Mish Mash

My Supposed To Yesterday:

-wake up at 6am
-leave the house at 7am
-catch the bus at 8:30am
-arrive in the Loo at 10am
-attend a very important meeting at 11am
-see a house
-hand out resumes
-take transit home

My Actual Yesterday

-slept in until 9am
-freaked out
-made apology phone calls
-had sushi for lunch with the boys
-vegged out at my house
-went lappy shopping
-had chai in the sun
-vegged more
-went to see Pulse

I lie when I say that I went to see Pulse, because I didn't really 'see' it at all. My experience with the movie was something more like "I endured it" as opposed to "I saw it", as Alex so eloquently put it. Pulse is a horror movie. I don't do horror. I don't do thriller, or even action, really. I'm a big ol' fraidy cat and I say that almost proudly. I've seen about three scary movies in my entire life; Se7en was watched from behind a column in my friend's living room (I could duck behind it when scary parts were on screen), Scream was watched because I didn't want to be an open wuss in front of my friends yet, so I watched it with two pillows for my ears and one for my eyes, and I walked out of the theater part way through Red Dragon. How did I ever make it through Pulse? Well, let's just say that I was curled up into a little ball in my seat, my eyes were shut so tightly that I'm surprised my mascara didn't smear more, and I really wish that I had trimmed my finger nails beforehand because jamming them into my ears really hurt after a while.

I can't explain why I never got over my fear of scary movies because it seems that a lot of people can. I went because I thought I was up to the challenge of finally 'facing my fear' and all that trite stuff, but as it turns out, I'm not getting over this one at all. My fear of heights? Meh, I'll just jump out of this plane that's 13,000 feet in the air (<-- totally doing that again on Sunday!). But I still can't walk across a bridge comfortably. Don't know why. Personally, I think the reason why I can't do the scary movie thing is that seeing one is sensory overload for me. In the theater, the screen is huge and things are always flashing so that if I don't end up twitching on the floor, I'll have a really bad headache. And the sound is just so...LOUD. The booming and screaming and AHHH! rattles me to my bones and listening to the movie with my ears plugged is even too much for me. So you can argue that there's silence in horror movies. Yeah, sure. There's always silence right before banshee screams pierce your eardrums.

Ever since I read The Odyssey, I've always thought of myself as Circe-like because I too was sensory like her. I enjoy rich colours and smells and the texture of different fabrics and delicious food and beautiful music. I totally dig having my senses stimulated. But in a movie theater, especially when there's a scary movie on, I feel like they're being assaulted all at once and my nerves just can't handle it. When I listen to music, I can only listen to music. I can't do anything else or I won't enjoy the songs. When I talk on the phone, I sit there and talk on the phone. If I start cleaning or doing dishes, I stop listening to the person. I have never, ever been able to read while the TV is playing. I have to pick one and give it my full attention.

I am also a visual learner and have an overactive imagination. When I see something memorable, the image ingrains itself into my brain, and then my imagination takes that image and plays with it. For a very long time. I can still see scenes from all those scary movies I saw when I was younger and yes, they still creep me out. I listened to Pulse more than I watched it, and even with my eyes shut tightly, I still played a movie in my head depending on what I heard and what scenery and images I had already taken in. See, you give me a bit of something to look at, and I can take it and turn it into a whole movie in my head. Weird, I know. And a final word on my fraidy cat-like quality: I once peed my pants in a haunted house because I got scared by a big, fuzzy ball on a string. Yes, that's how bad it is. Let's keep this information to ourselves, shall we?

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I finally went to the Loo today and did all the things I was supposed to do yesterday. I got the info I missed, I saw the house and I went looking for employment. Everything went fairly swimmingly, except that looking for a position as a server can be discouraging with little restaurant experience. Okay, so I know that a few months' experience doesn't sound like very much, and okay, so I've never served alcohol and I've never poured fancy wine, but I SWEAR, just give me a chance and I'll be an awesome waitress, just you watch. I'm nice! And I can carry three full plates of food! And I check up on people's meals and offer freshly ground pepper because I hate it when I go out to eat and they don't.

I left a few places feeling like I was really quite foolish for thinking I could even try to get a job there. After a couple bad experiences, I stopped going into fancy restaurants altogether. Humph. I bought two veggie samosas from an organic food store thinking they'd make me feel better. I sat on a bench outside the bus station eating one of my samosas, feeling really relaxed. The sun was keeping me warm and my feet were resting from a day full of walking. I dangled one of my thong sandals from my big toe. I inspected my nails and picked at my cuticles. I took a big bite of potato, peas and spices when a car on the street in front of me rolled down a window. "Excuse me." I looked up. "You're really beautiful." Huh?

Gulp. I sat straight up. I quickly swallowed as much of the samosa as I could, but I hadn't chewed all of it and so when I tried to say Thank You! it came out all garbled and ...food-y. I tried to smile. Then I remembered I had food in my mouth. I tried to look feminine and dainty and beautiful, but his deed was done so he waved and drove off. I sat backed, chewed, swallowed and smiled to myself. How ridiculous was that?

I feel silly saying that something so superficial could make my night, but it really did. The difference between this time and all the other times that I've been complimented is that I was being fairly unattractive when this boy took notice of me. I was sitting hunched over on a bench, huddled over an Indian snack in a bag, with my sandal hanging off my toe and a big gob of food in my mouth. My shirt was dirty from when a piece of potato fell out of the samosa and rolled down my white tank, the curry leaving a trail of stain. I was picking at my nails. I even said Thank you with my mouth full. Bless him for thinking I was beautiful when I was in such a natural and rugged state, and even more blessings to him for making the effort to tell me.

Talk about making me feel better. Pfft, I don't need to be a waitress in a nice restaurant. I'll just sit on benches eating and wait for nice boys to tell me I'm pretty.

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And whoa, has anyone read about this? New planets? What the hell? Everything I was taught in school is going to be thrown out of whack, from astrology (is my moon going to be in Venus this month or Ceres? or Charon?) to My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.

Bonus geek points if you know who Ceres and Charon are! And Circe!
11:39 PM

Monday, August 14, 2006

Asia Returns

I realized that, upon returning from Asia, I have very little to say about my five weeks travelling there. Even while I was updating from abroad, all I managed to do was tell you which airport I was currently at and what countries and cities I had just been to. Friends have excitedly asked, "So how was the trip?!" to which I have responded, "It was good" and not much more. It's not that I had a bad time and it's not even that I had such a fantastic time that I'm speechless about it. I suppose I just find it hard to tell stories without something sparking a memory, like going through my photos or journal would. But because I love my bloggy blog and my internet peeps so much, I'm going to put forth an extra effort by sharing some photos, journal excerpts (in italics) and little tidbits here and there. I present Volume One: Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City (henceforth referred to as HCMC).

My brain is reminding me that this is probably a bad place to start documenting my trip. Going through my journal, I remember how we got off to a bad start, Vietnam and I. The HCMC airport is probably the worst airport I've ever been in. Disorganization can be cool and romantic in a spontaneous way and all, but the lack of structure here certainly doesn't have the same charm. Then when we got into the city and settled in...I swear Ho Chi Minh is the city that never sleeps. I've been awake at 2am, at 5am and there are still people on the streets, on their mopeds, in their cars, constantly HONKING. It never stops. If it wasn't for jet lag, I'd never fall asleep. And then there was that time that we paid $15 for a cab ride when it should have been $1.50. And then that other time when we paid $18 when it should have been $1.80....You'd think that my family, having been there before (my parents! having been born and raised there!) could figure out the fares on the meters enough to see through the cab drivers' bullshit when they overcharged us. Nope.

Every time we returned to HCMC I felt that cynicism...I know that there's a local vs. tourist sentiment. As tourists, we get picked on and ripped off - we are prey. And I hate that. I wish I could change the way things worked, if only so that we/I could enjoy ourselves a bit more. I'm just disheartened to find that people aren't that sincere or kind at heart, despite my desperate want for them to be, and even more disheartened at having to live in it for the next little while.

HCMC and I eventually learned to tolerate each other and perhaps appreciate each others' quirks and cultural differences. It got me thinking and writing a lot, which I guess is a good thing - more of those thoughts to come later. Regardless, I enjoyed (most of) my time there and have a feeling that it won't be too long before we meet again.

Okay, picture time. Here's some of what one would see if one were to walk around HCMC (click to enlarge!):

 
Right: The difference between the rich and the poor is staggering.

 
Left: Women shielding themselves from the sun.
Right: I really, really like this photo.

 
Left: This is the oncoming traffic, headed right towards you as you cross the street.

This is what you'd see if you were somewhere high, looking down or around:

 
Left: This is the coffee place where my dad got his caffiene fix in the mornings, and at night. Vietnamese iced coffee is really, really yummy.
Right: Good morning, Vietnam.

 
Left: This was the building that our first hotel room faced. It might have been some sort of hotel once too, but it looks like the weather took it's toll on it.
Right: If you turned right, facing away from the mildew-y building, you saw this.

And this is what you'd see if you drove by:

 
Left: That's totally a moped with about a dozen live chickens tied to it. Live. They were still alive. No doubt he was taking them to some sort of slaughterhouse...I found it very disturbing, especially when one of the chickens lifted its head and started looking around.

Lots of people, lots of mopeds, cone-shaped straw hats, street vendors, lots of tall, skinny and colourful buildings side by side. I particularly liked noticing the remnants of the French occupation:

 

Notes on that French occupation thing: You can see it in the architecture, you can see it in the large number of Catholic churches that pepper the countryside among the Buddhist altars, or in the statues of the Virgin Mary in front of people's homes. But the strangest thing is that the French managed to influence the way the Vietnamese understand English. I was trying to have a conversation with a nice Vietnamese woman and she offered to take a photo of me and my surroundings. I told her that I had already taken lots of pictures. She didn't understand and asked again if I wanted photos. I said I did it already, that I was done. After several minutes of struggling, I noticed that she understood the word "photo", but not "picture" even though they mean the same thing. I later came upon the realization that she understood words with French roots. For example, she understood "photo" but not "picture". She could say "finish" but didn't know what I meant by "done". The Vietnamese know "cinema" and "discotheque", not "movie theater" or "club". Neato, eh?

The city smells a lot like Over Populated. You can smell the heat, the people, the food at the markets, the dried and salted seafood, mildew, rotting vegetables and sewage. The humidity doesn't help either. We, funnily enough, had lunch at a KFC located close to the market that was our next stop. The stairwell smelled sickenly of dried shrimp; I called it "Seafood Sewer". It's a new scent, reminiscent of the streets of Vietnam. The streets were so dirty that I ended up throwing away two pairs of flip-flops at the end of the five weeks.... Daddy took us on a journey looking for toys and we ended up walking on the dirtiest 'streets' I've ever seen. What was once garbage was now part of the street - decayed/decaying and mashed into the pavement either by passers-by or motorbikes. The only good thing was that they evened out the road a bit by filling in the holes. Then there was the compost pile that obviously just started as a garbage pile, and over time, began to compost despite the lack of intent at it's conception. It was bumpy and wet as liquids squished beneath our light-as-possible steps. Mum was lucky that her shoes had a heel, though the elevation didn't prevent a chunk from being stuck to her shoe. I looked for pieces of brick, wood, or anything that still looked solid to step on, lest I be resigned to a similar fate. At one point, I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation and asked simply, "Why are we walking through a garbage dump?" Luckily, it didn't smell bad - though I might have been holding my breath. Later on that same day, my dad accidentally stepped on my foot in a fumbly exit from our hotel..."We just walked through a garbage dump! There's a smear on my foot!"...

And this is where I do something special:



YouTube has this nasty server that's a bit flimsy and my video isn't always here...keep your fingers crossed and keep checking?

11:51 PM

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Compu Freak

I unpacked! I went to the bank! I did laundry! All of it!

I've researched and found prospective rooms to sublet in the Loo, I've found jobs to which I can apply AND I managed to find computers with nubby mice! NUUUBBYYYYY!

I know you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, so here:



This is a nubby mouse. The more professional term would be "TrackPoint pointing device/stick", (but who really wants to say that?), and the more immature term would be "nipple mouse" (tee hee). So this is the thing with which I have a mild obsession. It is far, FAR superior to the touchpad *shudder* and "allows a user to move the cursor large distances without the need to pause to reposition their finger". Ha. That's the thing I hate about touchpads; it's the fact that you need to lift your finger all the time. The discontinuity in the motion is at odds with my soul.

So you're thinking, Problem solved! She found a laptop with the goddamnned nubby mouse so now she can buy one and shut up about it already. Alas! Not so! The problem is, ThinkPads are the only notebooks I can find with nubby mice and they cost hundreds to a thousand more than any other lappy I've looked at. I can buy an Acer with pretty good specs for $800. An amazing Toshiba would only cost me $1000. But ThinkPads! Dear goodness, if I went for the X Series (thinnest! and lightest!) I'd be paying about $2250(!!), and that's for the economy model. I don't know about you, but there's nothing economical about that number. Like, hel-LO! I'm a broke-ass student here, living off the earnings of my campus jobs from last semester and I need this lappy because I've got a life on the go (a CHEAP life on the go, mind you) and I'd like you to be a little bit more sensitive to that. I mean, I guess I don't HAVE to buy the X Series models...I could always go for the...*choke* R Series or something. But they're no walk in the Affordable Park either.

And there's another thing: The MacBook. I suppose this would be the happy medium price-wise. But it's not happy at all because THERE'S NO NUBBY MOUSE. Then again, it is a Mac. It's soooo shiiiny. And sleeeeek. And you can't really go wrong with a student discount and a free iPod. See! IBM, or Lenovo, why can't you do something like that, huh? HUH? Humph.

So there's my dilemma people. I can buy a well-priced Toshiba lappy with great specs at the local FutureShop. I can spend a bit more and get a MacBook (and an iPod). I can spend even more and get a ThinkPad. With the nubby mouse.

Why can't someone out there make a nice, shiny lappy with a 2GHz Intel Centrino Duo processor, a 100GB hard drive, with 1 GB of RAM, a good sized (14, 15"?) TFT LCD screen that has at least 5 hours of battery life, a beautiful nubby mouse, that weighs only about 4 lbs and costs about $1000 or less? WHY? Come on people, work with me here, work with me. You'll get one super-duper happy customer if you do. Uh, hello? Hello?

What to do? Calling all compu-geeks! I need advice.

*******

In other news, I managed to get up around 12pm today, so I'm one hour closer to rising when it's still morning. Go me!

I also managed to upload all 1227+ of the photos and videos that were taken in the last 7 weeks and organize them all into neat little folders. The process of picking the good ones to show you have started, but it's nowhere near complete yet and my weekend is looking a little busy. How's Monday for you?

11:38 PM

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

My Mind Is All...Bleeeargh

Our weekend in Seattle worked out quite well after all. We got into a hostel two hours before we left the house (and got a $3 discount for one night!) so no crashing or staying awake all night was necessary. We successfully avoided A's ex-bf despite the fact that we went to his favourite sushi restaurant and were 17 blocks away from his house - my powers as Queen of Freak Coincidences were not in gear, I suppose.

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One of my favourite Freak Coincidence stories is this:

Annia was visiting me for a couple days last summer and we ventured off to Chapters for a HP6 release par-tay before seeing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the local movie theater. Things at the bookstore ran late or the bus was running late or something, but we stood impatiently at the bus stop because we knew we couldn't miss Johnny Depp in all his weirdo goodness. We waited and waited, and the bus didn't come. I suggested hitch-hiking to the mall, it was only a few kilometers north after all. She said, "What! Are you crazy? No." So we waited. I said it again. "No." We waited some more. And then I said, That's it. If the bus isn't here at the next red light, I'm asking for a ride. "Fine."

The light turned red and the bus still wasn't there, so I chose a car with a male and female in it and hopped off the sidewalk. Excuse me, hi! Uhm, I know this may sound really strange, but my friend and I need a ride to the mall - are you guys headed that way? It's just that the bus is late and our movie is going to start in five minutes and I was wondering if you could give us a lift? Please? Silence. Weird looks. Okaaay, sorry, I didn't mean to weird you out, we just need a ride. I'm going to stand back over there now. Annia may have laughed at me at this point, BUT, the girl called me back. And offered us a ride.

We jumped right in, I lathered thanks on them and thus began the Freakiness:

They were students, the girl from the University down the street from me and the boy (her boyfriend) was visiting for the weekend, from UoG.
Annia goes to UoG. Same school, that's cool.
She tells him that she studies LA (Landscape Architecture - isn't she neat?)
Oh no way, so does his roommate.
No way indeed.
After hearing his roommate's name, Annia's reaction was something like this: OMG! I know him! I was just at a party at his house a few weeks ago! Do you live together? Have I already met you?? OMG!!!
Me and the girl: Jaws hanging open.
So it turned out that of all the cars in the world, we got into one where the driver and one of the hitch-hikers have partied together because she knows his roommate.

See what I mean? It's almost freakier that we didn't run into her ex.

For snippets of other freaky coincidental stories, see here.
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And, oh yes. Guess who I met? Moonshine! Well, that's what I call her, and I think I only do that because she calls me Shunshine and she needed a nickname too. Annia and I are big on meeting blog-friends in person when we travel. When we went to Boston, we met one of her LJ peeps who turned out to be a sweetheart. Moonshine was too - she put up with our weirdness, a craptacular Mexican restaurant, an accidental wet t-shirt contest that I started (see: Annia knocking over a FULL glass of water onto me), treated us to lunch AND drove us to the library. She's nice, she's funny AND she's a fancy-schmancy Producer! Does she rock or what?

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So. I'm home I'm home I'm home. Yes, I am home, but I'm feeling entirely anti-social right now, so I don't see how that information is going to be helpful to very many of you in the immediate future.* The want to crawl into bed and just stay there despite the absolute beautiful weather outside is caused by the giant list of THINGS TO DO sitting in my brain because OMG there are so many things to do. Nothing in my room has budged since mid-June, and when I walked in last night I was reminded of the terrifying chaos I was living in until I left it all behind. Only to return to it, of course.

I managed to ravenously eat a late dinner, take a dangerously long shower, give my dad his birthday present of fresh seafood from Seattle (as fresh as it could be after nearly 36 hours in a box) and open my stack of mail before finally falling asleep at about 2am to DCFC playing in the background. My body is still on West Coast time as I didn't wake up until 11am (only then because the phone was ringing off the hook all morning - people, I said, Leave me alooooonnne!). And, it's clearly 2am right now.

The aforementioned stack of mail (bills, investment statements, junk, PAYCHEQUES, and a Hostelling International membership!) are tossed onto the floor along with my unpacked luggage, piles of clothes, and $145 worth of wooden stamps and cutesy, but completely frivolous, HELLO tags I bought at an artsy paper store last week. I've only done about a third of the laundry that needs to be done, I haven't uploaded a single photo and I'm nowhere near getting my life back in order yet. I've gone back to eating junk (see: the chocolate-peanut-butter glutinous rice confection and ice-cream sandwich I just ate at 1:30am), and writing reminder notes on the back of my hand.

There are cheques to deposit (thank the lordy - I just spent seven weeks spending and not earning), investments to make, tuition to pay, and a class schedule to organize (along with begging the DE office to let me register despite missing the deadline)! A lappy-top with neurotic specifications to buy!** And possibly an iPod too. I need to put things away, wash my clothes, find a place to live (talk about STRESS) and a job near campus; there's shape that needs getting back into, people that need to be talked to/seen, planes to be jumped out of, road trips to be taken, friendships to maintain, a life in Spain that needs pulling together, supplies from my old job to return, photos to organize, stories to tell, oh my GAAAAHHH.

Don't you just hate it when you read blog entries that are full of whining and complaints or rants about how busy a person is? Yeah. Me too.

I miss being in Vay-Cay Mode.

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I have done a lot in the last seven weeks, but the one thing that I have not done at all is sleep naked. I don't have to miss it any longer.

Photos and stories will be shared soon. Before 2007.

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* When I'm in Anti-Social Mode I tend to get a bit snarky too, can you tell?

** Someone with lots of compu-knowledge, PLEASE tell me what to do about finding a portable notebook with a button mouse. I NEED a nubby mouse. NEED.

2:18 AM

Friday, August 04, 2006

Happenings

Last week at 12:30am on Thursday night/Friday morning, after we had just stepped into the foyer, Annia and I got evicted from her house. It's a long story with details that aren't mine to share, but a conflict that had lasted two months finally came to an end with fifteen hours notice to Get The Hell Out. I'd say we dealt with the situation very well; I mean, within twelve hours, we had a new place to stay that day, the next day, every day, forever, yay!

Over the next four nights, we stayed at four different places, in four different rooms, in four different beds. Some might say that this is the mark of a traveller, I'd say we weren't so much travellers as we were vagabonds or The Lost Children of The World.

Now we're settled into her new place with an awesome lady who's kitchen I adore, and who's cat I didn't see until three days after I moved in.

Our trip to Vancouver Island last weekend was good, despite the fact that Nanaimo was about the size of, oh, let's say my fist. We saw the whole downtown area in about four hours and the best part of the 'city' was probably our hostel. I'd go back to Nanaimo just to stay there. (Hi Bruce!) We went to Canada's only floating pub, I taste tested three different nanaimo bars, and we rode bikes through the rain after trudging through the sludge of a sewage contaminated lagoon. It was awesome. Even the burning sensation in my thighs.

Going to Seattle this weekend should be interesting because:

1. We have no place to stay.

Yes, we are the kind of gals to book our transportation first, and then realize that all the hostels in the area are full. So we can either rudely crash at someones's place or stay up all night wandering the streets.

2. A's ex lives there and bumping into him would be as awkward as me bumping into J.

This doesn't necessarily sound like a big deal, nor does it sound likely because Seattle is definitely bigger than Nanaimo. BUT. I have been in so many coincidental situations, that I might dare call myself the Queen of Being in Such Coincidental Situations. Take, for example, the time we were in a jade store in Beijing and my brother ran into one of his buddies from school. School in Toronto. They're in the same program and work out at the gym together. And months after school ends, they find themselves in the same jade store. In Beijing.

Or, that time I worked as a waitress in a Tea Shop and served this small group of small, cute Asian women which seemed regular enough, until I saw them on the streets of Chicago, ILLINOIS a few weeks later. Weird.

Or, that time I was in California and ran into the cruelest effing coincidence I've ever heard of.

OR. Last night, when A and I were at the art gallery and met a math teacher who not only lives in the same area back home, worked at our old high school for a couple months, but also knows some of our favourite teachers. Like, he KNOWS them. That's only one degree of separation. An art gallery! In Vancouver!

See. Queen.

Not that I want anything awkward and awful to happen while we're there. I'm just sayin'.

2:58 PM