I have moved on....

I don't even know if anyone even checks this blog anymore....but here's update anyway:

- still blissfully married to my amazing husband Tim
- I've become a homeowner - we bought this awesome condo in the city and have fallen in love with it and with our neighbourhood too!
- no babies yet
- Tim and I are now wedding photographers!

Don't worry, I am still slogging away at my day job as an engineer, however Tim has seen the light and left his job at an architecture firm and days of endless cadding. Check out our work at http://www.timchin.com and more importantly, keep us with our photographic exploits and latest work on http://timchin.wordpress.com!

Ciao ciao!

Clueless...so clueless.

We had a joint English-Chinese service today at church and Pastor Chan announced it (again) that Tim and I got engaged. He had us stand up in front of all 400 or so people while they clapped, and I blushed furiously and Tim sheepishly waved at everyone.

So I was telling a friend of mine the other day the whole proposal story in all its detail (as any girl is apt to do) and she simply couldn't believe I didn't see it coming, even up to minute before it happened. "How could you not have known?" she exclaimed after every other sentence I completed. "I-I don't know," I shrugged my shoulders and just grinned. In retrospect though, I suppose there were many clues, subtle and glaringly obvious, that just went over my head.

Clue #1, Thursday:
I was at church with Tim and some of the worship team who were prepping for the weekend. I was telling Kelsey to make the set a little shorter because we were supposed to have communion that Sunday, when Tim interrupted. "Uh, there's no communion this Sunday."
"What? How would you know?" I asked over my shoulder.
There was just the slightest bit of hesitation (during which Tim was thinking to himself "Oh CRAP" as he told me afterward), and then he said "Oh, because Pastor Dave told me."
OK. That wasn't really adding up. I mean, we talk to our pastor, but it's not like he'll randomly call one of us to give us the insider information for Sunday. I narrowed my eyes as I turned around to look at him. "What, you just happened to ask him?"
"Oh, well its because Jon wants to sing a song on Sunday. And uh, he asked to ask Pastor Dave...so, yeah."
It made sense, so my curiousity was sufficient satisfied.

Clue #2 Friday:
Joe, Tim and I were hanging out at their place when Joe asked Tim out of the blue, "Hey, so when are you and Jon practicing the song?"
My back was turned to them both at the time, so I missed the whole drama played out in facial expressions. Joe had no idea about the conversation that had taken place on Thursday, so he thought he had made a huge blunder. Tim stared him down with a mixed expression of shock and fury. Joe responded with a look of wide-eyed fear and apology. And in the meantime, I was spreading some double-cream brie on a slice of baguette and thinking, "Mmmm. Cheeese."
Anyway, I guess that counted as a clue, too. Why would Joe care if Jon and Tim were going to do a song? I was too wrapped in my piece of cheese to notice.

Clue #3, Saturday:
"So, my parents are coming down for the day tomorrow," Tim told me as were hanging out at his place again.
"Really? What's the occasion?" I asked.
"Oh, well uh, they wanted to see that loft we were interested in" he stated simply.
"Say what?", I exclaimed. "We just told them that we liked it, we're not ready to buy it or anything!" Tim and I have been doing some condo and loft shopping in the last few weeks, realizing that it was actually kind of fun. We weren't ready to put down the cash and sign up for a mortgage anytime soon, though.
"Well, you know that's how they are, kinda spontaneous when it comes to visiting...and they're going to be here for church service tomorrow too" he added with some trepidation as he backed away from me a little as I had a mini spazz-out.
"Well now I have to tell my parents!" I wailed. "Because they're so going to run into each at church tomorrow and my parents are going to find out why your parents are here! And now I have to tell them that we're looking at condos and they're totally start getting all opinionated on me and I really don't want to deal that right now."
I should add that we were not the only people in the room, a few friends were over and they sat there in awkward silence, while concentrating a little too hard on the TV screen during our whole exchange.

Clue #4: Saturday night
Well, I ended telling my mom about Tim's parents upcoming visit, our clandestine condo shopping, and she took it all with a breezy, "Oh really? That's nice! Let's all have lunch together tomorrow. Dad and I will go the early service instead." No lecture on why we were already looking at condos. Nothing. I was too relieved to think anything more of it.

Clue #5: Sunday morning
I greeted Tim's parents at door at 9:30. I saw that Tim's dad had a video camera bag slung over his shoulder and still, no flags went in my mind. I mean, it was about as surprising to me as seeing my own shadow on the wall. Which is to say, not surprising at all.

Tim, his parents, and I headed down the side of the sanctuary to find an empty row and I was to sit down. I sat down first and turned to say something to Tim and then nearly head-butted his mom by accident, who had settled down next to me. I was a little confused as Tim had seated himself on the other side of his parents even though seconds before he was walking right behind me. I decided I was giving this more attention than it deserved (uh, yeah right) and brushed it off.

Finally with 10 minutes left in the service, Pastor Dave introduced Jon to go up to the stage to sing his song. Although, something didn't seem right. Jon was sitting with his guitar, far away from any microphone and Tim was standing right in front of one, holding only a little piece of paper in his hand. "That's funny, I thought Tim was going to play the guitar," I whispered to his mom, who replied back, "I've never heard Tim sing before!"

And would you believe that at this point, I still had no inkling of what was to come? I mean, Tim sings, but he's not a singer. It's not really his thing. Drumming is his thing. Quoting C.S. Lewis is his thing. Taking pictures is definitely his thing. But singing? Not really. Despite the oddness of the situation, I thought to myself that maybe has was singing some backup vocal for Jon.

So the guitar intro began, and Tim began to sing...and it was off-key. Now, a lot of you know that I am really picky about music. And you know how you can feel really embarrassed for someone? Well, I felt so mortified for him, that I couldn't look at him. Two thoughts entered my mind simultaneously at the point: "WHAT on earth is he doing?" and "Why the heck is he singing Amanda Marshall?!"

And then it hit me. I realized it at the third line of the song. I suddenly understood what was going on - I was being proposed to, at church, with Tim's own version of Amanda Marshall's "Marry Me", and OH MY GOODNESS HE'S PROPOSING TO ME. Instantaneously, the tears came bursting of my tear ducts, I clasped a shaking hand over my slack-jawed mouth, and used all the willpower I could muster to avoid breaking into loud, rasping sobs. Which probably would have been a little awkward for everyone.

Now, I understood what was going on by the third line, but almost everyone else was probably confused all the way until the end of the first verse, which ended on the words, "...that you'll marry me". At that point, a collective gasp went up around the sanctuary, heads whipped around from every direction to look at me, and people started to clap.

Tim, at this point, had given up at trying to sing the song since he was getting pretty choked up (although many friends told me that he had nailed it a couple of times practicing the night before) so he just spoke the lyrics instead, while the music continued to play in the background. Everything was so well-planned that he had the lyrics up on the screen in Macromedia Flash. Finally at the end of the song, he beckoned me up to come to the front of the sanctuary, and as I approached, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Although everything at that point onward is a bit of a blur, I did say "Yes", or some form of it, and he put the ring on my finger, flashbulbs went off and we were surrounded by a crowd of well-wishers. "Tim, I was thinking, 'I'll marry you!'" shouted one of our friends.

Well there you have it. I was completely caught off-guard despite the pretty obvious (in retrospect) signs that were more or less thrown in my face. I like my surpises, though.

For all of you who weren't there and want to know what was in the lyrics of the song Tim sang/spoke (he changed quite a few of the lines from the original song), read on:

I wanna laugh, until I cry
Wake up with you each day till the day I die
We've been to New Orleans, we've been to Gaspe
Took funny pictures, ate jambalaya and cafe au lait
But when the day is over, and I stumble home
I dream and sleep
that you'll marry me

I wanna drive until we get lost
Stand in field lookin up at the sky
while we worship the Holy cross
Somehow I know without asking why
That you love me more in a minute
Than anyone could in a lifetime
All the joy that you've brought
completes my whole world inside
Swept me off my feet
Baby, marry me

We'll need a preacher man
Reading from the good book
And you'll want a classy dress
Ain't no ceremony for the vows that I took
From the moment I met you
I have been blessed

So let's make a toast
And drink up the wine
Here's to you lying here next to me
Until the end of time
Whereever you are, I wanna be
And everything that means anything to you
Means everything to me
Singing in this church hall
In front of all of these eyes
And they'll talk for weeks
But we're all we need
So baby, if you're free
Marry me...

We're engaged!

I suppose I could recap the whole event but most of you who read this blog were there anyway. Although there are a few details here and there that complete the whole story even more. For those of you who weren't there, no, it did NOT happen on Valentine's day. That would have been way too cliche and if he did, I probably would have asked him to propose again the next day. OK, well maybe not. Details to come. Stay tuned!

The Progressive Accumulation of Stuff

There’s this wonderful little phenomenon that Tim has christened “The Progressive Accumulation of Stuff”. It’s the reason why you may go into the grocery store to pick up some milk and leave with 2 bulging bags filled with cereal (to go with the milk), brownies (because they also go with milk), calcium enriched orange juice (an alternative to milk), cheese (because it was in the same section as the milk) and Triscuits, organic blue corn chips and of course, salsa (all unrelated to milk, but placed conveniently in the aisles on my way to dairy section).

It’s also the reason why I went to “just check out ” some shoes in the mall some ago and ended up buying three pairs.

I bring this all up because this is The Progressive Accumulation of Stuff is really why I now own a laptop. Observe:

1. I started going to the gym last year and realized that trying to read the closed captioning on the television while on the treadmill was only causing me nausea, but I didn’t really like watching Dr. Phil anyway. So I started looking into buying an iPod.

2. I found iPods very expensive, although quite aesthetically appealing. However as I did more research I found out that I needed USB 2.0 ports, and Windows XP to run iTunes. My two ancient desktops at home were (and still are) running on Windows 98. Dang.

3. I decided to shop for a laptop, so that when I did get around to buying an iPod someday, I would be able to upload my songs with ease. And besides, Windows 98 was getting on my nerves with its seeming incompability to run with anything.

4. I bought myself said laptop in the summertime. And then I stopped going to the gym.


It was a tragic how it all turned out at the end of my quest for portable music. However, as fate would have it, Tim got me an iPod Nano for Christmas! Now I can happily plug it into my new computer and upload songs to my hearts desire. I only wish I could use it more since I don’t really take public transit anywhere and having to plug it into my FM transmitter to listen to it in the car for my 15-minute drive to work seems like just a little too much work for the amount of gain.

So…I think it’s time to sign up for the gym again.

'Tis the season to go CRAZY

So between multiple gigs with COR, organizing a big Christmas dinner edition of Unwind, major stress at work and all the various activities in between (Rehearsals! Meetings! Office Christmas events! Dinners!) I am so totally looking forward to my week off between Christmas and New Years. I plan to do nothing but sit in front my fireplace, watch hours upon hours of TV and/or read. I have no intention to do Boxing Day shopping (gasp!). I want to be left alone. Well, at least for two days, anyway.

"Yes, the purpose of my trip is business."

I got to utter that line for the very first time today. On my very first business trip. I don't count the day trips to our Toronto plant, since they didn't include all-expenses paid meals and hotel stays. To be able to order "The Special" at dinner without having to ask how much it cost - that's a luxury I could get used to. Oh, and did I mention that I'm in Florida? Staying in a hotel on the beach? In shorts-and-T-shirt weather?

I would have been more excited it weren't for certain circumstances surrounding this monumental event (or, a significant milestone, if you will). For starters, I've been completely swamped at work. Swamped to the point where I don't answer phone calls, I don't return pages, and when people drop by my desk to talk to me, I will continue to type at my computer for a few minutes as if they were not standing right over me, something that I used to absolutely detest with other people. So the thought of having to leave all this work and unresolved problems behind, was, well, stressful.

Secondly, Hurricane Wilma. It made landfall in Flordia last Monday, the day before I was originally scheduled to leave from Montreal. The city I am visiting wasn't adversely affected, but the hotel I was booked at cancelled my reservation on the weekend because their power was out. So then I pushed my trip out by a day. And then by 5 days. And then extended it by another day. By the end of the week, the people at our internal travel agency knew my extension and pretty much answered my calls with "Yes, Angela. What is it now?"

And finally, our customer almost decided to do their flight testing on Saturday. Which would have meant I would have to miss Unwind, our bi-monthly coffeehouse - which wouldn't have been so bad, except that I was taking the lead with Tim on this particular one.

However, all has turned out well. Despite having to fly out at 7:45 am on a Sunday morning (forcing me to miss church), I got a free upgrade on my car rental - not that it mattered since I'm paying for the car anyway and should be back home for next weekend. Now I just have to worry about whether or not I have time to hit the beach.

Oh, and I'm not gloating. I'm just very enthused.

More important lessons learned

If you need to burn sugar to get that nice crisy shell-like surface on top of creme brulee (sorry about the lack of accents but I couldn't be bothered to switch my keyboard to French), do not, I repeat, DO NOT use a lighter. The result will be a creme brulee that reeks unappetizingly of lighter fluid. Consider yourselves warned.

Also: Southern Comfort is quite flammable, not surprising as it has a quite a bit of alchohol content. It provides a very pretty blue flame that takes some time to go out. This item is somewhat related to the previous one. In the end, I decided that I did not need a hard crispy top on some leftover creme brulee that I wanted to eat cold and contented myself with enjoying it with just brown sugar sprinkled generously on top.

A few snapshots...

I'm adding a few snapshots here to add to the anecdotes in my last post...they are courtesy of Kevin (whom I have yet to ask for permission to post them on my photo site, but then again I don't think he actually reads my blog, so, yeah, whatever. Thanks Kev!)


This is us breaking into the chalet after realizing that we had left our keys inside.



This was taken as we were testing out the newly purchased USB cable in the parking lot on my computer.


And this was taken as we were assaulted with the cold and salty waters of the Atlantic. You can see that I am wincing in pain from the saltwater having found its way into my cornea. The ocean can be so cruel.

Back to life. Back to reality.

The thing that is a real downer about going on vacation is coming back from it. The weeks and days preceding it are filled with anticipation, and a eagerness to step away from the ordinary everyday. And then you come back and before you know it, you're back at work, picking up where you left off; and it might as well be that you never went. The vacation was a but pleasant dream - an interruption of your waking hours.

On that somber note, I had a great time out in the eastern-most tip of La Belle Province. Unlike my previous whirlwind trips (case in point, my last trip to London and Rome back in May), this was a change of pace. We hung out. We chilled. We ate...a lot. We walked on pebble beaches by the ocean and looked for whales. We cruised around the town of Gaspe, looking for a USB cable.

What?you say. It's true. Apparently 1 GB CF cards for my shutter-happy boyfriend and budding photog/paparazzo friend Kev and was not nearly enough space. See, they both recently bought DSLR's (digital versions of those big-lensed cameras that make the REAL clicking shutter noise when it take pictures). So to deny them the freedom to snap away to their hearts' desires would be like denying a birthday child a whack at the pinata...it would be downright cruel. And I had assumed that Tim would bring a cable (he didn't), and he assumed my newly purchased laptop had a built-in CF card reader (it doesn't - it only reads Memory Stick), so it was nearly an utter tragedy. So on our first full day in the town of Perce, we searched every store we thought might sell a card-reader - to no avail. (Of course we were looking in all the touristy gift shops, but still!) The next day we made our way to (the slightly larger) town of Gaspe and 4 stores and 2 strip malls later, we managed to find an
electronics store. What a relief. We started to download the pictures mere minutes after the purchase was sealed and completed in the parking lot.

Other highlights from the trip included:

- Breaking back into our own rented chalet through a window shortly after discovering that no one remembered to take the key on our way out.

- Elatedly enjoying a choppy but exciting ride on a boat out in the ocean and then being pelted unexpectedly and repeatedly with cold salty seawater while tossed violently about the deck. Kev lost his footing at one point and managed to put a crack in the window of the captain's compartment when he slammed into it. We screamed and crawled our way back to the safety of the covered lower deck. It was rather embarrassing. (Of course, the fact that the seats were wet on the upper deck should have given it away.)

- Discovering the Gaspe night life. All one and a half blocks of it.

- Waiting more than an hour at a pebble beach for low tide so we could cross over to the Perce Rock only to realize we had been given wrong information about the time - it was not for an additional TWO hours. We didn't stick around.

- Realizing that burning a treated 2X4 plank of wood probably wasn't such a great idea.

I've put up quite a few pretty scenic photos on my smugmug website: http://angemala.smugmug.com. Check them out (you'll find the picture of us breaking into the chalet too).

Shut up, Eva Longoria

So I was reading the newspaper yesterday morning as I was having my breakfast,and I flipped to the Arts and Entertainment section when I spied a small article on the 2005 MTV music awards (VMAs). It was mostly covering the fashion of course, because who are we kidding, MTV isn't about actual musical artistry anyway. So there was this line about Eva Longoria, the starlet of Desperate Housewives fame, showing up to the event in nothing more than a one-piece bathing suit and simpering to the audience "I wasn't going to let a little thing like a hurricane keep me from wearing my bathing suit."

Well, I just about choked on my cereal and felt a little sickened. A little thing like a hurricane? That's nice, Eva. Trivialize a disaster that has killed possibly hundreds so you can play up your sexpot image. That's right - this "little" hurricane sure didn't keep you from exposing as much of your flesh as possible but its only caused hundreds of thousands - of not millions of people to lose their homes. Of course, we probably can't expect these Hollywood starlets to possibly understand the implications of such horrendous events unless it hits them in their surgically enhanced faces.

I don't normally criticize people by name on this blog, and I don't like to - but I was really just too annoyed.

Worth a thousand words...

So I figured the other day that with all the pictures I take, I should really post them up and share with the world. And so here we are: http://angemala.smugmug.com. It's still a work in progress - I've got a lot of photos I want to put up from various events and trips I've taken in the past year. You can download the pictures as you wish in full resolution! And you don't have to sign up for anything - just click away and enjoy.

Speaking of my camera - it was one of those last-minute purchases I made prior to my trip to the Rockies last summer when my dad told me quite plainly that I could not borrow his digital camera. In a panic, and not wanting to bring my old point-and-shoot embarassing clunker of a film camera - I did some intensive research (which actually consisted of asking three people their opinion on which camera to buy) and bought my camera the night before I left. It was the best investment I've ever made - there's nothing quite like being able to capture a moment in an image, which can sometimes express more than words ever could.

I think I write stupider

So I was re-reading some old posts tonight (come on, admit it, we ALL do it!) and it dawned on me that my writing is nowhere as sharp as it used to be. It's a considerable backslide if you compare posts from 2003 and the last few I've posted. Back in the day there were more syllables, more variety in the vocabulary and more run-on sentences - a sign of pseudo-writing genius and saavy. My newer posts are peppered with the monosyllabic expression "heh" and I keep referring to "people" as in, "Picking underwear off the floor isn't kosher, people". What's happened?

I think I can take some solace in the fact that many people out in the blogging world write like idiots who didn't make it past the third grade. I made the mistake of browsing some random blogs and xangas one night to see if there was anything interesting out there (because there are a few literary gems sometimes) and my eyes were assaulted with people writing words like "krayzee" and "wit" (as opposed to "with") and punctuating every third sentence with "DAYUM!" and "thazz hawtz!". And I man every second word was mutilated. I actually felt my brain cells dying in the shock of it all. For the love of all things sacred, what in the world is going on? Do these people actually think they sound cool? Is sounding like a simpering fool supposed to be "hawtz"? Has "blubbering illiterate chic" taken the cyberworld by storm? So fine - even the lousiest writers have a right to broadcast their...um...thoughts. The internet, after all, is public domain and its not like I'm forced to read these atrocities trying to pass themselves off as comprehenible thought - but they should come with a viewer's discretion advisory. "May be disturbing to readers who know how to READ".

And if any of you ever catch me writing anything like that, please slap me upside the head next time you see me in person.

Climb every mountain...

I went on a short day hike in New Hampshire this past weekend. It was a steep uphill climb to the top and although I was dizzy that I felt like throwing up afterwards, it was worth every ache I now have in my legs.

Dang! Has it really been...

...6 months? What happened?! I didn't even realize that my last post was in November.

Well first of all, work happened. A real job means real responsibility, people! No more time to surf the internet on while on the clock! And in the meantime, my life got incredibly busy. I joined the gym, recorded an album with my gospel choir and was just basically tied up with lots of various weekly commitments that left me with little time to blog. I meant to, though! I started to draft something a while back and found it just tonight on my blog account.

_____

Dear Mr. President of the Fox Television Network,

I was so very sad that I did not get a chance to watch the last reality special you offered to the viewing public, "Who's Your Daddy?".

The show inspired me - if a father who gave up his daughter at birth could be reunited with her with the promise of winning a substantial sum of money, why stop there? I say we continue to raise the bar even higher and exploit every single poor, desperate sucker out there who wants their 15 minutes of fame and instant cash! Bleed them all dry!

How about a show where you line up a dozen couples who are on the brink of divorce and have their respective children battle it out to keep their families together! Every week, the children from each family should go through a series of "challenges" to determine which family will be eliminated for the week. You could have the child contestants undergo challenges like spelling bees, dodgeball matches and difficult household chores like floor waxing and roof gutter cleaning (with no ladder provided!). Wouldn't that be such a hoot? The eliminated families will head straight to divorce court and the winning family at the end of the season gets 4 free months of marital counselling and an all-expenses paid trip to Disney World!
_____

I didn't finish it and I don't feel like finishing it. So there.

Here's a very quick re-cap of my life happenings since December, in no particular order:

- I moved to a new house! Oh wait...that was in September. Never mind.

- I put up Christmas lights. With Tim. At around Christmas time.

- Went to NYC in February with Tim, Joe, Jason P and Andrea, Tim's roomie and spent most of the weekend either running around looking for people (the ones mentioned above) or places (because we -being Tim and I- had to meet up with them and we were always late or lost). I also spent too much money.

- Went on a whirwind trip to London and Rome in the span of a week with Sana at the end of May. It was great and I really should post some pictures up soon!

- Worked really really hard on recording an album with my gospel choir, the Choir of Reconcilation. We had two recording concerts in April that ROCKED. Those of you who could have come and missed it should be ashamed. Just kidding! But not really.

- Changed departments (temporary) at work. I was pretty much kidnapped out of my old department into another department and given a role that has a lot more responsibility. It's pretty much like a promotion. For someone who had no intentions of climbing the corporate ladder, this is pretty darn good. At the time of the offer I was rather flattered and humbled at the same time. Now that I work longer hours, I'm just tired. But it's all good.

- Attended Lynn and Lat's nuptials in March! Their wedding vows made me cry. The song I sang with Ivanna and Lil made Lynn cry. Hee!

- Survived a fire in my house. I can almost hear the choruses of "WHA-?" Yeah I know, but it's true. Thankfully it wasn't too bad - the bulk of the damage was in the basement where the fire started but the rest of house sustained a bit of smoke damage. So the whole house had to be re-painted and re-wallpapered. Our basement has to be redone completely. If there's a lesson to be learned boys and girls - make sure your smoke detectors are in working order because that seriously saved our lives. Well, God saved our lived but you know what I mean. We could have slept right through it and I don't know what would have happened. Well, I mean I could definitely hazard a guess but it's too much morbid to write out. We lived in a hotel for more than a month, which, quite frankly, sucked. But I really shouldn't complain because things could be much worse. Overall, I am thankful.

- Moved in AGAIN last tuesday (post-fire). There are boxes. Big boxes. EVERYWHERE. It's no picnic everyone, having to look for clean underwear in cardboard boxes because not all your furniture has been delivered yet and all you have for storage facilites are boxes and/or the floor itself. Check your smoke detectors, ok?

I'm sure a lot more happened but I don't remember very much and now I am tired. I am now reminded how much energy and time it takes to blog. Hope it won't be another six months until I blog again.

Mon-daze

I was abruptly awoken this morning at 4am by the sound of my mom yelling at my brother for still being awake at that hour and doing schoolwork, that according to her, should have been finished considering how much time he had been spending at his desk in the past week. YES, it was so loud that I heard every single word.

Then I couldn't drag myself out of bed for the longest time, even after having violently smacked the snooze button numerous times. Tim, who sweetly offered to give me a wake-up call at 6:30, didn't come through. I ended up getting up at the time I had originally planned to be in the office by.

Later on I spent a frantic 10 minutes looking for my car keys only. I was completely bewildered - I knew I had put them on the hook next to the door. Finally when I retraced my steps from the day before, I ended up looking down on the floor directly beneath the hook - and found them.

At the office, I wrestled in frustration with my laptop for a good couple of minutes, not comprehending why it wouldn't click into the docking station. I eventually realized I was trying to put it from the wrong side.

Mondays. Hate 'em.

How we stumbled into a New Orleans ghetto...

...without meaning to. All we wanted to do was to visit the local cemetary. It's really not as strange as it sounds - but having seen enough ads for cemetary tours to last us a lifetime, we decided that maybe New Orleans cemetaries were worth a visit.

Stepping out of the French Quarter one afternoon to head over to the nearest cemetary that we had found of our map, the scene changed drastically. While the French quarter had narrow streets and balconies crowded with chairs and quaint store signs hanging over every window, the area surrounding the cemetary looked bleak and abandoned. We crossed the street that divided the French Quarter from the neighbouring district rather timidly and approached the gate to the cemetary only to find it locked. I was a little dissapointed and relieved all at the same time.

We saw what seemed like a grocery store off in distance so we headed over to pick up hot sauce for Erx to bring back to Singapore, and where I found a Coke machine selling all sorts of brand name soft drinks for a 25 cents. And as we left the grocery store I pointed out a path cutting through a group of houses that we could take- it seemed less dubious than the rather abandoned looking street.

As we made our way down the path and through the rows of houses, I began to notice that there were many toys of sad-looking condition strewn about in the grass. Taking a harder look at the houses, I realized that most of the windows were boarded up. Groups of people that were gathered off the path looked at us intently as we passed. In the meantime Erx cheerily said "hello!" to every person we passed on the path.
When we finally near the end of the ghetto, I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hey look!" Pikka said, pointing across the street. "There's our hotel!"

A house in the Garden district (read: non-ghetto part) of New Orleans.  

The Real N’Awlins (and the Real Houston too)

So I went away last week on a whirlwind 9 day trip that took me through two cities in two states. You may be thinking, “Ange, vacation again?”. I only took one week off in the summer because I had anticipated attending Debbie and Jamie’s wedding in Houston, and I had figured, hey, if I’m going to spend all that money on the airfare, I might as well make a trip out of it.

(Of course, I hadn’t really considered the fact that stretching my airfare dollar also meant draining money out of my bank account and racking up my credit card bill. Because there were some other little things that needed to be paid for, like, oh I don’t know, accommodations and food. Funny things, those basic needs are.)

But anyway, my financial woes aside, I had a marvelous time.

Congratulations!
A shot I took of the beautiful bride Debbie and her very tall husband Jamie. This was taken in the lobby of the Hilton in Houston where the wedding reception was held, right before the meal started. In fact, by taking this picture, I may have contributed to its delay. Oops! 

Debbie and Jamie each took a few minutes to give really moving speeches during the reception. All in all it was a really beautiful wedding - a two-Kleenex/wear-waterproof-mascara kind of wedding if you know what I mean - and I am glad that I traveled all the way to Houston for it.
 

Having been deprived of amusement parks all summer, Tim and I decided to make the trek to Astroworld while we were in Houston. The two-for-one entry deal we got was pretty sweet and the short and sometime non-existent lines were great. But there?s something eerie about watching unoccupied cars making their way around the roller-coaster track and walking around the nearly empty park felt like we were on the set of a bad B-horror movie. 

And this is where we had dinner at Six Flags. We sat close the windows so we could look outside, in case any tumbleweed would start drifting down the deserted street. 

Mmmm?raw oysters. Heaven in a half-shall. Restaurants serving up fresh seafood were everywhere in New Orleans and together (Tim, Pikka, Erx and I), we consumed as much seafood and Cajun fare (jambalaya, gumbo, po?boys, etc.) as our pocketbooks and appetites allowed. Mmmm?gumbo. 

Speaking of heaven, I sure hope there will be café-au-lait and fresh beignets just like those at Café du Monde. We went there almost every day to get our fill of deep fried dough covered in powdered sugar and our dose of milked-laden caffeine. Mmmm?beignets. 

Did I mention that we liked our gumbo? 

A special dish called ?Praline Bacon.? From the numerous samples of praline I tried while browsing through various stores in the French Quarter, I came to the conclusion that pralines are simply flavoured sugar melted over pecans. (Think fudge but sweeter.) Now imagine that encrusted on bacon strips and you?ve got yourself Praline Bacon, a New Orleans original and the quickest way to a heart attack if I ever saw one. Pikka said her strip of Praline Bacon was good, the second was ok, the third was not so good, and would have vomited if she had had a forth.
 

And what did I have for breakfast that morning? French toast stuffed with cream cheese and strawberries. They don?t call New Orleans the ?Fattest City? for nothing.  

Of course our trip to N?Awlins wasn?t only about the food (contrary to what you may think). Buskers and jazz clubs abounded and we caught a couple of pretty good acts. 

Preservation Hall, French Quarter: For 5 dollars, we got to cram into a small room that looked like it was caught in a time warp circa 1930 and listened to some great music played by some superb musicians.
 

Big band music at Snug Harbour in another area of New Orleans called the Faubourg Marigny. 

The next night we checked out another band called the Jazz Vipers at a place called ?The Spotted Cat?. 

Random picture of me and Tim. Well?check back soon because I?m going to be posting more pictures and more stories (like how we all wandered accidentally into a ghetto) in the next days. Toodaloo! 

Contrivance, thy name is Wicker Park.

Last last friday, I watched "Wicker Park", starring Josh Harnett (who I don't really find all that particularly hot...maybe it's because I find he bears an uncanny resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones.) The trailers made it out to be a lot more suspenseful and thriller-esque than it actually was. What kept the movie afloat was its crazily convoluted plotline, which kept my head spinning and my attention riveted to the ever-changing story.

Which is to say, I enjoyed it.

Tim didn't particularly like it. He explained in great detail to me how every crucial turn in the story was so contrived, how all the twists were so obviously set-up and how the writers must have thought they were so clever, until I hated the movie too.




(Well, I didn't really hate it...it just sounded so much more dramatic than "dislike". Blogwriting is all about the drama.)

life without internet

as my wise friend sandy once said, a computer without internet access is "a box. just a box!!"

here`s an excerpt of an email I wrote to the worship team at church just two minutes ago:

"i have no internet access at home. i have no access to hotmail at work. my computer at work doesn`t have a floppy drive but has a cd-reader. my computer that has the worship team schedule file has a floppy drive, cd reader, but no cd burner. my other computer that has a cd burner is still lying around the new house in its various seperated components. i am now writing from the public library, on which hotmail is for reason not allowed, but i found a way around it. this keyboard is french. I AM LIVING A TECHNOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE!"

for some stupid, stupid reason, we cannot access the internet at home until our phone line has been "upgraded". it sounds like a repeat of our last attempt to get high speed internet.

you can laugh at me all you want and leave your snarky comments in the comment box. i can't check them anyway! HA!

(...sigh.)

check out the rest of the pictures...

here: http://community.webshots.com/user/princessange824
Check the album called "Rockies Trip 2004"

As much as i wanted to tell as many stories as i can remember i do not have the discipline to do it. Email me though, if you are curious about any of the pictures.

Actually, this might be easier...

Anticipated FAQ

Q: Is that a black bear running away in that fuzzy picture?
A: Yes it is. It was a young bear and it had scampered close to our campsite as we were having breakfast one morning in Jasper. In fact, I was so into our very delish breakfast of bacon and eggs that I didn't realize it was there until Alex pointed it out. We were never in harm's way though, because for starters, it was a somewhat young bear and because a parken warden was following it around the campsite. Turned out the bear had been hit by a vehicle earlier and was injured, and the warden had to put it down. Very, very sad.

Q: Are my eyes fooling me, or did you guys make brownies with M&M's while camping?
A: It is indeed brownies you are looking at in that picture. John baked them in a pot over the campfire. They were Wicked Good. Seriously, that was the name printed on the package.

Q: Did you guys go to the hotsprings in Banff?
A: Oh yeah, baby. We did, the day after we returned after our hike. In fact, it was the thought of the hot springs that kept me going for the last few kilometers.

Q: Did you guys go to the North Pole or something?
A: No, just the top of a glacier.

Q: What's the deal with picture of your feet?
A: There's something very exhilarating about feeling the wind between your toes, driving through Banff at 100 km/h.

Q: If a tree falls down in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
A: I don't know.

Feel free to leave any questions in the comment box.

Lower Fish Lake - this was taken near the backcountry campground we stayed at on ou overnight backpacking trip. Mosquitos are plentiful, vicious and behave as a collective entity there. Even as I ran from our tent to the eating area a swarm would find me within minutes. John was convinced that Fish Lakes is where all mosquites are spawned and sent out into the world to prey upon those who would dare to let any patch of skin see the light of day. However, Fish Lakes will always hold a special place in my heart because it was there that I ate ravioli out of a can for dinner for the very first time in my life.  

This is on the way down North Molar Pass. Believe me, it was much steeper than it looks. We hiked between and beyond those mountains that you see in the background. 

Yes, there was snow. No, it wasn't that cold. 

John and the trekking poles. 

The trekking poles I bought prior to leaving for the trip proved to be much more than a source of amusement (see both photos above) but they may have saved my life (or my ankle from being twisted). After we scrambled up a particularly steep mountain pass that left me breathless and close to miserable, we naturally had to descend on the opposite and equally steep side. Small rocks a steady foothold do not make - halfway down I began to slide out of control and nearly pitched forward until I jammed both my poles into the ground and caught myself just in time. My triceps and obliques felt strained for the next half hour but I'll take that over a twisted ankle (or death) anyday. 

This is a more accurate depiction of my physical state during the hike. Right after we finished packing for the trip, the guys helped me put my pack on and I confidentally and excitedly did up all the buckles and tightened the various straps. Then to my dismay (and quite evidentally, theirs as well) I nearly fell over backwards as soon as they let go of the pack. For the next few minutes, I tottered on my feet, cursing gravity and the need to eat food, as the pack was stuffed full of it. Fortunately, I was able to adjust to the weight and we set off - a few hours later however, the guys removed the tent out of my pack and transferred it to Alex.  

John took this as we were taking one of many breaks during our backpacking trip. We were sitting in one of the beautiful alpine meadows I have ever seen (well who am I kidding...the only alpine meadow I've ever seen). Purple, pink, red and yellow flowers colored the grassy plain that went on for miles around (I should know since we hiked through it) and snowcapped mountains surrounded the area. It was like being on the set of "Sound of Music". 

One of many shores around Vancouver. This was taken half an hour after we lost our map. 

Tales from my trip out west: Part 1 of...a lot.

The Vancouver Experience

After having been told what a beautiful city Vancouver is, I experienced it myself first hand in the last two days of my trip out west. Majestic mountains and shimmering waters set the nature-istic feel. Well-dressed people (although not as well dressed as Montrealers but much better dressed than the Kamloopians - that's inhabitants of Kamloops for those of you not in the know) dotted the streets and a good variety of retail shops and tempting eateries lined the avenues downtown. Bubble tea and sushi places were plentiful in Richmond.

We got into Vancouver late Friday afternoon, and decided to head straight downtown to make the most of the rest of the day. I was sitting shotgun, and consulting our only street map of Vancouver and trying to give directions to John, who upon entering the city, decided to unleash his Quebec-style driving onto the unsuspecting natives. So there we were, cruising along East Hastings street at full speed, discussing the local geography and completely unaware that we were only in one of the most ghetto areas of Vancouver. "Isn't Vancouver on an island?" Alex asked from the backseat.

"No it isn't," I said, starting to unfold the partially folded map in my lap.

"I think it is, Ange," Alex insisted.

"No it's -" I started, but I never got my chance to point it out on the map. FWAP! The words had not even left my mouth as the map ripped violently out of my hands and sailed out the car window, which had been completely rolled down - partly because John's car doesn't have air conditioning, and partly because the best way to drive through an unfamiliar ghetto neighbourhood is with the music blaring and audible for a 3 block radius.

I involuntarily clapped my hand over my mouth and turned around quickly to look out the back. In a weird mixture of horror and fascination, Alex and I watched as our map, our only map of Vancouver tore through the air as if possessed before abruptly diving to the ground, kamikaze style. And before I could even entertain the thought of asking John to stop the car so I could go retrieve it, it was promptly run over by an SUV.

"Wow, Ange" said John, after he and Alex regained their composure several minutes following a fit of laughter, "You really didn't need to throw the map out the window."

Somehow, we made our way down towards the shore where we parked the car and took the ferry to Granville Island. It's a bit touristy but the hustle and bustle of the public produce market gives the place a down-to-earth, rustic feel. There were also a lot of interesting little stands where local artists were touting their work, but we were rather hungry after having arrived on the island so we decided to scout the market for some snacking food before doing some serious perusing. Half an hour later we planted ourselved by the marina and between the three of us, devoured an entire baguette and a gigantic slice of brie. After our hunger was satisfied, we were ready to go and resume our tour of the island and we made our way back
to the shops.

Alex was the first one to reach the stores. He tried to open it but it was locked. "That's weird," he said and we headed over to the next one. Locked again. And the door on the next building over was locked as well - it looked like all the stores were closing for the day. I looked at my watch and checked the time - 5 minutes past 6. We had only been there for an hour. So, essentially we had taken the ferry to Granville Island over so we could eat bread and cheese.

Teaser picture: a shot of Lake Moraine taken on my brand new camera. The stories and rest of the pictures are coming. 

Go west, young (wo)man

In less than 48 hours I shall be in Banff National Park, snuggled up in a super comfortable down sleeping bag (courtesy of Jasper) on a self-inflating mattress (courtesy of Mountain Equipment Co-op...although come to think of it, they didn't exactly give it away to me).

My buddies Alex and John are probably somewhere in Sasketchewan right this very minute, driving on the TransCanada to get to Calgary on time to pick me up Sunday morning from the airport. I hope they don't forget.

At the moment, I am at Tim's place in Ottawa. The poor guy has to finish putting together a Flash video for his friends' wedding banquet tomorrow night (yes, that would wedding #3) which is in Toronto, for which we are leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning.

Packing for this trip was, well, interesting. Trying to pack for a wedding and a backpacking trip and squeezing everything into one carry-on and one duffel bag proved to be quite the task, but I managed. Shopping for this trip also proved to be detrimental to my bank account. Here's what I had to buy: hiking boots, the aforementioned sleeping pad, trekking poles, a digital camera (ok well I didn't have to buy one, but when you are planning to visit one of the world's most scenic spots, it's nice to be able to capture it on, uh, a memory stick), a rainjacket, a tarp, and countless other small items. Good thing I was able to borrow a number of other items, or VISA would raise my limit yet again.

So stay tuned...I plan to chronicle our (mis)adventures everyday. Stories and pictures to come!

 

Back pain sucks

My lower back has been in pain since yesterday morning. It started off as more of a nuisance but then grew progressively worse throughout the day until I nearly passed put out on my bed at 10 o'clock, my thoughts swirling randomly in a blur from the pain, conciousness slowly ebbing away, my heart beating rapidly and a cold sweat forming on my brow. Never again, I thought myself to myself in half-delirium, never again watch "That 70's Show" when your back is out. Laughing had become a bittersweet experience. Well, more bitter than sweet. OK fine, it was just plain bitter. Sigh.
 
I don't know what brought it on. If you know me well, you've probably figured that strenuous activity had nothing to do with it. (Mainly because there was none to be had). And I'm not all that sure sleeping in a bad position caused it either - wouldn't I have felt the effects that moment I got out of bed yesterday? Anyway, I decided to see the doctor today, since I took a sick day from work. (Don't snicker at me, people, when reaching out of bed to hit the snooze on the alarm clock is so painful you wish you bought the farm right there and then, you wouldn't want to go to work either.) The doctor prodded and poked at my back for a few minutes, made me lean from side to side and backwards and forwards, and then informed me that my back muscle was inflammed. When I asked him why, he gave me the a vague explanation that included humidity, not being warm enough when sleeping and bad posture.
 
Not satisfactory at all. I want to know precisely why. I need to know the reason why I can't cough without my back spasming with pain. I have to understand why picking up the phone causes me temporarily paralysis. When trying to put a fresh bedsheet on my mattress reduces me to rolling around on my bed flailing my arms and legs every which way in a concentrated effort to tuck in all the corners because I was unable to bend forward on my feet, I think I have all the right to understand the reason behind the pain.
 
But then again, the doctor prescribed me some drugs to try to make it all go away. Maybe I shouldn't complain.
 
 
 

two down, four to go

I am talking about weddings.

Last year, I thought going to three weddings was nuts. If going to weddings could be measured on a scale determining level of sanity, this year is criminally insane.

Of course I am happy for my friends and relatives. I rather enjoy sitting through wedding ceremonies and I feel privileged getting to witness one of the most important events of my friend's lives. My eyes never fail to moisten during those beautiful moments when I hear then exchange their vows.

It's the whole deal with the attire that bothers me. Dressing for weddings is complicated. Let me explain first of all that most girls will wear a daytime outfit and a nighttime outfit. I am "most girls". But if you're lucky, you might be able to pull off an outfit that will be fabulous enough and will work seamlessly for both day and evening. I am not so lucky.

In fact, three of the weddings will be the same group of people. So repeating the same outfits at these weddings will clearly be a social blunder. Why? Don't even ask me to explain, it's of those things that just is; just like how bread always falls with the buttered side down and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This same unspoken logic also dictates that I cannot wear the same outfits I wore last year to the weddings with the same group of people. Now, I am fully aware that it is likely that only the most observant and hawk-eyed fashion conscious females will notice that I wore the same dress - guys, who inexplicably can get away with wearing the same suit to all six weddings, wouldn't. No, I would need to give, at the very least, a two-to-three year window (depending on the color and the style) before I dare to let the dress or outfit reappear into the public eye.

So I was on the phone with Tim the other day, trying to explain my dilemma. "This means I have to buy at least six dresses!" I concluded sadly, after having ranted and raved for the past half hour.

"Well, Ange," he began, with a trace of amusement in his voice, "People probably won't be looking at you, they'll be looking at the bride. Believe it or not, the wedding isn't about you!"

I was momentarily stunned into silence. Then we changed subjects and talked about something else.

But then again, what does a guy, who gets to wear the same suit over and over, know anyway?

Fear not, I am alive.

I am merely more occupied these days, with, oh what's it called again? Work. Believe or it, I actually do real work, much unlike what I was doing at the three-ring circus that was my former place of employment.

But I have stories to tell. Stories that I will tell and then probably wish I hadn't. Stay tuned, folks, the blog is back!

ahhhh....

(a satisfied sigh)

Warning: the following is sort of a boring post. Sorry. I'm racking my brain for some interesing anecdote to share.

It's so very nice to be working in a professional environment where personal growth is encouraged, the job is interesting and challenging, benefits are a-plenty, coffee is abundant (although sadly, not free) and the drive is 15 minutes or less. (I clocked my drive home at 12 minutes).

The drawbacks on the first day of work: walking close to 5 minutes to my car through a parking lot, that viewed through the window, is a sea of glass and metal; walking for 5 minutes in light drizzle that left my carefully and meticulously blow-dried hair a frizzy mess; getting lost going back to my desk after a staff meeting (but there was free coffee at that meeting at least).

So I had the week off last week, and even though my last minute plan to travel to Scotland or London or Paris didn't quite work out, I had a good rest. Thanks to Tim, I ate lots of creme brulee, which appears to be his new interest/obsession. And for the first time in many months, I got to sleep more then 8 hours several nights in a row.

hooray for the habs!

tampa here we come!

yes, i am one of those fans who materialize out of nowhere when the home team makes it into the playoffs.

help me, i'm having a crisis

I have a week off between jobs and nowhere to go.

Any ideas on what I should do? Who wants to be my travel buddy?

News sure travels fast around here.

On Friday, I told my two bosses and two of my coworkers about my decision to leave. I've had several people come up to me to congratulate me this morning. Earlier, when I was downstairs on the shop floor, the sewing department lady called out "So where are you going, Angela?" from across the room.

When I returned upstairs I told my co-worker Dominique about it. She nodded and said, "Everyone knows."

hooray for me!

OK, to clarify that somewhat cryptic post, I'd to announce that I've accepted a job offer at a really great company on the South Shore! I worked there for two summers when I was still a student at McGill and I'm quite excited to be going back, especially since the work I'll be doing there is pretty much what I've been wanting to do all along. God is so good. :)

By next Friday I'll be bidding farewell to 2 1/2 hours on the road each day. I'm not going to bash or complain about this place anymore since I'm leaving anyway, but I am glad that I will no longer have to endure the awkward (but so hilarious) pseudo-advances of Scary Latino Guy, who, just last week told me how much he missed our "friendship" and if I wanted to catch rides up with him to work again. It took me a whole lot of willpower to supress my laughter in front of him.

I will miss a couple of people here, however, who have been very supportive of my quest for a career change. And I will miss my fabulous spacious desk by the window. My only regret is not having changed desks earlier.

the end of an era

when one door closes, another one opens.

Perhaps I should add that I voluntarily closed the door. Actually, I opened the other door first then ran back and closed the other one. Ok, actually, its in the process of being closed.

Confused? I'm sorry for the vagueness. Details are coming.

sometimes it's not what you say...

it's how you say it.

Never underestimate the effect of your tone of voice or the manner in which you say things. Something said in a neutral or nuanced tone might not mean much but add a little condescension, a hint of snarkiness and right (or in this case, the wrong) facial expression to it and suddenly those very same words will bite, cut down your credibility and insult your intelligence.

Let me give you a real-life example: My boss can be the most easygoing guy most days but there are times when he can come off as a complete jerk. A few days ago we sat down in his office and he gave his comments on some work that I'm doing. By the time I left his office I was fighting back tears. In a manner of minutes, his had delivered his assessment in the most patronizing and dismissive manner that left me feeling like pond scum. Not just regular pond scum, but pond scum made of a single cell and incapable of processing higher thought. And it wasn't as if I had actually done anything wrong - it was a simply a matter of difference of opinion.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about my co-worker who flies into fits of rage from time to time. Although I still stand by my opinion that such physical displays of anger veer on the side of being unprofessional, I can certainly understand her frustration. Since I’ve moved my desk closer to the window (and as a result, next to her desk, something I was initially terrified about) I’ve actually gotten to know her a lot better and have been a witness to the detrimental and accusatory manner in which my boss addresses her. Somehow he’s been made to make a simple question like “Didn’t you finish that report?” completely disrespectful. Perhaps the worse thing about it is that he’s totally unrepentant and won’t acknowledge how hurtful and detrimental his words can be, which, in my opinion, just makes things that much more worse.

I guess I just want to say that we have to be sensitive about how we say things and how it might be perceived by the other parties. To be able to pause and evaluate how you’re going to express something says that you value the person to whom you’re talking to, you understand that they too, have emotions, and that you respect that. It’s something I’m working on, too.

dance, little girl, dance!

So I'm thinking that maybe my dancing skills and ability to groove have improved.

This is all thanks to my gospel choir, who during rehearsals, with a just a few introductory chords on the piano, will get off their chairs and start moving and dancing like nobody's business. See, black folks exude coolness in their movements, even with the wackiest antics. Chinese people...not so much. Not me, anyway.

In an earlier post I mentioned auditioning for this choir back in September. Now, the audition was composed of elements one would associate with trying out for an amateur choir: I sang two pieces that I had prepared, and then they tested my vocal range, my ability to stay on pitch by singing a number of intervals, and my ear for picking out harmonies. Now that part was just crazy. They played a section of track of a choir singing and asked me to pick out the alto line and sing it back to them. I got to listen to it twice. Twice!! I managed to pull something off that I sort of half-made-up. And I figured the audition was over.

Medad, the choir director, sat back in his chair and said, "Ok Angela, now I'm going to play a song and I'm going to ask you to dance."

I froze for a few seconds until my brain had fully processed the weight of those words. "Um, you want me to dance." It wasn't even a question, because I knew I had heard it right. I think by saying that I was simply attempting to muster the willpower to do it.

It's not that I don't dance at all. I do. But when you're standing in front of two auditioners who are sitting behind a desk writing notes, and you're dressed in office wear because you just came off work and furthermore, facing a floor-to-ceiling window so that your awkward and possibly spastic-looking "dancing" is on display for all the passing-by world to gawk at, it gets a little weird, see?

"Just relax and have fun," said Medad as he hit the "play" button on the CD player. And they didn't ask me to dance for one song. They asked me to dance for two.

And now you all know that by some miracle of God and a lot of graciousness on their part, I made it in. And I'd like to think I've improved in the groove department. Medad no longer stops the entire practice mid-song to show me how to dance with a little more soul. On more than one occasion in the past he had to tell me "Angela, you have to just feel the beat, ya know what I'm sayin'?", "Shift your weight from one foot to another" and "Try not to jerk your head so much."

So for the gigs we've done in the last few months, I've gone in equipped with the confidence in knowing that I, too, can maybe dance with a little bit of soul. The delusion came to an abrupt end after one of our concerts and Juliana came up to me and said "Ange! That was great! You were so cute - being the little Chinese girl trying to dance with all the black people."

That's ok. I'll take "cute" over "Your dancing reminded me of William Hung" any day.

QUESTION: What do guitar picks, hair elastics, and money have in common?

ANSWER: These are all items that I don't seem to be able to keep in my possession for long periods of time (long = 2 weeks for guitar picks and hair elastics, long = 2 days for cash). Sometimes I wonder if there is some sort of portal in the form of an invisible swirling vortex in a corner of my room (or in my purse, in the case of cash) through which these items dissapear into an alternate universe. How in the world do I keep losing these things anyway? Where on earth do they go?

an excerpt from a conversation I never imagined I'd be in

(overheard after fellowship tonight, after dessert and after an intense discussion of the The Passion of the Christ)

"Have you guys heard of "Maple Syrup Urine Disorder?" asked Amanda, somewhat out of the blue. Well, it wasn't completely out of nowhere, she was talking about her research.

"What?!" we all collectively gasped. "Does it mean the viscosity is like...maple syrup?" asked Lat incredulously. It seemed completly unheard of until Ivanna came bursting into the room.

"I've heard of it! I have a patient who has it!" she exclaimed and proceeded to sit down next to Amanda and they started discussing it excitedly. Well, maybe not exactly excitedly because at this point I got up and left the room.

Adrian's queer commentaries

(Part 1 in a series)

"I think she looks like an angel." -Adrian's comment on Diane Keaton when he saw her on TV during a Barbara Walters interview

random happenings

So my life has been unbelievably exciting lately. Every hour has been filled with one adrenaline rush after another.

For example, I went grocery shopping at Loblaw's (ding! ding! where's my endorsement cheque?) after work on Wednesday and I got to use the self-checkout machine! It's great. Not only can I avoid human interaction altogether during my grocery-store run, I also get to live out a childhood wish of playing cashier. The only bump in the otherwise smoothly paved road of the experience was when I had some trouble opening the grocery bag. Those darn bags - the opening was practically fused together and the machine kept repeating "Please put your item in the bag! Please put your item in the bag!". I was on the verge of beating the machine with my bagels until one of the grocery store employees who had been standing 10 feet away and watching me struggling with a wary eye hurried over and oh-so-helpfully separated the bag I was trying to open from the rest in the stack. Because separating the bag from the rest will magically make the plastic in the bag opening disintegrate. Anyway, I managed to open the bags, shut the machine up and proceeded with checking out my items without any further incident. I felt such a great sense of accomplishment afterwards that I left the grocery store with a grin on my face.

Another exciting happening this week: my folks bought a new washing machine earlier this last weekend and it makes almost no noise during its wash cycle. I got to use it for the very first time on Wednesday and it was so quiet that I was checking it every 10 minutes to see if the machine was still going. Whew!

I also went to Toronto last weekend. Interesting bits from that weekend:

1. It took us SEVEN hours to get there. That's quite a bit longer than the usual 4 it takes when I drive. Of course, witnessing nine separate accidents in a 45 minute window will make one drive a little more cautiously in crappy weather.

2. I got to stay in both a downtown penthouse apartment AND a mansion in the suburbs. (Thanks Sima and Roopa!)

3. Never say. "I'm not going to buy anything this weekend," and then go shopping on Queen street during sale season unless you enjoy contradicting yourself.

4. Table for 10 downtown at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night? As John would put it: no love.

5. Auto shows are much more fun when your prime objective is to sit in as many high-priced luxury vehicles as possible (and grabbing the steering wheel, yelling "Vroom vroom!" and cheerfully waving at the perplexed dealership representatives there. Ok, we didn't do that. Some people pretended to make out in the back of an Audi, though. I don?t know them anymore.)

Lastly, at the risk of sounding like a total sap and thoroughly embarrassing Tim, I have to declare to the entire cyberworld (or to the two people who read this page) that he is the bestest. He drove down from Ottawa, picked me up and drove to Toronto, shuttled between downtown, Mississauga, Scarborough, drove back to Montreal over the weekend and then drove home to Ottawa the next morning. All because I didn't want to drive my car and he wouldn't hear of me renting one. Everyone say it with me now: Awwwww!

This is how badly I want to leave my job:

Lately I've begun fantasizing about how it would be like to tell various people around my office that I'm quitting - not that I've found another job yet. But I'm sitting around dreaming up different scenarios like:
"I'm not scanning this entire manual for you. You know why? Because I quit!"
or "What do you mean we're out of paperclips? This is outrageous. I quit!!"
and "So you won't buy me this leather executive chair, huh? You don't think it'll fit in my cubicle, eh? Well fine then! I QUIT!!"

Perhaps I should be taking all that energy and focus it on searching a little harder for a new job.

a big thanks

to all of you guys who came to Crossroads on Sunday. It was very encouraging for me (and for rest of the choir too) to see you guys come out, enjoy yourselves and dance in the aisles and such. I had a good time too and I am thankful that despite how late and rushed everything ran at the beginning, how unprepared we were because we had JUST learned a few of songs on the Wednesday before and we didn't get to warm-up with the band, it turned out great. Praise God!

And mark your calenders: April 25th my choir will coming to take over the English worship service at MCAC.

Happy One Year Anniversary to me!

Today marks the first anniversary of my blog.

In one year I have moved out, experienced glorious freedom from parental authority and the satisfaction of self-sufficiency, and then...moved back home.

In one year, I have bought a brand new car, had the passenger window shatter spontaneously while driving over the Champlain bridge, gotten into a minor accident while travelling in Toronto, had the passenger side mirror broken off by some random drunkard, and put almost 35000 km on it. I try not to think about how much its depreciated since then and how much more I have to shell out in car payments, lest I start crying.

Throughout this past year, I have vowed to find a new job. I'm still working here, with psycho-lady, creepy Latino guy, and the fork stealer.

Instead of offering you fresh reading material, I will shamelessly follow in the path of most commemorative programs and simply fill this space with, er...filler...and give you a list of what I think were the 5 best posts of the year. Sorry if you feel gypped. Happy reading!

1.the infamous chairlift incident
2.dreams
3.a hard lesson learned
4.Mondays
5.amusement parks and waterslides

My family’s first venture into the world of high speed internet...

....has been nothing short of a disaster.

Believe it or not, until this last week, I have accessing the realm of cyberspace with a pokey 56K dial-up connection, much to the chagrin of many of my friends. The occasional offers to send me pictures or videos were always quickly and dismissively rejected as I feared it would take days to download them. “You mean, people STILL use dial-up?” they would exclaim in genuine surprise (MCACers, doesn’t this sound like a certain Aussie we all know?). No people, dial-up has not gone the way of the dinosaur. Soon, but not yet.

When we finally decided to make the splurge and go high speed (I suspect offering to split the monthly fee with my parents had something to do with it) I was pretty excited. No more having to avoid flash websites, goodbye to tying up the phone line and a hearty adieu to waiting for what seemed like forever and a day for large e-mails to download. At last, we were catching up to the rest of the cyber-world. It was only the installation process that was holding us back from high-speed heaven.

Now, if you’ve been a faithful reader of my blog for some time, you’ll notice that a lot of seemingly ordinary things in my life seldomly go as swimmingly as they should.

For starters, we didn’t receive enough phone filters, and my father, wrongly assuming that my phone was not in constant use didn’t install one for my room. So you can imagine my shock when I tried to make a phone call that one day, and had my eardrums nearly pierced right through with a series of intermittent high-pitched whirring and beeps. Sympatico then continued to demonstrate their stellar service to our household by sending us the wrong cables in the installation kit. Maybe they had double-teamed with Future Shop too, because later on in the ordeal, the sales guy there sold my dad the wrong cables for the router.

So finally, two weeks after initially receiving the installation kit, we had amassed all the necessary hardware and were ready to go on-line. Only, it appeared that our phone line had some sort of error. Error? I was able to make phone calls, was I not? We had used slow pokey dial-up for years, hadn’t we? Was our phone line too old for our brand new modem’s liking or something? Was Sympatico going to tell us that we needed to get a new computer too? Well, whatever it was, they fixed it 2 days later.

Several days later as I was browsing online, I said casually to my father, "Hey Dad, so what kind of firewall are we using?"

"Uh...yes...well...can you download one and install it?" was his reply. I've never liked those question-to-answer-a-question responses and I certainly didn't like it now.

"You mean we've been going online without a firewall?!?" I exclaimed, suddenly feeling very vulnerable, as if I wandered into a shooting range with a huge bull’s-eye painted on my back. My worries were justified - half an hour later I discovered we had a virus - some sort of worm that had either already existed in our system or that had somehow infected our computer during our several days of defenceless surfing. (Did I also mention that we didn't updated our antivirus software in ages? Somehow I thought my dad had always taken care of it and he always thought that I would do it - communication is key, people. I should have learned my lesson last fall when I inadvertently double-booked myself one weekend for a camping trip and a wedding because I had assumed the wedding was on Labor Day weekend. It’s a long story.)

Anyway, within hours, one of our computers was rendered nearly useless, despite running a new antivirus software. My level of paranoia had hit the roof. As I passed by my brother's room the following day I asked him if the firewall was running on his profile on the computer in there. “What? Uh, I don’t know,” he answered.

I stopped in my tracks, took a deep breath and said slowly, “Sam, is there an icon in the taskbar that you’ve never seen before? It’s for the firewall…it’s called Freedom.”

He looked and replied, “Nope.”

I reacted. In one quick motion I swept into his room, vaulted over his chair, shoved him out of the way and logged him off. “What do you mean…I can’t believe you’re…why in the…AAGH!” I was unable to make complete phrases in my disbelief and frustration.

So my family’s just a little bit on edge these days. We’re going to have to reformat both computers because it appears our other computer has been infected too, through our home network connection.

And, in the meantime, since it appears I have no other choice, I’m just going to have to surf at work.

An update is coming your way soon...I've been working on a post describing the nightnare that was our high-speed internet installation. Check back tomorrow...or something like that.

Oh and here's an interesting bit of information: apparently the control tower at Mirabel Airport goes into a state of frenzied panic whenever more than one plane lands at around the same time. Yep, business is certainly booming around here.

What the...

What Famous Leader Are You?

I prefer "social butterfly", but whatever.

The Four Stages of Traffic-Induced Lunacy

Observed over the past two snowy mornings while stuck in traffic for 2+ hours:

1. The False Optimism/Complete Denial Stage

“There won’t be much traffic today,” I tell myself every single morning as I start my car. I repeat this to myself even as I clear several inches of snow off my car, as I shovel the snow in my driveway so I can back my car out, and as I inch my way down the street at the thrill-inducing speed of 5 km/h. “It won’t be that bad. It can’t be that bad.”

Optimism quickly gives way to brief period of denial when I finally see cars lined up on the main boulevard near my house leading to the highway on-ramp, meaning its at least a 20 minutes wait to even get onto the ramp. “This is NOT happening. No!” I’ll say out loud, to no one in particular.

2. The “Triple A” (Annoyance, Angst & Anger) Stage

“This totally bites.”

This ushers in the second stage, when everyone on the road who doesn’t let me into their lane has delivered me a personal insult. A lot of sighing in frustration, a lot of drinking of coffee and lot of directing unkind thoughts at other drivers who wrong me are part of this stage. The prospect of spending an additional hour or two on top of the hour I usually take to travel to work, the whole idea of wasting time and the fact that I’ll have to stay late at work gives me a lot of angst. And a stomachache too, but I’m thinking that’s probably from the coffee.


3. General Giddiness Stage

Having been kept in my car for too long (not too much unlike a prisoner who has been kept in solitary confinement), my foul mood subsides. Suddenly, everything is hysterically funny. The radio deejays are hilarious. Ugly fixed-up cars are cause for outright mockery. Peculiarly enough, I find myself bopping my head and singing along to bad 80’s music and (gasp) Celine Dion. Alex, who I carpool with, and normally by this stage has been picked up, is a witness to this strange madness. He laughs along at my madcap antics. Or maybe he’s only pretending to laugh along and is silently hoping the ride will be over soon.

4. The Oh-My-Goodness-Nature’s-Call-Couldn’t-Be-Any-Louder-Nor-Clearer or the I-Need-to-Go-to-the- Bathroom-NOW Stage

The consequences are having drained my coffee mug empty 2 hours before have now come to haunt me, threatening to back up into my kidneys and making every pothole or bump on the road I drive over utterly and totally painful. Every spray of washer fluid on my windshield seems to taunt me.

Suddenly, I can’t wait to get to work.

I love kids, but...

I am reconsidering my dream family of four kids.

This comes on the heels after having had the, um, special privilege of babysitting Pastor Dave and Janelle’s brood Sunday night. Oh, make no mistake about it, I love their kids immensely. But their energy level only seemed to increase exponentially as the evening wore on.

A little background information is in order, though – Sunday was Janelle’s birthday and her parents were in town, so Pastor Dave approached me and Tim after worship service:

Pastor Dave: Hey, how would you guys like to spend a romantic evening on the south shore -

Me: Pastor Dave, you want us to baby-sit your kids, don’t you?

Pastor Dave: (a little sheepishly) Um, yes.

We heartily agreed to help them out so they could have an evening off for a quiet dinner.

7:00 pm
I felt a little antsy as we were driving over, thinking we should have arrived a little earlier so they could leave right away to make their dinner reservations. But I shouldn’t have worried. The kids had just presented Janelle with a birthday cake they had helped decorate and she was opening gifts as we got in the door. I surveyed the scene: 7-year old Micaiah was doing handstands and cartwheels. 3-year old Hannah was galloping around on her brand new pony stick, which she had aptly named “Pony Girl Stick”. 1 ½ year-old Miah was toddling off to the bathroom to try to climb up the toilet tank. And 1 month old Samuel was screaming, rather shrilly. I looked over at Tim and had to suppress my laughter at the shell-shocked expression on his face. His experience with children was minimal at best; made even more apparent as his initial interaction with the kids consisted of calmly saying “Hello” as they cast him a disinterested glance and proceeded to run away. I sighed.

7:40 pm
With the picture taking session over and all presents opened, they decided to have some birthday cake before they leaving for dinner so the kids could enjoy it too. I had been playing with Miah, so I went to go look for the other girls and found them upstairs singing for their enraptured audience - Tim. Cute.

8:00 pm
Pastor Dave called to restaurant to let them know that they were going to be late, and we got dinner on for the kids. I know – birthday cake before dinner doesn’t seem to work very well with kids. “I’m not hungry!” declared Micaiah after one spoonful of her noodle soup and as her parents began to explain to her that she had to finish it and that they had to be leaving soon, she burst into tears. Preoccupied with trying to feed Miah her dinner while keeping an eye on Hannah as she happily slurped her soup away and a pool of her dinner began forming under her chin on the table, I don’t exactly remember at what point Micaiah stormed away from the table. Janelle’s parents started clearing away the dishes. Tim, in the meantime, was busy eating birthday cake.

8:35 pm: The Lewises and Janelle’s parents were finally on their way out the door. Pastor Dave had already put Miah to bed since it was already somewhat late. So technically, we were down to two kids, two babysitters. (A 1:1 ratio...should have been a breeze, right? Right...) Janelle had spent the last twenty minutes talking to Micaiah in her room and got her ready for bed as well. And she had calmed down considerably after I promised her we could play Monopoly – somehow I had been able to decipher her description of the game in between her sobs. All in all, it looked like it was going to be an easy evening. “We should get them to bed at 9”, I told Tim, whose arm Hannah was hanging off of. She seemed to have taken quite a liking to him.

But first the kids wanted to show us their toys in the basement. We obliged, and were subsequently treated to a grand tour of their brand-new Barbie train, a detailed non-working demonstration of an Easy-Bake oven, and introductions to a variety of stuffed animals and dolls. I headed off in search of Monopoly and returned with it to find Hannah and Micaiah giggling and showing Tim how a ¾-length skirt on Barbie could double as a strapless minidress, much to his apparent amusement.

“Oh, that’s not the right one!” Micaiah exclaimed when her eyes fell on the box in my hand. “We have to play the kid’s one!”

“But I didn’t see any other one,” I replied, secretly hoping she would just forget the whole thing. I don’t particularly enjoy playing Monopoly, and kid’s Monopoly doesn’t seem to be any more appealing. But she took me by the hand and we went to search for it in the closet. “It’s not there,” I told her, after I gave the shelf a half-hearted scan, already feeling slightly relieved at the prospect of not having to play.

“THERE IT IS!” she squealed with excitement, and after I had extracted it from the depths of the closet, I made her promise that we would only play for ten minutes and it was time for bed. I glanced at my clock anxiously. It was 9 pm and I was sure it was past their bedtime already.

9:20 pm
The game finally got underway after 20 minutes of dividing the money, sorting out the colored markers, trying to figure out the rules because the rules sheet appeared to be non-existent, and realizing that there were no property cards to be had. How the game of Monopoly, even the kid’s version in which the corporate take-over of an amusement park seems to be the prime objective, can be played without property cards is beyond me. So we decided to simply roll the dice and advance our markers; most of the chance cards only gave instructions to roll the dice a second time anyway. So now the game was reduced to stripped-down version of seeing who could roll the highest and get their marker all the way around the board first. I'm sure the Parker brothers would have been thrilled.

The second emotional outburst of the night occurred when it came Tim’s turn to roll midway through the game. He was preoccupied playing with Hannah, who at the had lost all interest 10 seconds into the game(surprisingly, considering she was all of three years old), that he didn’t realize it was his turn. Micaiah chewed him out: “Timothy, you can’t play with Hannah anymore, you have to play Monopoly!” (For reasons unbeknownst to me, the girls kept calling him “Kim” at first, until I told them his full name is "Timothy”.)

Within one second, Hannah had flung herself face-down into the nearest cushion and began to cry vehemently, her tiny frame heaving with every sob. Alarmed, Tim and I looked at each other. “What’s wrong, Hannah?” I asked in the gentlest voice I could muster.

“M-M-Micaiah s-s-said he couldn’t p-p-play with meeeeeee!” she bawled. As Tim picked Hannah up to comfort her, Micaiah turned to me and said in a loud whisper, “I think she loves him!”

9:35 pm
With the game of Monopoly finally behind us, we got the girls ready to sleep. We all settled into Hannah’s bed, first to read from a word book at Micaiah’s request (which nearly put all of us to sleep, as reading names of zoo-animals is sometimes apt to do), and then to read them a bedtime story, complete with color commentary from both girls. Then the girls said their bedtime prayers. During hers, Micaiah said “…and please God, I hope I can sing two songs before I go to sleep tonight.” Who could say “no” once a request like that has been brought before God?

10:00 pm
After dashing downstairs several times to get Micaiah her stuffed sheep and both girls their glasses of water, tucking them both in, putting on their CD to listen to, saying good night and heeding their strict instructions on which hallways lights to keep on and the exact angle the door had to be kept open at, Tim and I crept out. “Wait, I have to go to the bathroom!!” Hannah shouted, and she jumped out of bed and rushed off to use the facilities. Naturally, Micaiah followed that up with a “ME TOO!!” and leapt out of her bunk bed with acrobatic ease and took off for the bathroom as well.

10:10 pm
Tim and I wearily made our way back down to the den, flopped onto the couch in sheer exhaustion and flipped on the TV. “And you say you want to have four kids one day?” he said, sounding rather defeated. I was too tired to answer him.

11:15 pm
“You put my girls to sleep at what time?!” exclaimed Janelle, after I recalled the events of the evening to her and Pastor Dave. Luckily, they were more amused than anything.
“They walked all over you, didn’t they?” Pastor Dave chuckled, slapping us consolingly on our backs. I tried to explain that I thought the girls usually had some play time after dinner.

“Oh that’s OK,” Janelle said, laughing at me. “Most nights I get them to bed by 7:30.”

I went home and slept very well that night.

ange posts again (after a two-week hiatus)

After years of denial, I have finally conceded to what most of you probably and already believe to be true – I am a geek. Through and through.

This startling - but not completely unexpected - revelation happened a few weeks ago as I was flipping through the newspaper and my eyes fell upon this one particular article: “Largest known prime number found”. I was all, that’s pretty cool, and I then proceeded to read article intently beginning to end with a great deal of interest. Then suddenly, I stopped as the realization hit me. “Oh my goodness,” I said to myself softly. “I think I’m a geek.”

The week before, Tim had been over helping me put up Christmas lights on my house. Having braved the climb up the ladder an entire two times to hang up the rather high-maintenance icicle lights to the roof, while 60 km/h winds gusted in the cold night air, I decided that Tim could finish off the paltry 5/6 of roof length that was left while I stood down below and hollered instructions and gave some constructive criticism on his icicle-light attachment techniques (I know, this is quite the run-on sentence, and adding this little statement isn’t helping matters much). “It’s crooked!” “They’re not spaced out enough!” and “What’s taking you so long anyway? And could you stop shivering so much? The ladder’s shaking and it’s scaring me!” I’m kidding about the last part, by the way. Really! I am!

Anyway, there is a point to this story. At one point, as Tim was climbing up the ladder I shouted frantically “Hey, be careful! We set the ladder up sort of crooked, so the load distribution on the edge of the roof is uneven!”

He sort of turned around from where he was on the ladder up near the roof, and even in the semi-darkness I could see him raising his left (or right, I actually don’t quite remember) eyebrow in a mixed expression of disbelief and perplexity. Afterwards, when he was back down on the ground again, he said to me, “Load distribution?! Ange…you’re a geek.”

“I’m so NOT,” I insisted to him stubbornly, even while I was mentally estimating the reaction loads on the roof. I can’t help it, I do this sort of stuff at work all day; I assured myself, albeit unconvincingly.

Then there was my snowboarding trip with Gamoon earlier this week (during which I fared much better getting off the ski-lift than my previous excursion to the slopes). The day so far had gone by without much incident although the slower runs resembled a human obstacle course with immobilized small children dotting the landscape like freshly fallen pinecones in the snow. “The run is going to be really packed now,” sighed Gamoon on one of chairlift rides up halfway through the day, as the line-up below started to become increasingly crowded.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter because the chairlift can only bring so many people up at a time, so the rate of flow to the top of the hill remains constant,” I replied matter-of-factly, without skipping a beat.

Gamoon snickered at me. “Tim’s right, you ARE a total geek.”

Fine, I’ll admit to it, I like watching Star Trek. And my friends and I have laughed at movies like “The Core” and refused to watch them solely because we knew the premise was scientifically impossible (or, highly unlikely). If anything, I blame my education. I blame every professor that cracked many a lame engineering joke until finally, we the students started laughing at them too. Maybe we all wanted to believe that we were merely sniggering at the lameness of it all, or politely chuckling to appease the professor and to fill the uncomfortable silence that ensued, but deep down inside, we were reveling in nerdish glee.

I’d like to blame my engineering classmates as well. (Now I sound like I’m accepting an award. “I’d like to thank the following people…”) Only, I won’t name any names here. But…oh heck. Rich, Shaun, John, Dave, Roopsy, Christine, Danny, and April have all had a hand on numerous occasions for nurturing what has inevitably become second nature. Like the time we gave each other nicknames (and may I add here that they were very short-lived) like “Eigenvalue” and “Laplacian Operator” during our BVP class and thought they were fall-down-on-floor hilarious. Or the time Roopa and I were walking down a hall in the McConnell Engineering building and saw this door down the corridor closing itself at the pace of a wounded turtle crawling through a vat of tar. We looked at each other, and said at the same time, “Too much damping”.

But I suppose the most concrete affirmation is when your own fellow engineering classmates bestow the title of geek upon you themselves. Wanting desperately to be reassured with a “Oh yeah, that totally happens to me too”, I told them the Christmas light-hanging incident today and instead found myself being laughed at.

So…there you have it. I’m a geek. Ah well, at least I drive a nice car.

Happy Belated Birthday

to the following December babies: (I didn't forget. I just...remembered at a later time. Hee.)

Debbie all the way in Austin, Texas who's birthday was on the 10th.

Sheila who had an exam the day after her birthday on the 12th.

Jon who's b-day just passed on the 16th, and according to him was "just another day".

If I forgot anyone else, I will apologize profusely when I see you the next time and I promise to eat some cake on your behalf.

numbers

7 - roughly the number of minutes it takes for me to drive from Tim's apartment on Cote-St-Luc Rd to the bus station on Berri and Maisonneuve (assuming there are no people blocking intersections on the way there).

2 - number of cups of coffee I drink in an average workday

3 - number of cups of coffee I drink in a stressful workday

10 - on average, the number of minutes I'm late by picking up my carpool buddy and friend Alex each morning.

8 - number of singers in my gospel choir

4 - number of grueling years I spent studying engineering at McGill only to forget almost everything learned due to mind-numbingly boring tasks I carry out at work.

0.25 - number of hours I'm predicting will elapse before I start getting bored at my office Christmas party tomorrow night.

1 - number of drinks I will probably have at this office Christmas party

4 - number of drinks I would have if I didn't have to drive and then go to a choir practice at church at 10pm.

9 - as of today, number of days 'til Christmas vacation. Yay!

Check it out

So the details for this Sunday morning's "performance" have been posted up on the sidebar as promised. I put "performance" in quotes because I feel that this coming Sunday morning isn't really one, per se, but I'm not really sure how to term it. It's not truly a performance - it's really an opportunity to sing before God and be uplifting to the people.

So we'll be singing a set of songs, accompanied by our awesome band. It's gonna be great! If you're not an MCACer (because I have no intention of asking people to miss worship at our church), do come out and check it out!

As for MCAC, I'm going to invite COR (that's Choir Of Reconciliation if you were wondering) to do worship sometime in January. So don't you fret.

BTW, my choir has a gig scheduled for Dec. 7th 9 am at the Word of Life Church on Atwater. More details to come!

If you were to name a sports team...

you would probably choose a name that would:

a) be somewhat humorous.
Examples of this can be found in school intramural sports. The McGill Engineering Flagball (that’s flag football for those of you not in the know) League had teams with names like “What the Flux”, “Screw and Bolt” and my own dear (and might I add two-time championship winning) team, “Mechanical Bulls”. Alright, so my team name wasn’t actually supposed to be funny. I just needed an excuse to bring up the championship-winning part…did I mention that we won it twice?

b) allude to the physical prowess of the team
Examples: uh, most of the professional sports teams out there

c) be strongly suggested by your corporate sponsor
Um, only the Disney-fied Anaheim Mighty Ducks comes to mind as an example here. I don’t care if their team logo looks like a caricaturized version of a stolen prop off the set of the “Jason” movies. Who in their right mind would decide to name their team Mighty Ducks, anyway?

And then there are professional sports teams whose names don’t fall into the above three categories, and only baffle the mind when you imagine a committee of people making a decision on those names. There are quite a few of these, but today, I’m specifically going to pick on the Ottawa Senators. Let’s take a look-see at what exactly is so threatening about a senator (taken straight from www.canadaonline.com):

“The main role Canadian Senators have is in providing "sober, second thought" on the work done by the House of Commons. All federal legislation must be passed by the Senate as well as the House of Commons. While the Canadian Senate rarely vetoes bills, although it does have the power to do so, Senators do review federal legislation clause by clause in Senate committees and may send a bill back to the House of Commons for amendments. Senate amendments are usually accepted by the House of Commons. The Canadian Senate can also delay the passage of a bill. This is especially effective towards the end of a session of parliament, when a bill can be delayed long enough to prevent it becoming law.”

Wow. I almost fell sleep just copying and pasting that onto the page.

So let’s do a quick match-up here. An avalanche can smother the life out of you. A “thrasher” can, um...give you a good thashing. Lightning can render you immobile and, quite possibly, dead. And a senator can, well, delay the passage of a bill. Oooh…I'm scared, people. I’m shakin’ in my boots!

I can even understand names like Maple Leafs, Canucks and Canadiens. Such monikers smack of Canadian distinctiveness and patriotism, and therefore make sense - even if a leaf doesn’t stand a chance against an avalanche. (Furthermore, the plural of “leaf” is actually “leaves”. Anyone who says “I need go outside to rake the leafs” would sound like a fool, yet “Toronto Maple Leaves” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. But…I digress.)

Perhaps the powers that be (in the NHL, anyway) decided that with Ottawa being the capital of Canada and all, a team name that resounds with political power would fit the bill. Suffice to say, they pretty much missed the mark with “Senators”. They might as well have gone with “Members of Parliament” or “Cabinet Ministers” or “House Speakers”. If they wanted actually wanted a name with a little more glamour attached to it, they should have named the team “Governor-Generals”. A name that would be associated with fear and terror, yet be completely unrepresentative of Canadian politics would be “Dictators”. Maybe they should have worked the judicial clout angle and gone with “Supreme Court Justices”.

Even the imagery doesn’t work. A greying-haired spectacle-wearing politician in a power suit waving a sheath of papers mightily in the air is simply not as threatening as a sabre-toothed tiger on the prowl.

So the question remains – what were they thinking? Was the name decided upon after a night of drunken revelry? (Probably.) Did the Canadian government pay off the NHL? (Unlikely). And does it really matter, because its just a name, and its not a reflection on their performance on the ice? (Maybe, but they’re not doing well so far this season).

To all you Ottawa Senators fans out there, this was all in jest, and no offence. (Except for Tim. This was a deliberate jab at you. Hee!)

cancelled!

bad news...i'm sad to report that the concert for this wednesday has been cancelled. i won't get into all the details here, but it appears that someone in the position to OK the concert decided at the last minute that he didn't like the fact that we would be singing music of a religious nature. Which is sort of ironic because it was a concert for the faculty of theology.

anyway, the good news is that it WILL be rescheduled for next semester, under someone who will be a bit more tolerant. so stay tuned.

hey guys, i posted the schedules of the various concerts i'll be singing in for the next month or so, so come and check them out! The first two concerts are with my gospel choir and the last one is with the church choir. there's a small admission fee for the concert at McGill...somewhere btwn 2-5$ to cover the cost of renting the place.

God is good

So as I sneezed three times in succession at work today, I realized that I have not gotten sick. Yet for the last two months, I've slept an average of 4.5 hours a night during the week. (Ok...I'm exagerrating. I've slept an average of five hours a night). And during most of the week, I'm out and about around lots of people, some of whom who have been violently ill (ahem, like Lat and the 20 people he gave his nasty bug to).

God is good, indeed.

time for some roastin'

And so we have it: two true profiles of actual people in my office. There are more, but my lunch hours are only so long. More to come, I promise.

The perpetually PMSing co-worker

Her moods normally range to irritable to (pseudo)-homicidal rage and it seems that she has about the sensitivity of a piece of litmus paper dipped in acid. Most of the time I’m simply intimidated by her. On a few occasions however, when she’s flown into a fit of torrential anger, I’ve fought the urge to dive under my desk, hug my computer tower, and cry for my mommy. Instead, while she slams her desk drawers shut with formidable force, pounds on her keyboard until I feel start feeling sorry for it, and smashes binders and files onto the table, my knees knock the bottom of my keyboard tray as I jump a bit and I wind up making tons of typing errors as a result of my heart seizing in fear with every impact coming from the other side of the divider. Granted, her boss gives her a lot of crap, but for goodness’ sake, lady, get a grip.

I’ve had the unfortunate experience of having to encounter her while she’s been in one of her fouler moods. I remember timidly approaching her desk one day, while she was typing something and asking for some documents that I needed.

“Um…hi.” I cleared my throat awkwardly while she continued to type without so much as glancing at me. “I was wondering if you could maybe pass me that stress report…” She finally looked up at me and gave me such a penetrating stare that I involuntarily backed away. “Y-you know…” I sputtered helplessly as she glared at me wordlessly, “th-the one the cu-customer sent to…uh… you…” My voice, already feeble to begin with, trailed off into a whisper.

It’s not like she wasn’t completely co-operative. To be completely fair, she has her good days scattered here and there. Sort of like rainy days in Las Vegas.


Give this guy an inch and he’ll stretch to ten thousand miles

This is the guy who can’t help but flirt with every woman in sight, whether it’s a married mother of two in her late-forties or a fresh-out-of university grad 12 years his junior (yes, that would be me). He’s about a hundred trillion light years away from emanating anything resembling suaveness, and his bumbling of the English language coupled with his thick accent doesn’t help matters along. “Ah, womans” he said snarkily in my hearing once after I mumbled an obligatory “good morning” to him. It made want to spin around, grab him by the collar, shake him hard and say: “It’s wo-men! WO-MEN!! How could you possibly not get that after being in North America for 15 years?!”

If I sound unusually biting in my description of him, it’s because I’ve had a couple of bad run-ins with the guy. He was exceedingly nice to me when I started working here last year, and being the naïve gal that I was, I took it as him simply being welcoming and friendly to a new employee. I mean, who would have thought that a divorced 34 year old with two children would be interested in someone almost 12 years younger?

Unfortunately as the months progressed it became increasingly clear to me that he was not the “older brother” figure I had made him out to be, as he started to ask me out for coffee on the weekends or dinner after work. A little bit taken aback the very first time he asked, I had given him the benefit of the doubt that he simply wanted to socialize outside the office, but feeling uncomfortable with the idea, I politely declined and gave some sort of lame excuse about feeling tired.

Now girls, some guys will take that as a hint and leave you alone. Someone who can’t master the word “women” will not.

I stopped having lunch with him so frequently and soon he was muttering “Oh, fine, so go have lunch with him, and not me” each time I was in his vicinity. Then there were the jokingly half-serious marriage proposals, the gifts he left on my desk and the whining “How come you don’t come and say hi to me anymore?” So I just began avoiding him altogether, which brought on yet another barrage of unwanted encounters.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked me one day, after many months of my avoiding him. Out of completely necessity I had to ask him a question that was work-related.

“No,” I answered plainly. “I’m not mad at you. I just want to maintain a certain degree of professionalism.” I kid you not, those are the exact words I said to him. Looking slightly taken aback initially, he then proceeded to be sullen and somber for the duration of our conversation.

So you would think that would be the end of it all. Sadly, it was not – he cornered me at least a half-dozen more times to say to me “Did I do something wrong? How come you don’t talk to me anymore? I’m sorry I made you mad. I’m so sorry. Don’t be mad”

Finally one day, I lost it. “Listen!” I interrupted him mid-sentence after he had stopped at my desk yet again again to offer another bumbling apology for nothing. “I’m not mad at you! So stop asking because you’re FREAKING me out!”

And that was the end of that. He sulked around the office for a week, told the Maryse the receptionist that he thought he was in love with me, and that he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t be interested in him. Of course, he promptly started hitting on the next female employee that was hired. Yech.

hmmm....

interesting.

ESFP - "Entertainer". Radiates attractive warmth and optimism. Smooth, witty, charming, clever. Fun to be with. Very generous. 8.5% of the total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

interesting INDEED.

i've always thought i was "entertaining"...but i've always figured it was at my own expense that you guys got your laughs.

it feels like I’m back in school

The feeling of utter helplessness, numbers swimming before my eyes and equations that appear to add more variables to themselves every time I look at them again: this is all pulling me back to a time when I sat confounded in front of mounds of useless textbooks and incomprehensible school assignment questions. The difference between then and now is that back then I sat in a library, with friends and classmates closeby to whom I could holler for help; whereas now I am sitting at work, getting paid to lose the brain cells that are probably fizzling away from exhaustation and overwork, and there is no one around to help me. Add into the mix that fact that I have no textbooks – only old NASA technical reports circa 1960, which are only slightly more helpful than if I had consulted the latest issue of Vanity Fair.

You ask “aren’t there any other engineers there to help you?” Well, yes, I suppose my boss could help me, if he weren’t so busy and was actually in the office most of the time. So far I’ve spent the better part of the morning reading lines of program code over and over, running said program code over and over and always each time arriving at what I know cannot be the right results. The frustration is driving me the point of insanity – I’ve started talking to the program as a person under my breath: ”Why? Why are you being so difficult? Why can’t you understand me?!”

Sigh. So sorry for this boring rant. I’ll make up for it in my next post by roasting my co-workers.

Note to self: It’s OK to blog when the server at work is down, and it just so happens that all your work is saved on it.

another pet peeve (#4 in a series):

It always happens when I need a caffeine boost the most. Upon entering the kitchen, I’ll find the coffee pot empty. That’s already a big office no-no; the unofficial rule is if you finish the pot, you make a fresh one. Nevertheless, while I silently accuse various co-workers of breaking this rule, I’ll make a new pot. Of course, being the productive employee that I am (*cough) I’ll return to my desk to do some work (read: MSN) instead of standing around in the kitchen waiting for the coffee machine to do its magic. And seeing as my workplace tends to be governed by Murphy’s law, one of my bosses will have something pressing and urgent to tell me right as I get up to head back to the kitchen when I figure that the coffee must be done. And by the time I finally tear myself away from my bosses’ inquiries, I’ll return to the kitchen to run into one of my co-workers stirring a cupful of my freshly-brewed coffee, and the pot – empty.

Sigh.


if you care to know...

And now for your amusement, i present to you the top three word searches that led some people to my page (courtesy of Sitemeter):

1. John Mayer’s tattoos
2. High heel boots
3. Thank you for coming to our wedding

what the heck is a moo-moo?

to address the questions i've received regarding my last post:

a moo-moo is a shapeless garment that, supposedly according to the Simpsons, extremely overweight people wear. it comes in a variety of flowered patterns and may or may not be accesorized with a hat.

and now i suppose the question is, "Simpsons?! Whatcha talkin' about, Willis?" Die-hard fans will recall the episode where Homer purposely gains weight to obtain "legally disabled" status so he can work from home. The classic line from this episode is when Homer sits down at the computer for the first time and reads what's written on the screen: " 'To start, press any any key'. Hey, where's the 'anykey'?"

And oh yeah, he goes out shopping and purchases several flowered moo-moos. That's where the reference is from.

Alright, now I must get back to work.

I need to blog about my dining experience last evening, but I'm somewhat torn about what title I should give this entry:

my friend's big, fattening italian wedding
or
goodbye, atkins diet, it was nice knowing you

We attended Dave and Nancy's nuptial festivities yesterday night. I was so overwhelmed with the sheer volume of food presented to us that I feel compelled to share with you all a blow-by-blow recap of our meal. Maybe you'll think I'm just silly but if you've never been to an Italian wedding, read on.

First they served each person a generous serving of proscuitto with melon - one of my favorite Italian appetizers. This was followed by a soup, which was then followed by a plate of pasta. Mind you, this was pasta of the cheese-stuffed variety. By the time I was finished, I was approaching my fullness quotient. We were then presented with what I thought was ice cream. Ah, dessert, I thought to myself. As Roopa put it later on, our middle class minds thought the meal was over.

As it turned out, it wasn't ice cream, it was sherbet meant to cleanse our palate. Round two began.

Salad made an appearance at our table, followed by steak with potatoes. Before we had finished taking pictures of our plates, they brought out a seafood platter. To finish it off, we were also treated to a fresh fruit platter, followed by crepes stuffed with ice cream. It was absolutely marvelous.

By then I was fit to bust, but it wasn't over yet. They set up a buffet with mussels, italian sausages, pizza and submarine sandwiches and pastries. Even more astonishing was the fact that everyone lined to help themselves to the spread. Although I was quite full and ready to call it a night I couldn't resist the pastries and joined the queue to liberate a few of them from the dessert platters.

"I thought I was full before," declared Roopa afterwards, pushing her finished plate away, "but now I'm officially full." I mumbled an agreement in between forkfuls of millefeuille pastry.

I thinking alongside the wedding favors they hand out to guests, perhaps Italians should distribute individually packaged moo-moos as well. Then no one would have to think about loosening the belt buckle or anything like that. Hi, thanks for coming to our wedding. Here's your moo-moo. Changing rooms are on the left. You're at table 30. Enjoy the evening!

A big congratulations to Dave and Nancy. Another big congratulations to Joce and Van who got hitched last weekend. Stay tuned for picture postings!

john mayer ROCKS

contrary to what one of my fellow concert-goers says, I thought the concert last week rocked. Shoddy sound mixing aside, John Mayer gave a great performance that had the hundreds of giddy girls in the audience swooning and screaming, nearly blowing out my eardrums. But then again, maybe I shouldn’t have been screaming so loud either.

breaking the silence

And now to relate to you my spa experience.

The weekend before last, we took Sana and Kathy up to Tremblant to celebrate their birthdays. The trip included an excursion to a Scandanavian spa outside the village, which offered a relaxing experience in the form of a series of hot and cold treatments. The idea was to do 15 minutes of a hot treatment followed by around 10-30 seconds of a cold treatment, followed by “resting” for another 10 minutes, and then repeat the cycle 3 times over. The spa facility itself is nestled on the side of a hilly slope, with a beautiful view of the river and tucked away from the noise of the main road. Signs posted everywhere asked for silence to maintain an atmosphere of serenity.

Upon changing into our bathing suits, we decided to go for the Finnish steam room first. Initially, it was a somewhat weird to be sitting in a roomful of complete strangers in total silence, sweating profusely and trying not to inhale too deeply because it felt as though the steam could burn the inside of your nose. But just as I was getting used to it, one of us indicated that it was time to go.

I was dreading the cold treatment already – it was already no more than 10 degrees outside, we were in our bathing suits, and we had to completely immerse ourselves in cold water. Someone suggested checking out the man-made outdoor waterfall, so we did. Kathy was the first one in, and as soon she was under the waterfall, she let out a scream. So did Arshia. So did I, Sandy and Sana, and we all splashed around in the water, screaming and yelling all at once.

We had just stepped out of the shallow pool and were still huddled together and chattering excitedly among ourselves when I saw the door to one of the solariums swing open and bald, stern-looking man stride out towards us with a look of utter dismay and anger on his face. We fell silent as he approached us.

“Ladies!” he said heavily, putting his hands together. “Could you please not scream anymore? We want to keep it silent here!” He gestured at the signs and glared at us.

“We’re sorry,” we said in unison, all of us looking very shame-faced, and he turned and walked away.

“Oh my god guys, I’m so embarrassed,” Kathy said, with her hands clasped over her mouth as though to suppress any remaining screams that wanted to burst forth.

Feeling quite mortified myself, I closed my eyes and imagined how it must have been perceived by the other patrons – resting tranquilly, listening the soft music from one of those “music inspired by nature” CD’s looping over the speakers and then being wrenched out of their serene state by ear-piercing screams that sounded like bloody murder. I winced silently.

We hurried away to a more secluded side of the facility to take our 10 minute rest and remained pretty well-behaved for the duration of our stay.

The John Mayer concert is tomorrow night and I am very excited. I've been looking forward to it since I bought the tickets.

In fact, this entire month is jammed pack with activites: the concert, two weddings (next weekend and one after), and just this past weekend, a trip to Tremblant. I'll have to post some highlights of the trip - check back soon because it will be quite the interesting read. =)

In other news, I just made my life a heck of a lot busier by joining a gospel choir. The dancing that I had to do for my audition actually paid off. Don't ask me to do a repeat performance for you because every time I try to mentally picture myself dancing at that audition I break out into goosebumps. When I find out the concert schedule I'll post that up too.

an angry work-related rant

So there I was the other day, sitting at my desk, somewhat frustrated with my work. Frustrated in a good way though, because what I was working on actually required some thinking and problem solving. It was challenging - much unlike the mindless tasks delegated to me in the last little while.

In this post-feminist, make-your-own-coffee and do-your-photocopying era, I never would have expected the vice-president to approach my desk, carelessly toss me a CD and say “There’s about 50 drawings on that – would you print them out for me? Thanks.”

What am I, your all-purpose engineer/girl Friday? Sorry, I didn’t notice that on the job description. Maybe that’s how they should describe this job position – because it will be vacant after I high-tail it out of here.

I don’t know if I’m being ultra-sensitive or rightfully peeved. For starters, it would have been nice to say something along the lines of : “I’m really pressed for time today - could you do me a favor and print these out for me when you get a chance?” Let me make one thing clear – I do not report to this VP. In fact, I have never worked on any project with him or for him.

The way the vice-president just tossed the task on me said two things loud and clear:

1) Because I am higher up in the corporate chain, menial tasks such as printing drawings are beneath me and not worth my time. So you do it, since it appears your time is less valuable than mine.

2) I’m too stupid and too lazy to open AutoCAD and print these myself.

Might I add that shortly afterwards he was laughing and chatting with another director just down the hall for a good while, while I scrambling to print the drawings out and write a damage tolerance analysis report at the same time.

Am I being ridiculous for being peeved, guys? Impart your words of wisdom on me, please!

ange the raging shopaholic

I’ve often insisted to others, especially to my mom, that I am not, in fact, a fanatic impulse shopper. Yet as I look back I realized that in the past year I have not gone more than a month without purchasing some sort of article of clothing or useless item. The unopened car air freshener sitting in some forgotten corner of my room, the never-worn pair of corduroys hanging in my closet and the used one-time hair straightening iron from Wal-Mart (remember what I said about Wal-Mart?), purchased a year ago are a testament to my folly.

After all, I do exhibit the signs of perhaps what most would deem a shopaholic: 1) occasionally skipping work early to go the mall and “look around” (perhaps the fact that I am merely bored and have no work to do might have something to do with it, but I digress); 2) being unable to resist a sale; 3) convincing myself that I absolutely need something, such as a fourth pair of jeans; 4) furtively spiriting my new purchases away into my room in a guilt-ridden manner to hide it from my mom, and during the summer, from my roommate.

The first towards solving the problem is recognizing it. And the recognition came slamming down on my head like a ton of bricks a few days ago on a shopping trip with Sana. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you hear yourself saying things like “Well, you can never have too many pairs of underwear, right?”

Sana and I spent that afternoon perusing a variety of stores and exhibiting warning signs of pseudo-shopper-schizophrenia. “What do you think of these boots?” she asked when we were at Aldo, holding out a brown pair with pointy-toes, all the rage these days. “I don’t really need a pair of boots, though, but…”

“They’re nice!” I said excitedly. “Try them on!”

Of course, pointy-toes high heel boots are not the most practical, especially if you’re an elementary school teacher. But Sana seemed torn, because they did look very nice when she tried them, and especially since they were 30% off.

“But they’re brown” she sighed, “and brown’s such a hard color to match. What do you think?”

“They’re on sale and it’s such a good deal!” I insisted. “You should just get them because it’s all always good to a nice dressy pair of boots.” I paused, and continued, “But I think that if you don’t absolutely love them and you don’t really need them, then don’t get them.” I looked at the boots again. “Hey, maybe I should get them!”

Seeing the confused look on Sana’s face resulting from the several conflicting statements that I had just offered her, I quickly turned away and stared intently at a pair of sandals on the shelf in front of me.

Note: I don’t need another pair of boots, nor did I absolutely fall in love with the ones she was trying.

An hour later, we found ourselves at Zara, a store where the salespeople are infamous for seldomly acknowledging the presence of their clientele. With the sheer volume of Saturday shoppers filling the place, we were sure that we would be more than just ignored – we would probably be refused change rooms altogether. Undaunted, we made our way inside anyway.
“Hey, what do you think of these pants?” I asked Sana, picking up a pair from a nearby rack.
“They’re nice,” she replied as she scrutinized them and then scanned the rest of its offerings. “Uh, don’t you have a pair of beige pants already?” she added casually.
“Nope!” I answered, a little too brightly.
She turned slightly and looked me right in the eyes. “Are you lying?”
“Um…” I paused slightly, averted her eyes, and then sighed. “Yes,” I said, in a small voice, feeling slightly ashamed. She just laughed at me.

We spent another two hours of see-sawing between being convinced that we absolutely needed certain articles of clothing and accessories and then snapping back into realistic practicality. When I started telling Sana how much I needed this 90 dollar skirt, she practically took me by the arm and dragged me out of the store. Not to say that we didn’t end up purchasing anything though – at the end of the shopping day we were both toting shopping bags filled with things that we talked ourselves into plunking down our hard-earned cash for. Although I was reveling in a guilty pleasure, I was at the same time aghast at how only hours earlier I had decided that I didn't need anymore clothes. Yet here I was, trying to figure out how I was supposed to cram these newly acquired fall wardrobe additions into my closet.

On our way back to the parking lot, we passed by Indigo, which apparently closed later in the day, evidenced by the number of readers and shoppers milling about in the store. I poked Sana in the arm. “Look at all those people in line!” I said excitedly. “Do you think they’re having a sale?”

Sana looked through the window thoughtfully. “Maybe,” she answered slowly and then almost instantaneously her voice took on another quality. “Let’s go inside and see!”

And, without another moment’s hesitation, we were inside the store, being jostled about here and there by other people: some who were there to search for the newest New York Times bestseller; others who didn’t know where else to turn after all the other stores closed; and people who fell in somewhere in between, such as Sana and I, drawn immediately to the “$10 and under!” table.

I actually don’t need to feign interest in the literary pursuits because I do enjoy reading. So it was genuine interest that I browsed their discounted selection, picking up various novels that I had never heard of by authors I do not know, and thumbing through the pages. Whether these novels were good or not were of little consequence to me – their deeply reduced prices alone would merit ringing them up at the cash.
“Can you believe they’re selling “[name of novel I don’t remember]” for only 4 dollars?” said a middle-aged woman incredulously, standing near us to her friend, gesturing at one of the titles sitting in the pile. Wordlessly, Sana and I both immediately picked up that very same book and started leafing through it.

“I can’t believe how cheap these books are!” I hissed to Sana under my breath. “Maybe I should get one!”

“And they’re hardcover too!” she whispered back. “It would be wrong NOT to buy it!”

I circled the table and started looking the books with the most impressive covers – and subsequently blowing off that immortal phrase “Never judge a book by its cover” when Sana came up beside me. “We must leave now,” she said quietly. “We must leave now!” The spell that the bargain books had put over me broke, and I put the book I was holding back down and allowed myself to be steered out of the store.

An intervention at Indigo, by another shopaholic. If that’s not the warning of a problem like emergency road flares at night, I don’t know what is.

back to the 'burbs

and so i have returned.

it's been almost three weeks since i've been back and still people are asking me "So you've moved back home already?" in a lowered tone of voice that is slightly mournful, pitying and sympathetic all the same time, not unlike that tone you would use to comfort someone at a funeral. there are losses and there are gains to returning to the nest. for starters, i have my mother fussing over whether i'm dressed warmly enough to go out, or getting enough sleep, or have something to bring to the office for breakfast. it's nice, really, except this nagging feeling i have inside of me everytime i decide to skip dinner at home, that is accompanied by something that sounds like my mother's voice giving me the "hotel" speech, that one that reminds me that my home is not where i simply drop off my things, get free food and put my head down to sleep.

living away from home meant hardly getting the typical 8 hours needed for sleep. it meant worrying about my car being vandalized or stolen because it was parked a few blocks away in a neighbourhood where both things have happened (a fear that was realized when i found my sideview mirror hanging lifelessly by a wire last month - drunken imbeciles have to get their kicks somehow, i suppose). some expiration dates on food were a given a few days grace. my bedtime lullaby consisted of squealing tires and sirens, at times, alternating; at other times, synchronized in a strange harmony.

despite all that, i enjoyed the experience thoroughly and would do it again, on a more permanent basis when i have really and truly have the means.

the fruits of boredom

During one of my many boring days at work last month, I flexed my creative muscle and wrote out some new lyrics to John Mayer's "Your Body Is a Wonderland". Actually, I need to give credit to Jon, who came up with the idea of rewriting to "We're going to Wonderland". (The amusement park in Toronto, people!) So here you go...


Verse:
You've got the weekend free
I've got no place to be
So why don't you come with me
To another place, another city

Flying down the 401, there's
no time for bathroom runs, 'cause
the day is short, the lines are long and
there'll be more time for fun

Bridge:
So if you have cash
just bring some
I hear the prices
they raised them
and if you get nauseous
don't eat lunch
'cause it's gonna be wild...

Chorus:
We're going to Wonderland
(We'll drive the van)
We're going to Wonderland
(Don't make new plans)
We're going to Wonderland
(Prepare to stand)
We're going to Wonderland

Verse:
Somethin 'bout the smell of hotdogs in the air
the sounds of screams and sights of people flung 'round here and there
The rides are short and the food's expensive
but you'll manage to convince yourself that somehow it was all well worth it...

(repeat bridge and chorus)

guys and new clothes

When I buy new clothes, I will try them all on again once I get home. I'll try them on with different pants, coats, jackets, shirts or whatever, to see what kind of outfits I can make and to see if they'll "go". I will preen and pose in the mirror for a good few minutes, scrutinizing, analyzing and admiring my new purchase. The whole process can last anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour.

Today I surprised my brother with a fleece jacket from MEC. I had stood in front of the racks for over a half hour, completely undecided over the color and style. When I gave it to him, his face lit up with a big smile, and he exclaimed "Wow! Thanks Ange!" in genuine happiness. He put it on, showed it to my mom, and checked it out in front of a mirror for a full 5 seconds. Then satisfied, he hung it up, closed the door to the coat closet, and went back to reading the paper.

on amusement parks:

For the low, low price of 35 dollars, tax included, you can buy yourself a ticket to stand in various lines for what will seem to like an eternity, with your personal space repeatedly invaded by sweating strangers, your nose taking in the collective odor of those same people, and your skin burning under the heat of the sun. You endure all this so that at the end, your body can be subjected to extreme velocities, violent maneuvering and sudden stop and starts that will leave your head spinning, your stomach ready to lose the last meal it ingested and your common sense left somewhere behind in line. I say the last item because at some point in the day, you manage to convince yourself that the 30 or so seconds of dizzying thrill was all worth the wait.

You can also opt to pay an additional 12 dollars to leave your vehicle in a badly maintained parking lot and walk 20 exhausting minutes to the entrance of the park.

On a somewhat related note, I went to LaRonde last month. OK, so it wasn't a bad experience- it was fun, actually. But if you break it all down, that’s essentially what going to an amusement park is all about.

on waterslides:

I also went to a waterpark for the first time in my life a few weekends ago. Now that's an interesting concept when you really think about it - scores of people eagerly waiting in line to hurtle themselves down plastic tubes - sometimes in a giant inflatable torus; sometimes not.

Many of you already know that I cannot swim, and am slightly – ok, make that completely petrified – of deep water. Deep meaning anything over 4 feet. (Stop laughing.)

So it was with great consternation that I agreed to go along on this trip, whining to everyone to within earshot the two days prior that I cannot swim, despite being told repeatedly that the water at the end of a typical slide is only 2 inches deep. I realized that it was a complete lie the moment we arrived at the park and I saw people flying off the slides and into pools of water, be completely submerged for several seconds before they bobbed back up with a look of complete exhilaration on their faces. My heart sank.

To be completely fair, not all the slides ended with a pool of water. The one that stood 4 stories high off the ground at an angle so steep that it was pretty much a vertical drop ended with a shallow 2 inches of water. So did the slides with inner tubes the radius of regular automobile tires – perfect for a small child, not so perfect for a terrified 5’ 7” adult.

Luckily my friends patiently “warmed up” with me on a ride called “The Lazy River”. It consisted of travelling along a watery circuit in inner tubes that travelled roughly at the heart-stopping velocity of a wayward shopping cart in an empty parking lot on a mildly breezy afternoon. And much unlike what the name would suggest, we found ourselves pelted, sprayed and showered with freezing cold water at unexpected intervals, during which we frenetically paddled with our hands and feet in a futile attempt to pick up the pace and make a quick exit from this cruel and unusual form of water torture.

ange and alli do their own scaled-down version of fear factor

My fear ebbed away during the course of the day and as a grand finale I found myself lining up to go down the aforementioned five-story vertical drop waterslide. How I ended up on that ride was a bit of a fluke – Alli and I were originally in line for a slightly tamer slide that shared the same platform. Tamer, because it consisted of several twists and turns – instead of a sheer drop. It became apparent that many people perceived it that way too, as the line slowly inched along, while the line for the death-drop remained somewhat thin. We slowly began to debate the possibility of going on the death-drop slide instead:

“The whole ride will be over in few seconds.”
“Yeah, but I’m scared.”
“Me too, but hey, we can say that we did it!”
“I know, but I’m scared!”
“I know I know…so am I, but the line is so much shorter!”
“BUT I’M SCARED!”

We finally decided to straddle the two lines until we worked up the nerve to actually line up for it. Seconds later, we found ourselves actually (and inadvertently) in line. A few minutes later, I was clutching the railing, the ground below swirling before my eyes as I experienced a serious case of vertigo. I felt more nervous about going down the slide than I did about writing a hard exam that I was not ready for at McGill.

It was all over in a matter of a few seconds – but those were some of the most terrifying seconds of my life, when I felt my stomach hit my throat and at of the end of which I couldn’t tell if I was still moving downwards or forwards. Was it worth the nerve-wrenching wait? You bet.

and…a final observation

I also discovered something interesting that day at the waterpark, while lining up for our turn at the slides – easily half the people in line in front of us was branded with some sort of tattoo. This led me to make the following conclusions:
1) More people in Quebec get tattoos than you actually think
2) People who like to get tattoos also like to frequent waterparks
3) Waterparks are clandestine meeting places for a secret order for which membership is validated by an abstract design tattooed on the lower back, shoulder or bicep.

On a side note, I also found the number of guys sporting nipple rings somewhat disturbing.

A question that was running through my mind at 2am this morning as I was engaged in a frenzied packing spree at the apartment:
"Why did I bring SO many clothes with me?"

The coffee at work never tasted so good as it does right now.

My internet at work was been down for almost all of the last week, so I found myself seemingly cut off from the rest of the world. As Sandy remarked yesterday, (and I'm paraphrasing this because at the time I was concentrating on trying not to totter in my newly purchased, fabulous strappy black heels) "What good is a computer without internet access? It's just a big box!". Why yes, it is.

My boredom at work in the last week two weeks, coupled with the lack of access to the rest of the cyber-community last week, culminated with me feverishly typing up a new blog entry in Microsoft Word, in a window reduced to 6 words wide and three lines long at a font size of 10pt. Occasionally I would frantically scramble to minimize the window and pretend to be mulling over an AutoCAD drawing of a rivet every time I heard footsteps approaching.

But there have been times when I've walked past various co-workers' desks and caught them staring at a blank Microsoft Excel worksheet with look of utter and intense concentration, their faces all flushed; or clumsily trying to close a Jobboom or Monster.com window. Heehee.

Anyway, all this to say that you should come back and check for an entry about my experience at Super Aqua Club and La Ronde sometime later this week, assuming our internet connection is up and running.

my b-day

today i turned 24. thanks to Maureen, Anne and Adrian who e-mailed me to wish me a happy one. It made my day to hear from you guys!

today's happenings included worship at church this morning and lunch at a korean restaurant that left its pungunt garlickly kitchen aromas stubbornly embedded in the fibres of my clothing. i then spent a good part of the afternoon washing my car, lamenting over the various new scratches i found; followed by paying bills online; and now, blogging. a home-cooked meal and a chocolate mousse cake awaits upstairs in the kitchen.

not to say i didn't get to go out to celebrate - last evening was spent with some friends at the very hip restaurant Sophia on the main and then at a karaoke bar on Crescent. You know people truly are your friends when they will accompany you onstage to sing a song they don't really know, meanwhile collectively making fools out of themselves in public; and sit patiently for an hour and a half while you debate whether or not you will actually go and up and sing, and then waiting for your turn to go up after a bunch of rowdy American tourists belt out an what seemed to be an endless stream of 80's hits, Bruce Springsteen, and bad rapping. thanks, guys. I love you all =).

and now it has finally hit me...oh my goodness...I'M 24!!

why i possibly have the best boss

Having been dropped with a new project earlier today (and thank goodness because the last thing i was working on was so boring i wanted to shoot myself in the head), I spent a good part of the morning leafing through an enormous pile of drawings. i was still at it around noon when George, my boss, walked up my desk and said:

"Now Angela, I know I said that this project is important but it doesn't mean you shouldn't take your lunch!"

And just a few moments ago, I went into his office to ask if I could take off earlier on Friday, because I'll be going to Toronto. "Sure," he said nonchalantly.

"Well...I'm making up the time right now," I told him.

"Whatever," he replied lazily, waving his hand.

It almost makes me feel bad for going behind his back and looking for another job.

random pet peeves

1. creepy co-worker: this co-worker of mine who stares intently at my computer screen throughout the whole duration of time that the screen is in his field of vision every time he passes by my desk. the voyeurism aspect of it is downright creepy. i can understand a quick glance out of curiosity, but a sustained stare? (and no, this isn't the latino guy who asked me to marry him.)

2. carrots why do carrots always have to be sold in the supermarket in packages of at least 2 dozen? and the carrots they sell individually are those gourmet top carrots that go for 2 dollars each. for goodness' sake, i'm only one girl...ONLY ONE GIRL!

3. invasion of much needed personal/break time why is it that my bosses always need to talk to me around lunchtime or towards the end of the day?

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock lately (or you simply don’t live in Montreal), the WTO was in town for the last few days. Hot on their heels were a ragtag group of tree-hugging activists hailing from all over the continent, armed with spray paint, a lot of rage, and apparently any loose construction equipment they could find lying around, as evidenced by the broken windows of Burger King, Jacob and other unfortunate businesses boarded up along St-Catherine street. There was a picture on the front page of Tuesday’s Gazette of one of the protestors smashing a construction road sign through the window at the Gap on the corner of Mountain. Lovely.

(I don’t mean to poke fun at these activists because not all of them are violent, and the points they are trying to get across have value and make sense. But smashing windows and wreaking general havoc? They’re turning themselves into a big joke and the object of public scorn.)

On Monday morning, I woke just a little but later than I would have liked and once again I was parked on the side of the street where it’s no parking between 7 and 8. I rushed out of the apartment at 7:02 thinking to myself that maybe I had just enough time to grab a coffee from the Second Cup down the street for my drive to work.

I was still trying to figure out the odds of a Ville de Montreal “officer” (I don’t know what we’re supposed to call those heartless folks who dole out parking tickets like they’re Herbal Essence shampoo samplers) driving down the street and spotting my now-illegally parked car in the 3 minutes it would take to buy a coffee when I spotted them. A group of what were unmistakably WTO protesters was standing several feet away from my car. It wasn’t the dreads, nor the modern-day bohemian style clothing, nor the sleeping bags and faded knapsacks that gave it away. No, it was the spray paint cans they were wielding, the gas masks they were strapping to their faces and the sticks they waving around as though to warm-up for street battle that kind of, sort of gave some indication as to who they were.

At about the same time, noisy cheers and shouts erupted from a much larger crowd gathered down the street for early morning anarchy. Standing on the corner eyeing the larger crowd warily were two police officers, who were also casting dark, suspicious looks at the group clustered near my car.

Suddenly, I decided that coffee could wait.

On rain and irony:

Irony is deliberately not bringing an umbrella on a night out that required walking 8 blocks each way because that same umbrella (note: its a full-size behemoth model of an umbrella) had been lugged around for 2 consecutive weeks, even on days when the streets were bathed in brilliant sunshine with nary a cloud in the sky despite daily weather forecasts threatening heavy thunderstorms and rain. Irony is deciding “That’s it, I don’t care what those crackhead meteorologists say about it raining tonight, I refuse to take this with me,” and stepping out of the venue hours later only to find it pouring, with the full-size behemoth umbrella sitting purposefully 8 blocks away inside my apartment.

Might I also add that I had put off washing and waxing my car for those same two consecutive weeks although it was shamefully dirty (having been driven ruthlessly through 30 km worth of highway construction zones every day) and in dire need of some TLC on my part. You can probably guess what happened on Sunday mere minutes after I finally washed it at home and started waxing the hood.


On adding insult to injury:

Never, ever, buy cheap stuff from Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is already cheap, therefore its cheap stuff is even more sub-par. I bought a so-called “Le Kit de Car-Wash” on Sunday that, among other things, contained “cleaning solution”. It was only after I got home that I bothered to read the back of bottle and discovered, much to my dismay, that it “must never be used on exterior car surfaces” and “Highly corrosive. Avoid contact with skin.” Well, I should have known. Obviously the fact that they supplied a bucket and a variety of sponges and drying cloths should have given it away. Oh, and the “drying cloths”? They had just about the absorbency of tree bark.


On washing your car with dish detergent:

Don’t.

*cough cough*

for those who may been mildly curious about whether or not i played hooky from work on monday...i did. and no worries! i didn't lie...i left a message on my boss' answering machine explaining that i wasn't feeling well (very true at 5:45 in the morning) and that i needed to rest up (also very true as I had been up until 1 the night before talking to Pikka and Erx).

sleeping in till noon was pure bliss until my boss called (not to check up on me, but to ask for something). good thing i was at home and good thing i had just woken up so i sounded convincingly unwell.

and of course, taking the day off had nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that i had a pedicure appointment at a spa later that day.

and monday rolls around yet again .

i realized that today is july 20th and the summer is more than half over. not that it actually matters for me of course, seeing as i don't have any vacation time left for the rest of the flippin' year. bitter? why, not i!

well, actually, the end of summer will mean the end my happy sojourn downtown, and back to suburban living, home-cooked meals and being able to save for RRSP contributions. it will also mean having to wear socks and shoes again, which i will probably try to put off until mid-November. but let's not even go there yet.

i had a really good weekend. actually, i had a really good week, despite last monday morning's harrowing events. i went on a retreat with my church to a resort hotel near St-Sauveur. I know some people perceived the whole event as being some sort of churchwide vacation prior to it happening, but it was far from it. Sure we had fun and that facilities were quite good but I got a lot out of it and I had a good time talking to people from my church that I normally don't get a chance to because of language or generational or cultural differences. And I could see this weekend that all those things that everyone thought was a barrier or hindrance doesn't have to be because people were having fun and sometimes just really good, meaningful conversation.

the past week was just one packed day after another - Just for laughs comdedy show, street festival, movie, dinners and having friends over . Pikka (my roomie) often wonders aloud how I can come from work and be on the go until midnight or so and wake at the next morning before 6 and go to work and then do it all over again. I'm not too sure myself. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just going to collapse one of these days. I think I'm just trying to squeeze as much out of the summer and urban living as much as I possibly can and have fun while I'm at it.

at the same time though, I'm seriously contemplating whether I should call in sick tomorrow morning and sleep in for the first time in 2 months.