San Francisco Day 4

There is a beautiful park right in the middle of downtown SF.
From here you can see Neo-Classical and Modern skyscrapers right next to contemporary buildings.
There are oldChinese doing Tai Chi, and young mixed race art students taking photos.

Right here, right now everything is right with the world

Tomorrow I will be going back to the hustle and bustle of normal life.
I don't know how many momoents of timelessness I will get in the next little while.
* * *

I went to the SF Virgin Megastore today.
Partly for posterity's sake, not that it's a hugely momentous occasion, but it could be one of the signs of The End. I also wanted to score some CDs at 50-75% off.
I couldn't do it. Too many of the employees had this numb, shocked look; they'd stare off into space. Some of them seemed about to burst into tears.
Being cool is a prerequisite to working here.
The reason behind the stares is that Virgin fucked these kids over, and it has only started to dawn on them that in 30 days they will be out of job, and people like me are only there to hump the corpse.
I looked around to say that I'd been there and, feeling dirty, I left.

Further impressions of San Francisco

Best Idea Ever
Take an old building, preferably a train station or ferry station, and then turn it into a Mecca/awesometown of food.
In SF it's called The Ferry Building
I spent a solid four hours there today, the first two were spent wandering around in a blissfull haze, occasionally giggling like a school girl and at other times skipping around. People were looking at me funny. What can I say? Food does this to me.
After finding a nice little wine store - which gave me the opportunity to get my feet back on the ground. I did a little tasting at their bar. Here it is:
Bastide du Claux Blanc, Cotes de Luberon 2005
Hans Lang Sabrina Riesling, Rheingau 2006
Domaine du Cabasse Sablet, Deux Anges, Cotes Du Rhone 2006
Chateaux du Caladroy, Cuvee des Schistes, Cotes du Roussillon Villages 2005

I then traipsed over to The Slanted Door. Holy south-east-asian-fusion-mindblowing-orgasmic-food Batman! Yes Robin, all our viewers should eat there at least once.
I had lemongrass pork vermicelli.

So basically today was consisted of a series of mindgasmes

Further Impressions:
1. There are more people here rockin' fixies than normal bikes.
2. I have yet to see a longboard.
3. You could spend a whole yeare here eating out 3 meals a day and you wouldn't repeat your dining experience
4. I have not yet seen an independant sit-down coffee shop where you could kill a whole afternoon.
5. There is no real coffee culture. For example, the only place where I can get a proper Americano is if I ask the smokin' hot Spanish girl who rocks the barrista at the coffee shop at the school. Everyone else makes them with long shots... Who does that?

We interrupt schedualed programming to bring you this important endorsment

Why Vietnamese Sandwiches are the Best Thing Ever
1. Rice flour bread. It's crunchy and light with a soft center... uber-yum factor
2. Shredded pickled carrots. Wow... yummers, on the dente side of aldente, great sweet/sour interplay
3. Pickled onions... same as above, but with oniony goodness
4. Spicy peppers... need I say more? When you've got the acidity from the pickles keepin' the spice on it's toes... and then there's
5. Cilantro. Much maligned, I know, but... just when those peppers are threatening to do in the carrots and just take over, you bite into fresh cilantro and wam! Palate cleansing/cooling grassy interplay with the other three condiments... and we haven't even gotten to the
6. Liver Pate. Yup, that's right. Take liver, cook it up, add some asian shallots, drop it all in a blender with some cream, pulse into mushy. Transfer said mush into a ramekin, chill for 12 hours. Slice, warm up and stuff in to a sandwich. So it plays off of the crunch from the bread, the acidity of the pickles just highlights why liver is soooo good, it coats your mouth with creamy, livery goodness just in time to reduce the duration of the serious hot factor from the peppers. And it reduces the cilantro factor just enough so that even if you don't like cilantro, you'll still love this sandwich.


It's a mouthgasme.

If you've never had one, get one NOW

*We now return to our normal programming*

In Transition

Impressions of San Francisco Part 1
1. It's odd that even though I am still in what should be considered "a familiar civilization," the traffic here scares the shit out of me (no joke, my bowels are loose and it's not the water).
2. In Canada, we're used to thinking of ourselves as multi-cultural. Vancouver has nothing on this town. In a four block radius around my rooming house I could have a fully halal breakfast made by Pakistanis, walk around the corner for dim sum, go up a flight of stairs for gefeltefish (for lunch). And then I could go down an alley-way for a Vietnamese dinner, and then down the street for dessert at an artisanal ice cream place. And this in the sketchy part of town. While on said food bender, I'd be listening to a mix of gentrified English, ebonix, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish, Persian and Urdu. Like I said, Vancouver has nothing on this town.
3. It's really big.
4. It's fucking warm; 15 Celsius at 7:30am in March... who does that?
5. Things are cheap. Food, beer, coffee, smokes. This morning for breakfast I got a sticky bun and a large americano for under $3... Who does that?

Time to go; travel day 1

I think I've discovered the reason that Kelowna sucks you in.
Kelowna does not change.
On the surface it does: new buildings; no Willow; a new bridge, but fundamentally, the town stays exactly the way it always has.. I can't really explain it better than that.

But... I said my goodbyes for the enth time last night, and as I left the bar, the wril of conversation that escaped with me out into the night, sounded exactly like the same conversation I've always heard as I leave... life just... goes on. In Kelowna, it never changes.
I think the heart of the reason that Kelowna sucks so many people in lies in the fact that it really does feel timeless, maybe it's all the old people that go there to hover on the edge of eternity. Or maybe it's like Vegas... you go there to live, but goddamn, you don't want to live there because none of it is real. Nevertheless, there is something fundamentally reassuring about being able to visit somewhere and say to oneself: This will never change.

* * *

The thing I really don't like about flying is waiting: sitting in airports; sitting on the tarmac; line ups for customers, shit like that.
The act of taking an airplane - beyond the fact that it is extraordinarily difficult for someone of my stature to feel comfortable sleeping in a plane - is one that I am completely indifferent to.

3 hours later
That being said, taking a plane full of certain Types of people. You know who I mean. Those idiots with no volume control, who don't shut up, and don't know a damn thing.
This older lady - a resident of SF - was complaining to her seat partner that they are not allowed to exploit all the natural resources in the US, and she thought that it was bad policy... and anyways, it's not like it's going to run out... we've got at least another 300 years worth of oil; and she doesn't like it that the price of a barrel of crude is bottoming out, because that means that they coula actually use it (presumably the Barbarians at the Gates, though I doubt she could have voiced it in so articulate a manner).
What. The. Fuck?
I felt like standing up and yelling accross the 5 isles that seperated us:
"A: the reason you don't exploit your own resources is because you exploit everyone elses, so that when the shit hits the fan, you'll have depleted the whole planet except for your own shit! and B. The only reason you don't care about resource depletion in the first place is because you're old, with no grand kids, and so don't care if they'll be able to live on this planet after you're gone. And C. What. The. Fuck.


Axe that. I don't hate flying. I hate people

Work

Now that I have two days left of work,
The things that didn't bug me
Now drive me fucking nuts.
I'm having a hard time not being rude to customers.

There will be a rant, very shortly

Random Thoughts on Leaving

T minus 4 days.

Tegan and sarah on the speakers at the Beanscene.

Whenever I travel I find that this is one of the places that I miss the most. The old hardwood floor that feels so interesting beneath bear feet; protruding nails near the door, and the polish worn away by hundreds of feet. The old couches, you know the ones that you don't really want to think about how clean they are, and who's done what on them.
The sounds of the coffee grinder and the barrista steaming milk. The often surreal conversations of the staff. The smell of brewing coffee, of espresso and locally baked food.
The brick walls, chipped and worn.
And the coffee, the wonderful locally roasted coffee.
When I come here, I know I'm in Kelowna

* * *

Going through my notes, I just found my schedual - or what I've been told my day will look like once I'm over there:
10-12 am - Contact/teaching time
1-3 pm - "English Corner"
4 pm - "Testing hour"
I don't actually need to be there for testing hour most of the time, though for verbal exams I do.


I think I will actually miss the smell of patchouli.

Sun in an Empty Room

Now that the furniture's
Returning to its Goodwill home,
with dishes in last week's papers
rumours and elections,
crosswords, an unending war
that blacken our fingers,
smear their prints on every door pulled shut.

Now that the last month's rent
is scheming with the damage deposit,
take this moment to decide if we meant it,
Sun in an empty room
if we tried, or felt around for far too much
Sun in an empty room
from things that accidentally touched.
Sun in an empty room

The hands that we nearly hold with pennies for the GST,
the shoulders we lean our shoulders into on the subway, mutter an apology.
The shins that we kick beneath the table, that reflexive cry.
The faces we meet one awkward beat too long and terrify,
know that the things we need to say
Sun in an empty room
have been said already anyway,
Sun in an empty room
by parallelograms of light
Sun in an empty room
on walls that we repainted white.

Sun in an empty room
Sun in an empty room

So take eight minutes
and divide by ninety million lonely miles,
and watch a shadow cross the floor.
We don't live here anymore.
--John K. Sampson
---The Weakerthans

I'm pretty much fully moved out; and John just hits it on the head. Thought I'd share that.

Today

Yesterday I got my tickets to GZ, my visa and my hotel confirmation in SF.

I must confess to being a little bit worried about money; I'm sure it'll be alright... my life has had a golden hue to it of late.

Can't really sleep, but that's to be expected

T minus 6 days

Allow me to explain

Somewhere between a woman and a town, I lost sight of what it meant to be me.
I had invested more of my energy in treading water than in swimming.
Just before Christmas, 2008, the woman removed her pressure. With pressure, comes support. Without pressure you can breath. But when something is pressed so hard against your soul that it becomes your vertebrae;
No matter how sweet that initial rush of clean air to the lungs may seem; it quickly becomes apparent that they don’t work as well as they used to. Before that which was blocking and suffocating became their structure.
In desperation born from fading elation, one tries to come to grips with new found freedom.
I was quickly grasping at straws
The thickest, strongest and most flexible of the straws is one that I have often dreamt of grasping.

China


When the pounding on the doors of my mind gets too loud
And grows to a crescendo
That threatens
To break them down
One of three things happen; either I
Put my dukes up and come out swinging
The Mad Woman in the Attic comes downstairs to take over
I dream of China


* * *
China represents rebirth
The last time I knew her, learned to love food; I understood something that I had chosen to forget: to me food is better than sex.
An epiphany – nearly religious – that is central to who I am and what I do for a living.
I also learned
I love humanity in all its variations, though I sometimes anger myself into believing otherwise
I love the way it feels to be surrounded by millions of people going about their lives; shitting, spitting, snoring, farting, loving, struggling, eating, fighting working, fucking…. Living
I love the feeling of 1.3 billion people waking up and realizing: fuck the West, This is our time.
And that, for me is only part of it

* * *

Option 3 is one that I finally decided to make real.

December 27th, 2008: Take a stack of sticky notes and write: “March 6th I will be in China” at eye level everywhere in my apartment

January 3rd, 2009: Start applying to every job that opens in Canton through a variety of government run websites

January 4th to February 13th: Continue to send out at least 3 resumes per day.

February 14th: Two weeks after getting my passport I inform my boss that I would be leaving The Metro Group at the earliest late March. This was of course induced by the consumption of lots of really tasty sparklies (we had a pseudo-single/recently dumped bitch fest in honour of V-day, and had some Champs, some Cremant de Loire and a really tasty sparkling Shiraz from Barossa… not important). I had, by this point admitted to soul-crushing defeat. I give up on going to China

February 17th: In spite of the shitty pay – and being treated by the customers like just another highschool-dropout beer store employee who is doomed to live out the rest of his life as a till-jockey – I realize that I love my job, and I love everyone that I work with.

February 27th: Discover Craigslist… okay, mostly discover the testament to the creativity of the human spirit that is “The Best of Craigslist”. You owe it to yourself to peruse it for a while.

February 28th: My Craigslist addiction is now full blown. On a lark, I go to the Guangzhou version. I apply to the only add in the employment section that was posted that day.

March 1st to 5th: Go about my life, loving my job and the people I work with. Completely forget about the application.

March 6th: Recognize this date? Yeah, all over the apartment. I get a phone call. I get a job. In China. Yeah, I manifested it bitches. It’s real, it actually happened.

* * *
Location is important.
Four of my favourite people in the entire world are there, and they have no idea what’s about to hit them.

It's real

I have exactly 9 days before I leave.
I have a ticket to San Francisco; but no visa, yet.
An apartment that come wednesday will be empty
with no one to fill it
Nearly broke
Probably won't have enough to make it through one week in San Francisco
and then the next two weeks over there

just received an email that confirms I'll be going.



This is actually happening

The First Entry

Juts for shits and giggles.
Post something that is irrelevant.
That way I'll know it's real
That this is actually happening.