CONSPIRACY THEORY #20050329       

so this place sucks even more during a blackout cuz there’s ABSOLUTELY nothing to do. it’s been a grey day all day and there was a blackout. the emergency light is pretty weak so you can’t even sit by it and read. you can’t use the washroom cuz it requires electricity to pump the water up. you can’t cook cuz you’re stuck with an electric stove. so i decided to go out for a pint with some people on my floor. and the night ended with me getting beer spilled on me and now i sit and type as i wait for the washing machine to finish.

so i find out when i can leave in the next few days. then i can re-book my ticket. i’ve already started looking for part-time jobs back home. go fig. hahahaha. i can’t wait. at least even if there was a blackout back home you don’t have to pay so much when making a damned phone call! stupid per minute billing just like a celly. i’m tired. hurry up washing machine! i didn’t want crusty beer, ciggy smoke smelling clothes to wash the next day so i figured tonight was the night. ugh!

so i learned about botswana today from ambrose. it’s a pretty rich country. damn! he was telling me how much he had to pay for his wife who’s from a different tribe. 17 head of cattle, x number of sheep, clothes for her family, etc etc. i kid you not! i think traditions and customs like that are pretty damned cool. he’s going to show me wedding pix soon. wheeeeeeeeeee!

o o o. i hear the washing maching is going to stop soon. so i go. nite nite everybody. and hey, for this week i’m one more hour ahead since the brits had to feel o so special by putting their clocks ahead a week earlier than the rest of the world. damned imperialists!

agent orange

CONSPIRACY THEORY #20050323

this city is shitty. ha! what a PROFOUND insight. someone cut in front of me in line at the train station yesterday. so i politely reminded him that i was in line in front of him and the fucker totally ignored me. so i yelled, ‘fuck you asswipe!’ to him and walked off. i didn’t want to start a fight cuz knowing my luck in this city it’d be HIS word over mine.

so housing woes. i have to be out by april 18^th. the housing office likes to fuck with students’ minds and tell them bullshit. one person will tell me there’s no waiting list for people to move in here… and then their colleague 2 seconds later says, ‘yeah! no problem! there’s ALWAYS people wanting to move in for the summer!’ so i panicked and sent out an sos e-mail to the rest of the humanities dep’t. so the secretary there tells me that i should look for somebody to take my place. i did last night and the person i found is ON A FEKKING WAITING LIST TO MOVE IN HERE!!!!! so i e-mailed them this morning and told them i found someone. then they e-mail me back and tell me that they’ve contacted someone on the list and that she’s next. right. asswipes!

i’ve e-mailed the convenor of the program telling her why i’m leaving early ie: the spit and the food incident, and asking her if i could just leave when i move outta res so that i don’t have to find short-term accommodations somewhere. lord what a bitch that’d be. i CAN stay in sabina’s room until april 29^th cuz she’s in bosnia until then. after that who knows? so i sit and wait until my convenor gets back next week. ugh!

one paper goes well, the other? i have to re-do the outline cuz i’m not getting ANYWHERE!!!!! fekk fekk fekk. i’ve learned that the brits are sub-title crazy. remember i got docked marks for that? well yeah. they prefer stupid things like sub-titles to ‘help the reader along’isn’t that what good writing supposed to convey? i don’t get it. anyway, so i have to think of sub-titles, what a foreign concept. and apparently ‘canadian’ grammer isn’t good enough for the brits either.

my flatmate mina seems so perceptive, but i think because i’m such a weary asian, her lurve interest seems creepy. like he has an asian fetish. AND he smells bad. he came over on monday evening, and they were talking in her room until like 2am last night. anyhow, i got that gut feeling when i met him. eeeeeeew. but the thing is, she’s probably flattered that he likes her. and it’s not like i can tell her now cuz i think she’s been eyeing him for a while. meh, what can i do except kick his ass if he does anything to her? she IS 33 after all.

agent orange

CONSPIRACY THEORY #20050317                   

my cat died yesterday. i can’t stop crying. i’ll never be able to hear him meow, howl, feel him purr, smell his awful cat breath, laugh about the stupid things he does, have him comfort me when i’m sad, even if he was sleeping.

i feel numb and it’s somewhat disbelieving because i’m so far away. i’ll never forget the day i left. he was sleeping on the cushion he wasn’t supposed to, in the family room. i kissed his nose, he woke up and started purring. my parents told me to hurry up so i told him i’d be back soon, gave him another kiss and left. but he left before i could come back.

i realize now that funerals really are for the living. they give the existing loved ones a sense of closure, a chance to say good-bye, a chance to celebrate that person’s life together. i’ll never have that. what am i going to do without my moo?

i’ve never felt lonlier.

agent orange

CONSPIRACY THEORY#20050312

so remember how pleased i was about getting a new shower? well it’s still in the packaging sitting in the hallway outside our flat. everytime i come home and open the firedoor from the elevator and i see the turquoise packaging, i’m reminded that it’s NOT installed. and they’ve ripped out the old one and locked the bathroom. which means 7 people have to use one. and t-rex’s gf is here. and the toilet smells like someone else’s shit again, despite the fact that i tried to wipe it down since nobody else will. i’m scared to go pee now.

 i have a new credit card! finally. jeezy peezy it takes forever just to get one. but now i can have an emergency one and not feel the pain of exchange rates. WE HAVE A NEW POT!!!!! i’m excited. it’s NOT teflon, so we don’t have to worry about dying if something sticks to it. i luckily didn’t have to pay for half of it, even though i offered, but the payback is that i make storage space for it in my cupboard and that whatever i make in it, i share with mina. fair enough. curry on monday!!!! wooohaa! i’m excited, i can’t wait. maybe by then we’ll have a new shower too! yeah right! they were supposed to do it one at a time because flat #4 was set to get theirs first. but they destroyed both and installed #4’s first. fuckers!

i got talked into doing the 10k after all. dammit! matt, the way cool artist that works at the gym organized this charity run to raise money to help build a school in kenya. so he asked me today if i’d do it, and i told him my knees were wonky, and he said, i’d be able to do it… so i said, i guess so? and then uncle spenny didn’t believe that i’d do it. so now i go. ugh! my poor knees. so if i don’t blog for a while after next sunday, you’ll know why.

wheeeeeeeee! fairtrade market next saturday!!!!!! this means more yummy cake! yes! this is what i will spend my money on the most! food! mmmmmmMMMMmmmm and well, i’m a typical person that eats when i’m sad/angry/annoyed/bored. terrible habit? yes, but i know i’m going to work it off, so it really can’t be all that bad can it?

agent orange

CONSPIRACY THEORY #20050308

life is just SO fuckin’ fantabulous! t-rex’s gf is coming for the weekend again. that’s just PEACY! i’m SO excited, more shit on the toilet, great.

once again, buuuuuuuuuuuurn! my poco class was TOO bizarre today. ok. the French girl let’s call her f is somewhat flightly, on a basic level i’m cool with her, any sort of in depth discussion won’t happen because she’s too stubborn to see other people’s opinions. we were discussing at the beginning when would be a good day to re-cap on term papers before we hand them in. we were trying to figure out a good date, and most people preferred a week before they were due. so he said, ‘alright, the 12^th is good then?’ and she sorta burst out incredulously, ‘one week before they’re due!’ but just the way she said it, and the fact that she was involved in the discussion was kinda funny so we all sorta had a little giggle about it. but she seems to do this often.

anyhow, so we were discussing a reading and the question was: ‘is postcolonialism utopian?’ and i said it sort of was. just because there is no longer any occupation, the structures are usually still in place, the racism is still there, and people are still traumatized blah blah blah. so there never really is an end because it’s a part of both the (coloniz)er/ed histories. so my prof turned to others and asked what they thought. F said, ‘no no no. of course postcolonialism is a possibility, look at china.’ which i didn’t understand so i asked her to explain.

            ‘china is a communist country, because it’s not participating in western capitalist imperialism.’

most of the other people disagreed with her, because how can china not be a colonizer when in a sense… look at tibet, taiwan, and hong kong.  she’s not racist, in fact she’s fascinated with chinese culture. because tibet, taiwan, hong kong have the same cultural past, they’re all chinese. that FLOORED me. and i sort of murmured, ‘well if you ask a taiwanese person, i’m sure they’ll disagree with you.’ but her argument was that it wasn’t ‘colonialism’ like the west. ok. if you define colonialism that narrowly then yes, it could be seen that way, but you’ll have a lot of people disagreeing with you. it basically ended up as more of a verbal catfight. this got VERY uncomfortable, and to make things worse he sort of added fuel to the fire by asking her how she could say that when you look at tibet? regardless of what someone thinks, you’re not supposed to take sides, you’re not supposed to allow ‘discussions’ to get that far to the point of umm… 5 v. 1. so i shut up and was waiting/hoping that my prof would stop this mudslinging. no. he let it continue. i was going to say something, but i don’t think it’s up to me to undermine his class, since he’s already socially inadept (see conspiracy #20050203) likewise, i’m afraid of what that might do to my essay mark. and he asked person x who was silent and getting angrier by the minute what she thought. and she rightly said, ‘well if it’s a discussion where people’s opinions aren’t being respected then i don’t want to be involved.’ go her! and he sorta jokingly said, ‘well what kind of a discussion would you like to have x?’ DUH. get the picture yet?!?!?!

it was REALLY tense. and rather than having a lil breather he went along his merry little way and asked someone to do her presentation. some people were kinda laughing that nervous laugh when you-don’t-know-what-to-do laugh. and of course it didn’t really go well for her because everyone was still tense/mystified/wowed. so we had another discussion after her presentation, which was kind of difficult given the situation we just encountered.

we finally had a break and re-convened. my friend michelle had her next presentation. apparently f has a real beef with her. she sat through michelle’s WHOLE presentation looking through a book, reading it, commenting on it, and trying to get 1^st presenter’s attention away from michelle’s topic. eh? are you in high school? no matter what your beef is, that’s just plain RUDE. michelle had nothing bad to say to you when you were being attacked, what are you doing? so after her presentation, michelle was answering a question about portuguese colonization and f seemed to be disagreeing with her. so michelle asked her, ‘is there something you disagree with? i’d like to know your opinion.’

‘no no. i’m just reading this book.’

‘i’m sorry if my presentation is boring you and this topic can’t keep your interest.’

‘no no, i have nothing to say.’

riiiiiiiiiiight! ok. michelle handled it quite well, and didn’t pursue it any further.

after class the prof asked F if she was at all hurt or put off by people attacking her, and she said no, she had no problems with it. and he asked her and x to stay so they could ‘discuss’ this further.

1. you’re a prof. you FACILITATE discussions. you’re allowed to have an opinion too, but if it’s just going to add fuel to the fire, then don’t say it because it’ll just make the situation worse.
2. if it’s no longer a case of a discussion, but mudslinging then you damn well better intervene!
3. it wasn’t fair to 1^st presenter to have to present after that, give us a lil breather.

needless to say, it was a VERY VERY awkward class.

agent orange