Sep 27 2007
You have the right to free speech.
As long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it.
Know your rights! These are your rights.
All three of them.
— The Clash
Sep 26 2007
Presque tous les étudients de la langue français ont un petit livre qui s’appele L’art du conjuguer ou un Besherelle… mais cette semaine un collegue francophone me montrais le site “Le conjugueur”. Et alors, c’est fantastique! Je quitte avec les livres! Tous est sur l’internet! 
Sep 20 2007
Finally, Ottawa has coughed up some delectible delights unseen elsewhere in the country and therefore worth trying. I just had dinner at The Sweetgrass Bistro. I had the vegetarian food, obviously, but the meat eaters’ food looked good and interesting. I also really liked the decor, the wait-staff, and the philosophy. Oh, and when I told the waiter to try to keep my vegetarian food away from the fish and shellfish, he said, “Don’t worry, one of the guys who works here is allergic to fish and nuts so we’ve got a really good system.” And the food… the food was interesting, good, and unusual.
Definitely the best thing going in Ottawa for a slightly better than my jeans night out.
Sep 12 2007
The bday pressies are starting to trickle in (early ’cause the ‘rents are away).
Sep 11 2007
My LJ Friend 25 Stories is finishing off her PhD at home and working at the Centre Oral History & Digital Storytelling at Concordia University (Here and Here). I am in awe & jealous, jealous, jealous. Look at their recording centre! Look at the assistance and archiving possibilities! Look at the support!
Instead, I got to struggle and shuffle and do it myself — even though I have a supervisor who uses oral history to record educational experiences, too. But wouldn’t it be great, to have that kind of support? Then again, I was relatively unencumbered by too much structure. Another issue altogether.
What is wrong with that paragraph? I write, “was, was, was..” and realise that in fact I have not yet defended and therefore it is not a situation of ‘was’. but “is/am/are”.
Sep 11 2007
I’m listening to a clip on CBC Radio One’s show “NightTime Review” on which they are reviewing The Current’s week on “mixed race people in Canada”. (Check it out here) Touching on a load of issues all at once, none in depth, but digging into the identity of those of us who are one but many, like me. I call myself a Canadian, because I was born here. I grew up here. I carry nothing but a Canadian passport.
Perhaps the best part of all this is the quotation in the second link above of Lawrence Hill’s book of “the where are you from conversation”. I cannot count the times I’ve have played this game. It is uncountable. I am flabbergasted to see it (& precisesly what my underlying thoughts about it are). I am not alone! 
Tbh, Unlike how Hill explains it, the reason I find the conversation offensive, is not that it hangs on my race, but that as far as the asker is concerned, I am not Canadian — or not Canadian enough. (Me thinks I need to read his book!)
Amazingly enough, the show today, a documentary by Lisa Khoo, concludes with the notion that many “mixed race” people are like me. Fed up with the labels. Enough is Enough. We are not “living inbetween”. We are ourselves and as such are whole people.
Sep 09 2007
Ok, so the article triggering this post is not that new (May 2006), but my mother lent it to me in that, “have you seen this article” kind of way and I ignored it for some months until this evening. When I realised that there is an article on allergies in it. Click here to read it.
The article was really interesting in a number of ways — particularly when I consider the many ways that we are able to treat the symptoms of allergies. I also had the giggles when the mother of an allergic from birth boy said that her doctor told her he’d never seen a kid with so many allergies. I counted. Her son and I are allergic to the same number of things, although not quite all of the same things.
The one thing they were unable to explain is how it is that my envrionmental allergies got better when I lived overseas & didn’t bother me much at all the first 5 years I was back home. But then I moved here to Ottawa & I’ve been officially miserable since the end of July. Lethargic. Labyrinthitis, headaches, earaches, itchy pallete, and even a bit of difficulty breathing (my asthma has been so good in the past decade that I don’t even have a puffer around anymore). So, yeah… what of it? You are Hyperallergy Girl, suck it up. And certainly, IRL, I rarely complain about the foods I cannot eat or be in the presence of, but when it comes to my environmental allergies (Golden rod, ragweed, dust, tree pollen), I am made miserable for weeks on end and will whine (mostly to my Mum) about how it’s totally unfair.
The locals tell me, through runny noses and reddened eyes, that Ottawa is really bad for allergies. I wonder if there is a researcher out there studying Ottawa as an allergy cluster? Because the number of sufferors is well above the average here! Three of us in my unit (of 
at work alone.
When I was at home over labour day, I stopped by the family health practice begging for some kind of allergy drug more effective than the over-the-counter stuff… and was told that there are none. Huh? How can that be? I’m on extra-strength over the counter meds and I’m dying here. There must be something else!
Honestly, I think I need to leave the country again. I can’t take much more of this.
Sep 09 2007
Thanks to the comment Steve Withers left me last night, I found the following explanation of how MMP system will work. But it ends on an upbeat note. My question is, what happens when the coalitions don’t work? Or if 4-5 parties have to work together in coalition? The inability of some PR govts to get anything done goes unmentioned in this video. I’m as yet undecided, but still, I think the video is worth watching if you don’t know how MMP electoral systems work:
P.S. Before I am accused by some gentle reader of favouring the Yes campaign Click here to read the website of the No MMP campaign.
