Tales of Gardening Feats

My mum, brother and I took the time this afternoon to get some flowers for my dad's grave and plant them. I finally brought the plastic green dividers that I bought from the school's rummage sale last year. I also finally got to dig up old useless roots in the soil and plant living things in the bed. Like LIVE flowers. Anyway, it's looking a lot better now. Such a pretty day...

Some cute LOST gifs made by an SA goon.

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I was working the last two days so I hadn't posted. One of the things I noticed is that students were definitely going insane. Secondary 1 to secondary 5... they were all going positively insane. It is warm, it is green, and it is SUMMER. I got fed up with having nobody and nothing to back up any discipline cases (especially being a supply teacher), so they were treated to a two-day WTF marathon where anything went. Fortunately, the more sensible ones were plodding along fine, but the crazies were just absolutely crazy. These are 17 year old mental cases I'm talking about.

If it were up to me, I'd have expelled their asses a long time ago, or just let them go out to the workforce and try their stupid antics and see how long they last when their boss asks them to do something and they defiantly yell "NO."

Tales of Gardening Woes

The beans actually haven't sprouted at all, despite a week and a half of rain and waiting. On the other hand, the bed has produced two shoe indentations smack dab in the middle of it.

I don't understand. I planted a dozen of these things just as my mum explained it. I watered them every day that there was no rain. I even pulled out all the stupid weeds that I - OH NOES WHAT HAVE I DONE!??!

(No, actually I know the difference between them. Don't worry.)

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My hayfever became so intolerable last night that I took a Benadryl and promptly fell asleep for much longer than I usually sleep (yes, even on unemployment days months). Then today I kept all the windows closed and became agoraphobic.

Staying Clean While Travelling

My brother finally returned Thursday evening. The first thing he did was take a shower. The second thing was eat mama's congee. The third thing was take a nap. (Thus sums up my brother.)

When we folded the laundry earlier today, he held up his white shirt and said, "Oh wow, it's clean."
"Why didn't you guys have time to do your laundry or shower while on tour?"
"That's because we didn't have time. There wasn't a shower on the bus."
"Well, I mean when you have a day off you could rent a motel room and just shower or something."
"That's because we had too many expenses on our off days so we didn't get any."
"Well, I figure one of your expenses could have been, oh, maybe... do your laundry, and another one would have been, um, take a shower? I'm sure your fans would appreciate a non-smelly band when you perform."
After a pause, I mentioned that they could have gone to a science lab somewhere along the way and get a free shower that way. "You know, the chemical showers?"
"Where would we have time to go to a science lab?"
"A school... you know, just step in there, ask to use their shower of some sort..."

[On second thought, they have showers at a gym and in the locker rooms at school as well so you could just go in there instead. I didn't think of that at the time because I spend all my time teaching science for chrissakes.]

Anyway, his very nice girlfriend is also visiting this week, so they're out picnicing at the moment. It is finally a sunny day, after weeks of rain rain rain RAIN cloud rain rain cloudrainrain SUNrain. In the meantime, I have completely opened my windows and am right now experiencing the hayfever that I should have been going through weeks ago when everyone else had it.

SCHOOL SAVED THANKS TO THE GOVERNMENT

In other news, I was called to go up to the school yesterday morning. I had arrived after a press conference given at the school, stating in much pomp and pagentry that the school will finally receive money to build its extention for the high school, thus saving these students from being shipped out downtown in the future for years to come. (That is, until all these elementary school kids get up to high school and then there may be even more problems.) As for the lack of news coverage online... well, there was apparently a communiqué sent to everyone but only Global news came by and there was a short 2 minute segment yesterday at 6pm.

Words cannot convey the anger.

Do it with EMOTICONS. >:( >:o >=( :@ >:t >>>>>>P

Two kids set fire to their geography textbook next to the tree on our lot. Then they took off. Then I ran outside with a bucket of water to put it out. Then I went to school to find the policière but nobody had a goddamn clue where she was. Then I came home and blogged about it.

I'm just waiting for the old lady upstairs to get home so I can get her to find the cop.

ADDENDUM: I finally got hold of the old lady upstairs, whom I successfully related the story to in my terrible, terrible French. She was quite nice about me bothering her on her lunch break and offered to call up the policière from the school and leave a message (since she calls the most often) and I left the bag of smouldering textbook with her.

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I should probably also tell a bit of backstory to this. During this school year, there have been incidents of drug use and breaking and entering in this building, since the students at lunch and after school have absolutely nowhere to go except other people's private property. They especially like to break in to the basement apartment because the entrance is in the back of the building. The old couple's daughter lives downstairs with her husband and family of three young girls.

Needless to say, there has been almost no action taken by the school or police, other than taking down reports and handling phone calls. Finally, there was enough of the neighbourhood disgusted by this that the policière of the school had a meeting with everyone to inform us what was being done: sensitisation pamphlets. Essentially, NOTHING. GOOD JOB, SCHOOL.

Metablogging

Since Davy and brem have lately taken some time to explain certain aspects of their blogging activities, I thought I would talk about mine today. Though I highly doubt anyone actually cares about these points because my own blog doesn't sound serious enough to merit such commentary.

1. I write about absolutely anything. I think this is fairly obvious. My most natural trait is to excessively brood over one topic and then completely change line of thought. On the other hand, there are limits. I don't talk about more personal things beyond feelings and events.


2. Completely unilingual. This is because I don't actually function in any other language. I'm chinese-illiterate and I can't even carry on a normal conversation with my mum in cantonese. Despite living in the middle of redneck Quebec City, I have very limited french interactions with the community beyond going down to the local pharmacy and buying a lotto ticket when the jackpot exceeds 20 million. Really, it's that pathetic.


3. OMG don't even think of sticking this thing on a search engine. Being a class A super-introvert and also a highly traceable professional (high school teacher), I am very sensitive to people invading my privacy. I don't mind the random readers or trusted acquaintances and friends who come by (hi!) but I would rather erase this whole blog than let one of my charges get a hold of any of my entries, and with good reason.


4. Reason be damned! If I think something is stupid, you know I'll say it. If I think something is awesome, then you're free to skip the crude 4-part LOST sketches and follow-ups of why I think Mr. Eko should be crowned as the new king of the LOST island.


5. No posts because of winter solstice, the beans' sprouting, and the crossing of paths of Mars and Jupiter. I don't have a regular schedule. This is because when I do work, I tend to get cranky and I won't have much to say that is newsworthy. Also mentioned before, I skip writing when I'm in Montreal or otherwise travelling. Then I can come back and whine about it, like Cowtown.


6. Above all, I write for myself. Yes, I get embroiled in thoughts of "Waaa Jorgh is the only one who left a comment!" and I admit, I'm not a very good responder because I don't actually answer him. But my blog wasn't initially meant to inform, educate, and entertain my readers. In fact, it was meant for me to vent and sound pompous to myself. I am entitled to such a space, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to exploit it!

This degenerated pretty quickly. Anyway, to compensate for this lack of journalistic professionalism, please enjoy the following sketch.

Confused old man???

Sketch

I thought I would post a sketch that I made a while ago but forgot about. I think it captures the feeling almost perfectly, which is why I like this one. (On the other hand, it is not a very good quality scan.) 

Arigato, minna-san!

Attribute the absence of posts during long weekends to travelling.

I had some great moments this weekend. One was jamming with Davy on his gui-tars in his fantastic loft downtown Montreal. Not that I know how to jam on a guitar. Jorghnassen kareoked to Davy's strummin' to the oldies. He also invited us to taste the 99% chocolate-with-warning that left some of us (Jorgh and I) quite shocked at its profound... cocoa-ness.

Related to this thought, we made brownies this morning before I came back to Quebec. After a few chunks of semi-sweet melded with oil, flour, eggs, sugar, and even more oil, I wondered why one cannot eat the baking chocolate in a similar fashion as mentioned above. Of course, the answer lies in the fat content and the nature of the product. I also discovered that the cheaper the chocolate, the less you're likely to enjoy it. (Case in point: milk chocolate Easter bunny priced at 89c ... before Easter.)

I also had a nice Schwartz lunch with friends yesterday, followed by a pretty entertaining game of Cranium. Unfortunately, Jorgh and I were an over-powerful team, since we had the greatest factor of communication between ourselves (6 years of experience and counting) compared to Johanne and Rachel's teams that knew each other for barely 5 months. Also, Johanne's boyfriend Francis was clearly more francophone than his anglophone game-handling skills could compete with, which did lead to many hilarious moments for which we all did applaud in merriment and good show. (Push versus pull?)

My most unfortunate change of plans was to discover that the learning center cancelled my Thursday and Friday dates, but wanted me to come in tomorrow. SEE BELOW. Unfortunately this message was left on the answering machine on Friday when I had already left Quebec (and my mum only told me in the evening), and today is a holiday. I hastily left a message on their machine Friday evening from Montreal... So they will probably already have either someone else scheduled for tomorrow, or I will find out in the morning if they confirm this message.

EDIT: No, my mum misheard. It's 2 Tuesdays from now, not tomorrow.

SKYPE YOU!

I just heard today that Skype offers FREEEEEEE calling of landlines and cells across Canada and US until the end of the year.

EDIT: The thought just came to me that it does mean one person has to be on computer all the time and the other has to be on the phone all the time.

EDIT PART 2: Now if I only had someone to call... :(

Landscaping and Neighbours

It seems that our landlord is a complete douchebag, so I took it upon myself to pick up the trash that mysteriously appears every day on the lawn, by the parking lot, around the garden and other spots that the wind and tunnel effect spews schoolkids' leftover lunches. And drugs.

Anyway, my very least favourite chore is picking up trash. The candy and chip wrappers aren't too bad because they aren't filled with goop or shit (so far), and there aren't massive piles lying around, only scattered. But what I hate the most is that the garbage is mixed with the leaves that a certain idiot landlord believes will decompose on their own, sitting in untouched, weed-infested and barren corners of the yard. It's even worse - they're leaves that the wind tunnel also scattered from the yard of the school.

(One of the things I should have suggested during that meeting two weeks ago between the school, the police, and the neighbourhood was that the school get these goddamn messy kids to come and clean up their trash because I was tired of doing it... but it was mostly about drugs and they didn't even have a concrete program to deter it.)

I was just outside a moment ago, picking up leaves and trash. I don't have a rake nor large garbage bags, so I was doing it by (gardening) fork and grocery bag. I also took some time to weed out some massive dandelions sprouting between the paving stones. It's quite time-consuming, but it would definitely help prevent more from spreading and aggravating our allergies further.

We noticed that our side porch was excessinely sagging some time ago. I suspected it was because the soil under it was sinking, but there is probably much more to that. During May and June when there are crazy rain storms, the entire walkway on this area gets flooded. Foot-high flooding. Fortunately none of the water gets into the basement. Unfortunately because of that, the landlord doesn't do shitall about it. Thus, due to years of flooding and soil being inevitably washed away, the ground has sunk a good couple of inches. You can feel the angle of depression walking around there.

The porch itself now feels precariously unbalanced. There is evidence on the side of the foundation that the steps have sunk about an inch or two each. I'm getting kind of nervous about the stability of this thing, but we don't have young kids jumping around on it so I don't think there's much to worry about yet.

I did dig up a couple of paving stones to see if I could determine what could be done, but I have no idea what to do. There is nothing for me to compensate for the sagging walkway, and I'm no carpenter who can fix porches and fancy wooden stuff.

As I was putting the stones back, there was some sort of repairs going on next door that necessitated cutting down some electrical or telephone cable. The people repairing the wires never suggested I get away from the area, and they didn't mention anything being too dangerous to touch, so I mostly ignored them.

That is, until they turned on the chainsaw. Suddenly wood chips from above were raining down on me. I looked up, and they were chopping something down from a pole. I quickly scurried away like a rat, kind of pissed that they weren't even considerate of me "down there" pulling up stupid roots and picking up leaves. Once inside, I watched the rain of dust and woodchips piling up around the area where I just picked up other people's crap.

I've been hiding at home since then. They're still humming away at their chainsaws and wires. People are utter morons around here.

I don't have a broom either.

Happy Mother's Day!

My mum and I were debating on whether we should go to the flea market in Ste-Foy yesterday or just go home. She says that she enjoys looking at junk and not buying it versus actually buying useful things. Although last week, she did start eyeing the suspicious looking 80s pattern chairs (you know, charcoal flecked with random green and pink specks - I'm sure you had something like this in your house) and then I said "Let's get outta here." I think if I had a couple of bucks to set on fire, I'd do that instead.

I planted beans outside in the garden that I dug up. I just hope that nobody steals our beans or sprouts like during the year my dad died - they stole our melons. >:( As I previously mentioned, there are rednecks as far as the eye can see around here, so what would they do with a chinese melon?

Our garden is too desolate for any sort of raiding though. For now, there are only tulips growing by the side of the building, left by my brother from several years ago. There are also metric tons of vines overgrown on the fence that nobody ever tends to, so I take it upon myself to cut back some of the vines. I don't even think the landlord intends to do anything about them. In fact, they were creeping across the entire lawn last year before I viciously pulled them out of the ground and slashed the bastards to death.

Soon the rain will come. When it does, the vines will start showing their leaves. That is when the massacre will begin. Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!

Open Letter to McGill Web Page

Dear McGill Web Page,

Yuo suxx0rs.

Unthankfully yours,
Everyone on the goddamn planet.

P.S. Tell Alumni to stop bugging me for donations until you fix it.

Every time Jorgh asks me about something that necessitates me looking up something about McGill, the discussion always falls upon the waste of webspace called McGill.ca. I am sure everyone who designed it is especially proud of how it is completely unreadable and unhelpful. I don't recall any news web site requiring the use of SIX narrow columns on a front page squishing in TEN different headings. It's confusing, it's disorienting, and it actually keeps people from reading the front page at all, except to unsuccessfully scan it for a link to a godforsaken useful document like an exam schedule.

Every single link on the front page goes somewhere different. That doesn't sound like a bad thing, but having a header that says "Student Information" versus a link that says "Student Services" somewhere else on the page lets you believe that McGill paid these people just to make as many webpages as possible with as many different combinations of the words "student," "full range," "faculties," "admissions," and "pat ourselves on our butts for making these fantastic web pages."

To be completely fair, the design is probably not up to the webmaster. I can emphasize with the poor prole who had to endure the hours of, "But I'm telling you, I want the web site to be completely white so all the text can run together like a massive word jumble. And squish the whole thing together in the middle of the page some more because I don't like using up the entire screen."

And yes, I know how completely ironic it is for a person who has such a messy looking blog to complain about how terrible another web site looks, but I made this site on a whim whereas WE PAID FOR MCGILL'S THING WITH OUR BLOOD TUITION MONEY.

Trend Wars

Amusing for perhaps a few minutes (or until you run out of things to compare), Google yourself a war! Surprising and unsurprising results?

P.S. If you process common things too much, Google restricts your access. :(

I Blog Me When...

... either things are going really well, or when things are going really slow. It happens to be neither, but that's because I haven't posted in a few days and I've been a bit busy working.

Anyway, right now things are getting better. I have more or less made slight hints to my more trusted colleagues at school that the board sucks, and I could be leaving if nothing else happens.

Lo and behold, another indeterminate leave occurs. I have a tendency to get upset when I have these indeterminate leaves, mostly because the person who leaves has a really sad reason to need one. This time, it's even sadder (to me) the reason, which happens to be that the teacher's father is gravely ill.

Things go a full circle. Yours truly came back here because of father being struck down by a stroke.

I managed to talk to the teacher in question before he left today, to arrange the rest of the week which happens to be "administer exam, correct them, administer another one, etc." He looked pretty depressed, despite his poker face. It makes me very sad to know his father is ill, and that I am replacing him at one of the most crucial times of the year.

In other news, the kids all keep asking me two things:

1. I got a hair cut??? Really???


2. Why am I not replacing that other teacher who went on paternity leave??? Maybe because I DON'T HAVE A CLUE.

Anyway, this month at that school is going to be insane. There is the yearly camping trip that is coming up in two weeks, a grad kayak trip in the same week, a ped day and a holiday soon, and a load of regular teachers absent or on leaves.

It will look more busy this month than I thought.

Jorghnassen requested Chicoutimi, but I thought it would be more interesting with the whole Saguenay region. 

Tour of My Neighbourhood

Following my habit of reading the SA forum, not joining because it costs $10US (although that might change into $10CA at this rate) and then posting about the topic here, I give you a Tour of My Neighbourhood (versus "Tour of My Town" because I really, really don't know that much, come to think of it).




WARNING: large file size (~2 MB)
Goddamn let me fix this problem... >:( Picasa won't let me send large photo sizes :(

EDIT: OK, I've made the above image into an image map, so you'll have to click the different quadrants to get one part at a time.

Those of you who aren't too familiar with Quebec, there's very little public transit going out to the really boonie-like places. For instance, the movie theatre does have a bus line going there... once every two hours or something equally as ridiculous. Also, the entire city is white so there's not much reason to put "REDNECKS LIVE HERE" everywhere.

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Yet another article about Islands. Hilarious (and at the same time, NOT hilarious) if you know what is going on there, and you know who the article is talking about...

Rant :(

I come across as a manic-depressive kook but I often feel terrible at times of inactivity like this. It's pretty easy to put aside the feelings of depression when there's a steady job, and one is surrounded with friends and good people, projects to work on...

But depressing feelings are like raisins in a glass of soda (try it if you haven't seen it before); they bob up and down unless you take them out of your drink and deal with them before they plump up. Ahh, silly analogies.

My day starts with a noon breakfast of champions (a bowl of cereal), followed by a few hours of "what the hell," and then a supper of random food. Then I'm back to "what the hell." My mum comes back from work and gets exasperated at me for a few hours. On Tuesday I tutor. On Wednesday I watch LOST, if it's new. Sometimes I get to bed at 2.

Jorghnassen has always been good to me. He tells me great things and supports my projects, comforts me about the serious dicking (pardon my language) I get from this place, and usually peppers his conversations with "Come back here :(" ... which everyone says.

Of course I have thought of it a lot - every time something stupid happens (March), to name a few), every time I see my friends, whenever I see youth retention reports (especially about anglos), when I visit my dad, and then when I make food enough for ten when I'm the only one who's going to eat the damn thing.

It pains me a lot to think that I am not needed here. The last two years I've been sitting on my ass here making myself pretty depressed, but I tried to convince myself that the reasons I chose to stay here (for now) were valid. Well, they're not so valid, just probably ridiculous from everyone else's perspective.

I am not convinced any more that I was meant to do what I thought I could. What's the use of two degrees from a university when I don't remember any of my training or make any use of this knowledge? Why did I have to go through so much pain and suffering over five years, only to come out feeling like I learned next to nothing? Why did I stay on this train when I didn't want to go to Alberta, but to New Brunswick? (No, I don't want to go to Alberta nor New Brunswick - it's another stupid analogy.)

But I'm not convinced I wasn't getting anything out of it. I enjoyed moments when things went well, with my own abilities. I was always happy to help, maybe too happy to help. I would go out of my own way to make my charges happy and keep them on the better path. I think I would have even quit if my charges told me it was better that way.

(Oh, but I didn't quit. My charges were actually getting along better until the bosses got rid of me.)

I'm probably the only person stupid enough to think this way, but I gave up a job once for a friend whom I believed was better suited for the tasks, and because he wanted experience in it. And I would do it all over again given that choice. But I'm tired of popular opinion trying to make me feel entitled to things or feel guilty for not being more selfish, because I really, really want to do great things for deserving people. (But I don't want to be a total tool either... I'm not like that.)

I just feel that I can't do it.

Of course I won't leave this post on a sad depressing note, so I'm linking this freaking cute corgi. (I think it's a corgi...)

Bach again?

Stupid pun.

Anyway, the Bach piece below is only the first part of the first movement of the concerto. Personally, I haven't listened to my own recording much because I know how grating some of the sounds can get, but I hope you take a listen.

I finally listened to it this afternoon and I must take back what I meant by the rupturing of eardrums. It's probably the best thing I've worked on so far (but unfortunately not the best recording). I enjoyed listening to it because I enjoyed working on it, and above all I enjoyed the piece.

It is less known to my friends and readers my musical history, whose entire truth I don't like to divulge because of my shame, but most of the time when I was in training and on hiatus from the violin, I did not enjoy it to a certain degree. This is probably natural to a lot of average students who don't like to practice and play things that are so distant from what they understand and like. Thus, I was less inclined to play anything anyone assigned me to play.

So since I have been on my own for so many years, I have only learned a few new pieces that are involving as this. Actually, Bach is one of the few composers I will play because the music is not too deranged (ahem, difficult) like the romantics. I didn't think I could progress further than where I ended up.

Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when I put together the concerto (2 posts below) and finally listened to the accompanying parts this afternoon. I was so happy I got through that part in one afternoon that I actually stopped doing everything else (which was essentially nothing) and played on top of the accompaniment. It felt great (although it didn't sound too good...)!

In fact, I don't know if you can tell, but I was ecstatic recording all the parts.

Now, the difficult thing is to get a great recording especially when there is only one musician doing all the parts and conducting herself. It became a nightmare of timing and cues, which is why it took 6 hours to record 2 minutes of music. And it still isn't right. So I'll fix the timing the best I can and upload it again. On the other hand, the recording quality will have to wait because I have no idea how to mix or master.

Sambomaster!

I don't remember where I last talked about Sambomaster or if I ever mentioned it at some point (which would be quite odd if I didn't). I probably did mention Naruto many times. The opening for Naruto that features Sambomaster's song is called Seishun Kyosokyouku, which got me hooked right away. If you watch the video, try imagining the face of the singer.

Now, here's the music video with the song in its entirety.

I still love this song. Rock on, japanese care bear!

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Lots of anime use songs from j-rock and j-pop bands for openings and endings. It's actually quite common for them to change the songs every season, and often in the middle of seasons. (Perhaps to boost the ratings, since it involves making new animations for the songs as well.) This applies to Inu Yasha, Naruto, Bleach, and other popular action series.

On the other hand, (short-running) romance anime use voice actors from the shows to sing their theme songs, if they're talented enough. So the anime in question will often scramble for leading voice actors that are proven to sing well and have great talent. For example, Love Hina and Chobits.

Anyway, the point is that there's a lot of money and time spent on making these openings and endings original, catchy and entertaining. So why would an american company license an anime and completely throw out the original opening to vomit up an abomination of a "song" like this opening for dubbed Naruto? (Don't tell me it's because they don't want to change the songs for an english audience, because they've pretty much left Inu Yasha as is due to the possibility of insane old geezer otaku backlash.)

Ok, I admit there have been weird things in the original as well. But really, generic rock riffs do not make a satisfactory substitution to this. (Or FURRIES and UNDERAGE GIRLS IN SWIMSUITS.)