May 30
Que
emocionante! OK, so I just wanted to let you all know that I'm on YouTube now.
Gabriel, with whom I sang some duets at the Festival de la Cancion on Monterrey
back in 2003, has posted the one solo that I had, called Habanera, from Bizet's Carmen.
I'm so excited. The sound quality isn't great, but I hope you enjoy it anyways.
For those of you that don't know, this is a fairly well-known opera aria. Here
are two of the duets: La
Vie en Rose, and Con
Te Partiro (or Por Ti Volare in Spanish, which we
did in both languages, I in Italian and Gabriel in Spanish). Apparently the two
other ones we did aren't good quality enough to stream. But this will give you
an idea for now :o)
May 20
I
hadn't put any of those Blog things I'm addicted to on my site lately, so I
added a couple of them just for the sake of posterity. I was about to begin my
sentence by saying, "Lately, I have been thinking about something..."
but the truth is that I've been thinking about a lot of things, as is almost
always the case with me. Sometimes, I wish my brain would sleep.
During
my Internet drought at home, I had been thinking about the state of
multiculturalism in our country. I have been helping this person I know with
her PhD dissertation, and she is in the same department I did my master's in,
so we are always on about multiculturalism issues of some sort. We had a
discussion about this Multiculturalism Act that was passed in 1988 in Canada (I
actually thought it was passed earlier in 1972 or so, but apparently this was
just a policy at the time). In any case, I started thinking back to that time;
I would have turned 11 that year, and I remembered that was about the same time
we got these buttons at school with cartoon drawings of people on them and a
slogan saying: "We are all different!" I guess it was to commemorate
the passing of that Act. The concept fascinates me, though, because, while I
understand the idea that we are to accept (or in the terms of the Act, Respect,
Tolerate, and Understand) our differences, this notion has always seemed to
focus on what segregates us rather than what unites us. We can be united in the
idea that we all have differences, but then we get into these nasty
controversies of minority rights, which have no end. And our differences, I
believe, are one of the factors that prevent Canada from having a defined national
identity. Of course, without this topic of discussion, we might have nothing
philosophical to talk about outside of hockey and beer, so perhaps it's all for
the best! But seriously, as I concluded in my own thesis, the hegemonic powers
would have use stay divided this way to continue the competition for resources
and various kinds of capital in order to keep the status quo. I realise this
sounds pessimistic, but until I run for Prime Minister and find out it ain't
so, that's how I see it.
There
has also been a lot of excitement in my life this past week. Excitement makes
it sound like a good thing, but what I mean by that is that the week was
eventful and full of surprises. Some of that, I can't share with you because it
has to do with one of the kids I work with, and with confidentiality, a blog
certainly isn't the place for that info. No, the other major news of the week
was finding out that the landlady met with an emergency situation and must move
back into her house here in Edmonton by the middle of next month. Kelly can
move into the basement suite, where she lived before, but I am out of house and
home because I can't afford to live anywhere on my own yet. I turn 30 next
month, and my b'day present from life is having to move back in with my mom and
her husband. Great. The two good things about it is that I will be able to use
the money I used to pay in rent to put toward buying my own place next year,
and hopefully also I'll get a chance to spend more time with my mom before she
retires out of country next year as well. So a lot of changes.
As a
side note, I just watched An
Inconvenient Truth tonight for the first time. While the environment is
of concern to me, I got the more subtle message in Gore's documentary slamming
the Republicans. I mean, it kind of made it turn into a really long TV campaign
ad like the Americans always have during election season. The subtle message
was, " Don't vote for the Republicans next election, vote Democrat."
He shows part of the election results when Florida's voting count went wrong
and makes it seem like he would have changed the whole environment around had
he been elected and boo hoo that George Bush has ruined the world. Well, I
think Gore's more significant contribution would have been not going to war.
I'm sure he would have ratified Kyoto as well, which would have been great, but
I was a little disappointed with a political slant I just wasn't expecting. You
know that these kinds of videos are going to have their socially conscious
political message, but not a direct blaming the Republicans for all our
problems kind of message. I do wonder, too, how much he could have done in
office. I saw Bill Clinton being interviewed on the Daily Show, and Jon Stewart asked Clinton if he could have done
as much for the country as he's doing now that he isn't president anymore, and
Clinton thought he couldn't. He said there are so many other factors to consider
when you're running the whole country, so sometimes you can't do what you want
to do, no matter how much you want it. I don't really know what my thoughts are
on that yet, but it's just food for thought, anyways.
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