scissors and sharpie

k, pictures from saturday are here now.

i woke up this morning to a phone call from me Ma. that's a better alarm clock than those annoying beeping and buzzing ones.

it's pretty much pissing Noah's Ark outside today. as in i will either have to find a rickshaw or wade to the school. ever since my students asked me to help them work on their writing skills more it's been easier to come up with things to do that makes them work and me not so much.

so the two guys that bimala and i went to pick up at the airport the other night haven't really left their room much. it was pretty funny yesterday when they were roasting and sitting around in their room in their skivvies and i was like "yeah it's not that hot..." i took them to a grocery store cause i figured they should get out of the apartment to see things.

one of them didnt know what Monty Python was. WTF. how do you NOT know that?

i have video of the John Denver performance but there's not way the internet here is fast enough to upload anything video so HAH suckers you have to wait.

actually, Nick and Saz and I are supposedly playing some club gig thing in the next few weeks i dunno for sure, but Saz wanted us to each to come up with ten songs to play. i have nine:

1. Creep - STP
2. Blue on Black - Kenny Wayne Sheppard Band
3. Cover of the Rolling Stone - Dr. Hook
4. Dear Mr. Fantasy - Traffic
5. New Orleans is Sinking - The Hip
6. Empty Road - Matt Good
7. Clumsy - OLP
8. Long Slow Goodbye - QOTSA
9. Slow Cheetah - RHCP
10. Insert Suggestions Plz and Thnx.

i might nix Clumsy cause im not sure if i can get the pitch right enough.

ok so POSTCARDS. ok, people waiting on postcards from here. Mail here. Is Terrible. that is the only way to describe it. I've yet to find a post office and I'm not spending like $5 or more per postcard at Fedex. so be patient and i will find a way.

I bought this cd. it's brilliant. just watch and you'll see why.

scissors and sharpie

this is where i amuse you

either blogger or my interweb connection is being lame right now, so the photo post i had planned on will have to wait til tomorrow. til then, see last night's stuff at Casa Del Flickr Del Pat.

bimala and i went to pick up two new people from the airport tonight. it's fun seeing people's expressions here.

this is where i amuse you

i will know what you were for

the circus is in town, fairgrounds for escaping something you've never been able to see for your entire life. can you deafen your senses with the sound of one creaking, wooden ferris wheel and the smiles of children floating through the air. something in this solace that you can't quite feel, that you can't quite read into, leaving you unsure whether to sit or smile.
the circus is in town, lifted in on a field of balloons. the red ones always dance the most, they always have. somehow weary and somehow willing to move on to move over to move away from this scene that seems so out of place yet only makes sense in some strange way.
the circus is in town, dark rooms and dancing bodies where the only thing flying through the air is the haze of smoke from dimly glowing embers. strange how comforting it seems when you return home late at night and smell the smoke still wafting from your clothes.
the circus is in town, never sure which is the real one, never sure which one will take you the furthest away from where you want to be.

i will know what you were for

i dont want you to wash my clothes

i woke up in that interim time between breakfast and lunch where it's too late to go up for breakfast and too early to go up for lunch. this leaves me with peanut butter and Snickers to eat before lunch is ready.

i didnt get up until 10.30.usually i get up here around 7.30.

fuck me, that was weird last night. lifestyles of the super rich and morally questionable... not that there was anything like that really visible, but that's the only group of people here who'd be able to get away with miniskirts and tequila shots here.

im not a big dance party fan, but how many people can say they've been to a limited invite party hosted by arguably one of the biggest DJs in the UK and South Asia? not many. i guess that might strike me as more important if I actually knew who the hell he was before hand. kind of like walking into a concert of someone you've never heard of before with crazy fans going "IT'S BALLY FUCKING SAGOO MAN!" and you're like "who the fuck is Bally Sagoo?"

the few people i was hanging around with there were nice, all working on a master or phd or research work. all of them agreeing that this was not really their type of party either.

I missed the Matt Good show. im actually pretty bummed out about that. given the option to go to MG or go to one of the most unique events i've ever been to, i'll pick MG any day. i hope everyone who managed to go had a good time. it's odd what can trigger a sudden burst of homesickness. a concert. a pre concert meetup. knowing that people are going camping this weekend. im glad i have stuff to do today so i dont have to think about this all day. but still, sitting on a roof playing some KWS isn't going to make up for a Canada Day long weekend that starts off for people with a killer concert.

on a lighter note, i finally found some Monty Python. im going to go have some peanut butter and watch some Life of Brian, have lunch and then go do things.

i dont want you to wash my clothes

tired. went to party. did not bring camera. turned out to be DJ'd event by this guy who is supposed to be some famous Bollywood remix DJ. they had booze. had scotch. met Iranian girl, Swedish girl, British girl, and Australian girl, all friends. all left early. got ride home to the boonies. going to bed now.

tomorrow, pre John denver.

his name was yoda

i'll be the first too admit im not the biggest party fanatic on the planet. i'll go have a good time, but this is dependent on what type of mood I'm in at the time. good mood usually equates to good time, bad mood can mean bailing on friends and getting the fuck out of dodge. i like going where i know i feel comfortable in my surroundings, know where things are, and have a decent chance at knowing who some people are.
so much to my own surprise, im sitting here about to head out to that invite party i mentioned with lots of people i dont know, in a place ive never been, without knowing if it's shitty dance music, etc etc etc.
here's hoping i'll have some interesting stories tomorrow. which is pretty much assured anyway, cause i have to go sing john fucking denver at a rotary club thing tomorrow anyway.

his name was yoda

scuse me while i squish you

i can only describe today as possibly one of the most randomly interesting days i've ever had.

begin with waking up from a not so restful sleep, proceed to come up with an idea that turns four hours of teaching into about 40 minutes while still having your students do work and learn, meet new old British guy, hang out in an office between classes long enough to be invited to a dinner in honour of said old british guy, go home early, chill with the guitar, in a group hustle down to the best hotel in the immediate area (id say probably meriting a 4 star rating but i dont know officially) for said dinner, sit down for dinner with the head of marketing for the biggest soft drink company in the country, the hotel owner and the most famous sports doctor in the country, proceed to be served as much food as you'd like free of charge, proceed to be invited to the Shisha Lounge, smoke a shitload of shisha, meet the VP of ISIC (you know those international student card things), be invited to an Invite Only party at one of the top three hotels in the city, have private car take you home with a box full of swag from said Marketing Head. did i mention it was all for free.

yeah, try and top that if you have a coop in Ottawa.

scuse me while i squish you

track pants and flower girls

sidewalks are made out of water here and bricks are the solid lilypads that we all walk on on our way to the university.

there's some kid outside who got himself a kazoo. and he's been blowing on this goddamn kazoo about every waking minute for the last two days starting at 6am and not stopping until late in the afternoon. it's times like that when you're laying in bed at 6:30 wishing kazoos didnt exist.

i watched Black Snake Moan yesterday finally and it was pretty rad. Sammy J can pull off an old blues singer pretty damn good. the only beef i had with the movie was that you have two main actors who are brilliant like Sammy J and Christina Ricci and then you have to go and fuck it up by putting Justin Timberlake in it as the crybaby boyfriend. good thing he's not in it that much.

after i watched it i threw the as yet to be named acoustic into open G, headed up to the roof and actually played until i started to cut the front of my fingers up. there's this building right across from ours that's still being finished and there were some workers sitting on the roof listening.

on friday apparently i'm playing guitar for Nick at some Rotary Club meeting thing where we have to play two John Denver songs and a Neil Diamond song. i picked up this pretty wicked green long sleeve shirt the other day that i think i'll bust it's performance cherry at there.

i also never thought yoyo skills would be handy here but then again, I've basically suspended my sense of surprise here.

you think Yo Yo Ma gets a lot of Yo Mama jokes?

after dinner last night i helped Bimala start some research for a project she's doing and after i started to show her all the stuff i have on my flickr, and while we were going through a crash course in googling at high speed i had on Epsilon Machine but switched to Muddy Waters for the pictures. so now i've created a new Muddy convert. she was tapping her feet and nodding her head along and i was like "you can totally dance to this music" but she wasnt so sure so i got up and did a real shit ass jive but it was enough to convince her.

i only have two hours of class today and all im doing is handing back their epic failure of an exam.

while we were going through my pictures last night i got to a bunch from danielle's birthday and chad's birthday and my birthday from last year and the infamous Puddle O' Vom shot and i mentioned how i'd missed both of their birthdays already and then i had this moment where at the same time i felt very far away from everyone and everything but at the same time thinking about everything going on here. it's really odd. i haven't actually felt very homesick at all yet. i mean, i miss people, but there's no huge sense of it. i do miss knowing what's going on and i miss knowing what people are doing and i even miss the overhanging threat of being hit in the head with a sandal after chad's put not a few drinks in him. but right now it would be hard for me to imagine not walking up in the morning to the sound of a concrete mixer or cows outside or the air force doing low altitude flybys.

i could imagine not waking up to that fucking kazoo though.

as much as it's chaotic here, there's still a lot of simplicity and sometimes simple questions just need simple answers.

track pants and flower girls

singing on a double decker burger

a bunch of us went to a french bistro for brunch today and it was awesome and i ordered everything in french and the lady who owns and runs the place was like "you're from Canada, are you from Québec?" so i said no and then she's like "oh but yu sound lyke yu ar from zer!" anyway, she was super nice to us all and im totally going back at some point cause the food was fucking stellar.
then that turned into an impromptu shopping day and then a movie night with Death at a Funeral which is also awesome.
i finally found a belt i like cause i wanted a fabric belt and i found one so now i have it. i looked at some ties but none of them impressed me much. and i got this tiny little camera tripod that will fit in my pocket and is just what i need for rooftop shots.
this post brought to you by Malaysian Twix bars and Aarong curd yogurt.

singing on a double decker burger

like hannibal lecter having an orgasm

voila. epic new suit. call me Barney Stinson and send me to a strip club.

for those not familiar with the HIMYM universe, educate yourself on the above statement. k thx.

also, spider as big as my hand. no joke. as big as my hand.

i have to be down at the Canadian High Commission in the morning so I'm going to sleep.

like hannibal lecter having an orgasm

meditate like a tax rebate

bought time for a bit of a fotopost. let the picture praising commence. i shall take that as a sign that you wish to see more of them thus giving me plenty of reason to go take more.

i'm correcting the First Term Exam I gave my classes yesterday. someone at this uni decided that there has to be three big exams over the course of the semester and this was the first one. im almost done correcting one class, and it's like fucking Hamburger Hill. i think so far maybe ten people have passed. i'll admit i made a tricky exam but i told them to prepare for that and most of them didn't bother so i dont feel bad about blowing them out of the water with it.

i went to pick up my suit today that i had made. EPIC. pictures to come.

k, need to go eat dinner now.

meditate like a tax rebate

but Ving Rhames didn't have a WWF background

i promise i will have more pictures up soon. i have about three days worth i need to go through and pick which ones will suffer through the long and drawn out flickr uploading process here.
weekend summary: gettting up at 530am to go play soccer. go shopping all over the city. have lunch at the Westin and marvel at the fact that there's quote unquote real food to be had though not very cheaply, sit in a variety of pod chairs, find new music store selling more instruments, not buying any, going to pick maggie up at the airport after waiting outside for like 2 hours and finally get to bed after 22 hours, wake up, go to school to do class slash project work, home, lunch, haircut, home, hook up dvd player, watch new Indiana Jones.

im still not sure what I think of the new IJ flick. i was really hoping it wasn't aliens. although i did get a good laugh at the start when they open the doors to the warehouse and then when the truck smashes the box open that has the Ark in it. also, I only paid $1 to buy it. how much did you pay to see it in a theater? i bet more than a dollar.

there was this intense storm tonight. not intense as in super crazy, but intense as in the way it looked and how it moved. i've found that im a big fan of standing on rooftops watching monsoons bear down on us and then stand in the rain getting drenched watching the lightning. i have some pretty rad shots of the clouds coming in that i'll put up later.

also, the haircut. not the best ive ever had, certainly the cheapest. 80 cents. and they dont use clippers here. they use a straight razor.

-----

also, since it's still sunday at home, dont forget to say happy birthday to Jen because you should and that's the right thing to do. or make an offering of nachos and guacamole. that's also the right thing to do.

but Ving Rhames didn't have a WWF background

a voltron sized jesus with lasers

see more dog pictures

totally necessary.

a voltron sized jesus with lasers

it's an odd assortment of hanging clothes, the not quite dry smell wafting up up and away even with the window open. thickening the air, thickening the clouds, thickening the sun, the days are heavy when you breath them in. living under water in the open air while jumping over puddles. three blades spinning, standing below where the air moves endlessly around and around. someone opens a window to find a draft only to let in a tide of the heat that had been held back tenaciously to this point.
the dust settles. it hides away in corners waiting to spring back into position after it is swept up moments before.
metal pots for water. boiled not shaken. shaken not stirred.
days that quicken and slow with no sense of time at all, passed away on couches or beneath the heat of the sun.
walk up steps to seek the sort of refuge that only a rooftop can give.
wooden chairs creak, and the sun sets.

after clicking done

i'm having a suit made. i had it measured the other day and gave them the details i wanted (single breasted, three button, short lapel, double vented, no pleats, one back pocket) after picking some pretty nice material. all told, material and tailoring cost me like $175. compared to probably close to $1000 for the same material and tailoring in vancouver.
being measured up for a custom tailored suit is kind of an odd experience. not a bad odd, but kind of like a funny odd. hopefully they dont fuck it up. then i would be a bit annoyed.

i found out today that i have some Hitler fans in at least one of my classes. fortunately for the student who decided to inform me of his admiration of Hitler and that "the Holocaust was just him letting off some steam because when he was young the Jews treated him badly, you know?" I managed to restrain myself and not punch his fucking face in. could have also had something to do with the fact that we were standing outside by the soccer pitch at the time waiting for the game to start. while i didnt fucking smoke him this time, i did tell him that if he ever said that to me again I'd rip his head off. i think he got the idea.

our cadre of mostly Canadians ended up discussing this over dinner. we're all pretty dismayed about the fact that people here can think and say shit like that with a straight face and believe every word of it. i'll put up with a lot of bullshit, but anti-Semitic discussions and beliefs are not included in that. i've already decided that anyone in either of my classes who says something similar will be immediately leaving the class and failing the entire course. I will do this completely guilt free, and given the pull that the international faculty have at this university, with plenty of support. my students think im a hard ass about quizzes and exams, wait til they see what happens if this comes up.

im playing on the faculty football team in some tournament that starts tomorrow. should be fun. im also starting my first major step in my nursing project tomorrow morning. yay for finally feeling productive! i played football with a bunch of students today and only slipped in the mud once but now my thigh kind of hurts from the landing.

im also on a bit of a kung fu movie kick right now.

i should sleep now because im pretty tired and usually that means that one should go to sleep so I shall now go to sleep.

after clicking done

got a job but the future's bright

i'm really kind of getting sick of this whole teaching english thing. it was fun for a while but now it's a fucking hassle and annoying putting up with the students.
i try to teach them english and then they write shit like this:

2morw we can hv our roamin,ya?brin my pen drive n we can go out 4 thn @ 1.00.ok?if u cant thn infrm me by phne call,cuz in my hom iv no net cnnectn nw.bt iv 2 get my pendrive 2mrw.Hav a gud nit.Nd njoy ya" hedbangin"s.

like seriously, what the fuck. when i read shit like this all i can hear in my head is Sammy J in that scene from Pulp Fiction asking if they speak english in What. English motherfucker, DO YOU SPEAK IT?

I FUCKING HATE NETSPEAK. it's not a goddamn language, it's a travesty.

trying to coordinate a project when you have to show your prep stuff to people here AND email it home to three different people to look over before using it is also a pain in the ass i could do without.

you can buy these 6 in 1 DVDs here so i bought all six Star Wars on one dvd. I was a little dubious about having 6 full length films on one dvd, and it turns out i was right to worry. holy disgusting compression and frame rate Batman... maybe if you watch it from 20 feet away it'll look ok, but trying to watch it close up...not happening.

in other news, we have pretty much the same weather as Vancouver except it's still 35 degrees out.

i am going to have a malaysian Snickers and go sit on the roof for a while.

got a job but the future's bright

that the world's a subway

water fights are way more fun in the middle of a downpour. probably because it really doesn't matter how good you are at water fighting in that case because everyone involved will be soaked anyway. they're even more fun if they take place on a big roof.

i actually managed to get a fair bit of work done today in finishing a course outline, coming up with another page of research and interview questions, and prepping introductory letters for study participants.

i finally found a good copy of the Forbidden Kingdom so i watched that yesterday. I also found all six star wars movies for tk 80, which is about $1 for all six. so i'll probably watch one of those in a bit.

i could really do with some bacon. apparently you can get it here somewhere. I have a new mission. apparently there's also a place that will serve alcohol pretty close to the apartment. I have two missions. DRUNKEN BACON AHOY!

that the world's a subway

the story of a hundred aisles

just a quick note as im about off to bed...


will someone please tell me what exactly the CBC plans to do to introduce HNIC next season if the forever iconic theme song isn't going to be used anymore?

anyone and everyone in the country could tell you that there's no way in hell you could ever replace that song, so why not bother using it again?

is someone at CBC pissed off at hockey fans? is that why the CBC didn't resign the rights to the song that EVERYONE FUCKING KNOWS?

In other news, far more important things have happened and are happening that you should concern yourself about because they deal with the day to day live of millions of people in poor living conditions but Canadians, pay no mind to these items, an item of national sanctity has been shelved for god knows what reason.

you know, it's really an odd feeling knowing that you're sitting 20 feet, if that, from a family living in a tin roofed shack with the main source of income being the father is a rickshaw driver, and getting more pissed off about the HNIC theme song for a minute than wondering if the storm last night had any lasting damage to their house...

the story of a hundred aisles

stories of the great while whale

im getting kind of sick of this whole teaching english thing. most of the time it's hard to remember that it's a university class seeing as how all the students act like they're in grade 10.

there was a super crazy storm last night that woke me up because the rain was hammering against the window so i got up for a minute to look out the window then went back to sleep.

exciting, i know.

things I am glad for today: The Penguins losing the Cup. Clinton losing the Democratic nomination. Granola bars. Housekeepers. Fans. Bug Spray.

i had this crazydream last night that i was chasing Bubble around with a baseball bat because HE"D been chasing someone around with one of those electric flyswatters and the whole time i was speaking in some Old Timey Preaching voice.

there was just about fisticuffs in my second class yesterday because someone called someone else a name. that's totally what i expect of university students.....

we have this odd mix of north american and british style stuff here. take for example Salad Cream. i had never heard of Salad Cream. but apparently Salad Cream is popular in british type places. it tastes like mayonaise with mustard in it. so, kind of wrong. however, karen brought back packs of gravy mix which we had last night on the chicken and it was pretty much the most delicious thing ever.

i need a new card game, im getting my ass kicked at Asshole and i dont know why.

stories of the great while whale