A Conversation with the Afterlife

It's been nearly six years since my dad passed away. I often have dreams where he appears as he was when I was younger - sometimes even in his twenties or thirties, when only photos could have showed me how he looked. Nevertheless, my belief when he died is that he exists in an afterlife, where neither God nor Devil nor Buddha exists. It would be where people's souls exist on a plane different from ours, and we could communicate with them somehow, in mystic or an indirect manner. He was not a believer of any sort of religion as far as I knew, and this belief in a non-denominational afterlife comforted me when I woke up in tears from seeing him in dreams after his death.

Once I fell asleep and dreamt I could talk to him. In life, we could not speak directly as his English comprehension was not complete and my Cantonese comprehension is laughable; but to my knowledge, we were able to speak freely with complete understanding. An exchange could happen:

Me: Dad!
Dad: How have you been?
Me: Pas pire. You?
Dad: It's good. Nothing to complain about.
Me: ...
[Awkward silence.]
Me: So... did you hear about that Hockey Night in Canada theme controversy?
Dad: I heard. >:(

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.)

RUN FOR THE CURE 2006 FUND RAISING Stuff

To tell you the truth, I'm still $105 dollars away from the goal of my selfish ass not paying the registration fee, and I have about 5 days to get it. As I have very few readers to begin with, let's lay the situation down properly, and then you can tell your friends.

1. This is 100% legit. I did this last year. I'm doing this again this year. I'm probably going to haul my butt to do it again next year. I don't need to have a friend or a friend's friend or someone in my family stricken with, or even die from, the disease to justify fund raising for breast cancer. I'd have chosen the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada if that were the case, but it pains me even to think about that in the first place. Maybe I'll do that next year too, then you'd probably think that I'd have a reason. But I don't need one, do I?


2. Oh jeez, an online form that wants a credit card number. You know what? You don't have to use the form. You can email me for details. I'll even post my email address for spamrificness: chowmaylay[AT!!!]yahoo.com ... One person gave me a cheque. (THANK YOU, PERSON!) All I needed was a name, address, and email. That's if a tax receipt is wanted. You get one if you ask. Otherwise, you can just tell me your name is Mr. Incog Nito and I won't even bat an eye.


3. If you have ever made yourself a promise that you believe in, when throughout your whole life you have never believed so concretely, for your own sake or the sake of a friend or someone you have never met, then you know how I see this run and how much it means to me. Damn the psychological barrier of registration.

So all I need is perhaps 2 very nice people to donate ~$50, or 5 equally as nice people to pitch in $20 or so, or 10 (uh, 11) amazing people to abandon their coffee doughnut habit for a few days and scrounge up $5.

Please, please, please... if nothing else I ask for this year (I don't think I ask much, do I?), I ask only that you invite your friends or anyone you know to pitch in and sponsor me. /begging

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...

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

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."

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!!!

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.

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...)

Year-End Update

Dear all,

Amid turkey leftovers, guest-receiving, chocolate overdoses, a new washer arrival, and a terrible, terrible mess to clean up from the delivery, I'm having a wonderful holiday. It lasts for another week, or two, or whenever. As it so happens, my long vacation is a result of a good and/or bad thing - being a supply teacher.

Anyway, I would like to start to end this year's blogging by trying to remind myself what happened over 2005. Uh...

January

Continued to work at the school. Constant reminders of why teaching is a hit-and-miss game pop up everywhere. Also, January tends to be the most depressing month due to nothing happening.

February

Ivo comes to visit and cheers me up immensely. :):):) ... Winter is also starting to look less ugly due to my first trip to the tubing place. Stupid shit happens with the landlord.

March

Nagging thoughts over purpose of obtaining two degrees.

April

The Pope dies. Why is this such a big event to me, I'm not even sure anymore... Waves of strike days further disturb the regularity of the school year at the school, not to mention the teacher turnovers during the year.

May

More of my strike escapades. 3/4 of the school disappears to the wild for a character-building camping trip, while the leftovers like myself are stranded at school to fend for ourselves.

June

Exam corrections, and biking diversions pepper my month. The anniversary of my father's death still hurts.

July

Trip to Cowtown and environs. Weddings strengthen the family bonds. Got to see Wesley. :D Also, got to meet the psycho vampire dog Bobo. :|

August

Disappointed with myself not getting a job for the school year. :( Nonetheless, I made a vow to continue working in Quebec.

September

Amazing training to run 5 km! Well, not really that amazing. I turn 25. Does that mean I'm just an old baby?

October

Amazingly completed the run. @_@ Also, amazingly obtained a driver's licence. @______@ Also, the start of a long supply teaching run...

November

Continued the long supply teaching run. Happily, it means that I shouldn't be as worried as the summer to obtain a job, hopefully for the reasons I'm thinking of. The word "pancake" keeps popping up. Eddie's grandma passes away. :(

December

Birth of PJ the 3rd. :) Along the same lines, I learned the virtues of ordering things online. The possible start of crazy buying sprees... Felix and Rachel separately visit for the holiday break. :D:D:D

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Jorgh visits me every month or so. I also go to Montreal every so often to shower him with gifts and/or food. I mean "and."

I met many interesting people and had lots of memorable experiences. I keep reading more and more manga when I should actually try to read real books, but I find pictures and stories more attractive. Might this be the real start of a different path?

So much for a bike ride...

Realize that I haven't been on a bike since last summer, and I haven't done any physical exercise for just as long. I am way too tired to head to Sillery today, for a number of reasons (that just happen to be causational):

1. I have so many freaking bug bites on my legs that were probably caused by mosquitos the size of beachballs, that
2. I went to bed at 4 a.m., dying of itch and then
3. I woke up at 9 a.m. itching like hell.
4. So I was so groggy and itchy that I neglected to eat much of anything, if I even ate at all (though I don't remember)
5. and then I just went biking down to the grocery store and back, but my legs gave up when I got home! Talk about pathetic... :(

I will go biking (further... much much further) tomorrow, as I am determined to get out of this disgusting fat slump.

Is Father's Day the new most depressing day of the year?

Impending Death and the Subconscious Mind

News of the Pope's rapidly deteriorating health had been circulating for at least a month. But being "not catholic," it didn't strike me as something of a great spiritual crisis. We all know the guy's a gajillion years old (since everyone tends to poke fun at that, including me) and suffered from a series of ailments over the many years, including Parkinson's.

Today, as I was trying to avoid the chaos of April Fool's pranks that bombarded me in my science class, I felt an incredible wave of sadness. Perhaps it was the weather - the sombre grey of a much too-familiar winter that cast its gloom through the windows. Perhaps it was the moody rain that suddenly transformed into great globs of snowflakes, then mysteriously melted into another spell of rain. Or maybe just because it's Friday. Whatever the case, I thought it was because I was feeling like my usual incompetent self.

When I arrived home and turned on the television set (to watch my daily 3 Simpsons reruns, one in French and two in English), the channel was set to CBC Newsworld. News droned on and on about the Pope and his rapidly ailing self. The story had been all over the school in the last few days, due to our irish (and/or catholic) foundation of teachers and the predominant fear of death that haunts our students, whose parents of the military sort would go on duty for extended periods of time to uncertain areas of the world.

It unnerves the mind when one hears about the fading health or death of a popular and prominent figure of the world. The bit with Mother Theresa was like that briefly, except for the fact that her death was overshadowed by the death of a member of the british royal family, whats-her-name. This time around, it is the story of a man who is dying. Slowly but surely dying.

A medical corespondent started speaking about the most current status of his health. At the moment, she said that he was going through septic shock, which is the point where blood is not reaching the organs thus shutting down the whole body. It then reminded me of the very moment, almost two years ago now, when the doctors at the wretched hospital spewed forth their report on how there was nothing to be done about my father.

Lo and behold, the whole day connected. My heart and my mind agreed upon the feelings were caused by the "spiritual father"'s dying reminding me of my own father's dying. The wave after wave of teary-eyed people on television telling reporters what they were feeling then made sense.

As I write, the pope is dying, probably in some physical pain (but might be numbed from drugs?) or unconscious. Perhaps he's in the deep sleep stage, where no one can follow. I hope that the pope will "walk slowly."

My father... I think that if one has travelled this far, and one has done all one can, one should just let go. So we pulled his respirator and let his heart keep going...

And that is the moment when we look to religion to find answers, or to find comfort, or just to feel something.

Jorgh will explode if I don't blog right now

My cute Jorghnassen was very nervous the entire trip and back, but he managed to drive us to the cemetery on Thursday to visit papa for his birthday without causing any traffic accidents. One guy honked out of his imbecilic nature, but overall Jorgh did a good job of driving after 4 years of not driving.

On another note, I got a response from the idiots at the french school board. Just as expected, it was a rejection notice (what else could it be?) but I didn't even predict it would be as bad as it is actually written. It's so bad that it's ridiculous. It's a form letter for sure, probably made from a program with a bunch of tick-boxes, which they decided to tick all the negative things. They went into a shitload of BS about how I didn't take into consideration of the students, or their socio-cultural and economic backgrounds, or how I didn't show that I was competent in any shape or form, blah blah blah... This from a 15 minute interview in a language where I have absolutely no possibility of expressing myself properly.

I find this hilarous but also very maddeningly disgusting.