These are the Voyages

We're Online!

2006-10-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

As of right now, this blog will temporarily close. I'd like to announce the official grand opening of "Welcome to Neverland", our new blog for the rest of our year in Japan! It's at www.japanamazing.blogspot.com See you there!!!

And remember, start from the bottom to get the whole story!

We:re Heeeere!!!

2006-09-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

Hey - We:re here and we:re safe and we:re doing quite well. We:re at an internet cafe and I:m not wasting our precious Yen to figure out the Japanese keyboard at this moment.

So just a short what:s up -

Our apartment is quite nice and it:s in a really convenient area ^ lots of room for visitors, too. We:ve just finished training and had about half a week of actual teaching already. It:s too early to tell whether the job is really our cup of tea, but commuting on the train is definitely cool.

We have cell phones already but we aren:t sure about international calls, yet, so just hang on for now. We:ve signed up for internet and it:s getting installed about halfway thru October. So that:s when the real blog will start. I:ll post the link here, so keep checking back!

Lots of love

JEN and CHRIS

Meeting the Fockers

2006-09-03T17:23:00.000-08:00

In a way, it’s felt like I’ve been here in BC for an entire month. The anticipation of flying to Japan is making time drag very slowly by. But in another way, it feels like only a few days have gone by since we landed in Vancouver. There is a lot of stuff to see and do here on the west coast, and between packing and shopping and the daily necessities of life, I’ve only seen and done a very tiny fraction of it all.

Just a short disclaimer about this blog entry – there are no pictures yet. Any pictures that have been taken during this visit have been by friends with cameras and not yours truly. I’ll try to get my hands on some of them eventually. But if you read my blogs just for the pictures, you’ll just have to skip this post. But it’s good, so I’d still recommend reading it.

So here goes.

We started out with dinner at home. Chris’ dad had taken these two weeks as vacation, and although he didn’t plan any faraway trips, he’s certainly making the most of his holidays in the kitchen. That first night we had chili and pasta, and every day we seem to wake up to a new breakfast displayed on the kitchen table.

During our first couple of days, the family mostly stuck together. They were happy to have Chris home and pretty excited to meet me too! They took us here and there, showed me a couple of nice beaches in their area, some of the super-ritzy neighborhoods close by, and some very cute restaurants on the shore. Unfortunately, most of these activities involved all 6 of us piling into the minivan. That in itself wouldn’t really have been so bad, had I not consistently gotten carsick whenever we left the driveway. I guess this prairie girl had a thing or two to learn about driving on hills, but after about a week, now, I’m doing a lot better.

On Monday we were invited to the neighbors’ place across the street for dinner. Their names are Jung and Jane and they are a young Korean couple with a very cute little boy named Caleb. That evening they made us an incredible Korean barbecue meal of beef that I think was called “ko-gi”. It was amazing. We also had a lot of fun just hanging out in their backyard all evening.

I think it was Wednesday when we met up with Grant and Rachel (my bestest cousin – for those who don’t know) for dinner. Chris and I got all pretty and drove out to Abbotsford and met them at their apartment. Once I got over my carsickness from the drive in, dinner with Grant and Rachel was really fun. From there, they took us to a popular place out here called Milestone’s where I had some very amazing West Coast salmon. We even went out somewhere else for dessert afterwards! We chatted and chatted and it was quite late by the time Chris and I got back to White Rock.

On Saturday afternoon I was able to meet up with my age-old best buddy Erin, who has just recently moved out here from Winnipeg. I was actually expecting to see her in Manitoba last week when I was there, but Jenna was kind enough to inform me that Erin had suddenly scored a really good job out here in Abbotsford and within a week she had left Marty (her huz) to sell their house in Winnipeg as she temporarily moved in with her Aunt out here in BC.

Anyways, the main point is that Erin, my very very dear friend whom I had not really spent time with in years, showed up here at the Stockmans’ on Saturday afternoon and whisked me off onto the SkyTrain and right into downtown Vancouver for some major chatting and hanging out and shopping. We basically spent the whole afternoon out there together. We even had gelato :) When evening rolled around and my bag was nicely laden with new shoes, we just hopped back onto the SkyTrain and I was “home” just after dinner. A very good day indeed. It even turns out that Erin is planning a trip to Japan early next year!

In the midst of all these special visits and everything, we’ve managed to pick up all kinds of Canadian “essentials” that they say we’ll have a hard time finding in Japan, we exchanged a bunch of money, we got our suitcases in order and took care of all those tedious little things you do before a trip. There were a lot more people that I wish I could have visited out here, some in Victoria, namely my friend Jessica. But we’ll be back!

Just a few more days left here at the Stockmans. Today happens to be Chris’ sister’s birthday. She is 18! Mom and Dad wanted to make a special dinner for her today, so that’s what we’re doing tonight. They even recruited me to make her favorite, apple crisp, so I feel like I’m making a contribution.

All in all, the Stockmans have been amazingly generous and wonderful hosts. Their house is gorgeous and they treat me like one of the family. This entire week, like I said, their dad has been on vacation and Chris’ brother and sister are still on summer break so the entire family has been here the entire time. I’ll admit all of this has been a little overwhelming for me (even aside from the carsickness), and between the preparation for Japan and the annoyances of suburban life and “meeting the parents”, I’ve felt once or twice like simply crawling under the front porch and staying there. I must say I even snapped at Chris a few times, that his unbearable family was driving me up the wall, but looking back now, I do have to blame a rather bad case of PMS for *most* of those comments. I just have to say how extremely lucky I am that Chris is so understanding and sensitive and listens to everything I have to spew and puts up with all of my issues. I don't know what I'd do without him!

Like I said, though, the Stockmans, although about as different from my family as could ever possibly be, are wonderful, generous people and I’m happy that they call me their “new addition”.

I would almost say I’m sad to go…
… but I’m not ;)

I just don’t think it’s natural for a person to spend this much time with their in-laws and I’m just really really really excited about Japan. We’re flying via San Francisco early on Tuesday morning. As you can imagine, I’m not thrilled about the bazillion-hour flight, but there is a new culture and an absolutely ridiculous language out there, just BEGGING for me to learn about them. And I’ll be there soon.

I’ll be there soon!

Oh, P.S.
There’s going to be a new blog. And no, it’s not going to be called “Jen in Japan”.
It’s actually going to be from both me and Chris this time, and I’ll publish the address just as soon as we have it all set up and we have something to write… about Japan!

It's Worth the Trip!

2006-08-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

It’s only been a week and a half and Ontario already seems so very far away and so very long ago.

I am currently sitting in the upstairs office of the Stockmans’ lovely house in White Rock, BC, looking out at the many other almost identical but just as lovely houses down the street. In case anyone was still wondering, we got here with minimal incident and we are safe and sound and comfy and very relaxed. (At least I am….) But we’ll save the BC story for another day. This post is dedicated to Altona.

Like I said, was only week and a half ago that we said goodbye to the house, the roommates, the jobs, the car, and the friends in Waterloo, and good riddance to the smog, the traffic, and the landlord.

Goodbye, company car!

After a tedious afternoon at Chris’ unofficial high school reunion in some rainy Missisagua park, two of Chris’ very lovely, smart and entertaining friends, Anup and Louise, were kind enough to finally drive us to the airport. In two and a half hours, we were back on the ground, this time in Winnipeg, meeting my beaming parents at the airport. From there, we tossed all of our luggage into the back of the pickup, crammed ourselves into the cab, and headed for good ol’ Altona.

Now, I won’t plow through what we did on a day-to-day basis, because I simply don’t remember. It was really nice to be home, though. It was especially nice to see Steph and Trevor. I think we hung out with them more than anyone. We even went to Trevor’s family’s place for lunch after church on Sunday! They said it was nothing, but let me tell you – farmers sausage is a real treat when you’ve been gone as long as I have.

After lunch, Trevor even took us on a tour of the pig barn! Chris looked incredibly hot with coveralls and rubber boots on. When he put his glasses back on, on top of the sanitary mask, I could hardly contain myself ;) The pig barn was really cool, though. I think I’ve been in one before, but I honestly can’t remember. Chris had a blast in there.

Another farm-related highlight was the evening Trevor took us out to see his uncle on the combine. There’s a bit of a back-story to Chris’ obsession with combines. They weren’t out on the fields when he came out here the first time in May, but we did drive by a couple of the farm machinery lots that weekend, and he thought they were just the coolest, most massive things in the world. Trevor caught wind of this, somehow, and arranged this meeting with his uncle on the field. Considering that Trevor’s family is just one of the nicest in the world, it didn’t surprise me one bit when his uncle told Chris to climb right up into the seat beside him and they finished the last few rows together.

After the field was done, of course, they invited us all in for drinks and we stayed right up until Steph and Trevor’s bedtime, just chatting in the livingroom.

Chris got some great shots of the field and the machinery.

And here he is… the farm boy himself!

So… what else did we do out there? We met a few friends, namely Shannon and Mike, at the Hut for some ever-so-tasty taco fries, we spent a good amount of time looking at honeymoon photos from Steph and Trevor’s fabulous Caribbean cruise, we tagged along with mom in her daily treks to the post office and the grocery store, and we had some very tasty family gatherings at both Grandma K and Grandma G’s places. Early on in the week, Grandma K stopped in and wanted to take us out for pizza. It turned out, though, the pizza place was closed so we walked the two blocks back home and had a very enjoyable wiener roast behind the boat shed.

Mezmerizing, isnt’ it?

Another afternoon, Chris and I were just bumming around the house, when Mom suggested that we head off to Fort Dufferin on the Red river and hike the trail into Emerson. So we did!

Here goes!

The Red.

Flood damage?

Just call me Driftwood Jenny.

Nature: Bring it ON!

The old train bridge at Emerson.

So, that’s all the pictures I got. I got a bit of a haircut during the week sometime, just a trim. Not worth any dramatic before-and-after pictures like last time.

One thing that’s crazy, though. Steph had to leave on Friday already for a wedding in Waterloo, so we had to say goodbye to her a little early. The even crazier thing is, that the place that she was going to be staying in Waterloo was just around the corner from my old house! What the heck?

But, even without Steph there to pass the time, before we knew it, we were filled to the brim with farmers sausage and it was time to head out again. On Saturday we made a nice leisurely trip to Winnipeg to catch our (for once!!) mid-afternoon flight to Vancouver. The trip was smooth, and despite my restlessness, we were landing in no time (Well, no time compared to what’s ahead of us…) So here I am, like I said. Safe and sound at the Stockmans’ lovely house in White Rock, BC. Log on next week for that story.

This is it!

2006-08-19T07:39:00.000-08:00

Everything's packed and the house is clean. I've been off work for three days now and my stomach has been a giant knot for about the same amount of time.

Tuesday was my last day of work. It was hard saying goodbye to lots of people, especially Maria! In the evening, I had told a couple of the guys at work to meet us at a little bar in town. I sent a few emails, too, I guess, but I never expected 15 people to show up! So, in that case, saying goodbye ended up being a lot of fun.

Over the next couple of days, I somehow managed to sort through absolutely everything that we didn't send to Seattle, and in the end we managed to fit all of it into 3 suitcases, 1 garment bag, and 2 backpacks. We rock!!

And now we're waiting for our ride. They should be here in about 15 minutes...

AAAAAH... they should be here in about 15 MINUTES!!!

Well, good thing we're all set to go :)

Altona, here we come!

A Work-Related Incident

2006-08-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to take this opportunity to say how great my coworkers are.

I had a few days off last week, and then on Saturday afternoon, I went back in to serve a couple weddings. It was going to be a pretty busy night and there were a lot of staff there mid-afternoon when I arrived.

Maria and I were in the bakery, working away, and I noticed her whisper something to Linh as she passed by. I thought nothing of it, I figured they probably just had a joke going on and I went back to work.

But not 10 minutes later I noticed the entire kitchen staff sneaking up behind me. I turned around and there they were, all standing there with big smiles. Maria's face was especially red, so I knew there was something going on. As the chef gave me a big hug, Maria snuck over to the fridge and pulled out the cutest little chocolate cake with "Good Luck Jennifer" written on it. Needless to say, I was smiling pretty big by this time as well.

Cut it, cut it! They all prompted.

So, right after I grabbed my phone and snapped a few shots of the whole event, I cut the cake and served everyone a piece.

And that's when I noticed that it was a bundt cake, that is to say it had a hole in the middle. It turns out Maria had covered the top with a piece of boxboard to make it smooth and then decorated on top of that. Interesting idea, I thought.

But why did she put a foil-wrapped box in the middle of the cake? Did the boxboard need support? Probably not.

Oh... what's that, JEN? Everyone started to ask.

Haha, it's my present, I said jokingly, and started to peel off the foil. But sure enough, under the foil was real tissue paper and ribbon, which I very curiously unwrapped as well. Inside I found a box with a Loonie in it and another small package. Same paper, same ribbon, only this one was a small cylinder. It looked almost like a mini Christmas cracker. So, of course, under everyone's gaze, I opened that one too and found nothing...

... but a big wad of cash!

This has got to be a joke, I thought. What's going on?

But no joke, it turns out Linh wanted to help me out since my hours had been cut back for summer, so she and Maria got everyone to chip in a little! The actual plan, I found out later, was to put actual Japanese Yen in the cake, which would have been very cool, but it turned out they couldn't get it exchanged in time. No matter, though, it was still an awesome surprise!

Oh, and I got a nice little 'Good Luck' greeting card as well that everybody had signed. Couldn't fit that in the cake too, Maria?

The cake...

And the people!
Jammie decided to dash in front of the camera, that's the chef Chris peeking through the shelves... Lisa's the one with the butter, and Helen's laughing - which may or may not make this picture worth a lot of money.

Just kidding :)

Greetings from Waterloo on this Wednesday...

2006-08-09T07:10:00.000-08:00

Hi, here I am again.

I don't have any new and exciting pictures this time or any revolutionary comments about Western society.

I just wanted to say hi and bring the blog (and anyone who reads it) up to date on the doings of jennygiez.

The thing that is probably occupying the most space in my mind right now is packing. I love packing. My Dad always said one of the best parts of going camping is getting everything ready. And I totally agree. I love packing. I love having an excuse to get rid of things. I love stripping a room bare and cleaning every corner of it. I love fitting all of my worldly possessions into one suitcase.

I've packed up and left a number of places in my life, but none of those experience have been quite like this. You see, I still have my one suitcase... but this time I also have Chris' suitcase. No, make that Chris' two suitcases... and 2 boxes of books, one box of binders, and 4 Rubbermaid bins of who-knows-what, his desktop computer, his megatron of a monitor, his printer, his laptop, his stereo, his rice-cooker, his desk and chair, his end table, his lamps, his golf clubs and his bike, not to mention all his clothes are at least twice the size of any of mine.

Now, I'm not really complaining about it all... I mean, what else would I be doing with 3 days off a week? You can only sit on the patio with a big glass of iced tea for so long. No, that wasn't even sarcastic. So I'm still having fun packing. I'm just saying its different. I guess I dont blame him for having all that stuff. I mean, I went pretty much straight from Altona to Waterloo to Germany and back to Waterloo again, and if I couldn't carry it, I had to leave it.

Chris, on the other hand, had his family right in the neighborhood when he left for University. (re: all the Rubbermaid bins) So they just carted loads of stuff over to his dorm in first year, and it pretty much just stayed in the area and got put in storage while he was in Germany. When we got back we just pulled it out of storage and it's been sitting in my house ever since. His family has also since moved to Vancouver, and so we've encountered the need for a serious material purge.

We were big-time lucky, though, to have a friend, the amazingly intelligent and ambitious Justin who has been offered a 'freaking sweet' position in Seattle with Amazon.com. And, of course, along with the stock options and the signing bonus and the corporate housing and whatever else, they are shipping all of his things out there for him. Since Seattle is a mere border-crossing away from Chris' family's place, Justin has offered to let most of our things pose as his belongings and essentially get a free ride to the west coast. What a great guy!

And yeah, we've got most of that stuff packed up already and it's just waiting in Missisauga. The only hitch is that these things won't arrive in Seattle until after we leave, so whatever we send, we won't see it again before we get back from Japan. (With all fairness, I have a box of very sexy kitchen utensils in that shipment as well, that I already miss dearly. But apparently Japan bosts some prety sexy utensils as well, so I hopefully won't feel too deprived).

Whatever things we're not shipping, we've managed to sell to my old roommates and now we're just dealing with the Japan-bound suitcases.

Now this is more like it :)

So what is going on besides packing, you ask? Well, let's see...
We booked our plane tickets yesterday! It's about time, if you ask me. The company wanted to book us on a group flight through their agent, which was all fine and dandy 4 months ago when the fares were decent, but of course they decided to wait until less than a month before our departure and quoted us a price that was almost twice as much as we were told originally. Luckily, however, Chris is a flight-booking guru and he got in touch with the company's travel agent himself, and after a couple weeks' worth of phone calls, we got decently-priced return tickets on the right day at the right time. Because it's not the company's "official" flight, however, they basically told us they would not be tracking it from Japan and if we were delayed at all we should not expect to have company transportation from the airport. Even though our flight (via San Fransisco) is scheduled to arrive at the very same time as the Toronto flight, they say they just can't keep track of two for some lame reason.

But you know what? Chris and I say bollocks. As long as we're together and we have the address and number of the head office in Osaka and our apartment, we'll be fine. Besides, if worst comes to worst we figure the $1200 total we are saving on the flights just might cover cab fare!

So Chris should be picking up our visas from the Japanese consulate sometime this afternoon, and after that's done, we're pretty much set! Aside from securing our ride to the aiprort, there's just one thing left to do - possibly the toughest of them all - and that's saying goodbye to friends. Even though I'm ready to take a break from kitchen life, I think I'm going to have a hard time saying goodbye to the people I work with. And then there's the school friends that are still hanging around in Waterloo... The thing is, we don't even know when we'll be back out this way at all. Hopefully we'll be able to lure a couple of them out west in a couple years for various reasons ;) Other than that, I know there are certain people that I hope to never lose touch with, wherever we are.

*sigh*
Alright. I've got stuff to do.
I'll definitely post again before we leave, maybe even send out an email. Oh, and there WILL be a new blog for Japan (I seem to run through these things on a yearly basis...) I don't know yet when it will start or what it will look like, but you can believe it will look incredibly hot and be full of very awesome things to see and read.

So ttyl.

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

2006-07-26T17:14:00.000-08:00

I finally saw it.

I didn’t think people were really that dumb.

But I saw it.

I mean, I thought people were dumb for listening to ipods while riding bike in traffic. While I’m on the road it’s all I can do not to yell “what the hell are you thinking” at them, like I do at the people who ride in the left bike lane and with whom I sometimes nearly collide.

If they are listening to ipods too all I do is give them dirty looks. Because I know they are just so stupid, even if they could hear me, they probably wouldn’t understand the words “were you born in freaking England?”

Don’t get me wrong. I love listening to music. I even use an mp3 player on occasion. Like when I’m waiting for the bus… or jogging on a quiet trail.

But what I saw the other day just plain made me scared.

The last I checked (and I may be wrong) driving a car with headphones on is illegal. Not to mention incredibly dumb. Let’s just say I was glad to be observing this guy from the safety of a giant bus and not my bicycle in the intersection.

Is it just me, or has the earbud-phenomenon just gotten out of control? Since when did making a transaction with a cashier while having a tinny, downloaded version of “Rhianna featuring 50 Cent” flow into your cranium via elongated ear-sperms become acceptable social behavior?

Beats me.

All I know is that when something becomes so iconic, you sometimes just have to go with the flow. So here’s my submission.

Get Your Kicks... on Route 401?

2006-07-07T06:43:00.001-08:00

One last little adventure in Ontario before we return to the big leagues.
Feiner has been bugging me to come to Ottawa for a long time. I went once after Christmas a few years ago. And now that Schlegel has also moved out there, we figured it would be fun to go see both of them and party with the rest of the city on Canada Day weekend.

So we hit the road on Thursday afternoon. In this:

They actually gave us an Altima at first, but it seemed to be using way too much gas, plus it was so big inside, we felt like we were in a giant steel bubble. And that’s no fun. So we traded it in for this little guy.

One tank each way. Pretty good for a 6 hour drive!

And he was just so cute, we named him “Guido” after a little friend of ours.

Okay, enough about the car.

We left at about 3pm, and after switching the car and inching through some major gridlock in Toronto, we arrived in Ottawa just before 11pm.

Adam quickly welcomed us in, we chatted for a bit and then headed straight for bed... Or… couch, I guess, as it was in my case.

We were up bright and early the next day, Chris and I had breakfast with Adam but it was only Friday so Adam had to work and we parted ways for the day. So Chris and Guido and I headed downtown on our own. First stop: Museum of Civilization across the river in Quebec.

We left the car in Ottawa and walked across the bridge to the museum. It was a really nice day. On the way, this Chinese man wanted us to take his picture here. And then he offered to take ours.

That look on Chris’ face is pain at the thought of a stranger touching his camera.

I had been to the museum the last time I was here but it was nice to go again.

I think our favorite part was the movie about farming.
Well, as you can see the place is huge. It was well into the afternoon by the time we were done in there, and we were starving.

So we dragged ourselves all the way back across the bridge to Ottawa and into the first Schwarma place that we saw. And they were awesome. We ate them just outside the American Embassy, this Giant concrete submarine-looking building that blocks off a good part of the quaint roads and parks in the downtown area.

Well, I guess we can’t go in there! So we just got some coffee to give us a jump start for the National Art Gallery – next on the list.

Only...
after lunch we were overcome with that mid-afternoon-all-I-want-to-do-is-take-a-nap feeling. So we sat down on a bench for a bit to finish the coffee. And close our eyes a little bit. And, finally, when we got to the gallery, we were pleasantly informed, in two languages, that they were only open for one more hour and it was recommended that we come back tomorrow.

Awww! So we checked out the gift shop instead. Chris seemed to be quite satisfied with that. “See all these postcards?” He said, “All the best pictures from the gallery – they’re all right here! It’s just as good and you don’t even have to walk around to see them all!”

If you say so, Schatz.

Oh, we still got to see one of the coolest parts of the museum, though (aside from the gift shop). This particular piece of art is standing right outside the building 24/7 and you don’t even need a ticket to feast your eyes on it.

Unless it feasts on you first...

Where’d the gallery go?

Watch out, Parliament!

Chris! Look out for its poison fireball eggs!

Whew. By the time we were finished with the spider battle, it was already the evening, Adam was calling us, it started to rain, and somehow we both got pounding headaches. It was still a long walk back to the Advil... uh... I mean, the car, but we made it.

We rested back at Adam’s for a bit, and it was soon time for supper. Adam Schlegel arrived after a quick phone call, and, with much anticipation, we were whisked off to “The Works Gourmet Burger Bistro” which ended up being a lot of fun, and really tasty, just like the guys said. I’ve never even imagined so many kinds of burgers.
I forget exactly what it was that I had, but there was shrimp and Portobello mushrooms on it, all washed down with a chocolate-orange milkshake.

And if that wasn’t tasty enough, back home we pulled out the “School of Rock” DVD and had a nice sampling of Jack Black. Very funny.

Then, suddenly,Canada Day was upon us!

It was a beautiful day. Sunny and warm but not too hot. We woke up and Adam provided us with a nice breakfast. Then we promptly headed out to the downtown / Parliament Hill area and joined the party. Oh boy. There were buskers, there were bands, there was all kinds of food, all kinds of fun, and all kind of people dressed in red and white. I had never seen so much red and white.

But we fit right in.

And the winner is…

We spent most of the day winding our way around the downtown area, we went up Parliament Hill to watch the Snowbirds fly by, we also watched the Governor General and the Prime Minister arrive, as well as the 50 or so giant tractors lined up on the street in protest of some imports or something. All Chris and I could say was “Moooo”.

Patriotism, anyone?

So that’s where they’re getting it all!

Spider-babies?

Watch out kid! It’s farming propaganda!

violin le playing on le stilts lady, huhhhh huuuh huhhhh

How do they do that?

We stopped for lunch at an amazing little collection of cultural food booths and sat in the shade to eat. Chris had another Schwarma. Only this time he got extra change…

Now, how does that happen?

Chris was a little disgusted by it, but Adam really enjoyed his food.

We headed through the park a bit more after lunch and we saw some great Aboriginal dancing.

Then we met up with some other guys we know. I’m sorry, Schlegel. I know you don’t like getting your picture taken. But you’re just so darn cute with those crutches!

And after doing the whole circuit one more time with those guys, they headed back to get some food, and we made our way back to the park for some much-needed rest.

Is he asleep?

Yes.

Yayyy! Let’s get the camera!

After eating once more and getting our sweaters and raincoats, we made our way once more to Parilament Hill for the fireworks. Well, we actually ended up just behind the Supreme Court of Canada with a bunch of people (who thought I could go to Ottawa and come across 8 people I actually know?), we staked out a place nice and early and pretty much just chilled there for a couple hours until the show began. It was nice. There were sparkly ones and shapes and stuff.

Before long, we were back at Adam’s refrigerator of a house, getting ready for bed and chatting about the day. And we’ve still got tomorrow!

Sunday was a little more relaxed, thank goodness. We went to Adam’s hippie-church in the morning (who needs the Art Gallery when you can interpret the sermon in a sketchbook?) and we came home to an awesome barbecue lunch with his family. Then we made our way to the new Canadian War Museum.

This place was huge. There was no chance we’d see the whole thing. So we just picked two exhibits: World War 2 and the Cold War. And we barely made it through those before the PA decided to pleasantly announce, in two languages, that we had to get our asses out of there.

Give me all you’ve got.

“Do they always do that”?

Beware of what?

I bet they’re even cooler on the inside.

Forget the museum. Let’s just watch TV.

And then, as is usually the case with such museum trips, it was suddenly the evening. We still weren't ready for dinner yet, so the three of us made a quick trip to the “beach” on the river close to Adam’s house.

Then, after the beach, we slowly ventured out for Greek food at this place where Adam says they like to take his Grandfather. It was cute.

We got back pretty late and I pretty much just fell asleep. I don’t really know what the guys ended up doing, but before I knew it, it was Monday morning and we were packing up our things.

We headed out for one last breakfast with Adam Schlegel and TJ and then hung out at Schlegel’s cute little bachelor pad for a while. It was nice to see those guys again. But then it was time to say goodbye.

Bye Adam! Bye Chester!

Bye Ottawa!

So Chris and I hopped into Guido and headed back through Toronto.

Mmmm. Toronto.

Well, it looks like it’s back to work tomorrow. But only for one more month! Then Manitoba and BC, here we come!!

Horray!

2006-06-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

The professional shots of the wedding have arrived. Steph sent me a small sample of them and I put them in a yahoo album :) They won't show up as the best quality, but they're still nice!

... With All the Rights and Priveleges Thereto Appertaining

2006-06-16T07:14:00.000-08:00

So what's new?

Well, as you may or may not have remembered, my birthday has come and gone. Wow, that was more than two weeks ago already! Being as smart as I am, I didn't remember to ask for that day off, either. So we had dinner out on the night before, Friday, and it was really nice.
But on my actual birthday I only had to work in the evening. And coincidentally, the New Hamburg Mennonite Releif Sale and Quilt and Tractor Auction was happening that morning, so at least there was something to do! Yee Haw!

No, it was really great. It was a beautiful day, I saw tonnes of people I knew and Chris and I ate a ridiculous amount of food.

We headed straight for this booth, of course. But we were a little late.

There was still Rollkuchen, though!

And pork on a bun.

And then we hit the homemeade ice cream and apple fritters while we watched the tractor auction.

"Who is that young whippersnapper in the green shirt bidding on all the tractors"???

Now what are we going to do with this thing, Schatz?

And what else is new?
There has just been really beautiful weather here, lately. I've basically been working a lot but just wanting to be outside. So it's kind of depressing but working is also good, because we're really starting to buckle down and save up for Japan. We already have tickets to Winnipeg (August 19) and Vancouver (August 26) and a short two weeks after that we should be in Osaka! Providing everything goes as planned...
... But now that I finally have THIS - everything else should go quite smoothly.

What could be in HERE?

Wow, fancy.

Why, thank you Mr. President!

Yeah. My convocation was yesterday but I didn't go. Word on the street is that they make you pay an obscene amount of money to rent a gown and a hat and stuff and basically all you do is sit for hours and hours until your name is called. So I just biked over to the office and picked it up this morning. And for once in my entire life they did not give me any hassle.

Thank you and goodbye forever, University of Waterloo.

Would You Like Fries with That?

2006-05-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Hi!
Back home safe in sunny Waterloo.
The temp has really been rising lately and it is making me quite happy. Even though working in the kitchen is turning into quite a sweat-fest, I'm still not complaining. I start at 6am anyways and by 2 in the afternoon, I'm usually chilling out in my backyard with an iced tea.

Work has been going well. A lot of people are on vacation these days and I'm doing a lot of different things at different stations and still learning new things every day.

About a week ago I had the opportunity to cater a pretty fancy charity function. I had whipped up some of our famous bread pudding with caramel sauce and the sous chef and I stuffed all our catering equipment into his little cavalier and headed out to a big recreation facility just outside of town. I had started working at about 2 or 3pm that day, I think, and by the time we we were all set up it was about 6:30 pm. The chef was going to leave at that point and I was slated to be there till about 10. And that's when I realized how hungry I was starting to get. Am I going to miss supper??

Thankfully, though, chef realized this too, and before I knew it, he had taken off in the car to pick something up.

So as the guests started to arrive, I just made sure everything was hot and fresh and nice and shiny. And then the chef pulled back into the parking lot with nothing but... McDonalds.

Hey, it was good! But I had to laugh. Just the day before, I had lovingly chastized Chris for picking up McDonalds for lunch while he was on the road. As I sat there in the car, eating my quarter pounder and fries, I also couldn't help but think about the chef of a four-star hotel restaurant walking into McDonalds in his kitchen uniform.

I asked him later, of course. He just laughed and said no, he used the drive thru ;)

Winnipeg or Bust

2006-05-18T10:22:00.000-08:00

Like I said, now it was time to relax.

On Sunday morning, Chris and I went to the good old EMMC, saw a few more familiar faces, and then joined up with Dad again on this beautiful, sunny day (Mom stayed home to recuperate from the wedding) and we headed out to Auntie Bev and Uncle Greg’s place out in the country for brunch, some more chatting and more relaxing. We left in the late afternoon, just in time to give Chris an awesome view of the valley before we got dumped on by an imprssive evening thunderstorm.

Oh yeah, and now that the adorable little bride was no longer around, I decided to see what it might have been like…

Well, looks like I’ll just have to get my own one day!

Let me see, what else did we do? A bike tour of Altona, a trip to the MCC, lunch at the Hut… you know, the basics for those of you who have visited me out there. We hung out with Grandma some more, toured Mom's work, Dad's work, made one little trip to Winnipeg to see Erin, made a trip down to North Dakota to see some of the remnant flood waters, made sure to watch 24 with Dad, and before we knew it, we were on our way back to Winnipeg International and on our way back to our regular Waterloo lives.

A country girl at heart.

I really don’t know what you’d call him, though.

That there is some floodin’

We really wish we could have stayed longer after the wedding. There was still so much I wanted to show Chris and a lot of people I didn’t get to see. But I guess that just means we’ll have to come back!

We Are Gathered Here Today...

2006-05-18T08:21:00.000-08:00

It all began in September of 1984 when I received a new baby sister. Then, all of a sudden, 21 and a half years had gone by and my baby sister was getting married!

I flew out to Manitoba by myself about 5 days before the actual event. Chris and I had planned to fly out together but then, suddenly, he was offered a hot new job in Guelph beginning that very week and he would only be able to fly out on the evening before the wedding. A big thanks to his friend James, though, for driving me to the airport!

With these two togtether, the nerdiness is just unstoppable.

Pearson Airporrt. “Slightly” bigger than Winnipeg International….

After 2 hour flight – which just happened to also be transporting the entire Manitoba Moose hockey team – I arrived in Winnipeg and I wove my way through all the big hockey players and the waiting TV cameras, to find my smiling parents waiting patiently in the arrivals section.

It was really nice to see them again (my parents, not the Moose…) and from the airport we just threw my bags in the truck and made our way straight home.

As my blog has already stated, the first few days were just rainy and everybody was mostly at work, so I just chilled out, went to see Grandma and hung out with Mom, who had also taken the whole week off.

As of Thursday, however, the BRIDE was off work, and the fun began!

I forget the order of it all, but during the next couple days we successfully shopped for makeup, undies, sunglasses and perfume, got the RING professionally polished and visited three different salons and day spas. By the time the weekend rolled around she had been tanned, waxed, plucked, massaged, manicured, pedicured and smelling like roses. Seeing my little tomboy of a sister like this was wonderfully strange.

Watch those nails!
And hey! Where’d you get THAT shirt?
Are you beautiful enough yet? Yes? Okay, now let’s get this party started!
You see, unlike the way it is out here in the big city, back home people don’t usually outsource their weddings by hiring wedding planners and caterers and decorators and all that stuff… no way! You and your family do it all yourself – and you have a blast!

Thursday night I managed to teach the entire family how to fold napkins into the “cardinal’s hat” and we all got down to business.

Very nice!

First thing on Friday was the church.

Simply beautiful with lanterns and white roses.

Then came the reception hall – Altona’s newly renovated Millenium Exhibition Centre. Very nice.

But where do we begin???

The Groom and his dad hauling hams into the kitchen.

Those are some nice hams!

I’m not touching them! I’ll ruin my nails!!

Dad built a super-nice backdrop for the jazz band.

Come on, you’re not tired yet!

There we go, very classy.

For lunch, Dad took both families out.

What’ll it be?

THIS is going to be my son-in-law?

We got home late in the afternoon and after all that work we just passed out.

Our cousins Aaron and Jordee arrived from Saskatchewan later on in the afternoon, just in time for the rehearsal at the church.

Chris arrived at the church right after the rehearsal. Steph’s awesome friend Cortney drove all the way to Winnipeg to pick him up because the rest of us were so busy! Now, this was the first time he met my parents in person. A potentially scary situation for both parties. But... I think he made a good impression. In the words of my mom: “Wow, Jen, he IS hot!”

After the rehearsal, do you think we were finished? Oh no there was still the rehersal dinner to be had! It turns out Trevor’s parents took absolutely all of us to the best pizza place in town. And It’s a pretty small place so they booked the entire restaurant! We had a lot of fun eating and just chatting away.

After dinner we all made our way the two blocks home. At this point Chris presented Steph with a special something he had brought along for her:

You’d have to know the story behind Steph and the German Schnapps to truly appreciate this gift, but you may be able to find the story in here.

So after we were all nicely liquored up, it was time for bed. What with both cousins AND Chris now in town, we had a full house for night. We stashed the cousins in the livingroom, put Chris in one of the bedrooms, and I got to sleep with the Bride ;) I can now say that sleeping in the same bed as your sister on the night before her wedding day is not something I would recommend… “Jen, stop breathing, you’re keeping me awake. Jen, I don’t think you understand how important it is to have most of the blankets on the day before my wedding. There Jen. That is your corner of the bed. You have to stay there because I need space for my beauty rest. Jen, It’s the day before my wedding. Why won’t you realize this?”

Well, I supposed we fell asleep at some point because 6am rolled around quite quickly. Of course there was no more sleeping after that point.

Hey Steph, wake up. It’s your wedding day!

Then it was time to get ready. Make sure your dress is still there!

Done in the shower yet, your majesty?

That’ a full house!

Then, after breakfast, and after Trevor dropped off the brand new Chrysler 300 he had borrowed for the big day...

... the girls were off to auntie Joanne’s for our hair appointments!

Are we having fun yet?

Whitney! Come over, I need makeup!

Make me beautiful!

Then it was my turn. Oh boy.

You like?

Back in the car. We’re done from the neck up… Let’s work on the rest.

The beautiful bride, basking in the attention.

Here, babes. I got it.

Here I am!

“Wow”.

(We actually had the professional photo session in the afternoon before the ceremony, so we had to scratch the “no seeing the bride” rule and Trev was waiting in the hall as we got her dressed)

What do you think of these?

That’s better.

I think I have something in my teeth...

Got it!

“Let’s boot-‘er”

At some point during the five minutes after Steph was ready and before we left for the photo shoot I managed to slip into my dress as well. Then, off we sped to the Thresherman’s Museum, an old-style outdoor farming museum about half an hour away. We spent what felt like 3 hours marching here and there through soggy, uneven grass, randomly taking photos with old tractors and things. This was quite tedious for me. I think there is a reason the old settlers didn’t wear pointy heels and corsets. Those photos had better be good.

When we finally made it back to the church, we had a couple hours to wait until the guests arrived. We snapped a few more pictures with the family and then just waited for the guests to arrive.

Exactly.

Wow, those are some good looking people.

The Fam. Hangin’ out in the basement.

Oh, I have never seen those two so nervous.

Oh, the butterflies!

I’m all set! Bouquet, Ring, Kleenex.

And finally, the moment arrived. First Trev’s parents came down the aisle, then Aaron brought in my mom, then Trevor and his bro entered from the back of the church, and then was my turn. I got up to the stage without incident. And then came Dad and my baby.

Let the waterworks begin!

Well, for me, anyway. I made good use of that Kleenex, let me tell you. I think Trev could have used some too. And Dad.

But before we knew it, the ceremony was over. We had had music from the amazing Scott Brown, a sermon from Pastor Walter, another amazing song, the signing of the register, and we were out!

Short and Sweet and now we eat.
Oh right. More pictures.

Well, that’s us...

Our family’s new look.

Gotta get a shot of that giant dress... Uh oh. Get out the way, mom!

Okay, after the pictures, the wedding party took another cruise around town in the Chrysler. When all the guests had found their seats in the hall, the new couple was announced and the jazz band started up.

There’s our good old band teacher, Mr. Schott! Trevor was his prize pupil. (Next to me, of course.)

He decided to play “their” song. And I decided to eat.

Steph’s roommie, future sister-in-law, co-worker, and makeup artist got right up there and sang a very hot number.

There were a few speeches. I must have laid waste to an entire box of Kleenex during mine, but people seemed to have liked it.

Trevor’s brothers said some very interesting things too.

Dad decided to pay us a visit up there too.

As you may or may not have noticed, the food was awesome. Just plain and simple ham and baked potatoes. The highlights were Grandma Klassen’s buns and pickles of course, made special for the big day.

Mom and Dad gave a speech, and so did Trevor’s parents, then came Courtney and April, and Grandma Klassen too. It was all really beautiful. During dessert, one of Trevor’s brothers started up a slide show of delightfully embarrassing baby pictures of both Steph and Trev that we had secretly put together.

And after all was said and done I had fit just about enough ham and potatoes into my contorted stomach as I could, it was time to relax again. Trevor and Steph quickly left and changed out of their formal clothes, came back in Trevor’s Ford wagon, packed it right full of presents and took off to their apartment in Winnipeg to await their Caribbean cruise which was to leave on the following Saturday.

The moms and dads proceeded to clean up the hall and Chris and I sat around and chatted with the remaining relatives that I so rarely get to see. Sometimes people are surprised when I tell them there was no booze and no dancing at the wedding. To them I just say don’t be so shocked. That’s just not what we think a wedding is about. And it’s just not part of our culture.

So it was a great wedding as far as we were concerned.
Okay, so Mom and Dad and Chris and I went home and popped open a few bottles of wine ;)

Well, it was an amazing experience. I honestly can't see my own wedding being any better. (Whenever that will be;)

But now, like I said, it was relaxing time. At that point I had almost 4 more days to spend in Manitoba and I had lots of stuff to show Chris. Let the rest of the vacation begin!

Not Everything is Flat on the Prairies

2006-05-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

Although my parents are probably saying "man are we glad that Jennifer and her crazy new boyfriend are finally out of our hair" My trip to Manitoba this past week was totally awesome and wayyy too short. Chris loved it too, and now it's become a major goal of ours to go back once more before Japan.

Once I get the pictures uploaded and I eventually come across another day off of work, I'll blog about the whole thing! Till then, it's back to the grindstone, not to mention unpacking and cleaning this schweinerei, that, before I left last week, somewhat resembeled my house.

Best wishes to Steph and Trev somewhere in the Eastern Caribbean!!!
Also looking forward to seeing Feiner again this weekend and getting in some serious Star Trek Marathon action at Becky's.

Check again next week sometime for The Adventures of the Bridesmaid-in-Blue.

Oh, Altona.

2006-05-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Altona!
(Although I don't know how many of you who read this aren't from Altona...)

I made it through my last day of work on Sunday (another 10 hours!) and by 10:30am on Monday morning, I was waiting in the Pearson Airport for my flight to Winnipeg, which, by the way, was the same flight that the entire Manitoba Moose hockey team was taking on their way home from Syracuse!

So anyways, I've been here in Manitoba a couple days now and so far I haven't done a whole lot. It's nice to see everyone again, and it's also nice to sleep in. I wrote my speech today, had lunch with Grandma, cooked dinner for everyone and did a puzzle ;) As of this afternoon, though, Steph is off of work until she gets back from the honeymoon... which means tomorrow it's down to business.

Apparently we have go tanning and waxing and manicuring and all that wonderful stuff tomorrow, and then Friday will start bright and early with the big set-up of the reception hall and then rehersal followed by the rehersal dinner. And then comes the big day, Saturday, where we have to go and do hair and pictures and then, finally, the ceremony and the reception.

Whew!
Wish us luck.
Pictures definitely to come :)

Engage!

2006-04-22T15:59:00.000-08:00

"Wow - I don't think I've ever had a conversation end with 'oh - they've
started the machine - gotta go!' :)"

This was the first line of an email I got from Adam just the other day. Allow me to explain.

We all know about my sister's wedding coming up, don't we? (As if I don't talk about it enough...) Well, before we get to talking about my dress, which has finally been altered, by the way, we have to talk about the skin that has to wear it. As in, the skin that has not seen any sun for the past 6 months. Now, I am normally quite opposed to what my dad affectionately calls "fake baking", but when it came down to it, Steph picked out a pretty bright blue for that dress of mine, and... well... bright colours and pale skin just don't mix. Plus I still have a few tan lines on my shoulders from the good ol' Gardenland days. Plus Steph is actually doing it too, which is entirely unexpected in itself, so I don't feel so bad. I'm drawing the line at the French manicure, though. She can go solo with that one, that crazy girl!

Anyways. So after looking into what some of the local tanning salons had to offer, I managed to weed out some of the more Barbie's Dreamhouse type of places and actually ended up in the place in the plaza across from my house! Great people, btw. Little plug for them here.

So back to the story. I ended up buying 10 'sessions' of whatever-it-is you do, which, apparently, should do the job before the big day. I won't say how much I paid ;p

I think it was on Thursday that Chris and I went in to give it a try. Somehow we decided that I would go first. The nice lady then simply pointed to a door and said "I'll turn it on in four minutes. That should give you enough time to get undressed and lotioned up". I kind of inched towards the door with a questioning look on my face. I mean, I knew about the undressing part. Steph had already been kind enough to inform me of her experience. But... lotion? And how do I even get inside this thing??

Well, I must have asked some kind of stupid question like that or something, because the lady responded with "OHHH. You've never done this before!" And, even though she was actually the "laser hair removal" lady, she proceeded to show me what was involved, exactly, in this particular experience.

So after receiving a set of mini-goggles and buying a sample of this lotion called "accelerator", I entered the little room. And inside the room was a turbolift.
No, really. It looks exactly like a turbolift.
You'd think that would have been slightly comforting to me, actually, but no.

I proceeded to undress and put the lotion on. (I'll stop there with those particular details...) but no sooner was I all set to go than my cellphone rang. And, habitually, I answered it, of course. It was Adam, turns out he's coming out this weekend, etc, etc.
"Look, dude. I can't really talk long..."
And then they turned on the machine and I spat out the words you read in the beginning of this post.

For a split second all I could see was glaring blue light, and as I instinctively shut my eyes, the deafening roar of the machine's fan filled the little room. I immediately hung up my phone and fumbled for the protective goggles they'd given me. In my haste, however, I must have pulled at the goggles too much and the elastic on the one side snapped right off!

I tried now to get dressed as quickly as possible, with my eyes still shut tight, of course. I still don't know how I did it, but within 30 seconds I was back in the little hallway of little rooms with a panicked look on my face, holding the little goggles by the broken strap, saying something to the effect of "duhh.... I got a phone call".

A different lady was out there now, but she was nice too and in a split second she sent me back in, goggles intact, and there I was, in the turbolift once again.

Instead of setting it on a timer this time, the lady said I could just press the green button once I was ready and the machine would start. So I took a deep breath and went for it. The blue lights turned on again and the roaring fan started again, and it started to get hot in there. Is it supposed to be hot? I kept thinking to myself. I mean, those blue lights always look so cool in the movies... what if this machine is malfunctioning? I actually kept imagining that I was hanging by my wrists inside the big closet-type convection oven I have at work. The whole apparatus was actually shockingly similar, to tell you the truth.

So that's when I just closed my eyes and counted the seconds until my six minutes (ultra-beginner session) was over, hoping I wouldn't pass out or burn to death in the process.

Now, that's some kind of torture.
So I don't really see myself becoming a regular fake-baker. I am alive, though, and it did result in a bit of a tan, as far as I could tell, so maybe a few more trips to the chamber before that wedding won't be the end of the world.

And how does this freshly altered dress look? Well, see for yourself!

Just practicing my drunky face too. Don't mind that ;)
See you in a week, babe!

On a Patio Far, Far Away...

2006-04-19T16:46:00.000-08:00

Wow, it seems the last time I posted here was almost two weeks ago!
Well, I guess it’s time to catch up, then!

Remember that restaurant that I went to with Jung-Mo? Well, I took Chris there the other day. Our goal was to order that cute box-lunch that I observed Jung-Mo get last time. But of course, we didn’t know which one it was on the menu, exactly. So we decided that ‘set meal’ may be close enough. Well, first we got the tiny baby salad, and then the miso soup, but it turns out that ‘set meal’ is not a lunch box but an entire grilled fish served with rice.

They were pretty good, though. Mackerel, if I remember. And if you want to improve your chopsticks skills, it’s definitely something to try. I’m thinking maybe I should just start at the top and make my way down the lunch menu so I can really get a taste for Japan… or maybe I can wait until I get there… we’ll see.

Holy Mackerel.

“Saba” in Japanese!

Yum?

In other news, as of May 1st, Chris will be employed! Remember that little plug I wrote about a certain talented, good-looking guy seeking meaningful summer employment a couple of weeks ago? Well, after a long couple of weeks passing around resumes and going to interviews ( and including a small stint in lawn aeration – which we will never mention again…), my Schatz has been offered a job with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture in Guelph. Apparently they’ll give him a car and he’ll be assigned to collect samples of food and agricultural products from various farms and report back to the office in Guelph. Sounds pretty interesting, I’d say. Plus, did I mention that they’re going to give him a CAR for the whole summer? You know what this means: no more dragging groceries home in my backpack, no more biking to work in the rain… I like the sound of this. Of course he’s only ‘supposed’ to use it for work, so it’s not like we’ll be making weekend trips to Manitoba or anything, but it’s still pretty cool. Oh yeah, and I think they’re going to give him a laptop, a cellphone, a blackberry and a government credit card too. That’s hot!

And speaking of hot, the weather here has been amazing for the past three days – two of which I was off from work :) On Monday I did a bit of wedding-gift shopping for my little sis and my future little bro. Little hint, guys: it’s not on your registry. HAHAHA! Also did a little Wal-Mart shopping for myself, seeing as it’ll probably be better to visit home for a week in something other than the old Batman T-shirt that I wear under my chef’s jacket. Oh, and while we were at Wal-Mart we also picked up one of those summer essentials – a barbecue!

But you are only living there for the next four months. Why would you buy a whole barbecue??
Well, there are a couple reasons.
- I split it two ways with my roommate who will be living here all of next year.
- It cost 17 bucks.
… Okay that’s all I can think of. But they’re good enough reasons for me!

So what kind of barbecue can you get for 17 bucks? Well, obviously it’s not big, but it suits our needs quite well.

We call him R2BQ :)

It’s not gas or anything – the tank would have made us shell out at least another 20 bucks ;) So we’re grillin’ on charcoal, with very satisfactory results, if I do say so myself. In fact, I even invited some friends over to celebrate my days off, the end of their semester and the arrival of awesome weather.

Oh yeah, and check out the awesome new lawn chairs *(from the dumpster down the street…shhhh)*

Smile!!!

Domo Arigato

2006-04-06T17:03:00.000-08:00

This week was my last tutoring session with Jung-Mo :(
To celebrate all we both had learned this past semester, we went out for Japanese/Korean food!
I had the day off, so we met for lunch. Unfortunately, my stomach wasn’t in the best of moods, for some reason, though. It may have had something to do with the hot and rainy and humid and cold and sunny weather that seemed to plague me that day – practically all of which occurred during the 10 minute bike ride to the University Plaza.

So the red chili kimchee and hot wasabi weren’t quite calling my name that day, if you know what I mean…
The place was really cute, though. It’s called ‘Mirage’ and it’s kind of beside Mel’s to the west (to those of you actually know what I mean by that, of course.) It’s pretty small on the inside with lots of bamboo everywhere. Okay, call me super-white, but I was pumped to see Jungmo and the server actually bow to each other when we walked in! Turns out she is a sister of one of his colleague’s (and pretty cute, at that – wink wink, buddy.)

I felt bad that I wasn’t in the most ravenous of moods, because I really was excited about trying something new! My tummy in the mood for meat, either, so I ordered what appeared to be some noodles called udon that came in broth with vegetables that looked pretty cool. Jungmo got what was called a “lunch-box” with salmon. And it was just gorgeous!

First, though, we were served tea that he said was made with rice. It was really clear and really hot and had a really faint taste of – well – I guess it must have been rice. Then we got the the tiniest mini baby salads that I’ve ever seen. It was literally one tiny leaf of lettuce and one slice of radish and a couple shreds of carrots in a tiny bowl with some weak vinegar or something. I forget how it tasted, exactly, but it was fun to eat with chopsticks! With the salad, we also got little bowls of miso (fish broth) soup, which I also don’t think I’d ever had before. These little appetizers were free, but the free-ness of them is one way you can Korean food from Japanese restaurants, apparently,. Basically, in Japan you gotta pay for everything!

Good to know…

So anyway,
Here’s what my noodle bowl looked like.
I kept calling that pink swirly piece of tofu my “eraser”.

Oh, and I also learned that day that udon noodles are among the most slippery and difficult to handle, even for Japanese people! Of course, it doesn’t help that all you get is a set of pointy chopsticks and that big flat spoon. After watching me struggle for a bit, Jung-Mo kindly informed me first, that it was impolite to pull the noodles out of the bowl with the chopsticks and into your mouth, and second, that it was easier to pull the noodles out with the chopsticks, one at a time, and then let them coil down into the big spoon, and then slurp them from the spoon into your mouth. I think I got the hang of it at the end, even though the noodles all over the table may have told a different story. Jung-Mo was still impressed with my chopstick-skills, though. So there, noodles!

So my meal was good. I felt really bad that my tummy hurt and I couldn’t finish it. Jung-Mo got me to try some of his meal too – which was actually just as good as it looked:

Literally, it was a lunch box. I recently read that these boxes are really common around Japan and you can buy them wrapped in pretty paper for taking on trains and going for picnics under the cherry blossoms ;)
Oh, and speaking of pretty paper, I recently also read that gift-giving is also really common in Korea and Japan and small thank-you gifts are an ubiquitous social custom… which is why I shouldn’t have been surprised when Jung-Mo pulled this out of his bag after our meal!

Wow! What is it?

“For you and your boyfriend – for Japan”

It was to thank me for a semester of tutoring!
I thought it was incredibly sweet.
After lunch we walked back to campus and I wished him all the best.

I’ve signed up to tutor again next semester and I’m really looking forward to meeting my new student.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

2006-03-31T16:27:00.000-08:00

And I also can't believe I haven't told you yet - that I got offered a job in Japan!

They actually called me back the very next day after I talked to them. I've just been so busy pendling between here and Guelph and working like mad that I just haven't sat down and written about it!

But - it looks like a go!
Apparently, I should be getting my "employment package" in the mail pretty soon, after which I'll probably have to gather a crapload of documents and send them back. It's all for a work visa and stuff. I'm happy they're going to arrange that stuff, though. It looks like they'll take care of us quite well. More details later.

I even talked to the chef the other day and I guess you could say I gave her my "4 months' notice" - haha. She's happy for me though. Everybody seems to be!

Now, to just get started on learning Japanese... whoa.

Hairway to Heaven

2006-03-28T11:57:00.000-08:00

Hi.
For all you waiting to hear about Japan, well… you’ll just have to wait a few days longer. Sorry to keep you in suspense! I actually called them today. I talked to the same nice lady that interviewed me, and she said that basically it took a while for her to get in touch with my reference and my application was only recently sent to Japan for review. So she’ll get back to me within the next few days! Here’s hoping!

Oh – did I tell you that Chris got a call right on time? Apparently they got in touch with his reference immediately. So he’s in! And that also means it’s looking good for me…

But until then…
Let me tell you about last week!
I worked, of course. It wasn’t bad, as far as I can remember. The best part, however, what when Chris came out to Kitchener on Wednesday night! He’d decided to skip his Thursday class in order to take advantage of a little 50% off sale at Shopper’s Optical in Cambidge (the best Optical place EVER). We spent all morning there, picking out glasses and sunglasses, and figuring out what kind of lenses he should get and all that stuff. It was fun. Then we had a nice lunch at East Side Mario’s. It was fun too. Yeah… as much as I hate malls, I have to admit Cambridge Centre is a nice place. How could you go wrong with a place that has Shopper’s Optical, Tim Horton’s, East Side Mario’s and an ice rink all under one roof?

We still couldn’t stay there all day, though.
Because I had a coupon.
That is, I had made a little appointment that day to redeem a coupon.
At a place called “Chameleon”.
Which is a hair salon.

WHAT? You may be thinking. Jen – going to a real hair salon?!
Well, don’t get me wrong, guys. I still like cutting my own hair and stuff. And I still think it’s dumb to dish out that much money just so that they can look like *this* or *that* movie star. But that said, my hair has actually gotten pretty long now. To the point that I don’t know anymore how to colour it or cut it so I’m happy with it. And another major reason is Steph. I promised her that I wouldn’t look like a freak for her wedding, as much as I love looking like a freak in everyday life. Add a “free style cut with highlights” coupon to the mix, and - Bam! – you’ve got Jen in a salon.

But… if the highlights are $130 in the first place, how much am I really saving, here?
That’s one question I didn’t really bother to ask until all was said and done.
Well, hopefully I won’t have to go back anytime soon.
I hope you like it, babe!

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

I Need a Heeero!

2006-03-20T12:50:00.000-08:00

Everybodycut! Oh yeah! I saw Footloose on Friday!

So I had Wednesday off for the interview, and Thursday too, just because. Then Friday rolled around and I worked like mad from 6am until 3pm. But after *that* I got picked up by my old homeboy Feiner who, after spending the last two weeks trekking around the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Germany, decided to take yet another day off work, drive the 5 hours from Ottawa to Waterloo and attend this year's Grebel musical - Footloose!

First, we went out for dinner, of course. And before that we went out for bubble tea. Which would actually be the first thing, then. And the dinner second. Right.

So we got to chat for a good hour and a half over our traditional bubble tea and steamed pork dumplings before Chris showed up on the bus from Guelph. Then we all went home and changed, hopped back in Adam's hot new Tercel, and made our way to the yummy Indian restaurant on Albert Street, Koooboooriiinaiii or whatever it's called ;) We even got two of our other old friends, Joel and Suzanne, (who I literally haven't seen in years!) to come and eat with us. It was so good and we had a lot of laughs.

Then - the show! It was pure entertainment, that's all I have to say. Amateur, of course, but at the same time there were some really strong performances. And it was a giant production. The biggest Grebel has ever put on. Way to go, guys!

The next day I spent the morning working or something like that. But then in the afternoon Schlegel came over! He was in town for the musical too. Only he was seeing it that day instead. But lucky for Chris and me, he squeezed us in between a visit with his Grandma and a dinner date. Hehee. We had a tea party.

During our chat, Schlegel half-jokingly brought up the fact that his parents were looking for A-Z drivers for their (pig/chicken/goat) farming operation. I'm sorry - but I'm already working pretty hard... But Chris is looking for a summer job! What do you think about transporting livestock, honey? Well... let's see... first of all, I'd actually need the *license*... and then there's the need for a vehicle that would actually transport me to the farm every day... Oh. Right. Well, that's too bad.

But listen up, everyone. My Schatz is still in the market for a summer job!* He's a big, strong, healthy, super-smart, super-organized, and super-good-looking guy with a fresh B.A. So drop me a line if you know of anything! I don't want to be the only one bringing home the bacon this summer ;)
*(preferably in the bussable K-W area and/or providing a vehicle that requires a "regular" drivers license)

Hmmmm. Oh man, yeah. And THEN Feiner came over again for the evening and had dinner with us. Along with Becky and Dave, who were so awesome to stop in and have dinner, even though they were hosting their own St. Patrick's party that very night! Becky even brought over green cake. It was awesome. Unfortunately we couldn't make it to her party because of my particular bedtime-needs. But I'm sure they still had a blast.

Feiner stuck around, though, and after dinner we were priveleged to see his Prague/Lithuania/Germany slide show. Which was awesome. Did you know he actually went to see Ali in MANNHEIM and visited my old flat! Oh man, did THOSE pictures bring back memories!! He even ate at Chris' favorite Yufka place! *just a little jealous* That crazy guy!

Of course I was super-lame and I literally fell asleep as soon as the slide show was over. As far as I remember, Adam left soon after that ;) I hope both of you guys had a good trip back to Ottawa! I'm *really* going to try to come out on Canada Day!

Alright. That's it for now. I'll post as soon as I hear from the Japan people!

... and done!

2006-03-16T04:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen… I had my interview with NOVA!
I made sure early last week that I had this day off. I got up nice and early (albeit actually later than I typically get up for work these days), slipped on my really nice skirt and blouse, squeezed into my really nice boots, and battled with my long-neglected hairstyle until it was… well… really nice :) After a quick breakfast and taking out the garbage, I was on my way!

In a blowing snowstorm.

Yah, getting to the bus stop wasn’t the most fun in a skirt. And to think I was biking in 15 degree weather last week! *sigh* Well, I guess that’s what March is all about, isn’t it? But no worries, I caught the bus and I was at the UW campus well in time for 9:00am.

The interview was in the brand-new co-op building, which, I believe, was mostly constructed while I was in Germany! I’d only been in it once before. It’s nice, you can be sure. First we had a group interview in a giant glass room upstairs. Unfortunately, though, we didn’t have a great view of the snowstorm because there were giant window shades over all the giant windows in order to facilitate the video projector. Oh, and just before the meeting started, in walked a friend of mine, Maegan, whom I hadn’t seen in almost two years! She had lived in Aleda’s house for a few months the summer I first moved in. Of course I got her attention and she came and sat with me. It was great to see her there. She’s not totally sure about going to Japan, but I hope she does it!

Well, as for the interview, Chris had had his interview in Guelph the day before and he’d called me right afterwards, of course, to tell me what to expect. He’d said it was going to be pretty long and quite interactive. And, sure enough, we played a lot of games and watched a lot of slides and asked a lot of questions. The session concluded with a little written grammar-type test, and before I knew it, the clock had reached 11:30am.

My personal interview was scheduled for 12:00 noon, so I just wandered around the new building for a couple minutes to stretch my legs and then sat down again with some of the other people waiting to go. It turns out the one guy I sat with used to work at the Waterloo Inn!

When 12:00 rolled around I was fetched by one of the women and brought to an upstairs room. She answered a few more questions I had, then we played an interesting first-response word association game, then she asked me some more questions and finally she got me to teach her a mock lesson. I have to say she made a very good pretend-ESL student. The whole thing lasted about 40 minutes or so, and then I was on my way home! We’ll hear from them next week, apparently, regarding the positions.

Oh, I could go into so many more details about what I learned about the company and about Japan! The interview was encouraging and now I’m just really excited. But hopefully you’ll soon get a year’s worth of blogging about it. I guess next week I’ll know for sure!

The Hot List

2006-03-02T18:14:00.000-08:00

OhhhhhhKayyyyy.
Let’s see.. .

I’ve actually been up to a lot lately, it seems. I wonder if a list might be more useful to describe the past few weeks.

1. I’ve started as a volunteer English tutor at UW. My student’s name is Jung-Mo and he’s a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering from Korea. He’s 29 and has already been through military service and a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Korea. He’s only been here for a few months! He knows a lot words like “tin-silver solder specimen”, “semiconductor” and “printed circuitboard substrate” so it’s just pretty mcuh everything else that we’re workig on :) We usually meet twice a week and it’s pretty fun. We’ll ususally first work on new words from the week before, then either his presentation or conversational sentence formation, and in the last part of our session we just talk about culture. I’m proud to say I’ve already introduced him to a variety of things from root beer to pancakes. We’re also reading an article right now about the history of the Aboriginal people of Canada and the Oka Crisis specifically. (Okay, maybe not as excitig as Korea’s history… but hey, it’s all we got!) And speaking of Korea, I’ve learned a lot of things from him as well! Did you know that on Valentine's Day in Korea the women traditionally give chocolate to the men? Only one month later on March 14th they have “White Day” on which the men will give candy to the women? And not only that, I’m learning a lot about low-temperature ultrasonic semiconductor soldering...

Oh Jen, you might say… it's so nice that you volunteer. You’re such a wonderful person! … But am I?

2. Well, think what you like. (And I really am a great person). And tutoring is fun. But the real reason I’m doing this is to get back into the swing of teaching. I did a lot of Sunday school back in the day. And if you think waaaay back you might remember me as a bright young camp counsellor and rock climbing instructor… But if you take a moment now and look into the future, you just might see still bright- but slightly older English teacher someplace far away... oh... say, like Japan.
Yup. Somebody’s going to have to remind me to request March 15th off work because I’ve got an interview with the NOVA Company . Chris met some people from NOVA at a carreer fair a couple months ago who he’s kept in touch with. Like many of these Teach English in Japan companies, they require you to be a native English speaker and have at least a Bachelor’s degree in any field. Teaching experience is always an asset, of course. But we’ve spoken to a couple people already that have gone and they say English teachers are so in demand that most people who apply are offered positions. These people have also come back after a year or two with a good bit of money, not to mention they are totally in love with Japan. So all that sounds really encouraging. I say – why not? I’m done school. I’ve got nothing else lined up. I’m a great teacher. I’ve got the travel bug. I’ve got the best person in the world to go with me.

3. And speaking of that guy. Last week was reading week and my Schatz was over here all week! I even randomly got three days off in the middle of the week and we did some major chilling out. We watched a few movies, a few (hundred) episodes of Family Guy, and we cooked a few awesome meals. The big day was Wednesday, though, when we shelled out the 30 bucks to rent a car for a day and took off to downtown Toronto for the International Auto show! (We took tons of pictures but they were with Chris’ big fancy pantsy camera, so they’re too big to send to me in an email. But I might find a way to post some of them up here, so check back…). The Auto Show was really huge and there were, of course, lots of cool cars there. Nerdy as we are, though, I think we may have spent the most amount of time at the Environment Canada Emissions Statistics booth.

We got to the Auto Show right when it opened at 10:30am and by about 3:30 we’d seen all we wanted to see (which was pretty much everything) We even took a little break in the middle for the nice bag luch that we had so lovingly prepared the night before. But at 3:30 we said farewell to the big brand new shiny sportscars and made our way back to the shitty rental car, in which we immediately proceeded to change out of “car show clothes” and into “going-to-dinner-at-Chris’-old-neighbors’-place clothes. Yup, we didn’t even have to buy supper on our fancy trip to Toronto. These people were super nice and we had a really big dinner and I was entirely full of both food and wine afterwards! I don’t remember what time it was when we finally rolled back into Kitchener. No worries, though. I had the next day off work too ;)

4. Oh, work.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m neither pleased nor honoured to announce to you that I’ve received my first knife wound. That’s right, after more than 5 months of working in a professional kitchen, I’ve cut my finger for the very first time. It’s a pretty good record, actually. But I was hoping to go all the way.

Unfortunately, I was chopping onions during the late-afternoon shift on a Saturday.

I’ll decode this sentence for those of you who may not work in the Waterloo Inn kitchen: “Saturday” would denote that since the knives get sharpened every Monday, I was using a rather dull knife. “Later-afternoon shift” would denote most of the other knives had already been used/dirtied during the day and that mine was from the bottom of the barrel. “Chopping onions” indicates that I was working with a vegetable that essentially requires a very sharp knife to cut properly, as well as that my eyes were already a veritable fountain of tears. And last but not least ,“I” refers to the person who is grossly inexperienced at sharpening knives on a steel shaft.

All these factors combined led to a little bounce of the knife off the butt-end of an onion and a nice bloody gash in my fingertip. And from now on, if anyone ever complains to me about fingernails, I will have none of it. If it weren’t for my fingernail that day I would have probably left my whole fingertip lying there among the minced onions.

That was almost a week ago now. I worked the next day all patched and covered up, even though it hurt quite a bit. During the week I kept bumping and hitting it too, and that wasn’t fun. But today is the first day I was able to work without a bandage. No infection either, so that was really good. Now I just have this little dent in my fingertip… I wonder if it will ever go away?

But. Other than that little incident, work is still going well. I’m learning new things all the time and getting more and more responsibility. I hope I’ll be able to handle working indoors during the summer, though. That is, if summer ever comes!

5. But before summer technically begins, my baby sister will be getting married! I am proud to say that Chris’ and my plane tickets have been bought and paid for, as well as my Maid of Honour dress. (Boy, was THAT a credit card bill!). We took some pictures of the dress as well, but it hasn’t been altered yet. The skirt is still too long, the corset is too loose, the straps haven’t been sewn on, the lighting is bad and it was storming that day and I was wearing a toque and my hair looks like crap in the picture… soooooo, I’ll take a really good one after the alterations and post it. Okay?

Okay.

So here I went and wrote a mammoth blog entry again. I hope you had fun reading it, mom – and everyone else. Drop me a line, eh...

To Tie You Over

2006-02-28T05:48:00.000-08:00

Well, hello again!

I’m sorry again, mom, for not posting lately. I don’t even have that much time today, as it turns out. I just thought I’d put up some cute pictures from the little birthday party I mentioned last time.

But just for an update, Reading Week has just wrapped up. And although I’m not actually in school anymore, I still used it as an excuse to accompany Chis on a little trip to the International Auto Show in Toronto. We had lots of fun fun. But more later…

Did you miss me?

Hghpppy Bghrthhdy!

Da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na…. Spiderman!

It was really nice to see them again.
More about Reading Week coming soon!

A Story, a Slice of Life and a Small Ramble

2006-02-07T16:10:00.000-08:00

THE STORY

Location: Charles Street Bus Station

I had headed straight downtown after work on Friday to pick up Chris from the bus depot. After a bit of time in the coffee shop across the street, I headed over to meet the bus from Guelph. I arrived with about 5 minutes to spare, so I just hung out in the waiting area, debating whether it would be worth it to pull out my book for one more chapter before the bus came. And then I saw him.

And by “him”, do not mean Chris.
As a matter of fact, this person may entirely be the polar opposite of Chris.
It was Tom.
And for those of you who don’t know who Tom is, you have probably not known me for longer three years. Which is coincidentally the approximate amount of time that has passed since I’v seen him. The time before that, we will not go into details about at this moment.

But there he was. His eyebrow looked a little more pierced than I remembered, his jacked looked a little more leathery, and his head looked a lot more bald. But there was no mistaking him ;) He didn’t see me, but I did have the vantage point, so I went over (probably with a rather dumbfounded look on my face) to say hi. At this point he also looked quite surprised and actually got up to give me hug. And we chatted for a bit. It was intresting. For some reason, however, I never managed to include the words “I’m here to pick up my boyfriend” in the conversation. And, of course, within 3 minutes I saw Chris out of the corner of my eye, advancing fast with his arms wide open and a great big smile on his face. As my brain let out a silent agonizing yelp, I awkwardly hugged him back.

And then I introduced the two men. Chris this is Tom... my ex. Tom this is Chris... my boyfriend.
And then there was silence.
I then decided to verbally acknowledge the awkwardness of the moment and convey to Chris the necessity that we leave immediately.

I kick myself now for making such simple introductions. I mean, I coud have called Tom an “old friend from Grebel” or something like that. As soon as I’d said his name Chris would have known who it was, anyway. I may not have freaked out. We could have maybe talked a bit longer. But I had to go and make it weird. Oh well. Coulda, woulda, shoulda... ;) I still got to go home with my Schatz. That’s all that matters.

A SLICE OF LIFE

Location: Suburbia, Waterloo
Weather: Giant, wet snowstorm

Last week I got an invitation in my email. It was to a little birthday party for a little friend of mine and ex-neighbor Aasif who I had not seen since I left for Europe last summer! The last I knew, he was 3 years old. This particular invitation said he was turning 5. Where has the time gone!?!

So of course I just had to go. I called up his mom, (who I had also not seen in just as long) we chatted for a bit, and got directions to the brand new giant house in Beechwood that she and her boyfriend had built just last year. (You go girl!!)

And then I realized that I already had plans to go to 110 and bring a dessert to their potluck-movie-event that very night... Hmmmm. Well, the birthday’s a lot earlier. I bet we could make it to both. It’ll be a bit of walking, but if we’re lucky and catch the right busses we’ll be fine.

So Friday came and I had everything ready. A nice brand new Curious George book for Aasif and a nice big pan of apple crisp for the guys at 110. I had been at work since 6am and Chris had been taking the LSATs at Laurier that day but we both got home and were ready in good time. The only thing we wasn’t prepared for was the biggest, wettest snowstorm of the year.

So much for walking over to Bibi’s! She had offered us a ride, though. And after some more deliberation and looking out the window, we called her and took her up on it. By about 5:30 all Aasif’s friends and family were there and the birthday party was underway.

So, honey. Do you think we’ll make it to the potluck by 6?
HA HA!!!!

So we called the guys and said we’d be late. But no worries, we (and the dessert) will be there by 7.

But then Bibi and her mom pulled out the food. Words can not describe Bibi’s cooking. And as it turned out, in the past year her parents had also moved up here (from Guyana). And you know what this means. The woman that had taught Bibi to cook was also present in the kitchen. We simply couldn’t pull ourselves from the table. And we simply couldn’t leave until Aasif had cut his Spiderman cake either. And then there were pictures. And I had no idea what time it was when Bibi’s cousin offered to drive us back home in his SUV through the mountainous snow.

Once back home, though, we had barely managed to clear half the driveway before Becky and Dave picked us and our apple crisp up and scraped through the snow to 110 for some post-potluck chilling. As planned, we all settled into the basement to watch the animated epic “Robots” (as much as 23 people can “settle” into the tiny basement of 110). Needless to say, I was sleeping long before Rodney Copperbottom even made his way to Robot City. But I had already seen the movie, so I was okay.

I don’t think anyone even noticed that we’d brought apple crisp. By the time we’d arrived, everyone was pretty full, as tends to happen at potlucks. But that’s okay. I’m sure one day this week, the boys will find it in the fridge.

A SMALL RAMBLE

I recently got a forwarded email from my mom. I do not normally make a practice of even opening forwarded emails, but it was from my mom and I didn’t even think she knew how to forward things, so I took a peek. The subject line read: “love ya lots – please read”. As Valentine’s day is fast approaching, I thought maybe it would be something cute and cuddly. Boy was I wrong.

In the email, what I found was a list of “things for women to do in an emergency situation”… “because it never hurts to be careful in this crazy world we live in”. Apparently a series of recent daylight-hour abductions in Florida or Oklahoma or somewhere (the email is not very clear at all) has got some women on their toes. And so, they (or whoever-it-was that began this email chain) managed to compile a small list of self-defense tips for women. I’ll admit, some of the tips could be useful, like what to do if you’re carjacked (ram your car into a wall because the airbag will save you and most likey seriously injure your unfortunately unbuckled thief...), or what to do in the case of a purse-snatcher (throw your purse as far a way as possible, in hopes that the thief will chase after ITand leave you alone...).

But aside from these, what the email primarily does, is encourage women to be aware of the tactics that “most serial killers” will tend to use when trying to abduct you. “Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.” The advice would follow: so if there is a big, ugly van parked beside your car, you should go right back into the store and get security to escort you through the parking lot... etc etc. Other tips include how to prevent getting thrown into the trunk of a car, how to avoid using stairwells, and to not let your feminine sympathy get the better of you and assist men with canes – or any handicapped men for that matter, because they are probalby faking it and they are probably going to abduct you like Ted Bundy… etc. etc.

By the time I was halfway through, I realized that this email was pretty much just meant to freak a person out. “Better careful than dead” was its repeated motto. I don’t know what kind of people enjoy doing this, or if they seriously think there are cunning serial killers waiting in the back seat of every single woman’s car, but it angers me, nonetheless. You see, what something like this does, (as is often the case in the media) is simply play on the sensationalism of the unknown and unpredictable - things that are impossible to control. The only result is fear – and, to use the words of Frank Herbert – fear is the mind-killer. I would personally call fear not only a mind-killer but also a freedom-killer.

The question that I immediately ask myself in response to something like this, is: Why is it popular for women (and for women to encourage other women) to be so afraid of things like this - that they can do nothing about? I would personally have to say I am afraid enough as it is to be alone in the city at night. Do they actually think i will be safer and/or smarter if I am MORE afraid? Here's a question. How many women per year are actually randomly abducted and killed by people they don’t know? I’ll admit, I don’t know the real statistics, (I’ve heard any where from 81% to 98%) but what I do know is that compared to crimes against women that are commited within the home by male friends and relatives, crimes agaist women commited by mysterious strangers (or “predators”, in the words of the email) amount to much, much less. What use is it, then, to constantly tell a woman to keep her door locked, if the violence is primarily happening behind that door?

And let me ask you this: What immediately pops into your head when you hear the words “violence against women”? Muggers, right? Or maybe carjackers or even serial killers? One does not tend to immediately picture stepfathers or uncles or brothers, do they? I’d say a big part of this problem has to do with the media. But I don’t think sensational emails like this help very much either.

You may think – so what? Better careful than dead, right?
Well think about this. What are the consequences of living in such a culture of fear? These are the words of the Timmins (Ontario) and Area Women in Crisis Organization (TAWC) – also quoted in Wikipedia.

"Women are often told to be extra careful and take precautions when going out at night. In some parts of the world, even today, women are not allowed out at night. So when women struggle for freedom, we must start at the beginning by fighting for freedom of movement, which we have not had and do not now have. We must recognize that freedom of movement is a precondition for anything else. It comes before freedom of speech in importance because without it freedom of speech cannot in fact exist."

This quotation is in reference to an event called “Take Back the Night” that is organized by women across the world to protest violence against women – at night, in public places... but I believe it also really demonstrates that public places in the nighttime are, in many cases, much safer than the home. Now, what kind of emails should we really be writing?

Oh, and one more thing.

As for serial killers, it’s important to be careful with stories in emails and such, because fear can really make people get carried away.

The forwarded email ended off with a whopper of a story – a serial killer who used a recorded baby’s cry to lure sympathetic women out of their houses and into their demise. If you read this story, and were about as freaked out as I was, you might also want to read about how full of crap it is:

http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/babycry.html

So with that, have a good night, girls.

Once upon a time…

2006-02-02T07:24:00.000-08:00

I know what you’re thinking.
"Whatever happened to those new rooms of yours, Jen? Did you ever move that big pile of stuff out of the other bedroom?" You know... this one:

Well, does this answer your question?

Woooohoooo!

Allow me to tell the story of two lonely little rooms.

As long as they could remember, these two little rooms lived side by side upstairs in a big house in the dumpy section of Waterloo right between the University and the big, nice houses in the forest. They’d had a few owners over the years. But most of them had been very mean to the rooms, not to mention tastelelss.

Then a little girl named Jenny, who had taken care of a different little basement room for the past couple months, came upstaris one day and decided to adopt these rooms as well. She immediately asked her landlord for some nice new paint, but unfortunately her landlord was very disorganized and she had to wait for a month and a half before the paint showed up. But she didn’t want to be too far away from her new little rooms, so she camped out for an entire month in the big room across the hall.

Then suddenly one rainy day in the end of January, the paint showed up! Only there were no brushes or rollers with the paint. But a week later, Jenny managed to convince the disorganized landlord that to paint, a person also needed brushes and rollers, and she brought them by as well!

That very weekend, Jenny got down to work on the first room. Her very best friend even showed up to help!

Jenny’s best friend has a very nice bum.

A couple days later, they started on the second room. Only this one was in even worse shape than the first! Before anything, they had to get rid of an awful papery substance that had been stuck to its walls.

Jenny’s best friend had lots of fun with this part.

And after a lot of hard work, it was off the walls and on the floor.
(Jenny wasn’t tall enough to reach the paper, so she had to wear special shoes. There they are, sitting on the floor.)

They painted this room as well, and when they were done, it looked much better.
But they weren’t finished yet, oh no!
Now it was time to move furniture!
Jenny’s friend had to go back to school, so Jenny moved a lot of the furniture herself. It was hard work, but still easier than carrying it all up from the basement.

Now, I’ll bet you’d like to see the new rooms, wouldn’t you?
Okay!
But let’s first remember what the old rooms looked like:

Ewwww!

But this is how they look now. This is the first room:

Very comfy!

And the second room:

Don’t you feel so much better now, little room?

And let’s not forget the bathroom! It didn’t need any paint, but it certainly needed a good cleaning – and some colour!

Ahhh. Much better.

Ducky’s happy too.

And Jenny and her two little rooms plan to live for at least 7 more months happily ever after.

The End

Yeah... asparagus.

2006-01-31T09:14:00.000-08:00

So... got home from Isaac's on Tuesday night, I worked for a couple hours on Wednesday morning. I got home and the house was just big and empty. So I decided to just pack up and go again - this time to Guelph to see Chris!

Only he didn't know.

As a matter of fact, my entire afternoon was a big lie as far as he was concerned. See, I called him when I got home from work, like usual, just to see how his day had been. Only I made the call a little later than I wanted to, and before I knew it, it was time to get the bus downtown! Only I had to get off the phone somehow... uhh... i gotta go get my... uhh... laundry out of the dryer... right now.

Haha. He wasn't too happy with the fact that I practically hung up on him. So I said I'd call him back later "during dinner".

And I proceeded to catch the bus - barely. And I also successfully got on the bus to Guelph. And when I finally got off the bus at Guelph campus, it was approximately "dinner time". So I pulled out the phone.

Hi Honey.
Hi... are you outside??
Yah. I'm... uhh... coming home from the store. I had a craving for... asparagus.
Oh.
Yah, so how are ya... etc etc...

So I made it to his rez building. I even waited outside the door for a random person to come out so I could sneak in without a key. All the while chatting on the phone to Chris. And then I found his room. And then I knocked.

Hang on. He said.
Okay.

(hehehehe)

Oh, and you should have seen his face.

What do you mean funny? How am I funny?

2006-01-30T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hi again. Nothing big to report today, but I thought some pictures might be nice. How’s work, you ask? Well, it’s slowed down quite a bit and since I’m still the rookie my hours are getting cut. I’m still there at least four days a week, though. This means I just have more time to pull out the camera!

Breakfast, anyone?

Or, how bout some lunch?

Long day? How bout some dessert?

“Duhhh...I want dessert too...”

Sure thing! Take your pick!

Hmmm. Does anyone else feel full?

Oh, hey. I did do something this past week, though. And what was that, you ask? Well… does this guy look familiar?

How could you stay away from a man who caresses grapefruit juice so gently?

And sure enough, Isaac, my good buddy and former co-underground-dweller called me up last week and invited me out to Hamilton. How could I say no? So I hopped on one of these:

(North America’s sorry excuse for inter-city transit...)

And we met up for a day and a half of good times.

Mmmmmm. Pamplemousse.

The actual plan was to go to McMaster University and see these guys at their student bar:

But all of Isaac’s friends were either sick or busy, and we didn’t want to go to the bar just on our own, so we ended up getting some food and hanging out at his girlfriend Danielle’s place and watching this:

Ladies and Gentlemen: May I present to you... the man-o-lantern!

It was nice to see her again too. And it was so fun to just chill and watch movies like old times, that the next morning, we just got up, had a giant breakfast and watched another one:

Do I amuse you?

And suddenly it was time to go home!

Bye Jen! See you next time!

Honey, I'm Home!

2006-01-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

After three very long, lonely and Christmas-filled weeks, my sweetie has returned!

Chris landed in Toronto early Thursday afternoon, his friend James picked him up and the both drove directly to Waterloo for a *gourmet* dinner provided by yours truly. It was a pleasant evening. Seeing as I had spent most of those three weeks entirely alone in this big house (New Year's? What New Year's?), it was nice to have Chris back, but also his friend James and we had fun eating and hanging out. We didn’t stay up too late, though, because the next day we had to hit the road!

And on Friday we left for Carthage, New York, the teeny weeny town in northern New York State where Chris spend a good part of his childhood.

It had been almost three weeks since the sun shone on Waterloo, but on Friday morning it was out! Maybe Chris brought it with him...

One of the main reasons for our little trip was to visit the military base where Chris’ father worked and where their family had also lived for a year before they bought a house in the town. Chris is allowed to enter the base only because he has a special US military ID card. He really only has the card because he is technically still a dependent of his father – who has the card for life because he is a veteran. But Chris’ "dependent" card actually expires on his 23rd birthday – which is on January 12th of this year! So this was his last chance to visit his old home.

As it turned out, the base has a hotel right on the grounds. This hotel is even cheaper than any in town (also most likely cleaner) so of course we decided to stay there. Who’d have ever thought I’d be sleeping on an American army base? Not me!

Not only are hotels cheaper on these bases, but restaurants, groceries, and gas too. So of course we filled up the car there. Only we had to wait in line...

"Oh, that guy SO has the same truck as me... I am SO embarrassed..."

"Hey, turn it down, or I’ll tell the commander on you!"

Since we left in the morning, we actually got there pretty early in the afternoon. The first thing we did, because it was Friday, was head to Chris’ old school to see if he could find his favorite teachers. And sure enough, we found his old bus driver, his librarian, his "first grade" teacher, and his old vice principal. They all recognized him and we spent most of the afternoon just chatting with them. I still can’t believe he actually keeps in touch with some of them...

That night we had dinner at "the" Italian place. Chris’ family used to go there too, of course, and they have amazing lasagna. After dinner we went back to the hotel and literally fell asleep at 8:00. A day on the road will do that to you, I guess!

The next morning we headed out to have breakfast at another old family favorite, the "Cracker Barrel". I don’t know if this was a typical American breakfast or anything, but I’m pretty sure we each ordered the "senior’s" portion and this is still what the table looked like:

And yes, those are "grits".

So after polishing that off, we walked around the "Cracker Barrel" store for a little while. It was cute.

Well, maybe not so cute...

Next stop, the "Salmon Run Mall" to see what’s new.

One of our favorite stops was this store called "Bath & Body Works". I think we smelled almost every hand soap in there. And they even had rubber ducks!

I was very excited.

Just in case you were wondering, in this part of the country “Sporting Goods Store” actually means "Gun Store".

It made me a little nervous, actually.

And the next thing I knew, I was in jail!

"It wasn’t loaded, I swear!"

Okay, no. Actually this "jail" was an old prison building that is used as an antiques store. It was huge and there was so much stuff in there. Before we knew it, the sun had gone down and we were still snooping around.

And then it was dinner time. A very important stop for us this weekend was the pizza place on the army base. It was Chris’ favorite growing up. And having that good old slice of pepperoni made him feel like a kid again :)

I’ll have to admit, it was pretty darn good pizza.

And after all that shopping we were sleeping pretty early again. We had to get up for church the next day, after all!

And this is where we went:

The old Catholic church where Chris had his first communion and all that jazz ;) It was really nice in there and they were even burning really nice incense. The message was about Epiphany and the priest was nice. Although I’m really not sure if I’ll ever catch on to what’s happening in one of those services...

We made our way home Sunday afternoon, but not before noticing a very familiar little sign on the side of the road...

Now, this may not mean much to most of you, but ALDI is one of Germany’s top grocery store chains. We did know that they existed in the States, but it was still kind of a shocker to actually see one. Do you think they’ll look the same on the inside? Let’s find out...

Sure do!
Alright. Let’s go home.

Christmas Day and My Escape from the Depths

2005-12-29T11:36:00.000-08:00

So how was Christmas after all?

Well, one thing I definitely did was work my butt off.
We ran a huge buffet for 6 hours and fed a thousand people in the course of an afternoon. And when Maria went home at 4 or so, I was all on my own till the end. I don’t think I sat down once!

But it was fun. Everybody was in a good mood, the guests were happy, and I was just glad to have something to do and to be around lots of people. I came home in the evening entirely exhausted and just sat in bed and talked to family and friends until both of my phone batteries literally died and then I just went to sleep.

This is what we ate at my “gathering” this year...

Believe it or not, this giant chocolate display was entirely consumed.

And here’s “the beef”.

Heat lamps just make people look so... hot.

The two days after Christmas were off for me – and I was a little sore from carrying all those cakes – but after a good night’s sleep I was ready to haul all of my things up two flights of stairs into my new rooms!

I arrived, of course, to find that all my former-roommate’s things were still in one of them...

But that didn’t stop my escape from the depths – as I proceeded to pile all of my things in other upstairs bedroom, neatly in queue to be moved in January.

I know exactly where everything is.

What is that thing in the wall? I’ve seen something like that before... I think it’s called... yes... a window!

The next day, Alicia showed up to get her stuff. It took three minivan loads and there is still a pile of dismantled furniture in the livingroom, but the upstairs was then clear and I proceeded to clean. After sweeping and mopping all the basement rooms including the bathroom, I then proceeded to do my new bathroom upstairs.

There is that curious “window” apparatus again… and what is that long flat surface?… Could it be… a counter?

And this specimen just takes the cake. I believe it’s name is “bathtub”. Something which hasn’t graced my presence in at least two years.

Oh, the possibilities.

You’ll have to remind me... is this how you do it?

So, I was fortunate enough to hung out with Adam on both of my days off because he was home for the holidays. When he wasn’t helping me move furniture and mount things with his power drill, we watched plenty of hilarious movies and ate plenty of tasty movie-watching food, as is our custom ;) We saw "Robots", which is awesome, and "Serenity”", which is even awesomer, but what really floated my boat this weekend was "Trekkies". I can honestly say I haven’t laughed that hard since the "our dog named Borislav" joke Chris told back in Mannheim - that nobody would get anyway...

So to top it off, after all this Christmas insanity at work, it looks like in January hours will be quite slim. I’ll keep myself busy, I’m sure. But first we’ve got to get through New Years – one of the biggest, fanciest ordeals that we offer at the restaurant. It should be fun... and I’ll be sure tell you all about it!

I AM the Candy Coating

2005-12-24T18:22:00.000-08:00

This is definitely a new experience for me.
It’s Christmas Eve,
I’m at home,
and I’m all by myself.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m terribly lonely or I’m asking for pity or an invitation or something. I’m not really sad at all, it’s just... surreal.

Last year was my first Christmas away from Mom and Dad. But it was spent with somebody else’s mom and dad in Germany, and it was definitely a special experience. This Christmas has been just different altogether. In the course of the past three weeks I’ve spent the last bits of quality time and exchanged gifts with various special friends before they each, in turn, left to spend the holdays with their families.

And then there was me.

With five bedrooms and three bathrooms all to myself :P

I decided to stay back in Ontario this year primarily because of my job. People want to eat Christmas dinner, and basically, it’s my job to serve it up! I was, of coursre, invited over by various kind people at work and at church for Christmas dinner, but I really just had to tell them no, I’m working on both the 24th and 25th. I grin shyly as they coo with pity, but to tell the truth, if I can’t be with my family, that kitchen is my next choice. I didn’t buy a tonne of presents this year or go to a thousand gatherings, and coming home and eating dinner in this big house all by myself may be a little eerie. But the thing is, I actually feel like I’ve celebrated Christmas this year with more people than I have in my entire life! And I certainly had fun doing it.

We have one big buffet left at the hotel – 900 people booked solid for tomorrow afternoon. As long as everthing goes smoothly, I think that will top the season off quite well. (And then there’s New Year’s Eve – but we’ll not get into that just yet...!)

It’s strange, in a way. Being alone at Chrismtas is always seen as one of the most horrible things a person can endure. I was kind of dreading it, but now that the time has come, I really don’t feel too awful. I guess it is strange, like I said, treating Christmas as just another workday (albeit at slightly higher pay ;). I think it’s strange because you realize that it IS just another day, as opposed to an incredible candy-coated and present-filled rift in the school year, to which all other days count down. Although I don’t believe there is anything wrong with such naïvety, it’s been quite interesting for me this year to have it all but stripped from my personal festivities. It’s certainly let me take a step back and look down on the holiday and all the customs and emotions that go along with it. I won’t go into detail here about the social and economic conclusions that I’ve mustered during the past few weeks, much less the religious, but my observations have been very gratifying. I feel like I’ve seen Christmas from another angle, which was, although a little less sparkly, just as beautiful. (*awwwww*)

So, from me:

And all my sweets:

“Merry Christmas” to everyone, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. Especially to all you in Manitoba who I miss most of all. I’m going to go relax now, maybe finish my book, maybe watch a movie, and then tomorrow it’s off to work again. It should be a nice day. You have a nice day too.

Brrrr...

2005-12-19T10:07:00.000-08:00

So just to catch up…

Last week was pretty much consumed by work, although Chris and I managed to sqeeze in a little quality time before he left on Thursday for 3 weeks in beautiful British Columbia. The Christmas parties have pretty much died down at work now, too, although I’ll be definitely working on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the big buffet. For now, though, I just plan on hanging out and getting some stuff done during my days off.

Before Chris left, of course, he managed to sort through all the things he’d left in my room during the term... wow.

Yesterday was Sunday again and since my Schatz was home I ventured out to church on my own. And as I sat there all alone, waiting for the sermon, in walks my old roomie from Grebel who I had not seen in almost TWO YEARS! As it turned out the parents of another friend of ours were hosting a lunch for the young adults group at the church, so we went there after, had a GREAT homemeade meal, and hung out right into the afternoon! Some more old friends showed up too, and it was just great to see all of them again.

As any good day follows, the plan for the evening was to meet yet another church group for dinner. This time from Maria’s church for another El Salvadoran supper :)
... but unfortunately the guest of honour’s plane was delayed and the cancelled the dinner.

But no worries... because, yes... I had yet another group of people to hang out with! Well, I shouldn’t forget Isaac, who ate dinner with me at home... But after that I walked back uptown to hang out with some of the cooks from work and other people for a little “Christmas cheer” at one of the bars where a bunch of them used to work. Not exactly another church group, but hey.

So we stayed there for a bit, and then all drove back to one guy’s place and just hung out listening to music and basically just breaking a lot more of that “Christmas cheer”. I’m not really into partying like that, and it wasn’t the most exciting party in the world, but I really had nothing else to do, I like meeting new people, and strangely enough at 3am I wasn’t even tired. Luckily I was able to get a ride home with a not-so-“cheery” co-worker of mine, though, and I still had a really great sleep.

I had today off too, of course, or I would never have been out at all ;) The plan for today is just errands and stuff, that is, if I can drag myself out of the house in weather like this:

Now, how beautiful is it in British Columbia, really?

Oh, Tannenbaum!

2005-12-01T18:23:00.000-08:00

Hi again!
Guess what – I finally made it to church this week. And not just once, either!
Since they’ve decided at work that they need my youthful energy at the seeming endless array of Friday and Saturday night Christmas parties – more than they do on Sunday morning at brunch – I’ve been told that I’ll get Sunday mornings off for the next little while, in exchange for working later the rest of the weekend. To this I was more than happy to comply. I’ve been missing going to church for quite some time, not to mention the past year in Europe! So this past Sunday (the first Sunday of Advent at at that!) Chris and I were up bright and early and on the bus to good old downtown Kitchener. I have to admit the sermon was incredibly dry, but it was nice to sing and see the back of a few people’s familiar heads. We went out for an amazing lunch at a great café too and just chilled out. We actually only ended up coming home at, like, 3:30 in the afternoon – it was pretty fun.

My second church experience for the week came actually the Wednesday before this. I had the day off, as well, actually. I had just come back from Guelph and when I came in the door, there was a message waiting for me to call “Maria from the Waterloo Inn”. So I called the number (which, I could tell already, was NOT the number for the hotel), and I asked for Maria! And sure enough, little Maria had called me earlier that day to invite me to HER church because she and a bunch of ladies were making El Salvadoran fritters called “popusas” for the young people as well as having a service and a bible study. She even offered to drive across Watelroo that night in the fresh, wet snow and pick me up! How could I say no? So cute little Maria came and got me in her cute little car and brought me all the way to her church for dinner.

So I walk in and immediately recognize a girl from my old Poli Sci classes at Waterloo. She recognized me too and introduced me to a bunch more people. Along with Maria, there was another super-friendly El Salvadoran lady there that works at the hotel with us…. and of course, I found two guys from Grebel that I knew and chatted with them as well. The food was great, by the way. But Maria was making it – how could it not be? The Bible study was interesting too, and all in all I had a great time. Maybe if I get a Wednesday night off some time again in the next couple months, I’ll come back!

Hmmm. And now I have some pictures.
So just rewind past the second church service that actually happened before the first sevice, but to the time just after the first church service but before the café lunch that happened just after it. Okay?

So we’re taking a lesiurely stroll back up King Street, when we happen to pass a particular favorite store of my mothers’ and mine – the Bargain! Bargain! Bargain! Shop :) It’s not too often that I get downtown these days, so I just stepped in for a second. And stepped out with about 12 feet of pine garland, two strings of white-star mini-lights, and a package of 12 assorted tree decorations. It’s Advent, after all, right?

And the result?

A very festive bedroom!

Looks nice, but how big is it, really?

Well, it’s smaller than me...

But bigger than something else...

/>
You can’t quite sit under it and eat chocolates in your bathrobe...

But it’s still too big to fit in your mouth...

Get the idea?

Is it Hot in Here?

2005-11-17T07:19:00.000-08:00

And as if two blog entries in one day weren't enough...

But let me *just* tell about my weekend.
Most importantly, my dress. Of all the places in Missisagua that we ran around visiting last month, none were able to come up with a dress that would please my sister. Like, don't get me wrong, my sister is anything but a picky girly girl, but it IS her wedding and I totally understand.

So then Chris and I tried again this weekend. I had found a few more stores in Kitchener that I thought might have something. But I was wrong. As it turned out half of them were going out of business anyway. What is with bridal stores going out of business in this town? Maybe an interesting sociological phenomenon....

Um. Yeah.
But then when Chris found out he didnt' actually have to go to class on Monday, he stayed another day and while wandering around just uptown in Waterloo - as in - not 4 or 5 blocks from my house - we wandered into this bridal store that I had remembered often passing on the bus ages ago. And there it was! The right style, the right price, the right selection of colours. I actually only ended up trying on THAT ONE DRESS. We took a picture and sent it to Steph...

... and she loved it too!
Perfect. So now she's just got to pick a colour (It won't be black, at any rate) and then I'll just go back and order it! And the best part is, no more driving to Toronto :)

I promise I'll look happier at the actual wedding :P

'Tis the Season

2005-11-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

Feeling jolly yet? Well, the world of retail certainly seems to be getting into the spirit. Doesn’t it seem like as soon as Halloween’s done a huge green light goes on somewhere, telling everybody to start hanging their lights and putting up “holiday specials”, the deadline for these activities, of course, being Remembrance Day?

But then again, doesn’t also seem like every year you walk through the mall during this week and hear at least 10 people’s mildly annoyed comments about how early Christmas preparation always seems to begin?

Well, you won’t hear complaining from me. Even if it is just an excuse to change the display window, I like the trees and lights and decorations – I mean – they could do it as soon as school starts as far as I’m concerned!

Yes, and as you might have guessed, on my days off lately I’ve been dragging myself to the mall. (Thank God for the Express bus, btw, or I might still be on the road…) Despite the fact that malls and I have never been the best of friends (we’ve enjoyed a strictly business relaionship, one might say) I can’t deny the fact that when the weather gets cold I need warmer clothes. And since I also haven’t really had the time lately to pick through every molecule of the thrift store, as I’d usually rather do, I’ve simply settled on the budding festive wonderland that is the mall.

Today I’m quite glad, however, since during such recent trips, two of my major gift-buying requirements have literally jumped out at me, with good prices to boot. Not that I’m done yet, but between internet shopping and home-baking and my family not getting theirs until I actually see them in May – I’m pretty much on easy street.

Now, I don’t ever intend on taking back everything I’ve ever said about the mall. I still consider it a ridiculous superstructure of materialism and sociological manipulation that we’d be much better off without. But I also think the holiday season twists the focus of it all just a little bit. It’s like this: during the holidays ads and sales are encouraging you to buy gifts, not posessions, and the stores are full (albeit sometimes too full) of people buying things for others, not for themselves. Now I’ll probably find at least one reason to go back between now and Christmas, but contrary to my mindset the rest of the year, I probably won’t complain about it. I just wish I had more people to shop for!

Short but Sweet

2005-11-17T07:12:00.000-08:00

A couple years back when I lived in downtown Kitchener and worked at Ghetto... uhh... I mean Central Fresh Market, I made a friend. I made a few friends there, actually. But this one is definitely one of my favorites.

Back before I even left for Europe, my fellow cashier Jessica left for the University of Victoria to get a Master’s in Public Admin. She loved the fact that I studied Political Science too, and we always seemed to get into endless conversations on the topic. We emailed once or twice during the past year while we were on opposite sides of the planet, but last weekend we met up again in good old Ontario! As it turns out, her school has sent her on Co-op to work for the federal government in Ottawa. And since government employees get Remembrance day off she decided to make a little trip down to Waterloo and visit some of her old friends.

I had the priveledge of giving her a place to stay on Thursday night after her long trip after work via Toronto. We stayed up late talking, of course, we had lunch the next day, and by 2pm I was off to work again and she was off to the next place where she was to spend the night.

But I think even in that short time we had a lot of fun. She’s invitied me to come out to Victoria and see her in school, as well as to Vancouver to see her at home, and MAN would I love to go. We’ll see about the summer, I guess. Till then, all the best at the OAG, dear. We’ll talk again soon.

And here she is, my favorite civil servant. And I really don’t know who that frumpy girl in the bandana is besider her. Poor thing must not have a car or something and ride bike everywhere...

I am a Leaf on the Wind

2005-11-08T04:58:00.000-08:00

Here is the blog entry where I was going to write my review of Serenity. But then I read this. I guess I just don't think I can say it any better than Orson Scott Card. But then again - who can?

The Good Ship Giesbrecht

2005-11-02T15:03:00.000-08:00

Well here I am again! Sorry again... MOM... about not updating so often. I mean, I'm not galavanting around Europe anymore, so there really isn't much to write on a daily basis right now. Besies, I call... sometimes!

But I guess there are a few bits of news in my life recently. For some reason I got three days off in a row this week. I didn't ask why. I'm just going to assume they're getting me ready for a long stretch next week. But whatever. Working is fun, but it's nice to rest too. Besides tonight is my last chance to go see Serenity!

So what else is new?
My dad is back from the Grand Canyon! He had a great time, of course, and he even said all that training paid off. He came back with a million stories and almost as many pictures. He sent me about 30 of the best ones in an email and I posted them online in an album that I named after the Canyon Man himself :)

As for me, like I always say, work is good. I got to be creative the other day and make treats for the kids' table at brunch. So I made Halloween cookies - pumpkins, bats, ghosts, you know. It was fun. But man, then I got all the chefs coming in and telling me how great they looked and asking me what they were. I mean, it felt good to be complimented, but I was really just thinking - guys, have you never seen sugar cookies before? Like, do you not have grandmas? Haha - so now I see maybe even being a gourmet chef does have some disadvantages...

Oh yeah. And I've also got an update on this whole housing situation. As in, we had a meeting with the landlord last night. Let me tell you, though, in those few minutes leading up to 6:00 when she showed up, there was more than a little anxiety rippling through the place. Like I've said, most of my roomies were pretty hell-bent on giving this landlord a hard time and doing whatever it takes to throw the lease out the window ... which makes what actually happened that night almost funny (in a twisted sort of way).

So basically once everyone gets into the livingroom, the first thing the landlord says is that she's sick jumping through hoops for the city and the fire department and contractors and consultants and everyone else, and as of January 1st she's just going to give into the zoning by-laws and limit tenancy to 3 people. "So at least two of you will have to move out. I hope you'll be able to agree on who it will be". And this was most precious of all: "Of course I'm also open to the possibility of everyone leaving if they wish... here... here are a bunch of lease termination forms I've printed out" ... she says, as more than one of my roomates slip the nasty letters they'd prepared under the couch.

And just like that, when the landlord opened the door to leave, all the tension and anxiety that had been polluting our air for the past couple months were rapidly sucked out as though Amos Avenue were a vacuuous abyss and our front door an emergency portal to the black of space.

**Can anyone tell I'm excited about finally going to see Serenity tonight?**

Ahem. So as it turns out everyone has decided to abandon ship but me. Like I said before, it's just the most convenient for them to do so. As for me, I'm staying on board and even getting promoted. I'll be taking on two new life forms, it seems. First contact should be exciting. And as for my quarters, they will be moved up two levels - and doubled in size!

Haha - okay so in case that didn't actually make sense to anybody but me, all four of the others have decied to take her up on the offer to move out at the end of December. Contrary to what some may think, I will not be happy to see them go, but I am still glad that they don't have to stress about this anymore. As for me, I'll be staying here and I'll be getting two new roommates in January. The landlord will be renting the giant room upstairs and the giant room downstairs out to new people and I will move out of the firetrap/hole in the basement (there you go, Mom!) and get BOTH of the smaller bedrooms in the upstairs to myself. My rent will even technically stay the same, although now that there'll only be three of us there we're going to have to pay an extra utilities fee every month. Which I can handle. I'm just happy I don't have to move. My main issue now is what the heck am I going to do with two bedrooms!?!

A Little Refreshment

2005-10-27T07:06:00.001-08:00

So, according to my mom this blog is starting to "stagnate". Well, I don't know if I'd go that far with my description, but I guess it is about time for another entry.
One possible reason for my mom's little need for reading material could be the fact that my dad is currently on a 10-day journey to the Grand Canyon that consists of getting into a van with three of his uncles and another friend, driving for two days and then hiking for another three days from the north rim of the canyon, down into it and back up the other side. He has been literally "training" for this adventure since the snow melted in April by going on hikes and walking the path around town (apparently losing almost 35 pounds in the process - go Dad!)
And since my sister spends the week at school in Winnipeg and I'm all the way out here, my mom is just plain all alone at home right now - looking for updates. So here it is - a blog entry just for you!
As for the actual update - work is still going well. I've been working early morning hours in the beginning of the week, then getting Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, and then doing evenings starting on Thursdays. I don't really like working in the evenings, but it's a little change of scene which is also not bad. This particular Tuesday-Wednesday "weekend" I was supposed to get a new smoke alarm or something installed in my room, plus I just felt like getting away, so I hopped on the bus and went to see Chris at school in Guelph. On Tuesday night we went to see the movie "The Constant Gardener" which was very good. Despite some stomach-wrenching handheld camera work and some seriously annoying plot-misleadings, the story about British drug companies using human guinea pigs in AIDS-affected Kenya was quite compelling. Other than the movie, we did a lot of eating, I went to one class with Chris but while he was attending his semiars, I just did a lot of sleeping. It was fun. Back in Waterloo on Wednesday night I hung out at 110 with Isaac and polished off the Firefly DVD series. Now we're ready for Serenity. Just hope to catch it while it's still showing in theatres!

Right now it's Thursday morning and I'll be heading off to work in about 15 minutes. I just got an email from Dad - in a hotel in Arizona - telling us he got out of the canyon safely, that it was HUGE, and that he's taken almost 200 pictures.
Can't wait to see them!

Calling all Fashion Police

2005-10-21T05:35:00.000-08:00

Alright. I really hate leaving my blog with something like *that* as the last thing to read. So here’s something positive!!

As most of you know, my little sister is getting married in the spring! And the Maid of Honour is none other that yours truly :D There won’t even be any other bridesmaids. Well, don't I feel... honoured. It's a great priveledge, yes. But with it comes the responsibility of
...finding a colour I look good in.

Which is harder than one might think, considering said colour and style must also meet with the bride’s approval. The bride who is 2400 miles away.

So here’s what happens. I find time to go to bridal stores with whatever help I can scrounge up. I try on a million dresses, and with the help of my sneaky-James-Bond-European-cellphone/camera, I snap a few shots and send them back to the “lab” in Manitoba for analysis. Results come back negative, positive, or more often that not – inconclusive.

But we’re making progress. Manily because pink and purple were outlawed from the start and I look terrible in yellow and orange. So here’s what we’re working with: And don’t mind the guy that’s always in the pictures – he must work there...

Exhibit A – “How do you spell beige?”

The gather at the waist will resemble Steph’s gown, which is what we wanted. She’s not sure if the colour would do anything at all for the wedding party, but I like it. Imagine straps and a shorter hem.

Exhibit B – “Feeling blue, baby?”

Nice and bright. But for spring? Doesn’t do much for my waist either.

Exhibit C – “The green queen”

This is basically just a sample of the colour. It would kind of match with the reception hall. But does it match with ME? What about the two-piece style – would it work at all with a shorter hem?

Okay so that’s it. If anybody REALLY wants to see me in yellow or orange, they’ll have to ask REALLY nicely. But even if you’re not quite queer enough to leave comments on this one, thanks for taking a look and getting excited alongside me for the big day :)

The Battle of Waterloo II

2005-10-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

Well, look who’s become the queen of few-and-far-between!

But hey, I promised I wouldn’t blog about every single workday, right? And yeah, that’s pretty much all I’ve been up to: working. But I’m still doing great. I’ve gotten a load more responsibility lately too. It’s actually a little stressful sometimes, managing the bakery all by myself, especially on Sunday (“brunch-day”) but that just makes all the rest of the days of the week seem that much more chill. So it’s all good.

And I say now that at least I spend the majority of my waking hours at work, because I wouldn’t want to be here at home. What’s going on in our big dream-house, you ask? Well, where do I start?

Okay, I’ve had roommates before. More than I care to count, actually. And I’ve disagreed with roommates before, even fought. But it’s never really been a big deal and we usually have many many more good times than bad. But with this bunch…. it’s just different. I don’t exactly know how to start describing it, but it’s all just…bad times.

And there’s not even fighting. Well, not on my part, anyway. I just basically sit back and watch everybody else wallow in some kind of chronic discontent.

First of all, there are the groceries. Which is always a bit of an issue in any house, I don’t care who you are. Normally, people will agree to buy a certain bunch of things like detergent and bread and milk and whatever as a group and split the costs. It just makes sense, I mean, you live together, right? So back in the beginning we drafted a list of “essentials” that we’d share. I don’t really know why, but they never actually caught on to how this “sharing” thing was supposed to work. “But what if I’m not here one weekend?” You can’t be exempted on a day-by-day basis, I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way. The whole idea is that we keep the house stocked with essential food at a much lower cost with much less effort, and we save space and create much less waste at the same time. They are like communal goods to which we all contribute and all consume. We will keep track of all the costs and providing we all do some contributing and some consuming of these goods, it should balance out in the long run. It just makes sense.

“But... what if I’m not here one weekend?”

Grrrraaaah.
“Okay, okay, we’ll give it a try”
Good. Oh, what’s that you say? You have absolutely no money and can’t buy food right now? Well, let me demonstrate to you the beauty of this system. See, I’ll buy a bunch of groceries. You are welcome to them of course, because we are technically splitting the costs. This way we can even cook larger amounts and eat together so we don’t have to cook little one-person meals every day. Once you have money again, you can go on a grocery run and after you pay for a few times, we’ll be even, and neither of us will have had to starve.

“Okay... but I’m going home next weekend, so...”
Are you serious?

And so despite this slight cognitive deficiency, none of us starved in the first month, thanks to me. Notwithstanding my bank account, that is. But hey, I’ll get my first paycheck soon, right? And now that they’ve got money, they’ll fill the fridge this week, right?

...Wrong.
As it turns out, they went and decided amongst themselves that the grocery thing “wasn’t working”, not that anybody except me ever cooked anything that fed more than themselves or their significant other. Then they went and calculated the amount of cash that each person owed me, and left it in an envelope on my desk, without any word as to why. And what with working now, I didn’t have time anymore to do all the shopping anymore either. Like, it wasn’t exactly the money that I wanted… I need somebody to go shopping! Do all you ‘broke’ people not understand that this is ten times as expensive as sharing? But at that point I’d given up on trying to get that idea through to them. And now that they had money, they started buying all the food they had ever wanted. So I started coming home to a very full (not to mention dirty) fridge, none of whose contents I could eat. I guess it’s time to drag my tired little butt to the store againSomehow this is reminding me of Europe….

Another big part of this is the landlord. So because of the previous bunch of tenants, the house wasn’t exactly rent-worthy when we moved in, but there has been a pretty constant stream of repair-guys coming in and out since September, and the major stuff got fixed pretty much right away, like the hot water and the window screens and blinds. But once my associates aren’t able to complain about the repairs themselves anymore, they will either complain about the strange men in our house at random times, the noise they make, the mess they make, and if not that, the fact that they used ‘our’ cleaning supplies to clean up said mess. And it’s not just griping. To them these are life-and-death matters, and all unhappiness gets beamed like a laser right back to the landlord.

Then one day the fire marshal stopped by for a random safety-check. First of all, she let it slip that our landlord didn’t have lodging house license for this place, which means there should really be no more than three unrelated people living here at a time. Oh, you should have seen the roomies when they heard that! So somebody went and talked to somebody’s mom’s uncle who’s a lawyer and found out there was a chance our lease was ‘null and void’ because of this by-law infraction. So then they ran around the whole house in a frenzy of bitching, chanting the words ‘null and void’, over and over.

When the fire marshal was here, she also pointed out a few violations, which I’m sure many houses (‘without fire-retardant paint on wood paneling over 15 years old’) will have, and found a few smoke detectors that weren’t working properly. Oh, and after this the roommates went absolutely nuts. Finally, something we can legitimately call a life-and-death situation. “I don’t feel safe living in this house” was the popular response, “I’m moving out at Chrismas because the lease is null and void”. To a trained bitch-detecting ear, however, this may have sounded more like “Yessss, now I won’t have to find a sublet for next semester”

“I don’t feel safe living here.”
But the fire marshall gave you a brand new smoke detector. That was the only issue with your room. Unlike my room from which I am supposed to escape from the flames through a 1x2 foot window by the ceiling.
“But... they used MY screwdriver to install it”

Oh, for crying out loud.

So that’s the way things are at my place right now. I don't really want to leave. This is the biggest nicest house I've ever lived in in my life. I went to all the work of painting my room, too. Besides, I don't care about any license, I made an agreement with somebody that gave me a place to live for one year. And that's what I got! But by the looks of things, while everybody else runs away to live for free with mommy and daddy again, I’ll probably end up looking for a new place at Christmas whether I want to or not. Wherever I end up, maybe I’ll be able to more successfully instill my socialist values, maybe not. That’s not really the part that matters to me. I’m just looking for some maturity, because I really think I’ve seen enough of whatever this is.

The majority of these comments bear no relation to my old buddy and basement roomie Issac, though, just for the record. (“we won’t…” you-know-what!)

So thanks for listening. If you’ve made it to the end of this blog entry, I really admire your endurance. I’d also like to know if you’re crazy?

But, like I’ve said before, this is my journal so take it for what it is, and any guilt for reading it is felt at your own risk ;) And what was today really about? A series of deep thoughts, maybe... a little bitch-fest of my own, probably... in any rate, a lot of stuff I’ve been dying to get off my chest. So thank you and goodnight.

Yes, but how to the turkeys feel?

2005-10-12T05:29:00.000-08:00

Question: What is Thanksgiving like when you live far from home and you can’t be with your family?
Well, I guess there are a few possible answers to that question, and surprisingly enough, I’ve experienced them all. You could maybe a) spend the weekend with somebody else’s family, feeling slightly awkward the whole time and not catching on to any of their jokes. Or you could also b) spend the weekend constantly on the phone with your own family who’s feasting on Grandma’s home cooking while you gnaw on microwave fish sticks. Another option would be c) keeping busy with work the entire time and ignoring Thanksgiving altogether. But then there’s also what I did this year which is d) having your amazing boyfriend come over with a car and take you out for a surprise romantic dinner in Toronto, drive you to work the next day, clean your room while you’re gone, pick you up, cook for you when you come home, drive you to work the day after that, pick you up again only this time keep driving all the way to Niagra Falls, and take you out for dinner again!

I’m sorry everybody, but this Thanksgiving takes the cake :)

If you can't stand the heat...

2005-10-03T13:47:00.000-08:00

It’s Monday.
A week since my I started my little job in the kitchen.

It’s been a good week. The excitement is kind of wearing off, of course. But that’s to be expected. It’s still nice to have a regular something-to-do. I even stayed an extra couple hours on Thursday to serve a banquet. But probably the most exciting part of my work on Sunday was doing brunch. The restaurant has this amazing brunch on Sundays, you see. For 15 or 20 bucks or something, you get, like, anything you could imagine for brunch. And fancy. So they put me at the pemeal bacon station with a big carving knife and I sliced a fresh piece off for anyone that came by. And then I traded with the omelette guy for a bit. And that’s when I felt the heat;)

So this is the station where people order custom-made omelettes. Simple enough, I thought. There are two mini-frying pans on two butane burners and you basically make an omelette for whoever asks, with whatever they want on it. I’ve made about a million omelettes in my life, so no big deal, right? But after I started I realized that handling two frying pans is a lot more complicated than handling just one one. Especially when they do not exactly balance on the gas range and tend to fall into the fire and send up a big oil-flame unless you hold them by the handles that are actually too burning-hot to hold without a washcloth that you wrap around the handle of the pan. Only there are two pans. And one washcloth. And neither of the pans balance…

So that was a bit stressful. Thank God I still have my eyebrows. And I didn't ruin anything either. But I was quite happy to be back at my bacon station :)

Although I worked Sunday, I had both Saturday and Monday off, so it amounts to a relatively decent weekend. Chris was over, as usual, and we manged to do some hanging out downtown and drinking of bubble tea. On Monday I finally went to see Craig! His apartment is huge, and he seems to be doing pretty good. (He’s got good and pretty too, come to mention it ;) We had a really nice chat and we’ll defiiniteliy hang some more now that I’m back in town!

So it’s back to work on Tuesday. I think by Thursday I’ll be doing the bakery all by myself. Eeek! I’ll let ya know ;)

But just for the heck of it right now, let’s pull out some memories of last weekend's party:

Three of my favorite people in the world!

Those are some hot girls.

Russ, don’t leave… we love you!

That’s scary.

That’s even scarier.
Are you feeling ill, Granny?

Chris, what are you cooking?

I've got some more ingredients for you...

Looks yummy!

Day 2 - Playing with fire

2005-09-27T12:48:00.000-08:00

I don’t know how, but I actually made myself fall asleep last night at 10:30 and even got a decent amount of shut-eye before I woke up at 5:30am. So I was good to go! And the early morning bike-ride was “refreshing” to say the least.

So don’t worry, I’m not going to blog about what I cooked every single day at work. But today I was in the bakery, which means I was learning entirely different stuff than yesterday, and a lot more too. We started by making continental breakfast platters and stuff. And if there’s anything I love it’s a continental breakfast ;) The rest of the day was putting together platters of gorgeous cakes and pastries, baking cookies and other fancy dessert things. The lady I worked with today was Maria, she’s originally from El Salvador, and she’s the cutest ever. She explained a lot more to me today about how the whole kitchen functions too, and that was awesome.

The most exciting part of the morning, however, was when she just handed me a recipe and said “cook this”. Okay, so it only had three ingredients. But it required precise timing, and most importantly using the gas range :D

I was pumped. And I did everything perfectly! Afterwards, I had to pour the stuff into little bowls and put it into the fridge to let it set. So I did that perfectly too. And then I opened the fridge door. And then I set the tray of carefully on the shelf. And then the shelf busted. And then everything on it, including my very first stovetop-accomplishment, totally crashed to the bottom of the fridge.

So I was a little less pumped after that. It’s not like they blamed me or anything, but it still sucked to clean it up :P And I’ve decided not to take the broken shelf as a sign of my future at the hotel.

Another crazy thing, there are a lot of hours between 7am and lunchtime. It’s kind of nice to get most of your work done in the morning, I guess. But have I TOLD you about lunchtime? I mean, yesterday I did kind of feel weird packing a lunch and going to work in a place that makes food…

… but today I found out that they CATER the staff room EVERY DAY! You just have to allow them to deduct 2 bucks from your paycheck every shift and you get to attack the “staff buffet” on your lunchbreak! And it’s not all just leftovers either. Today there was pizza, mexican potatoes, cheesy pasta, mixed veggies and a bunch of pastries and other stuff I can’t even remember. Now I call that a sweet deal.

After lunch it wasn’t long before Maria went home but I had another hour to kill so I helped the real cooks out again by chopping potatoes. Hehe, I’m still a little nervous around them. I have so many questions about stuff but instead I usually am just quiet or I tell dumb stories involving desserts and broken shelves…

Going home at 3pm is also not a bad thing. At least the weather was a little warmer for the bike ride :)

Chief Executive Pineapple Chopper, at your service

2005-09-26T16:20:00.000-08:00

Considering that I just finished my first day at WORK… I’ll let it be assumed that my meeting with the cook on Friday went quite well. His name is Gary, but in the kitchen he’s called “Chef”. How cute is that! So he took to me, I guess. But how couldn’t he have? I don’t think I stopped smiling the entire 20 minutes I was in his office. By the time I checked my email at home that afternoon, there was already a message there from the hotel, offering me a full-time position in the Garde Mange and Bakery starting on Monday.

Monday. That’s an entire weekend away!
You know what that means.
It’s time to celebrate.

And celebrate I did!
As a matter of fact, we had a good-sized party at our house that very night! Well, I'm not that egocentric, it was actually the housewarming party that we’d been planning to have for the past couple weeks. But why not celebrate my new job too? Adam was even comig out from Ottawa for the weekend!

So I guess it wasn’t the hottest party in the world. My Waterloo friends aren’t exactly wild dancing people, and if any other of my roomies had wild dancing friends, they didn’t show up. As far as I’m concerned, though, pretty much everybody I really wanted to see there showed up, some of whom I hadn’t even seen since I’d gotten back! I love all of you guys! So there was a bit of food and a bit of drinks and a bit of fun conversation. Most of the people were gone by midnight – can you tell I’m not a student anymore? – but it was still fun just the few of us chilling out after everybody was gone.

The rest of the weekend was great too. We went to St. Jacobs Market, we went to church on Sunday and even the Mongolian Grill. Three cheers to Adam for coming out for the weekend with at car!!! It was simply a blast. And as funny as it sounds, what made the weekend most exciting of all was that I had a job to go to on Monday!

And I guess that brings me to today. My first day of work!
After my first good night’s sleep in a couple days, I rolled out of bed and ate breakfast with the schoolchildren. Once I kissed them goodbye and sent them off, I headed out myself. Of course on my first day of work it was raining torentially, so I couldn’t take my bike, and I had to leave half an hour earlier in order to make my bus transfer. But I got there just fine.

I started out by getting dressed. And let me just say, I look totally awesome. I mean, I get to wear, like, a real cook’s jacket with the buttons down the front. They even gave me pants and a hat! That’s right, I’m working at a place where you not only have to wear jogging pants all day (right on!), they actually provide them for you! It’s a step up from pantyhose in my books, anyway!

And then I got right down to work with this crazy Vietnamese lady named Linh. She says my name “Jen” sounds too much like her husband’s name “Jim”, which she finds difficult enough to pronounce anyway, so she decided to just call me “darling” instead.

Can you make a Greek salad, darling?

Can I!

So that was the first thing I did. Greek Salad for 100 people. Then came spinach salad, same amount. Then I made 6 fancy pantsy fruit platters and cut up about 6 pineapples and 10 pounds of mushrooms for tomorrow. And then it was time to go home. Pineapples are pretty time consuming, it seems! But I didn’t actually go before I hung out a little and watched the *real* cooks work their magic. And the leftover wild-mushroom risotto wasn’t bad, either :)

So yah, that’s what I’m up to. If you haven’t figured it out by now, the Garde Mange part of the kitchen is where the cold things are prepared… like salads… and fruit trays…

I mean, I don’t know if it’s considered, like, the “loser” section of the restaurant or whatever. I also have no idea if chopping vegetables for 9 bucks an hour is a socially admirable use of a Bachelor’s degree and all of my contemporaries are already on their way to chief executivehood while I’m stuck up to my neck in quartered #1 mushrooms…

… but right now I’m not complaining! Kitchen work was one of of my favorite part-time jobs of all time. And this is from someone who’s had a LOT of part-time jobs ;) I actually consider myself lucky NOT to be sitting on my ass all day. And maybe I’m still having Germany backlash, but the people seem pretty cool too.

So after one day, despite a bit of pineapple-acid-burn, all is well! But talk to me again after a week of starting at 7am…

It's not like I have a...

2005-09-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning and I just laid there. I had no reason to get out of bed. Literally. I mean, the past few weeks I’ve had a few little errands to do every day, like little parts of the house to clean or set up, little things to mail or pick up, little people to meet for coffee. But today there was nothing. And even if there was, at that moment there wasn’t one thing that I could think of that would make me of any use to myself or anyone. Why did I even have to go and open my eyes, I thought. And it’s not like I have a JOB…

After another hour or so, after everyone was gone to school, I did manage to drag myself upstairs, pour myself some cereal and and catch the last 10 minutes of Regis and Kelly. Wow, Little Bow-wow has certainly gotten bigger, I said to the Karl Marx poster hanging on the livingroom wall. But something tells me he didn’t care much.

I got up to bring my cereal bowl into the kitchen… and that’s when the phone rang. I guess it must have been just really quiet in the house after I’d turned the TV off, because wen it rang, my heart skipped about three beats and I poured the remnants of my cereal milk all over the kitchen floor. Hello Jen speaking, I stuttered. Jen! I’m so happy to have finally reached you. I was already on the phone with Manitoba today, trying to find your number! But Ms from the Waterloo Inn, I emailed you my number immediately after our meeting. And you emailed me back the same day and said “Thanks”.

(Insert long pause of me standing in used milk as she checks her email records) … “Sure enough…” she says.
And “gaaaaaaah!” screams my brain.

Well, if anything props to my mom for being home and having my new number on hand. And props to me for getting the guts to leave a message at the hotel yesterday. And I guess props also to Ms Doogan for going to all that trouble of calling long distance too… I guess.

And now I’ve only got one more hurdle to clear. I’m going in tomorrow to meet the head cook. The thing is, I don’t have a ton of kitchen experience, so I’m going to really have to show some kind of super learning capacity. But I’m totally capable, so it’s all good.

Oh, and why was I lying in bed so late as to almost totally miss Regis and Kelly? Well, I went out last night! I took my little bike all the way uptown to the Starlight, one of my favorite bars, where I met Julian and Tonya who I had not seen in like a million years and we hung out with Julian’s cool band-playing friends who that night just happened to be having their CD-release party. And they totally rocked… as much as an experimental instrumental electronic band can *rock*, that is.

Virtual tour, anyone?

2005-09-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

My second weekend out here has come and gone. It’s Monday night and I still haven’t heard from the hotel lady. Apparently the cook was on vacation last week, though, and she needs to talk to him about my position. So I’m sure she’ll call this week sometime… (gaaaah!)

So since I wasn’t working yet, my weekend was totally open. I saw a few more Waterloo people, like Adam who is totally awesome and surprised me by showing up on Friday with a bed for my room! Chris came out again too and helped me with a lot of computer stuff, which was awesome too. He also ended up cooking yummy homemade spaghetti and afterwards cleaned the entire kitchen! Yeah, this guy won’t be getting away too easily ;)

So I’m happy to say that as of now my room is finally ready to be lived in. Aside from maybe a rug for winter, and some shelving in my closet, I’m pretty much set. And since I’ve gotten the internet down here now too, here are the pictures I promised!!

The new place.

The lovely back porch accented here and there with piles of junk.

The back door.

This is where we eat.

This is where we cook.

This is the livingroom. It was the last room to get worked on, but it looks a lot better now.

This is the dark tunnel that leads to the crevice in which I sleep.

That’s a lovely few shades of white.

Okay, the beige isn’t a huge change, but it’s something.

Ahhh, all set up. That’s better

And the new bed is a lot better than the air mattress.

Let’s everybody set up the internet!

My favorite downstairs roomie.

My favorite upstairs roomie.

My favorite Julian.

And then there’s this weird guy in the pink shirt. I don’t know what he was doing in my room…

Well, that’s it for now! Let me know what you think about our place! And check back to hear about the job, I guess…. (gaaaaah!)

... and she's IN!

2005-09-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

It's already Wednesday. The excitement of moving in and starting the new semester has somewhat worn off for most of us by now. All my roomies are in school right now, I guess. Or at least they're not home. Yes, I know I need a job, but I'm getting to that.

First of all, my room. The landlady managed to finally drop off a bucket of paint yesterday for that hole in the basement where I sleep. It was beige. Not really as cool as I had hoped for (or as pink), but certainly better than two-tone blinding white. So what do we have here... a roller, a tray, an old sheet, some tape, the paint... has anybody seen a paintbrush anywhere? No? I can't do the edges with a huge roller, you know. But apparently the landlady didn't know this (as I actualy should have already assumed by the looks of the paintjob in the kitchen).

But luckily the landlady's parents randomly came over at that moment, to check the water hose or something. I asked them if they could get me a paintbrush out of the shed. Sure... oh wait. I forgot my keys at home. But we'll be back in a few hours to meet another repairman, so just start painting and we'll drop one off. Okay fair enough.

So I started painting. And I continued painting, and a few hours later I had done everything but the edges around the doors and the ceiling. And still no paintbrush. So I waited another hour and then just did it all with a sponge from the kitchen. Yah, that didn't work all too well, and it kind of messed up the ceiling, but crappy equipment brings crappy results. And they never showed up with a paintbrush at all. But at least it's done. Thanks also to Isaac for letting me sleep in his room so that the paint fumes wouldn't have any magic effects on me overnight. (Although, in his words: if your scared of fumes, my room might not be much better!)

But I was fine.
And I even got up nice and early the next morning - for my big interview! Man, I looked good. The bus ride was pleasant, I was there a good 15 minutes early, and it was a breeze. She basically just looked at my resume and pulled out a list of, like, 10 positions at the Hotel and asked me which one I'd prefer. (Haha, I know I'm good, but I didn't know I'd have a choice!) But that's right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm in at the Inn :) The Waterloo Inn and Conference Centre, that is.

So since it's something I've been wanting do gain more experience in, I told her the kitchen. And she said sure, we'll find a junior position for you in there! Not washing dishes, of course, something cool :) All she needed to do was talk to the chef. So she's calling me tomorrow. And I went home a happy girl. My paint was even dry. Now let's decorate!

Home, Sweet Home

2005-09-11T15:51:00.000-08:00

I am writing now from my new kitchen. Our new kitchen.
We haven't set up any kind of network yet, but the
amazing Isaac has left his hot new laptop on the
kitchen table for all of us to use for now.

From my vantage point here at the table I am able to
gaze out the French doors onto the huge patio and
beyond into the vibrant green backyard. I look to my
left and am able to admire the meticulously cleaned
and recently stocked kitchen with the enormous
refrigerator, generous breathing room and ample
storage space. Behind me, also newly tiled and
paninted, lies the livingroom; full of boxes and
without furniture as of yet, but holding extreme party
potential.

Yes. In thinking about the backyard, the kitchen, the
big windows, the three bathrooms and the washer and
dryer, I've come to the conclusion that I really like
this house.

... Except for my room.
My room is in the basement. I think in a former life
it must have been some kind of storage closet. In this
former life, I believe the floor must have also been
level, and the walls lacking in giant holes.
Unfortunately, that life has passed and the remnants
of it have fallen into my hands. And now I must spend
the next year surrounded by its multicoloreed walls for 350
bucks a month. If the rest of the house weren't
entirely worth this money, I believe I'd be quite a
sorry tenant.

So I'm going to see what I can do about paint, at
least. But until then I've decided to use my energy
cleaning the renovation-dust out of the rest of this
lovely place, and use my bedroom as simply storage for
my suitcases and for my body during the night.
Pictures of everything coming soon.

And how is the job-search going, do you ask? Well,
there's honestly not much to say. I tried calling one
contact on Friday to arrange and interview time, but
she wasn't there. And I didn't leave a message because
we don't exactly have a phone number yet. So I'm going
to have to try again on Monday.

I simply hate it when so many things are just hovering
above my head like this. But that's also just the way
things are when you start a new chapter of your life,
so to speak. I'm actually quite lucky to be surrounded
by good friends, new and old, to help me out (and to let me
relieve my stress by helping them out as well!) A
special mention here must go to Chris, the man who
picked me up from the airport and hung around the
entire weekend, helping all of us haul furniture into
the house and junk out of it, buying food and giving
us rides wherever we needed to go. We even ventured
out to Hamilton on Saturday at Isaac's invitation and
had an awesome night of eating Italian food and
watching The Family Guy with his H-dot posse.

But Chris has gone now, back to Guelph and back to
school until some unknown weekend when he will find another wonderful family to lend him their car and he will
reappear in our house. Tomorrow is Monday and all my
roomies will also be heading back to class while I
resume my little job search. I can't say I'm looking
forward to it, but it is nevertheless very nice to be
in Waterloo again, especially with this weather.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

2005-09-06T09:15:00.000-08:00

After an entire afternoon of loving yet intensive labour I proudly present to you my new weblog.

Seeing as I am no longer in Deutschland, I have decided it necessary to discontinue my "Jen in Deutschland" blog. I beg for your understanding. However, I can also not deny that during the course of this past year I have developed a serious addiction to expressing my experiences, thoughts and opinions in this way.

Hello. My Name is Jen. And I'm a Blogaholic.

After a year working with a relatively generic template, I have this time combined my experience and my aesthetic aptitude, (and a handful of HTML tutorials) to create a custom template that pleases the eye while reflecting my personality. (Only to the extent that these two things can be combined, of course!)

But enough about my mad skills.

This blog will not be updated every day, as the last one was. This one will also not, for the most part, tell of my daily comings and goings, but will hopefully be something more of a storytelling medium and a creative outlet.
... okay, and also to let mom and dad know what I'm up to out here in Ontario :)

My time at home was wonderful. I have put together a great new album too. But on Thursday it's back to Ontario and back to the real world of "Jen in Waterloo". Isn't she done yet? Well yes. But it still depends on my school accepting the work I did in Germany. If they do, I can graduate. If they don't, I'll go back to class in January. At any rate, I'll be finding a job as soon as I arrive. At least I have a house, though. And a very cool set of roommates.

Bis dann!