Change

This is how I remember some of my friends…

but this is what they have become now, well at least for 5 days of the week… I am extremely happy about the people who crossed my life's paths, even the not so nice people… grateful for the friendships that were… and in so many ways just happy that some of them aren't anymore… It doesn't mean the friendships I kept come from people who have never changed… It means they changed at a pace that was conformal with my own change… So I still like them and I am happy they are still my friends… Like my mom says, everything happens for a reason…

this from when we went to pick him up for dinner...

And the place I made old dreams

I loved this place... and still do... So many memories, so much learned... so many impressions...

I used to have a bird feeder in

my last few years in grad school, outside of my office. A couple times, when I had to go out of town I had even asked some of my friends to feed the birds... I went to just walk around the old place with a friend, and there it was, my ol' bird feeder, still hanging... with no bird feed, albeit... My friend joked that it will be around till the building is demolished...

It was such a sweet nostalgia inducing act to go back like that... My friend who I was with, who is not in Minneapolis anymore either, and who had said in the past 'Minneapolis, meh... I can take it or leave it' was feeling nostalgic too. It was a good place to us!

Old Dreams and the friends I made them with...

We are, like I have said before, nothing, without our friends. It was good to go to MN, even in the smouldering heat wave. Coming out of the airport the humidity that made breathing a conscious process, reminded me so much of the summers of MN. It was also a welcome change from the rainy, cold and cloudy Vancouver weather as of late; sorry I can't be grim enough!!! But I must say, three days of that and I was ready for Van again.

It was a decision making trip - a trip that would ease me in to making a decision. Dreams, like language, like culture, like people, evolve and sometimes old dreams die, to make room for new ones. Death, even when it is slow and expected and has been a long time a coming, is a sad process and people do all sorts of things to make the mourning process easier. For me it was comforting to meet the people who shared the same dreams as I did at some point in our lives; it was refreshing to see how their own dreams have evolved and what life has brought them, or they have brought to life.

My PhD advisor, surprisingly quickly calmed down at the prospect of me leaving active physics research and we were able to constructively discuss other options - it must have helped to have his sweet wife, who I always was fond of - but this day she said she wished she had her camera so she could take a picture of me, because I was so pretty :D (yes I know!!! she also suggested I send in a picture of myself with my job applications!!! What a sweet ol' lady…)

It was also nice to meet my former office-mates, all of whom have left academia. Two of them in particular had lost a whole bunch of weight and looked like they were in so much better shape than they were when they were in grad school; compare this with a post or two I made about my meeting my former experiment colleagues on my current experiment and wondering why they had let themselves go like that. It was nice see how they had made good lives with whatever it is that they chose - two of them who were working at the same company, were even running a bet on who would loose the most amount of body fat within a given time - I know so nerdy, but I found it to be cute. Going out of academia, does have its perks it seems. It was also fun to recreate the politically incorrect laughter of our former office. I am in so many ways glad you were my officemates.

But I feel ultra blessed for the few friendships I made out of the realm of my office, and in those friendships is where I truly sought solace this weekend. For everything each of you did this weekend, for being the reflection of our friendships, thank you! You will remain nameless here, but you all know who you are. Thank you for driving all the way to see me and reminding me that I am held in your heart in as high esteem as I hold you and for listening to my new dreams and telling me they are not only not stupid, but also that you will buy my book! :) Thank you for the therapeutic cats. Thank you for the motorcycle ride along the witness to many of my life's baffling decisions, the mighty Mississippi river. And thank you, all of you, for trusting me enough to show me what you can do, what you have done and what you will do in your own lives, for teaching me to think differently; for the laughter, for the snapshot of love we hold for each other in our often unexpressive hearts. I am everything I am, because of my friends!

Tiny Plane

Going home in a tiny plane - well this plane will take me to nearby Seattle and then I'll take a normal plane to go to Minneapolis. I can never tell if this is Che Guevara or Big Foot as Alaska Airline's logo. Look the wheel even came out of the wings… tiny tiny plane… Going home in a last effort to save my old dreams, to see if being in the place that made those dreams for me, will change anything… I think of my marriage… before we really separated, we took one last vacation together, to the south of the US, hoping to find a reason to stay together… we didn't… and almost 7years later, I couldn't have been happier that I didn't find a reason to stay… I hope one day I will look at my Minneapolis trip to find reasons to cling on to my old dreams, and say the same thing….

Can I give my old dreams a honorable burial like my yoga teacher says? Can I offer my old dreams to Agni, so room will be made for the new ones?

Fraser Valley

Looking out, at the look out, appropriately, on to the Fraser Valley, with a friend who tries but fails so badly to pacify my agitated mind…. How did I grow to dislike what I am doing so much? I remember telling someone at the beginning of the year that I must think about what I want to do with my life, or I can become like millions of people in the world who do a job that they hate…. At that time I was sure, that I had about a year before I really hated what I was doing… it is 7 months and I feel like I really can't take it anymore… I am getting this close to resigning without another job… Yes, I know, so many people do it and are fine… and I applaud them… but I am not them… yet…

International Jazz Festival

Vancouver International Jazz festival - can't hold a candle to Montréal's. The music, I think, is not that much worse, but the people… oh the polite anglophones…. just live for once will you!!!??

But I actually totally understand... everybody

experiences fun in different ways... no one's fun is any less or any more than the others'. It's just this kind of laid back fun is not so much my thing....

Railway CLub

Railway club - there's a small train going around constantly on the wall!! This is my favorite French conversation venue. Without French conversation, I would have gone insane in Vancouver…

Once, my housemate in Minneapolis said that she likes to go to church, even though she is not a big believer, just because when she was doing refugee work in South East Asia, she found community in the church. I like to think French serves the same purpose for me. As a group of people French people belong right in Europe, with their extremely nationalist ways and intolerance of anything that is not like them, that stems from their imperialist past. But take Europe and multiply their bad by 10 and you have the French. Me, not a big fan of Europe, certainly not a fan of France or French. Despite, it serves as a community for me, a place, a reason for me to seek out new friends. And in the process I learn, not all French people are fucked up….

49th Parallel

Supposedly the best coffee in Van... this was a mean espresso... Yeah I've begun to drink espresso's... straight... (yeah, as in no cream no sugar). I guess this is after I hung out with this Italian guy in Tokai - it looks like all his coffee shpleesh worked...

Cosmopolitan Vancouver

So the butt is not the premise of the photo - it has photo bombed my discrete capture of internationalism in Vancouver. This woman is from Spain and so are her 2 sons but all of them have been living here for sometime and the boys apparently speak good English and correct their mother often, apparently. The woman was telling this story to fellow passenger from Ethiopia who chatted them up. And then they were talking about people they knew from other countries also, who lived in Van now, and how easily or not so easily they picked up English and what not. Other people either chimed in or smiled approvingly.

Vancouver, the most multi-cultural city I have lived in, the second most cosmopolitan city I've truly lived in, the most beautiful city I've lived in (ok well, almost as beautiful as Kandy), the best foodie city I've lived in and I live so close to the beach, something I've always wanted to… And yet, it never really clicked with me - and it seems like I can't wait to leave - a feeling that I have never had for any city that I lived in.

the future, the past and fun café's

Awww… peacock at Cafe Prado

Then to deaux-soleils where I wrote Research Highlights and Project Proposals and Myself essays for jobs, till the wee hours in the night or morning. This beer in a mason jar juxtaposed with a lesbian folk singer and my laptop and papers is me trying to capture the moment. This, and last night when I sat in West End coffee shops writing more stuff reminded me very much of my thesis days. It was a good feeling. Nothing might come out of these endeavours, but it feels so good to give it my all, the only way I know to do things.

OCD people

This old man, with fat fingers presumably, was texting on his phone with the key beep on. I can see how that can be helpful to tell you that you actually hit the key hard enough that the character typed. But yeah, most of us keep this turned off because it is annoying. So he was going beep beep beep beep all throughout for maybe 10 mins. It wasn't annoying to me, but it did get my attention and I quickly psyched myself to tune it out reminding myself that one day I too will be old and have fat fingers - not really… but I always think I have enough crap in my own life to bother me, so I try to minimize external minimal irritants. This was not the philosophy of one of the younger guys sitting in the back with his laptop, who after 10min.s broke down and said asked if he can please turn the sound off. The old man with fat fingers basically asked him to just shut up. Another passenger chimed in, that he too was bothered. And the old man with fat fingers accused both of them and continued to finish his texting - a big fight did not break out, but there was a lot of tension in the bus until the old man with fat fingers got off a couple stops later.

I thought about how as adults, we can not take things easy, how we insist that every little thing bothers us and how we insist to not get along and just fight for no good reason. There are so many things to speak up in this world, but these two boys choose to speak up against some mildly annoying sound. Instead of offering a solution in the form of a simple, 'I will soon finish', the old man decides to snap. All three of them idiots, and I too am guilty of this behavior at times. We are after all very much animals still.

Girls

I don't get along too well with girls, as you may already know. I guess I had an overdose of girls for the first 18 years of my life, or maybe with a such a statistically large sample, I learned that girls are just these super-soft lovey dovey people, but ultra mean humans… well I imagine not any meaner than guys… but I think with guys, I don't have too many boundaries, well not with most… I love the ability to call their crap when it is time, which I can't bring myself to do to girls - again probably all the cry-baby girls from back during my school days. So all this to say, there aren't too many girls that I have truly felt comfortable with and even fewer whose humor I've identified with. Actually I don't say this too proudly - it does eat in to my abilities at work places.

So, Jiae, is one of them girls who I really like. We first had an outside of regular work interaction, while we were discussing housing situation during long times in Japan and she suggested I sublet my apartment to her. She looked quite decent and I agreed - I wasn't going to sublet the place anyway but thought why not. I must admit I was not completely comfortable not knowing if she would be clean or be careful with things. My doubts were soon out to rest when I got to spend a week with her in Japan - she was super clean without being paranoid about it, but what really impressed me was her ability to figure new machines and stuff by guessing - a true physicist. We never agreed how much she should pay for the apartment and when it was time to pay, I gave her the chance to decide - I thought it would be a good way to gauge her - and she did not disappoint.

We had so much fun in Japan that we wowed to continue to hangout when we got back to Van. This is her first attempt - she cooked Korean food for me. The food was simple but tasty - as I have come to know Korean food, spicy and more flavorful than Japanese food. Soon, this black bean powder, that she mixed with milk and honey, will become a staple in my daily food. I will use it with fruit for a snacky drink and then for breakfast with yoghurt.

I must also say there was some pretty intensive romance that was booming between Jiae and one of my very good friends from my PhD experiment, while she was in Tokai. Well I don't know how much of it Jiae identified with, but my friend was definitely in to her. I was very much hoping that it would materialize in to something, with the secret hope that this would somehow lead to both of them being in my life forever. But it is slowly dwindling now… and except for hints now and then, I haven't had the courage to address this issue directly with either of them… oh well…