So Long, and Thanks For All the Sh!t

1. Thanks for not telling me what your intentions were for Monday, on Friday when I was actually present at school.


2. Thanks for messing up all the students who believed that the next teacher who would replace the classes I was teaching would be THEIR OWN.


3. Thanks for giving an explanation to the cooperating teacher in the math class what was going to happen for the next three weeks, at least. Oh wait, you didn't.


4. Thanks for telling me indirectly that you weren't going to do shitall about the discipline problems that was going on in class for the same students that I kept telling you about having these discipline problems.


5. Thanks for calling on Sunday to tell me I was getting axed in so many words, and that you already lined up a supply teacher on Friday.


6. Thanks for making it pretty clear that you don't think things were getting better, though clearly they were starting to.


7. Oh by the way, thanks for being intimidating and sly in your decision making process. Maybe next time you should ask me before you screw around with a hundred students' lives.

Taxes Again

One of the reasons I can't go out and play this month is because of each weekend devoted to the time known as tax season. (Yes, month.) My mum decided this year to give me her papers and have me do them for her, because I have "nothing better to do." I have already whined enough about it, and I'll whine again. I hate^infinity having to do this shit. I oblige myself, to get the return, but no matter how much I have coming back to me nor how many times I write these things... I will never ever ever do it without breaking out into fits every five seconds.

Tax software that the CRA approves costs money. That's about 50 dollars every year, for something you do yourself for free every fricking year until you die. I am a big cheapo miser, a learned trait from my mum and siblings (whereas my dad wouldn't really care and he would let someone else do the task for him).

Web programs aren't that much better. They all have deals where they let you do them for free, provided you have a net income less than $25000. But what if you made more than that? BAM! $19.95 plus $10 for every extra return. I might as well have bought that box at the store.

Yes, peace of mind for me is not spending a damn penny and doing it by hand. With a little help from my friends, Pepsi and day-old Bento. (Mommy working at the sushi stand on Saturdays is a goddamn blessing.)

And so I spend my weekends yellingly scribble away at the crumpled and stained draft forms. After a dedicated two minutes, I scour the net for easier solutions. WHY OH WHY didn't they make these programs with Quebec returns???

---

In other news, the Jorghnassen will be teaching probability and statistics all of May at McGill.

Also, I am still teaching at this school for another 3 weeks. By then, once again, the total time spent there will not be anywhere close to the required 60 days.

EDIT: OK, I just got a call two hours ago and they told me that I'm *not* teaching the same position anymore, but that I'll be replacing someone else (who is replacing yet another teacher on leave), at least for Monday. I'm getting sick of this bullshit.

Another Puzzle!

A terribly blury photo, but of an interesting puzzle for you, dear readers. I was given a pair of St Patrick's Day temporary tattoos to put "one on each cheek" (said the student), but I decided to put them on the back of my hands. In fact, I put them in this orientation. The tattoo is a shamrock with the words "GO ST PAT'S!"



Why would I do this?

St Patrick's Day Blitz

Now that this mess is over again for this year, I can finally get to blogging about it. If some of you wonder if I went overboard with the irish coffee again this year, worry not because I didn't even get any this time. :( Not that I went overboard last year. To put it bluntly, I took exactly one of Scott's irish coffees last year and one sip was enough to make my head spin.

Anyway, there was a school show on the evening of the 16th that I was requested to play in, by one of the teachers organizing the event. Of course, I never let down an offer to perform for a new audience, so I agreed. (On the other hand, it does often take me a lot of sucking up to me to get me to do these things in the first place.)

I learned the piece about three weeks ago, but fiddle music is notorious to me as hard to play properly, simply because of its looser style. (In fact, if you can't play loosely at all then forget it. It sounds like a machine.) So I did try better by memorizing the piece, but it became a fight between remembering the jumbles of notes and the frantic fingering of the left hand. Whatever. I played it well enough.

Getting to the show by 7 when it started was impossible. I mistakingly believed that the cursed bus I boarded would bring me downtown with just as much time as the other line I usually would take. This bus' transmission broke down, about 10 minutes from the destination, and we spent half an hour waiting in the middle of Vanier for another. (Don't ask me why I couldn't get out and walk, because if you know Vanier then you'll understand.) Then I waited another 15 for the transfer at the destination. Thus, I arrived at 7:30. Fortunately, I was slated after the intermission, which meant I was not in trouble. *PHEW*

I was a bit disappointed by the number in attendance, considering the size of the school and its vast, vast wealth of talent in the student pool. Many of them were wonderful irish dancers, while during my high school time there numbered exactly 1 (Danny's niece). I was most appreciative of the teachers and their lending of time, talents, and dedication. From my experiences at all the high schools I worked at and attended, I now understand better the school spirit that lacked in my own rather bland and often painful high school experience. Above all, it reminded me how much high school will mean to the students, as it gives them such greater lasting memories than their future years of perhaps less-than-stellar jobs will provide.

I was quite tired yesterday morning, having slept very little and felt slighted by mum who didn't even remember me telling her that I was performing that night. She thought I was asleep the whole time so she went off to play mah jongg again that evening.

We were provided free breakfast at school so I took advantage of that by sleeping in an extra 30 minutes unintentionally, then spending the remaining 10 minutes of my time preparing to get to school. There are 350+ students at school, so getting in line was a big nuh-uh until later, so I spent even more time starving while watching them eat and go crazy with the green.

I asked if the teacher organizing the show from the previous evening if he needed me to play during the breakfast, as some of the performers would do. He seemed pleased that I would offer to do so, and he did make use of this offer at the very first opportunity. So I played again that day, in front of 400 people who barely even knew me a month ago, and now considered me either a pe(s)t teacher or "that funny asian woman on the violin."

Like I mentioned in the previous post, VRAK-TV was sending a crew to school to film them in the St Patrick's Day celebration that morning. Everyone was abuzz and incredibly anxious to get a glimpse of their favourite hosts. When they arrived, everyone screamed. And they didn't stop screaming.

They screamed through the teachers' choir peformance. They screamed through the irish dancer. They screamed throught the student band. They screamed throughout the bingo game. Then the cameras left and the bingo game ended and everyone ran away. I suppose you can only have enough school spirit to last 2 hours.

I don't think I could take any more noise for a while. Felix suggested last night for me to go out to celebrate, but I seriously don't think I could have done it even if Jorghnassen came over and asked (and I'm not into drinking like Felix is).

5 minutes advanced notice?

Well, you might as well ignore this post if you
a) don't have VRAK TV
b) read this post somewhere without TV and can't reach one within the next 5 minutes
c) don't give a shit.

My school was filmed today celebrating the St Patrick's Day crazyfest by VRAK-TV - more specifically, by the famous (?) R-Force. It's on tonight "Vendredi 17h25, 17h55, 18h25" on VRAK-TV.

EDIT: OK, after further research, it made more sense that the things they filmed would not be shown today, considering that they probably need waaaay more time to edit and fix it up for viewing. Especially with the screaming of bloody murder by 300 kids about 99% of the filming.

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?

Dumpster Diving

I haven't done it before, but I am certain there is a definite possibility near where I live. Some of you know that I live near the mall, in the area where they are very quickly building new places to waste your money at. Within the last couple of years, they have built:

• A Wal-Mart


• Krispy Kreme


• Future Shop


• Archambault


• Pier 1


• Deco Decouvertes


• ??? I forgot the name of that electronics store


• Omer Deserres


• And many more!

I find it a complete waste of space. The size of the buildings are massive, and the parking lots and traffic ensure that if you walk between these buildings, you are guaranteed to get run over by some irate gas pedal-crazy SUV driving suburban mum.

Anyway the point is that I want to try the scavenger hunting of these outlet boxes. I was inspired by this SA forum thread (which will not be accessible forever, due to the constant archiving and the paying-money-to-look-at-its-archives thing). In the thread, the divers surface booty of food, random crap that you wouldn't want even as hobos, and questionable clothing. On the other hand, when they dumpster dive, the choice of dumpster will definitely determine the quality of the haul. I would *LOVE* to find a vacuum cleaner to replace this piece of crap that my mum still insists on me hauling around.

(When I get a good picture, I'll post it here eventually. Then you'll know what I'm talking about.)

So who would like to go with me? Lil V? No, nevermind; you wouldn't be able to carry as much in your small arms, as we run away from livid hobos. Well, whoever wants to give it a shot, I'll throw in a free meal. (One that doesn't come from the dumpster.)