vaughan mills visit

Well I finally made it out to the Vaughan Mills mall, with its flagship store Bass Pro whatever it's called.
That mall was an assault on my visual senses.
The food court was painted a pukey hospital green, and there were some "food" mural illustrations near the ceiling at either end: the colours were pretty saturated, and they and didn't add anything apart from kind of being a focal point in a large space. There were some ceiling panel type things high above the fast-food counters, in a dizzying array of designs. It seemed no two were the same, which kind of made the whole room a hodgepodge of patterns and colours and I couldn't see any unifying anything about the area. I know some things that might look good on paper (or a computer monitor) might not translate into what looks good in the form of actual steel girders and corrugated steel ceilings.
There was one throughway that had a narrow purple ceiling with all these plexiglas curved panels reaching up high. That was the only thing I liked.
Some areas had carpet that was wrinkling up. My dad would have commented that the carpet needed to be walked upon and stretched a bit, before it was to be permanently glued to the floor, but in a mall, you don't have that luxury to let people walk on it to break it in, the way you do in a house. I'm guessing that it was the wrong carpet for the job.
I'm normally spending time in Sherway Gardens or Square One, which I realize are established malls and have had some renovation since they were built. Note to Vaughan Mills planners & builders: you can't go wrong with a beige or black marble floor in a mall. It will last forever, and you can dress it up or down, depending on what you do to the walls.
There is some "canadiana" in the food court, which is a kind of a nice touch. We sat at a table that had a map of where I grew up, embedded in the tabletop. But it gave the place an American feel somehow. (One thing was from Windsor, never been there; something with an old-school picture of Kleinburg's downtown would have been more appropriate.) Especially the Canadian flags in the Bass Pro store... wow that place is waiting to be spoofed in a movie, with its dioramas with stuffed raccoons and bears atop the change rooms. I kid you not! Also it makes extensive use of murals. I'm not sure what the planners were trying to say, by having all that type of decoration, strikes me as going for the most obvious, and lowest common denominator as well. I can shop for GPSs and tents with a bit more dignity, thanks, in MEC or Canadian Tire. The aquarium was a nice touch though, with people showing their kids the fish, right beside a rack of kids' toy guns. I was a bit moved, by someone's young Asian dad being riveted by the fish, he reminded me of the racially-motivated harassment that Asian fishermen were experiencing in local lakes and rivers lately. :(

I'd get it to listen to NPR I guess

I was in the mall a few days ago, and they had a few armchairs set up in the mall corridor, but on the table beside them, these ones had little satellite radio recievers with headphones. I had a listen, and I found Bloomberg Radio and NPR, both of which might actually make it worth my while to get a subscription. If I lived in the US, I would probably just get it so that I could hear CBC Radio One, but I imagine I could get by on NPR. In any case, they market satellite radio by touting "Howard Stern, sports radio" which I give a big thumbs down to - if they'd told me I could get NPR, I'd've had more interest in it to begin with.

Facebook has a crappy interface, especially when dealing with photos.

Can I make a photo that is in an album already, into a profile picture? No! Of course not! I have to download it from the album, to the hard drive, and then re-up it as a profile picture. I had to do this for my neighbor who is in her fifties. Also she cannot add photos at all, either I add them, or another neighbor does.

I have the distinct feeling that someone has cooked up all the menus and stuff without actually testing it on anyone.

babbehs

I went to visit my wee nephew a week or so ago, he's 9 months old, and capable of getting around not too badly - he doesn't walk but he crawls. He can pull himself up to a standing position, and when I was there, he leaned against the coffee table, and proceeded to pull items off the shelf one at a time and smash them against the table top. My mom said there's a difference between boys and girls from the start, and clearly this dude is "busy", as she'd term it. His tenacity at getting his hands on any item in reach, is adorable and frightening.

In other baby news, I just got some photos and news about my cousin's daughter... she is not home from the hospital yet as she is not over 5 lbs, I don't know the whole story but to see her with a little oxygen and feeding tube setup was kind of... I dunno, my cousin is a super nice guy and to think that they can't take their wee daughter home yet and cuddle her at home, is kind of bleh. I'm making yet another baby afghan, I think this is the 5th, and I have it down to a science how many balls of yarn of which size make up how many rows of crocheting. But it was fun to pick out the cute pink yarn! Other babies had unknown gender when I bought the yarn, or were boys. I got some yarn for a wee cardigan as well, it will be wee for sure because a baby who is 5-6 lbs will still fit newborn clothing. I'm terrified that any sweater I start for my nephew will be outgrown by the time I finish LOL but with this little girl I think I have some time, of course I hope she outgrows it quickly :)

wired for sound

My folks are moving... a long way...
they unloaded their stereo... on me! :D (:o)
It's a Technics setup, the speakers say 75 watts - it's rather nice and boomy. It was purchased likely in the early 80s, and our technophile neighbor helped my dad pick it out.
Right now I have Winamp wired into the Tape In phono jacks, and I'm re-experiencing some of my fave music through a new set of speakers, therefore with a new sound. I have never heard John Scofield's Uberjam so loud in my living room before.

I totally hadn't expected them to donate it to me, but I'm ever so pleased.
in other news, smog days are back, my allergies are acting up. I needed a refill of my Flonase spray inhaler or whatever it is, and because I hadn't realized how old the prescription is, I was told to get a new prescription.   I hate the chokey feeling I get and it will be a relief to get this all over and done with. I only use it on smog days but I'm miserable without it.

tear up the roots

My parents are moving... in 3 weeks... across the country. They sold the house fairly quickly, and the closing date was quick too. I am moving my crap out of their house like crazy... I wanted to scan in some of the photos in their albums but I will have to unpack them first. O.o

chemical brothers ho ho

How have I not understood that this Chemical Brothers album, that I would like it so much? LOL I got it when my friend was dumping a bunch of CDs that she got given, that she doesn't listen to, and ha I like it quite a bit. I mean I'd heard of them, but never heard the album... I want more like it (Come With Us is the album)

Though listening to it as tired as I am, feels like I'm at a party

dunno!

ugh... my throat is still sore and no one knows what is up... I have an appt. with a specialist... bleh. Not knowing is crappy... sometimes, in order to cope, a special kind of doublethink is required.

I had a great day. Work was depressing, however we finished at 3pm, again, similar to last friday. And similar to last friday, I called my sister's house, hoping to drop by and see what was going on. My sister's father-in-law answered, they were babysitting and he wasn't sure when anyone else was coming home. I thought "what the heck" and went and bonded a bit with my inlaws and my wee nephew. It was fun, then we had dinner: inlaws, their friend, my 2 sisters, and my brother in law. It was some knid of crazy lamb dish but it was good.

The end.

went to the santa claus I mean st. patrick's day parade... there were lots of other things besides Irish cultural things in it... I got there a bit late so it seemed pretty short. And yeah santa I mean St. patrick was the last thing in the parade.

after that, because it seemed really short, I had time to join my sister and her friend and my brother in lunch, we went to some funky asian fusion cuisine place. I tried a bite of my sister's pad thai, and realized that even non-takeout pad thai is maybe too spicy for me. I had tofu and asparagus and some other veggies and it was good. and not that spicy.  Zanta made an appearance outside the restaurant window, and the staff quickly lowered the blinds.

I had a Sewing Circle kind of evening with my aunt. She made me dinner, I helped her assemble a baby carriage cover for her soon-to-be-born first grandchild. It took awhile, so we discussed everything under the sun, so it was very bonding. She makes excellent dinner so it was cool. She is my Aunt Martha Stewart. When we were kids, there was always the danger of us breaking something at her house, because she has everything Just So.

man... the Domain Name Registry of Canada burns me up. (also the Domain Name Registry of America)

I created and maintain a web page for this lady. I got an email from her that she sent money to the Domain Name Registry of Canada, presumably because they sent her a letter that her dotcom is about to expire. It will soon. However, I have it hosted with Netfirms, and there is a lock on it so that no one else can renew it. So they complained that there is a lock on it, and she said "well can you refund my money" and they sent back a kind of "we can host for this amount, this many gig of download" etc. and so she emailed me, "help".

I called their customer service and said how it was a misunderstanding, could they refund her money? They said "who are you WTF" and I told them I am the webmaster and they said they'd email the lady to confirm that she wanted this, they didn't want to deal really with me. Fair enough. So I told her what email to expect, that it SHOULD be offering to refund her money. We'll see!

Basically they want to provide hosting. But how they do it, is to send you a snailmail letter, saying that you need to renew your whoever.com, and that you should really do it with them. The person 1) thinks that this is Internic, and that their whoever.com is in jeopardy, and sends them a cheque 2) thinks that they are actually the hosts, whereas they aren't yet, and the person will then switch over hosting to them. Then they offer cheap hosting. WTF?
What a fucking scam.

As promised, my acoustic cover version of Perfect Way.

Please excuse the general mistakes and quality... improvement will have to wait until the blister is gone from my thumb. But the main point was the fun of the thing, so that might indeed be the final version LMAO

perfectway2007-03-11-21-37-38.mp3

I've learned a lot about how I don't really need to use a capo anymore, ever, if only I can get those barred chords a bit better higher up on the neck. :P

weirdo covers

I'm trying to learn Scritti Politti's "Perfect Way" on acoustic guitar. It's quite an effed up little song, with its crazy harmonic structure. But I hadn't bothered to lift it till now, for some reason, though I love Scritti Politti. For example, the chorus is in Bb, which for my crap guitar skills, is kind of an alien key altogether, I have figured out to play it high on the neck, with my crap barred chord skills that can't help but improve through such abuse. The verse and whatever are in F#, which means that my C chord will improve which it should really anytime soon. I'm awesome at A and E and D, but I was already so who cares about that. I'm suspicious that while composing that song, someone just played a bunch of chords, cause I can't see how F# and Bb relate together at all, except to bend my mind out of shape, which is why I like it. As much as I love 3 chord song music, it's nice to take my crappy guitar skills out for a real highway ride, instead of still trying to practice parallel parking for 234897987 hours. Not to mention how crazy harmonic patterns look so different on a guitar fretboard, I'm more likely to remember them, as opposed to a piano keyboard, where my fingers slip into grooves worn down long ago.

I'll try to post an audio file if I can manage to get it to not hurt my ears.

more pavee lackeen, my entertaining brother

I had an awesome day. Pavee Lackeen was amazing. It was shot as though following the family around during their daily activities, which included the kid getting booted out of school for fighting, visiting her brother in jail, gas-sniffing, shoplifting, and filling the kettle for tea, from a tap near the side of a road. Her mom was illiterate. It wasn't playing on your emotions, it was just pretty stark. The family is part of the Irish population who were booted off their land I dunno how many years ago, maybe 100, 200? I don't know, and have been living on the side of the road ever since. They tend not to get an education, and they don't work as much as they hustle for a living. Ireland's social services are trying to get them housing, and so forth, but this family's mom was getting hung up on not living in the neighborhood she wanted, etc. (I had to switch high schools and move around a lot as a kid, so I had no sympathy for them on that part!) Anyhow it was really good and my mom and dad enjoyed it. One dude sounded EXACTLY like a guy from Newfoundland would.

A bonus was that my brother showed up and saw it with us. He had gotten my email about it, but I had already shut off my cell phone so was unaware that he was going to hang out with us.

After the movie, my parents took off for their long trip home, but my brother and I went to Chinatown to eat dinner. Now THAT was hilarious, because he speaks Mandarin, and here's what happened: I got entranced by a store that sells, among other things, stone pigs, so I went in and bought one, because my chinese horoscope sign is the boar, and this is the year of the boar, so I need all the luck I can get, the lucky money I got last year didn't work, etc. etc. etc. While I was paying, my brother demonstrated his Mandarin speaking skills to a surprised fellow near the cash register, and some conversation ensued about whatever, I caught "Toronto" and "Ireland" - I know some cities and countries in Cantonese. When asked about his language skills, he was explaining to them that we were Irish, and then that Ireland had its own language, though we don't speak it. My brother told me the guy was likely a native Cantonese speaker, because he'd start in Cantonese by mistake and switch to Mandarin. The conversation looked lively enough, but there was some confusion on this fellow's part - my brother told him "my wife is Taiwanese" then the dude asked my brother if I was his wife. I wanted to try out my Cantonese skills on them but all I could remember was "yao mo gao shooah" which isn't polite - "do you know what you're DOING?" Besides I think that and being able to count to 10 don't matter much beside a dude who speaks the whole language.

Then we went to a restaurant that my brother and his wife go to. It was Northern Chinese cuisine, and our server was a chatty Mandarin speaking lady. She was also entertained by my brother's Mandarin skills. They engaged in quite a bit of conversation, and Ireland came up again. She said I was pretty, then later, that I looked French. He was explaining at some point that he had gone to McMaster, and I chimed in with "Hoymingdon" which is Cantonese for Hamilton (where McMaster U is) and she quickly told me how you would pronounce Hamilton in Mandarin (it escapes me at the moment) and I think they proceeded to make fun of Hamilton but I don't know that for a fact. Our food was good, I had some tofu that was deep fried and had some sauce on it. We had corn soup (seemed easy to make, chicken stock, eggs dropped in, corn, green onions) and we ordered too much food but some was stuff my brother wanted me to try, so you only live once, eh? I had tofu once that was deep fried with a coating like spicy fries, I like tofu.

Going to Chinatown with my brother is like going there with a special passport into a different world.

pavee lackeen

I'm going to see Pavee Lackeen with my parents... my dad grew up in Ireland and he's familiar with the Traveller community - or "tinkers" as they were called. I saw it in eye magazine, my dad is all excited about seeing it, he was "where did you find out about it?" etc. etc. I'm excited that my dad is excited! He's not much one for movies or getting out.

another link

OMG I just read that 2nd link and I want to cry. "No, I wouldn't want to live in Venice. Eight euro for a cup of tea. I couldn't wait to come home."

ugh - baking misadventures

Dammit - I made another ugly loaf of soda bread. The crust is hard and burnt, inside it's still a bit doughy in places. It should have a dense moist texture, which it has somewhat. It tastes okay, due to some sugar in that particular recipe - okay but still not really the way I remember my grandma's bread tasting. Then there's the issues of in Europe how they measure by weight, and in N. America, it's by volume. It's supposed to have buttermilk, and I use milk that I've just put a few tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice to sour it... maybe there's something in the buttermilk that does chemical magic that I'm missing. I think my baking soda might be too old. So there's many things that might be going wrong here. :D

But I just did some productive googling, and found out that in Ireland, they have mostly flour made from soft wheat, whereas in Canada, that's called pastry flour, bread flour is made from hard wheat. All-purpose flour is somewhere in between. So I'm going to go see if I can locate some pastry flour, that might be the majority of my problem, as every single loaf of soda bread I've made has been either too tough inside, or the crust was too hard, or both.

As it's supposed to be made with whole wheat flour, and there doesn't seem to be a whole wheat pastry flour (go figure! LOL) I'm going to have to try to use half all-purpose whole-wheat, for authenticity, and half pastry flour, for the right texture. It's supposed to be mostly or entirely from whole wheat flour.

Hopefully this finally works. I'm not exactly jumping off my chair to try baking again tomorrow, but I'll see if I can locate the flour at least, ready for the next time I feel like baking.

"passion for the industry" hmph

I think I've come to the kernel of a thing that bothered me when I was at film school, and former students came to speak to us.

I was ripping something out of the free newspaper, and there was an article on film editors, a statement from it from an editor was "a lot of us lucked into this job". Well isn't that great for the person who has the job already! What does that mean to an audience of students with aspirations to have that job?

I would say, if someone is somewhat vague about how they got a job, if there was any large amount of luck involved, they seem kind of "I am not worthy" and smug at the same time, or, (my favourite) you need "a passion for the industry", then I would think very hard about whether you want that specific job, or whether you are able to roll with whatever opportunity comes your way.

yikes

So this morning in Unrequited Dreams, I read about the sealers who were lost on the ice and found frozen to death.

Heh it's cold right now, -15C, without taking the windchill into account, so yeah, I'm glad I walk from the train station to work, one heated place to another. Though in that climate, doing that work, clearly it was an accomplishment for them to be coming home alive as often as they did. My own grandfather was a fisherman, and never learned to swim. How about that! It's the kind of thing that grounds you and you don't want to forget, but I don't want to tell it to my wee nephew if it's going to sound like it's making a caricature out of my grandfather. Our family doesn't roll like that.

colony of confused anecdotes

I'm reading Colony of Unrequited Dreams. It's good, Wayne Johnston is a good writer.

Unfortunately my mom knows him, or knows someone who knows him, and also he's written a book about where she's from - Baltimore's Mansions - so much of what I know about his books is about all the "inaccuracies" in them. I was truly not sure what section in Chapters to look for Colony of Unrequited Dreams in, it turned out to be in Fiction. Oh wait, on Amazon, Baltimore's Mansions is listed as a memoir, to add to the confusion.

It's weird to have so much written about what is basically a small town, that happens to have a lot of my history in it, history that I largely have no idea about - what I do know is blended with a lot of folklore-like anecdotes that I have heard over the years from my mom. It was weird to go there last summer, and see people who were related to the people in my mom's stories about the place.

(Of course, small towns being what they are, I could see potential new anecdotes happening before my eyes, as we drove around, and as she talked about the goings-on)

Anyways for me, I don't think I'll end up learning more about Newfoundland by reading these books, as much as it'll be adding to the big stew of fact, fiction, memory, and memorable people that exists in my head about the place. I'll be reading closely, yet taking it with a grain of salt.

AM DX listening

I like figuring out what TV and radio stations I can get.

My new mini shortwave radio would be fun if I could get shortwave stations on it - however it's just as much fun figuring out which DX AM stations I can get. I was surprised at how far away I am getting stations from: the italic numbers are distance from Toronto in km.



Of course I can only listen between 11pm and 6am, but because it's Dr. Laura and/or all news stations, I'm not really missing out. I don't mind a kooky late night show about UFO sightings, but haven't found one yet. My fave 11pm-1am host on CFRB is moving to another time, so I will be free to listen to shortwave & DX AM as of next week.

Looking at the map, I want to try some listening at night for AM stations when I'm in Newfoundland next!

I think my shortwave station frequencies and times need to be looked up on the internet again... it's been about a year since i last figured out any shortwave listening stuff.

radio geekery

I bought a wee radio from this Radio Shack that is shutting down soon. For about half off, I got an Eton radio, it's made for Grundig, is about 2x3" and has 200 memories and gets shortwave bands. It's a great radio for travelling. So now I'm entering in the stations I got when I was in Newfoundland and Ireland (yes, I still know what they were - I figured them out before I went, or, I made note of them while I was there) and I'm going to figure out the Montreal CBC Radio 1 station, and some other Canadian cities just in case. For good measure, I'm going to try to put down talk radio AM stations from England too. Finding CBC Radio One in cities across Canada is not difficult because the music and talk is so distinctive, (and the audio can be shitty because some of them were wired with AM quality network feeds, but now air on FM) but the Ireland stations were a bit trickier - first, I have no way to recognize their programming, and second, because RTE (their version of CBC) will advertise its stations as "90 to 92, Two FM!" meaning that across the country, they might have transmitters here and there broadcasting on a range of frequencies between 90.0 and 92.0 MHz. For example, I could hear three or four different transmitters broadcasting what turned out to be the same thing. There's no way to really know what transmitter served my area best, it's better to tune around when I get there, and look it up when I get home again. However I'm going to bring a rough guide of the stations' coverage next time. Before I went to Newfoundland, I mapped out the CBC Radio One FM frequencies and the one AM station, and I got a grand total of zero of the FM stations in the area I was in. Still, my inner geek was pleased to know what kind of range the stations did (not) have.

Time to get some kind of padded case for this radio, because eventually, I WILL drop it.

Know what? BBC has an Asian Network, radio in Punjabi, Gujarati, Mirpuri and Bengali. How about that???? How cool is that?

the fun SCA event

Well I had a fun day yesterday - it was awesome because the past 2 weeks have been a bit hit-and-miss. I went to an SCA event in Mississauga, not too far from where I live. I don't go regularly, one of my NY resolutions has been to start getting out to these events just to stay connected. So because I arrived after work, it was a bit boring because everyone was eating dinner already, I said hi to my one friend that I speak to on MSN, and then found a random table to pass the time. Boring at first, but it paid off - I got caught up in the dancing activities afterwards. I have always enjoyed these, haha, I won't pass up the chance to hold the hand of a nice strange man. Most dance steps were simple, some familiar, ie one dance had a do-si-do, and another had what I termed "the hokey pokey" because we stepped to the left, then right, then turned ourselves around. One person was terribly enthusiastic, and dragged in both people who were somewhat experienced, and newbies, and called out steps as we danced... so I guess if it was line dancing on a boat cruise, I would still have fun... don't tell anyone though. My friend from college was also there, so we sat down and chitchatted first, then we both did dancing, so it was pretty fun.