fuck th3 w0rld!

This morning, the title bar of the Economist print edition was "fuck th3 w0rld!" I wish I had taken a screencap, because after a few clicks on the "refresh" button, it was back to the usual "Print Edition." Still, it sure woke me up.

Speaking of waking up, I was wide awake at 3 AM this morning due to my very early bedtime. 8:30 PM, to be exact. I know, I am an old lady. Sunday nights are the best for being an old lady. Friday and Saturday nights? Not so much. So, a brief recap:

Friday night my dear roommate Neil, his friends and I went to Circa, the biggest and supposedly best nightclub in all of Toronto. Well, I'll give credit where it's due: it sure is big. Three floors, with an escalator leading up from the main floor to the second (or third?). The dj that night was alright, but the music was a bit slow to get started. By 1 AM though it was all very good.

Saturday night, well...Neil and I were invited to a party at the second floor of Rivoli, a restaurant-bar-lounge on Queen Street West. I had coffee at Rivoli and got all pumped to party, only to go upstairs to find that a) we didn't know anyone there, and b) it wasn't really a dancing party. So we walked home in light rain at around 2 AM, and collapsed.

Sunday was good, we had lunch at Spring Rolls restaurant on Dundas, near Yonge and Dundas Square (pictures to come from that later!) with mutual friends Craig and Jasmine...who, may I add, are one of the cutest and sweetest couples I know.


The cute couple, in person!


Aw, fag + his hag


My mango salad...I was surprised to find that it was actually a salad consisting entirely of mango strips. I was expecting some slices of mango in a regular salad, but...well. The "fish sauce" it was supposed to come in was completely nonexistent, though.


Obligatory group shot.

So now its Monday morning and I am looking forward to a new week of 9-5 excitement. I am really feeling that Michael Gray song "The weekend."

prison break

I was walking to work this morning, listening to my usual CBC morning show As It Happens, which was following up on the huge prison break in Kandahar last Friday. Now it's being reported that up to 400 insurgents amongst the 1000 dangerous criminals are roaming around, while the Canadian defence minister plays the classic "Well, they're the ones who screwed up" game (they being the Afghani government). This is despite evidence of requests filed last year for upgrades to the prison's security.

Also, with allegations and suspicions flying around about whether this was an inside job, it just goes to show once again how little I (and many average Canadians, I suspect) really know about what goes on in Afghanistan. A military representative on the show put it succintly- "Things are never what them seem in Afghanistan. Loyalties are bought....but this can change at any time."

And something else I found out in the process of reading about the prison break: Canada's tentative pull out date of Afghanistan is 2011! Oh, those memories of a 2009 pull out date seem so distant now. Was it even 2009? I don't know, some ridiculously idealistic timeframe that only the NDP are capable of dreaming up.

As a disclaimer, I don't consider myself by any means an adept analyst of Canadian politics or foreign policy. However, I am slowly getting into the habit of engaging myself at a new level- that of the eligible voter. That's right- I have never voted in a provincial or federal election as of yet, but in anticipation of one (that is, if the Liberals ever decide to show up for motions), I am attempting to have some sort of reference point for myself.

My political party of choice is yet to be decided- but as for now, it is definitely not the Conservatives as long as Stephen Harper is controlling the mothership. As my mother mused once, while driving me to the mall: "Stephen Harper...he looks like evil man."

I don't know about evil, but the things he gets away with are quite atrocious.

after the storm

It's been thunderstorming, as of late. Usually rainy weather depresses me, but I find that this time, it's quite cathartic. Walking to work today was absolutely beautiful, with the sun shining and everyone out in their jaunty summer shorts and skirts, walking, talking, or enjoying a bit of sun-filled solitude. I wish my life could always be like this- a perpetually sunny morning, walking to a not-too pressing engagement with plenty of time and Jane Birkin's effortlessly sensual voice singing "La Madrague" into my ears.

on being a tourist

I've been a bad tourist.

Or maybe this is just unique to me being in Toronto. I am here for the summer doing an internship (the usual 9-5 deal), for which I am very grateful, because I have yet to make many friends in this city. I would probably spend a lot of my days at a cafe reading and brooding about life (classic portrait of a Lonely Loser).

I think that Toronto is the kind of city that only truly comes alive when you have friends. Sure, you can say the same for any place in the world, but there are some cities that are so interesting on their own- in terms of local culture, architecture, shopping, and so on- that I could feasibly spend a good period of time by myself and not feel restless or bored. Some examples of cities like this are Paris, London, Marseilles, Lyon, and pretty much all the big cities in Europe I wish I had the moolah to visit.

I am the type of tourist that sets out in the morning with a map, a backpack, a camera and a vague itinerary. I love meandering aimlessly in large cities and stumbling onto places that guidebooks would say are "off the beaten path" - except I stumble on them without the help of a guidebook. It's just more fun that way.

So coming back to Toronto: I live very close to the famous Kensington Market and Chinatown, which places me at the hub of downtown. Well, I suppose when you're talking about such a huge city like Toronto there are many "hubs," but where I live is definitely one of them. I only discovered Little Italy on College Street two weeks ago, and had a wonderful time wandering down by myself and discovering all the charming little shops, restaurants, video stores and bookstores. I even saw a place called "Eat My Martini"-- $6 martinis! Now if only I can find some friends to sip them with, hah.

I do live with a roommate, but he's been vacationing it up in California (I want to go to San Francisco!), so it's just been ronery times for me here. Toronto people- if you have recommendations for cool places, neighbourhoods you like (bonus points for cool places in cool neighbourhoods) whether its for people flying solo or in groups, let me know. I am especially keen on live-performance music/jazz lounges. No hardcore punk or stand up comedy, though...although I don't mind comedy clubs with experienced funny men/women. Seriously, one of the most painful things one can go through is bad stand up comedy. I remember reading a NOW article by a guy who went to stand up comedy every night for a week, and some of the stuff he had to endure just sounded brutal. Did somebody say, "retard" joke? Seriously, jokes about mental handicaps are funny maybe 0.2% of the time, when used extrememly sparingly and by the right comic.

Anyways, I digress.

I checked out the Luminato festivities at Yonge and Dundas Square a few days ago.




The theme for this year (which also happens to be the first) is "Water." I am guessing that these are water molecules?





In the evening they had a performance of disco dance and music. Now, the guy on the sax: Sideshow Bob. Don't tell me you don't see it.



And to finish: my favourite Chinese restaurant name, ever. My roommate and I just crack up every time we pass it, badly imitating mandolins and taking turns saying the name in exaggerated Chinese accents. “In the Eeeat-ting Gaar-den, the Emmp-eror of Chiiiina sits with his thouuuusand concubines.”

You kind of have to be there to appreciate the humor.So anyways…..don’t you want to visit me in Toronto now, and be my friend?

Mmm, smell that desperation.

it's about time somebody said it

So the headline that caught my attention this morning on the CBC news site was this:
"'I'm just anxious to hear the words, 'I'm sorry.'"

It was from a survivor of a Canadian residential school.

The first thing that ran through my mind was: "They're only doing this now?"

To provide a bit of context for those not familiar with residential schools in Canada:

Between the late 19th Century and the late 1970s, about 150,000 aboriginal children in Canada were taken from their home and forcefully sent to boarding schools, known as residential schools.
Originally an extension of the missionary work of various churches, the schools began receiving state funding in 1874, after the government moved away from a policy of fostering aboriginal autonomy and sought instead to assimilate aboriginals into mainstream society.

From 1920, attendance was compulsory for seven- to 15-year-olds, although many former students say they were taken at a much younger age.
While many parents wanted their children to get an education and felt it was necessary to integrate into Canadian society, many children were taken from their families and communities by force.

The goal was to Christianise the children and to erase all traces of their aboriginal culture. One government official in the late 1920s boasted that within two generations, the system would end the "Indian problem".
(Source: BBC News Americas)

Other than the fact that they existed awhile ago, all of the above was new information for me as well. And that is actually quite troubling.

To elaborate: I am a naturalized Canadian. I was born in South Korea, travelled around Europe for several months with my parents when I was 6 (of which I remember approximately 0.7%), and lived in England for two years until I was 8 years old. In England I promptly erased my young brain of all Korean characters and replaced them with the alphabet under my mother's strict and vigorous watch. At age 9 my family came to Canada and I found myself surrounded by peers amazed by my ability to handwrite. But other than that, I fit in relatively well and lo and behold, ten years later I find myself proud to be a Canadian- nothing more, nothing less.

However, during those ten years I also graduated from the Canadian public education system (British Columbia, to be exact), from which I never really learned about the extent of Canada's literal genocide against the First Nations people. Of course I learned the basics, but the emphasis was definitely on the protracted kerfuffle between the French and the English. And very little page space was given to the residential schools.

Which leads us to today. I am now a university student studying international development. I learn about the genocides of other countries, the wrongs of corrupt institutions and governments of the past and present. And yet it's only today that I took the time to educate myself about Canada's own genocide. The story doesn't end here- I have also been hearing more and more about the deplorable state of First Nations communities in Canada, where conditions are akin to developing countries.

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it's not just the Canadian government that should be saying and feeling sorry. It should be me and every Canadian that don't know about the neglected state of First Nations communities and people in Canada today. I can't deny that news stories have flashed across my screen regarding First Nations, but it was so easy to push it out of my mind because lets face it- I don't live on a reserve, nor have I ever been on one. I feel no connection whatsoever with the First Nations community in Canada. I suppose my notion of what it means to be a Canadian is changing with age and a little bit more wisdom.

Well, a new lesson learned today on being a better Canadian.

kerfuffle

Kerfuffle is a noun.

Kerfuffle is: disorder, commotion; also written curfuffle, kafuffle, gefuffle (Miriam Webster English Dictionary)

"You will most commonly come across this wonderfully expressive word in Britain and the British Commonwealth countries (though the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer used it in January this year). It is rather informal, though it often appears in newspapers. One of the odder things about it is that it changed its first letter in quite recent times. Up to the 1960s, it was written in all sorts of ways — curfuffle, carfuffle, cafuffle, cafoufle, even gefuffle (a clear indication that its main means of transmission was in speech, being too rarely written down to have established a standard spelling). But in that decade it suddenly became much more popular and settled on the current kerfuffle. Lexicographers suspect the change came in response to the way that a number of imitative words were spelled, like kerplop and kerplunk.

In those cases, the initial ker– adds emphasis, as it does in other words, perhaps onomatopoeic but perhaps also borrowing the first syllable of crash. But we know kerfuffle was originally Scots and it’s thought that its first part came from Scots Gaelic car, to twist or bend. The second bit is more of a puzzle: there is a Scots verb fuffle (now known only in local dialect), to throw into disorder, dishevel, or ruffle. No obvious origin for it is known and experts suspect it was an imitative word. It is probably linked with Scots fuff, to emit puffs of smoke or steam, definitely imitative, which in the late eighteenth century also had a sense of going off in a huff or flying into a temper.

Some specialists think kerfuffle is also related to the Irish cior thual, confusion or disorder. It seems to be a minority opinion, though."

- Michael Quinion, World Wide Words.

I hope to entertain, provoke thought, spark debate with the kerfuffles of my everyday life and the universe in general. Expect randomness, inconsistency of theme, and perhaps photographic evidence of my life in various Canadian locales. And by various, I mean two to three.