...you'd be life-affirming in your grasp of the beauty of sadness. you'd soar in spite of the unfairness of these existences, these existential moments of angst and horror. We all have our fear, underneath these layers of lived experience and touching glimpses of joy, but your childlike melody cuts through all our learned fussiness, back to a primitive, instinctual confirmation of being: the miracle of touch, the giddy balms of love, and its unending, constantly shifting pattern.
In short, if you were music, you'd be Untitled #8 by Sigur Ros.
List five reasons (at least) why you are awesome.
Submitted by goobers18.
- I am a good friend. When I remember to be, that is. I make a real effort to keep in touch, and I've learned to forgive people for the things they can't help doing. Though I'm terrible with presents. I like to think I've chosen friends who won't hold things against me without telling me, but the fact that I'm not sure of this, is reason to try and do better.
- I have relative pitch and sing loudly, badly and joyously. It gives me high to perfect scores in Karaoke Revolution. My catalogue is mostly from 1991 to 1998 pop.
- My first attempt at cooking a recipe is almost always better than the subsequent attempts. So trying new things is often better than cooking old favorites.
- I interact enough with the world to get what you're talking about, but not enough to know more than you do. So I never dominate conversations about pop culture! Unless, of course, it's Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- I help you with your technology. Whether that's googling support material or telling you that you don't need it anyway.
What are your top five favorite cooking seasonings?
Submitted by skip.town.
mmmMMmmmm. I'm pretty new to cooking, but I'm already starting to get a sense of what I like.
- Garlic powder. Garlic anything, really. Garlic is great for giving bite to simple dishes. It can be minced, go through the press, roasted, made crispy. Garlic powder is nice for putting it in things that don't involve a lot of cooking, like tuna melts.
- Black bean sauce. I haven't used this lately, but it's salty and makes blander things very tasty, like salmon, or eggplant and zucchini, and I have a special place for it in my heart.
- Cumin. I'm not great at curries, but I do love the spiciness of cumin and having it show up in unexpected places, like squash soup.
- Ginger. I used to hate ginger's sting when I was younger; now I love its heat. I suspect my body chemistry's changed.
- Black pepper. Same as ginger, I used to never put it on anything. Now I use it whenever I can.
I developed my taste for the last three while living in Toronto - wonder if that had anything to do with me liking warm things? ;)
In honor of World Teachers' Day today, tell us about a teacher who had a positive impact on your life.
So many! I can't possibly choose one over any of the others, so I'll name them all:
- Ms. Adams. She went on to be a highly placed Montessori teacher. She was my teacher for grade 1 until the end of grade 3, and it was a bit of a trying time for me - not just learning to read in a new country, but also getting a back brace for scoliosis that officially ended playing outside for me, hearing the other kids react to someone being different (this was pretty subdued - no name-calling or anything, and I wasn't the "weirdest" in the class by any stretch), and being generally very supportive. It is likely that she would have recommended me for the summer gifted child program. Some of my best memories at Wolfe are because of her.
- Ms. Myronuk - the first teacher to emphasize science, the environment and alternate ways of thinking. My brother and I are both more or less life-long environmentalists because of her. She encouraged me to do a science project on my back, which was a great way for me to explore why and for what I had that experience, as well as helping me to understand my mother. Also, it doesn't hurt to have a female scientist around to indicate that girls can kick science ass too. Also, I continue to use mind maps and the seven thinking caps to this day.
- Ms. Jacob - the high school physics teacher. I was never very good at physics, but I think Ms. Jacob recognized that I was engaged in my learning, asked questions and cared more about understanding than grades (though I think she was disappointed that she had to keep giving me high-70's B's). She also crocheted lace and was much more vocal for getting girls into science, because by that age the splits were starting to show.
- Mr. Irani - the high school math teacher. He took a stance for the teaching philosophy he believed in, which did not have any place for "bells" of any curvaceous sort, unless they were being used to demonstrate mathematics in application. He created wonderful art in his free time, used coloured chalk, allowed himself to be moody and asked for space, and acknowledged when we were tired or feeling down to give us space. He was a math teacher that showed us Ansell Adams photos to talk about logarithms, and talked about post-9/11 racism before the lesson started. He modeled humanity beyond the institution. And he taught me that it was more important that I like something than I be lucky to score 90 in it - our school was a real rat race, very competitive (lots of Asian kids getting tutoring on the side), so we needed the lesson more than most.
When did you last write/receive a handwritten, snail-mail letter? Who was it to/from?
Submitted by Places Unknown.
I received postcards from Irving from both Shanghai and Hong Kong, as he was there for 2 months. I still have yet to send a postcard I bought in the Philippines to my friend in Winnipeg. I've yet to receive a response to a letter I wrote to a friend in Toronto, who has been the recipient of many of my handwritten letters.
I am firmly convinced that the art of long, drawn-out conversations is one I am terrible at.
What small act of kindness have you done in the last thirty days?
Submitted by One Kind Act.
On an 8-hour layover in Hong Kong on my way back to Vancouver from Manila, I arranged with some of my relatives to visit my aunt in hospital. She was there for complications from cervical cancer. She died shortly after my visit. I'm not 100% sure it was kind, but I was glad to have seen her one more time. I had only met her a few times before that.
I'm a little more upset that I can't remember what else I've done in the past thirty days that is noteworthy enough for me to have remembered it as an act of kindness. But then, in the past few years I've stopped stressing out about remembering things - it feels like a form of holding on - including any good I may have done. I try my best to just assume I did my best.
What is, or used to be, your SSB (secret single behavior)?
Submitted by Dee.
This doesn't count as secret, but it was definitely I did when I was single (especially when newly-so) - I went to the places where I'd had key memories of my exes, and reclaim them. I often needed to do this for places where they said incredible things to me, made me happy, and broke up with me - I'd often buy something to eat, take pictures, or go there with friends or the new person in my life. I've been doing this since I was 15. I learned at 17 that reclaiming their place of residence is less cool from a potential stalker perspective.
Doing this in Toronto has been completely unnecessary. That's what happens when you're not in a place long enough to be hurt there.
your head switches letters around? It seems to be happening more and more with me lately.
Example:
Parental <---> Prenatal
Context:
MySpace may launch parental software
*chuckle*
Not that they all aren't.
I've always wanted to make a t-shirt that says, "No in-and-out privileges."
And maybe it would have a heart on it.
