Holywood and Reuters

So Robert Redford and Shia Labeouf were in Van downtown (since it is the city with the second most movies shot, in North America and all) and all these people and also Reuters!!!! What's up Reuters? Nothing better to cover in word news?

Bernard Derome

I had no idea who this was until someone actually told me of this event - but he was apparently an acclaimed Radio-Canada anchor and what not. I went mostly because these days I don't miss any CBC/Radio-Canada event since I am sort of keeping an eye on a career there and also to better my French... I read that he was really a grounded anchor (you would think by virtue of the meaning of the word they all would be, but...) and in fact did a great un-provocative coverage during the QC referendum and all.

prendre le temps prendre le temps pour le reflechier
- Bernard Derome

This, that he said at the seminar stuck with me. Always a good virtue to have, not just for news reporting.

The Alchemist

My brother's birthday gift to me; he wrote:

As I read this book I could not think of anyone else I know whose life's journey resembled that of Santiago, than yours.

It's always complex to read a book that comes with that prologue: did he actually read it? (it doesn't look like his kind of book - I didn't know he read novels - of course this based on something he said to me about 10 years ago!!!); was it this part that he thought resembled my life or was it another...

But soon these thoughts were gone away - the simple allegorical story was in some sense perfect for this time of my life - a window to the things I once loved and maybe not any more and the things that I have grown to love and the call to make a decision, to make room for the dreams, the new ones.

So this was the book that gave the infamous,

when you want something all the universe conspires to help you achieve it

I loved the writing style - short, simple sentences. And very interestingly the first line of the book states "the boy's name was Santiago", which is the only time he is named - he is referred to as 'the boy' throughout the book. I also loved the way he wrote 'Personal Legend', capitalizing the first letters, like it was a proper noun.

Interestingly, the epilogue for the book talked about how Coelho found inspiration for his first novel, The Pilgrimage, after doing the camina the Santiago de Compostela. I had never heard of this, until a friend who I have great respect for, talked about this in Tokyo about a month ago. The next day, taking the flight from Narita to Vancouver, I read in the UA magazine, an interview with Martin Sheen on his movie, The Way, again about this camina (terrible story, but I watched this for the scenes of the camina, and I was not disappointed). So I go from never hearing about this to hearing about this from three independant sources within the course of a month - speaking of omens, the recurring theme of the book!

But here are some quotes that really spoke to my heart:

But this was the present moment and he wanted to live it as he did the lessons of his past and his dreams of the future. Although the vision of the date palms would someday be just a memory, right now it signified shade, water, and a refuge from the war.

You must love the desert, but never trust it completely. Because the desert tests all men: it challenges every step, and kills those who become distracted.

And if you didn't fall hopelessly and romantically in love with the desserts of the Giza pyramids after reading this book, well then you must not be a hopeless romantic!! :)

Day before yesterday my bosses said they wanted to talk to me today; they are probably getting concerned about the less than stellar performance promised by my previous bosses. I was able to talk myself through it and they seemed happy at the end. But today, well actually yesterday, after lots of crying that physically shook me like it hasn't for a long long time, I decided I will become happy again.

It was also a time I felt gratitude for the constants of my life, for the love, for the witness to my life. Even at times that my mind strays, I have found comfort in the constants. And for the first time in a long time, I said a clear 'no' to temptation, so I will be comforted in the constants.

And tonight I came home and huddled on my couch under the throw with a hot chocolate and finished reading The Alchemist and it calmed me in so many ways. Paranoia and psychosis are gone tonight and a strong determination to keep them at bay is now within me.

It also made me think of new beginnings; I have been for a while, but this time it felt stronger: my yoga teacher said last week (I know, I don't believe it either - that I am quoting a yogi):

Something's have been in your life and served you well and now they have earned the right to die. Offer them up to the fire, to agni, to make room for new beginnings. Let them die with dignity.

and the Alchemist quote that really, really talked to my heart at this time,

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

If I were to go by the book's theme of 'recognizing omens' so I would realize my 'Personal Legend', this would be it!

"Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?"

"Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you're thinking about life and about the world."

- The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

Dental Cleaning with a view

my first dental cleaning in Vancouver - about time you'd say, but there was like a 3-month wait period after making the appointment - perhaps, because I looked up ratemyMD and found one of the top 5 dentists. So the X-ray revealed one bad tooth that needed a filling and perhaps even a root-canal (!!!!??) - this made me throw a huge fit of denial, which surprised the doctor and so he opened his mouth to reveal like 10 crowns!!! I didn't tell him I intended to get to 50 without a single filling and also wondered if I made the right choice - I mean the man has obviously not taken care of his own teeth. A week or so later they would do a filling, and it seemed I was just short of a root canal, and they put a white crown (that cost me $50 out of pocket!!!! - they didn't even ask if they could put the silver one, that was in fact covered by my insurance... I might have opted for the silver, since it was an upper tooth and since I am a bit shorter than average people, the chances are no one would actually see the color of my crown... oh well). Anyway, it was also the first time I was anesthetized, which freaked me out since I didn't know how less is normal, to feel once you are been anesthetized - so it was this big drama of me asking for more anaesthesia and wanting the dentist to hold the mirror to my mouth every 2 minutes so I see what he was doing - so of course now there is a small roughness, that I will have to wait for a month or two before I get smoothed out.

This is the view from the dentists office - looking directly down my street - somewhere at the end of this picture is my apartment, eclipsed by the giant high-rises in the horizon.

Anyway, this all made me think of one of my friends from MN, who shuffles back and forth between there and Van and he is this former Soviet Union person so he is all-glory-to-socialism and is so enamoured by the Canadian health care system, compared to the US one, and he specifically talked about getting a dental cleaning appointment in Vancouver within a week of calling... so either he is lying, or he lives in some God-foresaken suburb - I am going to go with the latter... a lot of people tend to refer to suburbs of big cities as the big cities themselves... I beg to disagree, and disagree very much...

Anyway, I like universal health care because it allows affordable health care to everyone - so go universal health care, yes! But, I must admit, as a poor grad student at UMN, I had way better health care than I ever had in Montréal (maybe Vancouver might be different, I haven't been to the hospital yet) - in the UMN hospital there was a sign that said 'speak to us if you have been waiting here for more than 15mins.' and in Montréal, even when I went to the supposedly faster clinics, I had to wait for 1hr and 20mins, with a killing stomach-ulcer pain, before I got seen! But that was regular hospital; ok, so in UMN, you had to make a dental hygiene appointment 6months ahead, but you have to remember that was in the dental school - I tried to get in to the UBC dental school, they wouldn't even consider me unless I had some dental problem (makes sense - they are after all a teaching hospital for dentists where cleaning is not that important I guess)... So, yes I agree, I was one of the lucky few who got to go to a large enough school with good enough health insurance in the US - but it is indeed a little disconcerting that one had better health care when one was earning less than 1/3rd of the current income... I am not saying, "Canada c'mon get with the US program" - I imagine the Canadian system is better on the overall, but it is not as spotless as people like to think...