My best friend from grade school

My best friend from grade school visited me this weekend. She's the one, I did Math homework with ahead of the rest of the class - one might call us the Math teacher's pets... So we checked out the Just for Laughs fest and there were these huge sudoku boards and we both together filled one up - there was also quite the crowd gathered around telling us in French what numbers go where... But this whole thing sort of reminded me of the time we did Math homework together, even though sudoku, I still think, has no connection to Math, like most people believe. It was a very nice memory revival... She turned out to be a Math teacher...

I don't really connect with my long ago friends that well, if I haven't continuously kept in touch with them. This because I know I have changed a whole lot, which I am sure they have too, and am not sure if they realize that. But this one I connected immediately, when we talked on the phone. It might have been partly due to the fact that she teaches in this way off Indian reservation and I sort of immediately looked upto her for her humanitarian aspect... It turned out she went there for financial reasons, but I think she's still a good teacher and she loves those kids. But anyway, she and I stayed up till 4am every night, and then she stayed a day longer - so we did indeed have a good time...

Her husband though, I could have done without - he does tell some pretty funny jokes though, funny in a racy sort of way... But his opinions about the Indian kids left me confused, even though I think there must have been some truth to the corruption and feed-off-the-government tales that he told.

But within an hour of meeting, he told me how he 'hates anything that comes from the US' - and those were his exact words. Whenever people do this, oh like when our sys admin was franatically looking for the Canadian keyboard layout in my linux machine and said, 'I don't want to put the US keyboard, I don't like it' (even though technically they're both the same, just a difference in name), I don't know if people are taking a jag at me or testing to see where my loyalties are or are just plain kidding.... I am usually not offended, I ain't no American so I could care not less, even though I sort of feel for the country that sheltered and educated me for 7 years... But I am bothered by their pettiness, oh and if it's a joke, it is not a good joke you tell people within the first couple minutes you've met them...

But if I were an American, I can see how this would have bred nationalism in me... Not to say Americans have not brought this upon themselves partly. But a few Americans behave arrogantly, then the rest of the world gets defensive against them, then more Americans get arrogant... then I can so see these feeding into each other in a downward spiral...

Ah but whatever, I am slowly but steadily getting to the state where I can disregard people's wayward comments and not care about them... but apparently they still bother me enough that I will blog about them... :)