How to not sound like a robot

I'm not a fan of voice mail.

Or answering machines.

Or any sort of voice messaging system, frankly, and I mean this both in terms of dialing in and having one myself.

Whenever I get somebody's voicemail, nine out of ten times I will simply hang up and call back later instead of leaving a message. I hate leaving a message. It's not that I am incapable of thinking fast enough to leave the most rudimentary of details (i.e. why I am calling). Rather, I find that more often than not, my ability to convey that basic information manifests itself in a way that makes me sounds like a babbling child.

My biggest flaw in this regard is not knowing when to simply hang up. I often say what I need to say, then proceed to follow with 30 seconds of 'um' and 'ah' noises, before I finally conclude with an epiphanus "...soooo yea! call me!"

There is a reason I did not enter broadcast journalism.

Conversely, in my attempts to be professional sounding, I have received myriad suggestions that my personal voicemail message sounds like I am applying for an annunciation quality assurance position.

In my defense, I purposely formalized this greeting for the sole purpose of job searching. I would rather seem like an over-organized freak then one of those dudes that just plays an R&B song for two minutes then the machine beeps.

Or was that pagers? Actually I think I did used to do that. Awkward.

Poladroidoscopy

I completely made that word up. It doesn't even remotely make sense, I just like the sound of it.

I must preface this somewhat long post by saying there is no real moral to this tale. The short form is I just read an email and was thoroughly, utterly and completely flabbergasted that it could have come from me.

If anyone has Yahoo mail, you might have noticed for the last year and a half they've been soft-selling their "new" version of mail, which is essentially a java Outlook clone instead of the typical Yahoo template (which is a lot more like gmail).

I finally clicked on it today out of curiosity (read: boredom) and was fiddling around when I realized I had over 15,000 emails in that account. And I have two email accounts! Gradually I'm finding myself phasing out the Yahoo one and simply using Gmail for everything. Ironically, of course, Gmail has a theoretical storage limit while Yahoo does not, which was my original rationale for getting a Gmail account for online registrations and all the resulting spam.

Without getting too nerdy, I will just say that it's not often we can tangibly demarcate how our communication and human interactions have shifted from an off to online paradigm. Reading emails from three years ago is one of them. And I even recall deleting thousands of emails from that account some time ago, so I could have had more... but for some reason I got rid of them. I honestly cannot remember why, but it was vaguely practical. Faster loading times perhaps? But I digress.

My point being how silly the notion would have been 25 years ago that we could click a button and bring back a conversation from a completely forgotten era. And reliving a single conversation is like being able to essentially relive a moment in time. The same feelings come back, except now we have hindsight, which in some cases is not so much 20/20, but rather the difference between having eyes and not.

"Did I really say that?" Was a thought I often found myself uttering mentally. Sometimes, but thankfully rarely, punctuated with a "Damn. That's embarrassing."

I've sent many emails I regret. This is the real point of this post.

One would hope as one grows older and wiser, these unfortunate emails become increasingly rare.

I feel ashamed, really, still, from some of those emails. I can't even describe it.

I need to shower.

Budgeting

I have no money.

But March is a veritable musical orgy in this city.

What to do...

I like how I'm feigning guilt, but in reality if I can find people, I'm totally going to at least a show a week.

At least.

OBAMAOBAMAOBAMA. Canadiana?

A little overkill on the media coverage today (or yesterday I suppose, for you normal sleeping folks).

There's this clip where a teenager is screaming because she touched the president. Like, literally screaming, as if this were a Backstreet Boys concert circa 1999. Incredible.

The fact that this guy has something like an 87 per cent approval rating amongst Canadians is even more interesting to me. What is it about this country that loves him so much? Is it his charisma, which we are so completely unused to seeing from politicians? Are we simply pining for a Trudeau redux? Is it the fact that Jay-Z and Beyonce had front row seats to his inauguration, and that's just how Canada rolls?

It's crazy. Granted, our own guys are about as endearing as sacks of potatoes wearing Sears suits. But still... wow. And why? Well... isn't it obvious? Because Obama reminds us of... us. And that makes us feel good about ourselves.

I guess it's important to understand in all this how different we, as a country, still really are from our lovely neighbors to the south. To truly understand how amazing it is that Obama was elected president, just take a gander at stories like this one, from the Times.

Can you even imagine this ever occurring anywhere in Canada? I don't care if you're in the most wheat-covered corner of Saskatchewan, or the middle of an Albertan oil patch. Nobody is going to shoot down a high school edition of Rent because of questionable content. It just isn't going to happen. I mean, parents might oppose, but a high school of Canadian students would never stand for that kind of censorship. The play would go on. Guaranteed.

I think we forget that, unlike Canada, where the general populous is so often a diverse-yet-heterogenous cultural tapestry that just suffixes our ethnicity's after the word 'Canadian', there are still a whole whack-load of people in the states who think George W. Bush was a great president, and that Iraq is still going to nuke us.

We like to think we're liberal up here, but often we don't understand just how far we've evolved as a country in so little relative time. Even compared to a lot of Europe, where smokes, sex and booze are as common as Tim Horton's coffee, our standard cultural deviation on things like social welfare, rehab, immigration, gender and racial equality... we're right there, arguably tops in the world.

So yes, I love Obama. But I would never want to have to live in a country that NEEDS Obama.

Canadians love Obama basically because he wants to turn the US into Canada. He's the embodiment or our intrinsic inferiority complex, and we think he's amazing. This is the same reason nerds love him. And minorities in general now that I think about it.

So yes. I like the dude.

But if anything, he's just a reminder of how much I like living in Canada.

Maybe if people expressed as much enthusiasm about our own country as we do about the one below us, instead of living our lives being self-deprecating, we wouldn't be so star struck by guys like Barack.

When chopsticks themselves are a novelty

Strangely enough, I have had several conversations regarding the Chowhound forums over the past few weeks, and eventually we always end up laughing at good old Charles Yu, this dude who posts intensely detailed reviews in a very helpful and knowledgeable manner. Perhaps not so coincidentally, all these conversations occur between the same three people, so maybe we're just huge nerds.

Anyways, for those who don't frequent Chowhound, Charles Yu would be the equivalent of Mahjongmaniac (aka The Pochacco guy) on RedFlagDeals.

And if none of these references make sense to you, then you have already judged me. So let's move on.

Anyways, I always find it surreal when people on Chowhound swoon over common restaurants in the suburbs. Places along the Hwy.7 strip that I would go for family meals every week or so, sometimes get all this fancy praise heaped on them, with flocks of foodies making treks from downtown just to get a taste.

This blows my mind. I mean, I feel like being Chinese has so spoiled my perception of the food I consume daily that my standards have been skewed. I'm like a guy who's been dating Minka Kelly and now is no longer impressed by the likes of a Kristen Kreuk. It's madness.

It takes a lot more for a Chinese meal to impress me than any other cuisine, and I can probably only list on one hand the number of times I had Chinese food and was completely blown away.

I have never had this conversation with any non-Chinese people before, so I am curious if this ungrateful phenomenon applies to all cultures. I would imagine the appeal and novelty of different ethnic flavours always carries some clout in a dining experience, so to some extent this is not an uncommon thing.

But still. When people are making a ruckus about restaurants you've already filed under "good on an average scale", it makes you reconsider your edible world, y'know?

And great. Now I'm hungry. If I ever became a food critic, I can already tell I'd be one of the fat ones.

Snow!

That last week of temperate weather really lulled me into a false sense of spring. I was quite surprised to see snow out my window today. Not that I'm angry, I guess I had just taken for granted that there's probably another several weeks of bitter winter goodness to come. Tobogganing anyone?

I'm starting to run low on essentials. I'm all out of Johnnie Black (both bottles!). Half my Bacardi Black is gone. I still have an unopened Beefeater on my desk, but I'm not going to bother making GT's to drink by myself. People need to come over for that kind of effort.

Also, still unemployed and bleeding funds. But I don't so much mind that part. I'd rather go out enjoying myself till the very end than saving up scratch and being miserable every day about it, y'know? I'm pretty optimistic things will turn up fine. They always seem to, although my parents are starting to worry a little bit about my unwavering self-assurance. I don't blame them. I do drink all their orange juice and probably account for half their monthly utilities bill.

I think if I did have more money to burn, I'd probably spend it on classes. I am currently aiming to improve my graphic design and guitar playing abilities. Part of me still believes I am somehow a prodigy at some instrument that I have never played before.

Every time I sit down in front of a piano, I think maybe now I'll be miraculously amazing at it.

In hindsight, this may be a rudimentary form of insanity. Rather, I like to think of it as harnessing my latent superpowers bit by bit...

The love post

You know what I've never understood about Valentines day? Hearts.

Hearts to me represent emotion, desire, passion, life.

These are all important facets of our romantic relationships. But in the end, the most important part of being in love is the brain. It's the ability to make logical choices in a process that celebrates insanity.

Without our brains, we'd all go crazy chasing our own tails in endless circles.

So be a trend setter. Give out little candied brains this weekend instead, with phrases written on them like "I know you're an asshole, but at least I can admit I am too".

It may not make your significant other swoon, at first.

But it will.

Once they've had some time to think about it.

frack

It took me almost a week, but I am now completely caught up with Battlestar Galactica, minus only those web episodes and that bonus movie with the half-asian chick in it. I'm too lazy to download a two hour movie at this point.

Anyways, if I have learned one thing from this show, it is this:

I want to marry Grace Park.

A quick IMDB search reveals that she was on Edgemont (She was? So that show gave us Grace Park and Kristen Kreuk? In retrospect it's the english-speaking Asian males wet dream.)

She was also a dancer in Romeo Must Die.

From humble beginnings indeed.

I officially hate the Raptors

*Apparently I am not the only one who feels this way. Globe and Mail reporter Michael Grange, who's job it is to cover the Raptors for a national newspaper, has decided to stop watching Raptors games.

Against my better judgment, I tuned into the game tonight to watch us get massacred by the Cleveland LeBrons.

I only watched the first three minutes then turned off the television in disgust.

- Wally Szczerbiak three (made)

- Missed layup by Chris Bosh

- Wally Szczerbiak three (made)

- Anthony Parker jumper (missed)

- Wally Szczerbiak three (missed)

- Jermaine O'neal travelling (TO)

- Mo Williams jumper (made)

- Chris Bosh jumper (made)

- Wally Szczerbiak three (missed)

- Offensive rebound Ben Wallace

- LeBron James, alley-oop dunk

CLE: 10, TOR: 2

The Raptors gave up a back-to-back-to-back three's to Cleveland's shooting guard to start the game. That's three times, on the first three offensive possessions. Another open jumper to Mo Williams on the fourth possession, then another open three to Wally Sczerbiak.

To compound the matters of this absolute futility that we call a basketball team, Ben Wallace gathered the offensive rebound off this fourth miss, in the middle of four Raptor players.

Also of note, the layup Chris Bosh missed on his first touch was a wide open lane, with Zydrunas Ilgauskas standing directly under the net in the restricted area.

Any number of NBA player would have dunked on Z and gotten the 'And one' call. Instead, Chris Bosh purposely avoided contact, and missed the layup instead.

For a team to give up the same open three point shot for the other team's best shooter four times in the first three minutes is absolutely unacceptable. I've given up on this team before, but after watching the first three minutes of this game, I knew they no longer even deserved a shred of my attention.

They're dogging it out there. And if they've given up on the court, why should I bother caring?

I hope the rest of the city and Raptors fans do what's right, and stop supporting them until they show something worth being supported.

To my own dismay, I couldn't help but check in on the score at the end of the first quarter.

Cleveland 37

Toronto 15

Long distance secret lovers

I have a problem.

In the past four days I have watched roughly 40 hours of Battlestar Galactica. My eyes hurt and my body feels like what I imagine a bowl of soft butter must be like.

Anyways.

Sometimes I get calls on my cell phone from numbers that I do not recognize. The most recent, after a quick google search, have been one caller from North Bay, and earlier today, somebody from Orange County, California called me (the O.C.!).

I know these are just wrong numbers, but sometimes it's nice to imagine someone completely out of the blue might happen onto your cell phone.

Like "Hello, this is the Anaheim Angels. We'd like to sign you as a relief mascot."

Yeaaa... that's the dream.