Audition piece, anyone?

If you can do a decent Slavic accent (ideally Ukrainian, but anything Slavic would do (but don't tell them I said that)), the "Overture to the Commencement of a Very Rigid Journey" (i.e. the introduction) to Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated would be the best audition piece ever.

Things They Should Invent: basic palliative care training

I was reading about a family where an elderly grandmother was dying and needed hospice care, and the hospice people taught the family all this stuff: ways to adapt the house and the daily routine to make it easier for the grandmother, how exactly to help her with personal care, etc. etc.

As I was reading, I thought those would be really useful things to know - not just for if someone's dying, but for if someone's more generically sick. But they don't teach it to people until their family member has reached the palliative care stage. Why not have classes available for the general public to learn the basics, just like they have first aid classes available for just anyone to take?

Happy birthday to me!

Last year for my birthday, I got the release date for the 6th Harry Potter book.

This year for my birthday (well, birthday eve) I got the title of the 7th Harry Potter book.

But I'm a little bit sad that this is probably the last time I'll get Harry Potter news for my birthday.

Dear J.K. Rowling: Please make the release date for Book 7 December 22, 2007, just so I can have some Harry Potter for my birthday one last time.

The non-decorating brain

Of all the things in my life that people keep requiring that I justify, the weirdest one that keeps coming up is the fact that I don't decorate. I don't just mean xmas decorations (although I don't do those either), I mean any interior decoration whatsoever. The walls of my apartment are the same standard-issue colour that they were when I moved in. My furniture is almost all yoinked from my parents' house. My curtains are red because that's my favourite colour and my mother asked me what colour curtains I want. I don't have any art, apart from a few kiddie-drawings and a few mi-cielito drawings, all pinned to a bulletin board. (Why a bulletin board? Because I've always had one.)

People take this as a sign of not being grownup - still living like a poor student. But really it's a sign that my brain just doesn't do decorating. Really. I am aware that, in theory, this is not the optimal colour for the walls, but I am quite simply incapable of thinking of a better colour. If you showed me a swatch and asked me if I want that colour on my walls, the best-informed answer I could come up with is "dunno." I know that my rugs are fugly, but I can't go to the store and look at rugs and figure out which one would be better. Yes, I probably should have new furniture, but my eyes just glaze over when I go into a furniture store. I've picked up a few pieces of design theory along the way, but my brain simply does not process colour and texture and coordination. I read the condo section of the Toronto Star every week and it always has all kinds of "decorating ideas," but I am congenitally incapable of extrapolating from "decorating ideas" to "something I can do to make my apartment look better." Everything just scans as "not applicable." This is also why, apart from the occasional attempt to make a vase of flowers not die, I don't decorate seasonally. The part of the brain that sees a decoration and thinks "This would look good in such-and-such a place" just isn't functional in me. Despite the protests of the annoying contingent who say "Of course you can decorate! You just have to put your mind to it! Be creative! Decorating is fun!" my brain simply does not work in that direction. It's too busy inventing stuff and thinking of analogies and automatically tracking the etymological roots of the made-up alien languages that Hoshi Sato speaks.

The problem with school for introverts

Literature and websites talk about most of the reasons why introverted children find school difficult, but there's one I've never seen mentioned: for most of your school years, it is socially unacceptable to be alone or to not have any friends in whatever context you're in.

There were some times at school when I didn't have any friends whatsoever, and many others when I didn't have any friends in my particular class or activity. Personally and in a vacuum, this wasn't that much of a problem. I would have been quite happy to spend recess and lunch alone in my head, or to do any group projects single-handedly. The problem was that my classmates would actively torment me for not having friends, or even for merely being spotted walking around alone. This made everything into an ordeal. I had to find some friends who I could spend recess with so that I wouldn't have to be seen alone. I had to find some friends in each class so I wouldn't be left adrift for group work and so I'd have someone to sit with at lunch. I had to come up with something to do (or at least to say I had done) each weekend other than finish my homework and chores and recover from school, because that one teacher started each week by asking everyone what they did on the weekend, and it was more than my life was worth than to be caught saying "Nothing."

The thing of it was, in childhood there is no concept of acquaintanceship. Kids don't (or, at least, my peers didn't) grasp the concept of working with someone just because they're in your class and the project has to be done, or eating lunch at the same table as someone just because they needed a place to sit. No no no, you can only work or eat lunch with people who are your friends - and like real friends, come-over-to-my-house-and-play friends. And even if you have dozens of friends elsewhere, it was still a matter of shame to not have a friend in this room right now.

And, of course, the grownups didn't help. "So have you made any friends in your class?" they'd ask, as though this were expected and necessary. As though we should be able to find people we'd like to invite over to our house and play with our stuff in any randomly generated collection of peers. (Aside: some of my older relatives still say this to me - "So, have you made any friends at work?" - and in the exact same tone of voice.) We were simply never exposed to the idea that you can get along decently with someone at school without being friends with them, that people have private lives outside of school, and that there's no shame in not having a friend right by your side this exact minute.

All of which is downright exhausting when you really don't need a friend by your side for personal reasons, but you still have to constantly hustle to make sure you're never seen alone just to avoid torture.

Meaningless greeting cards

Once upon a time, I was shopping for a greeting card. A friend, who shall remain anonymous so as not to reflect poorly on them, was also shopping for a greeting card. For various reasons, we didn't really want to be getting greeting cards for our intended recipients. We didn't particularly like them and would have preferred to give them no attention whatsoever, but unfortunately it was one of those situations where to not give a card would have been actively insulting, and we didn't exactly want to be actively insulting.

We went about this different ways. I looked through a lot of cards, trying to find one that wasn't too enthusiastic or affectionate, and didn't express any sentiments that I didn't actually feel.

My friend unceremoniously grabbed the first card they found from the cheap section.

That made me realize that I really was putting a lot of thought and effort into a card for someone I didn't care about. But still, I can't bring myself to do that - not out of any deep hidden affection for people I don't like, but because I'd feel dirty signing and sending off a card that contained a stronger sentiment than I feel. I'm not sure what that means.

Karma police

I lost my debit card. I've called to have it cancelled and replaced, but I'm probably going to be without one for the rest of the month, which hinders my ability to acquire cash. I'm okay for money, (and I can get a temporary debit card with much more limited powers) but actual cash is at a bit more of a premium, probably for the rest of the month.

Thing is, Friday is my birthday. Traditionally on my birthday, I do my annual karma boost. It's a very personal thing so I don't want to share the details, but the important thing for the purpose of this post is that it involves, entre autres, the ritual dissemination of cash in accordance with a certain formula. It has to be cash, it has to be on my birthday, and the nature of the ritual is that I don't have the cash any more when it's finished.

If I do my ritual normally, this will put a significant dent in my supply of cash. I'm not worried about its effect on my finances - that's part of the point of this exercise - but I will probably end up short on actual pieces of paper. I have credit cards, but I'm not entirely comfortable with wandering around without actual cash.

But the purpose of the ritual is to boost my karma, and losing my debit card is probably a sign that my karma is running low. I could perhaps convince myself that the inconvenience of working with limited cash is a good sacrifice to make for boosting my karma - giving until it hurts etc. - but if I'm honest with myself, the point of my karma boost was never to inconvenience myself, it was simply to share the wealth, to post a net loss for the day rather than making a profit. I would withdraw the amount of cash in question from the bank the morning of or the night before, and the actual physical contents of my wallet would be unaffected.

I know, I know, at this point you're probably thinking "Awwww, poor baby! She has all the money she needs in her bank account but just can't get at it 24/7!" Believe me, I'm well aware that some people don't even have enough to have a bank account. I've been there myself, that's why I started this ritual in the first place. It's just that if I short myself on cash, I'll really be stuck if the power goes out or the credit card network goes down, and that isn't my intention. Having cash is part of my emergency survival plan, and I don't know if a simple misplacement is worth jeopardizing my emergency survival plan. But neither do I feel justified in holding back generosity towards others because I had a minor misfortune, to say nothing of the risks of leaving my karma down where it is.

The real problem with all this xmas nonsense

Here's the problem, right here.

Buggy

You know those things in the grocery store that are like big metal baskets and have wheels and you push them around and put all your groceries in them?

I call it a buggy.

I think I'm the only person in the world who does that. Everyone else calls it a cart.

I have no idea why I call it a buggy.

Now this is just weird

My superintendents gave me (and all the other tenants, I assume) the most religious xmas card ever.

This is especially weird because they're brand new superindentents. They've been here literally 2 weeks. I've talked to Mrs. Super once, when she knocked on my door to let the guys who were replacing the toilet into the apartment. Our conversation was as follows: "The plumbers are here." "Okay, thanks." We would never even recognize each other walking down the street.

A card from someone with whom I have no relationship whatsoever is a bit odd. A religious card from someone who has no idea what religion I am or am not is rather odd. Put them together, and frankly it's bordering on presumptuous.

Just one question

For those people who get offended when customer service people and randoms don't greet them with "Merry Christmas":

How are people supposed to be able to tell that you, personally, celebrate xmas?

Silly job interview advice

Job interview advice always says to do research on the prospective employer, but it never says what kind of information they want me to research, or what they want me to do with that research. The example given is always taking something you'd see in the business section of the newspaper and making some kind of question or comment about how that relates to the position you'd be interviewing for, but I've never had a job or interviewed for a job where that advice was relevant. I'd be happy to do any necessary research in preparation for the interview, but I haven't the slightest idea what kind of research they want me to do, and I'm not able to extrapolate from the general advice usually given to figure out what's expected for any specific position I might interview for.

It's like that often-given advice about putting specific achievements on your resume. The example they always give is something like "Increased sales by 30%." I've never had a job where my achievements were so specifically quantifiable, and I've always worked as part of a team, so even if there were specific achievements I can't take credit for them. When I do a good job, it's something like "I did everything I was asked to do in the time I was asked to do it in, and the client was satisfied with my work." (And that's the other thing about translation - generally the best that non-translators can say of a translation is that it is satisfactory. It's fine and there are no problems with it. Non-translators rarely notice the difference between a perfectly serviceable translation and a jaw-droppingly ingenious one. They notice problems, but clever word choices and avoidance of common stylistic traps are simply glossed over - that's the mark of a good translation.)

Another reason to take xmas out of public space

I think xmas would be far better if it weren't public. This thought is triggered by this article, which points out that media/pulp culture tends to present The Magic of Christmas Solving Everyone's Problems.

With media/culture/marketing/commercial xmas saturation tends to present xmas as this Big Important Thing with huge cultural significance. Which maybe it is, a lot of people celebrate it. But just imagine for a moment what it would be like if the majority of society didn't celebrate xmas at all, and it was just some obscure little tradition in your religion and/or your family.

Wouldn't that be cool? Once a year, in the depths of winter, your little sect gets together at midnight to celebrate the birth of its messiah. Once a year, on the basis of some archaic tradition from the Old Country, your family gets together under one roof for food and catching up, and maybe to exchange presents. You decorate your home with lights and plants and all kinds of bizarre things like that, and sing special songs. But it's just your thing, an esoteric little quirk peculiar to your family or your religion. Only the people who share your cultural background have lights in their windows and trees in their living rooms and carols on their CD player. Everyone else is going about life normally. Wouldn't that be awesome?

As I blogged before, I reached xmas saturation last week. And that was before anything meaningful had even happened! I'm not religious myself, but it's still a sort of family tradition. I get to see all my cousins (who become increasingly fascinating by the year), I get to eat special food that people simply don't make at other times in the year - if this were happening in a vacuum, it would be charming and enjoyable. But I've been bombarded by decorations and carols and greeting cards from people I do business with for a month already, so once I see my parents' decorations and carols and receive my grandmothers' greeting cards, I'm just meh. The meaningless public fracas saturates me before the meaningful private celebration can even begin. If there were no xmas in public space, I would be giddily rejoicing in my parents' lights and carols, maybe even decorating my own home. But as it stands, all the lights and carols in public just leave me wanting a respite.

Silly serving sizes

I just noticed that a brick of cheese in my fridge describes the serving size as "per 1.5 cm slice."

But the cheese is a rectangular prism! The faces come in three different sizes, so a 1.5 cm slice could be any one of these three different sizes! I doubt it's the largest one, but I honestly don't know which size they mean.

An observation

I make a lot of humorous comments in everyday speech, probably more than most people. By "humorous comments", I don't necessarily mean things that are laugh-out-loud funny or require any kind of amused reaction, just comments that have some element of humour or wit in them.

If I take all my interlocutors and organize them by gender and sexual orientation, gay men are most likely to laugh at my humour, followed closely by straight women. Straight men are least likely to laugh at my humour, although more likely than the other groups to repeat it elsewhere (to my knowledge at least - I have no way of knowing what is getting repeated behind my back). (The number of lesbians I interact with on a regular basis is negligible, so I can't really comment on them.)

Of course, this is strictly anecdotal and I don't presume to draw any conclusions.

How to ensure that politicans raise salaries for the greater good only

When politicians vote themselves a salary increase, there should be a sort of backwards grandfather clause: the salary increase will apply to anyone elected to that position in the future, but will not apply to any of the current members involved in voting in the increase. That way, they have nothing to gain from it either way.

The problem with academic projects

Thoughts from the shower: One thing I've always hated in school is when we had to think of our own projects. If the teacher told me to write an essay or do a presentation on a specific topic, I was fine. If they told me to pick something from a limited list of specific topics, I was fine. The problem was when they told me to do just anything, or something from an extremely broad category. "Do an ISU on some element of French or Francophone culture." "Write a computer program." "Document a technology." Except in the rare cases when I was especially interested in something, I found it brutal to pick a topic. It was even worse when the choice of topic was ridiculously broad, but the project requirements were ridiculously specific. "Pick a subject, any subject. Now make a bibliography on that subject. You have to include X encyclopedia articles, Y articles from academic journals, Z articles from the media, and N monographs." "Pick a topic, any topic. Now read three fictional novels on that topic, write a comparative essay, and do a class presentation." I could never tell whether my topic was suitable to meet all those specific project requirements, and half the time the teacher didn't even give the specific project requirements until we'd picked the topic. Assuming the assignment reasonably reflects the course material, I can do a good assignment on any appropriate topic. But I just suck at thinking of appropriate topics!

That just doesn't reflect reality. In every job I've ever had, I was given specific duties. My clients say "Translate this text," not "Find something to translate and then try to sell it to me. Oh, and by the way, the end result needs to be a 12,000 word annual report." When I did tech support, it was "Solve my problem," or "Pick a problem from the queue and solve it," not "Think of any problem in the world, then solve it and implement the solution for all affected users. Oh, and by the way, it needs to affect at least 50 users and not require any hardware upgrades."

I think this is the main reason why I'm hesitant to do my MA. I've been looking at course outlines, and there seems to be a lot of "Pick something and do a big-ass project on it" type work. Want me to research something? Tell me what it is! Want me to translate something? Tell me what it is! I'm not always actively interested in any topics that are relevant to the course, so sometimes I just can't think of anything to do an assignment on, but I can do good work on any suitable topic that you care to assign, even if I'm not interested in it. That should be an asset, not a liability - especially for a translator!

Elected representatives' salaries: factors to consider

Ontario MPPs recently voted themselves a raise. Some factions think this is important so that they can continue to attract quality people. Others think it's reprehensible since they already make far more money than the average Ontarian.

I don't feel particularly qualified to comment on the appropriateness or lack thereof of this raise, but I have noticed that a few factors are missing from public debate on this issue, so I'm just going to list those factors here and allow people to do what they want with them:

- Running for office represents a gap in your regular career. Most employers require that employees take an unpaid leave of absence to run for political office, and they probably have to resign from their normal job if they win. There are ethical rules that prevent politicians from networking effectively for personal gain while in office. They can't do a bit of part-time work on the side. They have to put their business in a blind trust. While you can apply for several normal jobs concurrently and there's very little wrong with rejecting a job offer, if you're elected to public office you have to accept; this means that it's very difficult, if not impossible, for a politician to apply for other jobs as a backup while running for re-election. Conflict of interest rules probably also limit what kinds of work a politician can accept for a period of time after they have been defeated for re-election.

- Politicians (and their families) have to live in the public eye. I don't know about you, but if the make of my shoes, the quality of my dye job, the size of my gut, the stylishness of my glasses, and the way in which I greet my loved ones in public were all subject to media scrutiny, I would expect to be compensated accordingly. If I had children who would be also be subject to this scrutiny, I would expect to be paid even more.

- Elected officials don't work only when Parliament/legislature/whatever is sitting. They also sit on committees, do constituency work, deal with the media and have to attend all manner of public events. Which brings me to...

- Politicians can't just refuse an invitation. If I am invited to a civic event, I can just say no.
Friend: "Hey, want to go to Pride?"
Me: "Nah, it's too hot out and I'm not that into parades."
See, no problem.
But if a politician declines to go to Pride, it's seen as an anti-gay gesture. Multiply that by every event at all ever, all of which they can possibly decline for a prior commitment, but not just to stay at home with a good book and a glass of wine.

So do they already get paid in a way that reflects all these things? Maybe, maybe not. I couldn't tell you. I just want people to take these things into account when calculating how much politicians should get paid.

Dirty old people

The bad: on the subway today, this extremely frail old man sat next to me. By my best assessment, he was 100 years old and Chinese. He sat way too close to me. It was odd, because he appeared to be properly centred in his seat, but he was WAY closer to me than necessary. I'm a bit above average size-wise, as women go, but well within the range of normal for the general population. And this guy was tiny. I've sat next to thousands of people on the subway, and I assure you there was no excuse for him to be that close to me! Then the train pulled into a stop, and he stood up early so that he could "accidentally" fall into my lap as the train slowed down. I've lost my balance the subway dozens of times, and this was definitely on purpose - even the lady across from me could tell. I had to change clothes when I got home, because my clothes were psychologically tainted. What's odd is this is the second time a 100-year-old Chinese man has invaded my personal space on the subway while acting completely innocent about it.

The not-bad: my upstairs neighbour has a wobbly bed. Today I saw my upstairs neighbour in the mailroom. She's well over 80 years old! I want to be her when I grow up!