Holiday at the (HK-ese) movies

Shit.

I spent the whole 2 weeks chilling out and watching old HK gangster films. The Tsui Hark, Johnny To, Andrew Lau, and John Woo
Just finished Exile, which will be Hong Kong's entry to the Oscar's for 2008.
I saw most of the 古惑仔 series. I also saw a few derivatives.

It's funny. I just realized how ingrained these movies were. I grew up with A Better Tomorrow.
And it has sorta been a rough bible for my life. Somethings I learned were: be loyal to friends and family; money is power; life is unimportant as long as one follow ones duty; death is okay as long as it is glorious; nothing is worse than a traitor or a snitch.

I hoping this week of movie watching will influence not beyond trying to double-pistol my way thru a crowded karaoke.

Only best friends can...

Only best friends can rip apart each other. That forgiveness is always expected, we can afford to be cruel.

Bob

I dreamt last night about Bob, Joker's right-hand man in Batman: The Movie.

We were inside a shack, under cover from fire off of Tommy Guns.

It was in the middle of the forest. I found the bullet fragments. They were dented, intact, and .22 calibre.

Bob was suprised. How could it be from a Tommy Gun?

Why I write (I think)

A friend of mine was writing her personal statement for her MFA applications. They are asking her: Why do you want to come to our school? What are you like? Why do you want to be a writer?

I was a little horrified by the application and am very sympathetic for her plight.

It made me kind of think why I spend so much of my time writing. For my friend, it is easy.

"I like writers. I like to be around other writers. And writing is something I think I am best at."

I thought about that. I figured that none of these reasons apply to me. Other writers make me edgy. Most of them a big weirdos. They have funny habits and they talk funny, like a little Roman slave-scribe is following them everywhere writing down every word they utter.

Writing also makes me jittery. My heart beats irregularly whenever I had to write. My mind gets untethered and it floats away from me. I don't feel like myself; it is as if a part of me has gone out of town and I am running across the highway to the cabin, trying the chase it back.

I really hate writing.

So, why am I doing this?

I was wandering in the inside of Eglington station, looking at the discount bookstore that sold out-of-date computer books and failed romance novels. People were passing by, off to somewhere.

I didn't have anywhere to go.

Why don't I have anywhere to go? I am not sure what I am doing here in the City.

I had to write this down. And then I realized everything down. I write so I can justify to myself that I do exist and why that is so. It is so because I am telling myself so.

So, I write. Otherwise, I won't be around and this page won't be here.

Whopper wednesday

It's a toonie for a whopper today at BK.

Man, i can't believe I had two. They are about 1000 calories each. But
it feels so good to eat...

K-Fed

The current issue of Details has Kevin Federline on the cover. He is the cover boy for their "50 Most Influential Men Under 45."
--
Sent using Agendus Mail demo.
Visit www.iambic.com for more great products!

Random finds on a international language

From the Wall Street Journal,
Plain English Gets Harder In Global Era
By PHRED DVORAK
November 5, 2007; Page B1

GlobalEnglish earlier this year also added a "Culture Notes" section to its Web site featuring cross-cultural business tips created by Transnational Management Associates Ltd., a London-based management trainer. When working in the U.S., "it is important to exude confidence, which Americans are taught from a young age," the guide warns.

Poem for David Lambert

Who can fault the sun
that gives light and heat
on all surface things?

Photonics rays
irradiating
the masses of electron waves.

Energy masquerading solids.
Steam, stream, and ice.
One light illuminating one sameness.

But, Inequitable Man,
frail and pale,
imagining wisdom
from its narrow spectral vision.
Calculating, differentiating.
Edifying the thought-tree
of phylum and kingdom,
family, class, and specie.

A delight of self-delusion.

Progress in chaos.
Myriad in one.
Lines in circles.

When the eternal cycle comes.
Existence compressing and expanding.
When the earth is molten.
When leaves and grass,
spine and fingers are stripped ions.

Where will the minded difference be?
What fell, what evil,
what good, what excellent?

Language a riddle,
Time, illusion.

Our comprehension no greater than the black ant
Knowing only
work, feed, breed, breathe,
and the probabilistic nature of existence: beginning, striving, dying.

When time runs itself out,
one black dot,
four-times unextended, remains.

Climbing up from rock bottom

I went to The Boat a few nights ago with friends I knew for awhile and some people I met recently. Flailing my arms, jumping up and down like an idiot to the ironic thumpings of 70's pop, I had a really really good time. I was 23 again.

Actually, better than when I was at 23. At 23, I was too self-conscious to dance like that with all those people. I was more withdrawn. I felt like, on the dance floor, the 23 year old I should've been. More care-free. Enjoying being young and feeling good about an unknown future.

23 was probably the worst year of my life -- in a lifetime filled with many bad years. They just never seemed to me to bad. Bad is not what happens to you: it is when you are within that state of mind where you look at your surroundings and you tell yourself that it was bad.

And it was bad at 23.

I was living by myself in the graduate student ghetto of Kingston. I hated everyone around me: my friends, my peers, my family, my teachers. People who might care. It was a self-made misery.

23 is too young of an age to be unhappy with life. I spent the next four years in upheavel. Changing places, jobs, friends, but never changing that state of mind of being miserable. Wasted youth.

I am 27 now. Life has not changed. I am still in the same place, really. But my outlook has changed. The world seems to be giving and giving to me now. It probably always have been giving and giving. I just wasn't paying attention.

And really, what is place if not a mental representation of ourselves over our physical surroundings? A plateau can be flat rolling plains or the height of the world.

I am appreciative of the joy people I know and people I am meeting have shared with me.

The Persistence of Memory (of web-apps)

An ex-girlfriend from high school used to get mad at me all the time because I couldn't remember her birthday.

I don't know when I did it, but I apparently entered a repeating reminder to myself years ago on Yahoo Calender.

I don't even use Yahoo Calender, but I still kept Yahoo Mail. Last night, while checking my mail, Yahoo reminded me that it was her birthday today.

It was so weird.

Synchronocity also displayed itself today on the same item. I went to have a burger at Harvey's. The clerk's name-tag read, "Tenisha," which is the ex-girlfriend's middle name.

Double weird.

So, wherever you are, hon, happy birthday.

The Toronto Way

Hanging out with many different people from all over the world is one of the privleges of living in Toronto. Here, everybody has different norms and expectations. And there are different communities of diverse cultural backgrounds. I, personally, know very little about each one of them. I just know the people that I know and that some of them are cool, some of them not, some are sad, some are flippant, some are rich, some are poor.

I had always thought that the ability to accept -- or, at the very least, tolerate -- people who are very different from you is one of the key pre-requisites to surviving and thriving in Toronto. You cannot walk half a block in this city without being overwhelmed by differences. That is what makes a city, a city. The overwhelming diversity is what makes Toronto a great city. And tolerance, and co-operation, and harmony. It's the Toronto way.

Cabbies

I was leaving for home the other night. Leaving a club in Kensington with $1.43 in my pocket.

2AM. It was cold at the streetcar stop on College. A black man and a white man was trying to catch a cab. There were plenty of empty ones but none would stop for them. The black man had on a toque in Jamaician colours. The white man was bald with a single earring. He had on a navy blue bomber jacket -- the same one the skinheads in American History X wore.

All the empty cabs kept speeding past them. They were walking and laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.

I crossed over to their side of the street and asked them if they were trying to hail a cab. They were apprehensive, but told me yes. I looked at them and smiled. I waved them away from the curb; closer to the side of the building and out of the light.

I had on a khaki-coloured London Fog jacket and and conservative-looking messenger bag swung to one-side. I looked like a visiting American businessman.

I stuck my arm out of the sidewalk and a cab sped down -- it swerved almost off the roadway -- and stopped pin-perfect in front of me, in spite of the rain.

I looked into the side-window to the driver, openned the rear-door. Quickly I waved the two men inside. As they got in, one of them thanked me. I said goodbye, slammed the door, and walked back to the streetcar stop. It was wet and I stared down the road west towards Little Italy. Still no streetcar was coming.

Urinals at Yonge and Bloor

Just went to the bathroom at Yonge and Bloor. All the urinals are working. The automatic sensor flushed. THere was perfectly warm water from the taps. There was even soap! Amazing!

Before I left, I thought I'd try my luck: I stuck my hands under the hand dryer. WHIIZZZ!! Hot air warmed my skin.

Wow. What did I do to deserve such good fortune?

Sex and Manhood

How could a man say no to sexual opportunity?

I am in the middle of reading Men's Work by Paul Kivel. Great work exploring the inner workings of masculinity. I can really identify.

I was kind of thinking about the same thing. A few years ago, a woman I was very attracted to propositioned me at a party. I don't know her very well, but I always found her very physically beautiful.

She was being a little frisky with me and I was a little aroused. On the other hand, I just wasn't really feeling it that night. I was slightly drunk. I wanted to go home and sleep. But I responded to her advances anyways because I felt like I must. After all, what kind of man goes running when a hot chick comes a knockin'?

Whenever I relate these incidents to my guy friends, they think I am a wussy. One of my best friend actually has a policy to try to fuck every girl that steps into the threshold of his bedroom. He isn't necessarily interested in every women that does enter his room, but he told me that he felt less of a man if he didn't at least try. The pursuit is what is important. The pursuit is itself the true test of masculinity.

I think back to all my friends who would go out every night, looking a lazy fuck. Actually, it was hardwork. Dressing up would take them two hours. Then, another hour of pre-drinking. What "pre-drinking" is for, it took me years to figure out -- it was to numb their sense of embarrassment so that they could hit on dozens of women a night and get rejected and keep on going. I still remember all the women they would bring back. Some of them, I knew, my friends were completely unattracted to.

I remember after one such unmemorable fucks, I asked my friend about why he did it.

"I just needed to get laid," he said, "sorry about the noise."

He chuckled and went back into his room.

I was horrified. My friend is an upper-middle class snob that would normally blow someone off if they had the wrong socks on. Why the hell is he fucking a woman he probably won't even talk to, he wasn't the least bit interested in, and will probably never want to see again? It seemed neither pleasurable, nor intimate, nor something to take pride or joy in.

My friends actually kept an informal scoresheet of their sexual "conquests." It wasn't really talked about, but everybody keep a mental note. And do compare. My friend, GQ, averaged about one woman a week, and YM, averaged about one woman every two weeks. They were friends and often wing each other. But it was also a competition to see who can beat who this week. Or, if one can take a chick off anoher. It was all meaningless.

GQ had just came out of a difficult relationship and was still dreaming every night about his ex-girlfriend. YM was completely confused. He wasn't sure about his sexuality at all.

Yet this nightly ritual of theirs went on for years. I was pretty disgusted and pretty sad.

I was thinking and thinking. Why do we have to prove our manhood like this? Why should anybody feel "less like a man" for listening to their body? Why can't a man say "no?" And if he did, does it make him less of a man?

The Great Yellow Hope

A few of my Catonese friends jokingly refer to me as dai-lo , "big brother." They say it in a joking manner, but they do actually mean it. Many of my friends look up to me.

With my friends, I was almost always the smartest. I knew more. I pick up new things quicker. I was more bold. I led.

Dai-lo was an honorific. These guys really believe in me. And they expect to keep doing things that will impress them. Things that they themselves cannot do. Score points. And these points will accrue to the whole team. My team. And they will somehow share in the glory. Or, as the Cantonese saying goes, "the one who helps the Chinese race capture a bit of air." Air = pride, self-respect.

Well, uneasy sits this crown.

It has been a little embarrassing that right now, I am not doing very much with my life. Mind you, I feel fine about it. My friends are embarrassed.

When we meet, they often ask me what I am doing. Almost half-hoping that I'll tell them that I am doing something so amazing that they will be dazzled again. Or, they will go out and find things for me to do. "Try that," they will say, "you will be great at it and it makes a lot of money."

I remember a few years ago, I was venting to a friend that I was unhappy at a crappy office job I was at. I was dissatisfied with a boss. The response was not what I expected. "Of course," my friend said, "how can a bunch of dumb-asses be your boss. You are too good for them." I thought he was trying to cheer me up, but listening further the conversation, I realized he was being quite literal.

They get confused if I tell them that I had recently failed at something. They will fault me. "Sam, how could you have not done it? You were probably lazy." It is as if, in their mind, I can do anything. The only possible reason how I can not get something done is if I didn't really want to do it in the first place.

This has done the most damage to my self-developement. I almost always take failure as a sign of my own lack of will. Instead, failures are part of life. People fail: they fail often. The good thing though is that people only need one or two success in their lives to live a full life. And the ability to accept the many numerous failures is the most important part of living life. It's okay to fail. Failure is what will eventually bring us those one or two success that we need. I need to start telling my friends that.

Mostly, they are confused about my lack of initiative and action. Wasn't I the one who is always strong when they are weak? The one who advanced when they retreated? The one who held the line. The one who shook the tree. The one who didn't falter. The one who carried the team. The one who stood above. Who flew and glided as everyone else struggled. Why am I not that person anymore?

Personally, I am very comfortable in my current state of limbo. I feel that I need it. I have been having a lot of inner growth. I am maturing in a way I never knew was possible. I am also having fun. Dipping in the fountains that I never knew existed before. The fountains I skipped as I flew. I am having the time of my life. Not just fleshly pleasure. I think I might have achieved a sense of euonia.

It's hard to talk about this sort of inner progress to some of my friends. They had always expected me to be richer, more successful, higher on the societal ladder, be the big man.

Recently, the situation is tense. They still speak reverently around me. But they are embarrassed and frightened. One even told me in Cantonese "if you don't make it, what chances do I have?" I scoffed.

Inwardly, I feel like I am letting down and making them feel that the world is just too tough. I feel like I have to go out and make a big splash. Be a big fish, so that they will feel okay in our little internal pecking order. This top dog is still top dog.

Then I remember why I am here and feel at peace again. That it is worthwhile. Even if I am seeing a lot of disappointed faces on people who count on me. Even if some of them become disallusioned, are avoiding me, gets flushed.

I have my own life to live. Maybe it won't take me anywhere glorious. Or make me rich. But it is my life and it is happening just as much as the tall grass is reaching towards the sky.

El Patrone

I had a talk with a friend today and it kind of helped me out with a problem I've been having in my life.

I was telling her about the various people in my life I feel responsible for. I've felt this way for most of my life. It seemed normal. My mother, amongst her friends, was ah-gai, older sister. She was the person everyone else came to when they have problems. Sometimes she consols, sometimes she problemsolves, other times, the person in the situation already had all the right solutions but just needed a slight nudge in the right direction. That is my mother.

I actually inherited this behaviour at a very very early age. I remember doing this as far back as grade 6.

Today, talking to my friend, vocalizing what I have been doing all these years sound weird. To some degree, it was intrusive. It was also controlling. It was caring. I know everybody always like me beter, some even look up to me afterwards.

Sometimes I wonder though: to what degree am I taking responsibility away from other people, infantilizing them. These patron/client relationships.

Who the fuck do I think I am? Godfather? Dai-lo?

James was telling me a few days ago that I should trust people, or, at least, leave them to their own device. People are more able when you trust them. I think I trust them. Especially to do things for their own good. Couldn't I?

Besides, even if they cannot do these things for themselves better than I could do it for them, the net effect of it ó being done by that person ó will more beneficial for all. Lack of frustration on my part. Sense of success on theirs. Our relationship will be far more equitable.

Not hot at all

Last night, my friend JC and I were talking about his "women problem." He is in-between seeing two different women: the really hot woman he is involve in now and the far plainer, less hot woman he actually likes.

I as making bets with E, our mutual friend, that he will wise up. Dump the girl he is with now and be with the woman he loves. E is more skeptical. "If the sex is as good as he says it is, I don' think he will."

This is compound by the fact tha the current girl is universally acclaimed to be hot.

"People kept coming up to me to tell me how hot she is. Even those who do not know we're dating," JC confided to me.

I realized, right there and then, how useless the concept of "hot" is.

In high school, my male friends andI often hung out at Fairview Mall. Above the food court is a crossbridge to the theatre on the second level. We stood on this platform ot check out chicks eating below.

Every women had a number. From out commanding heights, we jabbed out thumbs and heads at the hotties below. Imperiallydeclaring their hotness using a numerical scale from 1-10.

It was a floaing, consensus-building exercise.
"Dude, check out the 8 in the pink top."
"Nah, she is like a 6. Tits too small."
"But look at the legs on her. I think that counts for something."
"Okay, maybe 7."

So it would go on for hours. I think most of us barely paid attention to the women that we ourselves are allegedly attracted to. If one of us declared the appearance of a 10, we all clamoured like monkeys for a good look. Mostly, we argued. Each giving a diferent weight to different body parts, style, demeanor. The attraction was never the women and the endless parade of hotties never did feed eroticism into our hormon-driven bodies. It was just a big buy-bonding thing to do.

Over the year, I spoke to many heterosexual men about sex. I learned that their sexual preference are diverse. Pleasure of the flesh varied as the bodies of men varied. It is a piece of foolishness to let other men tel you who you should be attracted to.

So, it felt like high school again when my friend presented me with his problem. He was fucking the girl that every one else said was hot and not the woman he is actually attracted to.

But, eternal optimisim shining like the sun within me, I am still betting onmy friend to dump the hotie and date a woman I find physically repulsive and irresistably cool.

Book-brained!

I have too many books. I don't know how it happened. I don't think I
even read most of them. They are kind of just there, sitting on the
shelf and in boxes in the basement.

I don't want to get rid of them because they aren't worth anything.
And they might be useful. Maybe.

So I am in the process of cateloging them. If I can read them, I can
at least track them.

icky

Just realized that I hate Anglo women who like Paris.
It betray a certain ignorance about the city beyond the guided tours
and Fodor's.

I share the same pain as the French guy across from me. Trying to
hide behind his Nintendo DS as two more boring, suburban Ontarians
try to strike it up with him.
Just because they found out that he is from France.... how crass.

Pretty monumental day for me

Pretty monumental day for me. I finished the few notebooks I have been using for the past year.

In one, I found journal entries from 2 years ago. There is even stuff (undated) I am pretty sure I wrote in 2004.

They have gone with me to NYC twice. SF. And Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal countless times.

Time to say goodbye. Time to say hello to the new guys.



From Oct 31, 2005
I saw Julie today. Finally. It's strange. I've been looking for her for years. And I found her. And I had to go.

I also remember that when we first met, it was she who looked for me. I wanted to leave and she chasing.

Well, today. I managed to give her my number. She said she didn't recognize me. She didn't remember going to L'Am.

Well, what can I say? I barely recognized her. A few wrinkles already around the corners. I still remember her obsessive application of moisturizer and wrinkle cream. We were 16 and she was already getting ready for 40. My first real friend in Toronto. Not yet even 10 yrs and she wants nothing to do with me.

She told me she was going to school. I said nothing of significance, but noticed that she was still stylish in a white peat coat.

Fuck. She didn't remember me. I told her my name and she acted suprised. One thing has not changed: she still has the same facial expression when she is lying.

I guess it is one of those things. I hope she calls, but I doubt she would. Too bad. I really, really want to know how she is doing.



From Nov 5, 2005
I saw "the kid" yesterday. It's the kid!! Man, how many ex-AFC has been taugh this story and how many women have heard it? How many bars and how many bookstores? How much business did Trojan make because of "the kid."

Little punk in rip jeans, leather jacket, and black bandanna. For so long now, we thought you were the figment of some proto-PUA's imagination. Now I see you. Should I push you off your skateboard? How else will you give me the finger?

Paul Graham's Stuff

Paul Graham's Stuff - http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html

I remember living in Kingston for two months where my entire existence involved gettring rid of stuff. I had to sell or give or throw out everything because I was going to move back to Toronto and they won't fit into the truck. And I had nothing to do and no money. Selliing stuff was the way for me to subsist.

I walked into my empty appt everyday and just drank in the difference a month makes. Whereas before, it was littered with furniture and trinkets and DVD's and clothes and shoes ... now it was bare. I slept in a sleeping bag in the corner of the living room. By then, I no longer used the bedroom. The only thing left where my used to be was a charger for my phone.

I was free as an untethered soul. Which was scary. Nothing was solid and every is on its way to being reduced to gone. It was like I was escaping the physical world. It was like death. It was actually pretty good.

I get what Paul Graham is saying. I don't know if it is for everyone though.


Update: I found a really cool blog that is also in the spirite of this. http://positivesharing.com/2006/08/low-rent-living/

Musings at Union After the Leaf vs Chicago

Why do me take their girlfriends to hockey games? Why not take their
guy friends? Granted. Many women love hockey-- especially in hockey-
crazy Toronto. Most don't. Why do so many men insist on boring their
dates? Besides. It isn't a movie theatre; you can't makeout in the
dark. Stadium food will give you gas. The beer is too expensive to
get sloshed: There will be no drunken sex afterwards.
With the more virile men on the ice, going to a hockey game just
serves as a reminder to her what a fat, beer-gutted slob you are.
Ultimately, hockey is fun but it ain't romantic. When was the last
time you hear a woman gush about the mindblowing date she had pre-
drinking at the Loose Moose?

If your better-half bought two tickets to the Leafs, great! You got
yourself a keeper. Just offer to buy them off her and make it up to
her with whatever turns her crank. Go with a buddy -- somebody who
might actually have a good time.

The scandal! Bedtime at 11PM on Saturday Night. And a very long musing about the Newspaper biz.

I was out with my mentor, Greg today. We had a long talk about the
state of the journalism industry in Canada and how it is kind of
going down hill.

He had to go home early on the GO train. My friend who I was suppose
to meetup with called to cancel. She was sleepy after a very full day.

Damn!

I haven't been home at 10:30 since ... I don't remember how long.
This is all very strange.

Anyways. I was telling my mentor how the newspaper industry is dying,
not by the shift in technology, but by the poor business choices made
the people running the businesses.

The internet should've made these businesses more profitable.
Instead, newspaper are acting like British steelmills in the 70's.

They should be more like the small manufacturing companies in Japan
that eventually became Casio and Nintendo.

The post-war Japanese companies realized their expertise in making
calculators and arcade machines made them very suitable for the
computer age and they jumped right in to become very big concerns.

Newspapers should be dominating the internet right now. They can
capitalize on their massive brand value (goodwill,) existing
structure for content generation, their very very large client-base
(every business large and small have had done some advertising with
newspapers in the last 100 years. I can only imagine the rolodex on
the sales desks of every newspaper across North America and the
extent the their network is in place.)

Newspapers are actually far more suited to the internet compare to
radio, network, or music. The basic technology of the virtual world
is still HTML. Text. Bandwidth is expensive. Text has the lowest
transmission cost. Text is more immersive. Text is also cheap to
produce. Although good text, publishable, commercial-grade text is
still beyond the ability of most smaller organizations to make on a
consistent day-to-day level. (Each article your read in a newspaper
may have been the work of several journalists researching the topic,
another few to write. They also have an entire copyediting
department. Senior editors with decades of experience vet each
article. Finally, there is a culture within their community of
consumers to write back to the editors if anything is amiss --
community-generated content, or free labour.)

They should've anticipated Craigslist. It is also wrong for them to
blame their problems on one website. Craigslist is free. But in the
free market, you get what you pay for. The quality of classified ads
on it are actually pretty lousy.

Newspapers actually keep a lot of spam off their classifieds. They
should be concentrating on their strength. Better yet. Build a
"trusted marketplace" and they can handle payment and fidelity-issues
like eBay. Then can charge not on for advertising, but payment and
S&H as well. There is money to be made in post-purchase services.

It's also strange how reluctant newspapers are to adapt. I still
remember a few years ago how print classifieds were not cross-linked
with online ads. Also, I still remember how hard they used to make it
to view this online ads. I was looking for a job a few years back and
I was made to fill 2-3 pages of personal info before I can even look
at a job ad.

Newspapers, it seems, also don't realize the massive cost advantages
they have over internet news portals. People may get bits of news
from the internet, radio, and TV. But to get ALL the news, you still
need to read a newspaper. Radio and TV are like little tickers, you
are only really getting the headlines. To know all the reported news
for each day, the newspaper is the only usable medium. Reading a
major daily takes at least an hour -- just for the major news.
Computer displays are not designed well enough to be used for very
long. They are also not portable. Smartphones are expensive to buy
and must have costly wireless plans. Printing costs for consumers are
still $0.10 a page.

BTW, if consumers decide to print news websites to read on the subway
they are essentially subsidizing the print cost -- a massive that
they don't even come close to recovering from subscriptions or
newsstand sales.

I think one of the biggest concerns is that newspapers are still
advertising their circulation as their principle raison d'etre for
putting ads in their paper. Circulation is a useful metric. It is
also a very very old metric. Most rate cards don't even tell you that
newspaper readers tend to be richer, better educated, and
trendsetters. Unique site visits and click thru track one individual.
A newspaper left on a subway can be read by 5-10 people. A single
copy in a doctor's office can be read by 20-30 people a day. A copy
in a coffee shop, hundreds. People also trust newspaper more. Online
ads are still viewed with suspicion by many older consumer. As many
internet ad companies still focus on sex ads and get rich quick scams.

A simple assumption seems not to take place in the head-offices of
major dailies. Decision-makers in businesses use newspaper ads
because many of them read newspapers. There is a familiarity. Also,
if they want to reach customers who are, in many cases, similar to
those decision-makers themselves then newspaper ads are a good idea.
Circulation numbers don't reflect this fact.

The insularity of newspapers are scary. As Warren Buffet pointed out,
prior to the internet, a major local daily acted as an information
tollbooth in a city. One would assume that all the economic rent they
collected in the fifty-years after WWII would give them the economic
muscle to be big players. Ten years ago, in 1997, when the internet
exploded, why weren't the news organizations swooping into Silicon
valley as angel-investors? Developing a new medium like the internet
takes a lot of R&D. Venture capital often don't pan out. But if they
had bought twenty-thirty companies and just one of them ended up
being ... well, even Yahoo, they could have leveraged the technology
with their existing strengths. The same way Google bought Writely and
combined it with their traditional business of search engine and text
ads. Google Office currently don't make any money for them, but it
increases their dominance in their search and text ads. It is also
good future hedging: when it is good enough, they can use it to take
a slice out of the enterprise office market from Microsoft.

Imagine how different the internet would be today if newspapers were
equally foresightful. Ebay that offered added service to have
classified ads running in the city of the customer's choice. Useful
if selling a house. Or how about that if you paid for a quarter page
ad for a new product, Extreme Mousetrap 5000, your local newspaper
will help you put up a search engine ad. So if somebody is googling
"pest control," your website will show up on the first page.

In fact, newspapers with decades of experience design, layout, and
usability should be offering website design and hosting services
right now. Why let little two-person run an industry. They already
have all the business connections. They the expertise to do good
design. Or, at least, to hire and contract out the work. They have
designers on staff who are able to make the judgement call. More
importantly, they have a really really good brand and the physical
bricks-and-mortar stuff to ensure that they can be held liable and
won't sudden go out of business. For SME's that rely on their website
for business, this is a massive consideration.

And the brand power of newspapers, I want to reiterate again, because
it really is important. The internet remains a very murky and
transcient place for most people. Verisign, one of the most important
companies, handles all registrations for .com. If you bought an URL
like www.yourname.com, Verisign gets a portion of the fees. But
unless you are very net-savvy you won't know about that. On the other
hand, Gannet is the publisher of USA Today. They are in every
newspaper stand in America. They go to homes, hotel rooms. In fact, I
can buy it in Canada. Now, if newspapers had a reputation of being
competent businesses and good manager of information and being able
to "get" the internet and if both of them offer a similarly-priced
web service -- credit-card processing, let say -- who will you go
with? The company that plops a newspaper to your door -- rain or
shine -- or a company you heard is important when you asked your IT
guy, but you don't even know where the head office is? B2B is all
about trust. People still trust newspaper and their brick-and-mortar.

There is an counter-argument to all this. Also from Warren Buffet:
Stick with what you know and don't go into businesses you don't. I
agree. Major news companies are in New York and Chicago, not
Sunnyvale. They are not plugged into the buzz. They don't know the
players.

I think I have several arguments to that. One is that developing a
new competency suck, but necessary. It will take a lot of time,
effort, and energy. They will lose a lot of money buying into the
wrong companies and developing partnerships that go nowhere. But it's
like tuition fees. More importantly, trying beats dying. American
textile were a sunset industry in the globalization era of the 80's.
Newspapers, as content-providers par excellence, should be thriving
in the information age. They just got to work on the areas they are
not so good at.

Two. Newspapers already run a mass medium. They deal with all the
things like production, advertising, and marketing. Jumping to the
internet should be like business extension. The way your bank also
offers insurance and mutual funds.

Third. A newspaper is essentially a research think-tank attached to a
distribution channel. Some of the brightest and most resourceful
people work at newsrooms. If you don't have the information to act in
an new industry, maybe your employees can help. After all, they are
hired to dig for information. Some are hired because they have good
ideas. Maybe you can get them to write a report instead of just
publishing them in a column. Google stays innovative, some repute,
because they pay their employees to do side projects, unrelated to
their actual job functions. Many are expected to have one. That is
how Gmail and Google News come into being. Newspaper don't have to do
the same, but this really isn't some new wacky Silicon Valley idea.
Retailers often have corporate buyers ask their sales associates what
new product stock. In Toyota, assembly-line workers are expected to
give suggestion to workflow. I have yet to hear of any media outlet
make it mandatory for employees give suggestions at work. Ideas that
do come, like convergence, are top-down. And convergence was a
disaster because it was implemented from the top-down.

I think I have said enough. This is a very angry post because I love
newspapers so much. As a kid, one of my happiest memories was going
through the Evening Telegram everyday at my aunt's restaurant.
Customers came in and shared the different section with me. An
interesting article would serve as a common point to have discussions
between me and persons I have very little in common with. The city
daily is also a vital organization to gather local information with
the same depth and rigour. Many may dislike it for its biases and
omissions. Many hope that citizen journalists will replace it. I
think it is important to note that they are not held to same rigour,
ethics, and scrutiny. How many bloggers keep notes of sources. How
many refrains from blogging something until they can better
substantiate a news item? How many can fired or sued for errors?
There are some. but not many. I keep a blog. I can say whatever I
want. I love blogging. I can give my opinions. Say untrue things
(like errors in this articles.) But if I were a journalist, I am held
accountable to my words.

Since the end of the first age of partisan news-rags, newspapers have
become a daily record of the history of our times. The unfortunate
distortions, silences, and favouritisms are a necessary fact that
history is written by the powerful.

For all those cheering on the demise of the newspaper economic model
and its stranglehold on the "truth," and their seemingly incompetence
to deal with the Information Age, keep storming that Bastille. Just
don't expect revolution to a new order. It can just as equally bring
a counter-revolution, greater oppression, and ruin.

Blogging on my Treo via Hotsync

if thid works, then you are reading something I wrote on my tiny
little phone.

Blog needs testing

Blogger is still pretty archaic when it comes to mobile blogging.
What should I do?

Reflections on maintaining my addressbook

Tonight, I spent the last two and a half hours going through all of my address book info. It was a fairly big job. I've had my yahoo email address for ten years. Between my 7 changes of address, 8 phone number changes, my yahoo email was the only thing that was consistent. The same people that knew me from 10 years ago can still find me today by sending me an email.

Needless to say, I have lots of contact info all stored up in there. Everybody I knew, pretty much. Most have been sitting there for years. Unsorted. Unlooked at. So I went thru them. One by one.

The records were so old. There were people I didn't know. Some I probably couldn't recognize now if I tried. There were people I have not seen since high school. People I will never see again. People who won't speak to me again. It was a strange elation trodding down memory lane.

Then came the hard part: what do I throw out? I was especially delighted to discard ex-girlfriends. There were some jerks I never liked, but had to collaborate with from work and school. Those were easy and fun. The problem comes from good friends that I might never have the chance to see again. Dead emails that never got replied. When do I start assuming that the contact is no longer valid? Who were still necessary? What about the girl who went to Asia and is never coming back? Should I still keep the number from her parent's house in Markham?

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

144. That was the number of people I ended up with. It's strange to come up with an accurate count of the number of people you actually care about in this world.

I bought a second-hand smartphone.

A Treo 600. It's a quad-band phone with an integrated pda.

It's OK.

Combined devices usually suck. They do neither of the combined things well. That is true of the Treo.

As a phone, it cannot dial right away. The numeric keys are really small. And it is much bigger and heavier than any other phone.

The PDA is about the equivalent of the Z22 -- Palm's cheapest colour model.

Why did I buy this monsterous thing? (Definitely not for clubbing. I took this thing to a dance party and it fell out of the beltclip twice. Luckly, the thing is built like a brick and sustains impacts like a rock.) Its five years old. But, the Treo is lighter than a seperate cellphone and a PDA. two devices is also much more bulky. The integration of contact, calender, and a cellphone simplfies my workflow.

Furthermore, the keyboard make SMS much easier than predictive text.

For $150, it's Ok.

What I did for Nuit Blanche 2007

... not much.

Freedom School was performing that night from 9pm-11pm. I was there to set up and there to take things down. I didn't really get started on things till midnight.

Most of the night involved seperating and meeting again, almost by accident, with people. I managed to see 8 sites and they were okay.

A19 - Ghost Station
------------------
I met Steve in the lineup to see the Lower Bay Station. It was a long line. Big let down.

Dark, two subway trains parked on the tracks. Bass booming with a few tinkering metal sounds.

All I managed to say was Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot.

A15 - Footnotes
---------------
Bio-degradable cellophane made from corn is spread on the floor. participants are asked to trace their foot either with pencil crayon or aluminum foil.

Artist is asking us to question the ecological footprint they are leaving behind.

A30d - Onscreen/Offscreen
------------------------
It was at Innis Hall. Three short films.
One was cut from scenes from Dirty Harry.
One was a movie with scenes of different piano players.
One was of random stock scenes of explosion overlayed on top of each other.

Overhyped, pretentious garbage.

A30c - Awakening the Electronic Forest
----------------------------------
I got there @ 2:45Am.

There are different things happening in at different hours of the night. A brief schedule is included at the front desk onsite.
I saw some projections of dancers.

Most of the shows were theather. I missed all the performance time.

I did see one show called MySpace. It was great. Don't want to ruin it cuz there is a two little suprise at the end. The piece divides our real and virtual relationships and the our current inversion of space and intimacy.

A8 - Event Horizon
----------------
Fake UFO crashsite at King Crescent Circle. Fake new cast on projector. Cheeky, intentionally lame. Pop reference inside the tent.

A30a - Night School
------------------
Another "collection" of different works under one roof: Hart House. Again, many many (too many) video projector pieces.
There was a mini-bar that had mini-bottles in it...

The most talked about piece there was "Slow Dance with Teacher." You get to dance with real life teachers in a university reading room converted to a high school gymnasium. This was a Darren O'Donnell piece.

B9 - A Dumpster Diver's Paradise
----------------------------
This took place in the back alleyway of the Burger King at Spadina and College. A large dumpster was cleaned out and turned into a luxury hotel room for the night. There was room service, a concerige, fluffy bathrobes, and even a spa treatment.

Les had the foresight to book the room ahead of time and they were even giving away bottles of fake champaigne.

B14 - Collection, 2007
--------------------
Another collection of art under one space at the Cecil street community Centre. This one is mostly of performance art.
I had mostly jot notes from the night. It was almost 5AM and I was there for almost an hour.

- A women read dadaistic poems.
- Clown sleeps understairs.
- A storyteller, white man in white face
- An installation of pencil crayon drawings, notebooks, and trickets.
- A dancer on the stariwell, in white.
- Another dancer, slow -- Tai Chi-like -- in the garden also in white.
- A documentry of the setting up of this site projected onto a white sheet.
- A tarot reader.
- Two artist constantly working on a wire and pulley frame contraption. THe frame becomes a stageset for an interpretive dance piece.

Ontario Election Coming Up

The first election I qualified to vote was the Federal election in 2000. The Chretien Liberals were destined to win with a majority. I didn't vote in that election. My riding was held (and still is) by Jim Karygiannis. I liked the Liberals, but I am indifferent to the incumberent candidate. So I just stayed in Kingston that day and drank coffee in the Sleepless Goat watching the rain.

Since then, I abstained from every single election. Federal, provincial, municipal, plebicites, referenda. Nada. No vote from this disaffectionate, young Politics major. I even wrote an essay on why I am not voting for my college newspaper. Looking back at it now, it was depressive, pretentious, and gothy. I even used a brandy bottle to described why I was not voting. WTF.

This election coming up and the accompanying referendum on Proportional Representation might be important. It may produce minority government. The British-style Westminister System is about to be abandoned for something that was described by a citizen comittee to be "more fair."

There are something, for which, the ramifications are never entirely clear to all those who are participants in the thing. Elections are one of them. The theology of democratic-liberalism has as one of its main tenet beliefs that wisdom is carried by the greatest plurality of even the most ignorant of masses. Even if many unwashed, individuals are dumb, all of them put together are smarter than the smartest person in the world.

I like that. I personally agree with it.

This time around, I am actually tempted to break my ballot box virginity. But who I choose and the things done inside the little cardboard box I am not revealing. A gentleman never kiss and tell.

Anita Roddick, Founder of Body Shop, Dead

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Obit-Roddick.html?ref=business

So that's it.
Feels like the end of an era.

Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: A Home In The New World

Still reading the same book for the last week. A collection of short stories by Asian-American authors. Very good Asian-American authors. Chilling. Shocked. Powerful prose that shakes the soul leaving one numb.

Everyone who met me the last week thought I was depressed or upset: I could only tell them that I was reading and feeling a little shell-shocked.

Not the whole truth. I feel sick. There is a small little tuff of nausea in my stomach going through each page of the book. I wished the editor, Jessica Hagedorn, had put a few more comedies in ther to lighten up the load. But her attitude probably was, "who can laugh when so much is unhappy in the world. With Asians. In America."

I just finished Bharati Mukherjee's "The Management of Grief" was the perfect story about Toronto. I liked also the hyper-macho "Rico" by Peter Bacho. And Marilyn Chin. I honestly think I love her. And the enigmatic selection "Ahjuhman" from Chang-Rae Lee's "Native Speaker." Magical realism of Eric Gamalinda's "Formerly Known as Bionic Boy."

Feeling all sick and frighten and nauseated. It is as if that this is what I should aspire to and I cannot look at myself in the mirror and not see the seed of this thing in it.

Frightening. Truely frightening.

Which OS are you?

src="http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2003/01/os_quiz/xp.jpg" width="300" height="90"
border="0" alt="You are Windows XP. Under your bright and cheerful exterior is a strong and stable personality. You have a tendency to do more than what is asked or even desired.">
Which OS are You?

Mun Sum Mo Quai? Or, Denial of the Tragic

Between moments of the estatic and despair, our memory pushes for the experience of a lifetime in one full body thrust.

Mun Sum Mo Quai? It depends. Who is asking? When is it being asked? We're always telling ourselves that we have done nothing wrong. I have done nothing wrong.

Belivers of fate, the Greek thought that bad things don't just happen. We might not always get our just deserts, but they happen anyways because we did something to make it happen or our natures and our inheritance bring about our misfortunes. Our vices and our virtues both can be our path towards the tragic.

In fact many other sees liffe the same way. For Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Cassius is destroyed by his jealousy, Brutus by his trusting nature. We see this in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Guan Yuan by his pride and Drunkeness. Zhou Kwailang by fulfilling the call of heaven and his loyalty to the Liu's. There is always amoment of catharsis. The character realizes their ends are inescapable because it comes from themselves.

Almost ten years ago, I thought about killing myself. I was at the park behind my high school. I laid on the baseball diamond, near home plate, over an inch of fresh snow. It was still snowing. Cold I was drowsy from the cold. I thought about sleeping and not getting up. Never getting up al all.

I knew now that I probably wouldn't die from sleeping in the snow with my warm parka on. It wasn't cold enough. I didn't know that then. It felt comfortable. The snow felt war in the winter air.

My seventeen year-old mind came to a conclusion about life that made me want to get up: refuse cartharsis and there cannot be a tragic. If some shit happen to you and you come to some great, profound moment of self-knowledge, ignore it. Fuck. Forget that moment. You can remember all the bad shit, just don't remember that moment when you feel whole and complete and in-tuned with the self and the universe. Cuz when you do, you have just become a tragic hero. And nothing good ever happens to the tragic hero.

Forget it and the tragic cannot touch you. All that bad shit is melodrama. After that, the ironic. Ask yourself, mun sum mo quai? And say yes. Always say yes.Tragic heroes always die or suffer some fate worse than death. When bad shit happen to you (assuming you're a good person,) just laugh. Savour irony and life is just a bunch of random shit. Good or bad. Nothing is a tragedy if you don't allow it to be. If you just ignore all the profound stuff.

Daddyo's: Pasta and BYOW

New restaurant catering to the college crowd on Spadina and Sussex (just
south of Bloor.)

Pasta are below $10. Great thing about this place is the BYOW
Endorsement. They are charging $5.99 for corkage fee. Absolute deal in
Toronto.

Nice open patio. Very chilled crowd. Beer are $5 a pint.

View from Bridlewood Mall

I took these a few weeks ago.

Opera on Dundas Street: Notes on Northern Banality

Some people just need help.

There was a showing of the 1983 film adaptation of La Travalita at the
Italian Consulate on Beverly and Dundas tonight.

I walked by accidentally and decided to watch the show. I don't know
much about opera; I never had the privilege growing up. I try, as often
as the opportunity comes, to learn.

It is very very good. It's a love story. Hooker with a heart of gold.
(In fact, it was the opera Julia Roberts and Richard Gere watched in
Pretty Woman.)

I enjoyed myself, despite the show being one hour late because the tech
guys had problems with the giant outdoor projector.

I sat actually on the other side of Beverly, across the street from
where the screen was. I didn't wanted to go in because everybody was
crowding on the grass with lawnchairs. My vantage point allowed me to
not just the movie, but all the people's reaction during the movie.

First off, the average age of the people on the grounds of the consulate
was 50. There were a few Italian women in their mid-30s having a girl's
night out. Mostly it was older couples. A few Chinese people passing
from Chinatown stared, smiled, then left.

The young people that went by were just plain rude. (Does this make me
sound like a grumpy, old man?) They pass by, and as soon as they saw it
was opera, they would make snide comments. A few shriek out cracked
notes in a mocking falsetto. Most just scoffed.

I don't know. Was it really necessary? That most of the young people
have to give an exaggerated, hostile display to their friends on how
much they are not into opera.

Most vividly for me were these three CBC Chinese guys. They just started
walking very rapidly with a smirk: amused and disgusted. I wanted to
shake them and tell them: you won't be any less of a man if you listen
to opera.

I can understand if many people are uncomfortable with opera. It is very
much white, upper class type thing. There is a lot of highly
un-politically correct stuff. For example, in La Travalita, Violetta
gets hit quite a few times by her lover, Alfredo.

Still, I respect the imagination and craft of the piece. You have to
respect a thing that is beautiful.

I still remember when I was first introduced to hiphop. I grew up in
Newfoundland. Rap music had sounded like random noise and people
talking. A friend of mine actually had to teach me. He told me: listen
to the beats, listen to the track. Even if I don't understand what the
song is about, appreciate the production value, the hundreds of hours
finetuning each part of the recording. He put on some Neptunes .... I
sudden realized what he was talking about.

Appreciate the production value, if nothing else, in Vivaldi.

I hope those three Chinese guys will.

When the movie ended I walked towards the subway station. Across the
AGO, somebody had ripped two forget-me-not bushes right out from a
cafe's flower pot. Their yellow roots were drying up and dirt was
scattered everywhere.

Angels, peace, friendship, and folly of Western Civ.

If I had to pick a moment when I lost all respect for the white,
suburban, "North" American, it was around the just passing of the
millenium. It was then that I realized the absolute evil subjected to
their inner psyche by a bowlderized suburban upbringing.

A wicked fad was taking place when every middle-class white person
decided that they need more edge -- and what's more edgy than tattoos?

I, personally, love tattoos that transforms people into living picture
books. They are sometimes very beautiful. I am still a sucker for goth
chicks with angel wings drawn over shoulder blades. (It's cliche. I
know. But I don't question your fetishes, why do you question mine?)

What I didn't like were those stupid tattoos that some people -- well,
predominately white, young, middle-class people -- had of Chinese
characters strung together to meaningless nonsense.

In the hot, suffocating times, on the streetcar, I would sometimes speak
to the women with the strappy lycra tops and capri pants (this was a few
years ago, remember?) Their absurd tattoos on some out of the way places
-- mid-back, upper arm, the semi-flat patch of skin an inch above the
ankle -- would only be visible in the summer outfits.

I needed to know. So I always lie and tell them I don't speak Chinese.
And asked them what that word meant. People are always so eager to
tell...

One women, I remember, had three words written on her inner calf. She
told me she wanted to put on her body the three things that are
meaningful to her: Peace, Friendship, and Angels. She was a nice lady.

The words were sort of right, but the choice of them and written
together: Peace (as in otium rather than pax), Friend (which is not
always a positive word in Chinese), and Angel (which has no one word
representation in Chinese; angel is roughly translated as heaven's
delegate) means either nothing or -- at a stretch -- some over-inflated
bureaucrat working for some kind of funeral home.

---------------------------------------------
If you want to see more examples of ridiculous "Asian" tattoos, visit
http://www.hanzismatter.com/

It's pretty funny.

Ambushed by NINJA: ECB, Fed offer additional liquidity

I go off the net for two weeks and, all of a sudden, the world goes to
shit.

I was still working on my manual. Decided to take the subway somewhere
else to keep working. Standing on the platoform waiting for the train.
One of those CP24 news tickers on the screen: ECB offers $130 bil at
discount rate of 4% to calm market.

What?

Next news item: Fed to follow suit with $12 bil in liquidty.
Next news item: Bank of Canada also indicated that it stands by with
additional liquidity.

Um, WTF?

I wasn't sure what was going on. Why are all the central banks around
the world signalling WWIII.

I was kinda watching CBC Newsworld this morning and everything seems to
be going fine.

Wait, next news item: Oil prices dropped to $72/barrel despite declining
gasoline, oil US reserve.

Now I am very curious. I couldn't get a cell reception in the subway
station. So I bought a newspaper! Imagine that!

Globe and Mail -- um -- nothing. Their idea of a headline yesterday for
the business page was "Canada's missing out in India: Tata." Wow, news I
can use! In fact, page after page of the Globe is talking about buying
opportunities after the recent stock plung.

That the stock market has been plunging is not news. It has been one
sick market since the whole subprime market with their "No Income, No
Job, no Asset" loans (NINJA) is finally destabilizing the credit market
is well know for the last half year at least.

But the bigwigs on Wall Street said they have it covered. Bear Stearn
had said that it was contained. And Bear Stearn has the most exposure to
the subprime market. HSBC is not exactly going bankrupt. So everything
is going to be alright, right?

The last six months, a certain silence surround the topic. Elephant in
the room. Everybody is talking around it. Giving it a positive spin.
"Credit crunch woes: How to profit from it." "Manulife shops for bargin
assets prices."

There were hardly hard numbers to be found about what kind of exposure
it is. Most of it are in hedge funds owned by banks or hidden up with
other numbers. Just a lot of reassuring words from pink, old men that
everything is going to be a-okay.

Now I am sitting in a Tim Horton's, reading Jim Cramer's TheStreet.com
because all the major news outlets are ignoring the story. Smiling blond
couples from the Younge and Eglington, an area infused with bank money
from Bay Street, are covorting. Is it my imagination? People here don't
seem too worried. But I am worried.

Central bankers don't go around telling artsy "business page" reporters
that there is plenty of liquidity unless there isn't. They also don't
emphasize that they are putting out $130 bil unless it is some strange
PR campagin except as some sort of last ditch effort to convince Main
Street investors to park their money exactly where it is.

But why?

What the fuck is going on?

I am reading the Globe's website and some analysists are worried about a
consumer recession.

There is a fear of collapse of Asian and European banks. The word
"contagion" is dropping from every fat banker lips.

Fuck it all, I am going back to my manual.

Little Old Chinese Women

Another little old chinese women asked me for directions today.

It's getting very common. Little old Chinese women are always asking me
for directions.

Must be that I have an honest face.

Protesting the shutdown of Shepperd line

Something is afoot!
Somebody is staging a protest for the shutdown of the shepperd line.

Interesting objects: RDIF payment system at the TTC

This is interesting. You can pay via a little keychain fob at union
station.

Dimsum @ Dim Sum

Hmmm .... good.

Poetry Exercises

I was so cock sure that I had plateaued with poetry. I told David that I wanted to learn about prose. he gave one of his non-judgemental, impassive looks and changed the topic.

I finally got around to looking at the second set of notes he gave out.

Shit.

Those excerises aren't lala writing games I am used to. This is really hard shit.

One involved writing a poem and re-writing it in different, diergent meters.

Anotherinvolved ... well ... words I didn't know the meaning of. Most were some convoluted multi part word games with prompts and multiple rewrites that shifts the piece from tone to tone, POV to POV.

It will take me a whole year to do all of these.

Fuck. I don't even know if I am technically able to do all of them.

I fell like I am at square one with poetry again.

My plateau turned out to be a chasm and I need to learn how to climb out.

BMV - Annex

I was in BMV today, browsing. I noticed that the books we read are really different from those in SF. Different coast, different country.

Those bookstores Thea took me to in the Mission are really cool. The selections are amazing. In comparison, even BMV and Eliot's and Seekers seems asisnine.

I asked the booksellers about it and they tell me that it is just the reality of the Canadian book market. In the fiction section, there were only line after line of Peguin Classics and NYT bestsellers. In SF they seem to be able to sell novels and poems that can't have appeal to more than a few thousand people in the world.

This about Toronto really sucks.

Who is a Torontonian anyways?

I was buying a Shawarma at the JCC on Bloor and Spadina. The guy behind the counter started talking to me. He was going clubbing tonight. We talked about girls. I told him that SF was shit and how they don't have a club district and how the women are more beautiful in Toronto.

I gave him a smug grin and knowing look that said, "you know what I mean."

He didn't know what I mean.

He just came from Lebanon six months ago, he told me, and has been in St. Catherines. This is his first week here.

I didn't believe him. He had to say it twice more before I did. Whoa. He just seems so Toronto.

Then I thought about it and what makes Toronto -- Toronto -- is that most are from somewhere else.

He is Toronto, just as I am Toronto, or anyone else who declare some residency here is Toronto. Immigrants, refugees, East Coasters running away, high blood from Rosedale, Jane and Finch.

It's just the Toronto state of mind.

Leeliana

Walked past St. Paul's and saw all the AA people outside smoking. Remember that Leelee has her intermediate class tonight. I haven't seen her in a long time. I vacilliated outside. A little embarrassed for not dancing for so long. I walked inside and everything is still the same.

She is till wearing the same baby blue tanktop and yoga pants, coaching even the most experienced dancers the basics.

I don't care what James says. She is a great instructor. She puses even the most beginning dancers to be the best. She forces an exactitude for everything. I am going back. Come hell or high water.

Dropped by very quickly at Winner's

Quick price comparison between here and TJ Max/Marschalls. WIth the exchange reates right now. Hands down. No shopping in Canada for me if I am planning to go south again.

They were selling Levi 501's at the Marshall's in Pittsburgh for $12.99. At the Winner's in Yonge and Sheppard Centre, they were going for $19.99. Even at $.90/$1, Winner's still more expensive.

Still recovering

Last 4 days had been sheer horror as I tried to catch up on all my work at school. I think being a tech communicator is all about planning, achieving business objectives, and meeting project milestones.

I've been fucking up all that shit. Still horribly jetlagged. Couldn't sleep last night till 5AM. Still working out on Pacific Standard Time. Makes it real hard.

I am only meeting 60% of current milestones at school. Have a super embarrasing time explaining to instructors. Feel like this is reflecting on me badly. Though more so that it is a bit of an ego hit.

Life is not reflecting my Ganntt charts.

Dundas Station, TTC

Back! Toronto is so hot. 32 C. I had to shed my brown coat I wore all week in SF. I put away all my American money. Took $40 CDN from a CIBC machine. Called home. My little cousins are here.

The Toronto women in skirts are pretty. The A/C air is cool. I am on a subway train, totting a hunting bag and a laptop case. Nobody cares. I love T.O.

Niagra Falls, Canada

Slept thru all the way except for the one-hour layover in Erie and another hour in Buffalo.

Gave a homeless guy in Erie $6. Unprecedented for me. I hate giving money to the homeless, but we were talking. He had me when he told me that was an alien from another planet. Told me that his real father was Jesus Christ. He also promised me that he will give me $20 the next time he sees me. Like fishes and loaves.

And he sounded so sincere about everything.

He shook my hand and hug me before jumping on his trolley bus. He also blessed me. He drew the sign of the cross on my forehead.

In Buffalo, nothing happened except the pretty girl with the Coach bag. She thought I was looking at her. I was looking at her purse. Fuck. That thing was more expensive than most of the luggage under the bus. What was she doing on the coach?

The border was of slight interest. They built a little customs building now. Staffed all by regulars. The inspectors looked dry and pissed off. That’s why I didn’t stay!

Pittsburgh Greyhound Station

I was eating a hamburger at the cafeteria. A staff member came to clear all the tables. I tried to help by putting the little bits of garbage into the brown paper bag my hamburger came in.

“No, no, no,” the women in the apron yelled at me.

She took out all the garbage from the paper bag that was not mine and took them all away. And left all my garbage on the table.

I was displease only by the fact that she felt the need to do that.

Pittsburgh Again

Back on the East Coast. 28X bus again. Sunrise. Very groggy. Not yet 4AM in SF. I slept poorly on the plane. Flight was rocky.

Over Nebraska were storm clouds. Terrible flashes. I thought about what would happen if the plane got hit. Pilots lose all control. Plane stumbles into the flat plates of America.

In the last moment, would I be calm? Where would I find faith to hold on to sanity when doom comes and I am all alone?

All over SF

Spent most of the day talking to Thea as we toured Mission and Castro. She, far more keen than I, actually bothered to ask people at the workshop who lived in the Bay Area what their favourites places to go are.

This second trip to the Mission was therefore much more pleasant. Thanks Thea!

Ate lunch at some hipster place that was actually quite good.

We went to some really cool bookstores in the Mission.

She chastised me for being overcritical of SF. Then she peer-pressured me to sit on grass. We compromised and sat on dried, brown grass. Green grass would be too much for me.

Then we walked over to Castro. Dull Castro. I had to take the F Streetcar back to my hotel for luggage.

Before reaching the station, I complained about the geriatric feel of the place. I pointed out to the bar I was in yesterday and how old and pirate-like the men inside were. She said, “well, maybe that ‘bears welcome’ sign has a lot to do with it.”

Boy, was my face red. I hate to be wrong....

City Lights Books

With sticky hands I entered the sanctum. It’s very ... posh. Hardwood floors and flood lights. Except for the young people, everybody seems to make 6-figs. I was here till midnight. Three very interesting things happened (sticky hands, the 14 years old girl, the boy from Tennessee.) I am going to write them out as a separate piece cuz they are long.

Beat Museum

I don’t know what to say. This bare commercial space is the Beat Museum? Twenty editions of Howl in the gift shop. I went over and made fun of the Indie Rock white kid who worked cash. He didn’t get it.

I left.

Jack Kerouac Lane

Still no bathroom but.
Didn’t know Kerouac liked Chinese poetry THAT much. Drunken revelry poems. Friends.

Did he know that the word from that poem that got translated to “good friends” is a very far mark from the much more endearing meaning in Chinese? “The-one-who-knew-me-like-I-knew-me” it should be instead.

Columbus and Broadway

Running around trying to find a bathroom. My hands are still sticky from the sandwich and I feel like I need clean hands to go inside City Lights Bookstore.

On the Pier, overlooking Alcatraz

I am eating a shrimp and crab sandwich
It's good Cheap
Seven-fifty

Made by Chinese people
without care

But very very good

Made with confidence
of known quality
method practised by million unreflective seconds

the shrimp as good as crab

I look over to the lights of Alcatraz
A lone beacon warning ships away
I lit a camel

This is the best moment I had in SF

Marina

The sun is setting over Golden Gate. Mist shrouded, sounds of waves and gulls. Fighting. Beautiful. But this ocean smells different than the ocean of my childhood. Lack of brine in the breeze. Cool and does not sting. So this is the difference between the East and West.

On Powell-Hyde Streetcar

Finally tried the cable car. With my MUNI pass, it was only $1 extra. Normal fare is $5.

Feels like being on a living museum. Interesting. Loud. Rickety. Like the double-deckers in Macau.

Funny Incident. Some milkfed with a red face kept falling over people. He would blame the driver every time.

"Drive like a maniac," he muttered repeatedly,

He is 217 lbs, he told another passenger. If his IQ was half his weight, he might be ok. He is standing on the alley, toes pointed forward to the front of the car, half-inch apart. His center of gravity is kept at his chest. He keeps trying to compensate by gripping he overhead bars with his white-white knuckles.

I wanted to slap him. Then slap his stupid wife for dressing him in a stained blue sweatshirt tucked into deep blue Eddy Bauer jeans.

I hope they're both infertile.

Castro

Castro is kind of like CHinatown. Lots of history, great institutions and communty. I can't say I like it. It's boring here. Good, expensive shopping. Awesome clothes, and books, and videos. It's a good place to live. But wha do young queer men do for fun around here?

This place is like Treasure Island. Full of grizzly men. Bald. Tight shirts bunching up wrinkled sking and a single gold hoop on the earlobes.

I went to A Different Light bookstore. Very good reading selection. I was in some sort of hardware store. What does a queer hardware store sell? Garening supplies, notebooks, and minituriezed powertools.

I went to some kind of gay Irish bar sipping Jameson's and coffee with cream. It's like a retirement home where the residents keep gving me the eye....

F-Line Streetcar on Market St.

It's interesting how San Francisco built a dedicated street car lane in their main street. I wonder if Toronto can build a streetcar like that on Yonge Street. It would alleviate some of the Yonge line rushhour jams. Good for local business as people will actually see what's on Yonge Street instead of zipping by underground. And those tramlines make people drive slower. Good all around.

Mission Street Again

Didn't go home last night till 4AM. Ate at a Guatamalan place.

Woke up too late to go to the checkout at VONA. Feel bad. Didn't get to see Diem's little kid. He looked like a fun little tyke in the picture.

Went back to Mission to a different Guatamalan place. Breakfast Huervo.

Bernal Heights

James would freak. I am in a salsa club and the competency of this place is beyond belief. This is something else.

Mission

Spent Forth of July all over. Saw the top of fireworks on Lone Mountain. Then went to Mission. Kareoke with VONA people.

Clement St.

Saw New Chinatown. Newer than the old but still small and incomparable to Scarborough.

Powell STN

What a slow and lazy city! Nothing is open till 8:30AM. Same time right now, Toronto is pushing with people.

The MUNI lady was nice and spoke to me about SF.

"One sees the mask of Justine worn by people who use innocence to avoid the harsh realities that life presents or that well up from the heart...The Justine innocent may not have felt the stings of life and therefore lives a partial consciousness, a girlish simplicity. Or, she is not capable of aggression and will not intentionally hurt anyone under any circumstances. Such sensitive people cannot edit a manuscript or correct a student's paper or honestly advise a friend, precisely because they cannot be agent of hurt, even with the best of motives."

--Thomas Moore

Fillmore Jazz Festival

Went thru it on my way to VONA. Quaint. I does not compare (if I must compare) to Taste of the Danforth. More like the Little Italy thing on College West. Interesting to see the collaboration of Japanese- and Black-Americans.

Fat Americans

No joke. They are fat.

I was at Marshall's again today because it was too cold in SF.
I have a really hard time buying clothes here: all the sizes are either L or XL or even XXL.

A little frustrated, I went to the kids section, picked up a Kids XL, and slipped it on. Fit perfect around the shoulders and al little bit of slack around the waist. It's suppose to be a skin-tight for atheletic kids....

Too much $6 burgers.

Fisherman's Wharf - Jefferson St.

Saw the whole place in the dark under the full moonlight. Everything is closed but still pretty.
Took the F-streetcar by the water so I can see all the piers on the Embarcadero.

North Beach - Union & Filbert

Saw my first American-style police chase -- like something right out of Grand Theft Auto.

A White Ford Explorer almost sideswipe the electric bus I was on. SFPD chasing after.

North Beach

In the Little Italy of SF, North Beach.
I guess it's kind of nice. No real difference from College Street.
Same as always in the US, gritty.

I actually slept in all day today, so this is my second meal. Very nice. First time I actually ate cabbage sprouts and liked it.

Whatever happened to all those California Girls?

Before I left Pittsburgh, Eddy gave me a piece of little adage, "California Girls® are hot." He told me this as we depressively reflect upon the toniest part of Pittsburgh, Walnut Street, as another MidWestern Farmer's daughter trotted on by.

So today I am in Union Square, the toniest part of SF.... I have not yet seen these amazing girls that the Beach Boys sang about. In fact, most of the women here are rather plain and anemic looking. The only really good looking women are the 40-ish WASP-y X-Ray's.

I don't know. When I do see these mythical California Blondes, they tend to be small, short, fit, but very very dour, sandblasted faces.

MacFreaks camping on O'Farrell

The iPhone is being shown today and people in SF are going mad.

Apple fanatics waited outside the MacStore to get just a small peek. Some even camped out overnight so they can be the first one in.

The line stretch all the way around the block to O'Farrell.... scarey.

Aggressive Sales Tactics for Spa Treatments

I was at the San Francisco Shopping Centre when I heard a woman's voice call out to me, "Sir, do you know what the Dead Sea is?"

The voice is from a sales clerk at one of those boutique trolleys. Before I had a chance to answer, she grabbed my arms, "Come here."

She asked me to reach out with my palms forward and she dumped two scoops of salty, gelitine mash into my hands. "Rub them together, vigorously."

I did. It was some kind of spa defoliate. "I am from Israel. People come from all over the world to go to the Dead Sea to cure all kinds of skin diseases. This will help you. Just look! You have very dry skin."

I was still taken a back by the whole approach and was utterly dumbfounded, just meekly following along. I looked at the woman talking and noticed that she was slim, dark, short, and what can be considered as attractive. At the moment, though,http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=10391823# I was just internally offended and wanted out. But I still had this gunky salt slush all over my hand.

"Okay," she pushed my hands over a basin and poured water from a cistern over my hands, "now feel. Have you ever felt your hands so smooth?"

I have. But I told her I haven't.

Before I can formulate the thought of pulling away, she massage goo on the back of my forearms. "You cannot use the salt with face. But this is gel and it does the same thing. I won't put it on your face but I will show you on your arm."

It was a very strange moment. I can almost imagine kinky business execs paying thousands of dollars to be in the same position that I was.

"Look at all the dead skin coming out of your arm, eh."

I looked around to see if other people at the mall was looking at this. I feel a little accosted, a little intruded upon. Finally she was done and she swab my arm with cotton pads.

"I want you to see. Compare this arm with your other arm. Isn't it more smooth, more beautiful?"

She started placing jars of her product into my still outstretch hands. Time to go, I told myself. And I acted like I was having a panic attack.

"I had to go back to my hotel," I said, and ran off.

Marshall's

I found a Marshall's in SF! And they do have much better clothes here than the farmwear they have in Pittsburgh. Got 2 pairs of hiphuggers and a bunch of socks.

Whoo!

Tenderloin

A homeless guy on the bus told me that the Tenderloin wasn't something I can't handle. I asked him if it was like Hell's Kitchen in New York, a bad part of town in the eighties but it's all cleaned up now. Homeless guy told me that he was from New York and really, I had nothing to worry about from the Tenderloin.

I was bored after Japantown and decided to take a walk to South of the Market. A bit of a bust. Nothing there. So I kept walking till I hit the Tenderloin -- 6th, Market, Taylor, and Golden Gate -- sometime around dusk.

Shit. It was like a giant refugee camp. There were homeless people everywhere. There were old chinese ladies scrounging garbage dumps for food. Different people with different disabilities -- lame foot, cataract eyes, schizophrenia -- kept coming up to me. I have not seen the level of human desperation since I left Macau. Actually, Macau was never this bad. People came to for change, for cigarettes, for food.

One even asked for the pizza crust that was in my hand. I don't eat pizza crust, so I gave it to him. He was really grateful... for pizza crust. All the homeless people here are really really desperate. One old woman followed me for four blocks asking for change. When I said no, she asked if I wanted a "date."

I saw people huddling together trying to get warm. A few had very clearly passed out. This is not a good place. It wasn't so much as it is dangerous; The panhandlers are persistent, but ultimately fearful of tourists. For a vacation destination like SF, I don't suppose the cops take it too kindly to travelers getting mugged. It doesn't seem like panhandling is a lucrative here, as it is in Toronto. Worse still, I noticed that many of the homeless people on scooters are Vets... America really has serious problems.

Japantown, Kinetesu Mall

This place is pretty empty. But very pretty. Not like Chinatown, all touristy.

My mom would love it here. She always amired good worksmanship.

Chinatown in SF

I did so much walking today around Chinatown. The place doesn't stop, but in terms of activities and geography. I was there 6 hours and I don't think I saw half of it. Kinda puts the Toronto Chinatown to shame, but then again, they are completely different beasts.

Most of the place seems to be a giant tourist trap. All along Grant Ave are souvenir shops that sells more or less the same stuff in shop after shop. Later, I found out that the only real part of Chinatown is Stockton Street.

I woke up seven in the morning. (PST, so that would be ten in the morning back in Toronto.) I tried to get dim sum, but nothing was open. Barely found a HK-style bakery and order a milk tea. Not too bad, but it was a bit thick. Had a pineapple bun.

Then I went two shops down to have my hair cut by a mainlander. Why a mainlander? He was not very talkative. I like that in my barber.

Went back to Union Square and got GAP-ed. Took a shower. Then, it was back to Chinatown again.

I walked like a little mule uphill and up and up and up. Grant Ave just goes. Bought a new laptop bag. Tried to buy a tessen, but the quality is very. Maybe I will find a higher quality fan in Japantown.

Got tired and went to another HK-Style cafe/bakery. I felt I got ripped off. Lousy milk tea and a greasy porkchop should not be $5,

Going to try to walk to Japantown.

Caltrain from Santa Clara

Just like the GO trains, but slower and with no outlets for lpatops. I have not eaten in 13 hours. Gettng hungry.

San Jose International Airport

My sleeping bag is stuck underneigh the airport!
San Jose turns out to have a third-class airport, that is only slightly better than the airport we had in St. John's. Couple of gates and three carousel. We had to walk on the tarmac just to get into the airport.

Just to rewind a little. I managed to catch my originally scheduled flight. By the time I got there, UA 723 was also delayed by 25 minutes -- just enough time for me to convince the customer service rep to get me on the early flight. So yay! No one hour wait.

I slept for the whole trip. My body just needed it.

The whole sinus thing was killing me on the landing. My ear hurt and it is still hurting now. I wonder if there is anyway to get this problem fixed.

I managed to get my duffle bag from the carosel. Then it broke down.

WHOA! it just started moving. Gotta go.

UA6473

Departing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at 3:35 PM and estimated to arrive at Denver, Colorado at 4:59 PM.

Somewhere now over the skies of somewhere. Too far up to see the flat ground underneigh. THe clouds above make impossible snowscapes.

My flight got delayed and I won't be making a connector from Denver to San Diego. No worries, the woman at the United counter said, just take the 7:15 flight. I am always wary of promises made by Customer Service Agents. After all, I was one, and I never, ever knew what I was talking about. Sometime, I wonder about the trillion of dollars lost every year because of a system that place major responsiblities on the backs of under-payed, under-motivated, Gen-Y'ers that seem to populated these positions.

CRJ700 - it's one of those mini-jetliners for regional flights. Feels light being inside a really long Greyhound. The flight attendants served pretzels ... I hate pretzels. I got seated at 12D -- the seat by the wings -- where the emergency exit is located. A quintessential Fight Club moment. The door apparently 42 lbs. I don't think I have lifted that much weight in a long time. Now, I am expected to pitch this thing over a wing after the plane crash lands in the jungle? Calm as Hindu cows. I am sure the guy next to me would know what to do.

Pittsburgh 28X

On the slow bus (28X) to the airport. Traffic Jam.
Thank goodness, just another hour to go before leaving this sinkhole.

Pittsburgh

I guess this is what life is all about -- like Pittsburgh, long days of work and then going home, then maybe, just maybe, on the weekend have a drink with your guy friends. If you get lucky, you're really getting lucky.

Thus far, that is what Pittsburgh seems. Boring. Lots and lots of ice cream places. No real nightlife to speak of. Everything closing before sunset. People all seem to marry after high school and a single eligable woman is as hard to find as diamonds in the coal pits.

People seems to be fairly satisfied waiting for their days to end.

Erie, PA

Nothing to eat at Erie either. More vending machines. Erie, though, is more beautiful. Farm country. Still fertile.

American smal towns are kind of gritty. A group ex-cons -- just released -- are going with us .. well except for one. Three cop cruisers pulled in at the last moment and arrested one of them, Oscar in the Green Tweed suit. Found a screwdriver on him, apparently.

Attitudes are different here too. The driver just gave two near-identical speeches about "the four Federal Laws regulating your ride on the Greyhound." He also warned us repeatedly not to knock on the "security barrier" -- the flappy plexiglass shell around his seat that looked like it is stuck in place with superglue. Service employees seem to be continously on edge.

Stopped at McDonald's and grabbed a Big Mac. Mmmmm..... taste so good after not eating for 12 hours.....

Still hungry.

I guess I am having breakfast with eddy.