The Interview - February 2009

At the beginning of February I finished up the course I was taking, and then began job-hunting. So far, I haven't been successful. Language schools still don't seem to be doing much hiring, and although it's still early, some people think the industry - like other industries - can anticipate a slow year. Obviously being unemployed is a bit stressful and worrying. It's also boring! Not that I can't find ways to fill up the hours in my day, but I miss going to work. And although I have lots of free time, I don't have money to do anything, so I haven't gone sight-seeing or even been out dancing!

I have one big piece of news. I apparently made it through the first round of the JET application process, because I got called in for an interview in the middle of the month. The fact that I made it that far makes me feel pretty confident of my chances of being accepted, but the interview is still the deciding factor, and I'm really not sure how well I did. It was a half-hour process with three interviewers. I tried to prepare for it, but I couldn't anticipate all the questions they asked, and there were several I had difficulty answering. (ex. "How are you going to represent Canadian culture while you're in Japan?" Er, you mean besides being my lovable Canadian self?) I should find out by mid-April whether I've been accepted or not. I really don't know what to expect, but I'm trying not to worry about it. I did my best, and there's absolutely nothing I can do now that will affect the outcome. Except pray. Prayers are still appreciated!

I'm sufficiently optimistic still to be studying Japanese. I'm progressing very slowly but steadily. To help myself along, I've been borrowing DVDs of Azumanga Diaoh from the library. It's my favourite of the series we used to watch in the anime (Japanese animation) club. Although my Japanese skills are still very limited, it's fun to listen to the characters talk and try to pick out familiar words from their dialogue. A Japanese student was also nice enough to give me a copy of Tokyo Story, an old black and white Japanese movie, so I can practice my listening skills on that, too.

For St. Valentine's Day I went to an AVEN potluck. We ate cake and watched Doctor Who. For Mardi Gras there was a pancake dinner at church with bacon, maple syrup, strawberries, and even whipped cream! (Never had whipped cream on pancakes before.) The next day was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Last year I was in Hong Kong, where vegetarian eating is difficult, so I only gave up eating meat. This year I'm reverting to my usual practice of going completely vegan, meaning no meat, eggs, or milk. It hasn't been that difficult, except that I'm forced to cook pretty much all of my own food. That's cheaper than eating out, though, and healthier than some of the junk I've been eating this year.

Of course the most important day of the month was Sunday the 22nd: Oscar Day! As was the case last year, I hadn't seen any of the top contenders, and treated the ceremony as a preview of movies I should see. Top of the list is apparently Slumdog Millionaire, which I'd already heard good things about. Sean Penn won Best Actor for Milk, which got me thinking about the last time a lead actor got recognised for playing a gay character in a gay-themed movie: Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. That was fifteen years ago, and it feels like we've come a long way since then. Back then, the big issue was AIDS; this time it was same-sex marriage that everyone was talking about. Heath Ledger did indeed pick up the Best Supporting Actor trophy, as everyone'd been predicting for the last thirteen months. I haven't seen any of his competition, but having seen The Dark Knight I can say that he was good, and probably deserved it. Japan got the Best Foreign Language award for a film called Okuribito (Departures). I looked it up: this is the first time Japan's won an award in that category since its creation back in the 1950s. WALL-E, one of the only other films I saw last year, got the Best Animated Film award, which it richly deserves.

Best of the ceremony: I really liked how they handled the acting awards, where they had five previous winners in the category come up on stage and give individual shout-outs to each of the nominees. That was a welcome change for a ceremony that often doesn't give enough air-time to the winners, let alone the nominees! All the acceptance speeches were good; none ran on too long, and nobody got cut off (well, maybe one guy got cut off). Best acceptance speech goes to Dustin Lance Black, who won the Original Screenplay award for Milk. Best moment was Philippe Petit (the Man on Wire) balancing the Oscar on its head, on his chin.

Worst of the ceremony: Usually one of my favourite parts of the ceremony is the live performance of all five nominated songs in full, but this year there were only three nominated songs, so they worked them into a single medley. It wasn't nearly as much fun, although hearing "Down to Earth" mixed with "Jai Ho" was kind of cool. For some reason they didn't list the past achievements of the winners, which seemed like an odd decision to make. The film montages were pretty lame, although it wasn't as bad as three years ago when they practically took over the show! Oh, and someone needs to teach Jennifer Aniston and Jack Black how to say, "La Maison en petits cubes".

In Memoriam: Last year we lost Roy Scheider (actor), Paul Scofield (actor), Sydney Pollack (director, actor), Charlton Heston (actor, N.R.A. president), Paul Newman (actor, salad dressing maker), and Michael Crichton (writer). We also lost Majel Barrett (Mrs Gene Roddenberry), but she got left out of the montage. I was kind of surprised; I know she was mostly famous for her T.V. work, but she was in movies too, right?

Movies I've seen this month:

Tokyo Story - A painfully slow-moving art film of the kind we used to watch in university. I was mostly bored by it, but I did find it beautiful to look at, and I got the point in the end. I also appreciated that, as in old American movies, the characters speak slowly and clearly, making the dialogue easier to understand. (Three stars)

Soup Noodles and Kraft Dinner - January 2009

I don't have much to tell this month. It's the slow season for ESL, and I gather there isn't much work available. That being the case, I decided to take a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course. Although I already had TESOL training and more than a year of experience, I didn't have an "officially recognised" certificate, which is apparently necessary for a lot of the jobs in this city. So I enrolled in a month-long programme, and thereafter my days were mostly taken up with classes, and my spare time with homework.

Even though my primary reason for taking the course was necessity, I ended up enjoying it quite a lot. I had a fun teacher and nice classmates (both of them; it was a small class!). Although I've had a lot of teaching practice recently, it's been a while since I actually got any teacher training. Being back in school gave me a chance to learn about different methodologies, collect some new lesson ideas, and get feedback on my teaching style. The most important thing I learned is that I still have a long way to go to become a really good teacher, but at least I have some good ideas of what to work on. Hopefully I can get back to work soon, so I can start putting those ideas into practice.

Obviously my other reason for wanting to be back at work is so I can earn money. As long as I'm unemployed, I can't afford to do much of anything interesting. Things were especially tight at the beginning of the month, when I was trying to make up for over-spending at Christmas time. There were a couple of weeks where I was basically living on soup noodles and Kraft Dinner. Nutritionally disgraceful, I know, but brilliant financially!

The big news event of the month was the presidential inauguration of Barak Obama. In the week that followed, he and his family must have appeared on the cover of every single magazine in the country. After one day I was already sick of seeing them smile at me. Doesn't he ever get tired of having his picture taken? He was also Time's Person of the Year, and appeared on the cover of the Economist seven times in the last twelve months - I counted. Of course, despite all the P.R., the really issue is what he does now that he's been sworn in. So far he's already signed an order to close the Guantánamo Bay prison within a year, but he seemed a bit slow off the mark on the war in Gaza. He also has some kind of "stimulus package" to help prop up the U.S. economy, but I'm no good at talking about financial matters.

In related news, we got our government back here in Canada. Michael Ignatieff is the new leader of the Liberal Party, and so far he's not so keen on his predecessor's coalition plan, so it looks like our current government is sticking around for the foreseeable future.

Chinese New Year came at the end of the month. Obviously it isn't as big an event here as it is in Hong Kong, and I didn't do much to celebrate, but I did go out and see the parade in old Chinatown. It was pretty good, and I had a much better view of it than I had of the Hong Kong parade, so I enjoyed it a lot. The only crummy thing was the weather, which was cold and rainy.

Okay, I haven't seen any movies, or read any books (well, I've been reading books, but I haven't finished any), or been out to any performances, so there really isn't anything else to say.

Interesting Times - December 2008

In the middle of October, Canada had an election in which not much changed and almost half of the electorate failed to vote. The impression this gave was of a Canadian population that didn't really care much about politics. Seven weeks later, the opposition parties apparently decided that they were gonna make us care, darn it! Having slept through one of the least inspiring elections in their history, Canadians woke up to find themselves facing what could be the biggest constitutional crisis in eighty years. We were suddenly living in interesting times - with all the good and the bad that implies!

The story is fascinating. It brings back memories of university, and makes me wish I was back there studying Political Science again. The short version (you don't need me to tell you what's going on in the news) is that the Liberals, N.D.P., and Bloc Québécois decided to get together and form a coalition to oust Stephen Harper's Conservative minority government. But before they had a chance to do this, Harper went to the Governor General and convinced her to suspend parliament until the end of January. I honestly can't say how I feel about this decision, except that it was a tough call to make, and I don't know what I would have done in Michaëlle Jean's position. On the one hand, a coalition has every right to form a government if it commands the support of a majority of the house. On the other hand, the parties involved are so disparate that it's hard to imagine them governing effectively.

When I first heard about the coalition, I was rather annoyed, because it seemed like a desperate power grab by the opposition parties. But when it comes to being obnoxious, there's plenty of blame to go around. If Dion was obnoxiously ambitious, putting his own desire for power ahead of our need for a stable government, then Harper was equally obnoxious in the way he clung to power, even with only 38% of the popular vote. Moreover, he made some infuriatingly insulting comments about the Bloc, in which he implied that sovereigntists aren't real Canadians. (You can't say secessionists aren't Canadians while denying them the right to secede. Make up your mind, okay!) The Bloc, of course, is obnoxiously separatist; the Greens are obnoxiously impotent; and Jack Layton is just obnoxious. Period.

The upshot of all this is that we get to be without a government for a month and a half. (Watch us get along just as well without them!) Fortunately Canada's supposedly weathering the financial crisis fairly well so far, but it still seems like the result of all this intrigue has been similar to the result of the last election: nobody has really won, least of all the Canadian people.

At the beginning of December I moved into a new apartment. I was sad to leave the hostel, but I still go back and visit. I'm now living in the basement of a house. It's in east Vancouver, but very close to the SkyTrain (Vancouver's metro/el-train system) station, and only a ten-minute train ride from downtown. There are several other tenants, but they're rarely around, so I usually get the communal kitchen and dining area to myself. My room is small, but it's private, and contains everything I need, including wireless internet. I even have my own television with full cable! Initially, I saw that as an unnecessary perk. I haven't had proper T.V. since I left university. At home we don't have cable; in Hong Kong we had only four stations, two of which were in Cantonese; and at the hostel the T.V. was shared. So I'd gotten used to life without television, and didn't expect to use mine much. But it turns out that on dark, cold, rainy nights, when you're stuck at home with nothing to do and no one to talk to, T.V. becomes very inviting. So on my first night I turned it on and, being fairly out of touch with the hot, popular shows of today, sought out the comfortable and familiar - syndicated re-runs of shows I used to watch when I was in high school. Since then I've been spending most of my evenings with the brothers Crane and the crew of Starfleet. I think I may need a life.

In December I got my first taste of what work in Japan might be like. A group of Japanese high school students came to our school for a week, and I was one of the teachers assigned to teach them. I was quite nervous about it before hand. Japanese students have a reputation for being well-behaved, but they're also notoriously weak in English, and I was afraid that if I had a bad experience with my students it would put me off going to Japan. As it turned out, they were quite wonderful. Their level of English was low, but we ended up teaching very basic language and playing a lot of games, which was fun for everyone. One day I accompanied the kids (who wore a lot of plaid, by the way; who knew?!) to a Canadian primary school. We got a tour of the school, and then the Japanese students showed some Grade 1s origami, calligraphy, and other Japanese games. The best part was hearing the Japanese girls squeal, "kawaii desu!"* in response to the little Canadian students. Heh, don't they know they're plenty cute themselves? At the end of the week we let them try waffles with maple syrup and gave them all dream catchers. Overall, it was a very positive experience, and now I'm looking forward to Japan all the more.

Since then, my work hours have been cut down quite a lot, due to a drop in the number of students. I'm not sure when it may start to rise again, but it seems unlikely that I'll be able to keep working there in the new year, so I will probably have to look for another job.

December started off much like November: cold, wet, and rainy. The temperature hovered steadily at around 10ºC, about the same as the winter low in Hong Kong, but felt much colder with the humidity. I'd been told that that was about standard for a Vancouver winter, and was all prepared for a wet, green Christmas. But something unexpected happened in the middle of the month: one morning the temperature dropped below zero, and it started to snow! The snow only stayed around for about ten minutes, but the next day it started snowing in earnest, and pretty soon the ground was covered in a thick blanket of the soft, fluffy, white stuff. The reaction from the locals was largely surprise and complaining, both of which I had trouble understanding. I mean, there were only about four inches on the ground, and people were acting like they'd never seen the stuff before. (What, snow? In Canada?! In the winter time?! Naaaw!) This may explain why the streets took so long to get ploughed, and why the sidewalks were perpetually slushy. I had to laugh at them (wish winters in Ottawa were like this!) and also to feel a bit annoyed at the ingratitude. I mean, really. After a month and a half of rain, we finally got some nice weather! The skies cleared and the humidity dropped. The snow - as it does, paradoxically - made everything feel warmer, and - even better - made everything brighter, which was a relief after weeks of unyielding darkness. For a week we got crystal blue skies, pristine white snow, and temperatures just cold enough to put a spring in your step without being physically painful. Seriously, could you ask for better weather? As someone who grew up with harsh Ottawa winters, and endured a snow-free Christmas in Hong Kong, I for one was thrilled.

I'll admit, the snow did start to get too much, after a while, though. The week of Christmas it snowed again, and then it snowed the next day, and then snowed some more. The snow made walking a wet business, driving dangerous, and commuting slow. My sister and I had a painful experience on Christmas Eve. We were trying to get from downtown to my place, but after half an hour waiting for the train, two hours on the train waiting for someone to clear away a fallen tree (you wouldn't think it would take two hours plus to cut up a tree, but I guess that assumes you can actually find a chainsaw somewhere in the city of Vancouver...) and another half-hour waiting for a bus, we finally gave up and ended up spending Christmas Eve in a Chinese diner eating eggs and toast! Fortunately we were able to make it home in the end. Christmas Day was a lot better. We had Christmas dinner with some relatives who live in Vancouver. By that time the snow had gotten so deep that those foolhardy enough to drive literally had to dig their cars out. That was about the time I decided we'd had enough snow for a while.

To celebrate Christmas I also went to see the Santa Clause Parade, my first ever - or at least the first one I can remember! I saw the Christmas lights in different parts of downtown. I went to the Christmas pageant at church. And I saw some really cool gingerbread houses in the lobby of a hotel! I spent New Year's in Victoria.

The only other thing I want to mention is that I'm continuing my guitar-playing. My co-workers very kindly suggested that I take the guitar from work home over the holiday, so that's what I did. I've played it every day I've been here. I thought it might be difficult to get motivated (I was never that industrious in my piano-practice), but it turns out the guitar is addictive! Most of the time I only end up stopping when the pain in my fingers becomes unbearable! Unfortunately, I'll have to give it back in the new year. I could look into buying one of my own, but they're generally expensive, and I'm not planning on being here that long, so it probably wouldn't be worth it.

Movies I've seen this month:

A History of Violence - I'd heard a lot of good things about this movie, but I was very disappointed in it. It was surprisingly short, and I didn't really understand what its point was supposed to be. (Two stars)

No Country for Old Men - A slow, moody picture that combines atmosphere, brutal violence, and the subtlest touch of humour. I liked it a lot, and I think Anton Chigurh deserves to go on my list of great movie villains. (Three and a half stars)

T.V. shows I've seen this month:

The Sopranos - Crazy Italian Mobsters and the Women Who Love Them: a year and a half after it aired, I finally got to see the final season of this show. It was a rather disappointing ending, but The Sopranos was still a great series, and that's how I'll always remember it. Tony, Carmela, Meadow, A.J., Jennifer, Christopher, Pussy, Paulie, Silvio, Bobby, Livia, Junior, Janice, and Adriana: I will miss you all. Most of you were obnoxious, and many of you were despicable, but I'm glad I got to share in your weird family hijinks. R.I.P., those of you who didn't make it. Things I learned from The Sopranos: 1) Don't be a mobster. 2) Don't marry a mobster. 3) Never do business with a mobster. 4) Never borrow money from a mobster. 5) Never act as a mobster's shrink, priest, doctor, or A.A. sponsor. And finally... 6) Never ever EVER play cards with a mobster! Salut.

* Japanese for, "So cute!"

Hostel III - November 2008

At the end of October I moved out of my apartment and back into the hostel - the same one I stayed at when I visited Vancouver in June, and also when I first arrived in the summer. It was thus my third stay there, but fortunately it only lasted a month. I began apartment-hunting again, and was fortunate enough to find one right away, but I couldn't move in till the beginning of December. So I was at the hostel for all of November.

Hostel life is inconvenient in many ways. You have no privacy, you can't unpack your stuff, and you have to share the kitchen (and fridge) with dozens of other people. But in other respects it's very nice. The hostel was full of people from all over the world: lots of people from Japan and Mexico, as well as some from Australia, Europe, and, of course, various parts of Canada. The environment of the hostel itself was warm and friendly, and so were the people who stayed there. While I was there, I was never lonely, and I had opportunities to learn about different countries and to practice my speaking skills in languages like French and Japanese.

The Japanese is especially important to my goal of joining the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Programme. This programme takes young people from different parts of the world and places them for a year as English teachers in Japanese schools. This is similar to my last job, where I spent nine months teaching English in Hong Kong, and, indeed, the reason I got into ESL in the first place was with the aim of joining the JET Programme. The application process is lengthy and competitive. I spent a month and a half preparing the necessary documents in time for the November deadline. Now I have to wait for at least two months to find out if I get accepted or not. Your prayers are appreciated.

Back in October I was at a used book sale and picked up a beginner Japanese textbook. I've been using it ever since to try and teach myself Japanese. It's been going pretty slowly, but it's good to have a hobby. I have another hobby, too. For the past couple of months I've been learning the guitar. We have one at work, and one day I picked it up and began asking my co-workers to teach me chords. Now I can play several chords and a couple of songs, and I'm working on my strumming.

I didn't do much exciting in November. The highlight of an otherwise uneventful month was the U.S. election. It seemed to sneak up on me unexpectedly. The campaign had been gradually building up for two years - so long that it had almost become a fixture of day to day life. I was momentarily distracted by elections up on this side of the border, and next thing I knew, November 4th was upon us! I watched the results with as much enthusiasm as anyone else around here - and more than I'd expected to feel. I hadn't been rooting for anyone in particular. Both of the finalists were strong contenders with serious shortcomings, and I'd always been skeptical of the hype surrounding Barak Obama. Hype, after all, cannot fix the world's problems. But when it was all over, I had to marvel at what had just happened. A lot of the people who supported Obama did so because he was black - not a terribly good reason to vote for someone. Yet I couldn't help being impressed when the results came in. Because I really didn't think it would happen. If you'd told me six years ago that the next president of the United States would be a black man, I wouldn't have believed it could happen. In my lifetime, sure, but not before the end of the decade. And whatever else the Obama administration does (or does not) bring to the world, it is at least historic in one respect.

At work I talked about the election with my students, and explained its significance to them. Most of my co-workers were thrilled with the results. On Wednesday, one of them brought in doughnuts for everyone; the next day, there was chocolate cake. Hey, if I'd known a vote for Obama was a vote for free goodies, I would have become a fan of his a long time ago!

Weather-wise, November was a miserable month. Not that I can recall ever having a good November, but this one proved that all the stories about Vancouver are true. A few days before Hallowe'en it started to rain, and it didn't clear up for the next two weeks. We got a week of brilliant sunshine, and then more rain. After a couple more weeks of that, I looked out my window, to see something I barely recognised: clear sky! (Turns out that when the clouds are gone, the sky is actually blue underneath! Who knew!) One thing I will say for Vancouver weather: when it decides to be nice, it really goes all out. You can have non-stop rain one day, and cloud-free sunshine the next. The problem was that in November, the cloudy days far outnumbered the sunny ones, and half of them were rainy, too.

There's something worse than cold and rainy, though, and that's cold, rainy, and dark! Last year in Hong Kong I was spared Canada's long winter nights; now I remember how much I hate them. This is the time of year when dawn is at 8:00 and sunset is at 4:00. When it's dark on your way to work, and dark when you get out of work. When the sun never rises above 18º, and even at noon your shadow is taller than you are! I can deal with the rest of Canada's weather, but the eight-hour days really get to me, and having the few available hours of sunlight obscured by constant rain only makes them even more soul-killing.

On November 11 I got something I'd never had before: a holiday! I don't know if it's a work holiday in Ontario or not, but I distinctly remember that I never got a day off school for it. Indeed, the whole idea of taking a holiday for Remembrance Day seems strange to me; most holidays are for happy occasions. This year it fell on a Tuesday, and I really didn't know what to do with myself. I considered going down to the war memorial and observing the Remembrance Day ceremonies, but it was raining (as usual), so I ended up just sitting around doing nothing. I think that's one holiday I can probably live without.

I mostly went to the Anglican Church this month, because I thought it was high time I settled on one. I'll probably make it my home church for the duration of my stay in Vancouver.

In closing, I'd like to do a bit of un-solicited advertising on behalf of the C&N Backpackers Hostel in Vancouver. I stayed there for a cumulative total of more than three months, and found very little to complain about (well, except for the flaky wireless service, but hey, it was free!) The staff are friendly, the environment is warm and homey, and the location is convenient. Beds go for $20/night or $120/week - which in Vancouver is cheaper than a lot of apartments! If you're ever in this city looking for a nice, clean, cheap place to stay, this is the place I recommend.

Movies I've seen this month:

The Laramie Project - They did a screening of this movie at church. It tells the true story of a small town where a young gay man was beaten to death, and the town's reaction to the killing. I liked the script, but I wasn't big on the execution. Every other character was played by somebody famous, and I think that distracted from the story. It's based on a play, and I think sometime I'd like to see a theatrical version of it; I might like that better.

Books I've read this month:

The Last of the Crazy People by Timothy Findley - Somewhat opaque family melodrama about a group of people who are all either crazy or suffering from some form of emotional problem.

The Keeper of the Isis Light by Monica Hughes - Teen science-fiction novel. I read it back when I was in elementary school, and loved it. A decade and a half later, I found it just as meaningful as I remembered it, if not more so.

Howard's End by E. M. Forster - Forster's a difficult author, but I think I like him. Maybe. Sometime's I think I understand what he's trying to say, but his writing style is so meandering that it's hard to tell. I did like the book better than I remember liking the movie, although I saw it a very long time ago. I should watch it again now, to compare.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker - Pretty good story about a poor black woman dealing with racism and sexism in the first half of the twentieth century. I should see the movie some time.

I Met David Jay!!! - October 2008

I may as well begin this post with a piece of good-bad news. At the end of September I found a place to live, and moved in. I was in a one-bedroom apartment with a couple of other girls. It was downtown near Stanley Park, which is a really good location, and was close to my work, too. Unfortunately, I had some problems there, and had to move out at the end of the month. So the good news is that I had a place to live in October, and the bad news is that I'm back to being homeless and living in a hostel. It's a bit frustrating, but with a little luck I'll be able to find another place.

Early in the month I saw an exhibit that MSF (Doctors Without Borders) was doing at the library. I thought it was pretty interesting and worth talking about. It was an interactive display on their work with refugees in different parts of the world. They took us around what was supposed to be a model refugee camp. It looked like life there would be hard, but bearable. I'm guessing that in a real life refugee camp life would be a lot harder and not so bearable at times. What's really amazing is that there are people who spend years, all their lives sometimes, in places like that. Seems like a depressing way to live, but at least there are aid organisations to help them. Sometimes.

For Canadian Thanksgiving I went down to Victoria again. I didn't do much while I was there, but we did go down to see the University of Victoria and the famous UVic bunnies. It's true; the campus really is overrun with rabbits. I'm not used to seeing so many rabbits close up. They were kind of pretty.

The day after the long weekend was the election. I watched it dutifully on T.V., waiting to see if anything interesting would happen, but the only thing that seems to have decisively come out of it is that Stéphane Dion will be stepping down as leader of the Liberal Party. Poor Stéphane Dion. I feel sorry for him. He was so darned earnest in the debates. It almost made you want to vote for him out of sympathy! Plus, he made the environment the centrepiece of his campaign - a pressing issue if ever there was one. I wonder what the future of climate change will look like under the new government...

I'd been told when I first came here that I needed to climb Grouse Mountain, and one weekend I woke up, looked out the window, and decided to do just that. It was a chilly day for a climb, and quite misty around the mountain, but of course I kept warm with exercise. The climb was quite difficult, as hard as climbing up to see the Big Buddha on Lantau, if not more so. The average time is one and a half hours. I did it in one hour and fifty-five minutes. It was quite steep, and a bit slippery from the recent rain, and a couple of times I worried that I might slip. In the end I managed to get to the top in one piece, very tired, but glad I'd done it. I feel like I accomplished something. Unfortunately, one of the cable cars was broken that day, so there was an hour-and-a-half lineup for the ride down. Since it was already mid-afternoon, and since I'd been warned against walking down, I pretty much lined up right away, and didn't have much of a chance to see the top of the mountain. That's too bad, because it looks like there are some interesting things to see up there, including wood carvings and grizzly bears. I'll have to go back there sometime, probably in the spring. Now that I've done it once, I know I can do it again! At least I got to see the view, though. I couldn't at first, because of the fog, but once that cleared, the sight was spectacular! I could see all of Vancouver stretched out before me like an upside-down map: Stanley Park, downtown, south Vancouver, Richmond, all the way to Tsawwassen and beyond to the U.S. border - 50 km away! That alone made the climb worth it.

The highlight of the month was the monthly AVEN meet-up - which this month was extra-special. One of the Vancouver members gave a short seminar on asexuality at UBC, and David Jay came up from San Francisco to help out. Now, there's a better than even chance that you've never heard of David Jay, but he's the founder of AVEN, and, consequently totally awesome! And in case I haven't made it clear already, I got to meet him! This is a big deal for me. I've been a fan of his for years. He started the first major online asexual community; he's been all over the United States promoting his cause; he's appeared on loads of talk shows and news specials and in countless articles. Without him, there would be no AVEN. He's a minor celebrity, the poster boy of the asexual community, and I met him. Scratch what I said before. This was one of the highlights of the year.

The talk was okay, though of course little was said that I hadn't heard before. The more interesting part was afterwards when we had an informal group discussion. Then we went to someone's house and had an AVEN party with AVEN cake - my first ever! It was good fun, and I got David to take a picture with me - just for proof!

The month ended, as Octobers do, with Hallowe'en. We had a big party at work. Since most of the students had never celebrated Hallowe'en before, we encouraged them to dress up and enjoy themselves while they could. Many of them came with really good costumes. Some of my favourites were Hannibal Lecter, a samurai, Zorro, Wednesday Adams, some playboy bunnies, and the invisible man (a guy in dark glasses, a baseball cap, and bandages wrapped around his hands and head). Most of the teachers dressed up too. One man came as a woman; other costumes included a panda, Wonder Woman, an alien, a wood nymph, and a toasted western (a cowboy with toast hanging on pieces of string around his neck). I went as Sweeney Todd, something I'd been wanting to do for the last eight months, ever since I saw Tim Burton's/Johnny Depp's marvelous reinterpretation of the character. I think I did a pretty good job, although I didn't scowl at everyone nearly as much as I probably should have!

This month I found myself going back to a lot of churches, including one of the United churches, the Presbyterian church, and an Anglican church. I still haven't chosen one, though.

Books I've read this month:

Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry - Novel set in India by the same author who wrote A Fine Balance. I liked A Fine Balance better, but I still thought this was a fairly good book, with interesting characters and a good message. Now I'd like to see the movie some time.

Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman - Impressively believable teen fiction about an adolescent girl living in thirteenth-century England.