Back to the Future

Being back in class almost feels like turning circles in a revolving door.

I'm back at school after a six-month "break." But this "break" consisted of two internships that tuckered me out and gave me a taste of the nine to five lifestyle-- the "real world." I was treated like a full-time employee, minus the perk of an actual salary. I felt qualified and employable; I was ready for more. But in the blink of an eye, my internships were over and it was back to Rye High. But that's not to say that it's not nice to be back in class surrounded by peers I've spent the last three years learning and laughing with.





My extended time away from school was eye-opening and awesome. And my trips to California over the summer were fortunately a wonderful escape, and I'm so grateful that I had the chance to go twice.

*Newport Beach lifeguards

*Too cool for school (and the classic sunglasses)

It was basically my last summer of frivolity and fun before the reality of graduation hits me in the face like April sunshine after a long cold winter.
This is my penultimate semester before graduation. And then...who knows. Travel? My masters? (I could keep my student discounts!) Work/the real world? There are so many options, but there are several things I am longing for.

1) To visit Japan (while Ren is still there, I even have a place to stay.)
2) To move out and get my own place (I long for independence. A job would be necessary.)
3) To visit Europe (I would need massive funds.)

While my friends write MCATs and LSATs and worry about PSAs and other acronyms, I'm enjoying the thought of taking time off or jumping into the workforce. But mostly, I'm excited to have choices.
I'm at a place in my life where I'm daring to dream.

When waffles stick to the grill

A few weeks ago, my cousin Jason, his wife Andrea, and his daughter Abby came over to help trim the apple tree in the backyard. It looked beautiful-- blossoms covered the entire tree, making my backyard feel like an orchard. But alas, it was not meant to stay up. The tree had to be trimmed (damn power lines), and it now looks like a balder, leaner version of its former self.

*before the trim

While my mom, Jay and Andrea slaved over a power saw in the backyard and bundled sticks all day, I played with Abby. Being an only child, I ate up the chance to muck around playing hide and go seek and paint water colour portraits on the kitchen floor. I'd been planning to make waffles with Abby on our balling new Cuisinart waffle iron, but my Bachan ("grandma" in Japanese), had already mixed together all the ingredients. Now all that was left to do was pour them into the waffle iron and wait for them to get golden brown. As much as I appreciated the help, I was a little crestfallen. I wanted to be the one to measure and mix the ingredients together. Biting my tongue, I poured the first batch of batter into the waffle iron, smoothing out the thick, viscous mixture to ensure it covered every square of the grid. Bachan told me that she had sprayed Pam over the iron already, so I trusted that it was well greased for cooking.
But when the waffle iron buzzed and I went to open it, I was greeted with a sticky and crusty mess. The Pam had evaporated after the iron was pre-heated, and the waffles were stuck on both sides of the iron. I had to spend about 15 minutes scraping the waffle iron with a chopstick, flaking off what would have been a delicious and perfect treat.

Bachan watched me from the kitchen table as bits of waffle crumbles spread across her counter.

"Here I thought I was being helpful," she said as she apologized for the mess.

And then I realized how selfish I had been. Here I was, wishing that I could have done all of the preparation on my own terms, when all my Bachan wanted to do was lend a hand. She had even mentioned to me earlier how she wished she could have helped Jay in the backyard with the tree. My Bachan, an 87-year-old woman, wanted to help my firefighter cousin trim a tree in the backyard.

Our entire family is full of helpful people, but Bachan, as the matriarch, stands out in my mind the most. I think about how lazy I am, spending my free time on MSN or napping while she wishes she could just do more. She bowls every Friday. She walks up to the Price Chopper with her walker to buy her own groceries. She goes out in the garden to pull weeds, supporting herself with a cane.

As she sits in her pink easy chair, laughing to herself as she watches Japanese TV, I can only hope that by the time I'm in my 80s, I have half as much energy and strength as she does.

A walk to remember

I never thought I would end up here on Monday.
The last few weeks have been really rough in so many ways, and I needed to clear my head.

Normally after I finish my last exam, I feel an incredible sense of relief and liberation.
Not this time.

I handed in my last take-home on Monday, and I didn't even care. Summer is here, and I suddenly went from barely having enough time to sleep to not knowing how to fill my days. I need projects or work to keep me occupied so I don't dwell on certain things too much.

So on Monday, I walked from Yonge and Bloor to High Park to clear my head. I have four blisters on my feet to prove it. I felt like I was in a daze the entire time. That could have been because I wasn't wearing my glasses and couldn't really see or because I hadn't eaten all day. But I felt like if I slowed down or stopped, I wouldn't be able to keep going.


Life has been hurting my heart lately. I don't want to be one of those girls that cries and gets emotional all the time. But I guess I am one right now. It bothers me a little, but then i realized something. For the entire duration of my high school career, I was occupied with grades and projects and extra-curriculars. My life was a series of decisions made to help me get into university. It may have worked to my advantage, but looking back on those years, I might as well have been asleep the whole time. I may not have gotten hurt, but life was beige. I realized on my long and rather painful walk that even though my life may have gotten messier and harder, I would rather feel the pain than nothing at all. I would rather live.

And I'm so grateful for my amazing friends who can help me do that.

It's just one of those days

It's internship season, and the RCC is humming with job gossip.
CBC, CTV, TSN, Global, City, Omni all seem to be the buzz words of the moment among third-year j-schoolers.

And the other question of the day seems to be, "What are you doing this summer?"
Me: Shudder. Shrug shoulders. Mumble something incoherent. Avoid eye contact. Cry.
Ugh.
I have no job lined up for the summer, and it scares the shit out of me. I feel like a slacker, and I hate the looks I get when I tell people that I might be working retail, again. The store I work at has treated me well, don't get me wrong. But I feel so lacklustre and unambitious by working there again for the summer.

Retail has been an interesting experience, to say the least.

I met Peter Mansbridge twice when he came in to buy things for his son. I rang through Doug Gilmore's purchases at the register. I also served June Callwood, Jeanne Becker, and numerous MTV VJs. But the best celeb sighting by far was the one and only JK Rowling. She came into the store with her kids one day in October. Fan-freaking-tastic. We're not supposed to say anything when someone famous comes in, so it wasn't until after Rowling left that my coworker Catherine and I freaked out in girlish squeals and "oomgggggs!"

My other retail job was less star-filled, although Belinda Stronach did come in one day. But I don't think she really counts. My most notable day there was heading to Chinatown and Kensington Market to buy my boss an unscaled carp. Yes, unscaled carp, as in, a big stinky fish.
By the way, this was an eyeglasses store.
I wandered through Chinatown for at least an hour where no one took my query seriously or didn't understand my request. When I finally found a store that sold what I was looking for, I thought the salesman asked me if I wanted it scaled, and I said no.
Turns out he'd actually asked me if I wanted it killed. After I'd said no, he put the live fish in a plastic bag, its body flip-flopping and twitching like electrocuted jello. I panicked and told him, yes, please, kill it. So he then bashed the fish over the head with a wooden mallet. Then he put it into a clear plastic bag so the blood oozing from the carcass was visible for the entire Spadina streetcar to see.

As much fun as retail sounds, I'd like to branch out and do more this summer. I want to be challenged and excited with something new. Let's hope I get the chance.

Talking to strangers

I have a love-hate relationship with the TTC.
We don't have a car in my family, so the TTC is my lifeline. My metropass is my key to the city. It can be a real pain in the ass not having a car sometimes, but on rare occasions, even when my bus is 20 minutes late or the subway has an unexplainable "medical emergency", I can find a reason to be grateful for the human interaction on public transportation that would be unimaginable and impossible if I were boxed away in a car.
Case and point, my adventure home last night.

I was coming home from a friend's birthday party downtown. My eyelids were getting heavy, but I willed myself to stay awake for fear of being groped on the subway ride home to Scarborough. Suddenly, I'm jolted awake by an operator announcing over the intercom that we have to get off at Broadview because our train is going out of service. All of us begrudgingly trudge off the train and wait for the next one. The subway eventually pulls in and we make it as far as Woodbine, only to hear that we have to get off again because the trains aren't running between Woodbine and Vic Park and we have to catch a shuttle bus. As hundreds of people pool onto the Woodbine bus platform, a distressed looking woman comes up to me.

"What's going on?" she asks through a thick accent. I explain that we have to catch a shuttle bus to get to Victoria Park.
"Subway? Bus?" she says, a confused expression swimming across her face.
"We catch the bus here," I say, gesturing to the platform. "Someone had an accident." We discover that we're both going to the same stop, so we wait together, surrounded by agitated commuters cursing under their breath.

When the shuttle bus pulls up, hundreds of people converge on it, swarming like vultures. My new friend and I join the crowd, but the bus is already packed and I figure there's no way we're getting on.

I was wrong.

She grabs my hand and pulls me onto the bus with her. It is so crowded, I can feel people's crotches rubbing against my thighs. After an agonizing 15 minutes, we make it to Vic Park. I get on the subway with my new friend, and we start talking, now that we can actually breathe. My conversation with her makes my entire evening of TTC misery melt away.

She tells me she's from Afghanistan. She left 16 years ago because it was too dangerous. She lived in Russia for the first nine years and then moved to Canada, spending 10 months in Quebec City. She starts speaking to me in French and I converse back with her, trying to remember as much as I can from my second-year night-school French class. She tells me about her husband who tells her she's too old to wear short skirts and tank tops and how she ignores him because the clothes make her happy. She tells me about her kids, her family, and her teaching job back in Afghanistan. Half an hour later, we're waiting at the subway together and her bus comes to take her home.

It may not sound like much, but meeting this woman turned my whole evening around. I missed my bus and had to wait 25 minutes in the damp and cold subway for the next one to come. But I didn't care. This stranger put a smile on my face when I had a million reasons to grumble and complain.
I got home and regaled my evening's events to my boyfriend. I couldn't wait to tell someone else about this person I'd met.

I guess, simply put, I like talking to strangers. Sometimes they're not the scary candy-loving, white-van driving psychopaths your parents warned you about. Sometimes they're good people with a lifetime of stories that can spark up your life.

*photo courtesy of daily dose of imagery

eyes wide shut

I can't believe I handed in a nomination form for Arts and Life editor of the Eyeopener. I've never even written for this section of the paper. And what do I know about the arts? Hell, what do I know about life?

The Eyeopener is Ryerson's independent student newspaper, and I started writing for it this semester. Well, technically I wrote one article for them last year, but then I started writing for a smaller paper on campus called Night Views. I got paid at Night Views, but it didn't have the cache and prestige of the Eye. And the Eye is actually a pretty big deal at Ryerson. Notable alum include Wendy Mesley and Christie Blatchford.

I'm majoring in broadcast, but writing for newspapers satisfies me in a way that TV can't. I have a love affair with the written word. And it's not necessarily a passionate love for creative similes and analogies in feature writing. It's a practical, clean, no frills kind of love for hard news leads and nut grafs. News stories come together in my head like a jigsaw puzzle. The stories click and flow in my brain in a way that makes me feel like I'm doing something right.

I wanted to run for News, but I know I won't win. But do I even want to win? Is that the point? Winning? I figured that there was nothing wrong with throwing my hat in the ring. The news editors told me that no one usually wins their first time running, but it's fun to go hear the speeches and give it a shot. So, bang bang, I'm giving it a shot. It seems futile to attempt to win anything at the Eyeopener now though. I'm heading into my second semester of third year. If anything big was going to happen for me there, it would have happened already. I feel foolish running for editor of this section when I've never even written anything for it before. The closest I came to writing for Arts came when Greg, the current editor, asked me to watch the most vile and explicit pornography I could find in a computer lab at school and then write about what happened. I said no. But after a semester of he said, she said, RSU dramatics, it might be nice to exercise my creativity.

But do I run for something I know I won't win or do I run for something that I have a chance of getting, even if it's not what I really want? Writing that out now, the answer seems obvious to me. And I'm kicking myself for whiting out "news" and writing "arts" instead. But I guess I'll just go to the Imperial tomorrow night, make an ass out of myself for two minutes in front of the entire masthead and then they can count the one vote that will be cast in my favour (submitted by me) and I can go back to writing hard news pieces next semester, with hopefully some arts and life thrown in. I just hope the stories won't involve me getting thrown out of the library or the j-lounge by security and having my lab privileges revoked.