Weekend in TO

Jorghnassen posed for a shot, dedicated to both Ms. Rachel, and my cousins at the same time. ;)

Jorgh also posed for another shot that is reminiscent of another one from England:

Contrast to this:


We also were treated to some Chinese New Year supper, courtesy of my cousins.


The trip could not be rounded off without a visit to get some asian provisions. This time Jorghnassen visited the infamous Chinese malls in Markham. This particular moment was pure *triumph.*

Notice that I didn't have to run over *anyone* to park that close to the building.

Vacation!

I'm on vacation!
It's celebration!
It's celebration,
I'm on vacation....

Oh wait, no I'm not. :(

At least not yet! :D

As soon as these kids write their final exams on Monday afternoon, I'm taking everything home, correcting it all (which is going to be less than last term, as I have half the number of students and exams), delivering them Tuesday morning, and we're jetting off (by car, that is...)to possibly Toronto, and Montreal. And possibly Quebec. I don't know about Quebec, since Jorghnassen doesn't seem to want to take the extra two hours of driving to visit, but I'd like to see my mum at least, and hopefully squeeze in some time with the bunny man and his wife.

Then we're jetting off (literally) to England on the 27th, to attend Jorgh's brother's weeding. (Inside joke.) Oh, that reminds me, I need to get a camera before that. A real camera, not one that takes things like this:



Anyway, time to get cracking... I have another pile of corrections to complete at the moment!

Back and Forth, Back and Forth...

"Back and forth, back and forth; I'm beginning to feel like Sisyphus!" -some merchant, Zeus Master of Olympus

Once again, I took to the task of driving back to the homeland, while Jorghnassen had the monumental task of keeping me awake and calling for rest stops at every other service station. Our primary goal was the week-long vacation in our home province. Our secondary goal was to obtain the Rav4's summer tires from Jorgh's dad in Quebec.

Our first stop was in Toronto, to attend the pre-wedding Ning fling at a Dave & Buster's out in the middle-of-nowhere-Toronto. All I know is that one of the Ikeas was next to it. (I-KEEEEE-AAAAAHHH...) I haven't seen Ning in a long time, and even then it was a brief coincidental meeting in Quebec City as she was walking in old town with her now-fiancé Steve. They're supposed to be getting married this week. So happy...! :)

After spending overnight in Toronto with my cousins, we spent all day driving to Montreal, and then I spent all evening correcting Calculus final exams. The marks had to be submitted the next morning at 8 a.m. by email, otherwise I would have had one hell of a commute. I called Davy up as soon as I arrived, certain he would be having his party, to send my regards, and he promptly told me to get our butts over there. Unfortunately, I could not complete my corrections until 10 pm.

By the time we arrived, Ian had already scuttled off, having waited all night for our arrival. On the other hand, Ivo had been asleep and appeared half-dead on our arrival. Then he slept some more. ;) We spent the rest of the evening chatting, sipping tea and whatever else was left, and singing more Beatles songs.

Checklist of Montreal/Quebec Things to Do Eat:

• eat poutine


• eat poutine from Ashtons


• buy maple syrup in cans


• buy bagels by the dozen


• eat and buy tasty bread


• buy or eat own weight in cheese and curds


• eat sushi (!?)

(The last one actually makes sense if you remember what my mum does for a living.)

My favourite thing to do with friends is to make food for them. (Heck, any excuse to get the old roomies together.) So we ended up having one supper in Montreal with homemade sushi (unfortunately not Sushi Sunday but still good).

I managed to secure some of SUMS' doorstops Calculus textbooks for the school. Another reasonable excuse to make this trip's expenses tax-deductible. :)

Eventually we made our way to Quebec, but none of my siblings could make the trip. My bro is recording a new album, so all his evenings are taken up; my sister was entertaining her 'rents-in-law. And arriving in Quebec... my mum was working. Alas, we were also booked for pre-Easter supper with Jorgh's parents and brother in downtown Quebec, so we had virtually no time to go anywhere nor do much shopping. :(

I do feel like we ate a lot though...!

I was pretty bushed by the end of the week. And I still had to drive back to Waterloo, and then the next day yesterday was the first day of school.

... also I had to stop in Toronto for about an hour or so to drop off the bags of bagels, cheese curds, and beans for my cousin. We got back in Waterloo at about 10:30 p.m. and I worked late into that night at making new lesson plans.

Ooh you can bet your sweet patootie I'm completely off my rocker. I made a class blog for my computer class and I think it shows. (In order not to let random strangers get to this blog from the other one, or vice versa, you'll have to ask me what it is.)

O, T.O.

Gone for a while, eh? I'm still hiding from the real world in Toronto, at Eddie and Rebecca's place. I attended a wedding (second cousin's, if a godfamily even counts in the first place) and spent some time being driven crazy by my sister, mother, and brother all at the same time.

Also, I had spent a day with Davy and Stefan up in Chicoutimi before leaving for Toronto, but I won't talk about that much for the moment because I feel all of the following:

1. Bloated from the 9 day long EATASTICFEST called "meeting with family and gorging ourselves."


2. Bloated, having forgotten my running shoes at Jorgh's, and my mother forgetting to bring my running clothes after I told her to bring them.


3. Sleepy because it's fricking 2 a.m. after running around the EX all day and eating.


4. Irritated because I can't sleep.


5. I think my eye is infected because it's been very hard to not gouge it out from pain.

I'll be back in the province (at least) tomorrow, if weather, road conditions, car condition, driver condition, and hair condition permits. Meanwhile, VOTE FOR ME! VOTE pledge for me.

Es-see-pa-die-nah***

I remember going to Toronto during the 2003 gigantic SARS scare. SARS was a terrible blow to all the Chinese communities - financially, socially, and probably even weakened family ties ... (that's another story). Due to the western world's irrational fears of contagious disease being transmitted through foreign-looking people regardless of nationality, and then people actually dying in Toronto of SARS, everyone avoided downtown Chinatown. And every Chinatown in the country.

So for the first time, ever, there were parking spaces on Spadina avenue. Every single restaurant had opened all their doors wide and advertised inexcusably cheap lunches, hoping for some customers to fill their unusually empty tables. Eddie wasn't concerned about SARS, and neither was I, so we went to a place for lunch (which was also deserted). We had only ordered one dish to share between us, as most Chinese restaurants make oversize portions with this intent. (It surprises me sometimes how Jorgh's family doesn't really understand this concept... but I guess it's a cultural thing.)

The waiter brought a massive bowl of tasty soup (one of those that you usually split between 6 to 8 people). "Included." Well...

After failing to consume enough soup to fill one of the great lakes, the waiter brought our oversized plate of "General Chow's" chicken and rice piled to the ceiling. Ok, I'm exaggerating - it was only halfway up to the ceiling. Even with Eddie's above average appetite and me being starved on the train for 4 hours without breakfast, we barely finished half of the meal. I thought it was a hugely overcompensating meal until the bill came... for 5 dollars. Now that was just ridiculous.

*** Say it like a middle aged chinese woman having been born over there but lived here for thirty-odd years yet never really got rid of the accent. Yeah, like that.

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.

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.

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.)

Less Posting, More News

I'm on my two week long wedding attending blitz. I'm currently posting from Chicoutimi, for those of you in the know, my birthplace and origin of all those tasty blueberries I take home. I just attended one on the 24th in La Baie with Jorghnassen, the non-religious notary kind. Then I must schlep myself to Toronto tomorrow with my mum to attend another wedding that I have yet to figure out who is getting married to whom.

Meanwhile, the principal from the learning center has a possible job opening for September that I have a pretty good feeling he wants me to fill, but I'll have to wait for further response. I haven't mentioned it before because I don't want to cause bad karma. Kaaarrrrmaaaaa...

Lil V is in China right now and the Chinese government has been censoring her BLOGGER viewing so I'll try to post less for her to have less to catch up to. :p

I'm still trying to train for the 5 km Run for the Cure, although it's hard to do so when I've left my running shoes behind and I haven't been moving around a lot. I spent yesterday jogging in the pool (aquajog?), and I'll probably stairclimb in Toronto, although I don't think I want to do it if it gets really muggy down there.

I'm finally home

I called up my sister on Wednesday, and the following conversation ensued:

E: Hi, it's me.
M: Oh. Hi.
E: What are you doing on Friday?
M: Why?
E: Well, I was wondering if you had already planned something, or whatever... So...
M: Why? What's happening on Friday?
E: Um... cuz it's your birthday?
M: ... Oh yeah... I forgot.

It's not typical that she would forget such things, unless there is something even more pressing on her mind that she deems more important. Like furniture shopping in Toronto this weekend. But she claims such days are nonsense or useless, in the sense that gift giving and celebration shouldn't have an artificial reason. (Like turning a year older, or because a certain religious icon was born on some random day in winter, for instance.) Nevertheless, I had a quick supper of Indian take-out at her house that evening, just before she took off with her boyfriend to Toronto.

Other events this March Break included making sushi for Lil V, Stephen, Jorghnassen and his brother. For this purpose, I had the distinct pleasure of walking to Parc and Mont-Royal with Jorgh, finding no fish store, hunting for the fish store up to St-Joseph and Parc, then walking back home, in the rain. Who would believe that just a week before, there was a pile of snow that fell on QC, when at that moment inches of rain ran wildly through the streets of Montreal? The raw tuna in the maki rolls made it all better.

Norm had recommended the fish store on Parc, although in his defence he didn't remember which intersection it was on. I would usually double check such things in the Yellow Pages (or the Telus Pages, their machiavellian rivals), but in our drooling haste we neglected to do so. Just the description of his fish excursion that he gave us earlier this week was enough to entice us in our own journey. It may have been part of his evil plans. Curses, you fiendish rapscallion!

On the subject of my odd writing styles of late, it is a plan to craft a fantasy novel with Jorgh. I have attempted to commence (read: slept and ate and avoided) personal projects that I have listed often. Draw, record, work on... Well, with Jorghnassen's collaboration, I think co-writing a novel would probably be the only one I could complete properly. If only it were that easy to start...

We thought that this week we could take some time to look for fantasy novels to inspire and guide us on our own attempts. Jorghnassen and I spent a day wafting through book stores and their sections of fantasy novels and titles only to come up with rather mediocre or stupid collections. Then he got tired of searching and asked me to order stuff online.

One of my career aspirations, forgotten long ago for more concrete goals, once had been to become a writer (of short stories, actually). It is exceedingly difficult, though, to believe that this person, having not cracked open a non-comical book in years, could become such a writer. I used to write in high school, but that sappy and nonsensical trite that I spewed could not have held much water in the cutthroat writers' world. In CEGEP, I was introduced to the deeper and more satisfying aspects of reading and writing, much different from the high school book report or recitations of Animal Farm.

But I had forgone the path of languages, due to the overwhelming pressure from without and within to pursue the sciences. Then I had no idea what to do with it (as such things happen often to us science students), so I became a teacher. On the other hand, I do appreciate being a teacher and spreading the merits of being scientifically literate. (So, why fantasy novels? I'm not sure... but I'm certain it's more fun to write.)

Another career aspiration was to become a math teacher. Indeed, I am.

And yet another career aspiration was to become a musician. My brother is now fulfilling this in my stead, so I don't feel so bad. On the other hand, he was rather upset that my mother is upset that he would prefer this than to return to regular studies, I imagine. And he called me while I was at Jorgh's place to loudly make his point.

But such are the pressures of a life where East meets West. Is it too much to make a career change when everything is uncertain?

Hallowed-out

In a surprise twist of fate, there was one trick-or-treater last night. I recall another year's Hallowe'en when there was exactly one trick-or-treater, wearing the same tiger suit and spewing the same quicklyjumbledhalloweenphrase in order to get the candy as fast as possible... only a little shorter.

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My aunt is in the hospital in Toronto. Looks like I gotta go soon.