Favourite Places to Eat

1. Shiro on Cambie
2. Vancouver's #1 Dosa
3. Congee Noodle House on Main (please re-open soon).
4. Cito Cafe on Marinaside Crescent
5. Jade Garden in Chinatown.
6. Goldfish for their yummy soup (Yaletown)
7. Cellar in Kits (jazz and aperitif).
8. Uncle Fatih on Commercial (best budget pizza joint in town).
9. Salsa Agave in Yaletown
10. Kinos on Cambie (Flamenco nights are awesome).
11. Menya on Broadway and Yukon
12. Trix crepes on Cambie.
13. Fritz on Granville (nights on Granville with Anya isn't complete without Fritz)
14. Liberty Cafe on Main St (best pie)
15. Sweet Revenge on Main St (the best server and raspberry cake).

Hmmmm.....I think I eat out way too often!!! Maybe, I need to read Jen's food blog more often to get inspired about cooking.

Arcade Fire

to slay January's boredom.

Day 14: busy writing papers

I'm taking a break from Kanji to write papers. Also, I'm finding my flashcards boring. I need to start using my Kanji creatively. I hope my two new books help: Read Real Japanese: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers and Read Real Japanese: Essays by Popular Authors.

Day 9: 義 （ぎ）

I picked this 漢字 because I like writing it in my work book. It makes me feel like I know what I'm doing when I practice 義. It means justice, integrity, and loyalty. Also, it looks pretty.

Wondering why I'm studying Kanji now? Well as a teacher on call, I often get called to teach Japanese. Ninety eight percent of the time my Japanese is fine. The two percent of the time it doesn't sit well. Majority of my students are awesome. They are young motivated teens that are passionate about anime and Japanese culture. Basic Japanese goes along way, except when I have students that are Japanese Canadians and Chinese Canadians. Those kids often ask me how to write a certain kanji or give them a reading for a character they encountered in manga. My reply is always, "I don't know, go look it up." Embarrassing. To do something about it, I've decided to learn. I want to take the second level Japanese test this September. The test is difficult. I don't know if I'll pass.So as my soccer students in Japan used to say, "GANBARO!!"

Day 8: 勝 （しょう、か「つ」）

I’ve known two parts of 勝　for a while. The first radical is 月. It means month. The one underneath 力　means strength. I've still yet to learn the radical that sits on top of strength. These three radicals together in this specific order means a flesh cut by the powerful. The おん　reading is shou and the くん reading is ka[tsu] and masa[ru].

Day 7: 漢字

漢字of the day is 接(setsu,se[suru])。接 means to touch or adjoin. The explanation for this 漢字 is neat: strokes 1-3 join hands, and 4-8 is a standing woman. So when I see 接 I think of the desire to be close to someone I like.

Day 6: 漢字

Today’s kanji is 殺 (satsu, koro[su]). In Essential Kanji, P.G. O’Neill provides pictographic explanation of 殺：strokes 1-2 is an animal, strokes 3-6 is a tree, 7-10 is clubbed to death. To memorize this character I think of an animal sitting in a tree that has been clubbed to death. Essential Kanji is an awesome book. It gives you characters by stroke count, simple and frequently used characters are given first, the おんand くん readings, and English names of radicals. This book makes me want to study 漢字. I love it!!!

Day 3: Maligayang Bagong Taon!!

It’s 2009. New hopes, new dreams, new goals are in the horizon. This year I’m actually setting goals. Small goals to keep me busy and active: spend more time with friends, snowboard, use my snow shoes frequently, learn to be a better swimmer, take the 日本試験二きゅ, and work on my PDP +15.

american politics

While in Seattle I was hoping to see an Obama poster. No such luck. I did see several McCain posters though. American politics fascinate me: determining the leader of the most powerful nation, their long electoral process of finding presidential candidates from the major parties, the strategies behind selecting a VP, and the historical divisions between red and blue states.

I find all the candidates and the legend behind their myth incredible. McCain pulls his war hero card every time he’s asked a tough question. His running mate Palin draws attention by choosing to keep her mentally handicapped child. Biden connects with voters by reminding them of a personal tragedy that took his first wife and daughter. And Obama’s multicultural identity reflects the complicated fabric of American society.

Whomever the American people choose, I hope they do so on capabilities and political record.

return

It`s great to be back in company of great friends. I hung out with Kuniko on Thursday and Friday. We went to Mangekio onsen in Chiba. Oh, how I missed onsens! When I was planning my trip, I was hesitant because I haven`t been to any new place in the last three years. But now, I`m happy to be here. This is my first real holiday in three years

Yesterday, I walked around Yachiyo-Chuo. I found this beautiful walk way that meanders around the city. It is a brilliant green space. The flowers are labelled and the wood railings gave a touch of Japanese esthetic to this Disney Land city. Chiba is situated East of Tokyo. One of its main attractions is Disney world. While I was on the train, I saw Cinderella`s castle and Aladin`s palace. Japanese love Disney, which makes sense for this ultra stress, high pressured society to be in-love with fairy tale endings.

I have been eating amazing food. Kuniko prepared a feast yesterday for Kenta, Yumi, and I. We ate, drunk, and danced salsa in Kuniko`s leaving room. Since Cuba is the last place Yumi went on a holiday, she created Havana for us by dousing our coffee with rum.

In couple of hours I`m heading to Nagano. I`ll be taking the famous Shinkansen. The three years I lived here, I didn`t get a chance to take the bullet train. My town Chino has the rapid Asuza, I wonder how it compares to the SHINKANSEN?

Midnight's Children

It took me a year to finish Midnight's Children. Every morning a list of errands appeared on my desk and Salman Rushdie’s words were pushed aside. It is a great book. It inspired me and best of all, it made me laugh. This is my favourite part:

Commander Sabarmati walked out of the apartment block with the smoking gun in his hand (he was seen, through the crack of a door, by a terrified Latin tutor); he strolled along Colaba Causeway until he saw a traffic policeman on his little podium. Commander Sabarmati told the policeman, “I have only now killed my wife and her lover with this gun; I surrender myself into your . . .” But he had been waving the gun under the policeman’s nose; the officer was so scared that he dropped his traffic-conducting baton and fled. Commander Sabarmati, left alone on the policeman’s pedestal amid the sudden confusion of the traffic, began to direct the cars, using the smoking gun as a baton. This is how he was found by the posse of twelve policemen who arrived ten minutes later, who sprang courageously upon him and seized him hand and foot, and who removed from him the unusual baton with which, for ten minutes, he had expertly conducted the traffic.

Friday afternoon

I’m home on a Friday afternoon. It feels strange. My head tells me to clean my room and kitchen. My heart tells me to click away at the keys. It has been too long since I’ve written. Most of the things I love to do have been neglected: reading books, writing letters, talking to friends, watching the sky change. I haven’t found time for myself. My education degree took them along with my energy.
Now it’s done. I sit and wait for my licence and for the phone to ring. In the meantime I’m organizing pictures from my trip home during the holidays and relearning to write.

isang araw

I am awake before my alarm rings at four:twenty. At five:thirty I walk down Cambie. Sleepy construction workers with cigarettes between their lips sit in their trucks waiting for their shift to begin. At five:fifty my body tenses as I get off the bus on Pender and Hasting. The first crack in the sky is still buried under the horizon. And the dark forces me to carry my keys between my fingers. My strides are quick and long. Twenty steps before….nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen…..four, three, two, and safety.

Morning coffee is unnecessary when you go through the oldest neighborhood in Vancouver. Lights flicker from people crouched on the ground as they inhale smoke rising from their hands; cocoons line the side walk, people in different stages of muscular contractions scream inaudible sound. Sadness fills me as my bus passes through the downtown east side. Drug rehabilitation, social issues….we are born with unequal circumstances, how do we level the playing field? These thoughts slip away as I enter the industrial section. My own reality pulls me and traps me between teaching chance and probability, behavioral management, my nephew who has not returned my email, my students that are struggling in life, unpainted bedroom, choosing a country to live, dropping my suits to the cleaner.

Part 1

Escape is on my mind

Every night for the last week, I stretch the night by refusing to sleep. Pulling the blanket over my head, I hold off the new day. I can’t believe that two weeks of my holidays are gone. And all I have left is two more weeks. In March, my exhausted body felt that this break would never come. Now, that it's here, it feels too short. The days are shrinking.

Lately, I find myself in new roles. I had to talk to my female students about positive body image when I over heard a group of girls say, “I feel blotted…You look fat……..We look fat.” I felt that it was my responsibility to interject. I talked to them about being positive, loving their body shape, and that cool girls don’t put each other down. With their eyes, they stamped OLD on my forehead. Old in that sense that I have no clue.

I foresee my nephew attaching this same label on me when I speak to him. Something I’ve been putting off for the last week. My sister asked me to talk to him since I pay for his university tuition. She feels that he would listen to me. Like most teenagers, he slacks off with his household chores. This isn’t a big deal, but to his mother it is huge. Last week, she kept saying that he lives in the Philippines, and there’s no room for error if he wants to survive. I haven’t made the connection between household chores and surviving. But somehow, I’m an adult figure that needs to say, “Smarten up.” A hard role since I’d seen him only twice. Sending cards, letters, and showering him with gifts when I come for a visit is the only relationship we’ve ever had.

This role of being responsible to and for young adults feels foreign. I’ve been responsible and accountable for my own life for as long as I could remember, but being a role figure feels matriarchal. I find my shoulders droop with the weight of responsibilities.

politics in a pitcher

Doolan yells at me each time I ask him to translate a Spanish word.
“You should know that de Leon. It’s a common word, de Leon.”
He likes to repeat my last name. A habit I haven’t figured out. The last time we got drunk he told me that Filipinos are Asian anomaly. And that we are not really Asians. And that we are a strange breed.
“If we are not Asians, what are Filipinos?” I questioned him.
“I don’t know. You should know where you’re people are from. Geez, don’t you know your roots.”
“Well, not really, I thought you could help me.”
“If you don’t know. How am I supposed to know?” He barks at me.
“You say Filipinos are not Asians, is it because my archipelago is run by actors and pop singers?”
“You’re country is run by soap opera stars?”
“Yup, all seven thousand islands. From Luzon to Mindanao: mayors, councilors, senators, governors, and presidente are actors. Wait, except Rocco. He’s the only exception. He’s the minister of education.”
“You mean were actors.”
“Don’t interrupt! For punishment, I will steal your beer. I mean, it will cost you a beer. Stay in the present tense Doolan, they are actors”
“Son-of-a-bitch de Leon. You emptied the pitcher.”
“Well that’ll give you a reason to go up and talk to her again.” Doolan has a crush on the bartender. He refuses to order from the server and gets up to the bar to be close to the curly red hair English major.

what does it mean? pls recommend

Yesterday, I was shopping at a trendy clothing store on Main Street when a sales clerk with Buddy Holly’s glasses used the word humid. The word humid registered in my head and I paused. My impulse was to correct him. I felt like telling him that he misused the word. It wasn’t humid. It was chilly. The wind was fat and cold. It can’t be windy, chilly, and humid at the same time. Or can’t it? Humid implies heat, doesn’t it? I didn’t say a word. I smiled and continued sifting through the sale rack. But, the whole time I was at the store, my mind was on the word humid. For me, it is connected to summer’s heat and the taste of the rain in the air. Yet, Vancouverites with their northern relationship to the ocean gave it a different meaning. They use the word to describe the relatively high level of water vapor in the air. The logical side of me agreed that air saturation varied on temperature. However, the Prairie Brown Equator in me refused to change my word association. Humid will come after the adjective hot. Hot, and humid. Yes, that’s the order it shall remain. It can’t be cold and humid. Hot and humid, in that exact order, anything else is absurd.

Speaking of absurd, I’m reading Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. This is one my favorite parts:
Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.

Now, that I have a break before summer session, I want to read books that are hilariously absurd, magical, surreal, and carnivalesque. The more twisted things are the more I find them close to the truth. I want a different reality, so tell me what you’re reading. And, tell me why I should read it.

paolo's visit

unusual westcoast winter

no more drama

It’s eight:thirty and I’m fighting to keep my eyelids open. I spent last night in a cabin in the woods with 32 students and 3 faculty associates. Great food, great story tellers, an afternoon hike, and an evening huddled around the fire making music made sleeping on cement floors bearable.

It was snowing again when I woke up. During breakfast, few people were worried how they were going to drive up the hill. Hoping they wouldn’t get stuck. This seems to be a recurring theme in Van City lately. Last week, Production Way (the road that goes up the hill to Simon Fraser University) was closed. All busses were rerouted, adding an extra half an hour to my 60 minutes morning commute. Also, the back and front fence of my house had been down since December, the roof of BC place is still deflated, Stanley Park looks like it has alopecia from all the fallen trees, the black-outs, and of course, the two weeks we had to boil our water.

I have to admit, I sort of enjoyed the silt in our water event. It gave a little drama to this lovely city, but driving across Stanley Park today was depressing. From the Lions Bridge you could see bald spots and washed out roads. I hope no more drama is in store and I’m counting down the days cherry blossoms make their appearance

I haven’t written on this in awhile. There are tons of things to write, but I haven’t had time to sit down and tap away at the keys. There is also the question of why I blog? Its self involved. It adds to the “me” culture which I’ve justified by thinking that writing is a selfish act. I still think this way, but recent interactions with unintended audiences made me re-evaluate how I want to control who has access to my writings . In two weeks my practicum begins. The last thing I want is to have faculty, colleagues, and students read something I’ve written and think that it is an accurate representation of me. At best my writing captures a fragment of truth which represents me at that moment.

I started this blog two years ago to keep in contact with friends. I haven’t been doing a good job with that so here’s an overview and self reminder of the last 6 months:

1. School started this week. One week down. 46 left to go.
2. Jen got married to Mark. Seeing them over Christmas made me believe in love again.
3. Ian is almost as tall as I am. And a trip home is not complete without eating tons of cookies at Anne's home.
4. Bowling with Geret and Robb in Winnipeg is priceless.
5. Time is the best gift you could give. A lesson my Mom Marg thought me over the holidays.
6. That you are never prepared to lose a love one, regardless of how long you’ve been separated.

7. Montreal has the best poutine.
8. Sharad is a pretty cool Indian
9. Hanging out in the farm with Aleks and her parents rocks.
10. A wedding along St. Lawrence is beautiful.
11. Tea with Vancouverite friends is not often enough.
(Pics soon to follow)