stuff
Tact is for those who haven't mastered the art of sarcasm.
Friday, May 30, 2003 :::
It's been a while chickadees, for which I'm very sorry.
I'm also sorry for the above chickadees comment: I have no idea where that came from. But anyway...
Today is Friday, thank God. Definitely been one of those weeks that while seeming to go on forever, also saw absolutely nothing being accomplished. Except of course me spraypainting a box black, covering it in red fabric, and somehow coming up with the gumption to call it a voting booth from 1856. It did get me an A, but I think that has more to do with the accompanying 'explanation card' than the crappiness of my model booth.
I printed off my first draft of the thing that has become the Brockville Museum's disaster and emergency response plan: came out as pages. That's right. 91. I'm pretty sure that it's the longest thing that I'll ever write in my entire life, unless I one day get around to detailing the sordid, shocking truth of Lions Youth of the Year. Anyway, because I've done that I've really got nothing to do, meaning that I've been wandering around the museum basically annoying people because I've got nothing to do. As I think a last resort today I was set to iron shelves in archives. Yes, that's right, iron. They just got some new shelves made out of plywood in there, but apparently plywood gives off these gases that are bad for archives (it's amazing what useless knowledge I've gained during this placement - remember, humditiy below 65% to avoid mould growth!), so I had to iron on this wallpaper kind of stuff that acts as a sealant. I only managed to burn myself once, which I thought was pretty good - for me anyway. Of course, I did burn myself on Wednesday...
Ah yes, Wednesday. A bus tour came through the museum, and I helped serve them morning tea. I was going pretty well - charming all the old people with my 'cute' accent and my hideous apron that I have to wear. Until of course I first burnt my finger on a very, very hot teapot - we do put these really ugly tea cozies on them, but I was the lucky person to get the pot where the cozy didn't quite fit all the way round, resulting in a quite impressive little burn on my little finger.
But that wasn't the real accident of the day. The real accident was when, while pouring coffee, I 'over-poured' the pot meaning the lid fell off into the fine china cup below. The cup subsequently shattered into thousands of pieces, splashing coffee all over the place. In front of a room of 40 people. Damn me and my over-pouring tendencies!
My embarrassment was somewhat made better by the $5 tip that I got at the end of the day. This guy shook my hand on the way out, at the same time pressing a 5 buck note into my palm. Of course, it could've had something to do with this comment from earlier in the day: "This is a beautiful cup. Do you think I could take it home with me? And you come home with the cup too?" Blurgh. $5 tip went straight into the museum donation box...
Nothing planned for this weekend, only homework: I've got a 10 minute english presentation plus an essay (but only 750 words) for Tuesday, and then a 20 minute seminar for history on Friday, which I only found out about today. But after that, just 2 exams that sound easy (2 and a half hours) and I'm all done! Yippee!
Sunday, May 25, 2003 :::
Urrgghh! Somehow, somewhere, the now famous (ok, not so famous) 'blah' post has disappeared, along with all its fabulous comments! This day just gets better and better...
Saw The Matrix Reloaded on Friday night in Ganonoque. That movie is... weird. I had no idea what the hell was going on the majority of the time, but hey - the special effects were cool. Really cool. I didgot the feeling though that they were trying too hard to be smart, to create this whole kind of cult thing around the movie, and it just came off as pretty silly. I also think that it doesn't help that Keanu Reeves just annoys me - he looks doped out most of the time!
I'm currently trying to find an invention made between 1800 and 1914 that I can make a model of for my history project. Don't ask.
Anyway, I was trying to find something Australian, just so that I could impress all these Canadians with the sheer skill and intellect of us Aussies, and stumbled across this:
Did you know that J. A. Birchall, of Birchall's bookstore fame, invented the world's first notepad, right there in our own Launceston? Apparently until 1902, no-one had thought of sticking lots of sheets of paper together to make a pad - you could only get paper in single sheets. Now how cool is that?!? So everytime you use a notepad from now on, remember that this humble, but extremely important and useful, invention came from Launceston!
Wednesday, May 21, 2003 :::
See, I always do this. Write all this stuff, then forget the really vital things. Damn me!
I was supposed to go to Montreal on the weekend with my coordinator and a cool girl from Germany. I hadn't heard anything from my coordinator, so I thought I should ring him this afternoon to see what was actually going on (it is Wednesday after all). His wife tells me that the trip is off because my coordinator has to work, and that he kept on meaning to call me, or something like that. All I'm going to say is that that man really, really, really annoys me sometimes, and leave it at that, because otherwise there's a very good chance that I'm going to start ranting.
So once again it's another quiet weekend at home, with only a rugby match on Saturday morning to look forward to - my host sister's team is in the finals.
The glow of my fantastic success with the whole commenting thing still remains, made even better after people left such lovely comments for me! Everyone be sure to read the very funny one from "anti-underwear" (aka Aunt Andrea), which I think is much funnier if you've actually been listening to people talking exactly like that for the last 3 months. And while I'm on the topic of comments that have been left, the next time anyone sees James, make sure to tell him to go to bed at a reasonable hour: I go on MSN in the morning and he's still on, even though it's something ridiculous like 1.30 in the morning. I tell you, that boy never sleeps!
Went to the hospital on Sunday, and I think made a few of the staff a bit nervous. In a province that has been the focus of a fair bit of SARS-related attention in the last month, presenting yourself at a hospital with a persistent cough doesn't go down all that well. At the door before you even fill in a form or see a doctor you have to pass a "SARS test", which just involves a nurse taking your temperature, blood pressure and asking you if you've (1) had SARS, (2) known someone who has/had SARS, or (3) been to China or Hong Kong lately. The nurse told me though that even if you don't "pass" the test, the hospital still has to treat you, so it doesn't actually matter... Anyway, after waiting for an hour and a half they finally let me into the emergency ward, where a doctor looked me over, told me to breathe a few times, and promptly pronounced that I have bronchitis, and that I could expect it to last for up to 3 weeks. I was given a prescription for cough mixture with codeine (ahh, drugs... :p) and sent on my way, but not until I had to pay a not small amount for the privilege. I tell you, you only truly appreciate public health care until you have to start paying for it in another country!
Anyway, the stuff from the doctor seems to be working, because I am feeling better, and actually managed to sleep through the entire night last night, something that I haven't managed to do for a week. I'm still going to expect sympathy for the next three weeks (at least): the doctor said it could last that long, so that's how long it's going to last. :p
What else is new... oh, Tasmania actually got mentioned in the Brockville paper last week, which was pretty exciting. Of course, it was in a tiny story about how our Governor is taking over for the Governor-General who is in the middle of a sex scandal, but hey, we still got a mention!
Kent, the boyfriend of one of my host-sisters, says "Hi! Crikey, a dingo's got my baby!" in a very bad attempt at an Australian accent. It's somewhat disturbing to me that the 2 most well known things about Australians right now are the Crocodile Hunter (oh, how I hate that man) and a Seinfeld episode where Elaine apparently says "A dingo's got my baby!" Well, at least it's a guaranteed way to get a laugh...
Now I'm just kinda writing for the sake of writing... cleaned my room up today, which was of course incredibly exciting. Of course, I was just putting off doing my homework, so I suppose it's not all that impressive. Not that I've actually done any homework for about 2 weeks now...
Kent's got hockey on at the moment. Apparently the playoffs are almost over, but I'll believe it when I see it - these things seem to have been going on for months and months and months! 7 games a round certainly stretches the thing out.
Ok, I think this is enough. Really I'm just writing so people will leave more comments, but we won't tell people that, will we? :p
Saturday, May 17, 2003 :::
Yay for me! Everyone cheer the sheer genius and wonderfullness of the Madsta! For it is she, after struggling with completely confusing templates, HTML and Javascript for weeks now, who as finally got the commenting system working here! To celebrate my wonderful achievement (are you getting the impression that I just may be a little bit happy with myself? :p), I expect everyone who visits here (all 2 of you) to leave lots of lovely comments. Just click on the link at the bottom of this post and comment away, as well as read all the other lovely things that people have written...
Yay for me! (yes, I'm very happy with myself right now...)
Friday, May 16, 2003 :::
On my 3rd day in a row off school, and as you can see below, have started to go a bit quiz-crazy. People have always told me that I would like Switzerland (apparently my cupboard-door-closing obsession would fit in quite nicely), but I never realised I actually was Switzerland.... I love the Negatives, Target of Ridicule. Nice, very nice. :p
Switzerland -
A neutral power for as long as most can remember, it has avoided war for several centuries. However, it is still considered highly advanced and a global power.
You are a very effective teacher, and you are very committed to those who learn from you. You put your all into everything you do, to some extent because you fear failure more than anything else. You are always seeking self-improvement, even in areas where there is nothing you can do to improve.
Thursday, May 15, 2003 :::
I hate being sick when I'm away from home. I've got this really annoying cough and sore throat and so am staying home today. But it's just not the same when you don't have your mum or dad to make you a cup of tea and settle you down on the couch with your doona and a ham, cheese and tomato toasted sandwich (it's my comfort food ok, don't mock it!)...
I can't believe I forgot to write this story down on the weekend, because it really is very, very important:
On Saturday I made a vital move towards becoming Canadian. My parents have recently accused me of having a 'Canadian twang' to my voice, something that a so-called friend then confirmed. But I was certain that the fundamental essence of my australianism or whatever still remained, that I still hadn't lost it to the tempations of Canadian life.
Then on Saturday, I said eh.
Eh is a distinctly Canadian word, added on to the end of, well, practically anything. "It's cold outside, eh" "Where's the ketchup, eh?" "Ride a kangaroo to school, eh?" Up until that fateful Saturday I had managed to resist its pull. Most of the other exchange students at school started using it ages ago, but I believed that was only because english wasn't there first language and they didn't know any better. :p
But then, on Saturday night, sitting around a table eating dinner, I said it. I said it at the end of some silly, meaningless comment like "good we bought this much food, eh" And that was it.
I've tried very hard since that fateful day not to use that small, seemingly inconsequential word again, and so far I've been successful. But who knows how long I can resist. Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated...
I skipped school on Friday and went to a 'Heritage Fair' in Kingston, about an hour away, with the museum. If you've ever seen those science fairs on American tv, this thing was just like that, but with history projects instead. Some of the stuff that the kids had done (they were about grades 7 and 8 I think) was really cool - I saw projects on things like 'monsters in Canada' complete with casts of Bigfoot footprints, and the history of the poutine. Poutine is a decidedly Canadian concoction, where hot chips are smothered in gravy and then covered with cheese curd. I haven't tried it yet, but this is partly due to the fact that the first time I saw it it was being made in a school cafeteria and really didn't look all that appetising.
Anyway, back to the heritage fair. It actually reminded me a lot of TOM - all these excited, slightly nerdy (in a good way!) kids running around while their teachers stood in the middle of it all looking confused, dazed, and just a little bit scared.
On the way back to Brockville, the education coordinator from the museum who I went with gave me a mini driving tour around Kingston. The city (population: about 125,000) is set on Lake Ontario which stretches all the way up to Toronto. Apparently its population is a bit of a strange mix: the city is the site of Queen's University, one of the most prestigious Universities in Canada (or so I've heard), the Royal Military College (Canada's version of Duntroon), and the location of 2 federal prisons. Bit of an ecletic mix I thought!
After I got back from Kingston I was able to get a decent cup of coffee at Second Cup in the mall before going to watch 2 of my host sisters play each other at rugby which was entertaining, not just for the game but also to watch my host mother cringe everytime one of them got even close to the ball or to being tackled (which happened often).
Today I'm just spending a lazy day at home watching tv and bumming around on the net. I've got a bit of a cold (which leads everyone to say that I've actually got SARS) and all I wanted to do today was, well, nothing!
Yesterday afternoon I took a walk down King Street which used to be the main 'drag' of Brockville but has since been somewhat superseded by several malls that have been built in the North end. Anyway, King Street used to be the main highway in this area, and the street is lined with several beautiful, and huge, old houses. While I was walking I spotted a squirrel on the steps of a store, and followed it for the next few minutes or so as it jumped/scrambled/whatever it is that squirrels do down the street from one store to another. I had no idea how common squirrels are over here: I would see at least one every few days just running from one house to another in clear view. Apparently most people consider them a pest - I just think they're cute!
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 :::
I saw X Men 2 on Sunday at this really cool cinema in Ganonoque, which is about 30 minutes from here. That movie is so, so, so good, and not just because Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart are in it. It's also even better when you only have to pay $5 to get in, and when you get free refills on your soft drinks! Apparently it's only something like $3 on Tuesdays, and with the new Matrix movie coming out in just a few days, I think it's about time we made another trip down to Ganonoque, which concidentally I think has the coolest name ever!
Friday, May 02, 2003 :::
I think I set most of you who read this lovely little journal some photos today from my trip to Quebec City. If you didn't get them or if they didn't work, please email me and I'll try to work it all out, but I make no promises: why Yahoo is the most popular website on earth I'll never know. They certainly make you work hard if you want to do anything resembling usefullness there. Anyway, I thought it was about time that I did a post on the trip that was a week ago (I hope you've all given up hope on a post on easter - it's just not coming people. Let's just say this: there was lots and lots of food and chocolate (good thing), sunshine and warm weather (very good thing), and 2 visits to Catholic Masses (not such a good thing, but definitely an experience).
So, Quebec City. The trip was organised by my area coordinator (not one of my most favourite people on this earth, but not really a topic I want to talk about on a blog that anyone can actually read!). There were only 3 of us who went: a girl from Germany and a girl from Melbourne, plus a 'female chaperone' so everything would be right and proper. She was really cool though, and Quebec City was absolutely amazing, so it was really only the presence of my coordinator that was a bad thing the whole weekend.
We early left on Saturday morning (the very amusing chase after a random red van may or may not become the subject of another post if I feel in a mood of self-humiliation) because it takes at least 5 hours to get to Quebec City from here. My coordinator had this tiny car, and with all of us jammed into the back seat together it wasn't a particularly comfy ride.
Before we go any further, let me just say something about highways in Canada. Now I'm sure that they're a dream to drive on: 4 lanes the entire way, good surfaces, flat, straight, well signed and all that. But really, could they be any more boring to ride on?!? There's nothing to look at for 95% of the time because any towns you might have passed are all way off the highway served by exits or whatever, the roads are dead straight and the land we were driving through was flat as the proverbial pancake. Doesn't really make for a very interesting ride, but I'm sure it's great to drive on...
We finally got there at about 1.30pm, after missing 2 exits, crossing over something like 3 lanes of traffic in Montreal so that we could get to a McDonalds and toilet and had to get the German girl to ask directions for us in French in Quebec City. Ah, bless European exchange students and their multilinguism!
Quebec City is I think one of, if not the oldest, cities in Canada (my North American history is a little rough ok!) and at the heart of the city is the walled city, parts of which date back to the 1600s. We stayed in this really sweet youth hostel in the heart of the walled city. Just a few steps away was the Chateau Frontenac and the Basilica (the name of which escapes me right now). The city is all cobblestones and narrow streets, and buildings that look like something straight out of Paris. Even though it rained all of Saturday, we still walked around quite a bit and saw much of the city. We did go into the Chateau, but it is a working hotel (a very pricey one at that) and you really can't see much of it at all. It's an extremely impressive structure though - from almost anywhere in 'Old Quebec' you can see it's green towers.
We had dinner at this really cool little restaurant called 'The Crazy Pig' (I will not embarrass myself by trying to write what that is in French). We ate at 4.00. Now Canadians seem to eat much earlier than Australians, but even this was earlier than usual (even Lions would be surprised). The reason we ate so early? Well, it's possible that as we were going down the steps to the restaurant to have a look at it so that we could come back later, I fell down the steps and severely bruised my arm and my hand. Just a possibility... In my defence, the stairs were very steep with no proper tread on them whatsoever, they were wet from the rain outside and my shoes had very little grip on them at all. So really it had nothing to do with the fact that I have no coordination whatsoever and more to do with the extremely dangerous conditions in the restaurant! That's what I'm going to keep on telling myself anyway.
So we ended up having dinner there, a very, very delicious dinner. I had an authentic, very French croque-monsuier (I have no idea how to spell that - my 2 years of French didn't quite get me to that point) and this beautiful chocolate hazelnut cake for dessert. The best part of the entire meal had to be though the cuppacino that I had at the end: god I miss proper coffee over here! Oh, to hear the sounds of Dad's coffee-machine again!
After dinner we made our way back to the youth hostel, me with considerable more difficulty than before as a result of the extremely hazardous conditions at the Crazy Pig. We spent the next few hours talking about the differences between Canada and Australia and Germany. The Australian Shiela (I've been dying to use that word in conversation for weeks) and I were hysterics saying phrases like "doing blockies in my torana wearing a bondsie and drinking VB" and then seeing the looks of complete and utter confusion on the faces of the others. Anyone who said the english is the universal language was wrong: english that is spoken in Australia is definitely not the english spoken in Canada!
About 9.30 my coordinator decided that it was time we "hit the clubs". This man has the awful habit of generalising entire populations, age-groups, genders, whatever with sweeping statements such as "all Australians like to party hard and go to clubs", which pisses me off, because well, I don't like to party hard and go to clubs, particularly when the 'really cool' club (I also hate people who try and use "young people's" language to seem, well, cool) is this really, really seedy university student dive where the smell of pot is extremely overwhelming. After we all quite vocally stated that this was not a 'really cool club' and not somewhere where we would want to spend any time whatsoever, he took us to this Irish pub, where we were promptly refused access because the other Australian Shiela didn't have ID - she's only 15! So much for "Oh, don't worry about ID, no-one asks for that in Quebec City, they don't care. You do have fake IDs though don't you? All exchange students should have fake IDs". I was the only one out of the 3 of us who was legal! (The drinking age in Quebec is 18: it's 19 in all the other Canadian provinces)
So we went back to the room where the German girl, the female chaperone and the loser coordinator started getting ready to "go out to some really cool dance clubs". I felt a bit sorry for the cool German girl (I'm trying very hard not to use people's names here!) having to go on her own, but I was feeling basically bruised and sorry for myself and didn't want to go. But I think she had a good time from what she said, and the female chaperone who went with her as well was really cool.
The Aussie shiela (god I love that expression) and I spent the evening 'talking Australian' and bitching about our lovely coordinator, and basically having a tops time.
On Sunday we didn't leave the hostel until about 10. After having breakfast there we went to see this thing called 'The Quebec Experience' which was supposed to be a 3D multimedia sound and light show on 400 years of history in Quebec. It was very entertaining and all that ("ooo, pretty colours") but I have a feeling it was a very sanitised version of Quebec's history, and definitely not one that went into all that much detail.
We then spent the rest of the morning basically just wondering around again. I found some cool souvenir thingos, and we ended up walking all along the front of the fort that is on the very top of the hill in the old section of the city. On the top of the hill is the 'Plains of Abraham' where the battle took place that saw France lose Canada to the British. The view from the top was pretty spectacular, particularly of the Chateau. We eventually wandered our way around again, taking our time so that our coordinator could catch up with us - he lost his camera somewhere and had run off to find it. He didn't in the end. By this time it was about 1.00 and we were all starving, so we made our way to this absolutely gorgeous little restaurant called something like 'le Canadien' (yes, I know, my French is shocking) where we had this amazing meal. It was a proper french set menu - I had: vegetable soup, delicious wild game meat pie, and maply syrup pie for desert. I also had my first legal drink of wine in a public place since turning 18, which you might not find exciting, but well, I just thought it was important to mention! All of this, plus another good cup of coffee, was only something like $20 CA, so maybe $25 AUS, which I thought was pretty darned good for a 3 course meal, drinks included.
Then it was time for the long drive home, something that we were all dreading. I think we all managed to sleep most of the way however, which meant that we didn't have to talk/listen to our coordinator! I didn't get home until after 10.30 which kinda sucked, considering that I thought I was going to be home at about 5 (we were supposed to leave Quebec City at 1 - we left at 5.15) but it was worth it.
All in all, a pretty tops weekend. See the photos for further details!
I didn't go to school today, and it was so very, very nice.
I did get woken up at about 6.30 when HS3 came in to wake HS4 up and then kept on getting woken up again and again as HS4 came in and out of the room getting ready for school, but after everyone left on the bus at 7.15, I was able to sleep for another blessed hour and a bit. (I hope everyone was very impressed with the use of the special code there!)
I finally dragged myself out of bed at 8.30 or something equally luxurious (for this house anyway - when there are up to 8 people in a relatively small space, sleeping in can be a difficult thing to do) and had a leisurely breakfast of jam and toast. It was so nice not to have to rush or hurry or worry about when I was going to do the homework that I was supposed to do last night but didn't!
I spent the rest of the day just watching tv, reading and doing pointless things on the internet and basically being an absolute slob, something that I do extremely well but haven't had much chance to while I've been over here. The day was made all the more
better by the arrival of a package from home that contained chocolates for easter, several Age crosswords (a family tradition that must be upheld!), some phillip adams columns, a clipping from the examiner with James looking very handsome in his costume for an Oscar Wilde play, the Neighbourhood Watch report from my area (for some strange reason mum thought that I might be missing this...) and a special insert that was in the Australian a few weeks ago on 'The New Tasmania'. It was all very cool, but like all packages from home made me miss it more than ever! Damn these double-edged packages!
Double-edged! As in sword? Get it? Get it? Huh? Oh never mind.
Thursday, May 01, 2003 ::: This is a slightly modified version of an email that I just wrote to a certain "Ditto-girl" (you know who you are!), and I thought that being the lazy person that I am, I might as well just copy and paste and give you all a very boring and completely pointless insight into my day...
I had co-op in the morning where I 'worked' for 3 hours on the disaster plan for the museum (today it was the salvaging of photographs, works of art on canvas and methods for dealing with rodent infestation), got a lift to school, got a turkey sandwich for lunch, finished my english homework sitting on the floor next to my locker ('paraphrase the "To be or not to be" speech from Hamlet into modern language'), went to english and watched more of the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet, went to history and watched an episode of this bizarre BBC series called 'The Day the Universe Changed' hosted by this really weird but lovable guy called James Burke, had a discussion with a cool girl in my history class on the differences between Australian and NZ accents (she didn't know there was one the weirdo!) and things that Australians had invented (all I could think of was the Hills Hoist clothesline, the black box that goes in planes and the stump-jump plough [I think it was Australian, but that was grade 9 history, and well, who can really remember that long ago!?]), caught the bus home, got some salad from the fridge for arvo tea, watched Oprah and The Naked Chef, came on the computer, checked my email, read some fanfic and then wrote this lovely, pointless, grammatically atrocious blog entry! (cunningly disguised as an email to 'ditto-girl'
Urgh, this whole updating regularly thing is just far too hard for me. I promise, promise, promise that I'll do a proper update tomorrow (and I swear you can really believe me this time!) but before then I just wanted to record this act of kindness from earlier today because I'll probably forget it otherwise and I don't want to...
I went to co-op this morning at the museum as usual, and spent an extremely boring 3 hours writing about different techniques to stop rodent infestation in a museum's collections. 11.00 came and I went to say goodbye to the museum's director. Anyway, she didn't realise I'd been there the whole morning and was practically devastated that she just "ignored me" the whole morning, when the real truth was that I was working perfectly fine on my own and didn't need anyone's help. But anyway, she drove me to school as I think a way in her mind to apologise or something (it was drizzling outside so I was pretty grateful). I'd mentioned earlier that I was really tired, and as I was getting out of the car she said to me "Now if you feel too tired at school, you just call me and I'll come and pick you up right away and I'll take you home immediately." I just thought that was really, really sweet and nice and everything, and it was just something that I wanted to write down!
