It Must be Hard

She drove her date in her precious new sports car to the fabulous seaside resort inn, where they had dined on the finest seafood entrées and top quality wines. While they were nibbling away at their desserts, he took out a small box and knelt down on one knee. The restaurant patrons all watched intently as her eyes widened at his actions. He opened the ring case; her face fell quickly. She angrily stood up, took the glass that held the dessert wine and threw the contents at his face. The entire restaurant was abuzz with astonishment, while the man still holding the box held a look of stunned amusement. She quickly gathered her purse and belongings, and stormed out of the restaurant all the while screaming insults at him. When the mess had died down, a waiter helped the man clean his face and asked if things were alright. He shrugged and laughed heartily. The waiter puzzledly asked what had happened. The man opened the box and showed the waiter. Inside was neither a ring nor jewelry, but a small picture of the woman amourously entwined in the arms of another man. After the patrons had all left, the waiter said to the busboy, "It must be hard to be so beautiful."

Strawberries

She had diligently tended her balcony strawberry plants for many weeks, waiting for the first berries to appear. Finally, in early July after the plant reluctantly flowered and started showing its fruit, she could see that there would not be many berries to speak of. Thus started the heavy fertilizing schedule, until the few berries grew into large uneven blobs. Then one morning, she intended to harvest the ripened fruit when to her horror she saw that all her plants had all been picked clean. She gloomily lamented her loss, but told herself that perhaps they had been put to better use by nature.

Strawberries, Part 2

A restless and lonely boy would often wander through the halls of his apartment complex, climbing the stairs and sliding down the banisters. Sometimes he would covertly climb around the neighbours' balconies, knowing fully well that he would be in deep trouble if he were caught. His guardian knew it was not an environment suited for such a boy, but leaving him with his parents was impossible at the moment. Early one morning, the boy stole out of his apartment and came across the balcony on the ground level teeming with strawberry plants. Temptation proved too strong, and his greedy hands plucked the strawberries one at a time until his face was stained red and his hands gripping the remains of the fruit. When he realized his grand folly, he ran back and his guardian found him at the doorstep brimming with tears. The boy could not verbalize his mistake, only admitting that he had pilfered them from an unknown source.

The next morning, she found a boy carrying a large basket of strawberries on her doorstep.

Urbanites

An ambitious young student spotted on the other side of the street a solitary old woman sitting at a bench in a busy area, while rushing down the street to attend his class. He also noticed a metal walker further in the distance, unoccupied and drifting even further away from the bench due to hurried bystanders. His immediate thought was that this walker could belong to the old woman, and due to unfortunate circumstances it had been pushed beyond her reach and now lay in the middle of the busy pedestrian traffic. His path was taking him in the opposite direction, and his mind wandered about the woman so much that he was now a whole city block away, but he hurriedly turned around and ran back to where the walker was located. It was in the hands of a waste disposal manager (garbageman) who was loading it into the truck, but the young man's shouts of attention had the walker back onto the street securely in his hands. He dashed through the crowds with the walker to the old woman still seated on the bench. She was asleep so he left the walker next to her, content in his actions, and hastily jogged away to school. When she woke up moments later, she noticed that her walker had been dented in several spots and cursed aloud young hooligans who thought pranking a tired old granny was amusing.

Bird in a Teacup

A chickadee in a tree during winter ate too many fermented berries from the tree, and fell into a teacup lying in a permanent setting on the patio table underneath the branches. The teacup, filled with snow and a layer of frozen water, was shaped just so that the chickadee was unable to fly out. The chickadee struggled to escape the teacup but was unable, due to its inebriate state, leading to many distressing bird calls. The calls attracted the local alley cat, who attempted to pounce on the chickadee; but just at the last moment, the chickadee tipped the cup and tumbled out of it, escaping to freedom. A prize-winning photographer snapped a shot of the scene and it became the picture of the year.

Crazy Trip Crazy

Due to my unable to go home from Boston on Monday as hoped, I chose to stay in Montreal on Monday and Tuesday. ('Course, during that time I was feeling pathetic because I was supposed to go home to tutor, but that didn't happen.) Wednesday, Jorghnassen and I hopped on the train and headed southwest toward his dreaded destination, Anglo-land aka Ontario. It was a long ride, starting at 5 pm, switching at Toronto to the London train, and we arrived at around 11 pm. I missed seeing my cousins' house along the train tracks in Toronto because it was pitch black and thus I was not able to determine if their balcony was completed. Yay balcony.

Waterloo-Kitchener was peculiarly quiet. It is known as a student town, with student population estimates at approximately 30% (from what I heard they say anyway), and every house had a "FOR RENT STUDENT COME HERE LET US GOUGE YOU" sign in front of it. Yet, it was too quiet... I think it was attributed to the fact that exams were about to begin and people were theoretically studying for them. Maybe.

What was particularly cute at first then disgusting was the Canada Geese. We spotted a group of them hanging out on campus, eating the food and drinking a pond. The chair said that they stayed year-round now, feeding off whatever, which I thought was (unnaturally?) charming considering Montreal only has year-round stupid pigeons.

Then we came across the green sidewalk sausages. Lots of them. Everywhere. Then I didn't think the geese were so charming.

I felt kind of stupid when Jorgh had to drag me everywhere to talk to various professors in the Statistics and Actuarial Sciences Labyrinth Department. One: because they were more or less interviewing him and I was making him look bad by having nowhere else to go; and two: because I had no bloody clue what anyone was saying. Then I felt doubly bad because they took us out to lunch and paid for me as well. :( :) :(

Still, they responded pretty favourably to his presentation that I was sooo instrumental in setting up. And I still had no idea what was going on. Perhaps I'll make an S5 version of the thing so he can show it online and then I can link to it. Then maybe you might have no idea of what I have no idea of what Jorgh is talking about.

My favourite part of the trip was coming back home and finding my mouse crapped up probably because my mum doesn't know how to use a mouse.

Bwawston

Jin! Jiiiiiiiiiin! Bwawston. Bwawston. Bwaaaaawston... Schouwa... schouwa...

To fully appreciate this hilarity, you have to follow this story.

Rachel, her brother Pat, and I took a weekend trip to Boston (that inadvertently led me to a week-long trip away from Quebec City). Since I had never taken a real trip to the states, I thought it would give me a good opportunity to experience the Real American Way of Life and discover why people seem to characterise americans the way they do.

The roads are absolutely wonderful. Our pathetic rented PT Cruiser experienced nothing but potholes and rocky stretches of Quebec bacon-for-roads. We spent half an hour waiting at the border going to the states, and then suddenly all the asphalt smoothed itself out like a bedsheet after a restless night.

Our drive through Vermont was quaint and picturesque. It seems that the highway cuts through the sides of green hills overlooking lush valleys dotted with farms and cows. New Hampshire was pretty much the same, and it was a hop and a skip to Massachusetts. (I don't think I've learned so much american geography over the years as I did in the last two days, but I suppose that's what happens when you travel.)

Boston is a very nondescript place if you're not looking for it. The distinct New England style houses and buildings don't make it stand out so much, as much as if a certain someone would stop and actually let me get out and look at them.... The massive underground highway project aptly named the Big Dig doesn't stick out from the skyline (not that it should anyway). The most exciting eye candy of the city is a large white bridge leading into it, composed of thick wires and probably kryptonite as far as I know, glowing eerily into the night. Actually, I didn't get to see much of Boston, having only spent half a day sightseeing at the Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market.

Jin told us that the Bwawstonians don't pronounce Faneuil as we French-literate would (fan-oeil') but like some twisted, half-blind anglos would (fan'-iel... rhyming with Daniel).

On Saturday, we were treated to a breakfast at the IHOP, not at all because Jin doesn't have food at her home since I had arrived with two dozen St-Viateur bagels... but rather because she doesn't eat at home regularly. Considering that she doesn't really know how to cook (ok, not at all), we went out for every single meal.

The waitress was a very portly but charming woman, who would respond to each of our requests with a very Bwawstonian "Schouwa!"

"Can I have the whole wheat pancakes?" I asked.
"Schouwa! What can I get for you to drink?"
"Uh, some water please?"
"Schouwa!"

So to sum up the dining experiences in Boston, the portions are grotesquely and ridiculously enormous. The IHOP pancakes came in a stack of FOUR, and they are just as large as the pancakes I make, and probably 50% thicker. Rachel and I could only finish about 2 of our 4 pancakes each, and we were ready to explode. Every single other food place we visited gave us about 50% to 100% more than a normal serving size here. We had split a two-person meal at a portugese restaurant that could have easily fed a family of four. Nonetheless, the food is excellent and reasonably priced, but it's a pity that the american way of thinking of "value for money" trumps "giving reasonably sized portions without excess."

Jin also mentioned that her parents thought she had gained ten pounds since she arrived in Boston (which she had). Though she's as thin as a beanpole so ten pounds doesn't show at all.

A lot of our time was spent shopping. (Jin. 'nuff said.) The sales tax is 5% but doesn't apply to purchases of clothing or food below $175 I belive. So to sum up, it would have been advantageous to buy things in Massachusetts if not for the rate of exchange and all the other costs that we accumulated just to get to a place to shop. (We would have broke even, but I don't really like shopping anyway.) We went to a massive outlet mall on Sunday that was crawling with SUVs and other large vehicles, in the middle of nowhere. Rachel bought two watches, one for Pat. I bought a watch for Jorgh. Jin bought a metric ton of stuff including six or seven similar shirts and other things that I've forgotten already because we spent 7 hours at the place and my brain cells were just as fried as both my knees and feet.

But the highlight of that Sunday was the visit to Cracker Barrel. We had yet another breakfast/lunch at this place, where we were exposed to the peculiar homestyle favourite "Dumplins," composed of flour and probably goo. The young waitress had a habit of peppering her waitressing with "awesome"s. But the real gem of the experience was the gift shop.

Since there's usually a long wait time between tables, the ingenious management incorporated "old style item gift shop" concept in the same building. They sold various crafts and gadgets, candies, decorations, and toys. One particular toy was an electronic toucan that twice repeated whatever was said towards it in a higher pitch. So when Rachel saw this, she told me to fetch Jin and she would speak into the toy and let Jin listen to it.

"Jin! Jin! Hi, Jin!" it squaked. Jin started laughing. "We're in Bwawston. Bwawston... Bwawston..." and it went on.

Then Rachel went a bit further and the bird then squacked the infamous line:

"JIN! JIIIIN! JIII-IIIN!!! Bwawston. Bwawston. Schouwa. Schouwaaa... Faniel! Faniel!"

The best part was that the rest of the day, we would tease her with more gems like "But Jin, why couldn't you convince them otherwise? We thought you were a loyah!" Bwawston loyah. Yeah.

Finally, that evening we had supper at another restaurant but Jin wanted to pay for all our meals. We insisted on us paying our own parts, but she didn't want our money. So I said, "Jin, if you don't then we'll just have to make you take it!"

So Rachel, Pat and I squaked JIIINs, Bwawstons, Schouwas and other terribly accented things for another 15 minutes until Jin squealed out that she gave up. By that point, I was laughing so hard that I was tearing up and couldn't breathe properly, rolling around on the table. The other restaurant patrons were giving us weird looks as we were leaving but I couldn't help myself.

To sum up my trip, I learned that the culture of excess reputation is not at all unwarranted, and it was great fun to bug Jin all weekend.

Tomorrow I will be heading to Waterloo with Jorghnassen for his talk, and we'll be returning home (myself to Quebec City) on Friday afternoon.

Emergency PowerPoint?

Probably one of the few things I got out of education courses at McGill was the importance of making a decent PowerPoint presentation. Really, if I wanted to spend 5K a year for five years to learn to use PP, I would have just had to buy the fricking thing and sit here reading a layout manual.

Anyway, I don't have a lot of fantastic ideas on how to make a good presentation. I'm far, far, faaaar from being any professional in layout or graphic design. I have only a few pointers for some of you who might be kind of lost...

• Pick a clean font. Not Comic Sans. (This gets a bit more complicated because you have to package uncommon True Type fonts with your presentation...)


• Keywords, not entire paragraphs.


• Put in as many large, high quality relevant images and/or graphs as possible. Not on the same slide.


• You're presenting the slides, not the other way around... unless you're trying to be clever.

Jorghnassen had been here since Monday to have me help him put together his PP presentation for a talk. Yes, a 3 hour trip here just so I personally would do it for him. :) But it is a very important talk - scheduled just for him at UWaterloo next week. And, since I am certain that he'll get completely befuddled in Ontario due to the mass crowds of Ontarians, I'll be going along with him for the three days.

I don't really like PP. It does the most ridiculous and idiotic things, like changing its mind every few seconds and either allowing you to use different symbols and fonts in a text box... or not. It also doesn't like it when you want to make a minor change in its organizational chart wizard, since a mere human doesn't know what he or she really wants.

On the other hand, some people like PP for its preset elements you can choose from, like templates and colour schemes. There are some mighty ugly ones in there (COMIC SANS), but the choice is still there. And since Jorgh has a really hard time choosing things, the numerous but limited choices gives him (at least) the illusion that he can come to a decision.

Now there's just a few slight problems with using PP... not everyone has it, and not everyone uses Windows (no, really???). Fortunately, for the hapless Windows users, there is the PP viewer so you can knock yourselves out on that one. Also, fortunately for the "everyone else" user, there is Open Office that has a compatible tool, Impress.

Jorgh has a different problem though. He tends to be clueless about the computator and all its inner and outer workings, though he's smart as a whip and cute as a button and all sorts of other nice idioms. Thus, he came all this way to have me make his presentation.

That's okay, since I don't have anything else to do. :(

Whine

I'm not trying to make excuses for not jogging today, or sound like a whiny brat, but...

Several days ago, I hit my ankle on one of the many chairs that like to hang around my room. It's the same ankle that I fractured and sprained and sprained yet again over the years, so it's not like it was the most fit part of my body. Anyway, it was scratched and bruised so I didn't want to cause it undue stress, even though I've been jogging over the last few days.

But somehow there's always been more annoying things (rather than medically dangerous things) that keep hurtling themselves in my path. Like goddamn mosquitos the size of loonies. I had one hanging out around me that I couldn't kill until yesterday and it somehow gave me five bites, including one on my ankle bruise.

That's another thing I hate about summer. :(

Batteries

I'm sorry to report that my jogging doohickey gadget's radio just died. :( Now I need to replace two bug-sized batteries just so I can listen to CBC again while I run little circles.

It is too hot.

I saw a guy outside jogging around noon. He was heading up the overpass, his shirt completely soaked with sweat and probably part of his flesh along with it. What made it even worse is that there was absolutely no shade, and saner people who do that kind of stuff carry around jugs of water with them, and he had none.



Hell, I'm wearing half a shirt.




Notice that I get mightily ticked when it gets hot. One summer as a kid, my family and I went to Toronto and it was so terribly hot there that I was literally dripping sweat from the ends of my pigtails. I blame it on my parents who dragged us outside in the sun. My TO cousins wised up and bought an A/C unit.

On the other hand, our family never believed in A/C, and I only get that fan in the background to the left.

Stages of a Blobbly Jogger

Instead of reporting how far along I am on my jogging, as I don't think I'm making too much progress anyway, I'll talk about the actual act itself.

When I first started a year ago, I went through two stages: huffing/puffing, and wheezing/aching.

Once I got a bit more into it, I went through different stages: 4-count breathing, 3-count breathing (which persists the rest of the time), increase of pace, decrease of pace, sweating, staring at the ground, then lung explosion. Or something else gives way.

The 4-count and 3-count thing is the number of steps one takes for inhaling and exhaling. The phys. ed. teacher in cegep told us that keeping a constant breathing rate was one of the more important things when running, but he only mentioned the 4-count. Every exercise routine and accompanying music track is in 4-count. Nobody has anything to do with 3-count.

I think my breathing is too shallow. :(

A Visit

Bad dog! My pants had to be washed.

Then since Yoshi liked licking my feet so much (?!) I took a shower after.

But thanks for having me over for supper. :)

It's Give-Someone-A-Break Time!

I think that the world needs a bit more heart. Y'know, less cynicism. I think it's been rubbing off too much on me lately. For instance, earlier today while I was waiting in brem's car at the gas station while he was busy checking out the cashier, I watched the young attendant emptying out a garbage can. He was probably a high schooler, judging by the fashionable mop of hair on his head and the way his uniform shirt was semi-tucked into his pants. My knee-jerk reaction was that of wanting to chide the boy on having such a sloppy appearance at work. My senior coworkers (and especially the bosses) at the buffet would have thrown a fit, especially since a restaurant wants to provide the image of a clean and sanitary environment. Even for a gas station, one would want to show some level of professionalism, if it would only mean at least a tucked in shirt.

But I am one to reserve judgement. I watched the boy a while longer, as he tied the beer-can (and beer) filled bag up, and carried it away. As he walked, he spotted many pieces of garbage on the ground and also picked them up dutifully.

Likewise, in my buffet job, I also had to do very menial and disgusting, thankless tasks. Though they were part of my duties, I never expected anyone to compliment me for succeeding in cleaning out the buffet table at the end of the evening, nor to have stacked sufficient supplies of plates. But if I could give myself credit for something, it was that I did my job without ever exhibiting a bad attitude (unlike some of the younger coworkers I had the displeasure of working with), and it made all the difference to me. I felt that besides doing something completely mindless, it was sufficient to believe that my tasks were vital to the success of the whole organization. So it gave me some degree of self-confidence. (On the other hand, it did nothing for my career advancement but I don't really regret working there.)

So if a menial job well done could give someone some self-confidence, then this boy might benefit from some completely random words of support. I felt bad that I didn't get to do so, but I think I would have if I had thought of it sooner.

Give someone a meaningful compliment. Anyone. A random stranger. Your friend. A family member. Over the take-out intercom. To the cashier. To a busdriver. Telephone. Over the internet, even. ;)

Memories

I am both appalled and fascinated that I have a short term memory loss problem. Appalled, for the obvious reasons. One doesn't pride oneself for forgetting seeing someone merely days ago, or having eaten an hour ago, or even what was said a minute ago. (Though I'm certain I'm not as problematic as others who do have more extreme cases.)

Fascinated... because I tend to forget what I write. I have probably written as much as several times around the Earth by now, but I doubt I can even recognize my writings from even a month ago. If I discover my own short stories or a journal entry from ages ago, I will actually sit down and read these things as though a total stranger has written them. These mysterious events that occured in my blog entries from three years ago are actually new again to me. I don't remember experiencing such fierce feelings of joy, frustration, or regret... well, except the obvious.

My technique for trying not to forget anything important is to physically write it down in my agenda, on the calendar sitting right above my monitor, and/or then tell someone else about it. Though it's hard when I forget to do that within the first few minutes after hearing the bit of news. And then it's also a matter of not forgetting to refer to my agenda every so often.

What I don't do is post-it notes. They're alright sometimes but I don't see them as obviously after more than two are stuck up somewhere unusual. Even if put in usual spots, I will mentally push them aside as something obscuring my view!

My pet peeve is forgetting what I want to say just before I say it. My pet peeve is also forgetting that I want to say something.

... I don't really communicate well in person, it seems...

---

In other news, my bike has a flat again and has been sitting here for a month pathetically reminding me every day about it.

Two Cities Two Events

Both start today.

Fantasia 2006 - [July 6-24] Montreal film festival that I used to attend when I first started my studies at McGill. I stopped going when I felt that it had become too large and inconvenient to stand in line for four hours for tickets to movies that the scalpers would buy up just before reaching the ticket booth. (Trust me, I know.)

Festival d'été - [July 6-16] Quebec City music festival held in Vieux-Quebec. I have gone only once many, many, many years ago, and found it completely baffling why anyone would want to wander around in streets of massive crowds with expensive blinking badges, and entering badge restricted zones - only to be unable to see or hear bands due to the massive blinking badge crowd inside said restricted zones. Montreal Jazz Festival is much more accessible because of the lack of badges, but it is also privy to even more phenomenally sized crowds. (Thus, one must consider that the Quebec music festival doesn't get as much attention as the Jazz Fest so they have to recoup the money by selling said blinking metal thingies.)

MIA for 2 Weeks

I know that there have been some people trying to contact me over the last few weeks. I should have made this more obvious: I was attending two weddings over the last two weeks in completely different cities than the one I currently reside in, and thus I was not in town for those two weeks. I just returned this evening to my home (computer) and have listened to the phone messages (16, a new record) and read my backlog of emails (5 nonspam, wonderful).

Obviously I am terrible at communicating with people via any other sort of means than face-to-face conversation, especially the telephone. And I am also a class triple-A introvert. My choice of career is ironic.

---

I see that Ian is back in Montreal.

A Kid Who Makes One Reconsider Having Kids

Toronto was a massive tropical mess. The sun is stronger with even this slight difference in latitude. The air was laden with so much moisture that the humidex was 37 degrees nearly the whole time I was there. In addition, it was so hot in the morning that I couldn't run longer than half the usual time. (But I did get to see cute animals scurrying about.)

There were good things, like having seafood and more seafood. There was also seeing the cousins and more cousins of cousins. Then there was the terrible things, like filling up on so much water that I felt like one of those controversial fountains. But the thing that I could not understand was the behaviour of that certain ~3 year old baby...

The baby was cute enough. (Cousin of cousin of cousin, I suppose.) He spoke about three languages, all of them chinese, at the same time. Even his mum had a hard time understanding him. His favourite television program must be Thomas the Tank Engine because he had his own Thomas inflatable mattress.

But he had almost no discipline. The mother would restrain him when he hit her or slapped her around, but there was little to no follow-up after restraint, nor any corrective behaviour, so that the kid would just keep doing the bad behaviour. He would also start crying if he was restrained too long or denied anything he wanted. Then the restraint would stop or the adults would give in. In addition, he would slap around my female relatives, but not the male ones.

The boy made a great start when he arrived, as his nose suddenly bled three times in a row, and right onto the rug that Rebecca had just finished scrubbing a few hours prior to the mess. She then commented that the last time he had visited, he had peed on the floor as well. For some reason, one of the adults thought it might be a good idea to stick a piece of chinese green into the nose to stop the bleeding, but thank goodness the kid refused this unorthodox treatment.

But that is not the only thing the kid refused. He also refused to relinquish things that kids aren't supposed to play with, such as the inflatable mattress motor, and he refused to be told to stop beating up the people around him.

I was spared the whiny torment and torture of the boy by interacting as nonchalantly as possible, because I couldn't stand another moment when the mother would allow him yet again to fling a chopstick around. (That didn't mean I was heartless - I still helped him up and down stairs and make sure he didn't run into a pole or something.)

Eddie and Rebecca both work with young children his age, and they had suggested to the parents to leave the kid with them for 3 weeks and they'd straighten him out. (I'm sure everyone deep down inside really hoped the parents would say yes.)