the floor is really cold

the hours: 3 days a week, 9am-7pm

the pay: $20 ... a day

the perks: all you can drink gatorade, free shoes and tshirts.*

the experience: networking galore, real press deadlines, corporate communications

the resume: news releases, media advisories, (inter)nationally distributed publication 

the doubts: contract position, relevant experience, location

*and more wristbands than you can shake a stick at

i'm not going to lie and say there are no complaints. but they're acceptable complaints. 

so things are good. and that's the update.

bespoke is a funny word

ideas is airing on cbc1 right now, and this week's special is titled "measure of a man," an in-depth look into the suit. it's fascinating, not just in terms of the historical, but from the semiotic perspective of the modern male suit.

dressing well as a man is an interesting topic -- one littered with subjectivity that ultimately is never really quite that subjective at all.

thinking about how you dress (from a man's perspective) is often seen as preening, but i've never understood why this is. it seems sillier to me to put absolutely no thought into how you dress, because how you present yourself is so influential on your daily experience.

there's several particularly good quotes from the broadcast, but one in particular where an older woman who is quite knowledgeable about fashion makes the following comment:

women are never held accountable for what they wear. invitations always say black tie only, they never say what women should wear. it is men who are held accountable by the clothes that they put on, and for that reason i've always considered men's fashion more important than women's.

chasing bylines

you know that whole thing where opposites are supposed to attract?

i don't really get it. from what i can tell, much more often than not samesies attract way more than opposites. 

i feel like this myth has led innumerable impressionable young youth into making many a bad decision. someone should look right into this, and i would be willing to bet with great certainty that this atrocious fallacy would be repealed in the same manner our archaic nutritional pyramid was proven to be bad for you despite our childhood indoctrination of basic food groups and eating habits. 

if the simplest answer is usually the right one, opposites attract clearly is nothing more than the wistful fancy of some over-romanticized loner. 

on an unrelated note, over the past year my cynicism has reached astonishing new heights. i am officially an emotionless void; a biological organism with a cybernetic exo-skeleton sent from the future to kill john connor. 

on an extra unrelated note, lets list yet one more reason i love the wire. this season is about the media, and auteur david simon is doing everything in his power to shed insight into the plight of today's newspapers and the realities of that industry. 

in a delicious twist of post-modern irony, the use of a cable television show to cheerlead the cause of newspapers seems like a stroke of genius that i cannot fathom has never been thought of before. 

if there was a word to describe awe induced applause at a respectful volume and cadence, insert that word here please.

she-ra? i would.

most people I know are asian. 

technically, i would wager most of these individuals would define themselves as asian-canadian, but if we don't even know what Canadian identity is, how is anyone expected to understand what Asian-Canadian even means? maple syrup fried rice?

i've narrowed down the asian-canadian identity into two principles: 

- wealth

- practicality

and thats it. i can't help but feel that for the vast majority of asian-canadians, these are the two over arching values on which entire lives are premised. 

for those who do not necessarily hold these principles key, we are generally more confused and at times self-loathing about our identity. 

i feel somewhere, there is an asian-identity that can be defined by culture, and that i would be proud to embrace as my own. but i feel like most asians spend more time trying to just fit in than actually celebrate our differences, and that's ultimately what i find most confusing. 

what are we so afraid of? 

asides from being poor, that is.

This man is electric. There are few seminal speeches that take place in politics anymore, and even rarer is it that an orator appears who can deliver one with such poise and presence.

Just... wow. The next couple weeks are going to be some awful good television at the very least. Think of it as American Idol, except the winner gets to determine the fate of the free world.

the bonus post (climb into my mind)

Today I was in line at Starbucks to buy a grande mild coffee. This would not normally be a particularly notable event, as it recurs with near clockwork regularity on days I have neither work nor school.

The line was moving particularly slow, as there was only one person serving a rather long queue, and one other barista making drinks. 

Perhaps a damning symptom of my current frame of mind, I initially noticed that the girl two spaces in front of me in line had a rather unique Ipod sleeve. It appeared to be made of white crocodile skin, with an orange inner liner that matched her clutch sized wallet. I thought it was neat, did not give it another two shakes, and continued to look around, duly noting that the price of coffee had gone down by two cents thanks to the new cut in the GST (inside, i did a little self high-five). 

After another few minutes (I would normally have been impatient, but I had just bought new cd's and was still basking in my post-purchase afterglow) my gaze again fell on the white Ipod sleeve, and I further noticed that the girl was wearing dark denim jeans, a furry AF hoody and Uggs. 

I made a mental note of how derivative and ubiquitous this ensemble had now become, wondered why asians all dressed the exact same, wondered if I was making the kind of snap judgment normally reserved for a gay fashion stylist, then continued thinking about what bitrate I would rip my new cd's at when I got back home. 

Anyways, after a long while it seems, the ugg/ipod/asian girl finally got to the front of the line and ordered a mocha (again, seemingly an almost cliched menu choice for slim asian girls at starbucks) and turned around to walk past us chumps back in line towards the service section of the counter. 

At this point, I realized what I hadn't noticed in all my previous observations and judgments of her clothing and accessories. 

This girl was drop dead gorgeous. 

She smiled at me as she walked by, and I think I kind of grinned or smiled or something and nodded. I'm guessing the word "gaped" may even have been appropriate, but I'm going to try and save some dignity here. 

I find whenever I make eye-contact with a hot chick lately, I'm trying to maintain that connection as long as possible just to see what happens. Sheepishly turning your head to pretend you weren't looking seems so futile. Just give the girl her due, and take it from there I figure. 

ANYways, I desperately willed the line faster at this point so that I could get my coffee and move towards the area she had settled in, at the very least to get another good look at her before I stepped back out into the (literal) cold of my regular day. I turned to see through the glass, but her head was down busy taking out her laptop.

I feel like I'm not quite at the point where I care enough to seek girls out at random encounters. But I must say, I'm closer. Especially when the girl is beautiful. But for the time being, going on dates and getting to know people is frankly just too much work and effort when coupled with what my regular life schedule will be like over the next four months. 

Part of me is worried that I'm just never going to find time for dating. My goals just don't really allot for it. 

The other part of me is happy that I don't have to worry about impressing a girl who can afford to buy the things a steretypical asian girl likes to buy. Then again, I am growing increasingly positive that I will never be happy with a stereotypical asian girl, so perhaps this point is moot.

Once I get the career stuff more settled however, I feel like I will thoroughly enjoy my adventures in Ugg hunting. 

Until then... window shopping will have to suffice.

dang it.

regardless of where you're playing basketball with strangers, be it at a chinese church, an inner city YMCA, or a jewish community centre, there will always be archetypical pickup basketballers.

my absolute least favourite is the "coach on the floor". if you've ever played pickup basketball, than you know exactly who i'm talking about. this guy is usually short, not particularly talented, and has a mouth that just doesn't know how to shutup. 

he's the guy who bosses people around, screaming things like "stay low!" or "rebound!", while standing somewhere and not doing anything. 

conversely, the typical offensive possession for the "coach on the floor" is for him to stand under the net and frantically demand that he receive the inbound pass and bring it up court (because naturally, he is the best point guard on the team), dribble the ball for several minutes at the top of the key looking frustrated as he seems to think his team is incompetent while the rest of his team run screens and get astonishingly open to no avail. 

ultimately, the "coach on the floor" will usually end up driving into traffic and throwing up a ridiculous circus shot that ends up being either an airball (nine times out of ten), or a miraculous fluke (one out of ten), after without fail, he will simply backpedal while screaming at his team to get back and play defense as if he's bob knight. usually, "coach on the floor" is also a defensive liability who tends to just foul people a lot. 

i find in general, i am wary of people who claim to be experts on everything. because honestly, unless you have a PhD, most of us are really experts at nothing. and even those of us who like to think ourselves experts in somethings, are usually not very good judges of our own expertise. 

the devil in the details

priorities can be a confusing set of values. they are completely relative, and not in the post-modern way that art has become relative. i suppose i mean they are completely personal, and completely valid in that personal sense, but at the same time i find it fascinating how different individuals can have utterly opposing sets of priorities. 

ambition is a powerful thing. i feel so often that our generation has misguided ambition, where we are a whole group of humans who stand only for the fact that we stand for nothing at all. 

people have coined phrases like twixters to describe our laze-in-our-parents-home ways, and frankly, it's starting to bother me that such general malaise can be so pervasive and yet so generally accepted. 

it doesn't have to be this way, y'know? on top of the generation that is coddled and losing valuable years of adulthood to glorified adolescence, i feel that we are also a bunch of people with the resources to make an actual difference -- if we would just make it a priority. 

how do you make people care?

how do you change people's priorities?