Category
College
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12.08.02The MexicanIn retrospect, it was probably not the brightest idea we'd ever had. We could probably have afforded the first class train fare if we'd stretched our wallets and our patience and denied ourselves beer for a night. But we were young and stubborn and we thought there was simply no choice more obvious than the second class train. We had arrived at Mazatlan train station at seven in the morning, ready to catch whichever train was leaving for Guadalajara, or thereabouts. The man behind the ticket counter confirmed that there were in fact two trains to Guadalajara that day - ...
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12.08.02Loving Me Not - the StoryOne night in mid-February 1992, when I sat in Pagliacci's restaurant at the heart of downtown Victoria, waiting for someone to show up, and hurting. We were friends, good friends, and I had an eighteen-year-old-girl crush on him, which never amounted to anything. We'd made an arrangement the night before, or at least, I thought we had. Over coffee on the balcony of the common room, over looking the sea, he'd mentioned going into the city the next night, and I'd murmered that I had similar plans. He said something about maybe getting some food, and I, being eighteen and ...
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12.08.02On My GuitarI miss my guitar. I've had the same twelve-string acoustic since 1990, when I bought it in a small music shop while on holiday in North Wales, and then hauled it over the long ocean to Canada. I chose it because it made a lot of noise - twelve strings always sound more accomplished and polished than six, and you don't need amplification to busk. I did a lot of busking. On the ferry from Tsawassen to Swartz Bay, I pulled out the guitar and busked Indigo Girls tunes to pay for the bus journey into Victoria. In 1990, I ...
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12.08.02On FitnessWords I never thought I'd hear myself say: I miss going to the gym. I learnt so much there. I used to think it was the perfect place to study - all the way through college and uni and my MA, I would head over most evenings at about eightish, prop up my book (Nietsche, Kant, Sexual Objectivism in Anthropology, 500 Spanish Verbs - books so dull that I simply couldn't bring myself to read at any other time, because there would always be something better, more interesting, more active to do) on the handlebars of the stationary bike, and ...
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12.08.02Strangers on a TrainI once travelled by Amtrack from San Francisco to Seattle, just after new year. The journey took forever, and we got delayed in southern Oregon because of snow, so my reading matter quickly ran out and I became bored and frustrated. I retreated to the viewing car to watch Pretty Woman for the eighteenth time (they had it on a loop) and stare out at the rolling landscape. A guy asked if I could do him a favour. I said sure. He asked if I could draw something onto his jeans, which seemed like a completely normal request, given that ...
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12.07.02Alarm ClockI've got a new alarm clock. It's not very restful. I realise that the point of an alarm clock is to wake the user up, but really, this is just ridiculously offensive. Where my old alarm went bibbiddy beep bibbiddy beep bibbiddy beep ...my new one not only tells me the date and day and temperature, but also lights up its enormous display in mysterious blue glow. But it also goes BEEEP BEEEEP FUCKING BEEEEEP GET UUUUUUP BEEEEEEP ...which inevitably means that these days I wake up in a bad mood. Davo suggested hurling it aross the room, and while I'm sorely ...
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08.14.02WaitingWell, this is interesting. A kind soul wrote to let me know that a person going by the nick "Irishlass" has posted a rather winsome poem on the arts and literature forum on a site called facethejury.com. Here's the poem in full. I'm sure she won't mind if I post it here:They have taken away the chair where you would have sat My fingers are cold wrapped around an overpriced tea The waiter asks if I need the bill and I am still waiting to begin (Perhaps you have forgotten perhaps dead, or asleep) The busy smooching of valentines cloy the air and I have picked your rose bare you ...
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06.28.02DistantMy ears hurt from too much feedback and crappy earphones. My bum aches from sitting in a hard chair. My back aches from leaning forward to a mic with a cord that wasn't quite long enough to stretch from the back of my computer.I'm suffering from two hours of talking with people via webcast at my college reunion, over on the west coast (wet coast, apparently today) of Canada, miles and miles and hours away (eight, I think).The connection was poor, the video was crappy, the conversation was stunted by a twenty second delay, but I'm glad I did it.Above ...
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06.22.02Not at the reunionA little over 7,700km away from where I sit writing this, a hundred people are gathering under tall trees for my college ten year reunion. I am not there. It's weird. Ten years ago (well, twelve if we include the years at PC) each of us at college reserved a little chunk of mind space for wondering what we'd be doing by the time the ten year reunion swung around - we knew about it even when we were attending, and we relished the thought of such a distant, exotic future point. The Ten Year Reunion. It morphed into this gigantic, intangible ...
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05.07.02Today’s earwormDahil sa iyo, a cheesy Tagalog love song, going round and round and round and round....Dahil sa iyo, nais kong mabuhayDahil sa iyo, hanggang mamatayDapat mong tantuin, wala ng ibang giliwPuso ko'y tanungin, ikaw at ikaw rin I've just discovered (after knowing this song for a dozen years) that the words are in fact so saccharine as to make one's teeth hurt when singing. Well, there you go.I used to sing in an international choir - songs in funny languages our speciality, though we did a cracking Jerusalem once. Anyway, this has meant that I can churn out passable lyric ...
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