Apologies friends and loves for the delay in the posting, I had written my previous post and was hitting the "publish" button just as my battery died and I shortly learned the adapter I had ensured would work in Italy did not also work in Paris. C'est la vie! Luckily, the one that I had for my phone did, so all was not lost on the electronics front.
So what I did instead of blogging was write myself some notes and I'm sat here now in my bed at my Airbnb in Venice working on catching up. I have a melatonin melting under my tongue so we have until that baby starts kicking in for me to try my best to honor chronology and describe for you all with feeble words the incredible, expansive, breath taking beauty and presence that is Paris.
Stepping onto the tarmac of the Beauvais airport I was hit with one primary thing: incredible cold. I could see my breath coming out of my mouth and that was rather a novelty coming from Milan where there has been record breaking heat and I had to sleep like a starfish in my room to try and let the heat escape my body as best it could without me dying first. Luckily, Dublin is at the end of this journey so I packed exactly one pair of jeans and one hoodie and they served me very well in the French climate.
Getting onto the Metro I got trapped in the turnstile with Belinda (my giant bag) and had to ever so gracefully limbo my way back out, to the disgust of the French people around me but I didn't care too much because those people won't see me again ever and really, who am I trying to impress in Paris? Once I got on the train, I started to pretty much instantly fall in love with the vibrance and magic of the city. The subway cars have windows along them so you can see out, and the stations have white tiles and often lovely designs that make NYC's subways look like the smoldering trash heaps that they literally are. It also helped that French couple got on board with an accorian and started singing to us. It was lovely and I started to get super pumped for Paris.
Finding the Airbnb wasn't too bad, and my greatest worry, the infamous 6th floor walkup with no lift plus Belinda was assuaged by the husband of the family who came all the way downstairs like a champion hero figure and carried Belinda all the way up for me. I find men in Europe are very helpful with bags and very resistant to my offer to assist them with it, often pushing me off like I'm insulting their manhood. I think feminism might not have taken hold as deeply or perhaps in the same ways. Either way, after all these days of running around the streets of Europe, I was willing to relinquish the task.
The Airbnb was as cool and funky as I thought it would be from the posting, with a loft bedroom for me with funky furniture and decor and a cosy space for me. Bonus: a cat named Lola who looked at me from her place in the middle of the bed and decided she didn't want a thing to do with me, and was never to be seen again. Still, having a cat around in some way was comforting.
I quickly evaluated the time and what was going on with my mind and body and decided to book it to the Louvre, the one of two things I had to see while I was in Paris. I screwed the pooch a bit on my planning, not knowing for sure which days I would want to do which thing, so I didn't do the book ahead thing. And my hard won phone data was not having it when I tried to book an online ticket. So I resigned myself to the offensively long line. Standing there I contemplated a lot of things, a lot of them terrorism related as that morning some military police were run down by yet another car-wielding ISIS asshat. One thing that I enjoy watching is people and their interactions, and the line at the Louvre is stinking with teen angst, couple drama, family tension and reminders that travelling alone is a blessing a lot of the time because you don't have to put up with other people's bullshit.
Once I finally hit menopause and got through the line, I commenced what amounted to a 6 hour visit of the Louvre. I did not by any stretch see it all. I splurged on the audiotour which uses Nintendo DS which I thought was really funky, until I tried to use it and found the navigation sucked and really it was largely useless. Either way, I saw some beautiful, historic, incredible things that will stay with me always. I am by no means an art historian, but I noticed a distinct theme of shit popping off resulting in women's boobs erupting from their chemises. Possible conclusions I have come to upon much discussion with other tourists include: terrible bra technology at the time, the fact that men were the painters and men like boobies, misogyny, boobs being nice to paint, and what seems like the best one so far from Leanne who you will meet in my next blog, boobs are a symbol of fertility and motherhood and so are exposed as a way of highlighting the fertile nature of women. I liked that one especially for the lady liberty one where she is liberating France and it seems a rather odd moment to pop a tit, but if you think about her wiedling the milk of freedom for the people of France, maybe that makes more sense. Other fun/weird highlights included a portrait called, creatively, "Dead Cat" of a ct that looks exactly like Gregory, only once he's popped his clogs, and some seashells and stuff where I thought, finally, someone is speaking my language! only to notice that it was a lady painter, and so that made sense that she had a fresh perspective on the old tits and sorrow theme.
Staggering out of the Louvre I started walking through the gardens sort of towards the Eiffel Tower because I wanted to get there for sunset, and a man came and asked if he could sit beside me. (Parents, clutch thine pearls, I was talking to a stranger!) and he only spoke French so I got the chance to terribly mangle the language. Almost every person I spoke French to immediately switched to English my whole trip, but he was trying to jump my bones so he was willing to give it the old college try. We walked down to the Sienne and talked about CAnada and Paris, and then he tried to hold my hand. I said, no thanks. He asked me why (why do they always need an explanation?! I don't want to touch you, and now you're making me tell you it's because you aren't sexy?) and to avoid getting murdered and pitched in the river I simply said, I just don't want to thank you, I should probably leave now. And, to his credit, he said goodbye and off he left. I took a bus and wham! There I was at the Eiffel Tower.
I wasn't expecting to think a big tower is so great, but it was so great! I didn't go up it, but I was enchanted with how pretty it is. Ok, melatonin kicking in hard, need to ride this wave to snoozeville, will write more tomorrow! Bon soir!
Friday, August 11, 2017
Milano, Day Three
Hello friends and loved ones! I am writing this from the bus
to Bergamo, the airport outside of Milan that is cheaper (think Billy Bishop on
Toronto Island) and it is the ungodly hour of 3:30am. My flight to Paris is at
6:30am, and this journey is the cost of a $40 ticket to Paris.
I’m feeling waaaay better than I was and I can tell you
about what I got up to since I last left you all, in my Airbnb getting ready
for my day after my Victory March home from Rafaelle’s house. I decided to go
see the castle because that seemed like a good place to see, and it was. It’s
in park area and then there’s this giant castle with a moat around it with no
water and you go in and there are a bunch of different museums that house art
and artifacts. They have a sculpture by Michelangelo and something by Da Vinci
which I really wanted to see, but it’s being restored. I may have an unpopular
opinion here, but the thing by Michelangelo didn’t really light my fire. It was
one of his last works, so maybe he didn’t put in the full effort. Or maybe I’m
not a sculpture person. Either way, underwhelmed.
After the castle I had an appetite for the first time in a
while, so I took advantage and returned to the canal area to sit on one of the
patios and enjoy a delicious lunch. Nicky had been messaging me on her way to
work and said that the signature dish in Milan is saffron risotto so I found a
patio where they served it and it included a glass of wine so I had peaceful, solitary meal watching the water
flow past in the canal and feeling my belly fill up for the first time since my
first night and the pizza.
Warm, contented and just the right kind of tipsy on wine, I
walked to the MUDEC which is Milan’s modern art museum (or, I think it is?). A
man on a dating app had told me that it was free after 4 and he was right,
which is good because I don’t know if I missed something, but it was just one
exhibit and it was all artifacts taken from other countries from around the
world that were collected by colonists. Now, those of you who have been closely
following my education recently know that the most recent course I completed at
OISE for my Master’s was “Decolonization and Anti-Blackness” and I’ve had a
pretty big grrrr on since then for colonialism. So, I was somewhat nonplussed
by the encased objects of sacred significance from Africa and Asia and the
bracelets that were used to trade for slaves. It’s important, and part of our
history and I had to grapple a bit with the pull between preservation of
cultures and robbery of peoples, but it made me think so I guess in that way it
was art.
The Klimt exhibit that is there I found out was just a
movie, and having experienced that jazz at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore
when I thought I was going to see Van Gogh paintings and I instead stood in a
room while JPEGs of his work were projected on the walls, I was not going to
lay down 12e for that.
By that time, the incredible amount of walking I have done
in the past days coupled with the lack of sleep or food, and the blood all
rushing to my stomach to deal with the carbo load I had just foisted upon it, I
felt the need to get home and get to bed. Which was perfect and part of my
plan, because of having to get up early this morning.
So I headed back to my Airbnb and organized my luggage and
packed everything away and took a big old melatonin and settled in to sleep at
about 7pm, which was perfect. And for the first time this trip, I fell into a
deep, relaxed sleep.
Figuring out my way to do this Paris trip has been one of
the most stressful parts of my planning. With the buses to the airports and the
timing and the Airbnb on the 6th floor with no lift I have been
scared and freaked out and concerned and upset about whether I’d be able to
make this work for the past few days. But I took the great advice of a crisis
counsellor I met with once, and I sat back for a moment in meditation and asked
myself what I would tell my friend to do in this circumstance. And I thought
about it and remembered that this was all just a puzzle game I was playing and
I had to let go of the emotion and fear and get to work on solving the puzzle. Once
I made that shift in thinking, it became easy to sort through the buses and
planes and cabs and printing my boarding pass to the bus quandary and come up
with answers. I asked for the help I needed and I got it, and I took it step by
step, just like every other problem or challenge anyone has ever overcome.
Now, as I sit on this bus in the darkness of Milan, I feel
the excited pleasure of travel. By 10am today, I’ll be standing in one of the
world’s greatest cities, and that’s fucking awesome.
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Milano, Day Two
The honest parts:
This is some scary shit I am doing. Social media culture wants me to make everything look magical and filtered, but I'm going to be honest with you my friends, this is some scary stuff. Every choice you make can be regrettable and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and lost in a world that is completely foreign. Signs in other languages, directions you don't understand and conversations with people that lack the clarity of the communication you enjoy with native English speakers. My stomach has been in knots and I have had a hard time sleeping because my mind is always racing in full survival mode as I try my best to figure out up from down and make as few mistakes with my choices as possible.
The most important thing at your disposal is your mind, and for me on little sleep and little food, my mind has not been functioning as best it can. I threw my contact lenses out without realizing because I was thinking I had to clean out the case, and I feel a bit like a zombie moving through the incredibly hot streets of Italy. This is the olympics of shaking your shit up, but as I said to my host yesterday, we travel to shake ourselves up and make ourselves see outside of the comfortable routine and safety of our day to day lives. If I wasn't shaken up, this wouldn't be travelling.
The what I did with my day parts:
Yesterday I was able to sleep mostly in the morning after taking a melatonin and meditating at 5am because my mind won't stop running. I got up and found a beautiful breakfast laid out for me by my Airbnb host of prosciutto and melon, which was delicious in spite of my stomach being sick. I made the terrible choice to then take my medication and managed to projectile barf my melon into the shower. Good morning Milan!
I got in touch with Coco and found out that her and her friend Alessandro were going to be leaving Milan early because it was so hot and he wanted to go to the mountains. Coco and I made plans to meet at the train station near my Airbnb, and then a long and arduous pursuit of a SIM card ensued that involved me going to the shop 3 times and trying to get things to work, my mind not working very well with planning but finally, with some help from Coco and her Italian, my phone finally has data which will make navigating and contacting people infinitely more easy for me.
Coco and I went down to the Canal and got some Vegan food at Universo Vegano, her favorite restaurant in the world, and the scenery was beautiful. Coco had to leave to head to the mountains, and I wandered up the canal to the Porta (gates that are like a big stone archway that I have no real idea of why it's there, but it looks cool) and then decided to walk back to my Airbnb rather than take transit to see more of the city.
The part to make your parents nervous:
I made plans with a fine Italian gentleman named Raffaele (everything you want in an Italian gentleman name) for that evening and after a cold shower to release my body of the sweat glaze and a chat with my host about the overwhelming, massive-feeling task of how the fuck I get myself to Paris at 6:30am tomorrow, I headed back to the canal to meet Raffaele at the Porta.
Raffaele likes travelling, though mostly in Europe he is going to India next week. He was friendly and nice and spoke great English having lived in Ireland for a few years. We walked along the canal, now filled with patio folk drinking their apperitivo and picked a place to get some ourselves. They do this thing here where you buy a drink and then there's a buffet of food so we did that. I had my first spritz, which was hella tasty and some snacks from the buffet. We talked geopolitics because it's me and that apparently gets the fire started for me.
Walking along the canal Raffaele did a good job on making a move, something that becomes different and accelerated on travel-dates because we both know I'm outta here in a day so there's no time to meet your momma. He held my hand as we walked down the canal and planted a kiss on me while we stood beside the water. After a conversation in which he shook my hand and promised he wouldn't kill me and cut me into pieces, and offered to provide me any identifying information I needed to feel safe, I agreed that going to his apartment sounded nice.
All I will say, because I'm a lady, is that we both did our nations proud in representing the excellence of both people. We fell asleep discussing the Olympics and me laughing at the Canadian snowboarder that got eliminated for having marijuana in his blood and how that's far from performance enhancing.
This morning he took me to the bus stop and helped me get a ticket, and then biked out of my life leaving me a lovely view of his excellent Italian booty. Now I'm showered and fed at my Airbnb, I have sorted out the insanity of my Paris journey tomorrow and I managed to eat breakfast without puking (yay!) so I'm going to get dressed soon and head out to see maybe the castle in Milan, and maybe some museums. I have to go to bed early because of getting up at 2:30am for my taxi at 3am that will take me to the Station Centrale to get a bus that will take me to the airport that will put me on a plane that will take me to Paris. It's a long trek and not very relaxing, but I feel invigorated and I'm starting to get that old feeling again that I had in Singapore of the world laid out at my feet ready for me to take any path I want forward.
This is some scary shit I am doing. Social media culture wants me to make everything look magical and filtered, but I'm going to be honest with you my friends, this is some scary stuff. Every choice you make can be regrettable and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and lost in a world that is completely foreign. Signs in other languages, directions you don't understand and conversations with people that lack the clarity of the communication you enjoy with native English speakers. My stomach has been in knots and I have had a hard time sleeping because my mind is always racing in full survival mode as I try my best to figure out up from down and make as few mistakes with my choices as possible.
The most important thing at your disposal is your mind, and for me on little sleep and little food, my mind has not been functioning as best it can. I threw my contact lenses out without realizing because I was thinking I had to clean out the case, and I feel a bit like a zombie moving through the incredibly hot streets of Italy. This is the olympics of shaking your shit up, but as I said to my host yesterday, we travel to shake ourselves up and make ourselves see outside of the comfortable routine and safety of our day to day lives. If I wasn't shaken up, this wouldn't be travelling.
The what I did with my day parts:
Yesterday I was able to sleep mostly in the morning after taking a melatonin and meditating at 5am because my mind won't stop running. I got up and found a beautiful breakfast laid out for me by my Airbnb host of prosciutto and melon, which was delicious in spite of my stomach being sick. I made the terrible choice to then take my medication and managed to projectile barf my melon into the shower. Good morning Milan!
I got in touch with Coco and found out that her and her friend Alessandro were going to be leaving Milan early because it was so hot and he wanted to go to the mountains. Coco and I made plans to meet at the train station near my Airbnb, and then a long and arduous pursuit of a SIM card ensued that involved me going to the shop 3 times and trying to get things to work, my mind not working very well with planning but finally, with some help from Coco and her Italian, my phone finally has data which will make navigating and contacting people infinitely more easy for me.
Coco and I went down to the Canal and got some Vegan food at Universo Vegano, her favorite restaurant in the world, and the scenery was beautiful. Coco had to leave to head to the mountains, and I wandered up the canal to the Porta (gates that are like a big stone archway that I have no real idea of why it's there, but it looks cool) and then decided to walk back to my Airbnb rather than take transit to see more of the city.
The part to make your parents nervous:
I made plans with a fine Italian gentleman named Raffaele (everything you want in an Italian gentleman name) for that evening and after a cold shower to release my body of the sweat glaze and a chat with my host about the overwhelming, massive-feeling task of how the fuck I get myself to Paris at 6:30am tomorrow, I headed back to the canal to meet Raffaele at the Porta.
Raffaele likes travelling, though mostly in Europe he is going to India next week. He was friendly and nice and spoke great English having lived in Ireland for a few years. We walked along the canal, now filled with patio folk drinking their apperitivo and picked a place to get some ourselves. They do this thing here where you buy a drink and then there's a buffet of food so we did that. I had my first spritz, which was hella tasty and some snacks from the buffet. We talked geopolitics because it's me and that apparently gets the fire started for me.
Walking along the canal Raffaele did a good job on making a move, something that becomes different and accelerated on travel-dates because we both know I'm outta here in a day so there's no time to meet your momma. He held my hand as we walked down the canal and planted a kiss on me while we stood beside the water. After a conversation in which he shook my hand and promised he wouldn't kill me and cut me into pieces, and offered to provide me any identifying information I needed to feel safe, I agreed that going to his apartment sounded nice.
All I will say, because I'm a lady, is that we both did our nations proud in representing the excellence of both people. We fell asleep discussing the Olympics and me laughing at the Canadian snowboarder that got eliminated for having marijuana in his blood and how that's far from performance enhancing.
This morning he took me to the bus stop and helped me get a ticket, and then biked out of my life leaving me a lovely view of his excellent Italian booty. Now I'm showered and fed at my Airbnb, I have sorted out the insanity of my Paris journey tomorrow and I managed to eat breakfast without puking (yay!) so I'm going to get dressed soon and head out to see maybe the castle in Milan, and maybe some museums. I have to go to bed early because of getting up at 2:30am for my taxi at 3am that will take me to the Station Centrale to get a bus that will take me to the airport that will put me on a plane that will take me to Paris. It's a long trek and not very relaxing, but I feel invigorated and I'm starting to get that old feeling again that I had in Singapore of the world laid out at my feet ready for me to take any path I want forward.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
Milano,Day One
I have decided to ressurect this blog while I am in Europe this summer to give myself a place to tell the stories of my travels without becoming an obnoxious smug asshole on social media who people hate. So here it is friends, back and ready for action, my travel blog!
Today was my first day of this five week adventure and it started out with me in my apartment in Toronto getting organized and ready to leave for the airport. My friend who is cat sitting came by to pick up the key and so of course with half an hour to spare before I had to leave, the bolt or screw or something broke in the lock and it wasn't working. Fortunately, not only is this friend a cat sitting hero, he is also a tool-using hero and he managed to take apart my lock and make it work again all while I frantically folded towels and put clean sheets on the bed and tried to remember that the most controllable variable in crazy situations is the choice to panic, and I wasn't ready to go down that road.
But, fortunately, with a newly repaired lock and slightly more restored faith in humanity at seeing the peaks it has created in people rather than the valleys, I made my merry way to Toronto Pearson. In general, the flight experience was fairly easy and uneventful, though I was somewhat dismayed to realize that my "window" seat at the back of the plane lacked poorly in the window department. Instead I settled in for movies I wouldn't usually go out of my way to watch but get to have the excuse to indulge in cause it's on a plane and a bunch of fitful non-sleeping while I ruminated on all the things I could have screwed up but didn't or might screw up in the future but haven't yet in this here trapeeze jump I'm taking.
Landing in Milan, my first impression was that it was an airport and much the same as all the other airports in the world, only with a little more cigarette smoke than you'd be used to back on good old Tutrle Island. Making my way onto the correct train while trying to figure my way through a lot of Italian signs was somewhat panic-inducing for a moment, but again, I remembered to calm my titties and use my brains, and lo and behold I managed to get the right train into central Milan.
I decided I wasn't interested in lugging my giant suitcase (I shall henceforth call her Belinda) in the super hot weather while possibly going the wrong way with a phone with no Internet connection and a lackluster knowledge of how the buses here work and opted instead for a taxi cab upon seeing the posted sign informing me which ones are legit and making sure my guy was one of those.
I don't like being the shitty American sounding person who keeps speaking English to people, but that's also my own fault for not buckling down as much as I could have on the Duolingo Italian learning project, but at least I know some rudimentary words and can understand some stuff. I am hoping to work on this.
I got to my Airbnb and it was a picturesque building with a buzzer and a courtyard. And, cause Europe, 6 flights of stairs for me to heft Belinda up. However, my host is incredibly nice and she helped carry my backpack and I figure it's good practice because Belinda and I are headed to a lot of places together in these coming weeks.
My Airbnb is a stylist's dream, a gorgeous apartment with perfect decor, simple and modern and chic and lovely. My host is so nice, we chatted in the kitchen about travelling and she showed me a map and told me all the places I could go and how to get there. The only crappy thing was the adapater I bought at the ITALIAN airport doesn't work in Italy. Its for Germany. So I had to buy another cord for my phone and I don't have a way to plug in my laptop so the next post might take some time but I want to write things down while I remember them clearly.
I had a super hot sweaty nap because damn it's hot here and there is no air con, thankfully since then I figured out how to use the fan and its working to save me right now. Then I headed out to the Duomo (a huge church) and to see about getting a SIM card for my phone (no dice on Sunday at this time kid) but it was the first chance I had to realize how incredibly beautiful it is here and walking in the galleria, the domed ceilings were just breathtaking.
I met up with Coco and her Milanese friend Alessandro and we had a great time together. We got some pizza (so good!!!) and some gelato which was heavenly (they put white chocolate in the cone for me first!) and we walked around looking at all the beautiful things and laughing and telling stories.
Now I am back at my Airbnb posting way too much stuff on social media and probably annoying people that might not want to see all of it so I'm thinking about better ways to share that don't bug people or attract shitty attention to me from scary assholes (they're out there friends!) and I'm hoping this is a good way to start.
Tomorrow Coco and I are going to walk along the canal and get lunch, and we might see about going on a double date if that all works out! We have Monday and Tuesday in Milan and then I have to leave for Paris at an ungodly hour which I have to start figuring out how I will get to the airport for and all that, but it will be wonderful and it will be Paris!
Today was my first day of this five week adventure and it started out with me in my apartment in Toronto getting organized and ready to leave for the airport. My friend who is cat sitting came by to pick up the key and so of course with half an hour to spare before I had to leave, the bolt or screw or something broke in the lock and it wasn't working. Fortunately, not only is this friend a cat sitting hero, he is also a tool-using hero and he managed to take apart my lock and make it work again all while I frantically folded towels and put clean sheets on the bed and tried to remember that the most controllable variable in crazy situations is the choice to panic, and I wasn't ready to go down that road.
But, fortunately, with a newly repaired lock and slightly more restored faith in humanity at seeing the peaks it has created in people rather than the valleys, I made my merry way to Toronto Pearson. In general, the flight experience was fairly easy and uneventful, though I was somewhat dismayed to realize that my "window" seat at the back of the plane lacked poorly in the window department. Instead I settled in for movies I wouldn't usually go out of my way to watch but get to have the excuse to indulge in cause it's on a plane and a bunch of fitful non-sleeping while I ruminated on all the things I could have screwed up but didn't or might screw up in the future but haven't yet in this here trapeeze jump I'm taking.
Landing in Milan, my first impression was that it was an airport and much the same as all the other airports in the world, only with a little more cigarette smoke than you'd be used to back on good old Tutrle Island. Making my way onto the correct train while trying to figure my way through a lot of Italian signs was somewhat panic-inducing for a moment, but again, I remembered to calm my titties and use my brains, and lo and behold I managed to get the right train into central Milan.
I decided I wasn't interested in lugging my giant suitcase (I shall henceforth call her Belinda) in the super hot weather while possibly going the wrong way with a phone with no Internet connection and a lackluster knowledge of how the buses here work and opted instead for a taxi cab upon seeing the posted sign informing me which ones are legit and making sure my guy was one of those.
I don't like being the shitty American sounding person who keeps speaking English to people, but that's also my own fault for not buckling down as much as I could have on the Duolingo Italian learning project, but at least I know some rudimentary words and can understand some stuff. I am hoping to work on this.
I got to my Airbnb and it was a picturesque building with a buzzer and a courtyard. And, cause Europe, 6 flights of stairs for me to heft Belinda up. However, my host is incredibly nice and she helped carry my backpack and I figure it's good practice because Belinda and I are headed to a lot of places together in these coming weeks.
My Airbnb is a stylist's dream, a gorgeous apartment with perfect decor, simple and modern and chic and lovely. My host is so nice, we chatted in the kitchen about travelling and she showed me a map and told me all the places I could go and how to get there. The only crappy thing was the adapater I bought at the ITALIAN airport doesn't work in Italy. Its for Germany. So I had to buy another cord for my phone and I don't have a way to plug in my laptop so the next post might take some time but I want to write things down while I remember them clearly.
I had a super hot sweaty nap because damn it's hot here and there is no air con, thankfully since then I figured out how to use the fan and its working to save me right now. Then I headed out to the Duomo (a huge church) and to see about getting a SIM card for my phone (no dice on Sunday at this time kid) but it was the first chance I had to realize how incredibly beautiful it is here and walking in the galleria, the domed ceilings were just breathtaking.
I met up with Coco and her Milanese friend Alessandro and we had a great time together. We got some pizza (so good!!!) and some gelato which was heavenly (they put white chocolate in the cone for me first!) and we walked around looking at all the beautiful things and laughing and telling stories.
Now I am back at my Airbnb posting way too much stuff on social media and probably annoying people that might not want to see all of it so I'm thinking about better ways to share that don't bug people or attract shitty attention to me from scary assholes (they're out there friends!) and I'm hoping this is a good way to start.
Tomorrow Coco and I are going to walk along the canal and get lunch, and we might see about going on a double date if that all works out! We have Monday and Tuesday in Milan and then I have to leave for Paris at an ungodly hour which I have to start figuring out how I will get to the airport for and all that, but it will be wonderful and it will be Paris!
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Redact! Redact!
Hi all,
I have lately been listening to the excellent podcast found at www.wearecitizenradio.com and it has really helped me to do that political plugging in that I was missing before. I just think it's important that I say,after the last post where I was questioning some stuff, that I believe in the "socialist government" that Conservatives want so badly for us not to trust. We shouldn't trust it, but for very different reasons than the right wingers would want us to.
Since listening to this podcast I have had some wonderful/sad conversations with friends and family members about rape culture and how prevalent it is, as well as white privilege and patriarchal privilege. I've also baked my first batch of vegan cookies and served them to my students who were impressed at how tasty options that don't involve animals products can be, as was I.
Being aware and awake is a painful feeling, one that makes a person feel like it's a hopeless fight, when things like three women being locked in a basement for 10 years while being ignored by police and neighbours while suffering unimaginable abuse comes to light and the only thing people can focus on about the story is the funny black man who rescued her and his personal life. Why don't we know as much about the perpetrators, or the victims and how their recovery is progressing as we do about a man named Chales Ramsey and his relationship with McDonald's.
However, as easy as it is to feel overwhelmed with heart sickness, the important thing is to find a community of people who not only see behind that curtain, but who are positive influences in your life to help you find positive ways to take action and who don't judge you on the things you aren't ready to do yet. Something I like a lot about this podcast is their attitude towards veganism.
I realise that philisophically, I should be a vegan already. I don't at all agree with the way that meat comes to my local supermarket, knowing that living creatures were killed so that I can enjoy a hamburger, or that terrible, immoral companies are reaping profit and are being positively reinforced by my purchase. I am also an environmentalist who is deeply afraid of what is on the horizon with climate change and the environmental impact of the lifestyle we enjoy in the West. All that considered, I cannot yet being myself to stop eating meat and animal products.
What has been my excuse since hitting my teens has partially been based on my feeling of unwelcomness in the vegan community and fear of the judgement I felt from people who were already to some degree practicing this lifestyle. What I like about Citizen Radio is how non-judgemental they are about people trying to start cutting out meat and animal products, or to vegans or veggies who slip up and eat something they shouldn't. It's taken a long time to find that underlying message in the podcasts, but I am happy to have realised that small steps are better than none, like cutting down smoking, I can start modifying my way of eating in a way that more closely fits my ideology.
Just wanted to put that message out there because I think it's a really important one because I think there are a lot of people out there like me and if all of us started eating even just vegetarian for one day a week, the impact that has can be massive. It's worth at least trying!
I have lately been listening to the excellent podcast found at www.wearecitizenradio.com and it has really helped me to do that political plugging in that I was missing before. I just think it's important that I say,after the last post where I was questioning some stuff, that I believe in the "socialist government" that Conservatives want so badly for us not to trust. We shouldn't trust it, but for very different reasons than the right wingers would want us to.
Since listening to this podcast I have had some wonderful/sad conversations with friends and family members about rape culture and how prevalent it is, as well as white privilege and patriarchal privilege. I've also baked my first batch of vegan cookies and served them to my students who were impressed at how tasty options that don't involve animals products can be, as was I.
Being aware and awake is a painful feeling, one that makes a person feel like it's a hopeless fight, when things like three women being locked in a basement for 10 years while being ignored by police and neighbours while suffering unimaginable abuse comes to light and the only thing people can focus on about the story is the funny black man who rescued her and his personal life. Why don't we know as much about the perpetrators, or the victims and how their recovery is progressing as we do about a man named Chales Ramsey and his relationship with McDonald's.
However, as easy as it is to feel overwhelmed with heart sickness, the important thing is to find a community of people who not only see behind that curtain, but who are positive influences in your life to help you find positive ways to take action and who don't judge you on the things you aren't ready to do yet. Something I like a lot about this podcast is their attitude towards veganism.
I realise that philisophically, I should be a vegan already. I don't at all agree with the way that meat comes to my local supermarket, knowing that living creatures were killed so that I can enjoy a hamburger, or that terrible, immoral companies are reaping profit and are being positively reinforced by my purchase. I am also an environmentalist who is deeply afraid of what is on the horizon with climate change and the environmental impact of the lifestyle we enjoy in the West. All that considered, I cannot yet being myself to stop eating meat and animal products.
What has been my excuse since hitting my teens has partially been based on my feeling of unwelcomness in the vegan community and fear of the judgement I felt from people who were already to some degree practicing this lifestyle. What I like about Citizen Radio is how non-judgemental they are about people trying to start cutting out meat and animal products, or to vegans or veggies who slip up and eat something they shouldn't. It's taken a long time to find that underlying message in the podcasts, but I am happy to have realised that small steps are better than none, like cutting down smoking, I can start modifying my way of eating in a way that more closely fits my ideology.
Just wanted to put that message out there because I think it's a really important one because I think there are a lot of people out there like me and if all of us started eating even just vegetarian for one day a week, the impact that has can be massive. It's worth at least trying!
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Time Lapses!
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
Singapore:
http://vimeo.com/zweizwei/singapore
Toronto:
http://vimeo.com/63647331
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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