April 2006 posts (with addition of March ones I didn't notice before!

April 25

Que Calor, Morena!

Isn't it hot, brown girl! This is the statement I am making here, one that I heard a lot when I was in Spain. By Mexican standards, I'm not that dark, actually, and wouldn't be called Morena here, but in Spain, I guess I was considered to be dark. Anyways, it is hot here, although today's forecast only predicts a high of of 32. That isn't bad. But most of the week is going to be above the average temperature for this time of year of around 30. Most days are supposed to be between 38 and 41. Isn't that great? Well, I have to say that although walking around in 38+ degree weather doesn't appeal to me, at least I haven't felt cold yet--except for last night. Thinking the ceiling fan and fresh air would cool things off enough that I could sleep with a thin sheet, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling cold, so I got under another blanket. Yes, I know I'm crazy. But it was only maybe about 25 out last night, so you can see how I might get chilly!

 

Anyways, I just arrived in Mexico yesterday after a long day of travelling. It kind of feels like coming home in a way. There are some new developments, such as a couple of new buildings that I noticed as well as some overpasses (the place is beginning to remind me of Houston in that regard), but everything is pretty much the same. It'll be good to catch up with folks here and find out how the last 2 years have treated them.

7:27 AM | Permalink | Travel

April 23

Two New Photo Albums

I was able to plug in a couple of albums for my readers this morning. I will add some more photos to the albums when I return to Edmonton because some of my photos ended up being quite dark, for some reason, so I'll lighten them up using my editing software at home. There were also photos I wanted to get close-ups of and crop, but I think these suffice for now.

 

A few comments now that I have pictures to explain. I didn't get any pictures of Enrique, unfortunately, so I'll have to post one of him from my personal stash of photos when I return to Edmonton. I didn't get a picture of Louise, either, who at brunch with us and ordered that very yummy looking plate of waffles. I did, however, get a picture of the awesome Lisa and the awesome guy she has been seeing, Luis. He happens to be a professor of astrophysics at Concordia University. You'd think he would be a boring, nerdy guy, but he's actually quite interesting and plays guitar pretty well and is much more well-rounded than you would think! Come to think of it, I didn't get any pictures of Vanessa, Sergiy or Valeriya either. I brought my camera all the time, fully intending to take pictures, but I forgot every time! Also, check out the entrance to China town. It looks the same as Edmonton's, pretty much, but you know it's in Montreal because you can see the street name there, René Levesque, which we definitely do not have in Edmonton.

 

As for Ottawa, I was told that there are always demonstrations outside the Chinese Embassy. I was disappointed that there was only one guy the day I was there. We so rarely get to see demonstrations in Alberta that I was hoping for something more exciting than that. There was also an interesting tent-like structure outside the Chinese Embassy. It looks like someone lives there because they had taken pains even to construct a sidewalk from cardboard. It made me sad. In any case, if anyone can confirm the name of the river that runs behind the Parliament buildings, please let me know. 3 rivers converge in Ottawa, I believe, and I, I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference...oops, wrong thought direction there! Well, the rivers are confused in my head, so some clarification would be appreciated. Oh, and if you're wondering why heads and tops of buildings are cut off in the pictures I'm in here, it's because I had to take them myself, and I just couldn't get everything in. People often tell me that they wonder why I'm not in any of the photos, and it's because often I am alone, but also it's because I generally snap things I want to paint or that I think are artistic, and if I'm in the photo, I'm standing in the way of that. But here you have proof that I was there. I should also mention the reason for the picture of that lady on the plaque. I just liked her vision of what she wanted the practice of law to be, so I was hoping the text in this picture would turn out clearly, which I can see it did. The spider picture is especially for Ruby. I remember showing her a photo of this sculpture when it was first purchased by or donated to the National Gallery, and I totally forgot the thing was there. Ruby loves spiders, so I thought she would enjoy this sculpture. Also, the biting art picture is as good as I could get it. I think the type of glass they use in the gallery is supposed to obscure photos, but I wanted to try to show the intricate work done on this piece of bark. One indigenous group in Canada has this art form where the women put a piece of bark in their mouths and then literally bite these patterns into them. I find it quite remarkable since they can't see what they're doing and go totally by their tactile abilities. There was a series of these, but obviously it wasn't worth trying to get them all since they would have been equally as blurry.

https://picasaweb.google.com/113865747642168640464/Montreal?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCL6I_4HduZ2h2wE&feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/113865747642168640464/Ottawa?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCLGTxp_B-ciHOw&feat=directlink
 

5:44 AM | Permalink

April 19

Pit stop in Pittsburgh

I decided to make a pit stop in Pennsylvania before going on to Mexico. I basically called up my brother on Monday and said, hey, can I come tomorrow? What happened is that I found out my travel agent had been in the hospital for some reason, which is why she wasn't around to tell me she had booked a ticket for me to Mexico and my other destinations with the round-the-world ticket. So feeling that I was running out of time, I started checking into tickets myself online and realised that it would cost me almost no more money to stop over at my brother's on the way down to Mexico. Rather than using Montreal as my Canada base, I'm now using Pittsburgh as my North American base, which is nice because it means I get to visit my brother on my travels too.

I have to start looking into some other tickets here today and get booking some of them, but if you're wondering if I'm in some exotic place yet, I'm not--although it's much warmer here than it was in Montreal and Ottawa! The other good news is that I can get the photos off my camera at my brother's, so I should be able to put up a couple of photo albums within the next couple of days.

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="https://photos.gstatic.com/media/slideshow.swf" width="288" height="192" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=https%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2F113865747642168640464%2Falbumid%2F6182324705091442481%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26authkey%3DGv1sRgCJ3bnuLY4emoTg%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

 

7:41 AM | Permalink | Travel

April 17

Ottawa back to Montreal

I've finally managed some time to write here again. I'm certainly not keeping as up to date with this as I had imagined I would, but then you never really know how your time is going to go when you're travelling.

I went to Ottawa last Thursday and came back on Easter Sunday. I had a really excellent time there. My friend Dmitry lives in Ottawa with his wife Alexandra and two daughters, Mila and Roxana, who are cute as buttons. I had never met his new family before, so it was a great opportunity to get to know them. Dmitry and Alexandra's hospitality is excellent, and I really felt like I could make myself at home there.

 

While in Ottawa, I went to the Parliament buildings. Normally I'm not into seeing the big tourist attraction type things, but it's one of those things that a person should see in Ottawa. It's a very impressive structure, as well as the buildings that surround it. What I never realised was that the building was constructed in true Gothic-style architecture, which is probably my favourite architectural style. It is replete with blackening bricks and gargoyles, the latter of which you may find a couple as beavers! That was unexpected, but very cool! I also went to the National Gallery (Musée National des Beaux-Arts) where I saw some even more unexpected paintings, such as Monets, 3 van Goghs, a number of Degas, Cézannes, and a Sisley. Was I in tears? Almost. It was overwhelming to be in a room with all these impressionists' work. There were also some Andy Worhols, and I have to say that I find this kind of boring. One scultpure was a stack of wooden boxes painted the same as Brillo pad cartons from whatever decade it was, stacked 4 high and 2 wide. Yay. I think warehouses should market their stock as art and see how much money they make. The museum also had a lot of paintings, those kind of which are just a number of coloured stripes that look like some colour-blind person decided one day that (s)he too could be an artist. I used to make drawings with felt pens like that when I was bored in school using my loose-leaf, lined paper, and no one paid me one red dime for any of those, and at least my colours matched. So I've decided that I will do up a bunch of these when I get home and see how much money I can make off them. A person could whip up a number of those in a very short period of time. Oh, one cool sculpture was of a baby's head, but like giant, probably about 3X3 meters, and was really well done.

 

The other museum I went to was the Canadian War Museum, which has a really interesting exhibit on right now on propoganda. They had items from Japan, Mexico, Germany, Italy, the US, and Canada, pretty much all related to the WW1 and WW2. The exception was a couple from Spain, which were from the Spanish Civil War. It was fascinating to learn about the different types of propoganda used and how there were several ways in which it was incorporated into the every day, such as putting war-related drawings onto tea cups/pots, children's games, and matchstick books. It wasn't just all through posters and television.

 

Anyways, it was a fun trip. Dmitry made traditional Ukrainian Easter brunch on Sunday, which consisted of mashed potatoes with butter and fresh dill, smoked fish, caviar, bread, and salads of various kinds. It was quite tasty! I assume I'm on to Mexico tomorrow, but I'll have to confirm. MY travel agent wasn't very helpful, and I don't yet have a ticket. I may be back in Edmonton before you know it! I'm going to research today to find some tickets for myself and see what I can come up with. I'll let you know!

10:19 AM | Permalink | Travel

April 10

Finally a chance to write in Montreal

Well, here you find me situated in an Internet cafe where I have a bunch of time to sit and write. For those of you wondering what happened to me, I just haven't been around the Internet that much. At the last minute, I decided not to bring my laptop as I had forgotten how heavy it is to carry the darn thing, and I haven't had the chance to get to an Internet cafe very much. 

All flights to Montreal went well, and upon my arrival, Enrique took me out for a walking tour of the area in which he lives, which was super after sitting around on planes and in airports all day long. He currently lives in an area of Montreal called Outremont, home to cafes, boutiques, and a miscellany of other types of high to low-end stores. It is also home to a population of Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, and Hasidic Jews, the latter of whom, of course, are the most visibly noticeable with their black attire and wool derbies on top of yarmulkas with the long curls on either side of the face creating a dark frame. Well, the women don't look like that, but the men are quite noticeable, anyways. I hope to get a picture of some, but I feel a little nervous about takng photos of people because I don't want them to notice and get upset. 

Now I've heard many people say that Quebecers are unfriendly and that they didn't enjoy their trip to Montreal at all. I have never had that experience, and I was even treated to a free bagel in the best bagel shop in town because I was saying how good the New York ones were and that I had never tried the Montreal ones before. The guy in the shop overheard me and apparently felt he had to remedy this problem. The bagel was indeed extremely yummy: warm and chewy, the way I like them.

The following day, I managed to waste an hour trying to find an Internet cafe. I looked in the phonebook for addresses and could find none of them that were listed there. I decided to carry on with my original plan of checking out Chinatown, and sure enough, I found one within the first 5 minutes, just randomly. It never fails. Happly, this place was also a Vietnamese Restaurant where I had a soothing shrimp wonton soup with noodles. 

Since then, I've been out for more walks, hanging out with Lisa and Enrique's friends, brunching, window shopping in the underground shopping mall as well as other places, and just generally enjoying the beauty of Montreal's architecture. Last night I went out with my friend Vanessa to this place where a friend of hers was playing. He created this little performance that is set to two different silent films. The concept is basically that he has re-written the musical scores for these movies to be jazz music rather than the traditional piano pieces that were played in those days. It was pretty amazing. 

Today, Lisa and I are going to the Musée des Beaux-Arts to see an exhibit on Catherine the Great of Russia. It should be brilliant. I'll leave to Ottawa in a couple of days to visit my friend Dmitry, and then spend another day or two in Montreal before heading off to my next stop, Monterrey. 

8:56 AM | Read comments (1) | Permalink | Travel

March 29

The Transitions of My Life

When I used to volunteer with the International Centre here at the U of A, my favourite time of year was the Transitions Orientation program. It was a program designed to smoothe the transition that international students make when they come to Canada. Through that experience, I learned a lot about transitions, and I also came to realise how transitions are a huge part of all of our lives. We often use another name for it, though: change. For me, change is a dreadful word because it means that things will be different. Those of you that know me as an outgoing, adventure-seeking person should also be advised that this is not my natural proclivity. I prefer routine, and I would probably develop obsessive compulsive personality disorder if I wasn't forced into situations requiring great change in my life. God must know this, and he does it to me on purpose for whatever reason. Well who am I to question that? My mom will remember, though, that I would have schedules in my head--you think you have list-writing of tasks to complete every day as a peculiar behaviour, but mine was all in my head! Anyways, I always had my days planned out, what I was going to do at which time, and so on. If something disrupted that, it would cause great anxiety for me, and I didn't know how to deal with that. I refused to deal with it, hence my desire for more control over my life.

I have come to see that transitions are unavoidable, however unfortunate I may think it is. While some of the transitions in my life have been harder to accept than others, I know that it has also made me a different person, someone that has been able to learn a lot about herself and the world around her because of them. And let's face it, one of the greatest changes in my life was living in Mexico for a couple of years, and that is something that even goes beyond a blessing in my life. It is something that continues to bring joy to me, though I no longer live there, because of the people from Mexico that are still in my life. It's a beautiful thing.

The reason I write about transitions today is that I'm thinking a lot about them as I'm about to embark on my 4-month period of travelling. It should be a fascinating experience, fun at times, and exhausting at others. Who I will be when I return is a different story, and what will be waiting for me when I return cannot be divined. It's something I ponder a lot and wonder if anyone out there thinks about it too.

6:49 PM | Permalink

March posts from 2006

March 21

One for the money, two for the show

Yes, I do realise I'm really behind on uploading my pics. 'Nuff said. I'm hoping to add a few of the insane snow we received here, total accumulations of about 27cm, most of it falling within two days. As you can imagine, there were lots of accidents on the roads, although the most exciting thing I saw was two cop cars surrounding another car in an intersection while driving home at 3am Saturday night. The cops came out of each car aiming their guns. It would have been fun to stay and watch, except I really didn't feel like being an innocent bystander getting shot if bullets actually started flying.

My main entry today is about my show last night. OK, not really MY show. I was definitely not the star, but it was a show I was in for my musical theatre class. I really wish I had pictures of this, and I would definitely like to get a video copy if I can since I don't know what I actually looked like on stage. It's a little difficult to be on stage and see yourself at the same time.

The 10 weeks before this show had been preparation. I'd like to say serious preparation, but with so many things going on like always, I can't say I really practised as much as I should have, and I wish I would have been able to memorise all my speaking lines. Well, for one of my roles, I didn't get my lines until the night of the performance, so I can't really help it that I didn't memorise it. I'm sure no one minded, and if they did, oh well. The show went really well, I thought, for the little amount of practice that we had. I consider 9 classes not a whole lot of practice, not counting the amount of time we had in between each class. Let's not think about that. Although I guess if that was my job, I'd have less excuse. Anyways, it really turned out quite well, and I found the whole experience to be as fun as I hoped it would be. It helps to have great people to work with too. The instructors were patient, and there were a lot of talented people in the group. Thank you to those of you that were able to come--which I think most of you don't read my blog here, but hey, you never know.

2:20 PM | Read comments (1) | Permalink

March 13

So much for my pics

I was hoping to get my pictures posted last week, my cool winter ones, but I'm sure you've noticed they aren't there yet. I thought I would have free time, but between watching American Idol, going grocery shopping, to the gym, and not being home pretty much all weekend because I had so many activities going on, I haven't had a chance to upload them.

Anyways, being that I've been so busy, I am experiencing concomitant fatigue. My first day to catch up on sleep will be Saturday, by which time I'll have lacked proper sleep for 2 weeks. Those of you that are cram-style students may think this is lots, but I've been averaging about 6.5 hours of sleep per night, and it's simply not enough to function normally. I know I'm not that old, but I also know I'm not as young as I used to be. Well really, who am I kidding? I've always loved having at least 7 hours!

So this is a short one today, but I just wanted to provide a brief update. A la prochaine...

1:50 PM | Permalink

March 08

Winter Wonderland Weekend

For those of you that know me, you'll know by now that I am a poet, and alliteration is one of my favourite things to do; hence, my title. In any case, I spent the weekend up north, about a half hour west of Grande Prairie. The driving conditions were somewhat blinding in a few areas driving up there on the Friday, but fortunately, my mom and I drove during the day so we at least had the light of day on our side. To give you an idea, one of the small towns we pass by every time we take that highway is called Mayerthorpe, and when we drove up this time, we didn't even see it. The snow was so much that we never even saw the town at all. That was weird.

Anyways, the reason we went up north was to surprise my grandma for her 80th birthday party the family was throwing her. She was happy to see us for sure, and it was an excellent opportunity to see my cousins, some of whom I hadn't seen in a few years.

The scenery was spectacular. I do love my Peace Country, that region, but usually it's in the fall when all the colours are out. This time, we were treated to 2 days of beautiful white hoar frost, and the second day was even better because it was sunny, so the white looked brighter in the shining sun as well as having a blue background against which to contrast it. I was hoping to upload my pictures of that last night but didn't get around to it, so stay tuned for those, which I hope will be there soon. For those of you that don't know what hoar frost is, it's the frozen form of condensation that's left when you get fog in the winter. Something like that anyways. My meteorologist brother would probably roll his eyes at my explanation, but at least you get the idea.

Like I say, stay tuned for photos. I'll have them in a photo album along with pics of my family. Until later...

11:33 AM | Permalink

Finally, my blog entries

I was questioning what format would be best for my blog archives.  I've finally been able to get them into a Word format so I can open them on my computer and post them, and I think i will just copy and paste a few at a time for readers who may be interested in reading past entries.  I will highlight when I have posted about things that have corresponding photos in the photo album link.  These are copied and pasted as is with original fonts, only changing the font colour where necessary for enhanced readability.  Here are the first few with dates!

March 01

Perspectives on Employment

I'm usually a realist. Some people might call me negative, but I usually can't help but see multiple sides of a perspective. It's all my lovely training in theory, I guess. Yet from time to time, I find myself dabbling in the world of idealism, and in this case, it's looking for the perfect job. Now some people say it doesn't exist, but I'm not convinced that's true. Let's say you are a people person, and even more, a person that loves to help other people. You have a bit of an aptitude for biology and a decent memory, so you decide to be a nurse. You study that degree for 4 years, and come out and get a nursing job. Is not nursing the perfect job for you?

I feel, though, that this correlation is easily determined when one has trained to do something specifically, such as a nurse, engineer, teacher, or what have you. In my case, I haven't really been trained to do anything but think: theorise and analyse. There is certainly space for that, but usually only in academia, and that's somewhere you generally need to have a doctorate in order to enter. I don't want to give up the next few years of my life and savings for that purpose. So where else can I go? You may ask me what my other strengths are besides thinking, and they are clearly in music, art, and compassion. Music is probably the only alternative at this point, and it's not necessarily even a very viable one.

I see that my thoughts are becoming tangential. My question is this: what is the perfect job for a person with theoretical skills but not necessarily practical training? At the end of the day, you meet up with that classic cycle of not being able to get jobs that will give you this practical training that you need because you don't already posses it, but how are you going to get it if you can't get a job? All I can say for now is that if you or someone you know is looking for a person that can speak one or two languages other than English, is compassionate, espouses lifelong learning for both other people and herself, doesn't necessarily work the fastest but is detail-oriented, please talk to me. Travel is not an issue, nor where I live, although preferably somewhere with a theatre, opera, and salsa club, and I'm concerned only with making enough of a salary to pay my rent, buy some food, and take myself out from time to time--oh, and travel here and there.

For the time being, I remain...J

2:20 PM | Permalink

February 26

The Bridge on the River Kwai

I just watched the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai tonight, and I decided to write tonight to encourage other people to watch it if you haven't already. Don't ask me about the irony, but I do think it's a good movie all the while not really knowing what the message is that the director was trying to say. It's a little confusing. If any of you have watched it or have the desire to do so, it is one of the "classics," and I would appreciate comments or responses as to your insights about the movie. I feel just a little bewildered right now, so I'm hoping to gain some insights myself through a little discussion. What I did enjoy about the movie was the cultural differences between perspectives of honour and pride of British and Japanese military commanders. Anyways, please drop me a line if you have anything you want to tell me about this movie.

9:56 PM | Permalink | Entertainment

February 22

Album explained

You may be wondering what the heck the rainy street and lizard pictures are all about. I just wanted to include them to try to show how much rain would collect on my street during rainy season. The lizard was actually dead at the time I photographed it. Somehow, it died right on the wall of my apartment. It looked quite alive, but it really was dead. Eventually, the rain washed it off the wall, and it got eaten by maggots. That was pretty gross, although I'm sure the maggots weren't too unhappy about it.

3:53 PM | Permalink

New to MSN blogging

As though I need another hobby in my life. I usually write a lot as it is, but I decided to add yet another activity to my already full life. I figured this would be the best way for many people to keep updated about me since I'm still living a soap opera life and have many emails in which I would need to repeat these episodes. It also gives me to the opportunity to make a public "rant" from time to time. Not that anyone really could be that interested, but since I must be honest and admit that I like to hear myself speak, well, here is just another opportunity for that very thing.

For those of you in Mexico, students especially, I'm hoping to put up all of my class photos I took. I now have a functioning scanner, so anything I took that was on a normal camera, I will scan and post here, hopefully within the near future.

I'm not totally new to blogging because I kept a blog for my last job, but now I have a personal one. Oh, I should mention also that the other reason I wanted to start this blog is so that I'd have somewhere to post future pictures as I'm planning to travel for a bit within the next couple of months. Then you can keep up to date as to where I am and what it looks like where I am!

For now, I really need to shower and get some lunch, so until later...

12:48 PM | Permalink