The Coffeehouse

I'm back, and it's time to get things started up again!

But first, let's make our way over there, shall we? 

Yeah, so it's not really over construction, but it's time for a fresh-ish start :) 

So you kinda guessed I'm not around eh?

I left good ole Canada on Monday, and it was very hectic the couple days before that. I mean, so hectic that I packed for a month-long trip on Monday....

Now, I'm somewhere among hills and valleys, and getting lost in the alleyways of the old cities.

See y'all in a few weeks!

This is my last week at work, and I guess I'll tone it down a bit, but YEAY!

It's been an overall good experience, learned lots of new things, met great people, but there is such an air of bureaucracy here. I can't stand it. Is it always like this? I hope not.

This past year, I just couldn't wait to grab my degree and hit the ground running. But the problem was, to where? And now I'm finishing up this job and I've gotten some great ideas, and again, I just want to take off running. I want to do something.

None of which might be feasible at the present moment due to things I'd like to take a chainsaw to.

I tried to do those long-term goal thingy-majingys, but what if I can't wait? What if I want to do it now, and may possess the capability, just not the support?

And what if I obtain the experience and capability, but the support might never be there?

Speaking of gift-giving...

Having a large extended family is a blessing, right? In disguise? If so, mine's got some great costumes.

In two weeks, we're going on a family vacation (God willing, as we say) to visit family and possibly attend a cousin's wedding (the first cousin-wedding I'd be going to). And as I imagine would be almost every culture's tradition, visitors come bearing gifts in exchange for free room, board, and food. Although there is no guarantee of the last part of the business deal, in case the gifts just plain suck.

I have about 30+ first cousins. *gasp*

But we won't be seeing them all. *phew*

But many of them have gone off and gotten married and produced offspring. *yikes*

You see where this is going? Do you realize how much of our luggage won't be actually ours?

I've spent the last couple of days at the mall, trying to pick out age and size appropriate stuff for relative. It's really difficult. For every person on our list, we conduct an indepth analysis of age, height, weight and other physical characteristics, and personality traits. We count back to figure out their age, and squint in an attempt to try and remember and/or predict their height, weight, and sense of style.

If we end up wrong about anyone, I know I'll just breakdown and cry.

I started my summer job on Monday, it's been quite interesting so far. Much different than last year's summer gig at the Ministry of Environment, not better, but different. Oh wait, no it is better: downtown (out exploring during my lunches), all-you-can-drink-coffee (the guys in my office are BIG COFFEE DRINKERS, yup, in all-caps, lovely people), and no robotic data-entry stuff. But, I'm the youngest person here, and there are no other students/interns on my floor as of yet, so it gets lonely. My past few days can be summed up by this oft-repeated phrase.

"Here, take these reports, look at these websites, and..y'know, read, get a feel for things."

So that's all I've been doing...reading. Which really, is no different than what I did in university, except now I'm getting paid to read (thank you responsible tax-paying Canadian citizens, special thanks to WLFG, Mona, and Omar2Cents). But it's oh-so-much harder reading government documents. Especially if you're reading simply for the sake of reading. I haven't been instructed to focus on specific issues, or look up a policy or anything you'd think a Research Analyst would do. I just read. And it's really difficult to stay focused (and dare I say, awake?) when there is no specific purpose to your reading except "getting a feel for things". To me, that's like reading the introduction/executive summary, and skimming through the remaining hundred or so pages. But I'm given two hundred-page reports to keep me occupied for the day.

Okay, I feel bad for complaining, and I think I'll stop now before I jinx myself and end up swamped with stuff to do and deadlines to meet and stuff....

It's settled, I want to be a pirate when I grow up. It looks like a lot of fun, you sail a lot, you play with swords, and you get a lot of booty (the non-anatomical type). Plus, your eyeliner and eyeshadow can be smudged and it looks good. Why, if it's not smudged and runny, then you ain't a true buccaneer.

Can you tell I have Pirates of the Caribbean Fever? :)

Arrrr!

..would be the title of a study done on The Coffeehouse. I am so ashamed I've turned this place into such an unworthy blog. I'm not exactly sure why summer does this to me. It's not like I'm extremely busy, just extremely lazy. Extreme laziness has come over me, procrastination, all that good stuff. Also, I want to spend every minute of my day outside, I can't stand to be in my room. If I'm at home, I'm out on the front steps or in the backyard, I can't seem to get enough of the sunlight, I feel like punching a hole in the wall to let more light in. Ideally, I would also be typing this post outside in the backyard.

So what have I been up to? Well, I did get a summer job, this time at the Ministry of Energy. Which is why I was kicked out of jury selection. "Excused" is the term they like to use, since you volunteer to "excuse" yourself, but I still think it's a kicking-out. It wasn't my fault the trial date was to fall on the first day of my job, I wanted to perfom my civic duty. Whatever, the justice system lost a loyal, open-minded, justice-loving juror. That was yesterday. I expected it to be like them John Grisham novels, or like the show The Jury, "real life drama" like the lady said in the video they showed us (I'm not kidding, she promised we'll see "real life drama unfolding in front of our eyes"), but no. No drama.

On Victoria Day, my family decided to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton. I'll leave it to the pictures.

So I visualized, something a bit long-term-ish, kinda vague-ish, but I visualized nonetheless. And part of that visual was doing something that I write about extensively on this blog, cleaning my room. And that's what I did yesterday after work, cleaned my room! Okay, fine, not completely, but it's a work in progress. Usually, cleaning my room is just putting things back into place, but this time, I cleaned with my vision, with a purpose. It feels great to finally have a sense of direction.

This, is way overrated.

Forget that last optimistic-y, glass-half-full, new beginnings, sappy post.

I handed in my last essay last Friday, I woke up on Saturday and.....nothing was different!

I didn't feel older, smarter, more mature. Sure, I may have felt a teeny tiny sense of accomplishment, I liked all the "congratulations", I'm looking forward to presents. Still, this is disappointing...

All that's changed is...... the pressure.

Pressure to find a job.
Pressure to get married.
Pressure to clean room (okay, this one is understandable).
Pressure to [fill in the blank].

There was supposed to be independence! (fun)responsibility*! adventure! independence (yes, twice)!

At this moment, I'm feeling a bit of "gaaah" crossed with "blaaaaggh", with a touch of "uggghh".

This better get better. Il est nécessaire qu'il devienne mieux. (I miss French class...sigh)

___________________________
*whatever that is... responsibility that you want to have? responsibility by choice?

My sister had a midterm exam this morning and she decided to go out with friends last night and not come back till late and be tired and be too sleepy to study. So she did what I usually do when I really can't and don't have the time to nap, but I need to anyway so that I have energy to stay up and study: she napped on my bed while I had the music going and was trying to clean-up my room. It's a psychological thing. You're so tired that you'll sleep through anything, bright lights and rock music, but the environment will keep you from going into deep REM. At 2:20 am (my sleeping pattern is still very messed up from the holidays), she flops on my bed with no instructions as to when to wake her up or if I'll be getting my bed back. I manage to get some mumbled answers from her and fix up the alarm clock next to my bed for 5 am so that she can get some rest but wake up and have a couple of hours to study before her test. I get her cell phone from her room and set the alarm on that for 5 am as well. I would have slept on her bed until she woke up, but she had notes and books scattered everywhere and I didn't wanna mess it up, also I needed to make sure she woke up and studied! (I swear, sometimes I feel like I'm her mother, I even set my cellphone alarm to 5 am, we had 3 alarm clocks in one room!). I've been wanting an excuse to sleep in my sleeping bag again. This is the sleeping bag that I bought and used for my Palestine trip and it holds a very special place in my heart. So I spread it out on the floor of my room and remembered the good times...

The summer program N and I were going to attend had rented a boy's secondary school and we'd be sleeping in classrooms, so a sleeping bag was needed. On our second attempt at entering the West Bank, we spent most of the day in a room where bag searches were being done. Just watching the soldiers open up each bag, search every sleeve, pocket and leg of shirts and pants, take samples from shampoos and toothpastes and pass empty bags through x-ray machines, then watch the owners of the bags refold and repack. Finally, it was my turn to watch the soldier mess up my clothes and belongings that I had so meticulously organized and packed. She got to my sleeping bag, took it out of its casing, unzipped it, padded it down, and sent it through the x-ray machine. She gave me a questioning, confused look. I had stuffed a flashlight into the casing as well.

"Why do you need a sleeping bag and a flashlight?" We told them we were going to be staying at the Novotel Hotel in Jerusalem, tourists that we are.

N and I had come up with every possible answer to every possible question that we could've been asked, and non of it was truthful. We forgot about the sleeping bags, and the flashlight. Luckily, I had just pored over a tourist guide to "Israel" the night before. Tourist.

"We're planning on visiting Soloman's pillars, camping out in the Negev desert. Y'know sleep under the stars, watch the night sky."

"You're crazy, you're gonna get eaten by mosquitos." Skeptic.

"That's okay, it'll be fun."

She was right about them mosquitos, everyone would joke that they were Israeli mosquitos, sucking the blood out of us. They call it "el hiss-hiss", although some say "el hiss-hiss" is another blood sucking insect, still Israeli. Every morning, I'd wake up with 2 or three bites on my lips, several on the rest of my face, and even more on my hands. The bites would be so bad, that I'd wake up from the pain they caused. Without any type of alarm clock except throbbing pain in my hands, I'd wake up at about 7 am every morning. On the bright-side, I always beat the morning rush to the bathroom. I'd almost suffocate during the night, zipping up my sleeping bag over my head, trying to keep out the hiss-hiss. And when I peek my head out to get some fresh air, they attack. You can hear them coming in groups...hisss, hisss.....