report card I got my first religion paper back. I knew it wasn't terribly fantastic, so I'm pleased with my 74%. It's worth forty percent of my final mark, so that's 29.6. Decent.

Today we did course evaluations for Bill's classes. I know I've mentioned numerous times that I like cute Bill, but over this past semester I've come to realize that he's actually quite the lazy, unhelpful teacher. Our class outlines are inaccurate, grading criteria is unclear, tests are not representative of course material, etc. I gave him some pretty low ratings and wrote in my comments too. Poor, lazy Bill.

In other news, I MADE IT THROUGH MARCH!! I'm pretty relieved right now.

I attended all three of my classes today. With no more papers to write, I'm going to be sure and attend all classes until the end of the semester and try and get myself get caught up. I have a LOT of reading to do.

But this weekend we party. There's talk of going to a strip club. Apparently that was my decision..?  | ¶ 6:33 p.m.

  home, home in my shack My head hurts. I finally finished my Prague paper tonight. Emailed it to my prof around midnight, so it's exactly one week late. I hope he is merciful in deducting late marks...

This one was longer than my other two (I went over 2000 words). I knew a lot about the history of Czechoslovakia that I wanted to discuss. I also referred to optimism and disappointment - those are some key experiences of the Czech people.

So now I can re-group and assess what needs to be tackled for April. Four exams and two papers. Two smaller writing assignments for NA-1860.

Two more weeks of classes, people. It's crazy.  | ¶ 1:42 a.m.

  no roadtrip for me this year. well, maybe to Sherbrooke. I don't usually have a problem sleeping. Tonight I am wide awake, writing my paper (I tried to sleep but failed). This is my last overdue paper. When it's done I can dive into the reading I've fallen behind in over the past few weeks. I can also stop skipping classes. This semester has consisted of a lot of stress for me.

In other news, plans are being made for a little bit of birthday fun this weekend. By coincidence, two of the more "mature" students around here (that'd be Scott and me) have birthdays separated by a day. We are both turning 31 this weekend - me on Saturday, him on Sunday. So we're having a joint party, which Devin has kindly agreed to host, before we head out to Sherbrooke, so that our bar options consist of something other than the good old Golden Lion.

frou is also turning 31 on Saturday, obviously. Here we are last year on our birthday, in Seattle, one of our stops on the 30th-birthday-roadtrip-extravaganza.

(click for larger image)  | ¶ 2:43 a.m.

  poor, poor Praguians I'm finishing up my research for my Prague paper. This involves completely immersing myself in history of the events of 1968, and it's really interesting but quite sad, too.

The people in Czechoslovakia got taken for a ride by the Communist Party of the day, who misled them about their intentions. It seems that Czechoslovakians had, from an early stage, a belief that they could have a type of government which combined elements of democracy with socialism. That was what they wanted, and that was what they voted for in 1946, when they voted the Communists into powerful positions. The Communists played along, fooling the President and head of the democratic party, Edward Benes, into thinking they wanted to cooperate in a coalition government. Benes later said his biggest mistake was trusting Stalin (Communist leader in Russia) and Gottwald (Communist leader in Czechoslovakia).

In 1948, a minor disagreement that arose out of the Communists gradual stealing of powerful positions (i.e. firing heads of police departments and installing Communist-friendly men) resulted in a mass resignation by democratic party members. What should have happened was a government dissolution. Instead the Communists managed to install their own people in all the vacant spots, even at this time enjoying the support of the general public, who were in the dark about their true intentions.

Benes was helpless. He didn't want to start a civil war by calling in the military. He died later that year ("broken and defeated"), and the Communists proceeded to try and convict any and all opponents of Communism in bullshit trials. That poor country suffered for too many years under a government that deceived them.

(disclaimer: this might be a slight over-simplification - I'm just learning the story)  | ¶ 5:39 p.m.

  I wish I was going to Mexico Mom & Dalt are headed to Puerto Vallarta in the morning. Your chairs are all set up for you, guys.

Have a good trip!  | ¶ 10:17 p.m.

  Annual West Coast Birthday Visit (aka Birthday Roadtrip Pandemonium) Dear Cupcake,

You missed the trip. Heading to the Rugby Club in a minute.

H.B. minus 6d...

Frou  | ¶ 9:58 p.m.

  the scoop To reward myself for my hard work yesterday, I headed over to the Lion for some beers with Devin (that's what students do, right?). CP came by for a bit. Others came and went. Devin smoked his cigar. We probably drank our beer a bit too fast.

That means that today was not so productive (again). I'm really pushing my luck on getting this next paper done. I've got my Prague books all spread out before me and I'm going to try and get a good outline done tonight. Hopefully after a good night's sleep tonight I'll get up bright and early and whip something up. I should be an expert at this by now.

Oh, I decided to play around with PhotoShop and made myself a budget-brand banner up there. Tell me if it looks like crap.  | ¶ 8:56 p.m.

  slacker report I have just put in a really long day on my paper, and it's pretty much complete. I just have to go back and fill in my footnote references.

I was up before 7 this morning, worked for close to five hours, took a few-hour break in the afternoon, and dove back in tonight. I'm exhausted, yet somehow satisfied. And go ahead, ask me anything about Mexican participation in WWII. I know stuff now.

This is the paper I had intended to finish LAST NIGHT. Yesterday was not my most productive day, however. Now I've only got two days to do my Prague paper (at least, that's the intention; he has a pretty severe late policy).

Deadlines, deadlines. Whatcha gonna do.  | ¶ 7:37 p.m.

  time just flies, no matter what you do Recently I received an email from one of the many temp agencies I have registered with over my illustrious career as an administrative assistant. The email made me laugh, because it said:

While madly cramming for your final exams and ignoring the inevitable transition to the “real world” (read: post-graduation work world), you’ve started to wonder whether you’ve acquired any skills during these four years in a liberal arts program that are attractive to employers.

Before you start believing you missed the boat and your buddies in computer science were on the right track, read on. While your proficiencies many not be as obvious as the engineering majors, many employers highly value the skills you have developed, even if you don’t recognize them yourself.

They go on to point out things like "meeting deadlines" as one of the skills students will have acquired in university. And that made me think about all the deadlines I've missed (I'm missing a couple right now!) over this past semester.

One thing that I know from my life in the "real world" is that when working on major projects, one is never alone the way a student is when tackling a term paper. No matter where I've worked, and in whatever capacity (legal assistant in a law firm, stock option girl at a phone company, admin assistant in a financial planning firm), if you were going to miss a deadline, it was assumed that your co-workers would assist you. You sometimes did not even need to ask. If you were swamped trying to prepare major documents for a meeting or a closing, all you had to do was look around and see lots of (usually) willing teammates.

In contrast to that, I can't get help on a term paper. Nobody is going to do the research for me, or compose paragraphs for me. And I wouldn't want them to, since this mark is MINE only. If you look at it that way, university life puts undue pressure on students to perform as individuals, where in the real world, you usually have the support of a company, and aren't typically left to flounder on your own.

At least I pay my bills on time, eh.  | ¶ 9:40 a.m.

  thoughts of a waiter I like his stories. Waiter Rant.  | ¶ 8:57 p.m.

  damn I'm getting sick again. And I never really recovered from the last cold. What the heck is up with that - don't you know that the Ryans don't get sick? (okay, Gina gets sick, but she's not a Ryan by birth so we let her get away with it..)

Yesterday Devin was kind enough to help me construct an outline for my next paper. So I've got a rough layout for my compare-Mexico-and-Canada on WWII assignment. Just don't ask how much I've got written yet. Since I'm planning to devote the rest of the weekend to Prague 1968, this one needs to be basically completed by tonight. Yeesh.

It seems like a lot of people I know are dealing with intense new experiences. Must be some strange planetary alignment going on.

Oh. I just checked Jonathan, who says that, "The Moon will be Full tonight, just before 9pm. That's why so many of us are having an intense time."

That full moon will get you every time.  | ¶ 2:30 p.m.

  whatever, harper This pisses me off. Last month, in a story called "Harper pleased by budget, won't bring down government" Stephen Harper said:

"There's nothing in this budget that would justify an election at this time," Harper told reporters.

"I'm a lot happier than I thought I'd be. The major priorities in this budget are Conservative priorities."

And now, in "Tories will reject budget over Kyoto, Harper says", based on what sounds like BULLSHIT to me, it's:

"This is an attempt by the government to get unlimited power to impose multimillion-dollar fines on any basis, without any parliamentary approval or discussion, whatsoever. It is completely unacceptable," he said.

Sounds like bullshit political maneuvering to me. You want to force an election based on climate change? Okay, then.

See also Tories threaten to force election  | ¶ 9:46 a.m.

  up before the dawn When I wrote my essay proposal for NA-1860, I was all, "I'm going to examine X; I'm going to compare Y; I'm going to study Z" (I had not done enough research to know for sure which subjects I would be writing about). And when Professor Manore handed it back, her comments recommended paring down my number of subject areas in order to give "depth of analysis" on just a few.

Now that I'm reviewing my research, I see how crucial it is to do what she suggested. Since Mexico didn't have much of an active combat role (other than sending some pilots to train and fly with the U.S. military), and since a re-hashing of the fighting has been done extensively, I think I might take a different approach and focus on what was happening at home in each of Canada and Mexico during those war years.

For example, the role of Canadian women changed significantly during the war; they stepped up and began working in factories and were a major factor in the impressive industrial production at the time. In Mexico, a unique arrangement was negotiated with the United States, who needed temporary workers to fill a gap in their workforce (the "bracero" program).

One of my favourite tidbits learned so far is this:
"Many Mexican intellectuals were less shocked at being at war than they were embarrassed at being formally allied with the United States."

It took some pretty fancy sweet-talk by the Americans to persuade the Mexicans to trust them back then. The fact that the Germans had just blown up two Mexican oil tankers helped a bit; they didn't really have any where else to turn.  | ¶ 8:15 a.m.

  she'll see you in glory George Stroumboulopoulos, on his CBC NewsWorld show The Hour, has a guest, a woman minister at a United church in Ontario, who is giving a different religious point of view on the Terri Schiavo case.

She says, "...for people of faith, we know that this life is not the end...". She doesn't understand why the religious figures involved are insisting that Terri be stuck in hers. She also makes the point that Christians know the value of a good death. And that the Vatican has even come out and expressed the opinion that "extraordinary measures" should not be used to keep a "body" alive. Interesting.  | ¶ 8:10 p.m.

  internalize completion Well, I completed and handed in my Cognitive paper. It ended up being only 1700 words or so (a bit short of the recommended 2400). Oh well. It will have to do.

Next up: World War II (as in, comparing the roles of Canada and Mexico)

Also: what do you think you find if you do a Google search for "gongshow"? (result #4)

Welcome to my gongshow, man.  | ¶ 5:06 p.m.

  I can still change my mind Last summer as I took steps to completely change the direction of my life, I was hesitant to commit, and reluctant to get my hopes up. Just in case. Plans could change. I could lose my commitment as easily as make it.

I applied for, and got, a student loan. I got re-accepted at Bishop's. I found a place to live in Lennoxville. I figured out what to do with my possessions. I figured out what to do with my cat. I bought a plane ticket. I gave notice at my apartment. I gave notice at my job. I packed my stuff and left town.

But even as each piece fell into place, I kept saying, I can stil change my mind. It was my exit strategy, in case things didn't work out the way they were supposed to. It was to prevent me from being disappointed if things didn't happen.

People have said to me a lot lately, "you're in the home stretch". And I see it, just like they do. Only I'm completely overwhelmed with the workload that I've failed to manage properly this semester. Three overdue papers. And despite only having four final exams, I also have two major papers due during the exam period for the other two classes. Five weeks to conquer this mountain. And I'm worried that I won't get my motivation back.

"Just sit down and get it done" doesn't work.

I can't change my mind anymore.  | ¶ 11:39 a.m.

  argh Turns out that "roll" that I thought I was on wasn't such a productive one. I started strong but didn't get as far as I needed to on my Cognitive paper. It's still a work in progress, after a long day of struggling to get it done.

Earlier I took a short break from Cognitive to do a bit of history research for the next paper. I also attended my one class of the day, I visited the library (to pick up more research material) and Scott was kind enough to drop by and keep me company for a while. He also provided feedback on my draft paper. This is an excerpt:

In another interesting study, results have not indicated that older adults have limited attentional capacity in divided attention tasks (i.e. exposure to two stimuli at once). After adjusting for age-related differences observed in non-divided attention tasks, outcomes achieved by older subjects did not differ significantly from those of younger participants (Nilsson). Additional support for these findings may be observed in the results of Naveh-Benjamin et al., which have shown that performance is adversely affected when attention is divided at the encoding stage for memory, but reduced attentional resources at the retrieval stage do not impact on the ability to remember.

Tonight has been the night of many phone calls. My brother, my sister, my father, a would-be tenant for this apartment (he came by, too).

My paper has 1,400 words. Tomorrow morning whatever I can bulk it up to before 9:30 is what will have to do. I'm done for tonight.

Oh. And now that it's spring, the bugs have invaded. I've killed at least five mid-sized critters today. Did you experience this last spring, Tom?  | ¶ 10:42 p.m.

  whatever, shrub "This is a complex case with serious issues," Bush said. "But in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life."

Is that what he was doing as governor when he signed all those execution orders? Is that he's doing NOW in Iraq? Erring on the side of life?

Story.  | ¶ 9:21 p.m.

  I'm on a roll now... I have written just over 600 words for my Cognitive paper. That's about a quarter of the way done. I'm feeling more motivated today; I think I'll get most of this done tonight and finalize it in the morning to be handed in.

Tomorrow I don't have class until 1:00, and that's my only class of the day. Gotta like it when your profs take a week off. Bill's actually in New York for his United Nations practicum class; they do some kind of mock proceedings at the actual UN offices, I think.

I will lose some marks, but all of my profs will accept my papers late. I'm going to be a paper-writing machine this week. It is what it is.

I got back my second debate mark for NA-1860. 3.5 out of 5. It was a little short - I wrote it the day I got back from the trip, so was running short of energy and time. Decent mark.  | ¶ 6:05 p.m.

  time waster... With the help of several people and website tips, I finally made it out of the crimson room. Thanks to Cam for this frustrating exercise. Yeesh!  | ¶ 4:49 p.m.

  so many losers... Yay, it's spring. It's been warming up around here; stuff's melting and stinking (ah, the lovely aroma of thawing dog shit).

Last night I decided to take a break from my non-productiveness (get that?) and join the crowd at Scott's weekly poker game (that would be Scott, Tom, Mike, CP, Devin and me all together). Devin cooked us a scrumptious feast of chicken chow mein beforehand, so we were all sated with food and wine before starting the game.

Last night was NOT my night. I just didn't have any good instincts or great hands, and lost my ten-dollar buy-in fairly quickly. But it was fun to hang out and chat with everyone as Devin cleaned out the rest of the table one by one. He walked away with the entire pot of $50; good payment for having slaved over dinner for us.

When I got home just before midnight, I had a burst of motivation and managed to get some of my first paper written. I'm starting fresh this week with a new commitment to getting stuff done, so despite being overdue on a couple of these, I WILL complete my tasks.  | ¶ 11:47 a.m.

  Look, it's the Birthday Girl!

Happy 6th, Caia.  | ¶ 11:13 a.m.

  trying. to. get. motivated. I'm not performing so impressively this month. Sure, I made it through that presentation (he gave me a 76) fairly well (other than the comment about me seeming bored and disinterested) (better than petrified, as I was feeling, I say).

But since then I'm really stumbling. I failed my cognitive quiz on Wednesday - it's only worth 4%, so it's not terrible (I got 1.4), but I'm struggling to stay on top of everything else too. Also, my Modern Government midterm on Thursday was a pretty sad showing. It's a good bet that I failed that, too. And it's worth considerably more.

And now. Two overdue papers. On which I've made little progress. Every day that passes is more deductions. But I sit down to research, read, organize, and I just can't stay focussed. My subject material has suddenly become terribly un-interesting to me (maybe Bill had it right; I've lost interest?).

Cognitive: Do older people perform less well than younger ones in every type of cognitive task?

NA-1860: Compare and contrast the roles of Canada and Mexico in WWII

All I can do at this point is remind myself that failing is NOT an option. So I must push through. It's hard.  | ¶ 11:01 a.m.

  purr Today frou got a new
What's his name, frou?  | ¶ 8:36 p.m.

  but I like The Game... Readers nominate the most-idiotic-twist endings

Who is Kaiser Sose? We'll never know!

(spoiler alert: if you haven't seen these movies and actually intend to, careful!)  | ¶ 5:08 p.m.

  revisions They moved my final exam from April 28th to April 24th. So now I get finished on the 26th. I've updated my schedule and countdown over there -->.  | ¶ 10:48 a.m.

  thumbs down My midterm yesterday did not go well.

I decided that going to the Lion for green beer was a good way to de-compress. Devin was kind enough to join me. So was my neighbour Brad. We had a few pitchers of Keith's. Devin's friend Jamie showed up; Brad left. We sang some bad bad Irish karaoke songs (we just wanted the free shooters) (and didn't even get them).

Ugh. I have to write papers.  | ¶ 10:01 a.m.

  Happy St. P's Day !
  | ¶ 8:43 a.m.

  in the waiting line Today in Cognitive class we started learning about language. Dr. Standing is fascinated with the subject area, so he talked at length about the history of language. We reviewed the origins of language by reviewing a language tree showing how so very many current-day languages originated from the same roots.

For whatever reason, that made me think about the long day spent in the Prague airport recently. Airports in Europe are a great place to people-watch, and to hear languages you've never heard before. Even though so many of them are meaningless to you, you learn to differentiate - i.e. Dutch does not sound like Czech.

Because we were in that line-up for so long, there was a type of kinship that developed between all of us in our section of the line. Directly behind us was a Dutch woman who had lived in South Africa for quite a while (I talked to her quite a bit). She spoke English with a very interesting accent. In front of us was a young man who I assumed was Czech, but noticed later that he was speaking a very choppy version of English with another Czech woman (maybe he was from Slovakia instead?). That was an interesting thing, too - seeing how everybody defaults to English, because it is indeed the common, universal language.

At one point I came back from fetching coffees and there was a quiet French woman behind us who gestured at me that she could hold something while I struggled with getting the cream and sugar into my coffee. Later her husband caused quite the ruckus when he became physically aggressive with the ticket agent; they called over the police and military to deal with him.

When anyone needed to leave to visit the washroom, make a telephone call (in a desperate attempt to get tickets changed without having to deal with the eternity of a wait), or fetch food, we would each hold the other's place in line, keeping an eye on their luggage, and gently nudging it forward as the line inched along. All without the benefit of a common language.

When we finally did get out of the line and were getting ready to check our luggage, in my haste to move from the line to the check-in counter, I forgot my backpack on the floor. But a kind man had taken notice and was already handing it to me as I came back to retrieve it. He was Asian, and did not speak English either.  | ¶ 5:15 p.m.

  history report In my favourite history class this morning we were covering the Cold War. It's interesting, all the different world powers that were actually involved. As Dr. Childs pointed out, we often think of it as primarily a conflict between the two main players, Russia and the U.S., but the events leading up to those very chilled relations had an major impact on how things played out. In Eastern Asia, there was the battle for China (between Mao's communists and the nationalist forces of Shiang Kai-shek), then the invasion of South Korea by the North, authorized by Moscow, resulting in UN action, which turned a little too aggressive, forcing China to get involved. I had no idea it was that complex. Fascinating.  | ¶ 11:57 a.m.

  I'm tired ...I was saying to Scott earlier how I needed to come up with a plan, one in which I care more about my work. I'm not being such a good, motivated student right now.

I'm just so mentally worn out for some reason. It's hardly the time to be contemplating 3 major papers. My cognitive paper that was due Monday? Not done. I'm waiting to hear from my prof whether he'll accept it late. My NA-1860 paper due today? Not done. She has a late policy, at least, so I'll get it done over the weekend at the latest. This afternoon I have a cognitive quiz, so I'm going to be spending the next couple hours reading. And tomorrow I have that midterm in Modern Government, so tonight is shot too.

The brutal part is that next week should actually be a relatively easy week. Why couldn't I have more stuff due then instead of now...? Cute Bill's away next week, so my two classes with him Tuesday and Thursday are cancelled. It's Good Friday, too, so no class then either. I believe we actually have a 4-day weekend here in L'ville. A lot of the kids will probably be away. See, THAT would be a good time to work on stuff. But alas, it's all due before then. Sheesh.  | ¶ 11:27 a.m.

  cheese please We're big on cheese in my family. I guess more specifically, it's frou and me who are the big cheese eaters; our brothers would get annoyed when we put too much cheese in the macaroni. We probably tried cheese on just about every possible food item when we were young - just to find out what worked (you can eat cheese on a lot of stuff, man).

So obviously we ate a lot of KD. But we weren't really brand-specific in our house. Nope, we shopped at the Co-op, and their house brand was "Harmonie" (maybe it still is; I haven't shopped there in a while). We absolutely loved the Harmonie mac and cheese, and extolled its wonders to all our friends. It really was better than Kraft, we said - because it was. We converted a lot of people to Harmonie back in the day.

Today I was walking home from politics class with my neighbour Brad, who is from Nova Scotia. We were discussing comfort foods. He likes bacon. I mentioned KD (because that's more my brand now). And he says, "well, I don't like Kraft - there's this brand back home...".

And I'm like, "HARMONIE?!"
Yes! he says. Hilarious.

It's funny to think that there's a Maritime kid ten years younger than me preaching the same thing that we did back then.  | ¶ 5:11 p.m.

  music recommendation The other day I was reading that Renee Zellwegger is dating her next musician, an Irish dude named Damien Rice. Since I'm always looking for new music, I decided to download some of his stuff and see what he was like.

He's totally awesome, people. They included one of his songs on the soundtrack to the movie "Closer", and I would totally recommend checking out the following songs: Cannonball, The Blower's Daughter, Prague (!), and Amie. The live version of Amie is better than the album version. The music is pretty acoustic - not a lot of bass or anything. And mellow, for the most part. For a more upbeat (and very catchy) song, try "Woman like a Man". It's solid, solid stuff. Thumbs up.  | ¶ 12:35 p.m.

  No, really... I am SO glad that it's over with. That presentation has been the focus of my existence for far too long, to the point where I've let other projects slide so this one would be good (and it was). I am SO not a public speaker, man. I basically read the presentation, but since my powerpoint show was so good (individually animated bullet points), hopefully it distracted from my almost zero eye contact with my audience.

Ugh. Now it's time to write THREE papers. And study for a quiz and midterm. All of these within the next two weeks. I repeat: Ugh.  | ¶ 11:30 a.m.

  three hours to go... I was exhausted last night, so I crashed early and got up just before five this morning. I'm making good progress on finalizing the presentation. So I'll get myself to school shortly and do a practice run for my friends in J9 (they're dying to hear about democratic reform, you know).

I'm pretty nervous.  | ¶ 6:35 a.m.

  change of plans Okay, I'm totally not recommending electoral reform. It's just too big of a subject area for me to cover, and so far I've focussed more on the other aspects of democratic reform, so I'm going to go with the "recall" provision. My logic is this: this is the best option because if MPs feel they could lose their jobs, they'll push for greater freedom within the legislature, and take the role of representative more seriously if they know they'll be held to account before the next election if they piss their constituents off.

Good plan, I think...

Oh, and that thing about me not being stressed? Not applicable anymore. I'm kinda panicking, as I count down the hours until the presentation (13 right now). I better pull this thing together.  | ¶ 8:39 p.m.

  hmm So my presentation is tomorrow morning and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to say yet. In the area of democratic reform, there are several things to recommend, like parliamentary reform (changing the rules about party discipline - i.e. MPs can vote freely on bills rather than the party dictating how they must vote); initiative provisions (the public can dictate a vote in certain policy areas, rather than cabinet setting all agenda items); recall provisions (getting your MP kicked out before the next election); increase direct democracy through more referendums ("referenda"); and the obvious, monster of a policy change, electoral reform.

I'm probably going to advocate for some type of electoral reform, but there are different things to recommend, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to detail all the options and outline the pros and cons of each (Bill isn't so good at giving clear direction on his assignments). The other thing is that everybody is recommending electoral reform these days - pretty much every province has a "citizens' assembly" at least discussing potential changes. So I'm basically just advocating what is probably obvious to a lot of people already...

The other issue is that I'm supposed to be presenting it as though convincing a certain government minister to accept my proposal. I don't really expect the government in power to be all that willing to changing the system that gives them such tremendous power. What are my reasons for recommending it? To increase voter turnout? To avoid an uprising by the people?  | ¶ 11:37 a.m.

  Prague pics! These girls are getting very drunk at Bombay Club.
  | ¶ 7:20 p.m.

  fire in Lennoxville! This town has a lot of fires. I heard several wailing sirens outside so I looked out to see multiple fire trucks and police cars gathering right near my house on Queen Street. There is a house on fire across the street - probably another student apartment complex. There is quite the crowd gathering, watching the firemen tear the roof and siding open before they start dousing the flames. At one point flames kinda shot up and we all gasped. Very dramatic.

I was standing with a girl who lived in the Familiprix building when it burned down two years ago. Too many fires, man...  | ¶ 5:56 p.m.

  It will all hit me tomorrow... People, I'm living in some kind of denial. I am well aware that I have a bazillion major projects due in the next couple weeks, but I seem to have maxxed out on the amount of stress I'm capable of feeling. I am blissfully un-stressed.

Well, there's a little bit of stress regarding not being stressed, but all-in-all, not much. Which is really stupid. Ask me how much progress I've made on the two term papers due this week (preliminary research only). I've been focussing on the actual live presentation that I need to do Tuesday, but that's followed by a quiz on Wednesday and midterm on Thursday. When will I have time to write two papers..!

Plus, after the Prague adventure and arriving back in town only to have to dive right back into class days, this weekend was my first chance to really relax. So that's kinda what I've been doing. Other than some yoga yesterday, and a quick walk up to CP's place, I've been holed up in my shack, not being all that productive.

Speaking of my walk to CP's, I want to mention our new snow. Yes, more snow! Less than a foot this time, but added to the pile accumulated the other day, we've got quite a nice heap. This time the snow was heavier, since it's been hovering around the freezing mark mostly. That means that it clings to the trees and is quite beautiful and calming to walk through (other than the workout it provides when you can't grip the sidewalk). I am fully enjoying the snow this winter. It's lovely.  | ¶ 3:20 p.m.

  winner! L'ville may be in the middle of nowhere, but this town has certain essential elements. You won't find many fancy coffee shops around here - no Starbucks, no Second Cup, no Timothy's - but we do have a Tim's. When they built the fancy new Esso station sometime in the years that I wasn't here, they saw fit to include a Tim Horton's coffee and donut shop within. Good decision, I say.

I have to say, I was feeling kinda lucky when I walked away with my coffee this morning. When I rolled up my rim after enjoying my coffee, I was pleased to discover that I finally WON something.

Guess what it was...?  | ¶ 11:49 a.m.

  glued to the desk I'm off on my next project now, the 10-minute presentation for political analysis, for which I'm researching democratic reform in Canada (I have SO much work to do). The presentation is Tuesday. I have another paper due Monday, but it isn't first on the priority list. W/e, eh. Anyway, I just came up with a catchy new title for my presentation.

"Life's not fair: But our democratic institutions could try harder"

Yeah, maybe it's gay, but we're supposed to try and be catchy. That's all I've got for now. I'm reading a lot - it's actually quite interesting, this topic that doesn't usually make the news. Almost every province in Canada has begun the process of moving away from the current electoral system (first-past-the-post, or SMP). BC is having a referendum this spring to decide on implementing a new proportional representation system. The federal government is probably slowest to make changes. There's the notion that the guys in charge aren't too motivated to change the system that got them there...  | ¶ 4:37 p.m.

  lame religion paper GRR. This was due yesterday - don't worry, though, I got permission to hand it in late. I'm getting a good start on hell week (as in, I'm not so on top of stuff).

Ninian Smart proposes the idea of “compatibility”, the notion that free will can act in concert with certain determining factors. He goes so far as to propose that the exercise of free will can occur only because determining factors exist; something had to determine the state of free will we possess.

I think this paper sucks.  | ¶ 11:20 a.m.

  what time zone am i in Last week we had a hard time getting time-zone adjusted; by the end of the week Pammy and I would both get four or five hours of sleep at night and then just take a nap later in the day. But apparently I'm suffering some residual effects because this week I've been crashing around 9:30 and waking up around 5:30. It's not completely wrong, but it's a little different than my old schedule. Just means I'm up doing homework before it's even close to being time to get ready for school (and in bed before the party starts... oh wait, I don't party).  | ¶ 5:57 a.m.

  cough, cough; cough-cough-cough I'm causing quite the ruckus today with my annoying coughing. I was trying to get some work done at the library, only it's quiet in the library, you know, so I was annoying even myself.

In class, same thing. For God's sake. This coughing better stop soon!  | ¶ 4:41 p.m.

  just breathe On my last day in Prague, after my walk up to the National Museum, I walked back down Wenceslas Sqaure (it's really massive) and grabbed a hot dog from a street vendor. Then I sat down on a cold bench and just breathed in the sights and sounds while enjoying my lunch. From there I headed east into the "new town" section that we had not explored all that much. I actually walked quite a distance, and found myself up on a hill in a park across from a school.

Despite the chilly temperatures, there wasn't a lot of snow - just a few inches or so. But some kids were playing in the park, sliding down a small hill on these mini plastic discs, shrieking and yelling, while their mothers sat nearby chatting on a bench. Again I sat there a long time, absorbing it all. It's a cool realization when you notice that despite being in a foreign country halfway around the world, people are really just the same. In Prague they're surrounded by tremendous history, and the remnants of communism are still fading, but superficially their lives resemble ours quite a bit.

Actually I think these people are tougher than we are. We think we handle the cold pretty well here in Canada, but it was damn cold there, and people just bundle up (lots of scarves and toques) and deal with it. It was impressive. They're also very slim and trendy (not sure how that relates, but wanted to throw it in).

I think that when I travel, those are some of my favourite memories: when you stop rushing around trying to see and do everything, and just stop and reflect, and truly appreciate being there.
  | ¶ 7:22 a.m.

  just call me genius We got quite the snow dump over night. Probably over a foot - hard to trudge through. But beautiful. And bright - when you go inside you can't see, as though coming in from a sunny summer day. But alas, it ain't summer; it's damn cold out there. A little different than the plus fifteen you guys in Calgary are living with...!

So I dragged my sick self to school this morning only to discover that my 9:30 class was cancelled. I debated coming home to work on projects until my afternoon schedule started, but I opted instead to drag my good friend Scott off for a nice long coffee and chat session. Pretty generous of me considering he told me this morning that I looked "terrible". Guess that's what I get for spending the night coughing. And I thought I'd managed to pull myself together pretty well in spite of all the hacking...

My afternoon classes were okay. In cognitive he had our midterms marked. I wrote this one the Wednesday before the break and was fairly unsure how I'd done - I was having motivation issues that day, but I still prepared somewhat thoroughly. So before getting the midterm back I braced myself - I like to go in with low expectations to avoid disappointment, so the target is usually 70 percent.

I got 54 out of 60. That's a 90%! Sweet.

Dr. Standing liked my writing (my talented fluff saves me again); his comments: an excellent commentary - ideas are presented in a deft and interesting way. Deft! And this one is worth twenty percent of my final mark, so this gives me a nice 18 out of 20. Genius, man.  | ¶ 4:48 p.m.

  protecting the homeland On Sunday when Pammy and I flew into Detroit, we had to clear U.S. customs before re-checking our luggage for the next flight to Montreal. We hadn't had to do this on the way through leaving the continent. On the plane they played a little video outlining American security policies and the new U.S. "VISIT" procedure, consisting of photographing and digitally fingerprinting all visitors. I had heard about this new system in the news a while back, and had sorta thought that Canadians were exempt from the process, but I neglected to pay close attention to the video.

From the Homeland Security website:
"The US-VISIT program was created to use cutting-edge biometrics to check the identity of foreign travelers."

So we arrive in Detroit and are hearded down the hall to Homeland Security (on this trip it seemed like all flights arrived at the same time, so we always seemed to be part of a massive crowd converging on previously empty locations). U.S. residents went to their spot and "visitors" went to another. We stood in line and watched as people were indeed photographed and fingerprinted.

I started to get very uncomfortable.

Pammy had asked one of the security men whether we all had to participate in this ritual and he said something about "well, you're in United States now", in a way that made me uncomfortable. And as I stood there I got more outraged about it. They wanted to fingerprint ME? But I didn't even want to be there - I was just passing through! My OWN government doesn't have my fingerprints (at least, not to my knowledge).

It occurred to me: what would the U.S. government do if countries around the world started fingerprinting American citizens? It's pretty outrageous that they can get away with this, if you think about it. It's like presuming guilt or something. And don't give me the excuse that terrorists attacked - that doesn't justify this invasion of privacy.

Anyway, it turned out that I was correct about Canadians being exempt, so I breathed a sigh of relief. Actually, I turned around and gave Pammy a big smile and thumbs-up or something, which, after having just cleared customs, probably made me look slightly suspicious, but w/e.

It really makes me not want to visit that country. I'm surprised that other visitors and countries have accepted the practice so readily. We'll be next, you know.  | ¶ 9:41 p.m.

  back in the grind I actually skipped my two afternoon classes today. I convinced myself that I could afford to miss them in order to dedicate some time to my looming projects. I gotta hand in my religion paper on Thursday. I worked on it on the 8-hour plane ride from Amsterdam, but it needs work still.

And the fact that I have to stand up in front of my politics class a week from today means I sure better get my butt moving on a decent presentation, so as not to look like an utter fool. I want my PowerPoint presentation to look impressive, so I stole a template from a government website and modified it to fit my subject area. I think it looks good. I'm so glad I'm becoming (somewhat) proficient with Photoshop (and PowerPoint). See:

I might change the title, but I wanted to fill in something just to have a good draft going.

Man oh man do I hurt today, too. I'm coughing so much (and hard) that my head is pounding. I took some good drugs and they're helping, but my throat is sure burning.
  | ¶ 4:33 p.m.

  doh! The entire time I was away - the two nights in Montreal, the six nights in Prague, one night in Amsterdam - not once did I awake and forget where I was. But this morning, in my own bed finally, as I hovered in that space between sleep and waking, I looked at the light patterns on the wall and thought, am I in Amsterdam? Funny.  | ¶ 12:02 p.m.

  First assignment completed. I had to refute the assertion that "masculine power is asserted through violence; feminine power through nurturing". I don't think it was my best work, but I think my writing rocks (plus I looked over other positions posted), so it at least sounds good. The kids make it easy when they say stuff like "every conflict between powers has been settled by violence". I pointed out that conflicts end up on the battlefield only after other means have failed. And I tried to make the point that military power is not necessarily the domain of men. I dunno man.

You have no idea how tired I am. After sleeping through breakfasts and wake-up calls in Prague, Pammy and I started requesting duplicate calls - especially important on travel days. Today's were at 6 and 6:15 AM, since we were catching the 7 AM shuttle to the airport for her flight and my bus.

It hurts when I cough.  | ¶ 10:58 p.m.

  Prague points They sure play a lot of Michael Jackson over there.

They served hot wine, which Pammy and I took quite a liking to, what with the chilly temperatures. They use the steaming arm of their cappuccino machines to heat the wine, then serve with sugar and lemon. Quite good.

It's hard to get a decent cup of plain old coffee. They have espresso, cappuccino, latte, and then something they call "Nescafe" (in some places), which is a lame attempt at coffee, I suppose. It tastes like instant coffee. I kinda got used to drinking espresso, with cream and sugar.

The hotels do not have facecloths (in neither Prague nor Amsterdam).

The main Czech food we tried was goulash. It's a basic beef stew consisting of beef, broth, and onions (which I removed). And if you order it with "dumplings", it comes with four round little slices of what seemed like processed white bread.

The cigarette packages also advertise doom and gloom. "Kouřeni může zabíjet", you know. That one means cigarettes cause death - I asked some dude to translate for me at Bombay. And yeah, I smoked a little in Prague. (BAD Stacey) And smoking is still allowed in pretty much all coffee shops, bars and restaurants. On our walking tour our guide told us that an unusually high rate of Czechs are smokers.

We drank a lot of Pilsner beer. I think it's originally a Czech-brewed beer. It's advertised as "Pilsner Urquell" mostly. They also had "Budvar". We tried it too.

With our walking tour we received a CD containing photos (lots), so I'll be posting some here over the next while. This is a picture of the National Museum above Wenceslas Square. I walked up to it and then did a mini tour of "new town" on our last day.


Also, I feel quite ill. I managed to catch a cold late last week (Pammy too) and it has only gotten worse with all the travelling chaos, not to mention the non-sleeping. Good time for hell month to be starting, eh.

It was a great adventure (I would love to go back sometime), but it's good to be home.  | ¶ 5:38 p.m.

  I'm home   | ¶ 12:06 p.m.

  travelling gongshow We travelled for 12 hours to get from one hotel to the next. And it's only a less-than-2-hour flight. We're beat, man.

The flight this morning was CANCELLED (yes, Speedwagon - due to the bad weather in Amsterdam which forced the delay and cancellation of many flights). We learned this upon arriving at the airport approximately two hours before the scheduled departure time. And were directed to stand in an already-growing ticket line to get our reservation changed. I gotta be brief because I purchased limited internet time here in the lobby of our Best Western hotel in Amsterdam (right on the canal - nice, but it's dark, so I haven't seen much yet).

To sum up: the KLM ticket staff were just about the most incompetent airport agents you would want to meet in a situation like that. They took about 30 minutes to handle each customer (in a "queue" of over 50 people, this was not helpful), were constantly screwing up the reservations for the customers they actually got to, and were resorting to writing tickets out BY HAND because they couldn't get them printing correctly. GONG. SHOW. And lots of angry customers. LOTS.

We MISSED the 1:30 flight, because the line-up just would not move. All in all, we stood in line for about five hours, before successfully boarding the 5:30 flight. Add in a couple trains into downtown Amsterdam, dragging our suitcases down a snowy street, and here we are, already asking for our wake-up call. So much for our day in Amsterdam.

Ah well. So it goes. Tomorrow's plan is to not have any flights cancelled. First Detroit (around 11), then Montreal (after a 3-hour layover). Cross your fingers for us!
  | ¶ 9:52 p.m.

  Last (full) day in Prague In Canada, when you order a McChicken sandwich at McD's, they ask, "do you want the combo?". In Quebec, they ask if you want the "trio". In Prague, they say "menu".

When I ordered my sandwich yesterday and the girl kept shouting "Menu?" at me, I was very confused. I thought she wanted me to read the menu, so I kept looking up at the menu and repeating "McChicken" as she kept asking me "menu?". We went back and forth a few times before I figured it out. Communication breakdown, man.

Pammy and I were a little disappointed with the Museum of Communism yesterday. It didn't seem to have a lot of stuff. The best part was a little room where they were showing video footage of various significant historical dates - like the invasion in 1968 by the Soviet Union, then the huge protest in 1989. It makes it all very real when you recognize the streets as ones you've walked on, and see people being harassed and beaten by police for no real reason. In 1969, some dude set himself on fire (and died) to protest the Russian occupation. Man.

The whole non-Communist world is still a very new thing for people here (it has been less than 20 years, after all)- they love their new freedom to choose. Unfortunately, sometimes that means having McD's and KFC setting up shop all over the place, but the place isn't too Westernized yet.

Something I am continually amazed by is the huge masses of people who are outside all the time. It's quite cold here. But people seem to not mind - retail stores have their doors propped open, there are lots of street vendors (hot dog stands and the like). And despite it being March and very far from the peak tourist season, there are a significant number of tourists in the main centers. I can't imagine how insane it gets in the summertime.

We were out late again last night. We decided to visit the Konvict Pub near our hotel, and after we finished our dinner asked our waiter to recommend a good venue for dancing somewhere nearby. He told us about Zlaty Strom, near the Charles Bridge, and said it was actually where he was going when he got off work shortly. We decided to check it out.

The club was quite nice - very trendy, but we were a little surprised when we first walked in. Downstairs on a lower level we could see four girls dancing in bikinis on a stage (a couple of them were actually topless) and that wasn't quite the type of bar we were looking for. But the club was multi-levelled and had different rooms for those of us who didn't want to watch the half-naked girls. We did sit and watch for a bit, but then found the room with the dance floor. We ordered some mojitos, requested some tunes and started dancing.

George (the waiter from Konvict) showed up with a girl-friend. I discovered pretty quickly that she wasn't his actual girlfriend when he started getting a little too friendly with me. But he was very nice and kept buying us drinks (I really enjoy the Czech rum). Some other young fellows weren't so nice, as Pammy discovered when one of them purposely dumped his drink on her back. They had been bothering her for a while (we learned how to say "fuck off" in Czech at this point), and she was furious. The bouncers showed up and escorted the punks out of the club, but not before they yelled at us and called us names in Czech (it's all Greek at that point...). Go Pammy!

So the dance clubs stay open until 6:00. The naked girls dance until 6:00. The bar continues to serve liquor until 6:00. I was loving the music (and the Czech rum - did I mention that part?). The dance floor was fun - black square tiles with different coloured lights under them, dancing in various patterns under our dancing feet. There are some nights when I love to dance, and last night was one of them. I met a dancing friend (a slightly creepy Czech dude) and we boogied for quite a while. No speaking, though. But Pammy was getting tired, and staying out until 6:00 probably wasn't our best course of action, so we headed "home" to bed around 4:30.

I was getting George to teach me some Czech phrases last night. I don't remember them precisely, but I briefly knew how to say "I speak a little Czech" and "I am from Canada". I'm better with just a few words - dekuji (thank you), prosim (please), and my new one "promi" (sorry).

Okay, this story is getting long so I'll wrap it up. We leave tomorrow morning for Amsterdam, then back to Montreal on Sunday.  | ¶ 3:36 p.m.

  (n) It's getting a little frustrating, this not being able to get my body clock re-adjusted to the local time. I couldn't sleep much last night, and I'm tired.

Today's plan is to visit the Museum of Communism. Hopefully I'll learn some useful information about the Prague Spring of 1968.  | ¶ 1:57 p.m.

  Prague report: Day four Today we accomplished stuff! Despite not being able to sleep AGAIN last night, we got UP this morning after just a couple hours of ZZZs.

To wake myself up, and while Pammy got ready, I took a stroll over to McD's for some kind of familiar breakfast. Only, they don't serve the same thing for breakfast here. I scanned the sorta bilingual menu for a breakfast list and got distracted by the "McLouisiana", the "McTexas" and "McMontana" sandwiches. I'm NOT making this up - they totally had all these state-specific burgers. I had to settle for "toast", which turned out to be a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. Who knew, eh.

We went to the Astronomical Clock to meet our tour guide at 11 AM. We had selected the "Grand Prague Tour" - a four hour walking tour including all the main points of historical Prague. Now, Pammy and I have sorta stumbled around a lot of Stare Mesto over the past few days looking for restaurants and bars, but it was useful to: (a) see it all in the daylight, and (b) hear about the history of it all. This place is as fabulous and as beautiful as you always hear. It is positively awe-inspiring to stand before or in some of the old churches, for instance, this one at the Prague Castle:

Yes, I was in THAT church today. It was huge and beautiful and rather indescribable. And WOW, was it cold in there. We've been pretty chilly all day, but inside that grand chapel was ultra-cold. I kept looking around for a fireplace.

After a quick afternoon nap, we went for dinner to Mama Lucy's for dinner tonight; it was good. We seem to be spending a lot of time on Dlouha Street. The other night, our long evening with American Andy and Irish Marcus (who charmed me with his fabulous Irish accent and by naming me "Private Ryan") was spent here at the Bombay Club, where we got totally ripped off, but that's a story for another day.

Private Ryan is signing off.  | ¶ 9:44 p.m.

  partying like it was 1999 I'm not going to tell the story today, but for an update of our adventures, you can read it over at Pammy's site.  | ¶ 7:17 p.m.