Copenhagen

I've just been hearing more and more about the Copenhagen climate change summit in the news lately, mostly about the violence between protestors and the police, that I've started to wonder what are they really trying to accomplish over there? I found a nice little BBC article that answered some of my QandA's about the conference, but I'm still wondering is any of this Really going to get anywhere? The activists are squabbling with the police and the Ministers are squabbling with eachother and no one seems to really be coming to any sort of conclusion. And how many of these activists and politicians and NGO heads etc. took flights to Copenhagen while releasing some lovely CO2 into our atmosphere? Just a thought.

I'm still not sure what to make of this conference. Are the activisits really getting anywhere combatting police to get into the centre? and what's the use of the police battering and arresting the activists? For my part, I think getting angry because those inside the centre are not coming to a satisfying conclusion is just not good enough. Why are you trying to get in when clearly the system inside isn't working? Squabbling with police and singing 'its hot in here i say there must be some carbon in the atmosphere' isn't changing much. If you want your voice heard make it heard through the way you live and the choices you make, the people you influence; make a voice of your own - from the outside - instead of trying to get someone elses on the inside to say what you want. Just a thought.

I'll leave you with a photo of some angry climate protestors to keep the wheels turning. What do you think about all this?

It doesn't matter in the end. It's not the End yet.

Oh dear

Just Because...

just because today was one of those mornings i just woke up in one of those ridiculously good moods. i was in such a good mood i jumped. several times. i jumped several times. and i was listening to The Maccabees while it happened.

Toothpaste Kisses

i'm just not a very big fan of capitals...

they make the rest of the letters in the sentence seem inferior.

what does the brain matter

"She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter - even trees, or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her suspicions), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps - perhaps." Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Nothing like reading a book at the right time in the right moment by the right author.

"...What does the brain matter,' said Lady Rosseter, getting up,'compared with the heart?'"

a subject i like

Activist Teacher Blog
Because I love reading anything that is critical of the academic system. Because I could go on for days criticising the university system. When I was in high school I would mentally note things I hated about the public school system and wanted to change. And now that I'm working in France I've already started to critically think about the way the school board is run here. The Activist Teacher blog is written by ex-UofO professor Denis Rancourt and examines our educational system with a very critical eye. Sometime I agree with him and sometimes I'm not sure what to think, but most importantly he gets you thinking about how we run our classes, how we 'teach', what we 'learn', how the school system functions to support the capitalist society we are surrounded by etc. etc. etc. and what sort of 'thinkers' we are producing. Do we need to completely disassemble the system to recreate something more conducive to learning? What is the real goal of 'education'? and how do we go about reaching it? Ah I could go on forever.

Anyways, if you are like me and have sat in lecture and have thought 'why am I here?' 'what's the point of all this?' 'I'm not going to learn anything from this course... I hope I can get through it with an average mark...' etc. then you will probably enjoy checking out Rancourt's blog. Enjoy!

Bonjour from Bubbleland

Bonjour!

Just a petit hello from Saint Quentin while I can access internet in the land sans internet! Not only do we not have internet in our chambres, the internet at the school and in the city doesn't always 'fonction' bien... I am beginning to think that Saint Quentin is like the little Bermuda triangle (well circle really) of France. People live here with constantly malfunctioning internet and seem to think that this is quite normal! we live in ancien times here. It's as if Saint Quentin is encompassed by a giant bubble which blocks out internet signals...

Ah mais everything else is bon and I will follow this up with some pics of the ville and some tidbits of info... if I can catch the internet cooperating...

The Perfect Tea

I have found the perfect tea - 'Chai Green Tea'. It's the perfect blend of the spices used in Chai - fennel, cardamom, cinnamon, etc. - with your typical green tea taste. I stumbled upon it by accident this morning while roaming my mother's somewhat dusty herbal tea collection. She grinds her own Chai spices and makes her own tea but Chai is usually too milky and too thick for me. Fruity herbal tea didn't really suit me this morning either so the Chai Green Tea seemed like an interesting experiment. And what an awesome discovery! It satisfies the need for something more spicy and flavourful than a herbal tea and doesn't overwhelm your senses with too dark a steep and an overload of caffeine (for those of us who can't handle too much caffeine...). So, while continuing my attempt to read a french novel, I curled up and enjoyed the first of many rendez-vous with a cup of Chai Green Tea ;) Never underestimate the healing qualities of the perfect tea.

Words are not as Romantic across the Atlantic

I booked my flight to France today.

I was listening to The Rentals song 'Story of a Thousand Seasons Past'. I thought the lyrics were particularly interesting.

I also started my final essay for my Romantic lit course. It will be my last undergraduate essay.

I gave up writing my essay and started searching for more Rentals songs. I came across their site. Someone is learning French in the video on their website. I thought this was nice.

Giant Crystal Caves

Because I saw this awhile ago in National Geographic and just thought it was really ridiculously cool. I want to walk in these caves...

Butterless Brownies

Have no butter? Fear not! you can still satisfy your brownie craving with vegetable oil! I've been trying to resist buying a new block of butter for the past week and a bit now knowing that the minute I do I'll start baking like a madwoman. However, today I overcame the barrier of having to BUY more butter by using vegetable oil instead! Oh it's a terrible terrible discovery indeed, now there is virtually nothing stopping me from making brownies whenever I want...
So I thought I'd share the doom with everyone! Here is the glorious recipe I found:

1/2C vegetable oil or melted butter
1C sugar (I might try brown sugar next time...)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2C all purpose flour
1/3C cocoa
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease a 9inch square pan and coat in cocoa.
mix oil and sugar in large bowl, add vanilla and eggs.
mix, in seperate bowl (which I never do and it works anyway), flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
sift (I never do this either and it works anyway) the dry ingredients into the wet gradually and mix thoroughly after each addition.
pour batter into baking pan.
bake for 20-25 mins or until brownies start to come away from the sides.
cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.

Ah today has been a very blog filled day. Check out the updated Lascaux Du Monde and this pretty little design blog I got stuck on for awhile. Anyways that's it, enjoy those brownies ;)

TOMATO

my closet environmentalism

It's just so simple sometimes. I'm not an environmental fanatic, there's tons of things I still don't do to keep our planet a little healthier I admit it, but sometimes it really is just so simple. Like throwing your little paper Tim Horton's bag in the paper recycle instead of the closer and more convenient garbage can. Or remembering to fill up your water bottle in the morning instead of relying on your work's water dispensers or free water bottles (and most tap water is healthier for you anyway! unless of course you are at my cottage...).

Today I drank from a bottle of water and the whole time I was thinking about the fish in that area of the ocean where all the plastic circulates who are contaminated with little particles of plastic. I couldn't help it, the image just surfaced and all I could think about was how sick they were because I was drinking from a plastic bottle of water. I also feel bad if I forget to bring my re-usable grocery bag when I go grocery shopping. These things are just so simple to adjust to your regular habits that it just baffles me when people claim they can't or just don't bother because they don't think their effort will change anything.

But we've seen the change already with the 5 cent charge for plastic grocery bags at most stores. The fact that there are more and more people using re-usable bags out there gives me hope for the anti-plastic bottled water cause. There's just no need for bottled water. We could put all the wasted money which bottled water companies use to keep their businesses running and gear it towards providing cleaner and healthier tap water... everywhere.

Ok that's the end of my environment rant. Here are some useful/interesting links for you on plastic:

JunkRaft
World's Biggest Garbage Dump - just some interesting facts in here.
Message in a Bottle
Plastic Ocean

"In your life, you meet people. Some you never think about again. Some, you wonder what happenned to them. There are some that you wonder if they ever think about you. And then there are some you wish you never had to think about again. But you do." (The Wonder Years)

Maybe not the most poetic way of putting it, but I just read it and it is true and it felt like a sentimental day. Unfortunately for us, we have no control over this. A mystery of our minds. Agreed?

My Public Transit Heaven

I really like taking public transit. I own a book called "Transit Maps of the World" and everytime I see a new headline about the long proposed subway extension to York University I get excited. I also feel cool riding the trams... or streetcars... or whatever you like to call them. The new art installation at Museum station makes me happy. Today I was discussing my passion for turning all our urban centres into public transit heavens. Efficient subway service for all, proper streetcar lines above ground for the inbetweens. Interesting murals at every station too. And everyone would want to ride them because they would be much faster at getting you where you want to go than cars. Not to mention ecologically and environmentally friendly. Just the thought of Toronto as a happily efficient public transit city makes me smile. And we're getting there, slowly. The new Transit City LRT project has been approved for funding and there's a current bid for light rail trains to replace the old streetcars. On top of that, discussion about the proposed Downtown Relief Line has resurfaced. Although debates about the gains versus the costs of these projects are ongoing, the fact that efficient and more environmentally friendly transit is in the works - is even being proposed - is just simply exciting to me.

heels night out

I don't see any problem with indulging in a little bit of dress-up sans raison every once in awhile. I bought this beautiful pair of silver and white heels at a vintage store about a month ago...


...but so far haven't had any excuse to wear them. So tonight a few of my girlfriends (also with new heels and nowhere to go) and I are dressing up and going bar hopping... solely for the purpose of heel wearing. Sometimes I wonder why I can't be one of those people who scoffs in the face of fashion and claims not to care what they wear, but when it comes down to it there's just something about finding a dress that fits you perfectly, or a sweater that's the right shade of orange (to match your red hair...), or slipping on a pair of heels that are extremely comfortable and look great. To me, style is just as relevant a form of personal and social expression as a painting or a book. It acts as a form of art that you wear on your body and how you wear and manipulate clothes to fit your style is unique to you. So instead of expressing myself through acrylics or words, tonight I'll express myself through heels. In the words of fashion icon Coco Chanel, "A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous," and tonight my girlfriends and I will be both.

online Life

This is my second attempt at starting up this blog. The first time I tried to do it anonymously. I wanted it to be a sort of outlet to write down all my thoughts and ideas, mostly my thoughts and ideas about stuff that made me angry - suburbs, facebook, the school system - I was going to update it regularly and really practise my writing, edit properly and so on. Yet, like many of my grand schemes, my upkeep of the blog sort of fizzled out and eventually... died. I can't tell you how many stories I've started, businesses I've half imagined, languages I've tried to learn, scripts I've half written and so on. I'm a chronic beginner and finishing failure. So, for this second attempt, I am not committing myself to any large-scale project or leaving myself with any grand expectations. I will write when I feel like writing and it doesn't have to be snazzy, it may just be a post about something I thought was cool and decided to share. No more, no less.

Part of the reason for the re-attempt at personal blogging is my new blog Lascaux du Monde that I started with a friend. She manages to update her personal blog quite regularly and through reading her blog, and discussing our joint one, I've started to take to blogging again. Also, as Facebook is fading as an online social network (for me at least), blogging seems to be rising and of course I don't want to get left behind...

It's interesting how online social networks tend to go in and out of fashion amongst friends. First there was MSN, which most people I know started using around middle school. We would exchange emails with eachother at school so we could go home and talk to eachother online - making plans to hang out, exchanging answers to homework, (and so on...). We were the lucky generation of pre-teens whose parents didn't really understand the internet yet or what their kids were doing with it. Then there was LiveJournal. I started using LiveJournal in high school because I was too busy to be on MSN. My friends and I kept LiveJournals as a sort of way of keeping up with what we were all doing. Even though we saw eachother every day at school we were so busy with jobs, extracurriculars and so on that we hardly had time to really talk. LiveJournal acted as a sort of personal and social outlet, we'd vent and then make party plans. Somewhere in between all this I was using other sites like Fictionpress.com which inevitably spread amongst our friends (tofurky) and other reading and writing sites. LiveJournal gave way to Facebook at the beginning of university because, as I remember one of my friends stating "It has pictures." I tried to resist it, but it just became essential, instead of someone asking you for your MSN or phone number they'll ask you for your name. So they can search you on Facebook. Events will be posted on Facebook and people won't even tell you about them to your face because they think you've already seen it on Facebook. I never liked Facebook that much, I see its good sides but we're not very compatible. And now here's Blogger.com, which I have to say I enjoy much more. But, like I said, I'm not 'committing' myself to anything...

I'd like to think my online life is not a very accurate reflection of my real one.