactive-ness.

of course, then there's prayer and faith which involves you doing something to deserve whatever you're praying for. i like that better :)

2005-06-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of a moment - sitting on the long bench by the courtyard windows in studio, with Caroline and Jordan. Talking about God. I told them I was Catholic - somehow an unknown fact, I have never tried to hide it. That belief is a fundamental part of myself. I have never seriously questioned it - "but you're good at ico." Caroline and Jordan decreed.

Why is it that some think philosophy excludes faith? I do not try to talk about religion when it is held scantly, in mockery - as if jesting about inherent contradictions in religious institutions is quintessential to youth. Refuting tradition does not make you more intelligent. Faith is not mindless - it is not blind, those who have built churches have put much thought into the process. One does not necessarily see more clearly in an aetheistic world.

I'd like to fight the other misconception that catholicism is strict. Never has religion been forced upon me - few catholics I know hold God and Jesus in the same reverential awe Christian praise groups seem to have. In elementary school, we wrote journal entries about conceptions of heaven and hell - that liberality to religion is something I have always taken for granted. I have rarely taken the Bible verbatim for answers to theological questions - which is why, I have issues with doctrines where "Jesus said 'I am the only way to God' hence all who do not bear the name "christian" will be eternally damned." The Bible is a repository of stories from which morals and basis for my faith are derived - the story of the prodigal son, the story of the good samaritan - one can be christian or "moral" in deeds as in words. But stories can be interpreted in many ways - Bible quotations, many which I love, many which I do not fully understand - in the end God will open his arms to us, and say "My children - you have been torturing yourself with doctrines of your own decree - my love is infinite and unconditional." Those who question that are short on faith.

God's house of love has many rooms and tenants.

----

More deep matters: some days ago; in fact last weekend, my roommates and I were debating about the right to suicide, or - what's the word for choosing to end life when terminally ill? My roommates claimed that one should be allowed to choose death to end their pain. In the case of suicide there really is no need for permission - but I think suicide is a selfish act. I don't think it is wrong - it is one of those things that cannot be *judged* - but it is selfish. Those who are brave would not choose death. My roommates think I am naive - Elaine indicated I was naive earlier on, too.

I disagree. I may smile constantly - I may choose to look at the world as a place of sweetness and light, but it is because I choose to believe "pine woods are as real as pigsties," not because I am oblivious to the ugly. I do not think one is any more in tune with reality by dwelling on the negative. The good and the bad coexist- so believe in beauty, and work for it.

I have wanted to kill myself. Seriously - I make jest of it, because I did not want to frighten anyone, but I remember those dark feelings of childhood clearly. Depression is not alien to me -- and i think my precociousness as a child, my photographic memory - go to prove that those feelings were real. I have never dismissed my childhood adversities. Being persecuted - not merely teased and bullied: I was cruelly tortured and I felt it; perhaps other children forget. I don't, and it changed me. Memory was born in me when I began to feel.

As a child, I never had the courage to kill myself. Hamlet's speech - killing oneself and staying alive are both cowardices.

I believe life is given to us as a gift, and we are keepers of it. We should take care of it. We should help each other take care of it.

I believe even in suffering there is value in life - and in staying alive we are giving those beautiful moments the chance to happen. We cannot assume those supreme moments will never come no matter how great our sorrows are.

I feel like I'm a burden always and want to erase myself and my existence altogether, but truly - it is selfish to choose death, because you lose only yourself but others lose you. You may feel like a burden on others when you are ill - but I don't think they would want to lose you, all the same. And love is that fragile thing that places other's wishes before your own. So, they may want you to cease to suffer for your sake because they love you - and I think if you love others better than yourself, you will want to stay alive for their sake. Even if you aren't capable of anything else - you are still capable of loving.

Even if you have no one left to love - death may come to you as a relief, but the world would be depleted if we were really left to our own devices in such matters! Life changes - we cannot predict how many years it will take, whose life you might influence one day. So it is still a selfish act on the scale of the world. Do not believe you are as insignificant as you feel in the world's billions. (if we believed that the world be no longer contain billions.)

I'm not insensitive to that sadness in our existence. But I don't think escaping duty and morality cures it. I understand it is hard to be brave but -- if my time comes, I hope I will not shirk.

2005-06-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

i want to work ______ very badly. i shall not say it to jinx myself. many people have sought and found glorious opportunities. dare i risk it? :) dare i wait for it to happen?

2005-04-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

I pass them sleeping on the streets
Their bloodstained hands and dirty feet
And I can't ignore them
Any more than I already have

----
NY isn't the first place i've seen homeless people. there's plenty sleeping behind Eaton's center in Toronto, and i grew up in Hong Kong where bums squatted on the doorsteps of my elementary school. I've always looked away and forgotten about them when they were out of sight.

Even in my four months here, when homeless people amble through the subway calling "excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, i'm homeless and i have to feed my kids, could you spare any change" i just bury my nose in my book and it doesn't bug me.

Last weekend i saw something more disturbing, though. two things.

Story 1:

i was on the train, at about 9am on saturday, on my way to The Cloisters. ( a medieval museum in a very pretty area.) in the same train car as me was a long, black faceless shape, a body lying across several seats... it looked ominous enough. several passengers glanced at it and moved to the next train car, but after i concluded that it was a homeless person sleeping wrapped completely in a black blanket i wasn't creeped out

well, midway through the journey, the black shape began to stir. it woke up, rubbed its eyes, wobbled to stand up. blanket unrolled to reveal a very brown, or maybe just very dirty woman. she looked out the window in panic and swore as if she'd missed a few stops.

then - she started calling "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, excuse me." But what did she do? she started taking off her wrap, and then -- her skirt!

i looked away, but half-wondered - why was she stripping?

well... i found out, soon enough there was pee trickling from her end of the subway car to our end. gross. me and the other three passengers bolted for the door without stopping to think.

"safe" in the next train car... that's when i started to wonder, isn't it hypocritical to feel so repulsed by the homeless? after all the years of fundraising for sandwich runs and advocating soup kitchens... after feeling nicely, complacently socially active after writing articles for the school newspaper about poverty in thailand.

but surely even a bum should know better: that there's public restrooms they can use instead of urinating on the subway!

then again, if *i* was a bum and i had no hope at all in life, because even feeding myself and trying not to get kicked off the streets at night is a massive struggle i must face every day, would i really CARE enough to make public places hygienic? i mean, if i was a bum and no one seemed to care about my hygiene i might want to piss everyone else off, too.

---
Start with me
I cannot lie
When my heart doesn't follow my eyes
Turn away, from all the suffering
That surrounds
Our time on this earth
For some their life has been a curse
I say I'm sorry and I should change
You know it just could be me someday
There's no way outa here...
Who am I to judge, what's been sent from above?

---
Story #2:

Have you ever heard about the bum with no legs? I've seen him on tv and in a movie ["Kids" by Larry Clark.]

Well, I saw him on Sunday. He's literally a stump - just torso, arms and hands, and head. he has no legs, so he "walks" from train car to train car using his hands to push him along. He just comes up to knee level with everyone sitting ... it was so pitiful to see him thumping through the train car begging for money - every thump just makes you wince, you know, cause you think - he has no legs, he's moving on his -- well, leglessness.

And I was thinking: isn't his case extreme enough for someone -- some charity organization - to do something about him? especially if he's already been documented in a film and he's been around for quite a long time. how can any disabled person survive like that?

does he choose to be a bum? is it more profitable, for him, than getting charity?

---
So we laugh, and we smile
And we play our games of sweet denial
But don't tell me we're forgiven
If we hold, all our breath
If we kneel right down and just repent
You can't tell me we're forgiven

Note: Lyric Snippets from "We're Forgiven" by The Calling. I love this song.

2004-10-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

guess what?

i'm excited about our studio project! really, quite excited. :)

i haven't posted in such a long time, i know. i always mean to, but ... i don't have time and i'd sound like a huge whiner. i don't know, as nerdy as it is, in all my feeling "meh" over cambridge isolation and ghetto-ness, and of course stress over co op and school marks and how competitive everyone can be, i really *like* school. i look forward to going to class. really! i love how, as you learn, new ideas resonate on themes you've read and pondered in the past.

i really came here to comment on my studio group, though. i like them! [note: i feel funny "talking about people" on the net; who knows but that they'll stumble here one day, but in all honesty i don't mind if they know this is what i think!]

first of all, there's matt. :) older than us by a degree, i think, i've never had the chance to interact with him. i'm awed by his intelligence and maturity, found out he has a lovely sense of humour (him teasing evgenia on her height). and he's so nice, he treats me like i can actually contribute when i really don't know anything about structure. major appreciation going out to him.

jenn (sitting a few spots away from me in the computer lab, as i write) is really sweet, really sincere. i like her a lot, too! :) today, i found myself in a great debate with the author of our design [pause to explain: our project is to construct a model of another classmate's project, selected by random draw. in trying to make the structure work, modifications are inevitable. the person who designed the building isn't part of the group.] when i mentioned some changes we'll make. he argued that we had destroyed the whole intention of his design; i only knew to tell him why i thought he didn't make sense and how his opinion wasn't the point of this project anyhow. jenn helped me end the debate with an incredible, kind, well-defined response: i don't recall it word for word, but she summarized the ideas that transpired in our three hour crit, our motives for doing this, and told joel that "if you had had time to develop this further, these are some changes you would have made yourself." what a lesson in people skills! :) i admire her.

john armstrong is so mellow! i like him, he makes me not feel bad for not having too much to say. i always marvel at how mellow john is and how perfectionist-ic evgenia is, [not that john isn't a perfectionist, because he is, but you hear evgenia's more vocal about it]. i've always seen parallels between myself and evgenia, as in, i have just such an overachiever mentality and can be so very complainy when given the chance! of course i'm not half as good as her, and i don't really know her.

i do know michael feinberg. one of the first people i met in architecture, he's also quite determined in his thinking. but i do like talking to him and it's nice to have someone i "know" in the group. the nice thing about working with friends is that you feel so comfortable being "you" with them. they're much easier to talk to.

but i feel like i'm going to learn so much from everyone in my group! :)

it's quite a blessing, interacting with people i didn't know :)

------------------------------

if you're reading, leave me a comment, say hi, email me, call me, visit me! little hermit me misses you all.

2004-06-18T22:12:00.000-07:00

i'm feeling strangely content despite my uncertainty over what's going on with the rest of my summer. (i don't like the *thought* of being a big bum.) i got to see acca, chowse, mo and ragu the night i got back. it feels so very nicely home-ish to just be around we "poksee kids" and be a pokium again :) i got to have a long long chat with my silly cool ex :b (*waves to moses* :b) i got to see patrick from ryla and i'm excited over the idea of seeing more of my ryla people, soon. i even got to catch online a few of the cooler trois-pistoleans like jocie and alex (where are the rest of you?)! and just now i'm pestering crescent ... crescent is fun to bug :) i'm really quite satisfied with my first week "back at home." now i only miss angela and stephen... (it feels like we've always had such a tradition of getting together during the summers, except now stephen's at waterloo), and all my not-yet-in-university people (where *are* you all heading to for uni?)

i'm sorry, to anyone reading this it just looks like a babbling list of names.

2004-05-05T19:21:00.000-07:00

i just read something a 'net-acquaintance' of mine posted on a forum:

"Anything under a 97% really bugs me; anything under a 90% and I get depressed. I just feel like if I'm not perfect I'm a failure. It's a horrible mindset that I wish I could get control of, but that little perfection monster in my brain doesn't want me to get control because then I'd lose my edge and fail."

although my standards have lowered considerably, it still describes me "to the tee."

2004-01-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

it's snowing!!!!! i can't sleep for excitement. i want to squeal elatedly to someone, but no one's online.

i've been so submersed in my "university world" that home and the holidays seem unreal. i can't relate to the "round of life" here anymore: i recall my high school days as facts that occurred, but i can't relive them as i usually relive my memories, in photographic detail.

what makes me write of this?

two nights ago, christine was chatting to me about head prefecting ordeals. i am always... stupidly amazed... when langstaff people "ask me advice." i can't believe people really seem to think highly of me there... little invisible me who i thought was hopelessly inadequate for all the roles i assumed. i'm meek and passive... i felt like no one knew who i was when i went to the office (and only looked at me strangely wondering what the heck i was doing there), i was "no good" at giving instructions and usually the prefects knew much better than me what to do. i was surprised that christine was frustrated and insecure sometimes, too... she and jen are so much cleverer, so much more tactful and outgoing than me. but while we were chatting, it took me a while to really recall who "ms. hall" or what "going to see the principal" was like... i must've suppressed those chagrins with new impressions! i registered that "i felt the same way, too" but i felt like i couldn't remember that high school world well enough to really help. only later on, when i was drifting off to sleep, did i remember li struggling to maintain order in race (despite how prudent and sincere and world-wise she is) or ayca crying when mo etc. broke contract for some sort of curriculum night. i guess i really wasn't the only one.

it stopped snowing. i'll go to sleep. when it's snowing as if the world is suspended... as if i'm in a snowdome! time stands still. there's peace. i can forget everything and just ... hope.

2003-11-05T12:46:00.000-08:00

meet the squirrel that lives outside my studio window. :D cute, no?

2003-09-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

how come no one comments on my blog? does anyone read it?

i went to the architecture party tonight... the traditional party that second years throw for first years. what did we do? they tried to cram 70-odd people into a teeny tiny split-level house off campus... and just drank. that was the ONLY activity. people got drunk. then they got more drunk. me, elaine, ping and some others stayed dry and hung around on the couch... and were bored out of our minds. and then someone started smoking weed. it smelled so bad, we left.

someone please explain to me the point of university drinking parties. is drinking a social skill... you make friends with people because you get drunk together? how do you have fun drinking... okay so people do crazy things when they're drunk... but if you're drunk too you're not going to remember any of it. and if drinking's an escape... from what?

i don't get it.

but i had a fun walk back from the party with elaine and ping and mike, albeit nearly twisting my foot countless times and stumbling into at least three puddles. it's not fun hiking over waterloo campus's stupid hills and valleys in high high shoes on a muddy, rainy, dark night. we were stranded outside south campus hall at one point and elaine and mike entertained us with some insane mandarin singing!

2003-09-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

we had our "crit" today on last week's drafting... a crit being basically when everyone puts up their work and we walk around and look at them and have discussions about them. honestly, i thought my group's work looked greyed out, non-outstanding, uncoordinated. if i had come into the room and seen our drawing set i would have thought, "i can do better than that."

same with my tests yesterday and today. the questions weren't hard! but there's no telling that i gave enough points or the right, relevant points.

and there's another studio assignment due wednesday! people around me are so incredibly talented... i care intensely, i don't want to "compete" with anyone, i'm proud i'm surrounded by talented people and i'm glad for them that they have good skills. but i'm already never satisfied with myself and my work, so that when the outer world seems to reaffirm my suspiscions, i feel utterly defeated. and i wonder... how much defeat can you take before you fall? everytime something i hoped for and believed would happen doesn't happen, i crawl further into my shell to hide my wounds and i feel un-confident, unhappy, too "sick at heart" to talk to people unless they're people i really know.

so i worry. >_<

2003-09-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

so what's been up with me since i last posted?

summer ended very very nicely... went out everyday that past week, and saw mostly everyone i wanted to see :)

frosh week went from crappy to pretty fun. i got crippled by a bug bite! ask me for details.

i had a fun field trip downtown to measure buildings in the first week, and managed to visit Tebby and Patrick in my free time. then last week i've been stuck in the studio til 11 or 12 every night, working. it's not just me, though -- MANY people stay later than me to work on their assignment. that scares me. one day i ended up not getting any food except a slice of pizza at lunch, because i was waiting for mike to finish his work, and by then the caf had closed. i was so hungry that night! :b

and at this moment, i'm very disconcerted, over marks: we had to hand in a group report, and i didn't work on it, the people who finished before me did. and i really don't have a right to complain, but the quality of that report... i wouldn't have handed in something like that in high school. there goes 5% of my mark. i want to cry.

2003-08-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

my dear people, i've returned home...... ^_^

i missed you all, but i have a feeling no one missed me :"( i'm disappointed my postcards didn't get home before me, it would have been faster if i hand delivered them, wouldn't it? BOO!

so how was europe?

it was nice. i saw some beautiful places, like the old cities of Salzberg in Austria, Heidelberg in Germany, Brussels in Belgium, the countryside of France, and the mountains of Austria and Switzerland (pictures to follow.) but with my renowned pokium high-expectations, i'm not satisfied. while i've never yearned to visit europe, i did harbour ideals of what i wanted to do at certain attractions and what i hoped to see. and when time constraints, delays, weather, the presence of too many tourists, the rigidity of the tour structure and paranoia about safety thwarts the realization of those dreams, i'm more unhappy than if i had never gotten a glimpse of europe at all. i can't accept imperfection.

some notes:

* . why do people want to see and do things just because they're famous? for instance, we were told: "there are three treasures in the louvre, venus, winged victory, and mona lisa. if you visited the louvre and did not see these three treasures, you haven't seen anything." Says who? there are SO many other beautiful artworks you can see and come away inspired. or in Switzerland, or Florence, why must the focus be on the consumption of watches and leather when you can roam the streets? i don't care to go up the Eiffel tower. am i going to go home and boast "i've gone up the eiffel tower, i'm better than you?" i don't get it. i know this is harsh, but it seems so ignorant when people are attracted by what they're told is good rather than seeking out something to appreciate on their own.

* . it sucks that most tourist attractions have many so limitations. for example, if you go to windsor castle, you're only allowed to walk along a set path, following the carpet and between the lines, so you only see the room and furniture at a distance. and michelangelo's sculpture "pieta/lamentation" is behind a glass window far inside a room by itself. you can't get close to the window cause it's crowded with tourists and even if you did, you only have a front view of the sculpture. it's a bit stupid to me that you come so far to see something in real life, and it turns out that you can see it more clearly in a photo.

* . i feel guilty that we waste so much food. all the restaurants we went to, they piled so much food on the table cause the it's prescribed in tour package, and since it was so hot in europe we have no appetite so the food was barely touched. locals must think we're filthy rich.

* . our tour guide made a lot of crude and racist/discriminating comments. he was a great guide in terms of organizational skills and travel-knowledge, but his values disturbed me. while we were doing a bus tour of Paris he spotted a homosexual couple at a cafe and pointed it out as if it was one of the attractions. "waaah, look to your right, there's a gay couple making out. see, see? gays are very common in France." if you're amused at something like that why can't you keep it to yourself? or "if you get a black customs officers (at the airport) they're mean and always inspect your purchases." my parents (and i *think* many others of their generation on the trip) didn't notice anything wrong with his comments and when i pointed it out to them, they said "oh it's just his way." their passive acceptance seems wrong to me, too.

* . we were told to beware of pickpockets... in France we saw one, a boy of 11 or 12 years old, he tried to steal a man's wallet and the man pulled his earring in self-defense. it hurt so much the he cried and the man "escaped." our guide said that the boy looked like an eastern-european refugee, and that it was very common for children to be trained to be theives because they're smaller and less noticeable. as tourists we (rightly) consider pickpockets enemies and threats and we strategy against them, where do we hide our money, what would we do if they "attacked" us. of course i wouldn't want my money taken but ... for that boy, after having his earring ripped he'll probably be beaten by the people who commanded him to steal, since he was unsuccessful. it's so sad.

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and now, time for pictures :) scroll down.

where are the pictures with people? they're only available by special request :Þ

2003-08-07T04:54:00.000-07:00

it's 5 am in the morning... and actually kinda bright outside. what am i doing up at this hour? my head's so hyperactive just now i can't fall asleep. i like days that are crammed with activities and "incidents," even just normal everyday ones, and i just had one of those. What did I do? I slept in (since I was up *last* night writing letters and emails and talking), and then went swimming with venetia. but everyone got kicked out of the pool because a little kid pooed in it (ewe, isn't that pleasant to know? >_< ). so we left and sat outside and chatted. i found out something which consoled me to not going to UT: the faculty ppl (or the dean? i forget) said that 40 people out of the 1000 life science frosh graduate from the program, and 8 get into med school. that sounds scary (but then statistics always sound scary.) i'm happy i chose not to go to that.

i went to chowse's house afterwards. i saw a bitta Mulan, we went to develop my long-coveted "muow guy" picture doubles (from LAST summer, at first markham, isn't that ancient history?), ate Jap food, tried to go on pressie shopping mission at hillcrest and finally went to Tim Hortons, where Tong works. Guess who we saw? Awrang!!! So this is the Timmies where he works. Awrang's disappeared from Langstaff for the past year so it was ... good!... to banter with him. he got so much skinnier! and since it was only Tong and Awrang working there we got free food... i like Awrang's telling us that "this is a buffet." hahaha! maybe we'll see him often at Waterloo, since he's Andrea's best friend. or maybe i should just go to Timmies every day and get free ice cap. :)

then Acca came... and *Wongee* came!!! i'm so glad to see Wongee... i'm sure i don't remember when was the last time i saw her, she never comes out. Terence and Mo and Juice and Tim came then... i didn't expect so many people were coming! So i had very very pleasant surprises, I'm glad i saw lots of people before I leave. and i got to take postcard and souvenir requests :) postcard list is beginning to grow long, but that's okay cause i'm gonna enjoy posting you people! and.... "dit lok hang kuay jup baw lay", "a lime a day keeps the hill away," mo's "Justin Timberlake" tennis player.... hahaha some of you won't know what i'm talking about but i'll just jot it down for memory's sake. As Jo phrased it last night I did have lots of "hometown fun" before I leave!

I leave Sunday, at night, just missing Acca 'n' Poksee's birthday gathering. I'm disappointed about that. :/ Before I go I hope I'll get to chill with Stephen this weekend, and I need to remember to go to the "lai-gay" and get books to read on the plane. When I come back, there'll be my G2 to do, rez stuff to consider, Angela and I can finally go watch "Finding Nemo" since she returns from hk the same day as I'm back! And i hope we'll have a "before university" gathering so I can see everyone before they head their separate ways... although there's a whole village of people going to Waterloo with me. Hmm i like how my plans for this month looks, don't you?

next month this time i'll be in Waterloo! wow startling thought.

2003-07-22T21:22:00.000-07:00

So pokium has a blog too! No, I wasn't led here by summer boredom. I've wanted to follow Chowse's and Terence's footsteps and make a blog since whenever it was that they made theirs. I think I even signed up for a blogger account, but it didn't have comments and I was disappointed.... anyway I learned how to use Greymatter today and had fun pottering around with the design. Now I've created another means of procrastination for when I do have work to do, and I get to worry if anyone ever reads this and if anyone will comment! :) Isn't it lovely how we like to create garbage which we then feel obliged to maintain?

Of course, I haven't any news at present. My summer's been uneventful... but in my anticipation for September and University I've hardly noticed how swiftly it's passing! Between reading and "doing pretty work" at home and going out for birthdays and swimming I really do entertain myself nicely. Yet — everything— is semi-embittered by the fact that no one wanted to hire me. I know finding a job is just luck but... isn't it strange how people tell you you have a great background and then it doesn't seem to amount to anything? If it weren't for that and for how I loved last summer so much I should be very happy. All my other summers I dreaded the return of school with something which was much more than mere panic. And there were some summers where I felt wretchedly lonely. This summer's free of both. It's also my second last summer before co-op, so very likely it's my last "real" unoccupied summer! I wonder if adults ever miss having summers, I never knew summers were a precious privilege of childhood.