I’m sih-wee-ous. It’s not just for wascally wabbits… See?

Here’s the current list of Google Interface languages (scroll down a bit)…. what the dickens is Bork, bork, bork! ?????

zeit geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-”gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

By permission from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary at www.Merriam-Webster.com by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.

This is interesting! Google Press Center: Zeitgeist

We shot lots of video over today’s Thanksgiving pow-wow at Allan & Cheryl’s place, but only a few photos, so I thought I’d post a couple of the photos that my dad gathered from his albums to show us. It being Thanksgiving, it seems appropriate to revisit the past. Canadian Thanksgiving is a holiday placed in October to distribute holidays evenly throughout the year (we celebrate Remembrance Day on November 11, so that takes care of November). We don’t share the historical significance of American Thanksgiving, so I guess the Canadian government decided some time ago that the second Monday of October was as good a time as any to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Allan scanned this photos and added these comments:

This first photo is a scan of a black and white photo taken of my grandfather and grandmother on the steps of (I assume) the family home in Guisad, Baguio City. This is only the 2nd picture I have ever seen of my father’s parents. The first is a set of portraits of them in the background of some of my parents wedding photos. I never knew before now that my grandfather was so tall, or my grandmother so short. It explains the wide range in heights among my uncles, aunts, and cousins and also my height comparatively among most Filipinos.

The photo prompted comments from my dad and step-mother about my grandfather. Apparently he was a snappy dresser, slim, and handsome. My grandfather died the year before I was born and my grandmother died 6 months after I was born. I do not know how old they were — though it seems safe to guess that they were in their 70’s by the time I was born.

Also pictured are some of my aunts, my uncle Thomas, and some of my cousins who are only a few years older than I. There are a few who are almost a generation older than I. Their children are younger than me by the same measure that I am younger than the children in this picture, about 3-5 years. My dad commented that uncle Thomas was the one who appeared most like his father. He was very handsome and had dimples…

Allan

Uncle Thomas met with a rather grim end to a short life (26 years), but I’m going to see if I can verify the story with more people before I try to describe it. The deal with cultures which favour the oral tradition is that you definitely have to speak to more than one family member to get the full story. I think I’ve seen a similar photo to this one, but I don’t recall my grandparents in it. I’m also surprised by the height differential… but this is probably explained by the fact that the only photos I recall of them are during their funerals, when they’re lying down…

We have a LOT of cousins. To this day I still don’t know how many first cousins there actually are. I think this photo was taken in 1971 or 1972, because Allan is still an infant (he’s the only baby in the photo), and my mother was pregnant with me. Allan and I are only 12 and a half months apart in age, which is closer than any of his kids, even though it’s impossible to tell!

My dad was from a family of originally 12, but a few died at childbirth, I believe. This was common for the time, and for a culture that relies upon midwives, not hospitals, one can expect a higher infant mortality rate. (As of 2002, the Philippines is 101st out of 224 countries for its rate of infant mortality — nearly 28 deaths out of 1,000 live births, as compiled by Nationmaster.com.) The remaining 9? (I’ll need to do a recount) bar one had children, and my dad is one of the younger ones. In fact, he was practically raised by his eldest sister, Jane, who is now being taken care of by her daughter Maureen, in upstate New York. I visited them briefly when I was in New York the last week of 2002, and hope to make it over there before too long. After all, my Aunt Jane is in her 80’s now. In fact, one of her great-grandsons is in his 20’s! It’s amazing that she would outlive her husband, daughter, and son, to remain the matriarch of my father’s family.

I’ve exiled myself to my parents’ house for the Thanksgiving weekend. I’m supposed to be studying, but I’ve been setting up my dad’s computer (Allan & Cheryl’s old computer) and connecting it to the internet. To get my parents started, I’m using my 20-hr per month dial-up allowance that’s bundled with my Enhanced ADSL connection at home (2.5MB/sec). Dial-up is excruciating…! I’ve never had it, although I’ve used it on the rare occasion when the ADSL servers have gone down. There’s just no comparison. Dial-up is painful!

Allan and Maddy

Melissa

An hour ago Allan, Cheryl, and the kids dropped me off from a walk around Green Timbers Park. It’s raining, but the kids love the puddles! Don’t all kids love puddles? There’s just something about them that draws kids like magnets. When Michael sees a puddle, he makes a run for it, so going outside means dressing the boy up in as much rain gear as one can find. Stomping in puddles is Michael’s forté.

As you can see, the other kids don’t mind rain, either.

Green Timbers Park photos
(22 in Ofoto album)

family

I’m glad that Allan and Cheryl aren’t put off by rain. They’ll take the kids out in rain or shine, which is good, since winters in the Lower Mainland (at least near sea level) consist of a great deal of rain. On the flip side, we don’t get snow — we’re lucky if we get one decent snowfall that sticks around more than 24 hours — so that means no shovelling! It was fine when we were kids growing up in Winnipeg, snow was synonymous with fun and we didn’t have to deal with the inconveniences that adults had: plugging in the car so it would be warm enough to start, making sure the sidewalks were clear, etc. etc. If we got a huge dump of snow, it meant no school! Toboganning! Krazy Karpets! (*I did a little search on Krazy Karpets, and I can’t believe they’re still available and selling for $1.99!*)

I like rain, myself. I think people in BC appreciate rain a bit more now after a summer of fires, dangerously low reservoirs, and a record lack of precipitation. I’m happy to see the grass green again after all that ugly brown… we needed the rain so badly. Bring it on!

World Vision Canada

After my little fiasco with the car, I let out a big sigh and hoped I would be able to finally get to Richmond before the whole World Vision Canada Sponsor Evening was over. It was the first one they’ve had in the West — the World Vision office is based outside of Toronto and it’s costly to have more offices and organize functions like this. I wanted to hear about some of the projects they’ve been working on, and there was a project manager from Honduras who was giving a presentation.

Auxense

World Vision phones every year to ask if I’d like to sponsor a second child, and I’ve always declined. I’ve been sponsoring a girl in Brazil for over 6 years (she will be 11 in December), and since then I wanted to stick to sponsoring one child and spend more time doing local community work and volunteerism. Which is what I’ve done, volunteering for the West End Seniors Network, Hostelling International, A Loving Spoonful, soup kitchens and doing a number of other things. But attending one of these meetings and seeing what differences child sponsorships make for a village makes it very difficult to leave without considering sponsoring more children.

Kerneus

So I went over to the table that had the sponsorship photos and profiles and pored over all of them. It’s not supposed to be like picking fruit at the supermarket — I wanted to look closely and get a sense of the child. There were children of all ages, from all parts of the underdeveloped world: Bangladesh, Honduras, Central Africa, etc. How would I be able to choose?? I think you just have to go with your gut in these situations. All I had in mind was finding a little boy who wasn’t in Latin America, because I sponsor a girl in Brazil. This little boy, Kerneus from Haiti, turned 11 in June and when I looked at his sweet face I knew I couldn’t put his card back in the pile. Kerneus looks small for his age, and right now he’s in pre-school, but even though he has the body of a little boy, he has the eyes of an old man. In fact, the more I look at his photo, the more I’m reminded of the esteemed actor Sidney Poitier.

Of course, there were others I would like to sponsor, especially this little girl named Melissa from Honduras (which made me think of my own niece Melissa) and a little girl from Bangladesh who had a very striking face. But in the end I told the lady from World Vision that I would take another card to see if I could get one of my friends to sponsor a child — I chose Auxense from Chad. I signed on for both Kerneus and Auxense, and told her I would make arrangements in my own time for a sponsor for Auxense down the road, because I could only sponsor one other child besides Glecia Jessica Felix, and that would be Kerneus. I had in mind the idea to go and visit one of these children, and it’s much easier to get to Haiti from Vancouver than it would be to get to either Brazil or Chad. Plus, in Haiti I believe they speak patois and French and maybe some English. It would be much harder for me to communicate in either Portuguse or the native tongue spoken in Chad (I’ll have to look that one up).

I’m deliriously tired now. After I got home I was invited out for drinks, and we stayed longer after last call than we’d realized…

It just wouldn’t co-operate earlier this evening. I’ve decided to go the co-op route and let Allan use the car to go to work so Cheryl can have the van to drive the kids around.

The car had been sitting for days, and I had a hard time starting it. I was frustrated — after all, I’d just dropped a chunk of maintenance money on it, and it should be grateful! I was parked on an incline, and I had to make sure it was warmed up properly, otherwise I would roll back into the T-intersection, a rather busy one with pedestrians, cyclists, and cars accelerating to make it up the hill. As I was sitting in the car, trying to keep it from stalling, an attractive guy with a couple of bags of groceries was strolling up the sidewalk. He turned around and saw me in the car and gave me a big smile, while I tried to hunker down and pretend I was doing something, all the while I felt like crawling under the dashboard as my car sputtered and coughed and protestedly loudly. He stopped for a moment, tried to get my attention, then started walking backwards up the hill, sticking out his thumb — like he was hitch hiking — and making funny faces and smiling…

Argh! Why does this have to happen NOW??? I was thinking of how I could pass this off as a joke: wave him in, then say, “Hey guy, I hope you’re not in a hurry…”

But what did I do??? I just smiled back and then pretended I was reading something!! I couldn’t even look up anymore, I thought maybe he’d walk backwards up out of sight, which he did, but am I a dufus or what? If the car was running fine, would I have responded? I think I would’ve! But I didn’t… argh!

Damned car. It’s pissed off at me because I leave it for a week at a time, then expect it — in its old age — to just go. It doesn’t even make sense for me to own a car — I live in the city, work from home, and have a U-PASS. The best thing for it is to be driven every day, otherwise when it’s colder and it just sits, it’s a pain in the arse to start. It’s being ornery, so my solution is to let Allan drive it, and I’ll join the co-op. Done deal.

If you’ve ever been to Italy or are familiar with Italian culture, you’ll appreciate this. It’s in Shockwave Flash, so make sure you’ve got the player first, your speakers turned on, and a few minutes to watch this little movie showing how Italians are different from the rest of Europe… it may take a little while to load, so just be patient.

I’ve watched it I don’t know how many times, but the driving and pedestrian parts always make me laugh!

Mon Dieu! I have removed the post from Saturday about “spilling the beans” because a certain event that was supposed to happen LAST weekend is not until THIS weekend, so I will have to make that post now a DRAFT… more later…

Carole

The postal carrier just chucked a *real letter* through my mailslot today from my friend Carole in Switzerland! Real letters are so noticeable because they are as rare as rollerskates nowadays. But I had to write Carole a letter a while ago because she doesn’t have a computer at home and no internet at the office — she lives in an old flat in La Chaux-de-Fonds and the phone is literally fused into the wall so it would take an electrician to re-wire the place for modern jacks. No dial-up, and forget about ADSL. Can’t even get cable. So, no computer… cos what’s the point without internet?

I really like Carole’s place, though, it’s spacious and comfortable and homey, but we have a good laugh about the quirks of living in a building that’s older than any museum in Canada. There are things so easily taken for granted living here, in modern buildings. First of all, her washing machine is super-old and hyperkinetic — I had to basically sit on it while it was running so it wouldn’t shimmy across the floor and pull the rubber tube off from the kitchen tap. I tried reading a magazine while waiting for it to do its thing, but the machine shook so violently during the spin cycle I nearly fell off! Also, of course, there is no elevator in her building, and she’s at least on the sixth floor, which doesn’t sound very high until you account for the high ceilings. You feel like you’ve done a session on the Stairmaster by the time you reach her front door. Which is not a bad thing… people in North America are fatter and lazier as a result of our mod cons and reliance on vehicles. Big refrigerators means more food at our disposal without making as many trips to the grocery store, and we’re eating food that’s designed to have a longer shelf life. Elevators are ubiquitous. I’m off on a tangent…

Anyway, so I got this letter today, and it’s a nice respite from the usual stuff that comes through my letter slot. I don’t get much junk mail, but I’m on the mailing list of probably every charitable organization in Canada. They also phone me, but I have to tell them my university tuition has doubled over the course of 16 months, and it’s creating a situation where I have to monitor my expenses, but they are welcome to contact me again next year. It’s bad enough that I’ve had to shrink down my volunteer time to nearly zilch this year because of the increasing workload, but I’m going to have to cut back on my charitable donations this year. Drastically.

Tomorrow night is World Vision Canada’s sponsor night at the Radisson Hotel in Richmond. I’m looking forward to hearing about their projects in Honduras and meeting some other child sponsors. I’ve been sponsoring a child in Brazil since 1997 who is now 10 years old, but I want to feel a stronger connection to my sponsorship than a passive occurrence of a monthly charge on my account.

While Arnold talked Californians into voting him into the governor’s office, Germany pummelled the U.S. 3-0 in a women’s world cup soccer semi-final upset (Sweden beat Canada 2-1 in their semi-final), Izzy Asper — the Canadian media mogul who founded CanWest Global — died, the Canadian dollar broke 75c U.S. for the first time since November 1996 (good for some, terrible for others)…

… and me? I felt like a Vegas promoter making phone calls, e-mailing, updating… I worked long into the night with windows of spreadsheets, Outlook, Yahoo calendar, online white pages, and Google in front of me on the monitor. Thank God for 21-inch screens, otherwise I’d go blind.

I did have some interesting phone calls, though. At 10 o’clock I got this bright idea to track down Rovin, who I haven’t seen for years, but I’d heard was in the Vancouver area. Keeping under the radar. So when I phoned, I was happy to get a very positive reaction — albeit after a very long pause! Once Rovin figured out who the hell was calling him at 10pm, it was like I’d set him on fire! I told him about the party, seeing Martijn and Jennifer and their baby Isla in the Netherlands in April, Tosca and Mike’s wedding, seeing Jackie at the wedding, and how these days I’m not the “party-girl” he remembers me to be…! I thought it was hilarious Rovin thinks of me that way, but last night as I was telling this to Christa I realized how much bar-hopping and late nights characterized that time back in ‘98-’99. It feels like light years away from today.