car

So, I am moving to the new place tomorrow, so I was thinking of moving somethings with the car tonight. I go to where I parked my car and don't find it. First panic, then strangely, a thought of relief crosses my mind and I am already making plans for zip-car. I am thinking at worse it has been stolen and I won't do anything about it and at best it has been towed, in which case I won't do anything either; the city can keep the car. I don't want my life to be dictated be a car.

But either way, loss is not a very pleasant feeling - the idea that you didn't give it away, but it was actually taken away from you and it wasn't on your clock.

So I call the city towing, and what do I hear? There was road construction and so they actually moved my car to a different street. No other city that I lived in did that for me - if there was going to be construction there would be signs, often within 24 hrs, and if you are not moved, you are towed to the city towing lot at your expense. Either Vancouver is super nice, or they got slapped with a huge liability case - I am going to go with the former.

So the next day I go to find my car. And it turned out that they actually moved my car to a no parking zone and then slapped a parking ticket on it - still better than being towed. Also it was a case that when you expect worse, and are faced with just bad, that bad doesn't seem so bad anymore. Relieved I was.

When I got in the car and started it, the feel the smell... I thought, what was I thinking when I was being relieved and thinking of going car-less? I love my car - yep this cosmetically damaged old car... I still don't want my life to be dictated by a car... but *a* car is different from *my* car.

iPad

iPads are soon becoming granny toys - with its inability to multitask (did they fix that in 2?) and clunkyness, and also its marketability as a reader, it is catching up with grandma's like crazy - I am seeing quite a few of them using them in buses. It is now one of those things that owning it makes you cool if you are a grandma, but not so cool, if you are any where below the age of 70! I do remember being all excited when it first came out, just like I was all excited to receive my 'voici votre ipod touch' e-mail and what not, but this interest quickly died away for the iPad. I must admit the Touch is still cool, well, not as cool as the Android smart phones... :D

Assembling a 47" Television

... and its stand... One of the few things we did together, without me being freaked, bored or perplexed...

I haven't had a tv in a house that I lived in, since I left my parents' place... and then I have this huuuuuge one now... (not mine though)....

The Latte Limo

seen while apartment hunting in Kitsilano, the hippy bastion of Vancouver...

Today when I got in the bus, it was pretty crowded, with all those people standing, there was just one seat, next to a pretty normal looking guy with a bike helmet. When you see an empty seat like that, with no obvious water or anything, you just sit, right? Well don't, next time... So I have a list of addresses written on my notebook, addresses of apartments I am going to check out. And I am pensive, but not thinking of anything in particular. The bike helmet guy next to me goes like "so how are you going to be when you get there?" and I am like huh? (cos also, I heard he asked "so how are you going to pee when you get there?"). He repeated the question, still I am thinking "pee", but since I am not the girl to shy away and encourage that sort, I said "just as I always do". And he goes "well how *is* that?" and this point I ask him "I'm sorry I don't think I understood the question". When he repeats this time and adds "you know are you going to be happy, are you going to be content..." I understand, but it is even more confusing than "pee". So I am like "I don't know" and he's like "you know you have the choice to be whatever *you* want" and I am like "ok".... and I laugh. He quips "you think it's funny", I say "yeah" he says "well yeah I am a funny guy" and it was not sarcastic or anything. Moments of silence follow, he says "you still haven't answered my question.... you know it's a simple question"... and adds condescendingly "but most people can't answer this question"!!!!

oh hippies...

I had to get off the bus as I was at my stop... I wish I had been on the bus longer... and contrary to what I said before, I would again sit next to him... He was interesting, like all crazy people are...

I must also mention this one apartment that I wrote to, from an ad on craigslist (craigslist is the way to find apartments in Vancouver... actually probably in Montréal too; I found mine on Kijiji, the French equivalent of craigslist). So the apartment manager writes back, 'Namaste...'. That is the biggest problem with some people... they read my name and immediately assume I am from some place, and god forbid they be wrong, so they pucker up and kiss my ass, and it totally misfires! I went to see it anyway, since it was the only character house at that time. When I meet him, he showers me with 'in-India' stories, like we like to keep our apartment warm, like in India, food in India and what not... after sometime I say "well I wouldn't know" to which he says "oh you were born and raised here?" to which I say "I was born and raised in Sri Lanka" and he goes, "oh India, Sri Lanka - same thing, no?" !!!!! And that is the second biggest problem with those people, even when they are oh-so-wrong, they think they were right anyways!

Diffractions and Meditation

knock knock... "I want to humbly share something with you"

he uses the word 'humbly' a lot...

"ok, what is it?"

A long story about visions of archangel Micheal and neutrinos and how to get the energy of the neutrinos and what not...

"come here babe... I want to show you something"

so he sits me down and sits in front of me cross legged on the floor, puts on some meditative cd. I am like, ok, why not - meditating can not be bad, right? So I am (like a little puppy) all straightened back, hands on my thighs, eyes closed, listening to this cd right - all ready to meditate - 2 minutes in to the thing he's done and he's like "see what I mean?" and I am sitting there thinking "what kind of a hippy are you -you can not even meditate for 3 minutes straight and I am supposed to be this crazy ga-ga physicist girl and I have more meditative power than you..."...

He takes out this cd and holds it to the light, and says "see that light? what color do you see?". My optics lessons kick in, and I am thinking of the wonders of diffraction gratings (all those diffraction experiments really blew me away when I first learned them, and still do in fact). And he's moving his head from side to side and saying "ah man... look at those colors change - there's energy in this cd man... did you see that?"...

He jumps up and sits next to me, saying "imagine... imagine I am your colleague... I am Einstein and you... you are fucking (my name)"... I am like "whoa... how the fuck did that ever happen - how did I get stuck with fucking (my name) and you get to be Einstein?"... but I don't say this... (to clarify, he doesn't use the 'fucking' word in disparage... it is, as it is in the US, just a figure of speech).

"I am gong to say to this cd, good things and then mean things... no wait... I am not even going there... I am only going to say good things". And then for the next couple of minutes, this grown man is sitting there, with this cd in his hand, talking to the cd "you are beautiful.... I love you... I think we are going to be together for a long time... I feel this is going well"... At the end he says , "well the shape didn't really change, but I think the colors changed... did you see that?". "No" I say, "but it must because I am not gifted"...

He talks about some guy who wrote some books about this voodoo science... "this man wrote about these extra dimensions... they say this in physics too now right?". Right I think, but string theorists are just as crazy as you... "And when I was a kid, I figured these all out... but I am not stupid man... I won't go into some extra dimensions that I have no idea about... I don't want to get all messed up man... you with me?"..."was with you until the part about you not getting messed up" I think. "See... also he wrote about aliens and he has come into contact with 2 aliens... but he wrote about these in 1972... long time ago, before we ever met aliens... and now what... we have found aliens, we communicate with them, sometimes we have problems communicating with them... and then we go through these wormholes and all that shit happens... and he wrote about all that in 1972".... Huh?????


He said a couple times, "I have been sitting here tripping" and I was this close to asking him what exactly he meant by 'trip'. It is not pot, I don't smell it... whatever he is on, I would like to try though...

Feminism and Carpetting

So we got new carpets today... It was this cutest Hungarian couple, probably late 40's or so (soooo old, I know ;) ). They had this amazing dynamic - I would have thrown up if I had to work with my significant other like that - imagine being with the same person, and this ain't an office, so being with just this one person only, 24/7!!! But they were pretty cool... and the woman, was there on her knees, pounding them nails away, ripping the carpets and installing them. It might have been even that she did more than the guy. It was such a reflection of what I think of the former Soviet Union (I know Hungary was not in the former Soviet Union), China and such communist countries - my brother commented on this too when we were in China - equal opportunity to all women - no big fuss, no big revolution, no branding eachother, no burning bras, but yes, they are feminists, maybe even more so than the revolution type...

I was spellbound by the way she merged carpet ends seamlessly, like in this pic - see the left side is not merged, it shows the two edges of the carpet, and the right side is merged... whoa... and it is always fun to see all the gizmos these people use, to straighten carpets, to glue them in and what not...

And the guy - he spoke with a Eastern European accent, and he challenged me to chess (as the stereotype goes, for that part of the world - the chess I mean, not the challenging), and when I told him we didn't have a chess board, he was like let's play it in our heads, ok pawn from D2 to D4...!!! I played him like 3 moves and then gave up... I could not keep up with the map - I am really a visual person.

Seamless assimilation

and I don't mean assimilation in a bad, Borg-like way...

There are quite a few Indian (as in from the sub-continent, most of the time I can not tell the difference between us all) bus drivers in Vancouver, which is actually kind of nice - it sort of breaks the stereotype: all Indians must be engineers and doctors... And ultimately I think this is the final barrier to racism: there is an equal proportion of every ethnic group in every profession...