11.02.2008: my apologies for not telling you in advance, it was organised all last minute, but we spent the weekend in toronto. i was looking forward to a relaxing warm weekend and had dressed suitably. but far from appropriately. toronto had been hit by a snow storm the day before and i was considerably ill-equipped with my trainers and thin trousers. and it's easy to forget how windy it can be in the city, and how that wind whips up from across the lake and pulls the warmth straight from your body. but apart from me having wet feet and numb legs all weekend, it was brilliant. so we shopped and ate and drank and all those other things toronto is good for. i replenished my comic book supply and bought a few books i can't get anywhere else. we ate some posh breakfasts (fantastic breakfasts) and generally felt sickeningly bourgeoise. art buying, and the like. i also did some laptop shopping (say hello). but more on that another day, hopefully one where i feel better about the whole stupid business. on friday afternoon we hit up the GSU, just like the good old days, with all the usuals already there and playing pool and blah blah blah. i'd almost not noticed how it'd been over a month since i'd last been in a bar. now i miss them again. it was the same sitting in the future cafe late on sunday morning, for the last time ever and not eating cake. later friday night, after a huge vege feast, we found ourselves at a very minor house party, arriving just as everyone was getting the munchies. and then even later, whilst trying to find the spare key behind the house we were staying at, we were suddenly struck by how light it was. it was 1am and everything was doused in an orangey pink. you could see perfectly. up north, away from the city, after 6pm everything is pitch black. light pollution approaches zero. and it wasn't just the night. the days had beautiful colours too. faint purple skys fading into yellow. the whole scene pops fantastic. and no one seems to care. returning home the weather was some of the worst i've been driven through. being eaten up by the storm, wind rushing against and through the car, the oncoming traffic appearing out from clouds of snow not many meters up the road. everything being buried in white. all very dramatic. and then sitting in silence with all the windows frosted up, soft light diffusing in from the carpark spotlights, our engine refusing to start. and there's nothing to see outside but white noise. but being back amongst all those people didn't seem weird until we got back. i was sitting down in our apartment and suddenly felt very removed. maybe the word is 'lonely'. or maybe it was just the modest mouse song that was playing on the radio. either way i can count the number of people i see on a regular basis up here on one hand. there's none of that noise you get when thousands of strangers walk by you every day. 07.02.2008: you can currently see a selection of my photos (none new) being used for wondercafe's social awareness month (sorry for the clumsy link, but that's the fault of frames, not me). it is all very exciting, and i'm particularly happy about that first photo, the one of the ungdomshuset cyclists. it makes me feel professional. and it's slightly ironic too, since their website is part of the united church of canada. but that's ok. also the anarchist graffiti accompanying a political article about voting. i subvert at you. and other important details, i will be kicking out of here sometime soon and arriving back in england on the 27th of febuary 2008. i will be around for an undisclosed number of weeks, one of which will be spent in the london and brighton area, before fleeing the country again. so be prepared, get excited, and please let me know if i can stay at your place. it will be very nice to see you. i'd made it through all the complicated stages of changing my flight (the departure date and location - i'm now flying from montreal) before the guy asked me for the expiry date on my card and i noticed it had passed. i'm not sure how i let this happen, being stuck in another country without any valid ID, a passport or bank card. i'm lucky that my current situation requires no money. infact, i haven't carried any money on my person since the very start of january. it's very liberating. and convenient too, since i can't access any of my bank accounts. if anyone is keeping count, that was just another night of no sleep. and if you're not counting and want to join in, we're currently on three. 06.02.2008: i slept badly. in a dehydrated whiskey haze that took me along the path of too many thoughts i wanted no participation in. it was an ugly nights sleep. i hated it. now i'm listening to raised fist with tears in my eyes from the freezing wind and drinking coffee that's suitably bitter. coffee so bad it's going to make my piss smell outrageous. we'd had a lovely evening, dining with our captors. they were so welcoming it made me feel the problem's my own. but everyone has said this, that as hosts they are fantastic and as bosses they are abhorrent. but of course, we are all out to have a good time, even if it means feeling somewhat deceitful - i'd just changed my flight out of here not fifteen minutes earlier (there is scheming afoot, but more on that another time). it's been so long since we've eaten posh food, it was quite the treat. cheese all melted and gooey, fifteen year old whiskey by the open fire. a big curled up wolf/dog, that insisted on playing footsie with me under the table whilst i was trying to concentrate on eating and holding sensible conversation. and someone has left a post-it note beside this computer scrawled with their ebay, paypal and amazon login details. if only i wasn't such a nice guy i'd let you have them too. the remainder of yesterday wasn't so fun. i was in the kitchen when we got hit pretty hard. we had a full house and only three staff, one taking orders and drinks, one cooking and me working the prep counter whilst countless undecipherable orders came in, with no one having time to tell me what to do. remember that time in school when you had that exam and didn't understand any of the questions and sat there for two hours panicking and doing nothing, your nerves getting worse by the minute? it felt like that, teenage angst boiling in the pit of my something-or-other. but in the end it was ok. and my 'boss', who i really like, bought me a 24 crate of beer. yesterday was a good day for free stuff. now i'm suffering for it. not really suffering that much. 04.02.2008: things i've learnt this week include how soup can look like a bosch painting (or at least a doom wall texture-map), just add prime rib. bleck. and i've learnt that oil at 200c only hurts briefly as it hits your skin. i presume that's the feeling of your nerves dying. and also something about snorting horse medicine, but i forget what now. maybe it smelling of lemon candy, some smell that conjours vapour like memories from a long time ago. mostly when i talk people don't really listen to what i say. or they don't understand and have realised it's easier to just ignore me. i don't know. but whilst it means i can talk graphically disturbing maths and biology, i'm all good. what have we been up to? reasonably little. yesterday we went skiing and found an awesome trail through the forest. sure we met up with some dog sledders and snowmobilers along the way, but it was mostly just us and the snow. and fuck anyone who wants to complain. also i'm actually not bad at skiing. this is pretty much fact. we've finally managed to borrow a bunch of dvds, so we've been making maximum usuage of our own personal theatre. i say theatre, it's got a sloped floor and could fit maybe fifty people or more. it's also a bit like sitting in church, or what i imagine that might be like based on the pews they used to have in the ferkin in rugby. we started with 'teen wolf', followed by 'i robot' and then 'batman begins' last night. the robot film raised some interesting ideas. no wait, i think i meant razed. any potential for intrique was thoroughly quashed by the holywood dumbing down machine. no big loss. i did like the idea of applying a vollman style moral calculus to the three laws of robotics, but the film is still stupid. and wow, terry gilliam really does have the worst luck. and we caught our first mouse. not with my extremely high-tech bucket trap, which utilises a coathanger to minimise friction and enable precision tweaking of the distance between ramp and bottle, but with a live trap lent to us. so much for all those design technology lessons. my trap even resets itself by having peanut butter smeared all the way around the bottle. i'll catch one of them with it yet. 01.02.2008: driving into town to buy groceries, during a quiet moment i suddenly get the urge to ask what everyone's favourite dinosaur is. all i get is a quick knowing laugh from the seat behind me, and no one else really gets my meaning. we should know the other interns better, especially since we need to rely on them for shopping and laundry (fat chance of that), and everyone loves dinosaurs right? well apparently not. and just to piss off those people who don't: the ROM is so badly lit for photography you would barely believe it. i normally like taking photos in museums, but that place.. i don't know oh hey look, it's febuary. i guess that means i need to start working out what i'm doing. i can barely be bothered. everything has too many hurdles. moan complain, etc. 31.01.2008: i'm feeling uninspired today, so i hope you wont be offended by a simple annotated list of the various happenings in my week. i say this like it's not what and how i always write. like somehow i'm normally better at writing stuff. but nevermind. but then i have to actually think about all the things i might have done and whether i told anyone about them already. like snow-shoeing into the middle of a lake and lying down for not long enough amongst all that flat snow and ice, then getting scared when we walked back because the snow looked funny and the ice was getting slushy. and yesterday i went out to help with the
11.02.2008: my apologies for not telling you in advance, it was organised all last minute, but we spent the weekend in toronto. i was looking forward to a relaxing warm weekend and had dressed suitably. but far from appropriately. toronto had been hit by a snow storm the day before and i was considerably ill-equipped with my trainers and thin trousers. and it's easy to forget how windy it can be in the city, and how that wind whips up from across the lake and pulls the warmth straight from your body. but apart from me having wet feet and numb legs all weekend, it was brilliant. so we shopped and ate and drank and all those other things toronto is good for. i replenished my comic book supply and bought a few books i can't get anywhere else. we ate some posh breakfasts (fantastic breakfasts) and generally felt sickeningly bourgeoise. art buying, and the like. i also did some laptop shopping (say hello). but more on that another day, hopefully one where i feel better about the whole stupid business. on friday afternoon we hit up the GSU, just like the good old days, with all the usuals already there and playing pool and blah blah blah. i'd almost not noticed how it'd been over a month since i'd last been in a bar. now i miss them again. it was the same sitting in the future cafe late on sunday morning, for the last time ever and not eating cake. later friday night, after a huge vege feast, we found ourselves at a very minor house party, arriving just as everyone was getting the munchies. and then even later, whilst trying to find the spare key behind the house we were staying at, we were suddenly struck by how light it was. it was 1am and everything was doused in an orangey pink. you could see perfectly. up north, away from the city, after 6pm everything is pitch black. light pollution approaches zero. and it wasn't just the night. the days had beautiful colours too. faint purple skys fading into yellow. the whole scene pops fantastic. and no one seems to care. returning home the weather was some of the worst i've been driven through. being eaten up by the storm, wind rushing against and through the car, the oncoming traffic appearing out from clouds of snow not many meters up the road. everything being buried in white. all very dramatic. and then sitting in silence with all the windows frosted up, soft light diffusing in from the carpark spotlights, our engine refusing to start. and there's nothing to see outside but white noise. but being back amongst all those people didn't seem weird until we got back. i was sitting down in our apartment and suddenly felt very removed. maybe the word is 'lonely'. or maybe it was just the modest mouse song that was playing on the radio. either way i can count the number of people i see on a regular basis up here on one hand. there's none of that noise you get when thousands of strangers walk by you every day.
07.02.2008: you can currently see a selection of my photos (none new) being used for wondercafe's social awareness month (sorry for the clumsy link, but that's the fault of frames, not me). it is all very exciting, and i'm particularly happy about that first photo, the one of the ungdomshuset cyclists. it makes me feel professional. and it's slightly ironic too, since their website is part of the united church of canada. but that's ok. also the anarchist graffiti accompanying a political article about voting. i subvert at you. and other important details, i will be kicking out of here sometime soon and arriving back in england on the 27th of febuary 2008. i will be around for an undisclosed number of weeks, one of which will be spent in the london and brighton area, before fleeing the country again. so be prepared, get excited, and please let me know if i can stay at your place. it will be very nice to see you. i'd made it through all the complicated stages of changing my flight (the departure date and location - i'm now flying from montreal) before the guy asked me for the expiry date on my card and i noticed it had passed. i'm not sure how i let this happen, being stuck in another country without any valid ID, a passport or bank card. i'm lucky that my current situation requires no money. infact, i haven't carried any money on my person since the very start of january. it's very liberating. and convenient too, since i can't access any of my bank accounts. if anyone is keeping count, that was just another night of no sleep. and if you're not counting and want to join in, we're currently on three.
06.02.2008: i slept badly. in a dehydrated whiskey haze that took me along the path of too many thoughts i wanted no participation in. it was an ugly nights sleep. i hated it. now i'm listening to raised fist with tears in my eyes from the freezing wind and drinking coffee that's suitably bitter. coffee so bad it's going to make my piss smell outrageous. we'd had a lovely evening, dining with our captors. they were so welcoming it made me feel the problem's my own. but everyone has said this, that as hosts they are fantastic and as bosses they are abhorrent. but of course, we are all out to have a good time, even if it means feeling somewhat deceitful - i'd just changed my flight out of here not fifteen minutes earlier (there is scheming afoot, but more on that another time). it's been so long since we've eaten posh food, it was quite the treat. cheese all melted and gooey, fifteen year old whiskey by the open fire. a big curled up wolf/dog, that insisted on playing footsie with me under the table whilst i was trying to concentrate on eating and holding sensible conversation. and someone has left a post-it note beside this computer scrawled with their ebay, paypal and amazon login details. if only i wasn't such a nice guy i'd let you have them too. the remainder of yesterday wasn't so fun. i was in the kitchen when we got hit pretty hard. we had a full house and only three staff, one taking orders and drinks, one cooking and me working the prep counter whilst countless undecipherable orders came in, with no one having time to tell me what to do. remember that time in school when you had that exam and didn't understand any of the questions and sat there for two hours panicking and doing nothing, your nerves getting worse by the minute? it felt like that, teenage angst boiling in the pit of my something-or-other. but in the end it was ok. and my 'boss', who i really like, bought me a 24 crate of beer. yesterday was a good day for free stuff. now i'm suffering for it. not really suffering that much.
04.02.2008: things i've learnt this week include how soup can look like a bosch painting (or at least a doom wall texture-map), just add prime rib. bleck. and i've learnt that oil at 200c only hurts briefly as it hits your skin. i presume that's the feeling of your nerves dying. and also something about snorting horse medicine, but i forget what now. maybe it smelling of lemon candy, some smell that conjours vapour like memories from a long time ago. mostly when i talk people don't really listen to what i say. or they don't understand and have realised it's easier to just ignore me. i don't know. but whilst it means i can talk graphically disturbing maths and biology, i'm all good. what have we been up to? reasonably little. yesterday we went skiing and found an awesome trail through the forest. sure we met up with some dog sledders and snowmobilers along the way, but it was mostly just us and the snow. and fuck anyone who wants to complain. also i'm actually not bad at skiing. this is pretty much fact. we've finally managed to borrow a bunch of dvds, so we've been making maximum usuage of our own personal theatre. i say theatre, it's got a sloped floor and could fit maybe fifty people or more. it's also a bit like sitting in church, or what i imagine that might be like based on the pews they used to have in the ferkin in rugby. we started with 'teen wolf', followed by 'i robot' and then 'batman begins' last night. the robot film raised some interesting ideas. no wait, i think i meant razed. any potential for intrique was thoroughly quashed by the holywood dumbing down machine. no big loss. i did like the idea of applying a vollman style moral calculus to the three laws of robotics, but the film is still stupid. and wow, terry gilliam really does have the worst luck. and we caught our first mouse. not with my extremely high-tech bucket trap, which utilises a coathanger to minimise friction and enable precision tweaking of the distance between ramp and bottle, but with a live trap lent to us. so much for all those design technology lessons. my trap even resets itself by having peanut butter smeared all the way around the bottle. i'll catch one of them with it yet.
01.02.2008: driving into town to buy groceries, during a quiet moment i suddenly get the urge to ask what everyone's favourite dinosaur is. all i get is a quick knowing laugh from the seat behind me, and no one else really gets my meaning. we should know the other interns better, especially since we need to rely on them for shopping and laundry (fat chance of that), and everyone loves dinosaurs right? well apparently not. and just to piss off those people who don't:
the ROM is so badly lit for photography you would barely believe it. i normally like taking photos in museums, but that place.. i don't know oh hey look, it's febuary. i guess that means i need to start working out what i'm doing. i can barely be bothered. everything has too many hurdles. moan complain, etc.
31.01.2008: i'm feeling uninspired today, so i hope you wont be offended by a simple annotated list of the various happenings in my week. i say this like it's not what and how i always write. like somehow i'm normally better at writing stuff. but nevermind. but then i have to actually think about all the things i might have done and whether i told anyone about them already. like snow-shoeing into the middle of a lake and lying down for not long enough amongst all that flat snow and ice, then getting scared when we walked back because the snow looked funny and the ice was getting slushy. and yesterday i went out to help with the