Some random thoughts:

It's a mixture of newly found (and even more newly lost) wealth and centuries of poverty. The poverty might have been a blessing in disguise though since Dublin has less of the awful Cold War architecture than in most cities (on account that they couldn't afford them).

The story of struggle is written in almost every building and every street - bullet holes in some places, remnants of the imperial symbol in others. Towering Anglican cathedrals in a Catholic-majority city. Despite that, the famous Irish hospitality can be seen even in the tourist areas (though not, alas, in Tourist Info). First time I got offered a personal tour by a priest.

Music and beer flowed freely at all times and the intermingling could best be seen in their coinage and from the Guinness symbol.

I've been on a theater frenzy lately. Seen two plays and a musical in the last two weeks. Reasons to be Pretty and Exit the King on Broadway. Sound of Music at the Princess of Wales Theater here in Toronto.

Definitely recommend Exit the King. Hope Geoffrey Rush wins the Tony for Best Actor. Susan Sarandon was also excellent as the Queen. Sound of Music was beautifully executed in terms of set and background, but compared to the superb script and acting of Exit the King, as well as the fluffiness of the theme, it came out lacking something. Unfortunately, the weak Maria and Captain did not help.

Will see another musical this Tuesday - We Will Rock You. And I'm planning to see The Tempest at High Park this year. Which means that I will see six plays/musicals this year. I also saw Kabuki and Nohgaku in Japan around this time last year...

So the gods my money will go to in the future are gastronomy, literature, fashion, and now theater. I need to find a new career.

On writing today:



An extra 1000 words (okay, one hundred of those are notes, regardless...). Hopefully I'll key in a few more hundred before I go to bed.

Was very productive today:

Did lots of weeding. Did you know the taproot of dandelion is about a foot long? No wonder they're so hard to eradicate.

Found out what's wrong with the family computer. Windows XP before SP2 sucks! Cannot read hard drives over 130 GB. Which means my Hard Drive space lost half its capacity. Go figure. Need to find a Vista.

And finally:



This is despite sleeping for about 14 hours...anyway cheers to me.

Oh, also found a tenant to sublet apartment for summer. Yay!

I know that it's silly to update with another progress report since it has only been a few hours, but knowing me, it'll be another month before I update. And I am quite proud of myself as I wrote over a thousand words today. Yay me!

Okay, it's not a lot for a month, but considering I've been doing my practicum for most of the time in between I'm happy. And I actually have a plot now! >_<

I'm currently in Ottawa trying to get rid of my bedroom (as I signed a lease until August 31st). It's unbelievably irritating to pay $622/month for an apartment you're not using. I've come to the conclusion that I really don't like renting/letting apartments. I hated looking for apartments, I hated the negotiation involved, and now I hate the process of looking for subletters. This makes me believe that I am meant to be rich so I either a. own my own place or b. have minions do the walking around and paperwork for me. Too bad my profession is not generally correlated with wealth :(. Right now, I'm dreading doing this all over again when I get to England.

Started a story for Hermione Big Bang and reached 1000 words. I'm quite happy about that. The minimum word count is 20 000 words by July, That's 16 weeks from now. Which means I have to write a little more than 1000 words a week to reach that. I'm not sure about my ideas or voice since it's ages since I've last written. However, I've wanted to join a fest for a long time since a clear deadline is a great push. Also, fics get illustrated, which is very cool. I'm going to post with updates every 1000 words or so to keep encouraging myself. Especially since the word meter is gorgeous.

I spent $80 on a teapot and its teacups today.  And I want to go buy more.

It's weird how my experiences in Japan has changed me.  The most obvious (to me) is that of aesthetics.  I have a greater appreciation for appearances now.  From a Western point of view, that's usually negative - it's associated with superficiality and consumerism. 

From a Japanese point of view though, if you can't even bother with the appearances, how can I trust what's inside?  Also, beauty is appreciated with the understanding that it's ephemeral.  And the Japanese appreciation of beauty means that 1. they try harder to maintain and preserve beauty and 2. they appreciate beauty in places where we just see ugliness.

What does that mean?

I am fascinated by fashion and feel like I should dress well even to go to the grocery store.  In fact,  I find myself decidedly irritated if I am unkempt.

I appreciate the seasons more.  A lot of foreigners deride the Japanese' focus on their four seasons.  After all, a lot of countries have four seasons.  But the appreciation is decidedly Japanese.  I notice the passing of the seasons more.  I find it irritating that there are no "seasonal cards" in the stationary shops.  I walk along sidewalks with mud splattered snow, and admire the few white patches that exist.

And finally, I am increasingly aware that food should be presented well as well as taste well.  And far above the presentation of food, is the presentation of tea.

And though some of this newfound appreciation is expensive (esp. fashion), I value it so I don't regret it.  Life is a lot more beautiful now.   Or perhaps life was always beautiful, but I was half blind before.  Now my eyes have been opened.

Now the only question is why I didn't adopt the Japanese punctuality as well.

The Big Read

(This has been floating around in the blogosphere so I thought I'd post it myself)

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. How do you do?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'ubervilles
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Note:  I bolded some that I gave up before the last two chapters.  I also didn't bold the ones that I've read half of then chucked (Life of Pi) .  I've also undoubtedly forgotten some of them since even the ones I've bolded and remember reading, I don't really remember the contents of.

2009 New Year's Resolution

My New Year's Resolution is to write at least 500 words per day. That's a sickeningly small amount of words, so I have no excuses for not fulfilling that criteria. It must be done each day, none of the cumulative nonsense. Topics can be varied though the end goal is to focus on writing fiction or essays rather than blathering as this entry is shaping up to be.

Reasons:

One, I'm not really happy about my life plans. I'm not unhappy, and my current situation is certainly comfortable. But I am 24. An end goal of comfortable is short-sighted and thirty years down the line I see myself regretting settling for comfortable. Writing will hopefully clarify my thoughts. Writing is also a productive activity and will hopefully motivate me to do other things. Plus, I really want to give writing a chance since the successful writer's lifestyle appeals to me. Note the successful part – frankly, the unsuccessful author's lifestyle sounds very uncomfortable.

Two, I'm extremely lazy. I want to change that. To some extent at least. While I don't see sloth as a cardinal sin, when my laziness severely hinders my potential, I need to reexamine my laziness. I don't need to be the most hardworking person I know. However, it would be nice to work hard for my own future at least once in my life. Not being the laziest person I know is also a goal that I should probably strive for. If I have to be the “most” something, “most beautiful”, “most intelligent”, “most dedicated”, “most almost anything” is better than “most lazy”. This New Year's resolution requires that I stick to a task that is not hard, but requires that I overcome my natural laziness.

Now next question...should the 500 words be written at one time, or can I do it throughout the day? Instinctively, I believe that it should be done all at once. Furthermore, it should not be used in a communicative sense (ie. facebook, email, school work). After all, those must be done at some point regardless. This should, initially at least, only have myself as an audience. It should also be one piece of work at a time. For example, 100 words on five different stories would not count. I would only find myself with hundreds of unfinished notes in my computer. However, if I finish one piece and want to start or continue another, that is certainly my privilege.

In summary:

1.500 words a day (minimum, not maximum)
2.non-cumulative
3.must be written at one time non-stop except for unavoidable reasons
4.not required
5.one piece of work at a time

Ideas for Content:
journal entries – the simplest by far
stories – the most intriguing though I don't have any ideas right now. Should look up old stories.
letters to the editor
essays outside of what is required from school (can use it for extra credit)

I feel bad - the only time I update is to post a new quiz result...oh well, at least I don't spam people's friendlists.


My Personality

Neuroticism	52
Extraversion	25
Openness to Experience	58
Agreeableness	41
Conscientiousness	7

You are a calm person who is considered almost fearless by some, however you feel strong cravings and urges that you have difficulty resisting. You tend to prefer short-term pleasures and rewards over long-term consequences. People generally perceive you as distant and reserved, and you do not usually reach out to others. You tend not to express your emotions openly and are sometimes not even aware of your own feelings. You are mostly a compassionate person, however you prefer to make objective judgments when possible, however you feel superior to those around you and sometimes tend to be seen as arrogant by other people. You are not an overly cautious person. You will think about alternatives and consequences but make up your mind fairly quickly.

Take a Personality Test now or view the full Personality Report. The best UGG Boots.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central   "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West
The Midland
Boston
The Inland North
The South
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

25% Yankee

5% Dixie

5% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

Interesting. I can't find a Canadian one and some of the questions are irrelevant, but tell me how you do.

Masculine You scored 56 masculinity and 36 femininity!

You scored high on masculinity and low on femininity. You have a traditionally masculine personality.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on masculinity You scored higher than 99% on femininity

Link: The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test written by weirdscience on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

After reading, please comment on whether I should send this to my MPP's office? I am slightly thankful that they referrred me (finally) to someone who could help. I'm more irked by the lack of confidence and ability my MPP displayed to the extent that they referred me to their sworn enemy.

---

I have been collecting pins from various levels of government. I currently have cute pins with Canadian flags on them and vulgar gold pins with the Toronto City Hall on them. I was missing something to represent the richest and arguably most powerful province of the Dominion. Being a stalvart Ontarian, I didn't want my province to miss out on getting good press in front of Japanese schoolchildren (The fact that I will have more prizes to give out hence securing affections of said schoolchildren is absolutely irrelevant).

On the hunt for Trillium pins, I have tried emailing my MPP with no results. After a few weeks, googled again. Turned out the email was from his campaign (which is still the first site that pops up on google AND on the official provincial NDP website) and he has a new number/email now that he's an MPP (quite a few entries down the list on google search).

Fine.

Called his Queen's Park Office. TWO WEEKS later (got immediate reply either day of or next day from MPP and counsellor btw), someone returned my phone call. Turns out there's only one person working there and she checks the voicemail once a month. Stupid me not to have realized that. Was given the Constituency Office's number.

Fine.

Called Constituency Office. They're closed on Fridays.

Fine. With Clenched Teeth.

Called Constituency Office on Tuesday. Got a real live person - whoopee! I thought I had gotten the jackpot. Until I was put on hold - when the lady returned, she said that she didn't have anything since they're a new office, but I can call my MP's office if I want to. Explained to her that I had called MP - MP was very generous and will continue to get my family's support, but I want some token from Ontario, government that gets 7% of my sales tax and another big percentage of my parents income tax. She repeated that they have nothing and gave me another number to call.

Not Fine, but Might As Well Call.

Number Got me to Queen's Park Office - Again. Also checked out Constituency Office's phone number again - same phone number as old MPP who had been MPP of riding for last decade (same party and probably same supporters of current MPP). Where did old stuff go? To the trash? I don't think so.

Peeved Off

Called Constituency Office again and told them Queen's Park had referred me to them. They told me to call
...
(anticipatory silence)
...
George Smitherman's Office!!! (Anyone who guessed that gets a pin!)

Just Puzzled and Bemused

For those who don't know, George Smitherman is in no way related to me or my riding. He's not even the same party as my lovely MPP. That said, called Dear Old George. Did not mention that I wasn't his constituent. Got Pins! Go Liberals! (Might add that by this time I was not feeling all that happy so I did twisted their arms a bit - emphasized that both federal and municipal have done their share; when asked how many pins I want I said "Well, my MP gave me 50, my counsellor gave me 40, I guess it depends on how generous the Province of Ontario wants to be." Message Conveyed. Got 50.)

Feeling Warm Fuzzy Feelings for Liberals

Will pick them up today/tomorrow. I leave with the understanding that the Liberals, even though not my MPP, will help me more than the more ethical but absolutely helpless/useless/waste of space and money NDP. Guess who's getting my vote, and, if I have any say, my extended family's vote next election?

Oops, forgot to give him shoes. Also erased the frame and added some snow ;).

Okay, not the most original. My taste in guys runs towards the traditional. Then again, when there's beauty, who needs originality?

Have been spending the last hour reading old acquaintances blogs. Met up with EC and she gave me a link to her blog which had a link to other peoples blogs from my old high school which just led to hours of fun. Before I forget, EC fun meeting up with you! And your blog was awesome. Too bad other people's were...interesting in a different sort of way.

In general, I find most of them funny. Call me mean, but knowing that other people's lives are worse than mine makes me happier. Of course, finding stupid people whose lives are better than mine also makes me kind of peeved off. But then I can just laugh at their stupidity.

Though it's kind of sad that I'm getting cheap thrills through snickering at other people's blogs. But don't worry, if you're my friend, I generally don't snicker. Or laugh. I might smirk once in a while but thats it. Plus, if your blog is really that snickerworthy, I'll be rethinking our friendship right now. Thankfully, most of my friends have only earned a few smirks.

But as I said before, its kind of sad that I can be amused by this. Especially since some of those blogs were friend-locked and I actually had to google cache them to read the entries. Fun though. Plus the challenge gave me a voracious thrill. I really need a life.

Okay, there was a point to this entry. I just realized that a lot of people in my generation are religious. Extremely religious. As in, every blog entry contains a reference to their Lord Jesus Christ and thanks to their Lord Jesus Christ and protestations re: their faith to their Lord Jesus Christ. I'm talking about at least three and a fourth borderline case here. That made up about a third of the blogs I read. Since most atheists I know are kind of apathetic and the religious bloggers seem very active, I see a comeback of theocracies.

P.S. I'm not bashing religion or those who are religious, I'm just bashing people who feel compelled to mention their Lord Jesus Christ five times every entry. If you are offended, feel free to bash the fact that I have nothing else to do other than read other people's blogs and bash them.