I am going to school Sherman Hamilton

We had some good times, Humber. 

I'm not going to say it was all sunshine and rainbows, but I will certainly shed a tear before i step out the door this one last time. 

I will not divulge however whether it is a single tear of joy or sadness. 

Here's a hint though: it won't be sadness. 

See you in New York.

Kangaroo's with bicycle helmets

I feel a rant coming...

Postgraduate experiences can be dissected many different ways, but one of the most obvious and common is the distinction between staying at home for university or moving away.

Many people who stay at home for their undergrad years lament their decision post-graduation. Even greater are the number of individuals who moved away, and often feel superior as a result to their stay-at-home friends in terms of life experience.

These individuals can be identified by their dismissive hand gestures, and posited theories of "they're just making up for not moving away for university" as a universal explanation for any sort of behaviour related to post-graduate identity crises -- particularly if that behaviour involves drinking a lot and generally not being a boring adult.

Obviously these are not absolute archetypes. There are certainly stay-at-home university students who see the world with moved-away eyes and vice versa.

My thought is not so much that these delineations exist (because most of us would concede that they do), but moreso the haughtiness of moved-away eyes on their poorer and more wordly brethren.

I suppose in simplified terms, I'm talking about the existing paradigms and social constructs of "adult", "responsibility" and even "maturity". I realize this all seems terribly post-modernistic, but that really isn't what I'm getting at here. Bear with me.

My point isn't that "adulthood is whatever you make it" or any sort of frivolity. Rather I wonder more if our ideals of adulthood are not sadly, sadly misguided?

I was thinking about why I want to do what I want to do, and it occurred to me through various discussions about my chosen vocation and some political chats that the reason I feel what I am doing is important is because, well, it is important. Very very important.

All I want to do with my life is inform people. Through stories, through insight, through commentary, I want people to be educated and thoroughly understanding of the world around them from every possible angle in order to make decisions about life and their role in our global society. I feel currently we make so many of our decisions with little to no regard of the consequences of our actions.

I see blood being shed for democracy in Pakistan and Kenya, genocide being committed over the right to a fair election, and yet here in Canada we can barely get people to leave their houses to vote. Worse yet, those who do vote are often woefully ignorant of what and who they are voting for, often relegating our most sacred of civil rights to nothing more than a glorified popularity contest.

I see kids growing up (and hell, peers) who will view a youtube video 10 times before they ever watch the news, or read US magazine until it is dog-eared before they ever pick up an article in Mother Jones.

Accusations of snobbishness or not, that isn't the point. My point is that if knowledge is power, we as a generation are keeping ourselves powerless, then complaining about why our world is crumbling around us.

Why global warming? Why war? Why recession?

Why ask questions why when all you need to do is ask how?

Our definition of a mature adult is just someone who has a 9-5, raises 2.5 kid and owns a white picket fence.

But the world is bigger than your backyard, and I feel like in order to really grow up, we're going to need to realize that sooner rather than later.

Now go read a newspaper. Please.

I don't like to stereotype, but...

I came home today to discover a box of Chunky soup sitting by our front door, roughly 20 cans worth of mixed variety.

Note: nobody in my household eats/drinks Chunky soup. I make soup maybe once every six months in an act of desperation should there be no other food options available; my parents probably even less. 20 cans may not sound like a lot to people who actually eat this stuff, but in my house it's about on par with discovering a flock of parrots in your living room.

My dad literally came running down the hall when he heard me come in.

"You hungry? Want some soup?" he asked with strange enthusiasm.
"Not really..." although at this point, the obvious question had to be asked. "Where did all this soup come from?"
"It was a such a good deal. One dollar a can."
"Who's going to eat all this soup?"
"I don't know. But look, there are different types"
"OK... you know, I don't think we're ever going to eat all this"
"What does [insert mangled English pronunciation of minestrone] mean?"

As an added bonus, last week he came home with a family-sized pack of life-savers candy. Who eats life-savers anymore? We were literally giving them away to various house visitors, and we mostly forced them onto people against their consent.

Our pantry is a veritable treasure trove of bargain-bin foods that will never see the light of day.

I was going to write a post with more gravitas, but now it seems dour of me. Perhaps tomorrow.

status update

... is thinking about perming her hair...any suggestions? ... is staying awake until this thing is finished!! ... doesn't believe in fairy tales.. but Barack Obama is pretty damn close... knows that he has to trust Him... and everything will be alright... Fear and Loathing in Port Hope... is in MIS... is thankful that God does answer prayers!... is pop bottles on three... knows that a watched pot never boils.

if you know me, you know i am not a huge facebook fan. 

i find it pointless outside of stalking, although i will admit to indulging in it every once and a while in order to see what other people are up to. i can do this because many of my acquaintances lay their lives pretty much bare on facebook, if not literally than with little updates or additions or subtractions that are subtle gestures of how they are currently feeling with life.

in a relationship? just broken up? got engaged? got a job? accepted to a school? moved to a new networ... i mean, city?

i'm a sucker enough for post-modernist fluff in that i can sometimes see through my social networking puritanical streak and actually find something kind of artistic within the jumbled mass of graffiti walls and scrabulous games. 

i usually do that by reading status updates. i find it fascinating sometimes to just scroll through a page or two of people's status updates. in essence it is a persons desire to connect and share with those around them. it's what's engaging your time and thoughts at the moment, whether expressed literally or obtusely, without pretensions because if that were the case you probably aren't bothering to update your status at all. 

it's an exercise often participated in with so much familiarity and comfort that people really let their internet guards down and honestly update a thin slice of their lives into it. i just find it amazing how accurate status updates seem to be, in many cases more real than people are when you see them in person.

reading status updates is kind of like being able to close your eyes and hear the thoughts of all your friends in your head. 

it's also probably why i refuse to do it myself, haha

glass bottles and sandwiches sliced diagonally

i think i'm just about ready for winter to end.

my mood has mellowed dramatically since it has been all snow/rain/cold/grey. 

if this pattern continues at its current rate, i fully expect to be massively suffering from seasonal affective disorder by the time i finally have a real job. 

this is disconcerting to me, because frankly i don't fully believe this is a real issue.

i mean, wah wah, it's dark outside. really? 

besides, who's to say winter is making you sad? maybe you're naturally sad, but summer is making you happy. that way we can use the phrase in a more positive light. 

"Thankfully, you have seasonal affective disorder. It's the only thing getting you through the year. Here's a pair of sunglasses and two passes to a tanning salon; come see me again next month." 

also, on the bright side (har har) you could tell people with SAD (i just realized that acronym as i typed that out...) that they aren't depressed, they're just kryptonian and their happiness is dependent on their alien DNA being powered by earth's yellow sun. 

actually, just thinking that makes the bitter cold all the more easy to bear. 

the valentines post

recent survey says 55 per cent of people believe in love at first sight.

this is either a painful reminder that we watch way too many movies, or a pitiful reflection on our societies definition of love.

i don't think it's possible to love somebody without knowing them well. then again, maybe i'm just a cynical bastard.

randoms

old people just shouldn't drive

really. there needs to be some sort of legislation about this. i've trudged through the wind and snow to brush off my car. i'm cold, soaked to the bone, and driving conditions are atrocious as it is. the last thing i need to do is fear some crazy old person who shouldn't be on the road is going to do something stupid and either cost me money or get me killed. 

at the very least they should be forced to pass a driving test every year once they pass a certain age. i mean, they aren't working anymore, they certainly have the time to take a few driving tests. yeesh.

and now, an example of how cold it currently is inside my bedroom.

cue it up

i am becoming a shower-tendency discriminator.

people have their tendencies, but there is one particular species of humanity that has always left me scratching my head: the morning showerer. 

now, don't get me wrong, i have nothing against showering in the morning when it is the only logical course of action (for example, you get home late and are exhausted). what i'm talking about is patterns, and for me personally, i prefer to shower every night before i go to bed.

much like every super hero has a super villain counterpart however, there exists in this world a subset of (possibly evil) individuals who choose to regularly shower every morning instead. 

this makes no sense to me. 

the one instance that always blows my mind is that once, after some mild sporting activity, i told a morning-showering-friend i was with that i was going to shower before we headed out for evening activities. her response to my asking if she would like to shower as well (separately, not WITH me. get your head out of the gutter) was "no, it's ok. i showered already in the morning." 

now, call me a stickler for semantics, but showering once a day is not the same thing as showering once a day BEFORE you get dirty. the whole reason i prefer to shower before bed is so that i can feel clean and comfortable in my bed, and that my sheets remain relatively pristine compared to the mess-that-is-my-room. 

why would anyone want to go to bed with a day's accumulation of dirt on them, then clean themselves off in the morning? isn't that the equivalent of laying in your own filth (literally)?

somebody explain this phenomenon to me. i think it's absurd and have spent much of my life trying to patiently understand the rationale behind what should just be another way of doing things, but now i have reach my curiosity's breaking point. i require a reasonable explanation for this behavior, or else i am just going to paint all morning showerers with the same broad and judgmental stroke of uncleanliness.

manatee destiny

it's funny that winter is considered the darker season of the year. it's true that night falls earlier during the colder months, but the truth is that when it's overcast and there's a sheen of white snow on the ground, there's enough light pollution bouncing around everywhere that even without the moon anywhere to be seen, 3am can seem just as well lit as 3pm. that's the case tonight. 

with the lights off, my room is still lit up from the light outside, as if the black itself had been sucked out of the sky and replaced with a dull orange-grey hue that leaves one unsatisfied with the current presentation of "night time", or whatever you want to call this non-black night. 

it's a weird light though, because outside isn't what i would really call lit up, or bright. its more night time defined not by darkness but merely by an absence of lightness, if that makes any sense. i find it very curious, and for some reason a little unsettling, as if i'm sleeping under the amber glow of some giant highway street light circa mid nineteen nineties, before white lights became all the rage, and orange light was the cool way to tint our after hours worlds. 

it's just not dark out, i don't know why i've been so obsessed over this the past few nights, but i find that it really bugs me. i wish the dark would just return. then maybe i could sleep again.

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? 

dinosaur eggs are baller

thoughts on the best regular season game of the season: 

- much like when the raps played boston, the atmosphere was simply rabid. this is playoff level basketball, no matter what anybody says. 

- there was an article on ESPN today by JJ Adande about how black people need to stop hating on the celtics for being a white team. well written, but in crunch time, after a giant game-tying 3 by rayray, detroit takes a timeout with under 30 seconds left to play. what song is blaring through the arena? 'rock you like a hurricane' by the scorpions. would you like some grey poupon? 

- hubie brown noted during the game that deron williams reminds him a lot of chauncey billups, which i agree with entirely. if that's the case, then is cp3 vs d-train even a debate? would you rather have the future chauncey billups, or the future isiah thomas? thought so.

- there's no such thing as statement games, but if we learned anything, it's that big game experience still makes the pistons the team to beat in the east. boston is a beast, but in the clutch, detroit was calm, poised, and executed exactly what they wanted. the celtics have three future hall-of-famers, but seemed confused about what exactly to do and who should take over down the stretch -- particularly KG. if they're going to go anywhere, he needs to demand the ball in the clutch, he's unselfish to a fault and was nearly invisible in the last two minutes of the game.

- i was supposed to go out tonight, but i'm jumping from this game straight to suns/mavs and in 5 minutes, the raptors game. if i were to estimate, i'd say i've chosen watching basketball at home over going out with friends at least five times in the last two weeks. please help me.

"morning" musings

simon's twitter train has finally left the station. i didn't even understand how it worked until this week. apparently my problem before was i had no friends. please, refrain from making the easy joke on that one, i'm delicate.

been picking up my poor neglected guitar with my recent freedom from school. i missed her so.

and finally, when it rains it pours, and in this case it's pouring engagement rings. 

congrats to wictor and gorphanie, may your weddings have as much or more booze than vanessa's. 

good. times. ahead.