Cap in Hand

I know I’ve told you before about how certain music reminds me of spans of events. But I was listening to Sunshine on Leith, that is, the Proclaimers, on my iPod and it brought me back to a different kind of memory. There are certain collections of music that remind me of my parents and my childhood.

I associate Sunshine on Leith with driving with my dad in his green Mazda pick-up, and I think there was also another Proclaimers album in the mix there. I think of the rents when I hear the Beach Boys because they have some of those records (like vinyl old-school records). Patsy Cline is totally my mom, walking after midnight, in the moonlight, just waiting for you.

A lot of that childhood music is associated with the vinyl collection circulating through the ol’ turntable. Like Boney M and the valuable lesson in Russian history (“Ra-ra-rasputin, lover of the Russian queen”) and Puff the Magic Dragon.

A lot of musicals also come to mind, particularly Phantom of the Opera, Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat and Cats since my mom took us to those when we were kids. All very good soundtracks if you ask me. And for anyone who maintains that Cats is stupid, you probably don’t even know that the song lyrics are from T. S. Eliot poems and that T. S. Eliot wrote “The Hollow Men.” Yeah. Think about it. No, YOU think about it.

I know we probably had some kid music rolling around as well, but mostly what I remember is from the TV shows, like Skinamarink and some Fred Penner classics.

But, when I was like 10 or something my cousins gave me this tape called “Cool Jammings.” This must have been my first experience with ‘real’ music, all contemporary and mainstream and everything. It was a collection of beach and summer related songs. These included Stir it Up, Kokomo, Hands up (give me your heart, give me give me your heart, give me give me), Montego Bay, The Tide is High (and I’m moving on, you’re gonna be my number one), Red Red Wine, and many other timeless classics. I didn’t forget much about that tape, especially the fact that my older brother ‘hid’ it from me. I’m sure his reasoning was that he needed to constantly assert his eldest sibling-ness. I think he threw it out because I searched the house for it and it was NOWHERE. Jerk face. Yeah, you heard me. I called you a jerk face (that was just to my brother).

Anyway, what music reminds you of your parents? Anything hilariously embarrassing? I hope so.

But the very next day you gave it away

Well, good weekend with Dinah, who left on Sunday. I believe she will be posting pictures of all the food we ate, so I suggest you all check that out when they pop up (link on the sidebar). Its always the way… you never do touristy thing sin the city you live in unless you’re with someone who wants to be touristy for a while. Unfortunately they had a big box thing around the eternal flame fountain that’s in front of parliament, I really wanted to show her that because its my favourite thing there. Oh well. We looked at the statues and stuff anyway.

And oh the food, there’s this Mexican restaurant called “Ahora” with, seriously, the best nachos ever. And everything on the menu comes with guacamole. So good.

Well, I don’t feel very coherent or narrative at the moment. However, I can tell you about my paper!

I’m writing a final paper for my Person-Case constraint seminar in which I will be talking about inverse systems, normally found in inverse systems (but attested in other language families as well). I’m going to review previous work on the topic which uses different analytic approaches: 1) Grammar external animacy hierarchies, 2) Syntactic and 3) Morphological. I wanted to make my analysis morphological in nature, but it will definitely have to be morpho-syntatic since the agreement on the verb obviously interacts with the syntactic structure. I’m going to compare 3 Algonquian languages, Plains Cree, Passamquoddy and Ojibwa. I’m hoping to get the meat of my argument with Ojibwa, since that’s supposedly “my language”.

But it should be good. I’m going through phases of feeling really good about it and being a little terrified. Its not due till January 3^rd, and only like 25 pages so I really don’t have anything to worry about. Normally I would have a grand total of 3 weeks to work on a paper like that while doing papers, assignments and exams for other classes at the same time. But no, I just have this left, so I’m going to make it as good as I can.

Ok. So I’m really hoping Dinah does a good blogging of the weekend since I don’t feel like I can. But it was good. Very good.

I <3 Wham!.

The British are coming

So MSN hates me for some arbitrary reason. This week I have not been able to sign onto msn from my computer. It just says “Service temporarily unavailable.” Well maybe my version of temporary differs from theirs or else they’re screwing with me for some reason. Nothing changed on my computer. It just will not let me sign in. I even re-downloaded and re-installed it. Piece of Microsoft crap, that’s what I say.

So how do you deal with people you don’t particularly want to be associated with in every situation? Say you’re helping someone with their Phonology homework, and conversation naturally intersperses itself throughout the study time. Good enough. But, also, say this someone has the loudest, most wall penetrating voice you’ve ever encountered and the door to your office is wide open. Further, suppose this person starts telling a story that would easily be interpreted as wildly inappropriate and offensive and repeats the possibly offensive word over and over, and takes his sweet, ear piercing time telling it. Clearly I am now associated with the inappropriateness since it’s in my office. Clearly my likely reputation and a decent person is completely ruined since my office neighbours that of two professors. How do I disassociate from that?

It was obviously impossible during the telling of the tale to tell this someone to shut the ---- up since I am just not the kind of person who can do that. I tried to make signals that I wanted to work and that the phonology study session was over.

Seriously, I need some advice on this. I lost sleep last night. Why can’t people take hints and shut up? I know I should shut up sometimes, and I apologize if I have similarly put anyone into this situation. But honestly, he was so loud. The possible consolation that someone might not have heard was completely destroyed with the mental reminder of the decibel level produced.

I didn’t even want to show my face in the department today, but had to in order to go to class.

Nothing's gonna stop us now

Well sports fans, we have reached the presentation finish line because I am DONE presentations for this semester. The last one was yesterday, and yes, I did turn red, and yes, my handout did shake in my hand but it went pretty well. I figure the major saving factor in any presentation is just really knowing what you’re talking about. So if you get lost on your handout or someone asks a question then it’s ok. Easy!

But now it’s paper writing time. Before I was expecting to have to write two final papers, but then a light shone down from the insulating ceiling tiles above and directed is sparkling rays on the top of my yesterday-showered head. I have the same professor for the two classes that I have final papers in, one class is at the MA level while the other is a PhD seminar. She suggested to me and the other MA student in the seminar that that we should just make the seminar paper a little longer and it would count for the syntax class as well.
Can anyone say Bouya?
Can I get a Holla?

Yeah, I know, amazing. So instead of writing a 20 page paper and a 12 page paper (having to think of distinct topics for both) I just have to write a 25 page paper, all in a continuous flow. I’ve written 25 page papers before, it should be fine.

But today it’s finally SuNnY! Its been raining most days for a few weeks now, and I walked out of my bedroom door this morning and began experiencing an odd sensation in my eyes. I thought to myself, what is different? After a few blinking moments I realized that it was the beautiful light streaming through the window and the lack of low rain clouds in the sky.

So, I’m feeling pretty good. I hope you get a slice of goodness and/or sunshine in your day too.

A runcible spoon

I bought my first uOttawa hoodie today! Now I can wear it instead of my U of T hoodie, which is my favourite, but I feel funny when people see me on campus. I feel like they think I’m saying that I’m better than them, but really I’m just wearing my awesome hoodie. So my new one is like cyan blue or something (Amina, I don’t think you read my blog, but it’s the same colour as that U of T hoodie you got in the spring) which is fantastic since I love blue, but its also kind of a girly blue. I’m finding that a little bit of girl in my wardrobe is probably not so bad, but I could never go all the way to pink, that would betray my very self.

My last presentation is on Monday, and then its paper writing time! Also I’m incredibly excited that Dinah is coming to visit me next weekend, ye-ah! We’re going to eat nachos and poutine and our hearts will stop during the most amazing weekend EVER! This Saturday my roommate and I are throwing a surprise birthday party for our other roommate who turned 26 last weekend. We’re calling it Operation Alpha-Beta… because he’s as many years old as there are letters in the alphabet, and everything sounds cooler when you use Greek letters. There’s also an Operation Hot Brother underway, but I won’t explain that now. And if it sounds bad to you then I’m ashamed of you and I punish you to watching some Arrested Development.

Does anyone else struggle with the question, “So what exactly do you do?” Because I cannot succinctly tell people what I do do. Meh. Anyway, I toyed with the idea of putting the best picture ever up today, but I haven’t because Pyweon might not be thrilled about it (even though I’m in the picture too). It’s from that time we had a girls night at Sharona’s. I think you remember.

Peace out.

Dear Mature Student,

I am very happy for you that you are taking more school and getting the education in the area you always wanted to. I think its fabulous when people do what they actually want to do in life, so Kudos for breaking out of the traditional behaviours dictated by our society. But I have a few things to say.

First, if you are one of those mature students who sits in the middle-back of the class and quietly takes your notes, asks relevant questions and generally acts like a normal student I have no beef with you, keep doing what you’re doing.

If you are the other kind of mature student I would really like to fill you in on a few facts. We know that you’re old, plain and simple. Not to be overly rude, but we can see that and judge the level of your oldness purely on physical factors, so don’t think we do not realize this fact. We also know that by virtue of being old you have had more years of life experience than we have. This is clear. So please do not talk to us in your sing-song storyteller voice like we’re 9 year olds who have a hard time understanding any degree of abstractness. We don’t need it and rarely do we appreciate it.

We know you’ve done other jobs and degrees before you came here to study with us, and when it’s relevant we are friendly with the idea that you would like to share some of that information with us. But relevance is key. It is utterly painful to have to sit through you’re attempt at an eloquent diatribe explaining some riveting phenomena in literature studies, philosophy, English, or any other discipline that is not the one related to this particular class’ course code.

We do not want to hear how you did it back in the day when that does not align itself to how we do it now. Your virtue of being old does not excuse you from the mass amounts of reading that we all have to do or the current level of understanding we are supposed to achieve. Just because you dress in more formal clothes and completely exclude hoodies from your wardrobe does not fool the professor as to your amount of intelligence. In fact, professors are quite clever these days at evaluating students based on their actual work and analysis.

Overall, I do not appreciate your condescension, mostly because I am not a member of the lower gentry in the early 19^th century. I do not mean to disrespect my elder but please realize that we are equals in the context of our studies and we wish to be treated as such.

Mostly I am asking that you shut up in class because we have no interest in you making class go longer than scheduled. I do not agree with your whispered scathing comments but have no socially appropriate outlet to tell you this.

Thanks.

Aren’t we the same as we were in Jr High?

I was just wondering about that today. In girl circles, at least, we still tease each other about boys, complain about homework, eat junk food and watch movies together, and have sleep-overs. The biggest change is the amount of parental involvement/supervision we have to deal with. We decide when we want to do all of those things and no one is yelling down the stairs for us to be quiet while we’re giggling on the living room floor.

I mean, we still watch the same movies we did when we were 13: Dirty Dancing, 10 Things I Hate About You, Centre Stage, Save the Last Dance, The Little Mermaid. The quality and selection of flick seems to be fairly constant. There’s always the new movies thrown in there but the classics remain (and yes, I leave Grease out on purpose).

In Jr High we hung out in guy/girl groups, even now I have the occasion to still do that. We went on (organized) trips where the bus ride was an integral part, and now its just replaced by the spontaneous road trip. We didn’t know where our lives were going or where we end up, and I’m fairly sure that most people my age ponder upon this daily. Some of us have more expendable income (some of us less) but we still buy the clothes and CDs we always did, well, not the exact ones, but you know. A good time hanging out eternally involves good food at some well known casual-type restaurant, but we don’t need the rents to drive us anymore (or we shouldn’t at least). Maybe situations change, but aren’t we still the same? Because seriously I’m not that mature.

Just a thought.

Fig. 1.1 'S'more'

CGNU

It makes me think about coffee while I'm drinking coffee.

2010!

Should I move to Vancouver next year and go to UBC so that I can be in the Lower Mainland in 2010 for the winter Olympics? Actually, I don’t care what you think, I make my own decisions. If I think that going to a school simply to geographically coincide with the Olympics is what I want then that’s what I’m going to do.

Crazily I am again looking at schools, deciding where I might want to do a doctorate. I could go on and on, but I don’t really feel like talking about it right now. But if McGill would let me in I would definitely go there, and hopefully the Olympics would be during reading week….

Am I insane? Is more school what I want? (And yet I do go on and on.) Yes, I think it is… its like avoiding the real world for longer but also being trained and prepared for actual jobs in the real world, doing things I actually want to do. Fortunately grad school is generally funded so it’s not like I’m going to school for 9 years just to have debt for all those years, only half of them. Yes, 9 years, that’ll be about right. I started undergrad at 17 so if all goes in sequence without major complications I should be a doctor of Linguistics when I’m 26.

Maybe I really need to seriously consider a year off. Canada is nice and all, and pretty much the most practical place to do all my schooling, but there’s a whole world out there. A world of no awful presentations or papers (although I kinda like writing papers, we’ll just conclude with a high level of freak-ness contained within my person) where you just do whatever whenever, at least for a few months. Backpacking, the very word tastes sweet as I form it in my mouth.

NOTE: All above questions and ramblings are simply and externalization of ongoing mental dialogue and are not ponderings actually put to you, the reader.

Coldplay

Did you know that if you take your wide-mouthed Nalgene (or any other such reusable container) to 7-11 and fill it with slushie it only ever costs 99 cents? Sweet, I know, but let me tell you that’s a lot of sugar to digest while you’re battling brain-freezes along the way.

I miss having food prepared for me at regular intervals. Don’t worry, I’m sucking it up.

I went to a Catholic church on Sunday, its different, very different from what I’m used to, but it was fine. Very ceremonial and formal. Which can be good.

I’m writing presentation number 2 right now to be presented a week from today.

I love Radiohead, they rock my socks off. There there….

I’m going to my friends house to watch Dr Who tonight, David Tennant is also a sock rocker, but I miss Christopher Eccleston as well.

I was given a Cadbury peanut butter bar today, peanut butter is a close and lasting friend.

I ate a couple packages of Popeye cigarettes. Mmmmm… mhm…

I have to go to class in 10 minutes.

Hallo-weeny

Yes, you will have to put up with a certain volume of baby pictures from now on. But isn't baby cute?

Since I’m telling everyone anyway

So Tuesday was good, I went out trick-or-treating with the little cousins. I did dress up a little, to my shame … my roommate had this board of stick-on moustaches so all three of picked one to wear on Halloween. I wore my stache with an old plaid patterned blazer and I was a salesman, somehow. I guess one of those really greasy salesmen…..

And my roommate went to the Chinese Embassy, but it was closed. Haha, no free electronics for him, probably just an urban legend.

On Monday I did my first presentation which was on feature geometry (in Phonology, I’m not doing Math any more) and I am told that it was pretty good. I don’t know how much I believe it since these comments were expressed alongside a set of other interesting comments. At least I had a partner, which means I only had to talk for half of the 15 minutes and if I started melting into a hideous glob of stage fright I knew she’d still be there to present the conclusion.

This is how it went: I began, doing the intro, presenting the proposal, doing ok. But as pointed out by others afterwards there were few red blotches on my face. The blotches, as the ticking seconds passed by, turned into an even hue of scarlet across the entirety of my normally pasty face. I got redder and redder the longer I kept talking which is accompanied by the hot face feeling.

When I started talking it was mostly full, semi-flowing English sentences. However, as per the increasing blush I began to talk faster and faster as well. My mom calls this my quizzer voice. So by the end of my half of the presentation I was talking too fast and didn’t have any time to think and was almost going to start into a series of frightening convulsions where my voice wavers drastically and I can’t hold a piece of paper. Then my partner took over and I stared at the desk until she was done.

Then, of course, question period comes after and its usually only the prof who’s been asking questions. He asks us what we mean by 3D blah blah blah, so I say, well its like so blah blah blah. He continues to ask, “Could you draw it?” To which I promptly respond, “No.”

Apparently this was funny, saying no to a prof, directly, unapologetically. But my partner began to draw it on the board anyway. I warned my partner many times before the presentation that this would happen, turning red and shaking and what not. I think she felt fairly cautioned because she wasn’t mad at me after or anything.

That was my first presentation, only 3 more to go! Fantastic. People keep telling me it gets easier the more you do it. Whatever.