fantasy holiday

yesterday:

on the way to godmother's, i asked about "ö". turns out we've been saying "örmagörd" a lot. dinner at godmother's was mostly nice, although uncle hate was being a right bastard and turned the salmon catching fire into an excuse to shame godmother's cooking - which is really good.

after dinner we walked to yeh!, and their raspberry / mango sorbet mix was AMAZING.

more disturbing than the vomit on the escalator at the metro station was gd reporting it and seeing the guy working the booth zip up his trousers as he stood up to respond.

...

i purchased final fantasy ix on psn last night, it's my first purchase and it seemed like a worthy one because i thought gd would like it. i started downloading it when it was already late, and it took longer than anticipated so my eyes were shutting long before i got to bed. i finally cleared the dishes and started reading dresden codak. it's stunning, but too many external references and i lose curiosity and just kinda buzz over whatever i miss...

---today:

so gd is not a gamer. i learned this this morning. turns out a combination of my wishful thinking and cognitive dissonance got in the way... after we'd established that, i received an email from my office informing me that i'll be starting work on monday, so that gives me a week of real holiday! obviously, i sat right down on the couch and fired up final fantasy again, this time with myself at the helm.

there's a lot less control than viii and not being able to save in a hurry is frustrating, but it's otherwise beautiful and cute and i'm looking forward to more. also, $10? worth it.

...

why is it not summer? what the hell is going on? it's been raining and miserable and chilly and it's mid-JULY already!

...

gd and i went to meet vfmp in the village, and we stopped at folies en vrac for wraps. their za'atar laffa was too hard, and their falafel too dry, but overall it was a tasty, solid lunch. we then sat down with vfmp for coffee, before deciding that it was too cold with the aircon. so we went outside, where the temperature had dropped and the wind had come up, so gd made her way home and we walked to sophie sucrée for damned good vegan cupcakes and tea.

[meta misunderstandings make for disturbing the peace]

vfmp and i had a long talk about political media bias, the arab-israeli conflict and what's going on over there right now, conservatives versus liberals and crowdsourced government. then i came home and [a weirdly upsetting and relieving discussion] and now shit's all good and i'm ready to relax.

just as soon as we get back from braving the cold to go shopping.

on the offensive - part ii

[... continued]

the woman working the metro counter was visibly in need of a verbal pat on the shoulder, the elderly woman ahead of me was driving her crazy. she's either demented or has never been in a metro station before... after i got through, she waddled back towards me from someone who couldn't help her.

"do you know how to get to the casino?" she asked, in french.
"not a clue," i responded. and proceeded to ponder casino ethics. only stupid people gamble, in my opinion. it's just not a past-time that makes any sense to me.

...

the plan had been to see godzilla, but neither gd nor i were up for it. we went to p.m. instead, where i found my stomache to be bigger than my eyes. it's kinda scary how much i ate, especially considering the belly ache after having eaten too much that afternoon.
we finished dinner at yeh! again; the insane crowds and impatience on grand prix saturday night were unsettling. shit, i hadn't even realized it was time for that yet!

i was so absolutely exhausted that i had difficulty maintaining balance, and we went to gd's where i shuffled into bed as soon as i could.

---sunday:

i woke up feeling marginally more human, and would incrementally feel better as my sudden sinusitis slowly went away. i spent the morning trying to repair gd's ubuntu installation and update mine while she gave private haircuts. she doesn't have a sound system in her cutting room so the telly was turned on eardrum-burstingly loud, i didn't even realize how bad it was until it hurt and i grabbed my netbook and ran to the bedroom. it wasn't even a case of turning the sound down: psychologically it was such a brutal experience that it would take a while before i was ready to go back in there :(

i couldn't fix her system - chrome displays in funny colours and flash doesn't work, so i eventually left flash uninstalled and told her to use firefox instead - but i at least sorted out mine. my netbook thought it was in israel and was unsuccessfully trying to update from middle eastern servers.

not that that should have been a problem :/

i did some work on my comic script, gd's brother arrived and we all went shopping. we had a good, cold-salad lunch and relaxed on her balcony for a while, and while she cut his hair i missioned to the pharmacy to pick something up for her. that way we wouldn't be stressed when we went to meet some friends of mine.

or so i thought.

---we were in good spirits as we arrived at berri-uqam, and were on our way out (approaching some police officers) arm in arm when some guy walking in the opposite direction closed in and shouldered gd as he passed. we stopped, shocked, and a few other people behind us stopped and stared as well; i thought he'd misjudged and simply not apologized, which in retrospect would be super weird for a canadian.
gd started saying something angrily, and i told her to let it go... which she did, and *then* told me that he'd actually hurt her.

*then* i was pissed, but by that time he'd disappeared around a corner. i spent the next while beating myself up over the incident and have been brooding on and off since. as we walked out i said to her, without really being convinced myself, that it might have been for the best. as the days have gone by, i've thought longer about the correct response and i can't decide between my first instinct - to run after him, hamstring him and drag him back by his ear to the police - and taking a "wonderfully nice guy" approach and trying to talk to the man.

either way, that shit's never gonna fly with me again.

---we met with my friends and did a serious ice cream and alcohol mission, twice each. at first i wasn't sure that we were all vibing, but an afternoon walking, drinking and sitting on a terrace quickly sorted that out.

weird note: mcauslan's griffon is not a proper griffon. i find that quite jarring.

gd and i came back to my place so i could shower and change, and we ended up having a long talk about the paranormal challenge. you see, she's apparently got a bit of a gift that i haven't mentioned because she's an obvious not-a-loony and she doesn't really talk about it. i'm not dismissive, but i am skeptical; i also believe that regardless of whether she's got second sight or not she's not irresponsible or harming anyone; i'm staying perched on the fence. what i have borne witness to is incredible sensitivity and intuition.
what we were discussing is how to go about setting up a scientifically valid test, if we get anywhere i'll be sure to share it here.
[otherwise, i'm not looking to argue with anyone about it. this is my journal, and i'm not interested in debating gd's powers or lack thereof. i am, however, happy to discuss possible, reasonable scientific methods to test for paranormal abilities and what would be considered a satisfactory demonstration.]

i had her in hysterics when i told her the story of my experience reporting a broken window while high in a charge office, i really need to remember to repeat that here sometime! it's been fifteen years, i guess i don't need to keep those days in the dark any more :P

we went back to her place, she put on hannibal and i sent lengthy criticism to supertongue on a draft of a slam poem of hers.

---monday:

it was a long night of weird dreams. i've heard from ric, who returned to south africa with his tail between his legs, and i'm extremely pleased to report that he's finally found a way to merge his i-was-pushed-into-law-by-my-parents profession with his desire to be a musician: he's created a record label and opened up a law firm specializing in music and the arts. i cannot begin to describe how proud i am of his progress! and how proud i am to have been a part of it.

[continued...]

poetry in motion

gd arrived just as i finished posting last night, and we discussed the issue with pulse. it's abso-bloody-lutely wonderful to be able to talk things out properly! we'd both been uncomfortable since our earlier discussion and we're both feeling good about things now. i made dinner while we talked, and once that was ready we sat down to watch in pursuit of happyness.

what a horrible movie! no, i mean it's a great movie, and a horrible, horrible story. i realize it's essentially a true story, but a lot of gardner's decisions were painful to watch.

---today:

we seriously overslept but the sleep was soooo good... unfortunately, the first act of the morning was blowing my nose and apparently tearing tissue in my nostril. it's really hurting :(

i arrived a bit late for my appointment with clam. it's an immigrant organization that's government run, but has a definitive refugee feel to it. as in, it feels like it's run by refugees, for refugees. i wasn't comfortable with the fact that they took all of my personal info to open a file for me just to answer a couple of questions. and those answers were not answered satisfactorily: i called up the immigration lawyer afterwards to double check and she explained to me why i'd been steered wrong.

later i'd receive an email from the recruitment agency with a suggestion along the same lines as clam's... but i just got off the phone with immigration canada (after a half-hour on hold) and they told me that what the lawyer said was correct. oh, man.

so i've asked the recruitment agency to inform the employer that there might be a delay and we'll see what happens.

---i'm less concerned about that than before before i got some good news - i passed the final interviews on tuesday! that's no guarantee of a job offer, but it's clearly positive and i'll hear back from them in a week. which should be more than enough time to figure out if this dream job is happening or not.

---i went to cafe l'artère to meet with rabbit, and we spent an unpressured few hours talking, criticizing and collaborating. some of the moments we shared were surreal; a couple of works she recited put me were literally stunning. i got some very interesting feedback, and what we walked out with might well be good for the finals in two weeks!

inflated ego

this is a shout-out to anyone who thinks of using crowd-funding to produce a book or a movie, from someone who's happily invested in a few projects. if the reward tiers don't make economic sense, sane people won't invest.

$25 for a digital copy of a movie? who the hell would pay that much to see it in the theatre?! $5 bucks is reasonable, $10 is understandable. but it doesn't matter how important or interesting you think your project is, that much is ridiculous!

and whoever thinks i'm going to pay $50 to get a chapter of an ebook or even more for the book itself is smoking some really, really good shit. again, even if the book does seem interesting, the reward tiers are totally unattractive.

more power to them if they succeed, but they could have done better, faster, and left a smaller chance for eventual investor dissatisfaction.

colder facts

well, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. -7? i can handle -7. -7 with wind? good lords, i thought i was going to die. it took me way too long to realize that my coat wasn't closed enough, and google maps voided some of the bus timing and i ended up standing and waiting in the wrong place for a while :(

what the hobbit had managed to help me forget came straight back as soon as i got home (i looked at my facebook feed): the massacre in connecticut today. you know, i don't even have an opinion about that. there're so many being flung around and i wouldn't dare to try to frame the reality with anything like an explanation or possible response.

bittersweet victory

the old-world institutions really need to give in to globalization and accept the idea that the internets are upon us. why the hell won't paypal israel let me purchase something and deliver it to myself in canada when my visa card has no problem with that?!

anyway, thank you backcountry.com for holding affordable snowboard gloves. i'm shocked that it's so bloody difficult to find them, and glad to hear that they should get here when the snow does ^_^

i *do* hope they fit :P

have home, won't travel

at least, i very much hope not :P

we got up early enough this morning to pay a visit to the tailor, purchase a kindle for pg at bureau et gros, and then head out to de la savane, the metro station with the awesome transformer-style giant metal fist through the wall that will from now on be the landmark that tells us we're home.

note 1: it was really, really cold today. we didn't realize how cold until i'd already made the wrong call and decided to wear just my jacket. a sweater would've made all the difference. a ski mask / scarf would've stopped my nose from freezing up. and winter hasn't even started yet.

note 2: when i bought my kindle, i was in south africa. i ordered it online, and two days later a package arrived at our doorstep. i was super excited and well impressed because, well, south african mail is not exactly world-class. pg ordered her kindle from canada, a first-world country on the same land mass as the place where kindles are produced, and only a couple of hours' drive from there. not only was it cheaper to buy it in the local store - no "international" shipping charges - but amazon's estimation was that if we didn't cancel our order it would arrive sometime in mid-december.

that's just ridiculous.

anyway, back to the story. we arrived at the head office (next door to our building), and spent ages pouring over the rental contract. it's pretty standard stuff, albeit refreshingly different from anything we're familiar with. unless you're in default, the law here really looks out for the tenant and it's quite generous.

so we eventually signed everything, and tomorrow morning we'll pick up our keys. the guarantee from my company is good enough that nobody needs to sign surety for us (an issue that k-twang had) and they took a single month's rent as deposit.

we were going to take a bus straight to ikea, but getting to the stop took a little too long (in the freezing cold and wet) so we turned back to subway for a good lunch and reorientation, then tried again. after the bus arrived, the few minutes walking to ikea were directly against the wind and bitterly cold. even inside the building it would take quite a while before we warmed up again.

ikea is ikea; we found a decent (and reasonably priced) sleeper couch quite quickly and moved on to a kitchen table and chairs. we went through the rest of the sections but that was all we were really interested in. we paid for the stuff and then went through to delivery to discover what a mistake having paid was... they can bring everything tomorrow (at a pretty steep cost for so little), but the window they'll arrive in is FOUR HOURS and they refuse to call before, meaning that we'll have to sit in the otherwise empty apartment for up to four hours.

and we don't even know if we'll be sleeping there tomorrow night; that depends on whether or not we manage to find bedclothes and towels.

my phone's not-quite-gps almost got us quite lost on the way home, and then i decided to get off the bus two stops too early, which in that cold and the rain wasn't a good call at all. eventually we made it back to the metro, then back home to dress warmer before going downtown for dinner and a movie.

i burned my lips on the tofu :(
otherwise, the meal was pretty good, and we had time for video games before the movie. pg didn't do so well with house of the dead, and i had a horrible experience with the ac/dc pinball machine (the ball kept getting stuck, not even tilting would release it), but we eventually found something we could both enjoy in dance, dance, revolution. that's a lot of exercise, though!

---we saw the man with the iron fists, which is made of win. that was a well-told story with great characters and a superb blend of iconic ye-olde chop-sockey and tarantino-esque. the only issue i had with it was that the narration was entirely anachronistic; freed slaves in those days just couldn't have talked like that.

but it didn't matter: it was visceral, gorgeous, and a whole lot of fun.

---the return home seemed warmer. we played with pg's kindle, which is much cooler than mine (hers is the standard kindle wi-fi, mine is the 3G) and we might have to do a swap at some stage (hers can use the french dictionary, mine not so much).

is that everything? it's been a long day and we have a busy one tomorrow as well.

a happily busy one ^_^

a full weekly - part iii

[... continued]

wednesday:

wednesday morning wasn't as ugh as usual, until i arrived on time to discover that class had been cancelled. fortunately, a flash of inspiration has struck on my way and i occupied myself with research for an hour or so before heading off to work.

i picked up a falafel on the way. i'd asked for a half-portion, and commented to that effect when i saw the guy stuffing a whole pita. he said "yes, yes, i know" and carried on, i paid the half-portion price and walked out, figuring that he used a smaller pita and feeling silly for not noticing the size difference. when i mentioned the experience in the office, the guys laughed and informed me that what i'd gotten was a full-portion.

i'm not exactly complaining, but that was strange, no?

i spent the day producing band-aid solutions, finally creating an on-the-fly interface for a system i'd hacked together recently and through it discovering some interesting bugs. interfaces and automation make qa better. i know this. i've had to fight to convince the others, who have finally begun to embrace one of my automated-qa solutions. but these things need time to build...

this evening, i knew where to purchase flowers and arrived home with a bunch of pink roses. i then went to the weekly creative writing meeting. that morning, on my way off campus, i'd cobbled together my answer to the homework assignment, and the response to my reading it was nothing short of glorious! the guys actually applauded, and i was extremely pleased. now that it's posted, i have to admit that i keep noticing bits that demand improvement, but i'm not entirely comfortable with modifying it.

it's not that there was too much candy on the table, it's that i could barely control myself and i consumed far more than i wanted. i left the place feeling a bit woozy on the sugar-rush :(

more hellsing, and bed.

---thursday:

my day began with enthusiasm for duolingo: they've just opened french lessons in beta. the idea is brilliant, and not only can i now say that the lessons are fun and well presented, but the fact that the translations you perform have an actual purpose is inspirational. it's kind of like the reverse of gamification.

on arriving on campus, i received a phone call from the boss informing me that the servers were down. it would take a couple of hours on the phone and remotely using my pitifully underpowered netbook, spread over the day, to determine that it was one of the hack-n-slash patches i'd been asked to perform that was killing everything. we don't know why, because the code all makes sense and everything *should* have worked, but because microsoft's azure doesn't provide basic connection information we had no way to determine who was at fault. all we know is that azure's table locking is the pits.

class: not to be a killjoy [said the killjoy], but bo burnham's sonnet 155 would be a lot funnier if shakespeare had written like that and if bo hadn't chosen to tack it on to the sonnet sequence. plenty of poets wrote sonnets that weren't numbered, and besides: his content more closely resembles barnfield.

---"just roll with it," said wordsworth, which made me recoil with disgust. "i don't roll with things that are wrong," i said, and continued silently to myself: "because doing that is what makes people mediocre."

later he annoyed me by stating that music theory is exactly like string theory, with absolutely no references whatsoever. and then i found myself arguing evolution with a couple of idiots because they don't get the difference between hypothesis and theory.

---of the stranger things that were occurring at work, scr informed me that someone had contacted the office looking for me. considering i am not officially employed by the company, this is in decidedly bad taste. when i called the person back, he was exceedingly unclear, talked in circles, and all i could get from him was that he'd found me through the company's website where i was listed as "freelance advisor". considering the fact that not even the ceos are listed on the company website, this is all wrong. the follow-up email that he sent me is incoherent at best.

*cue twilight zone theme*

---i must note here that throughout the week, girls both familiar and unknown have become increasingly flirtatious, some simply nodding and smiling at me and one even going so far as to tell me that she would be staring at me. i suspect the hair has something to do with it.

included in the list is a particularly foxy girl who was sitting near me while i was working; sometime after i overheard here telling a guy that she was too busy to talk and super-stressed because she was having her period, she moved over to my table and seemed only too happy to chat.

*scratches head*

pg tells me i'm imagining it.

[continued...]

probably saturday - part i

[post divided retroactively]

i've just given up on the work that i had to do - it's far more complex than i originally thought (and i originally knew it would be far more complex than my boss originally thought) - and i'm about ready to tackle other things that i'd rather be doing.

concerns for today: seminar paper rewriting, tons of reading, perhaps a little more sleeping, and fretting about the fact that my salary hasn't come in yet (now that my employer's finally paid, the freelancing organization's being dodgy).

*sigh*

---tuesday:

it began with a doubly difficult wake-up after getting to bed so late...

the bus ride was horrible. "to where?" the girl in the middle of the bus spat, and pg an i had to push past her to get to the plenty of room at the back. someone getting up early -and hurriedly - pushed past me just as the driver slammed on the brakes for a hard turn (that's the experience we pay for), and while i managed to catch myself it was at the cost of jamming my wrist backwards against a pole. after that i found a seat, and woefully nursed my wrist to the horrible twanging noise screeching out of the headphones of the person sitting in front of me.

french class: i was wasted, but it was enjoyable and productive nonetheless. i can't seem to stop being enthusiastic about actually learning stuff from someone who cares to teach it.

i spent a half an hour or so putting the finishing touches on my dummy paper just in case the advisor actually bothers to read it in spite of its status as mere placeholder. i was surprised by raindrops as i stepped out, wondering if my paper had brought the weather to ultra-weird. that's a joke, of course. but the weather remained weird throughout the week, switching between overly warm and cool and generally foggy.

i ate lunch at home, then carried off a chair lake gave me during one of our last encounters to give it to someone i studied with last year on my way to work.

i was broken by the time i arrived at work, at that point of exhaustion where work and hallucination were blending. and bad pressure from the boss made me gag. so i left as soon as i could, stopping only to sit with nystire over coffee and discuss practical future plans. i only realized later that i've been a bit of a jerk regarding his military trappings: if a man is happy with where he is or where it looks like he's going to be, then nobody has the right to judge him. not even me.

it wasn't quite rush hour when i left, but i still got good snowboard practice most of the way home.

i napped (kind of), ate, cleaned my wheels, then joined the rollerblading group. i'd missed the rain of mud from the sky, and the conditions were comfortably cool even though they were excessively dusty: by the time i got home my eyes were feeling sticky and my sinuses and chest were stuffed.

---wednesday:

on my way out the apartment i realized the extent of the mud-rain: all of the cars that had been out in the evening were (and still are, days later) completely covered in ick. yet another reason private car ownership isn't all that.

the morning's weather was perfect, and it felt like i was still in bed even though my eyes were open and my legs were reduced to falling one in front of the other. total dream-state - but it wasn't nice passing out in front of the professor. also, to make matter worse, i demonstrated the worst timing ever: "at least in the previous lessons i was able to get on with other things" isn't very ambiguous, and i said it *just* as she walked in :(

...

"a life well-lived is a catastrophe," i volunteered at one point, in response to a bunch of statements for which that seemed the only logical conclusion. "you're a pervert!" exclaimed the professor, with a smile on her face.

...

back at the office, starting the work day with lunch with the guys. the unprofessional with whom i usually find myself arguing with (and usually with the same reasons behind the argument, he's not much of a critical thinker) brought jack thompson to mind. that resulted in my note on videogame violence.

on the bus home, i was catching up with penny arcade. when i felt cold, i stopped reading to reach into my bag and pull out my penny arcade hoodie, and was smiling about that when i suddenly registered that i was wearing my penny arcade t-shirt too.

i had a quick nap, ate well and was super-tired when i left for the creative writing workshop. it's usually fun, but this time i presented the text i've been working on during my boring classes and i was extremely pleased with the feedback i received. i like seeing people touched by my work ^_^

[continued...]

not. my. day.

i got to work all excited after french class, only to discover a couple of minor bugs that kept me busy until i had to run to class again. it was in the middle of class that i got a phone call informing me that things weren't working...

... it's the class that's usually my favourite. nim, the girl who upset me on thursday? [i didn't even mention it, apparently. she kept cutting off the professor, and punctuated the rest of her sentences with "uh, huh?"s and "mmms" and "rights" - a little distracting]
i had a talk with her, which i'd been dreading both having and not having - i was certain the confrontation would be unpleasant, but the alternative was more of her behaviour. surprisingly, it seems to have gone alright. but the universe couldn't let it go at that, so it had her "teaching" us the whole lesson instead.

this is a girl who doesn't *get* what the class is about. we spent two hours pouring over uninteresting things that any idiot could find online, and in this case did. the highlight? she cited "the onion" as a source, not realizing that it's a parody site.

seriously.

...

straight back to work, there until 10pm. i got things basically functional, but the boss asked me to make some critical changes and holy crap, i've just spent two hours renaming fields in the database only to discover that i'd forgotten to incorporate a couple of changes made in the other office, potentially wasting hours of work when i don't *have* hours to spare. it's closing in on 1.40am and i haven't done the readings for the morning.

FUCK. and my outcry at my discovery woke pg :(
at least it seems that the bosses are happy with me. i'll tell you how much that's worth if i survive the day.

the down-wedding - part ii

... continued

friday:

a late-ish morning. i need to sleep more, not just lie in bed feeling tired. i started off visiting hardware dude to pick up cheap paint and a roller (that was more expensive than i was hoping), dropped that off at my apartment before bringing over a couple of things, switching from blades to shoes and heading back to clean the air-conditioner and paint. it took me a while to figure out that i have no clue how to clean the a/c, but fortunately i guessed right and ran it until it (apparently) cleaned itself.

painting was quick and painless, washing the roller afterwards was not. i pulled out all the nails and plastered in the holes, dusted quite a bit and then returned home to pick up my netbook and notes and head to coffeeholic for a great lunch, reading for sunday's exam and being exposed to an intriguing discussion of a class-action suit against strauss for producing the cream for their "milky" dessert range using fish-bones. the central issue is that some religious extremists have placed such crazy restrictions over and above those defined by the "kashrut" laws that they consider this mixture of fish and milk to be unkosher.

idiots.

not even the coffee could save me, and i returned for a quick shower and a nap that turned into the sleep of the dead - only pg felt i'd slept enough and made a monumental effort to drag me back from the nothing.

---i had a quick planning chat with my mum, sat agitated over dinner (i don't know why) and just before we left to the cinema i received an email that astounded me (translated from hebrew):

Hey totalwaste
What's going on.

I wanted to ask [of your dignity? in your estimation? from your sense of honour?] if possible and I thank [your dignity? your estimation? your sense of honour?] for your material in the English courses:
Shakespeare, Amercan [sic] Culture, Narrative Analysis and its tutorial, English Culture, Poetry Analysis and its tutorial, Introduction to Theory,

Thanks in advance

i haven't a clue who the sender is - the name on the mail claims "you can only go as far as you push" and the email address spells rubbish. so i don't have a clue who this is, nor what my dignity and honour have to do with anything, nor why they want my notes (or did they really mean material, like reading lists and pdfs?) for courses taken last semester, nor why i should even consider doing them any favours. i mean... wow.

---pg doesn't remember the smurfs. and i can't find them anywhere. except here. or here, where we can't buy them :/

we watched priest. priest frikkin' ROCKS. i don't remember where i read a review that made it seem like it suffered from crapiplotitus, but that's what i was expecting, not the exquisitely beautiful rendering of a fairly interesting combination of vampire narratives into a gorgeous mesh of comic and non-comic forms.

two previews formed an integral part of the priest experience. immortals looks breathtaking, and the upcoming remake of fright night excites me no end. if i haven't mentioned it before, i saw the original as a six year-old and it absolutely traumatized me, causing me to develop a deep fear of and lust for vampires during my formative years. this is gonna be good :D

---i just did the math - i'll have earned the cash to travel to south africa only by the month that i'll actually be there. that kinda complicates things :/

the down-wedding - part i

[post divided retroactively]

thursday:

could there have been any advantage to picking the wrong bus when i was already late? perhaps. i wasn't *really* in a hurry, and five minutes walking through and appreciating a city still half-asleep and beginning to stir at 10.45am was heart-warming. and almost tripping over a door, which in my experience is not a normal thing to find in the middle of the pavement, amused me.

a thought occurred: observing israelis talking on the phone, i'm beginning to suspect that a truly israeli cellular phone design would incorporate a phenomenally solid microphone and no earpiece. i think it's redundant here in enough cases to warrant some marketing consideration.

the place we met to study at is in a really nice little nook just off campus. the only people who showed up were myself and wordsworth, and a study group of three that primarily consists of reading notes because the other two hadn't been in class isn't particularly productive. the home-produced tea was delicious, our host's boyfriend crapping us out for putting our bare feet on their new couch was a bit weird.

quote of the day (completed in unison): huckleberry finn's plot was described as "a circular movement from a to b".
"the only movement i can think of that fits that description... "
"is a bowel movement"

i headed off to work, picking up a falafel on the way. this one was cheaper, larger, tastier, healthier and faster than western "fast food". the introduction of crap fast food into israel is a shame.

i had an argument with yogi about market research, which reminded me of nystire's link to let me google that for you. work was, to quote my boss, pretty blah. some jquery functionality that should be incredibly simple doesn't work. and that stinks.

i was totalled by the time i got up to leave, and i rested on the bus because i failed in my attempt to begin reading joseph conrad - heart of darkness. i had barely enough time to get ready before pg and i stepped out smartly dressed into the bright hot late afternoon sun... i had sweat patches on my back by the time we made it to the wedding shuttle.

as the years go by i find myself more and more estranged from certain people that i used to consider my friends. the bus ride had a few of those. it also took a long, long time to arrive. just before arriving, i discovered that i'd sat on chewing gum. in my nice black trousers. frack.

the wedding: substandard. beautiful venue, great food, but both the ceremony and the reception were a little too enthusiastically "traditional". highlights included contemplating the possible correlation between a shy bladder and an unhappy childhood, the sweets table, and the realization that i'd consumed far too much alcohol. fortunately [he says, sarcastically] the return shuttle only arrived at 2.30am so i had plenty of time to sober up for the relentless attack of the "oriental" music over the speakers in the bus. and not the bus driver's, either, but some ars relative of the bride who hijacked the microphone with his cellphone and maintained a stupid grin while refusing to lower the volume until the very end of our miserable journey. i really, *really* wanted to beat the snot out of him. judging by their reactions to the eventual raising of my voice, i think the austrians would have fully supported me.

pg was even more disappointed and irritated than i was after all of that, and tensions exploded on the way home and it took us a sleep before we could talk them down. *sigh*

---funny story: the guy whose book i reviewed? it turns out he's not just a friend of friends, he's the brother of one of them. it turns out that my assumption that he's "TheThinker" was correct (because it wasn't totally obvious</sarcasm>), and i'm amused that he strongly suspects me but wasn't entirely sure. i was certain he knew. either way, "Listen to me wannabe 'intellectual,'... I would recommend you therapy" after his assertion that he "[does] own a second degree in psychology" is just... well, if you want to read his book anyway, don't say you weren't warned.

[continued...]

the fire's still not out... - part i

[post divided retroactively]

it's been a long few days - and they've been good ones. not too conducive to writing things down, though...

---thursday:

i spent the two hours following my last post doing... nothing. i met up with wr on campus, and we would have talked about friday night's upcoming show (phototaxis) but were distracted by an amusing conversation with one of the girls in my class. we also met the phototaxis' cello player; she left a bit confused by our general randomness :P

i walked into class to discover that half the guys had been convinced i was australian. one of the girls wanted me to say "put another shrimp on the..." - for pete's sake! i'm NOT australian, so what difference does it make if i say it or an israeli does???
i felt like i'd walked into flight of the concords :/

i was accosted by a girl from my other class on the way back home - she hasn't gotten over monday's horror and is looking to vent even though we haven't had a chance to speak to the lecturer yet...

i tried reading on the bus, but i was too tired and slow to get anywhere. i got stuck in a short time-suck reading wired and chewing an apple until i realized that i had to be getting somewhere...

on my way out, i had a revelation! i suddenly remembered that the front panel of my pc has audio output jacks... i moved the cable from the back to the front and voilà! i have sound from my windows installation! so now i just have to switch the cable around whenever i boot into a different os. thank you, microsoft, for another fantastic win :/

i grabbed my dvd player, discs and a few beers and headed for the bus. i got off at the wrong stop, didn't listen to the directions i was given, and learned that bnei brak is more complex than i'd thought before finally giving in and following instructions until i found the place.

i was just as surprised as a bunch of my friends to learn that they know my classmate who was hosting us... botchman even ended up staying there afterwards. it was only at 3am the next morning that i received a phone call from the chemist asking if it was possible to keep the aforementioned classmate from the anime evenings because they'd had a *thing* in the past. i was almost as taken aback by this behaviour as i was by botchman's insensitivity to the bro code :S

we watched cowboy bebop: the movie - and it is stunning! my classmate and i amused ourselves by discussing some of its features in literature terms we've had forced down our throat; specifically laughing at mise en abîme in the form of the jack-o'-lanterns and witch costume :P

---friday:

i got to drive myself to florentine, where i had about half an hour or so to wait to meet with the girl who had my camera. in the meanwhile, i talked with the guy at the store about the fire and our pitiful political situation, then walked up and down the street eating sunflower seeds and chilling.

i picked out a cop for hooting unnecessarily in an urban area... should'a given himself a ticket, no?
he ignored me. surprise!

i felt a bit selfish after leaving the girl's place - she'd drawn more talk out of me about me than i could of her, and i have to admit that i'm curious as to why she's not talking about her shaved head and medical marijuana. but i'm not going to pry.

i took a shuttle back home, made a nuisance of myself when a couple turned their backs and walked from their dog relieving himself in the middle of the avenue, responded to a few comments (so people *do* read my blog?) and then turned in for the night.

[continued...]

another two days down - part ii

[... continued]

i scrambled home, but couldn't find my usual halloween makeup. instead of blacking my face out as i'd intended, all i could do was make it look like i was bleeding from my eyes, ears, and nose. apparently that was more than enough to freak out everyone around me, especially old ladies. i just hoped to be looking so hard done-by that even evil spirits would let me be :P

urchin's birthday party was pretty cool - what are the chances of meeting somebody else with a serious smiley tat? we had a surprising amount to talk about.
urchin has found a kitten; a decidedly cute one. we were discussing how inappropriate a pet can be as a gift, when it suddenly struck me that giving someone an infant / small child for their birthday would be very funny. also, giving someone a really drunk person - it's almost the same level of responsibility...

i had too much to drink last night.

today:

the morning began with the dream sketched above, and belly troubles. and a hangover. that lasted me most of the morning, even though i'd made sure to drink plenty of water before going to bed :S

i was feeling too down to smile today, and i think my arms were a bit stiff... from friday? weird. maybe it's from sleeping at funny angles.

i arrived on campus early, so i studied the library before class. i wasn't feeling good, and the first class reflected that perfectly.

the lunch break was chilled, i spoke to a couple of potential employers and learned (the hard way) about the orange salespeople.

---i don't like salesmen in general, but those on campus are a nasty bunch. it was easier to call the support number and i ended up with a better deal. i'm annoyed that i can't get the reduced student rates without upgrading my phone... having said that, it's a free upgrade to an iphone 4...

now i just need to figure out how to transfer all my important data from my n95.

a random saleswoman tried to attract my attention by shouting "green glasses!" at me, then couldn't understand why i simply walked past. i'm sorry, but you expect me to stop when you can't even think of me, for just a moment, as a person and not a target? frack off.

---i lay down on the grass to nap before the second class, but was disturbed by nystire - he called to ruin a surprise birthday party being planned. i mean... shit. i can't very well tell the organizers that he told me, because he intended well, but neither can i pretend that i didn't know. my only recourse is to organize my own... which i didn't want to do.

dammit.

the seminar was better, at least. i *have* to come to class prepared, because i *always* have something to say and i now realize just how suspicious my silence on thursday must have been :/
it has been insinuated that we should begin writing our abstracts... i think i may have a plan :)

the new guy is pretty cool - he's also a panic ensemble fan and he liked my shirt.

nystire called again while i was sorting out the material for the rest of the week, this time to ask about a piece of work that should've been checked three years ago and that was the responsibility of an idiot that couldn't make heads or tails of what he was doing. that aggravated me unnecessarily.

the sunset was stunning, though. i met up with pg, eventually wr joined us, and we all went to jerusalem to join the march against our degrading rights.

[continued...]

glazy - part i

[post divided retroactively]

hooooooooo boy. it's been a busy couple of days! and i don't have much time to write this down. i've just walked in, pulled my student card out of my mailbox (^_^), cracked open a beer and realized that i have to be outta here within the hour...

---
yesterday:

i began the day with an inappropriate shirt. it's usually not a problem, but my lecturer for two classes was wearing pink and the guy who interviewed me has a penchant for the colour as well... on the plus side, however, it made someone on the bus smile and laugh out loud :)

the first class was fine right until the last half an hour - i was sitting in the front row, and we were all freezing. i looked behind, and it was only us. too close to the air-conditioner. lesson learned.

i don't care if people looked at me funny: the first sunbeam i found i grabbed :)

after seeing the sports club with wr i went to be interviewed. i needed a seat and the place was packed, so i asked for and was given one by the people next to me.

---a minute before the interviewer arrived they decided that they needed it back. two of them were discussing the problem when the third, a Real Nice Guy, took command.
"of course we can take it back. we don't need to ask permission. just take it!"
i raised an eyebrow at the woman who needed it, who returned my look with an appropriate level of embarrassment. i got up and walked a few tables away where i found another chair.
when i got back, the woman thanked me, and the first guy apologized for the hassle. we'd only spoken in english up until this point; i guess they assumed i couldn't understand hebrew. the first guy then told the second, in hebrew, that it would be nice if he apologized too.
"i don't need to apologize! what for?"

charming.

---the interview seems to have gone well. it's a man i've worked with before and he can see the value of bringing me in, but while he's accepted me on my terms he's informed me that nothing is definite yet... tomorrow i'm supposed to hear if we're on, and even then i need to make a good connection with the CTO in order for it to be final.

i *really* hope this works out, because the deal is good for all of us and would save me from having to deal directly with the tax bureau.

i got off to a friendlier start with the all-girl class - they seeming to be warming up to each other as well as to me. i left that class with a *big* assignment, and the need to find a source for pratchett's explanation of the image production technique we employ: we allegedly work off the edges we've detected and fill in the textures afterwards. as our lecturer is a cultural anthropologist, he understandably mistrusts any metaphors for how the brain works.

i was informed of a work emergency right before the next class... bummer. the class itself was fantastic - a poetry reading by elaine feinstein. she's wonderful, and it was a great experience... but it wasn't easy to come up with questions for her afterwards.

when struck by sudden inspiration, i raised my hand and asked something that did, in fact, interest me. i asked if her husband's presence as a non-literary mind (he was a scientist) had any influence. i was pleased with her answer, but then she got a distant look and the session was called to a close.

i really hope it wasn't the lack of tact that did that :(

walking off campus into a beautiful autumn sunset made me fantastically comfortable with the world.

a sweet moment: an elderly woman on the bus producing a cd she'd burned for her friend.

one of my co-workers is a bit anti-social, although he seems nice enough. as part of the issue-detection process i had to ask him to check what processes were running on his machine.
"there's nothing interesting running."
i've never met anyone who could speak on behalf of the windows operating system, so i asked him to show me.
"yes, yes, of course i'm lying to you."

i really don't like the attitude. i don't like the fact that i had to explain to him that he has no clue what's running through my head and that his inference was not only incorrect but decidedly offensive. sheesh.
where do all these ultra-sensitive types come from?!

---then dr evil happened. since urchin called me up with the news his behaviour angers me even more - it turns out that the Big Deal stuff didn't happen, and that he simply needed to tell her to stop taking medication that she's on.

the bastard could have done that over the phone.

when she called him on his awful bedside manner, he made it worse by being flippant. wtf?!

---i hunted the bug until my eyes glazed over, and i carried myself home in zombie-state. pg and i started walking to the cinema... as we crossed ben gurion, a mangy-looking old woman caught my eye and began to raise her hand; i raised mine and smiled in greeting. she was displaying a photo of a pretty young woman; she received my acknowledgement with much pleasure, laughing loudly and mirthfully.

[continued...]

sleeprolling

i had a strange dream last night:
i caught a private investigator my ex-landlord had set onto me while he was going through my apartment, who didn't realize that the apartment belonged to me. eventually it occurred to me to record him admitting to being employed by the landlord, but only after he'd cleverly managed to talk me outside... i was trying to catch up to him when i bumped into someone i once went to school with, who continued to talk at me while i concentrated on taking a stupidly dangerous shortcut to catch up with the p.i.:
he followed me onto a narrow plank bridge [think tightrope] and pushed me. i barely managed to grab hold while kicking one of his feet out from under him, and he tumbled down to what i assume was his death.

the p.i. had disappeared.

...

back in the apartment, i sprayed a cockroach to death.

odd.

---i was woken up today by the guy i was supposed to be mastering graphics for, for an interesting chat wherein i talked myself out of about a grand for the job and turned a "mostly positive" into a "not so sure". i think i'd better go through the process of becoming a billable entity.

wr called me up to remind me that he'd invited me for breakfast at his new canteen... that demanded rolling, not walking. because i'm not feeling up to much, i bladed with minimal effort and had an enjoyable breakfast after eventually finding the place - at least i'm finding it funny that he's so bad with directions :P

i responded really badly to a situation that demanded an immediate and positive response (simple, really - "can we share your table?"), and my hesitation alienated the people involved and left me with a bad taste in my mouth :(

another slow roll to work, zombie-style, and i spent the day in my janitor closet reading the adventures of roger wilco. okay, i only managed to read the first volume while waiting for my mentor to get out of his meeting...

a quick explanation of the above paragraph: i've been assigned a workstation. it really is in an office so tiny that it's been used as storage space, so i'm sharing it with a vacuum cleaner (we take up about the same amount of space). one of the managers walked up to the door (i would've said walked in, but that's a rather tricky feat) and called me roger wilco, inciting me to hunt for a poster and find the afore-linked-to comics ^_^

most of the workday was consumed by setting up my development environments (with plenty of hassles) and testing the first change i'd made. then i got caught up with trying to find a decent search extension for mediawiki: nada. the only one that appears alright is sphinx, and that's way to much admin work for li'l ol' me - i'm not getting adventurous with company servers :P

towards the end of the day i overheard someone saying "vengeance is a dish best served cold", and auto-responded with "no, vengeance is best served in a stew" :)
[while ascertaining that i can claim that, i stumbled across a cute short story]

once again physically wasted, i slowly zombie-rolled my way home. i'm now waiting for a friend to come and look at the apartment, hoping that he's going to want to house-sit for me.

---how nice: my being an ex-smoker raises the cancer risk from my bellyache.

this little american-japanese girl is going to be one to keep an eye on - she's amazing! (and she has a whole channel of crazy shit).

psyched!

i picked up the guitar this morning, and my hands just weren't being useful. instead, i put them to work on my project, got somewhere interesting, then took a walk to the guys in charge of the shuttles while arranging for tickets to k's choice to be bought.

the cute blonde girl took a few moments to understand what i was getting at, but once she did she was quick to agree with me and sent out a memo :)

i sat with tahoma and nyah-nyah, eating delicious strawberries and sharing the shock of our pointy-haired boss' dodgy behaviour, then headed off base for the day.

i adopted a private for the duration of my travels (most of the way) to the psychologist; sweet kid, i hope he does okay.

i walked in to wait, then walked straight out to sit in the park for half an hour. even if i hadn't arrived early, i was ignored, nothing was clear and the waiting room was a furnace. eventually i was called in...

i don't recall how much time passed, but it felt like forever. the poor woman didn't realize how much i can talk - and this was just an introductory referral session. by the end of it, she was severely concerned that with my story* i haven't been using their services since i joined.

* or fragments of it, as there's a whole bunch i'm not sharing with her; as i told her, i see them as just as much a part of the military system as the suits

it was a bit relieving, even if we didn't get anywhere. talking cure? i wonder if the cure isn't in the act of putting whatever troubles one has into the therapy framework - now that i have somewhere to deal with it, i don't need to worry about it when i'm not "being treated".

i took the right bus in the wrong direction, got off at the next stop and waited five for the next one. once in tel aviv i walked a bit to catch the next bus - it was a lovely day - and was home with just enough time for a snack before going to physiotherapy. i missed every single bus on the way, but that gave me time to consume my falafel :P

i think it was a good physio session. i hopped on a bus to the university, and ten seconds after walking through the gate i experienced the "i'm home" sensation :D
wr sorted me out with a good cup of coffee while i browsed through his notes on post-modernism; i realize that i'm a bit ahead of the curve since last year's venture into hillman and in praise of doubt, and i'm gladdened by that.

when he was done working and we'd sat on his notes for a bit, we made to leave and were halted by a girl he knows and a friend of hers... we ended up sitting and chatting for about an hour, and the conversation spilled over into the bus ride home. it felt like half the bus was participating, all students and everyone still in study mode (or studying with books on laps) - a guy behind me mentioned "spiritual paedophilia" while talking to the girl next to him, and i couldn't hear that without context and not butt in to save myself an aneurysm: "what the hell is that?"

i got off shortly after the explanatory debate moved on to philosophical quandaries, completely on a high and excited to be rejoining that world ^_^

i didn't have much time before the guys rocked up for munchkin: it was a relatively quick and very high-powered game. i loaded the washing machine and showered when the guys left, began writing this and am about to get into bed.

---wow - i'm registering for tau and i'm already a fully-fledged member of the tau. who knew?

unpleasant vindication

i'm blown away. stunned. shocked. kinda hurt. isn't vindication supposed to be a good feeling?

just over a month ago we had an apartment conversation [25th august], which was incredibly unpleasant. i was told i needed to "compromise" (meaning live in a pigsty and do all the chores without complaining), and was made out by spot to be the bad guy.

it turns out that spot had already been fired before that conversation, and has been lying to us non-stop since. so not only has he been unpleasant, unhelpful and smelly (to the point where people won't enter our apartment unless we promise that his door's been closed a while), but he also hasn't been working and we only have another week before rent is due.

and don't think that he's been scrimping the last while. oh no. he's been going out a lot, hasn't had any time to do the laundry or dishes, and has spent wads of cash on poker nights. i'm sorry, i just don't understand.

and how did we discover that spot's been fired? happenstance. not out of spot's mouth. so in addition to us being upset about him lying all the time about the stupid stuff, there was this whopper waiting in the sidelines.

i have a headache.

chief crazy work-horse

the kid and i just got back from cafeneto - extremely therapeutic. things with sunshine seem alright, and the kid participates when i let off steam... he's like a good therapist :P

today started off dodgy - the anguish begun the day before hasn't abated, and until a couple of hours ago things have just been snowballing (as in getting bigger and bigger, not as in clerks).

it was a mission to get piles to help me take the plastic bottles to the recycling bin this morning. once we were done, i specifically told him - twice to make sure - NOT to throw away the packet. the kid and i were laughing now about the stupid, completely uncomprehending look he gives. halfway back to the office i registered that he wasn't carrying anything.
"what the $#@! did you do with the packet?"
he looks at me totally innocently: "i threw it away. why do you ask?"

most of what i recall from my army day (due to some memory-suppression) is playing spider solitaire. i started the day watching demo videos of ruby on rails with brother bear - friggin' insane, the things they do. it's impressive as hell, and i hope i don't find an excuse to have to use it (i don't do web dev. even when i do, i don't).

in the afternoon, i managed to catch our branch officer earlier than i'd expected. we sat organizing, but there was yet another screw-up on the receiving end and it's out of our control as usual. this is all very frustrating, as i write this i have exactly 1 week and 6 days to go before my release. this is a another tense period of my life.

i organized entry permission for a friend who used to serve on our base, and we milled around for about half an hour before i got back to my solitaire. the late afternoon was a bit of a blur of interesting work-related discussions and me stressing.

-- lying to the cute, well-intentioned girl on the bus --

i hopped off the bus, and walked through to meet ru55's girlfriend and pick up my calculus book. it's bloody heavy. we chatted for 50 seconds, and then i made my way to work (bumping into my tallest's ex, turns out she lives in the area).

my mother sent me an email laughing at me for my idea of studying engineering: most of my family on my mother's side are either in that or medicine :P

work SUCKED. i've now gotten most of it out of my system, the remainder of the evening was insane because my manager was almost as pissed off as me, and demanded that i call the guy - i had to learn his name, find his phone number (harassing a girl i've never met in order to get it), and eventually settle for mass emailing anyway. all this while handling mmf's RFIs (he's tampering with a website) and SxS's girl-friend trying to set me up with some french girl.

the final straw, when i was running late for the bus, was getting into the elevator and feeling something sharp in the middle of my back. i tested with my hand, and there was definitely something bothering me (my heavy bag on my back, not smart to not deal with it). so i hurriedly dropped my bag and was halfway through ripping off the windbreaker when the elevator doors opened.
so i moved my little mission to the foyer, where the guard stared at me in disbelief as i, in disbelief, removed a thick, inch-long nail from centre of the windbreaker's back.

how it got there is an absolute mystery to me, but it's the perfect physical embodiment of where my head's at. i handed the bent nail to the guard as i left, and just made the bus.

inpassing.org is excellent