Family Friday, The Big Brother Edition

so i have an older brother - i mentioned that i recently found out that he has a blog. those who know me know that i rag on him, oh, like almost all the time. i won't start here, or i may run out of blog space. but lately, we have been talking quite a bit. he is a high school teacher - physics and chemistry and who knows what else - and classes started this week.

as long as i can remember (and i can remember long) my brother has been the nicest person i know. and i don't always say it in a complimentary way. also, he would give that cherry tree cutting dude a run for his money when it comes to honesty. couldn't lie to win his kids in a custody case - luckily for him, it is not something he has to worry about. but when you have folk rolling their eyes about how this guy just cannot even tell a "white" lie - no, you don't look fat in that dress; yes i think your hair looks good - you know you have a case on your hands. oh... he is also a compulsive truth-teller. unprompted. out it comes. not always endearing. but then again, never a lie. and always just so damn nice. which would you prefer?

and this super nice, honest guy, woke up one day and said - i want to be a teacher. so i said - oh, okay (because that is what you say, right?) and then next thing i know he is on some course and has quit his lab job and is starting at some school for "at risk children" and then he transferred to an "inner city" school. whatever label the group of kids was given, they were high school kids. teenagers. and, when i asked him about his day at work, there were quite a few badass kids up in there too. yeah, i know i went to an uber-strict boarding school (nicknamed the pink prison and not for nothing either), so what do i know about badass? going to the bathroom without permission impresses me.

but you talk to him and he loves his job. he plans rope tricks that will help the students with lateral thinking and topology. he calls their parents if a kid misbehaves. on that day. to say, hello, your kid misbehaved today. apparently the kids didn't believe him in the beginning, when he said he would. apparently they don't know about his whole honesty fetish. he offers make up classes to help some kids, who are just a little short, graduate. i sure hope that he doesn't burn out any time soon. i'm burnt out just thinking about it...

Zen Thursday

oh... i am so ready to go to bed. in fact after the deep relaxation, all i am doing is pretty much counting the minutes until i can hit the sack. thursday? yoga at lunchtime day and i don't care what anyone tells me i have no clue what's going on anywhere. i did my full shoulder stand - to reverse the aging process - and followed it with the opposition pose, the fish - which reverses the reversal? i don't know... all i know is that everything seemed to balance out after that.

i bumped into my neighbour who had a bandaid on his arm. jokingly, i asked if his cousin had cut him and he said, oh no, i got hit by a car. and i was all - hit? glad i didn't have one of those moments where the response was, oh no but my cousin just died and i am headed to the morgue.
i digress. so i am all - hit?
not badly (explains the bandaid) just a little knock. turns out a woman lost hold of her kid and her kid ran out into an intersection. the car swerved to avoid the child and knocked my neighbour - but ever so lightly.
you see? balance.

so you think i was going to jeopardise that with the possibility of real life? no way, jose! came home and sat with my neighbour (the one who wasn't hit by a car), ate apple pie and ice cream and watched the family guy and law & order reruns.

ohmmmmmm...

Wacky Wednesday

it almost slipped my mind, it's not like it was big news today - more focus was on some actor guy named owen and his apparent deep depression - but it was the second anniversary of the disaster called katrina. president bush says there has been a lot of progress since then and so i don't understand why a whole lot of the people living in louisiana and mississippi (especially those pessimistic louisiana folk) are complaining that little has been done. granted some claim they are still homeless, but there is a bridge that has been repaired that will cut your ride by about 45 minutes so you can get back to your not a home in no time. now, isn't that progress?

i think the gloomy media, who make money off of my sadness it seems, is just trying really hard. somehow they seem able to find desolate landscapes and devastated people. how do they do that? i guess that's why they get paid the big bucks. because they really get me choked up everytime and apparently i am not the only one they have thinking that there might be something wrong with the fact that very little seems to have gone on since the water evaporated - except a bunch of mould growing in what is basically rubble. but look at me, i am getting sucked into it all, those reporters and their powerful imagery. i won't be sucked in. if the leaders of this nation see no reason to be ashamed of all of that. if they can ignore it and we here can still be a super power and the greatest nation in the world, heck, i need to switch to the us open and get a grip.

Moody Tuesday

i got mail today!!! who knew i would be so happy to get a bunch of junk mail and bills. but after my visit to the post office on saturday where i stood in line for an hour and a half - like i was trying to buy a nintendo wii - only to be told there was nothing there. of course i asked, so where is my mail? "you'll have to come back on monday and talk to blah blah white noise, control yourself pandave....

(i know i didn't close the quotation marks but the moment never ended)

i was told by a neighbour that word around the building is that i am holding an open house. so i spent the day wondering who started the rumour and if it is part of an elaborate plan to explain my disappearance in a week or two... yes, i watch that much crime television.

i went to whole foods today and discovered wine sorbet... now why am i discovering frozen wine at the end of summer? but no... silver lining - still in time for labour day weekend. i am off to buy cones.

stevie wonder's part time lover is an awesome pre-bed dance song. remember to dance lightly if you have downstair's neighbours and to lip synch if your walls are as thin as mine.

gotta find out when my open house is... have to make the space look extra special... this apartment i don't know i'm giving up.

Monday Java

i am easing into monday morning today, drinking my water and checking my bag to make sure i have everything i might need. the usual checklist - wallet, phone, keys. today, an envelope of papers to send to my older brother and lunch (yes, i spent the afternoon cooking yesterday). i have bbc world news on and have just watched a clip about princess diana. oops i almost forgot the sunglasses - i hate when i get downstairs and i have to decide how glaringly bright the sun is. is it worth walking back up to the fourth floor for the glasses?

i have my ipod on and i pick up the remote to turn off the telly and i see the banner - breaking news. i wonder, yet again, are they going to tell me castro is dead (damn you bloggers and your panic-inducing rumours!)? but instead alberto gonzalez has resigned. the man who insisted he wasn't going anywhere; the same alberto that dubya pledged to stand by until the end? to be honest, it was a bit of an anti-climax. i know many were calling for him to resign but i wanted to see him get into just a little bit of trouble first.

but, such better news than "castro is dead". it is a dream of mine to do a trip to cuba under castro. but i have to work out the kinks, the biggest being that this bastion of democracy that i am in doesn't allow me to go and hang in cuba. but after reading the government site on cuba, i know they are doing it for my own good. but when did i ever start doing things for my own good? hell, i have seen people with bleeding feet and still i want to run a marathon

Yawn

so my little brother arrived last night. from zimbabwe. in boston. at about 10:30pm (flight was delayed because it seems people are not happy at heathrow). and he came out about half an hour later - after being photographed and fingerprinted. seeing how he felt to see familiar faces after a 24-hour plus commute, makes my current hysteria so worth it.

he got into his college van and went off to begin orientation before he starts college and i got into my rental and drove back to new york. i hit the highway after midnight and got to my apartment at 4am (in case you imagined a shooting star last night). i was awoken at 6:30 am to be informed by a company trying to make a pickup from me that my intercom is broken.

you know i am thinking perhaps this is a sign. i am getting no mail, and now my intercom doesn't work. should i be going on walkabout?

tomorrow i shall continue to stalk my clever landlord who just doesn't answer the phone and never calls back... unless you owe them money.

but tonight i am not complaining... i think i need some moments of unreachability... until i have to walk down four flights of stairs to let that murphy's law visitor in...

This One's My Favourite!

because knowledge is power (and ignorance oscillates between being bliss and bondage), unicef launched the coolest campaign ever in germany. the goal is either to stop kids from complaining when they have to wake up in the morning to go to school or to teach them how africa is one nation unified in unedumaction. the campaign features 4 ads with the following blurbs:

• in africa, many kids would be glad to worry about school
• some teachers suck. no teachers sucks even more
• in africa, kids don't come to school late, but not at all
• i'm waiting for my last day in school, the kids in africa still for their first one

for all their efforts, all unicef got back was a whole lot of complaining. apparently some found the muddy blackface offensive. other nitpickers decided that the whole painting the continent's population with one education crisis brush was not the way forward.

well, unicef rushed to assure folk that the aim was to show that "children may look different but are equal - we all want to go to school." well they are wrong on both counts - according to the campaign, german children don't really want to go to school and spend their time there counting the days until they can leave. and this ad campaign clearly shows that will a little mud, all kids DO look alike.

It's The Economy Stupid!

a few months ago i had a little travelling adventure that ended up in security confiscating my special sunscreen. as soon as i got home i went straight to sephora to pick up another bottle of the stuff - ever since i learnt about the huge hole in the ozone layer while in high school i have been paranoid about the sun. it may all be a marketing ploy but it sure does work on me.

a few weeks later i travelled again - i had a huge ziploc bag but mr security guy confiscated my sunscreen again - apparently the bottle was too big. coincidence? conspiracy? cign?

this time it took a while to go back. in fact, it took until today to go back. i trundled over to sephora and, after the sale, i looked in my bag. what? no samples?! the only reason i ever thought of sephora was because every time my brother got something from them he got the coolest samples that he chucked over my way. i can understand belt-tightening and all but i thought the word was that we are in a recession. plus dubya told us that the best way to demonstrate our patriotism was through shopping. because, um, our sales tax goes to help pay for building democrazy and body armour. but how am i supposed to shop when i'm not getting my free samples, doggone it!?

the dark cloud of i've been cheated must have been totally cheated must have been visible because some women dressed in black, pink and green handed me a free mascara and another store gave me free hair product that i can actually use on my hair. i should have told pink, black and green to stop over in sephora and teach them a thing or two about patriotism.

Beef!

last thursday i came home from work and checked my mailbox. empty. i was a little surprised - it is not as though the junk mail comes everyday but the pre-approved loaners usually wait until the weekend to give me a break. but i didn't sweat it - it's not as though someone was sending me a letter. i missed my new york magazine but i decided it must be one of those weeks when the mag takes a break.

i went away for the weekend and came back on monday night - to an empty mailbox.
"there's no mail." my neighbour, stating the obvious.

turns out the postal service and my new landlord had a falling out over some key box that grants access to the mail deliverer. now, i have lived here since 2001 and, in all that time, there has never been a key box outside our building. not that any of it mattered, i had to pass through the post office and pick up my mail on my way to work. why do my shoes pick that day to be military grade tools of torture?

i get to the post office and my mail lady encourages, no practically demands that i jump into the fray.
"it's not just your building; the landlord owns 2 other buildings and they don't have a key box and so they're not getting any mail either! call the office and keep calling them and tell them that they have to put that box out there. until they do it, you'll have to come here once a week because i'll only sort your mail once a week, and pick up your mail. i know you get a lot of mail but it's your landlord's fault."

i am guessing that neither rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night doesn't include missing key boxes.

Heat Advisory

on saturday i gave in. i had been lying on my couch since friday afternoon, trying to convince myself that the hot and impossibly humid blanket of atmosphere could be eased by my hardworking fan. i couldn't take it anymore; i couldn't put it off any longer. i left my apartment and trudged over to the local appliance store (i am not going to plug them because some of the staff there were, quite frankly, less than friendly). i picked up an air conditioner that was supposed to be the right capacity for my living room and i took a cab home. i paid a guy $25 to carry the thing up to my fourth floor apartment and set about installing this window unit.

i pull out the instruction book and follow it step by step. there are some things i can't do - like bolt the unit to my outside sill, because it appears to be made out of iron and i can't seem to make a dent in it. but i get the thing in the window and go to the second last step. i am supposed to remove a screw from the ac unit. except, now that it is in the window, my screwdriver won't fit in to the side to do this. so... i am holding on to the a/c unit and trying to move it out of the window so i can start again and the next thing i know the machine is airborne.

i try to grab it but get only air (which might be a good thing because that unit gained momentum with a quickness and i might have just followed it) and then i watch it tumble down and hit the ground. it hit the ground with an almighty crash and hissed for the next 30 minutes, as i paced around my apartment, wringing my hands and saying oh my god, over and over again. and then i looked out the window and, yes, it was still there, pieces scattered below; thankfully no one pinned underneath it, as far as i could see.

the thought crossed my mind - maybe i can take the pieces back for an exchange. but once i got downstairs - frantic and sweaty as all get down, sanity returned. there was no way.

perhaps it is a sign... maybe i am to be a lab rat for global warming...
we have a heat advisory today