I thought that these were cool for comparisons of where I've lived in the past year:
Singapore:
http://vimeo.com/zweizwei/singapore
Toronto:
http://vimeo.com/63647331
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
I'm Baaack (To Writing)
Arrrrg, I'm back.
Ok, look here friends. They tried to scare the wits out of us in teacher's college about having any sort of online identity, especially one that could be connected to political affiliations and that really got into my bones. I felt like, I can blog about living overseas and try to keep that politically neutral cause I'mma be living in a country where I don't vote so I can't be all that political cause I frankly have no right to say anything there anyways. But I'm getting that creeping feeling in my belly and that itchy feeling in my fingers and it's been there for a while now and I just miss writing. So, I'm gonna. Yay! I'm going to hope that this is like in sex ed class when they told us that if we ever lost our virginity to someone who wasn't our husband we would immediately get genital warts, AIDS and syphilis and our junk would rot off. Or that if we ever so much as took a puff of a joint we would descend into immediate drug-induced hysteria and likely leap off a building. Let's just hope it's like that.
M'kay. I've got soooo much I've wanted to write about and I am just going to stick with like one thing today I think. Well, one thing that will bleed into the other things. I'll get to my life and all that jazz later on, but for now I want to talk about I guess we'll say Margaret Thatcher, feminism and my scary creeping middle aged conservatism. Aiyah, that's a lot.
To start, Margaret Thatcher, she died. Y'all know that by now. And I've seen lots and lots of vitriol and rage on my facebook newsfeed and people just straight up getting their glee on that Maggie kicked it. So I was all like, dude, I don't know enough about this lady to be informed (tangent time!!)
**Tangent: since my return to Canada I feel like I have had this plug that I am trying to put back into this giant switchboard I call political awareness that I literally unplugged for two years while I was away. I mean sure, I followed the elections in Canada and the States, in fact I watched ALL of the presidential debates, which I probably wouldn't have done if I'd been here in the land of the maple, but I did not get active about things, I did not participate in much political discourse and I think to an extent I shut off my critical thinking rage machine that I call my brain. Coming back to Canada I've slowly been plugging back in, one small prong at a time, but I feel like I'm sort of changed by the whole thing too, which will likely be something I discuss in tangent two!**
And so I went and read a little bit about Maggie and watched an interview with her from the CBC archives. Here's the thing. I don't necessarily get on the hating her bandwagon. For two reasons. The first is that I am a feminist. And as a feminist, I honestly and wholeheartedly wish to support women's right to make their own choices. Which sucks sometimes if I'm honest, cause women being people, they make some TERRIBLE ASS choices sometimes with that freedom that has been fought for. Thatcher pretty much being an example of this very notion.
Look, the lady was the fist female Prime Minister. And not in like, 1999 or whatever when we had the Spice Girls and a more mainstream notion of female empowerment. We are talking about when shit was pretty damn awful for da ladies. I mean, it still is, they still talk more about Hilary Clinton's hairstyles and choices of pantsuits in the media than her politics or ideology. So for that, Margaret Thatcher is a badass.
As well, I think she deserves some kudos for being a bitch, unflinchingly. In the words of Tina Fey, bitches get shit done. I think it takes some courage to be an outspoken woman who isn't liked, because our language simply has more heinous vocabulary at its disposal to hurl at you, and that builds some pathways in your brain that are a lot easier to go down when you need to articulate how terribly you loathe a person and I'm sure that doesn't lend itself well to people being kind to those of us with the boobs. If that makes sense.
Finally, and this is tangent two, I'm afraid I am becoming sort of a conservative. Which my Dad always told me would happen when I got older and I had dreadlocks and a tattoo and was like NEVER but I'm getting worried that I am anyways. Cause I was listening to this interview with her, and she's been set up as this paragon of evil, yet what she's saying is making some sense to me a little bit.
I don't think I've explored this or read enough about so I'll just talk about what I think is leading to here. It's contrast.
In Asia, where I was, people don't get shit from the government. Which is in some ways truly horrible. Elderly people, I'm talking 88 year old aunties with hunchbacks and sorrow in their eyes are cleaning up your tray at McDonald's because there is no social security and she needs to do that to work. Or someone who is blind is sitting on the pavement at this gleaming plastic mall where people are blowing hundreds of dollars on Angry Birds merchandise singing for crack change because that's all he can really do in this world he is living in. However. You don't have people on the bus talking about their parole officer being an asshole for wanting them to go see an addictions counsellor in the same conversation where the quest to score some stuff, dumpster diving and how crappy the cellphone that the government bought for them is cause the camera isn't as good quality on it as the one on the iPhone is has been discussed. You don't have psychos going in to government offices and getting money from the terrified employees there so that he can spend the weekend touring the area instead of violently attacking people because he just got out of prison and he's feeling bored.
I really don't know. The 13 year old idealist in me is arguing that the idiots who abuse the system shouldn't completely null and void the validity of said system. And that there are assholes in every society and every style of government is going to have it's flaws. I guess our system's flaws to me are still better than the blind man dancing to Gangnam style in the insane heat of Singapore at the mall so that he can eat and have a place to live in his 80's.
So for now, I thin I am going to side with my 13 year old self (she forced me to go to the Spice Girl's reunion tour and she wasn't wrong then) because I hope that I can plug my prongs back in and still keep my head on straight.
Ok, look here friends. They tried to scare the wits out of us in teacher's college about having any sort of online identity, especially one that could be connected to political affiliations and that really got into my bones. I felt like, I can blog about living overseas and try to keep that politically neutral cause I'mma be living in a country where I don't vote so I can't be all that political cause I frankly have no right to say anything there anyways. But I'm getting that creeping feeling in my belly and that itchy feeling in my fingers and it's been there for a while now and I just miss writing. So, I'm gonna. Yay! I'm going to hope that this is like in sex ed class when they told us that if we ever lost our virginity to someone who wasn't our husband we would immediately get genital warts, AIDS and syphilis and our junk would rot off. Or that if we ever so much as took a puff of a joint we would descend into immediate drug-induced hysteria and likely leap off a building. Let's just hope it's like that.
M'kay. I've got soooo much I've wanted to write about and I am just going to stick with like one thing today I think. Well, one thing that will bleed into the other things. I'll get to my life and all that jazz later on, but for now I want to talk about I guess we'll say Margaret Thatcher, feminism and my scary creeping middle aged conservatism. Aiyah, that's a lot.
To start, Margaret Thatcher, she died. Y'all know that by now. And I've seen lots and lots of vitriol and rage on my facebook newsfeed and people just straight up getting their glee on that Maggie kicked it. So I was all like, dude, I don't know enough about this lady to be informed (tangent time!!)
**Tangent: since my return to Canada I feel like I have had this plug that I am trying to put back into this giant switchboard I call political awareness that I literally unplugged for two years while I was away. I mean sure, I followed the elections in Canada and the States, in fact I watched ALL of the presidential debates, which I probably wouldn't have done if I'd been here in the land of the maple, but I did not get active about things, I did not participate in much political discourse and I think to an extent I shut off my critical thinking rage machine that I call my brain. Coming back to Canada I've slowly been plugging back in, one small prong at a time, but I feel like I'm sort of changed by the whole thing too, which will likely be something I discuss in tangent two!**
And so I went and read a little bit about Maggie and watched an interview with her from the CBC archives. Here's the thing. I don't necessarily get on the hating her bandwagon. For two reasons. The first is that I am a feminist. And as a feminist, I honestly and wholeheartedly wish to support women's right to make their own choices. Which sucks sometimes if I'm honest, cause women being people, they make some TERRIBLE ASS choices sometimes with that freedom that has been fought for. Thatcher pretty much being an example of this very notion.
Look, the lady was the fist female Prime Minister. And not in like, 1999 or whatever when we had the Spice Girls and a more mainstream notion of female empowerment. We are talking about when shit was pretty damn awful for da ladies. I mean, it still is, they still talk more about Hilary Clinton's hairstyles and choices of pantsuits in the media than her politics or ideology. So for that, Margaret Thatcher is a badass.
As well, I think she deserves some kudos for being a bitch, unflinchingly. In the words of Tina Fey, bitches get shit done. I think it takes some courage to be an outspoken woman who isn't liked, because our language simply has more heinous vocabulary at its disposal to hurl at you, and that builds some pathways in your brain that are a lot easier to go down when you need to articulate how terribly you loathe a person and I'm sure that doesn't lend itself well to people being kind to those of us with the boobs. If that makes sense.
Finally, and this is tangent two, I'm afraid I am becoming sort of a conservative. Which my Dad always told me would happen when I got older and I had dreadlocks and a tattoo and was like NEVER but I'm getting worried that I am anyways. Cause I was listening to this interview with her, and she's been set up as this paragon of evil, yet what she's saying is making some sense to me a little bit.
I don't think I've explored this or read enough about so I'll just talk about what I think is leading to here. It's contrast.
In Asia, where I was, people don't get shit from the government. Which is in some ways truly horrible. Elderly people, I'm talking 88 year old aunties with hunchbacks and sorrow in their eyes are cleaning up your tray at McDonald's because there is no social security and she needs to do that to work. Or someone who is blind is sitting on the pavement at this gleaming plastic mall where people are blowing hundreds of dollars on Angry Birds merchandise singing for crack change because that's all he can really do in this world he is living in. However. You don't have people on the bus talking about their parole officer being an asshole for wanting them to go see an addictions counsellor in the same conversation where the quest to score some stuff, dumpster diving and how crappy the cellphone that the government bought for them is cause the camera isn't as good quality on it as the one on the iPhone is has been discussed. You don't have psychos going in to government offices and getting money from the terrified employees there so that he can spend the weekend touring the area instead of violently attacking people because he just got out of prison and he's feeling bored.
I really don't know. The 13 year old idealist in me is arguing that the idiots who abuse the system shouldn't completely null and void the validity of said system. And that there are assholes in every society and every style of government is going to have it's flaws. I guess our system's flaws to me are still better than the blind man dancing to Gangnam style in the insane heat of Singapore at the mall so that he can eat and have a place to live in his 80's.
So for now, I thin I am going to side with my 13 year old self (she forced me to go to the Spice Girl's reunion tour and she wasn't wrong then) because I hope that I can plug my prongs back in and still keep my head on straight.
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