Disaster.

I was at a conference this weekend at Concordia, so not very far away and easy to budget for. I though it would be ok, I saw a few people that I know from Ottawa, including both of my MA supervisors. I was presenting a paper I wrote with one of my supervisors this summer, and we're presenting this paper again at another conference at York. So presenting isn't my favourite thing in the world, there are many things I do hate about. Despite what some of you may think of me I do have a very shy side, but even worse I suffer from stage fright. Sometimes I am amply able to overcome my stage fright and I have been able to give even decent presentations in the past. Today this was not the case. I started our presentation, and my heart was pounding when I started but I could speak and get the words out, and it was relatively ok. As I kept talking it go soooo much worse. I turned bright red (as I always do), but I've learned to accept that I'm just someone who turns red and I'm generally ok with that. The main problem was that my voice started quarvering, I mean like rolling into big trembling gasp type sentences and this caused a problem for conveying the idea of our presentation. It was like when you're super upset, and you're about to cry and your voice goes and there's nothing you can do to control it. Now, I wasn't going to cry, but it was so difficult to talk, and I tried to take some breaths, but I didn't want to stop in the middle of my talk and do a big "Inhale. Exhale." That would have been even more embarrassing. I just did what ever I could to get to the end of my section where my co-author was supposed to take over. It was truly awful, I am so embarrassed. I felt bad b/c people in the audience felt bad for me. I took some time to recover while my coauthor was talking b/c I was supposed to take a few sections later on, but he forgot this and presented them himself, then remembered a couple sections later and asked if I wanted to do that part. I answered no b/c by that point we were on a section that was his speciality, although I was hoping to redeem myself after gaining some composure. The discussion was fine, I am much better at addressing questions, I think because it's more like a conversation and less like a performance. But I feel terrible. I apologized to my coauthor and promised this wouldn't happen at our next presentation. I don't even know why I went crazy, it was a friendly audience in a comfortable setting. I just lost it.

When I was a kid (and a young teenager) I used to play violin in the Kiwanis festival. I hate that stupid festival. It was ok when I was playing in an ensemble or orchestra, I could focus on what I was doing and blend in with the other performing with me. But I also had to do solos, where I stood up on the stage with no music and had to remember the whole song and hit at the right notes infront of an audience and an adjudicator who was scoring me. I remember once completely forgetting part of a song and freezing -- terrible terrible memories. I was never meant to preform, it is so not my forte. Unfortunately presentations will forever be a part of my life in this career. I've had a few good presentations, so I'm hoping that kind will become more and more frequent.

Today is a bad day

I was getting coffee in the student centre and this girl walked past me and bumped my bag and my elbow while I was holding the coffee. It splashed back and forth, so I thought it was ok, but they she continued her trek past me (and trust me, there was plenty of room for us to coexist contact free) and bumps me again, knocking my backpack off my shoulder and making me splash searing hot coffee everywhere, including on hands and on my pants. The worst part about this is that she didn't even turn around. She didn't care that she'd bumped into someone, and because of this did not see the disatrous effects of her gross lack of courteousy. What a freaking jerk.

My day was not stellar to begin with.

Why Georgia?

I’m going to try and post now, even though I don’t particularly feel like writing now anymore than I did before.

So vegan week was done a long time ago, and it really wasn’t bad at all. The first day after it was over I had pizza (and not very good pizza) but it was still sooo good, I do love cheese. The hardest thing was having to read labels and make sure there weren’t modified milk ingredients in things. I’m not sure how vegans go out to eat, that’s even worse. The soy latte was fine, but I got some soy milk so I could eat my cereal, and that tastes like chalk. I still have half a litre that isn’t going anywhere now that it has to compete with the skim in my fridge.

I’m presenting at a *surprise* (at least to me) conference on Saturday at Concordia. I guess this is one of the quirks of having a co-author. It’s all good though, since me presenting at anything is experience for me at this point. My fellow baby PhD-ers think I’m so experienced b/c I went to 2 conferences already, but I was like them 5 months ago so its really not a big deal.

I’m getting really nervous about submitting my article for publication b/c I saw what some reviewer marks are like and they can be way HARSH. I like my paper, but I can also see where people can pick holes in it, but I’m already at the page limit so I can’t really flesh out every forseen concern at this point.

I have to buy a new kettle, mine tries to electrocute me when I use it. No lie. I’m kinda scared to make tea now, even used a pot of boiling water instead. I drank more tea in Ottawa b/c my roomies drank more tea and would always offer, but its nice to have something warm to hold, and wait for 20 minutes to cool to non-tongue-burning temperature. I used to not let the water boil when I made powdered hot chocolate but my crazy death kettle boils in 24 seconds flat.

Maybe I’ll write more another time.

Deco

I have things to post.

I just don't feel like writing.

GTW!

Does it look like me?

In View

I bought 100 watt light bulbs today, which have made a huge improvement on the lighting situation in my apartment. The floor lamp that is meant to provide visible light for the majority of the volume came with the lowest wattage possible in a standard size bulb. I tried to find out exactly how many watts its taunting dimness emanated from, however it was completely blank, no brand no nothing.

Make fun of me if you will, but I’m going vegan this week. I’ve wanted to try it out for a couple months there but haven’t had a quasi acceptable span on time where I could feed myself the appropriate plant based only food products. Originally I was planning on going for a month like an old housemate of mine (in fairness he did it annually during February since it’s the shortest months) but I thought that might be too long for a first time veg-O like myself. I’m starting today since I finished my yoghurt yesterday – I had to wait until the dairy products were used up in my fridge. I bought a crapload of veggies and other vegan delicacies such as hummus and its been ok for today. I’m thinking within a couple days I’m going to be going crazy for some cheese. At least its not like I was a meat eater, so its only one food group being eliminated.

I went to the McGill bookstore and semi picked out the McGill hoodie that I will wear for days on end this winter. I didn’t buy yet because there were huge line ups b/c all the undergrads are still buying their text books. How I don’t miss those days. I picked the gray hoodie with the red embroidered letters. You may think grey is boring but it was incredibly soft and the other colours weren’t much more exciting. Black and navy blue are boring (and I couldn’t cheat on my U of T hoodie with another navy one for a school whose colours don’t even include blue – go Varsity Blues!*). Anyway, I think it’s a decent grey, very academic.

Ooh! And I should be in Toronto near the end of Toronto, so if you’re one of my friends who still lives in Toronto you might be seeing me on your couch. I was accepted to the Algonquian conference at York. Yes, I know, York, where the subway tunnel dare not approach, but I think the buses still go there. Its not like I’m getting an art degree (because I have no ability to do so) just going to the mall school** for a little conferencing.

Yes I did change my profile picture. It got a little distorted in shrinking à la blogger which gave me a little of the crazy eyes.

*No one goes to U of T for sports.
**As a U of T-er I am constitutionally required to bash York at every opportunity. Its surprising the reactions you get for bad mouthing York (which will accept you if you can use a fork) when not at U of T, a huge contrast to the “Ye-ah” you get on the St. George campus^†.

^†Also UTM and UTSC are not real U of T. This is also required from me, coming from downtown.

Boot to the head

This morning I had a feeling that today was going to be a good day. Last night I went out with some Linguists and Philosophers to a pub just down Sherbrooke from me. That was fun, it was nice to get out and not to just be by myself, wandering around my little apartment, washing dishes and putting things away for lack of more interesting things to do. I met some cool people, got to talk other who I already knew. There was an interesting discussion on the use of oral and written language for divine information to be passed throughout time and between peoples. The argument was that such a method of correspondence runs the risk of being eliminated from the face of the planet by loss of all physical text and people who know the stories and that it should be possible for us to start again from the beginning again. I assume this is fully possible since the whole people of God things started before written text and holy stories passed on between generations.

Anyway, it didn’t turn out to be a good day like I had hoped. Just because of reasons….

I talked to the head of graduate studies in the Linguistics department today trying to get more novel courses on my course list semester. It could turn out that I will end up doing work outside a course framework which could be really good anyway and give me a chance to write and learn about some things independently rather than being constrained to strict curriculums.

I went with a couple of other new linguistics students to grad orientation at the grad house. It was super boring. Just old people droning on and on mostly about things that were common sense. It would have been equally beneficial to give us all the info packets and let us go, but the lollipops were pretty good.

I like Montreal a lot better than Ottawa, and I’ve devised a reason for that. I have realized that my main problem with our nation’s capital is it underlying, yet undeniable, feeling of exclusivity. If you’re not from there then you don’t know where’s fun to go, and its very difficult to get in as an actual friend of an Ottoweenie amonst their Ottowanish comrades. I’m sure this is not true in every sense, but I am really not the only person who has made comments to this effect. Montreal, on the other hand, just feels very open and free, like its ok for you to be there. Perhaps this stems from the greater cultural diversity and size of Montreal over Ottawa, but I’m presently tempted to consider Ottawa snot-city. Toronto was somewhere in between. I wouldn’t say it was terribly welcoming and warm when I first got there, but it did not persist in its coldness for 12 months like Ottawa did.

Now my apartment smells like fried onions.

Silmarillion

Despite so many years of resistance, the circumstances have finally converged and I have a cell phone. It was either a cell phone or spend the same amount on a landline. From experience I know that the cordless phone doesn’t work much more than 50 feet away from the house, so instead of getting fuzzy calls that fade out as soon as I start making my way to class I opted for the cell phone.

I’m having a little trouble trying to practice my French. I start out saying “Bonjour” or answering “oui” to the question “ça tout?”. If it so happens that I am talking to a fellow non-native French speaker I continue the conversation with the opportunity to say things like “d’accord” and “bonne journée”. However, if I happen to be facing a real quebecois, they have this incredible skill of discovering from the first half syllable that comes through my mouth that I am in fact a stupid Anglophone. I’m not saying I think I sound like a native speaker, but seriously, my pronunciation isn’t that bad. Give me a chance people! It just makes me nervous for subsequent times trying to speak French again. The reason I am not yet fluent is because of my crippling embarrassment of saying something wrong why I try – this is so not helping. I’ve been told my comprehension is very good, so I’m not a total lost cause. I’m not sure where I’m going to be able to construct comfortable environments to hone my skills in this area unless the Quebecers give me a chance.

There is no Grand and Toy anywhere within the normal limits of Montreal. I checked, the closest one is way out by the airport. Similarly, the only “business supply” places that show up on a yellow pages search for the downtown area are pen stores. And I was hopeful that “Pens Ltd” and “Stylo’s R-us” would actually have binders and paper and, call me crazy, pencils, but no dice. No, I had to go to the undergrond central rail station where this is a Bureau en gros (that’s French for Staples, well, kinda, a direct translation would be Egraffeuse… sp… actually, that’s stapler, give me a break). There they sell binders for like $6.50 for some reason. Just cuz you print heavy duty on the side doesn’t justify a 237% markup. But I bought them, because I wasn’t going to trek out to the airport to get the ones I really wanted.

It also took me a long time to find a drugstore so I could buy some conditioner. There’s no Shoppers around, there’s this place called something like Jean Coutou instead. I just don’t automatically think drugstore when I hear Coutou, must be a sound meaning association lost on me in the early stages of my language development.

Anyway, if you want to call me, email me and I’ll give you the number.