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Sunday, February 29, 2004
Good Buck/Bad Buck
I'm trying not to think about it, I'm trying very hard. I had my 2nd Don interview on Thursday (goodness, was that only Thursday? It's felt like a feckin' eternity), and letters come out this Friday. I can't really gauge my performance all that well and I feel pretty flimsy about it all right now, more nonchalantness than I'm used to. I've subscribed to a new sort of fatalism recently, and though I don't necessarily believe that everything is predetermined, I do seem to increasingly believe that there are reasons for the way that things turn out. I've always said that all you can do is your best, and then just keep your fingers crossed after that. The hardest part is accepting the fact that if the outcome is not what you wanted, there still is a reason for it.
I've been turned down for two jobs on campus already, and my optimism is being drained. If I can't be hired by university people to be an usher or camp counsellor, then who in the real world is going to hire me? School is coming to an end faster than I thought and I need some money. Though I loved/love the tea shop, I can't imagine working there as a part-timer again. Resumes are going out sometime this week or early next week so I can start racking up interviews when I get home. I still have my fingers crossed for a job at the on campus art gallery for next year, and if I don't get that, well, let's just say I won't be too happy. I didn't even get interviews for the last two jobs that I applied to. Not even an interview. It's a shame too, I'm usually pretty good at them, so I guess the problem lies in the way that I look on paper. The camp counsellor job was a major disappointment and I felt quite angry, upset and rejected for a day or two.
Anyway, I'm going to stop griping and end with a piece of good news. I got accepted to do a presentation at the Ontario Residence Hall Association Conference this coming weekend! Nervous? Yes.
12:58 pm
Friday, February 27, 2004
Breakfast Equals Not Bullshit
I've never really been a picky eater; I'm Asian, I've eaten it all. From strange Eastern fungi to chicken feet to duck heart and more, I've been there, done that and got the t-shirt. But when it comes to breakfast foods, don't mess with me, please. It makes me upset. My friends have been talking about breakfast at Harvey's for ages now, and having only eaten it once back in August, I couldn't really remember how good it was. Jason wanted to go this morning so I figured, why not.
I now have serious beef with Mr. Harvey.
"I'd like the breakfast combo please. Eggs sunny-side up, brown toast and a tea."
"I"m sorry, we don't have brown toast or tea."
So I'm slightly miffed.
"Okay, white is fine and I'll have an orange juice."
"Sausage or bacon? Hash brown or home fries?
"Sausage and homefries please."
Our meals come about 15 minutes later, with all the butter on the toast concentrated in the middle, making the already unappetizing and constipating white bread all soggy. One of my biggest pet peeves is uneven buttering. It bugs me. Up the wall. Now I'm even more miffed. The sausage is a hamburger patty and the home fries are chunky potato wedges, like the kind you get with pizza. "What kind of breakfast is this?" I thought. Soon after, the one yolk that I hadn't touched yet begins leaking all over the plate. "It's coming from underneath! How did that happen?" Jason's eggs were flipped over and fried, even though he ordered them over-easy. Later, I find out that we were supposed to get jam with our toast in addition to the uneven butter. I'm past miffed. I'm VERY miffed. Vexed, if you will.
"This isn't breakfast!" Jason cried, "This is bullshit!"
Mr. Harvey, you've disappointed me. Breakfast is supposed to be the best meal of the day! What have you done to it?! Ugh, I'm never eating breakfast there again.
12:07 pm
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Back To The Grind, Unfortunately
I just wanted to post and say that I'm still alive. And it's only Tuesday. Since getting back to school from Reading Week, I've done more than I thought was possible without falling asleep on stage or crying because I forgot to order coffee urns. I'm tired and...just tired. I'm going through every day just thinking, "Okay, one more thing and then you get to do this." or "Maybe I can just lie down for a few minutes..." or "Come on Shirley, keep on plugging along, just finish this and then..."
The list of Things To Do is shrinking...that's a relief. What's not a relief is this major midterm I have on Saturday...I need to get the heck out of this Business program. And then there's the Global Studies essay that's worth 35%. Procrastination is going to cost me $26 when I have to Express mail that FTE application to California overnight. Highlight of the evening: I have a photo of me and Kim from Street Cents.
Note to self: Keep eyes open whenever possible and remember to breathe.
11:33 pm
Saturday, February 21, 2004
A Taste of Motherhood at 19
Jason and I had planned to visit the Royal Ontario Museum last night, have a nice Indian dinner and then go skating at City Hall. We still did all those things, but add 3 kids to the mix: aged 10 (Katie), 6 (Justin) and 4 (Jordan), and subsitute the Indian for McDonald's. After more than 6 hours with them, I can say that I came out of the evening alive and still wanting children, which is probably more than I can say for Jason (he was tired even before we left).
There are some things that nearly drove me crazy, but in the end, kids still amaze me. For example: we faced rush hour on the way downtown, so the kids were bored in the car. They managed to entertain themselves for at least 10 minutes simply by singing the phrase "Dragonball Z" over and over. When that got boring, they sang "007 (double-oh seven)". And then came the famous "Are we there yet?", preceeded by lots of yelling and screaming. Thank goodness someone suggested they play the Quiet Game later.
Is being a mom really about putting up with noise in the car, carrying coats and scarves and hats in the museum because you're afraid the kids will lose them, and agreeing to eating at McDonald's because one of them really wanted a Happy Meal? If it is, then not only am I all prepared, but I also can't wait. Believe it or not, I liked saying that I wanted to order 4 Happy Meals (one for myself) to the guy at the counter; I liked telling the kids to stop playing with their Lion King 1 1/2 toys and eat their nuggets; I liked holding their little hands as we crossed the street and zipping up their jackets and putting on their scarves; I liked going skating in the rain at 10pm just because they claimed they weren't tired (and boy, they really weren't).
Well, like it or not, I'm not about to have kids anytime soon so I still have time to act like one. While at the interactive kids' area in the museum, Justin and Jordan made me get on all fours and crawl through a tunnel to see a fox. I did, saw the fox and told the boys that I had to get out. "This tunnel is for little kids, and I am definitely not little anymore."
And as Justin so eloquently reminded me last night, "But you're not old, you're only 19."
4:39 pm
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Lovey Dovey
This past Valentine's Day has got to be the best one by far. There were no cards, flowers or presents, but that's the last thing I need to know that Jason and I love each other. Instead of giving gifts, we piled into my mum's big van with my uncle and his girlfriend Zita and my brother and his girlfriend Vivian, and trucked ourselves up to Ottawa at 7am on Saturday morning. 3 cute couples on a little road trip up to the capital to spend Valentine's Day 2004 on the ice turned out to be a lovely idea. After much driving and napping and some getting lost, we found ourselves with skates strapped on our feet standing on the World's Longest Skating Rink, the Rideau Canal. It was a beautiful day out and I was in the bestest of moods, even though I was a bit nervous becuase I hadn't been skating since last Christmas. So at first skating on the canal was nothing more than a slip 'n slide 'n try to stay standing. But after a few kilometers, we all got the hang of it, and had a bunch of fun. I tried maple syrup with snow on a stick for the first time and had my first Beavertail too.
7.8 km x 2 in skates proved to quite the task. The first 2 hours was fun; going from beginning to end seemed like this wonderous adventure, filled with sunshine, trying new things, and keeping Jason from falling. And the 3rd hour wasn't too bad, we needed to rest a bit more, and every now and then I really wanted one of those kiddie sleds to sit on...but the last hour was absolutely terrible. My legs were tired, I couldn't feel my feet and my fingers felt increasingly frost bitten. By this time, Jason and I had stopped holding hands and weren't even talking to each other anymore. We just skated and skated and skated. Finally, we made it to the end, took a victory photo and pulled our skates off. I couldn't recognize my feet and I felt like an old lady because not only did my feet hurt, but so did my knees and my back. So yes, after 4 looooooong gruelling hours, yours truly did indeed skate the entire canal. Twice (there and back). That's more than 15.4 km (because I like to count the forks in the canal that we skated too) in just 4 hours. That's enough exercise to last me the rest of the school year.
We warmed up with a pasta dinner and some fun family photos. Jason and I ended up stayed the night with his relatives while the others went home. We played with the kids and spent Sunday at Byward Market, The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Parliament Hill open house. A Lebonese lunch later and we were on our way home.
So in the end, I discovered that love isn't about giving a card or chocolates or flowers or anything, really. It's about napping together in the backseat of a van, skating over 15.4 km even though you're dead tired just because the other person wants to do something wacky as a couple, sharing a cup of hot chocolate or tea, sharing a toothbrush, holding hands to keep the other from falling on the ice, going into a store because you know they want to, giving the other person your socks because theirs are wet from writing their e-mail address in the snow for all of Parliament to see (I'll give you one guess as to who that was), eating the others' pickled turnips or onions because they don't want to, signing your names on the same line in the guest book of an art gallery.
4:22 pm
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Say It Aint So
2004 is not off to a good start. I came back to school after the holidays with a terrible cold, kept it for two weeks and then got better. And now, somehow, I manage to get sick again! Apparently, this is no regular cold, this is viral URI (Upper Respiratory Infection). This if course, comes from the lovely doctor lady at Health Services who gave me four Tylenol Cold pills and bid me good day. Actually, she didn't even bid me good day, she just said, "Okay Shirley, you're all done here." If she was the one who told me I had viral URI, why in the world would she just give me cold pills? And she didn't even tell me to gargle with warm salt water, even though I told her my throat hurt every time I swallowed. Good thing I know to do that on my own.
So here I am, two weeks after I get better and I'm back to coughing, congestion headaches and blowing my nose with university toilet paper. Not cool. Residence is so gross, the perfect breeding ground for all kinds of illnesses. You get sick, you get better, what you had gets passed around the building and by the time it makes its way back to you, the sickness is a totally different strain! I'm so glad to be heading home tomorrow for Reading Week, maybe the building can finally clear itself of whatever germs are floating through the ducts.
5:08 pm
Monday, February 09, 2004
Hey Pretty
There's a photo of my parents and I standing in front of our house that was taken the night of my brother's Grade 8 Graduation nearly 5 years ago. Over the holiday break just a month ago, I remember flipping through albums and upon seeing that picture, thinking dejectedly to myself, "Man, I was hot." I had cute flippy hair, clear skin, breasts, and I was so thin that I wore this tiny tank top that showed my entire tummy. Those were the days. Those days are long gone. The hair is grown out and boring, the skin sometimes acts up, I'm convinced that my breasts are different sizes and I am definitely not thin.
This is not self-deprecation for the sake of fishing for compliments (that's the last thing I want), this is an honest assessment of my current state of being. I am the complete opposite of the stereotypical "pretty"/"hot" image. If you want a tall, thin, leggy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl who's going to make you smile your goofy smile and pine away, I'm sorry, but you'll have to look elsewhere. Heck, I'm not sorry, you'll just have to look elsewhere.
In no way am I ashamed of the way I look, I'm just sick and tired of the media telling us that the "romantic" way of falling in love is by seeing the other person. I've come to loathe the term "love at first sight"; can't it be "love at first date" or "love at first coversation"? Why this pre-occupation with the way that people look? Example: Big Fish. Loved the movie. Adored it, would buy it. But the one and only thing that I didn't like, really didn't like about it was the fact that Edward Bloom fell in love with his future wife just by seeing her across the ring at the circus. "Hell, you don't know that girl Ed! She could be a crazy, serial killer for all you know! Why in the world did you swear that you were going to marry her, just after seeing her once?!"
Because she was pretty, obviously. Excuse me while I throw up my curly fries.
Yes, people who look good are nice to look at, I won't deny that. I just want the world to stop telling us that they are the only ones worth looking at. I want the world to stop placing such an emphasis on the body. Who are you to tell me that I should be thinner? Dieting? Forget it. I am not going to dye my hair, buy contacts or alter my genes to make me who you want me to be. If you don't think I'm pretty, then so be it. I want to stop thinking knowing that the world is this superficial.
You can call me a flaming feminist, plain ol' petty or just jealous, but I think (after way too long) that I've finally come to realize that I cannot count on the world, or even those people close to me, to make me feel beautiful. I have to do that for myself first. Because if I can't convince me, then who can I convince? I'm just having a terrible time trying to figure out whether or not I have myself convinced.
I am so glad that my first Vagina Monologues rehearsal is tonight. A group of women getting up in front of everyone and saying out loud that they are not ashamed or emabrrassed is just what I need.
< / r a n t >
6:45 pm
Friday, February 06, 2004
Brekkie: Cereal With My Raisins
Breakfast has got to be my favourite meal of the day. I have yet to find a breakfast food that I don't like. You name it, I'll eat it; eggs fried, sunny-side up, over easy, scrambled, benedict, poached. Crunchy buttery and jammy toast, tasty taters, hash browns, fatty suasages and greasy bacon. Waffles, Belgian or not. Well, maybe not porridge or oatmeal, because it's boring. But even I can have a boring breakfast. Like cereal. Like this morning.
I have this jumbo box of Corn Flakes that my mother bought because she wanted me to eat healthy. It just sucks that healthy also means tasteless sometimes. If I'm desperate, I'll eat a plain bowl of Corn Flakes and milk. But today I was lucky for my lovely boy bought a bag of raisins and left it here last week. In go the Corn Flakes into the bowl, and a couple handfuls of raisins. "Mmm...more raisins." I thought. "This cereal is so boring it definitely needs more raisins." I add milk and I eat. I ran out of Corn Flakes long before I ran out of raisins. I even ran out of milk and I still had raisins sitting in the bottom of my bowl. Milk soaked raisins aren't too bad, but I've definitely found a breakfast food that I don't like.
2:42 pm
Sunday, February 01, 2004
Some Saturdays
I volunteer with Laurier Students For Literacy here on campus and we do Reading Circles every Saturday with the local kids. They come in, sit with us for an hour or so, read some books, do a craft and generally have a good time. But there are some Saturdays when I cannot for the life of me drag myself out of bed, especially if I've had a long Friday night. This Saturday was one of those "I've only had x<8 hours of sleep...I'm SO tired" mornings, but I went to Reading Circle anyway. And it was worth it.
Jill is 6 years old, likes purple and pink, dreams of Princess Land and loves Arthur. We read about the time when he got chicken pox and then gave it to his sister. We giggled and growled and changed our names and tried to guess how tall horses were. We looked at the pictures in Beauty and The Beast because it was too long to read. And then we started to read Rapunzel, because we weren't allowed to start coluring yet, but...
Me: "When she was twelve years old the Witch shut her up in a tower, in the middle of a great wood, and the tower had neither stairs nor doors, only high up at the very top a small window." Okay, your turn.
Jill: "Whennn the old wwwitch want-ed to get in...she stood un-der-neeeathhh and called out: 'Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your gol-den hair' for Rapunzel had won...won-der...
Me: She had what?
Jill:...where am I?
Me: You're here..."she had wonderful hair"....
Jill: Can we just look at the pictures instead?
I wanted to keep her.
6:51 pm
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