I've decided to move my cyberspace home! Feeling a little stale on Blogger, so have decided that after a couple years here at blogspot, it is time to move. So, please change your bookmakrs! My new blog can now be reached www.chiquitawonder.wordpress.com. Hope you like it! See you over there!
I've finally figured out why I'm not really a fan of movies. It's because to watch a really good movie takes too much emotional investment. As someone said to me the other week, "real life is bad enough, I don't need movies to make it worse". Finally discovered that that was the secret to my movie hatred over the last week as I, ironically, watched several light-hearted no-brainer movies with Muppet. THAT was completely fine. I even enjoyed it. But the thought of spending 2-3 hours of my life watching something serious and emotional and all that... Nah... I would rather read the news. News is much less emotional even though it talks about emotional topics. I appreciate that much more than movies... although even with news, I've noticed that I tend to avoid the headlines that I know will make me riled up (like anything to do with Stephen Harper, for example). Simply no emotional energy to read or watch that kind of stuff right now. Especially not with this job.
I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it. About a week and a half ago, my parents, Muppet and I went to this restaurant called 牛家莊 or "Peking Man" in English. The restaurant is located at Sheppard and Leslie in North York. Now, I already had a bad feeling about the restaurant from its English name. What respectable Chinese restaurant calls itself PEKING MAN???!!! Anyhow. We decided to try it anyways because it is one of the few Chinese restaurants close to the North York Ikea... and since we've been spending a lot of time in Ikea lately, we were in the area. Anyhow. All I have to say is, the food at Peking Man is terrible. Don't go there, unless you want to eat watered-down Shanghainese food. The noodles were flavourless. The cold noodles smelt bad. The spicy dishes weren't spicy at all. The xialongbao (little buns) were not juicy or flavourful. It was gross. And afterwards, I had a stomach ache as well. It was relatively cheap for Shanghai food, with big portions... but beyond that you should pretty much save your money and go elsewhere. No comparison to 鼎泰豐 or even 味香村 (even though I prefer the former over the latter). Next time, I'm going to follow my instincts and refuse to go to a Chinese restaurant which would name itself something as ridiculous as Peking Man. Yuck!
I can't believe it. The beloved odd-ball ninth planet is no longer a planet. And all because it's too small and erratic and abnormal with its elliptical and non-cricular orbit. It was always one of my favorites. I liked it for its oddity and originality and non-conformity. And now look what happens, it gets named a "dwarf" and it will disappear from children's textbooks forever. Devastating to know that there aren't really nine planets but eight! Obviously, I've done a lot of work this week (although I DID manage to convince that client to pay up this morning + provide an additional retainer -- small victories). I've been taking a greater interest in the Globe and Mail's Science Section these days, especially after a highly involved discussion with Muppet about Perelman's supposed proof of the Poincare conjecture (NB: That last link has a little bit too much math lingo for me to really understand completely, but if you get over the math stuff, it's pretty interesting), the shape of space, Dark Matter and other such spacey stuff. Science has never interested me more before! Physics and astronomy and all that stuff is definitely cool... On a side note: even though the science teacher quoted in the above article about Pluto thinks (implictly by inference from his comment) that the existence of Pluto will still be taught to children, I think that it would be realistic to assume that fewer people will know of the existence of Pluto because of this re-classification. And this, I guess, is what it means when one refers to the "power of classification and labelling". Depending on what you're called, your very existence could disappear from the radar of the general population simply as a result of education, popular reference, etc. I think this is an important concept because a lot of the social problems we face today are "invisible problems" -- "invisible" not because they don't exist, but because their existence has been obscured by a lack of popular knowledge about them or even obscured by the facade of "normality" that we have created.
The worst part of any job must be where you have to ask your clients to pay your fees. I hate that. You do work. You charge them a fee. They agree to pay the fee. Unfortunately, there are times when unexpected things happen (such as emergency motions), and the fees come out to be a lot higher than expected. That's when they usually flip out - "I'm not paying this", "I didn't expect this", blah blah blah. And then you waste your time justifying WHY you should be paid and WHY you had to do the work (usually because they are the ones that screwed up and was the subject of an urgent motion) and WHY if they don't pay you have to get off the record. Urgh. It sucks. It's also embarassing, difficult, annoying and it must be the worst part of this job and any others where payment isn't cash on delivery. No wonder so many lawyers jump at the chance to practice in-house or with government. One less repugnant thing to worry about.
One of the small Korean take-out lunch places around our office stocks this great guava juice. It's not like a lot of the western and even Chinese guava juices that are more water than guava. This stuff is the real guava nectar packaged as a juice. Love it. I'm totally addicted. So last week something happened in connection with this guava juice that I have to blog about. Last week, I walked over to the lunch place to grab a can of the guava juice. Unfortunately, there was none left and so I decided on a can of coconut water instead (also yum, but not as good as the guava). Anyhow, so I was paying for the coconut water, and the owner of the store, this nice Korean man asks me: "Do you like that?" I told him, yes, but in actual fact, I like the guava juice more! He then told me that he tried to stock the guava juice but they were out of stock, but that he would keep on trying. Today, I went back to the Korean place to see if they had the guava juice in. No luck. Still no guava. Again, the Korean man recognized me and told me that he tried a few times to get the guava juice in, but no luck. So I settled for the coconut again. I know, it sounds like a really insignificant incident, but it was significant to me! In this age of fast-food and fast-service, no one takes an interest in YOU, as a person. You're either a number, an ambiguous "customer", or a wallet. Relationships are pretty much next to nothing. Service, a lot of times, is in-sincere and by rote. I never even realized how detached we are from each other when we buy and eat and purchase until my littler interaction with the Korean man at the lunch place. It felt so WARM to be asked whether I liked something and to be remembered. As odd as it sounds, the experience was a light in the middle of a drab day of work. Completely hard to articulate, I know, but perhaps some of you who have experienced it might understand. Ironically enough, person-to-person interaction in our culture is getting more and more rare. The few times when it does happen between strangers makes the world feel so much less hopeless and disconnected.
Well, we've moved into my parents' place for a good few weeks now, and all I can say is the we're still working on part 2 of 3... namely, the "renovation" part. I'm putting "renovation" in quotation marks because up to this point, there has been a lot of running around, driving, phone calls, etc., but very little actual "renovation". Lets just say that it has taken us a little while to get ourselves educated about what renovating our place entails, especially with all the limitations posed by a condo. Anyhow, now that we've "run around" for a little bit, I think we're almost ready to start. Well - kinda. First, we have to order the kitchen cabinets, appliances, floors, countertops. Next we'll need to finalize a quote from our contractor. Then we'll have to deal with all the little but important details like the type of countertop, the colour of the walls, blacksplash tiles, etc. etc. etc. I don't think we'll be done until October, realistically. We're just not very good at making decisions about this stuff and not really sure how much we want to spend on everything. At the end, even after all this hard work, everything might just turn out to be really ugly... it's times like these when I wish I was an designer or something. Next time, I know to set aside like 3 months to do a renovation. It's just too much hassle and running around and stuff. Between that and work, I think Muppet and I pretty much have our hands full.
A friend taught me something the other day. We were talking, and she wondered whether one should pursue a career or "calling" where one does not feel joy. Now, this seems like an obvious statement -- of course not, you say. Well, when I thought about it a little bit more, that statement seemed to address a question that I have been pondering on and off indirectly for a little bit. That question is: if you have a passion for something, should you pursue it? Now, that also seems like an obvious question. The answer, you say, is of course! Well, what happens if you experience no joy in what you think you have a passion for? Seems to me that the answer really is: to do something fulfilling, you have to really have both. Joy and passion. You miss one, and you really miss the boat. I guess the reason why this is an important question for me is because I think it's easy for me to identify my various passions. There are some things that I am clearly more worried about and more interested in than others. However, what about the joy component? Now that seems to be a harder question... mainly because I don't think I've ever thought about it. Perhaps the answer to the "what do I want to be when I grow up" is dependent on answering the two questions together: What do I have a passion for? What type of work allows me to experience joy? That second question deserves some thought and contemplation I think.
Got home last night really late. Both times that I have taken this Winnipeg-Toronto flight has been delayed. I think it just might be a normal occurrence given that it is the last flight out of Winnipeg to Toronto, and the airport is so small that many planes use the same gateway. Anyhow, it was very tiring, to say the least. Especially since I had just driven 4 hours at break-neck speed and through a severe thunderstorm to get from the reserve to the Winnipeg airport. And that didn't include the 1.5 hours I had driven in the morning to get into the reserve. Needless to say I did more driving than work AGAIN. The road between Kenora to Winnipeg is pretty flat so thunderstorms leave have a spectacular effect on the landscape. As I was driving back to Winnipeg yesterday, I also drove into a severe thunderstorm system which lit up the sky with spectacular bolts of lightning. Because the land is so flat, you see a lot of the horizon, making the lightning bolts all the more clear and vivid. Very cool. The uncool part, of course, was having to drive through the thing and worrying all the time that I wouldn't get into the city in time to make my flight. Had a brief momentary thought yesterday that it would be cool to have an "outdoors" kinda job. Don't know why I felt that way. Maybe it's a reflection of just how much I am disliking my office job. To be honest, I can't make up my mind about my job. I don't hate it. But I don't love it either. I'm just rather lukewarm and blah about it. The annoying part is that I can't really put my finger on why I feel that way. Perhaps some of it is because I'm pretty new at the job. Another might be because it's a lot of pressure. Another might be because it's not creative. Another might be because it involves too much un-creative writing. Whatever the reason, I think some of the things stopping me from just picking up and leaving is because a) it's probably a really good job in the legal world (so if I want to be a lawyer, I should treasure this job), b) the cases I am working on are quite large and innovative, c) I have no idea what I would do next (this is a big one -- what if I choose something else that I end up disliking as well). Sigh. I guess I've just never really answered the question "what do I want to be when I grow up" to my satisfaction. I am really glad to be back. I really don't like business travel, and really there is no place like home. Granted, we still haven't started renovations in our "home" yet, but still... there really is no place like Toronto.
Yay. So happy. I'll be on a flight back to Toronto, one day early. To be honest, I've pretty much had enough of Kenora. Main problem being the food. Oh man, I've never had worse food in my life. Even eating in China was more fun. There are no good restaurants here. The "best" restaurant in the town is the one in my hotel.... which, frankly, sucks... and is very expensive. Not to mention the selection is terrible. Every restaurant serves Prime Rib, french onion soup, fries. And done in a gross fashion. I need to go home, go to the gym, and purge. But before I can get home, I will have to drive about 4 hours to Winnipeg from the reserve (I'll be on the reserve tomorrow, hopefully having a productive morning). The roads have improved somewhat around the reserve, but it's still slow going. There is still a gravel and dirt road for a good 30 minutes from the highway to the reserve. I can so understand why people on the reserve drive trucks or vans. You just can't get out if the weather is bad with those roads. Meanwhile, my small little Toyota Yaris took a serious beating on the road onto the reserve today. Poor little car. Not to mention that today as I was driving, a bird flew into my windshield. I was so shocked. I wasn't going very fast (only 60 km), but I think it was probably fast enough to cause serious injury to the bird. Also saw a duck crossing the road and a dead deer on the side of the road. :( The country is still as beautiful as ever. Blue blue skies. Shimmering lakes. Green forests. I can see why Kenora is a big tourist town for those who want to rent a boat and just relax on the waters. It sure is enticing.
Working with aboriginals puts me in complete culture shock. It's actually funny -- I haven't experienced culture shock in so long. When I went to China, yes, I think I did have some culture shock, but I think the memory of it has disappeared from my mind. And plus, I didn't need to work with anyone in a professional setting in China, so I could have gone home and kicked the walls when I got frustrated (and as I recall, I did in fact do that a couple of times). Here, I still need to work with these people. So I end up b*tching to my boss... who, uncharacteristically, has been exceptionally patient. And I think there's another important difference about having culture shock in China versus having culture shock here. To some extent, you're mentally prepared for the culture shock that you will experience in China. Not so here. Having lived quite well in Canada for 28 odd years, you would least expect to feel culture shock here. And when it hits you, you just don't know what to do with it. Here's how I felt: really pissed, frustrated, annoyed, etc. etc. And then after I calmed down, I realized it was all a matter of culture shock. If any of you have ever worked with aboriginal peoples, you will know what I mean. Things work very very slowly here. You can have a 5 hours meeting and not make any "decision". Like today. I sat in on a meeting between our clients and their accountant, and after 3.5 hours, no decision was made at all. If you don't know anything about aboriginal culture, you would just think they have no ability to make a decision. I think that would be the wrong interpretation. However, as someone who is acting in the role of the "professional" - like the lawyer, accountant, etc. You can't help but feel really frustrated. The western world works on timelines and deadlines and "efficiency" (as per our definition).... we don't really understand other less efficiency-focused worldviews. And talk about worldviews -- the issue of worldviews impacts child welfare law greatly. One of the biggest problems with the current provincial Child and Family Services Act (our child protection legislation) is that many of the concepts enshrined in that piece of legislation -- "protection", "safety", "permanency", "bonding", "attachment" -- are all a product of our western North American worldview. The legislation does not know how to deal with or handle other worldviews and experiences that have their own unique understandings of what "protection", "safety", "permanency", "bonding", "attachment", etc. mean. The result? A disproportionate number of aboriginal children being taken permanently from their communities.
Featuring the wacky adventures of ChiquitaWonder in legal (and not-so-legal) land.
