You alright, love
Almost all of the shops close around 5 or 6pm in Preston. On Sundays, it seems like everything is closed.
I ventured outside yesterday afternoon, braving the bitter wind, in search of something less pathetic to eat than the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I had been surviving off of. The campus and town streets were deserted. And as I took a right to explore a different part of town I hadn’t yet seen, I began passing closed storefront after closed storefront.
I’ve had a nasty cold since arriving in England, so my mission was to find a take-away as nearby as possible so I could hole myself back up in my flat, as soon as possible.
I passed a pub, and a 24/7 fish and chips and chinese joint, until I noticed a man walk into the tiniest little diner I would have otherwise completely missed. The place was cozy, served an all-day breakfast, and had lots of dishes that included sausages.
I settled on the tiramisu – probably the least English thing I could have ordered.
Noticing I had an accent, or perhaps taking pity on me because I looked like a wreck, the woman behind the counter and a man I assume was her boss began chatting me up: They let me try a bite, and it was one of the best desserts I’d ever had. Apparently the cook who makes the dish is authentically Italian.
Two colloquialisms I’ve had to adjust to hearing are “You alright” and being referred to as “Love,” the two often used one after the other.
The first throws me off the most: What is meant to be a simple “How are you?” gets me wondering how pale I must look if people keep asking if I’m okay. How do you respond? Do you say you’re fine, good, doing well, getting by, or simply by replying “Yes”?
Being called love is a term of endearment used, I’ve found, mostly by adults, and by both men and women. It’s kind of nice.
To my loves back home, hope you’re all doing alright.
PS – Hi Grandma.
New Year’s Revolution
Packed everything, remembered my passport, checked-in; luggage not overweight, said goodbye; said goodbye four other times, made it through customs, did it all with an hour to spare.
I’ve struggled these first two weeks of January to come up with a proper New Year’s Resolution: Something meaningful, achievable, and appropriate to where I’m going to be this year and what I’m planning on doing.
Nothing.
I’ve settled instead on accepting the fact that maybe this year, I’m in for more of a personal revolution than a single resolution. The fact is, I don’t know what I expect out of the coming year, nor do I know – by the end of it – what it is I want to have achieved. This year, I think, is going to be more about the “figuring it out” than about having it figured out and simply attempting to get there.
In just over an hour, I’m boarding my direct flight to London. It will be the longest time I have been away from home, and the longest time I have been outside of the Vancouver area. It will also be my first time in Europe.
I can honestly say that I have no idea what I’m in for, but I’m as prepared as I can be, and ready for adventure.
In a suitcase I had previously used for 5-day trips around the province, I’ve packed the essentials that will comfortably get me by for 5 months. If that fails, I’ve brought British pounds so that I can purchase more comfort.
In my carry-on, I’ve got a phone-sized video camera, a brand-new Nikon DSLR, my iPhone, my voice recorder, my e-reader, two scarves (layer-able), two pairs of gloves (not so layer-able), a guide book to Great Britain, and a European phrasebook. I would say I’m more than set to document my journey, as well as entertain myself during the long hours in transit.
I will keep in touch, I will blog, I will live-tweet as much as possible.
Here’s to a New Year’s Revolution: To unrooting myself and embarking on a journey to learn more about the world.
Here we go.
PS – Hi Grandma.
A quick quote
Over a year ago, I borrowed Hitch-22 from the library. Christopher Hitchens was an iconoclast, writer, and contrarian, and this is his autobiography.
I find reading about others’ lives fascinating, and I tried desperately to like the book. It was something I wanted to like, something I felt like I should read. I’m still less than halfway through it, but I maintain that there remains hope.
Hope renewed by the discovery of this quote:
“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
Words worth thinking about; good advice to live by.
Bucket List #62
If you’re looking for the post about Vegas, it’s the one below. This one is dedicated to something a little less frivilous.
I wasn’t sure how I would cross off #62. Be recognized for a journalism-related achievement from my list. I had even thought about leaving it on there until the bitter end as motivation to go out and achieve something worth recognizing. But winning a Jack Webster Student Journalism Award fit this goal best for several reasons.
First, it’s something that I’m proud of because second, it’s an honour. Third, I originally created my list as a list of eclectic, adventurous, and significant celebrations for all kinds of achievements: This definitely is one of those. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the award was journalism-related, and not for actual journalism.
So what did I write about?
My essay was short and to-the-point, like most of my essays are when I’m up against a pushy deadline, and constrained to a tight word count. In 500 words, I wrote about my view on the place of journalism in the world, my aspirations, and my reasons for getting into journalism in the first place. In my opinion, the reasons behind why anyone chooses any career – or any path for that matter – is very telling. Being allowed to know why anyone does anything is fascinating to me.
When I re-read my reasons, it all seems to make sense. I can trace back how I got to where am I by selecting certain “significant” events, by pointing to people who have encouraged me, events that influenced me.
But at the end of the day, I’m not so sure those are the case. What I mean, is that looking back I can choose to include what I think got me into journalism in the first place. In reality, if some small, seemingly irrelevant, non-journalism-related, circumstantial detail was changed, I may not be in my final year, studying journalism, and in love with the idea of telling stories and embarking on a career path that allows me to learn for a job.
There are, however, a few “milestones” (for lack of a better term), that definitely had an impact.
One of them was my discovery of Christiane Amanpour.
When I share this story with people, 80 per cent of the time I get a response that has to do with how she and I have similar hairstyles. If success in journalism was based on hair, I must be on the right track.
We share at least one other thing in common though, and that is a positive belief in the potential of journalism.
I won’t post my essay: When I went searching for past award recipients’ essays online in an attempt to dissuade myself from entering a competition that sees a number of high-caliber entries by more qualified entrants than I, I couldn’t find a single thing. I won’t break the tradition of secrecy by making it easier for next year’s essayists. They will just have to be original. I will give you the first three lines.
Christiane Amanpour once stated that: “Good journalism, good television, can make the world a better place.” And I believe that to be true.
The key, however, is that journalism itself should not set out to make the world a better place. Rather, journalism that discusses ideas, explains concepts, and provides accountability for actions, has the great potential to make our world a better place by informing populations and educating minds.
Thank you to the Jack Webster Foundation for seeing something true in my writing, and for a fantastic evening; Thank you to one of my instructors for flat-out telling me to apply.
Bucket List #58
I’ve written about this before: How I often struggle with defining the purpose of my blog, and on deciding where to draw the line that determines what is “appropriate” to blog about. Given my desire to go into media where, let’s face it, nothing is ever really private, I generally hesitate sending anything personal into the blogosphere, and out into the world.
It’s not like I have thousands of followers: I’d be thrilled to have a dozen regulars, actually. But still, my future self would rue my present self, if future self became known by something silly present self said.
With all of this in mind, I’ve decided to just go right on ahead and blog about my trip to Vegas. Going there for my 21st birthday was, after all, on my bucket list.
It was a point of contention when exactly the last time I visited Sin City was. Some time between 1999-2003. Needless to say, it was a very different Vegas than the one I experienced this past weekend.
In the spirit of my trip, I will leave a lot of what happened in Vegas, in Vegas. (This is mostly because leaving out a few things makes my trip sound much more mysterious and intriguing.) For the sake of being educational, I have chosen to make a list of everything I learned while away.
LIST OF THINGS I LEARNED IN VEGAS THAT I WOULD HAVE BEEN OKAY NOT LEARNING:
1. I have a tendency to pronounce typical all-American-sounding names with a Middle Eastern accent.
2. Video poker is not your friend.
3. Free shots given to you from a kind gentleman on the street that smell like paint-thinner, don’t necessarily taste like paint-thinner.
4. Denny’s will almost always trip to skimp you out of your Hobbit trading cards. Don’t let them.
5. Even if you try to run away from somebody chasing you up a crowded escalator, if they really want to, they will catch up to you. And then you’ll come off as rude. So always so ‘Hi’ to Paulo from Harlem. Even if the price tag is still on his hat and he’s in desperate need of a belt, he’s actually really nice.
5. Chickens can eat oyster shells. (But you probably don’t want to.)
6. Successfully convincing your mom to go to a hookah bar with you is one of the funniest and most awesome birthday presents you can get. Unfortunately, you can only ask for this once in a lifetime.
7. The Passion Pit is probably not somewhere you’d like to hang out.
8. When Victor leaves the Blackjack table, you should also probably leave. His replacement is too good at Blackjack for you.
9. One of the best decisions you can make is to run away from the dejected-looking balding Elvis. He’s not like Paulo from Harlem.
10. A contraption has been invented that ensures your guitar strings stay in tune. It’s quite expensive and has a difficult-to-remember name.
11. The pina coladas at Bellagio are much tastier, but the ones at Mirage are so much stronger.
12. Sometimes when you think you’re calling Langley, you’re actually calling the Caribbean.
The rest, my friends, remains in Vegas.
To be – or not to be – normal
“My wife could turn to me and she may say, ‘Why do you love me?’ And I can with all honesty look her in the eye and say, ‘Because our pheromones matched our olfactory receptors.” — Robin Ince
If we take biology out of the equation, why do we do the things we do?
Of course, if you totally remove biological responses, innate reactive and primal behaviours, physiology, and psychology, there very well may be nothing left.
If you believe in fate, or that we have souls, that there is a god or two or three, you may say that destiny, heart, purpose, or divinity wholly or in part answers the question.
The things we think may be thought out of our own free will, or they may simply be a series of chemical responses.
They may also be learned, and that’s what is perhaps the most interesting option of all. The most dangerous option: Learning to think a certain way without being consciously aware of the fact that we are learning, adopting, and executing certain behaviours based on certain passively constructed thoughts or ideas. This is the cousin of not being aware that we also have a choice in what we choose to think.
It’s called buying into a “normative society.”
None of us are born with a critically self-formed political affiliation. We may be born into conservative families, our early experiences may shape what we come to believe about politics, but all of this happens after birth. And for the most part, I think it’s safe to say most of us are aware that we are choosing to vote liberally over conservatively and vice versa, to like one politician over another, to choose between sides. Which party we choose over another is more or less an actively- and consciously- made decision. Sure, we may be manipulated, influenced, lied to, and our choice may not even be based on facts, figures, or anything of value. Nevertheless, we are aware of the act of choosing. But where did we learn that we have to choose between sides?
Where and when did we adopt and us-versus-them mentality? Why have we come to adopt the belief that life is lived in these phases of going to school, then starting your career, getting married, then having kids?
When did we come to associate being alone, single, and unmarried, especially later on in life, with being terribly lonely? Or weird?
Why do we buy into these overwhelmingly simple and classical theme of good versus evil? Why do some of us do things in the name of our country, or approve certain actions of our country, but dodge neighbours and disapprove of our kids behaving in a similar vein?
There are of course exceptions to all of these and they are by no means all-inclusive; people we know or have heard of or read about who defy these pre-set expectations of what is important, and of how to live in society. In some cases, there may be a lot of them. But a case can still be made that they are just that, exceptions. There are seven billion people in the world, and there can never be enough free-thinkers, innovators, and mould-breakers.
It may not necessarily be an entirely negative thing, buying into a normative society, and adhering to the norm. But like with any purchase, it serves well to be aware of the cost of such an action, and how much we’re paying.