If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

No, it's not sarcastic. Morning sucked. But I had that song stuck in my head all afternoon. "If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet..." and so on. It really did cheer me up though. That and being too busy to breathe.

Today in my stage (french for "internship"...English for "work like a rented mule for free") was the busiest so far. I have never taken a client to the psychiatric emergency room and today I had to take two. I swear there is something in the air in Montreal these days that is making people crazy and unhappy. Being right in the middle of it seems to have given me an immunity for the day.

There's this idea that psychiatric hospitals want to admit everyone and lock them up in padded rooms. The reality is that they don't have a lot of beds (and no padded rooms or straight jackets) so you have to argue your way in and even then they're constantly trying to sneakily discharge people. So getting a client to in-patient status, even temporarily, involves a flurry of phone calls, waiting around, harassing the nursing staff to get your client a freaking cot so they don't have to sleep in a chair, harassing the nursing staff on the new shift and harassing the psychiatrist who is covering for the missing psychiatrist to come down and take a look and sign a form.

It was really cool in a twisted sort of way. There's a sort of serenity amongst those who are totally delusional. Of course there's a sense of pathos, desperation and hopelessness, but some people seem to transcend that. I really don't know how to describe it, but it's uplifting somehow.

So while the universe chooses to shit on me in some domains at least it is trying its best to make it up to me in others. I have a job interview for a real live social work job! Of course it's in the middle of nowhere in Massachusetts, doesn't pay phenomenally and involves tons of work, but it's encouraging to get an interview from my first application.

Sunday night

Things in my life haven't been going particularly well for the last few weeks, but I'm hoping they'll get better soon.

I've been thinking a lot about the way my life is going. Today while playing some Scrabble I was reminded of some words by my main man, T.S. Eliot:

"Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?"

In case your highschool English teacher sucked or you otherwise never read it, check out the rest of "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" at http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

Many thanks to everyone who's putting up with my shit right now. Y'all are the greatest.

Turning Japanese Part II

This is another photo of the Shrine ("Tokiwa Jinja" in Mito). The plum trees were in bloom and it seemed like the whole city was out to see them. They're not quite as big a deal as the cherry blossoms, which are a major event every year, but still very pretty. Unfortunately my camera was having some issues.

We left the next day, March 28th, which we got to live twice, thanks to crossing the international date line.

Andrew and I got some beer and some sushi from the grocery store to have on the bus ride to Narita airport. Since we weren't hungover this time or in as much of a rush, we had time to peruse the gift shops in Narita and blow the last of our Yen on Pocari Sweat and some truly tacky crap.

Pocari Sweat is basically the Gatorade of Japan. I was told that it's produced from the fear sweat of the tiny Pocari, who are taunted mercilessly to produce it. Apparently some people will believe this. In addition to the name, Pocari sweat is an opaque white and tastes sort of like a canteloupe. With all those barriers, I don't know how it caught on, but I luuuuurve it.

This is at the reception. Clockwise from the top left: Me, Andrew, his father, his mother, Miyuki (who changed into the Western wedding dress her sister surprised her with) and Adam.

Turning Japanese Part 1.5

Here is the gaggle of people who came from North America for the wedding. Adam and Miyuki are the ones in the Kimonos. Oh, and if you haven't seen me in a while, I'm the one in the first row to the left, dressed in the black skirt and blazer.

Jesus casino!

Here's a pic of the big cross up close that I pilfered from Benjamin. I've always felt that it looked like a casino with a staunchly Christian theme. Note how it looks an awful lot like individual lightbulbs.

There's a big lattice cage around all the lights that looks particularly gaudy in the daylight. Also, there is a chain link fence around the bottom that tends to be surrounded by broken beer bottles and cigarette butts.

I used to think of the cross as an eyesore, then I got used to it. Since leaving the plateau and moving to the NDG I found that I really miss seeing the cross at night. It was like a big tacky nightlight. I'm not saying that I was wishing death on the pope by any means. It's just that if he was going to die anyway, couldn't he have croaked while I still had the awesome apartment on Esplanade that gave me a great view of the cross from the livingroom?

My mom, a self-described recovering Catholic tisked me for saying this. According to her they have to wait 15 days to see if he's really dead, yet they bury him in three days or so. I wonder what colour the cross will become if the pope turns out to be a zombie.

Yes, yes, I'm going to Hell. Want to hang out with me when we get there?

I'll be damned...

Yes, it seems the legends are true and the cross does, indeed, turn purple. I was sort of hoping it was an urban legend. I tried to check it out myself the night the pope died but there was too much fog to see the top of the mountain. Climbing up the mountain a bit didn't help. The mountain had a lot of mud and an acutal waterfall from all the rain and melting snow, so I ventured back home instead of climbing further.



Here it is as seen from Le Plateau. Usually there would be a greenish-whitish tinge to the light instead of the sort of mauve thing going on here. (Thanks to Benjamin for the photos)

Turning Japanese Part I

My 72 hours in Japan over Easter were, on the whole, more fun than exhausting. This should be qualified by mentioning that it took about 24 hours in total to get from Montreal to Mito and about the same amount of time to get back.

Andrew and I got to sit on the plane next to each other. Since his shoulders are the perfect height for me to sleep on, it made the 16 hours on various airplanes much better. Also we hung out and watched the movies Continental had deemed inoffensive enough to screen. Aside from being stuck in a chair for 14 hours in one leg, it was not too shabby.

The first night there all the folks who had come from North America as well as some people who had travelled within Japan went out to dinner together. Every course save dessert had crab in it, in many cases raw crab. I was extremely brave and got over my phobia about exoskeletons and ate some raw crab right out of the leg. Take that, seagulls!

The next night was the rehearsal dinner at one of Japan's oldest French restaurants. Miyuki's family and many of Adam's friends were there too, nearly filling the extremely ornate room to capacity. At this point the jet lag was getting to me and I think I may have dozed off at one point during dinner. The rehearsal dinner was followed by the bachelor's party. Though the boys were nice enough to invite me, I declined, giving up what was probably my only opportunity to go to one of these things. I made Andrew promise not to get too chummy with the strippers though. It seems there were no strippers, according to the very drunken account Andrew gave upon returning to the hotel at about 3 AM. He showed up covered in mud and complaining about having skinned his knee when he pantzed his brother. I asked him how he got so muddy and he muttered some stuff about aligator farms, ice flows and june bugs. Riiiiight. Surprisingly, he wasn't in such bad shape in the morning.

I couldn't sleep that night so at 6 AM I gave up and turned on the TV and watched the weirdest cartoon I have ever seen. I couldn't understand what was being said, but it featured either a kid or a monkey that could fly by farting. I think it was a kid because it appeared to be in kindergarten, where it broke a rabbit sculpture and its friends tried to fix it. One of its friends was always using a fake computer (he built it out of cardboard). Also, the kid's pants kept falling off and so he walked around in the nude a lot. If Jarry Falwell blew a gasket over teletubbies, he'd go totally apeshit over the frontal nudity in this children's cartoon.

I did more than just wedding things, not sleeping and tv watching. I also spent a lot of time shopping. If I owe you a gift in the next year, it will probably be something from Japan.

The actual wedding was confusing but very pretty. It was apparently a traditional Shinto ceremony. Check out the kimonos Adam and Miyuki wore:


Here are the Suslaks, Miyuki and her family in front of the shrine. This was just after the ceremony.
More photos to come.

Will the cross on Mont Royal turn purple?

Click on the title to Check out the current view of Mont Royal. (thanks to Sofi)

According to a random website, "The first cross on the mountain was placed there in 1634 by Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the founder of the city, in fulfillment of a vow he made to the virgin Mary when praying to her to stop a disatrous flood. Today, the mountain is crowned by a 31.4-metre-high illuminated cross, installed in 1924 and converted to fibre-optic light in 1992. (The cross's lights have always been white, but the new system can turn the lights red, blue, or purple, which last is to be used upon the death of the pope.)"

I always thought this was a myth because I also read that the cross turns colours during Holy week. I've been in Montreal since 1998 and I've never seen it change colours. Occasionally one part of the cross is a sort of snot-green colour. When I've been up there to look at it, it seemed as though it had plain globe lightbulbs illuminating it, not fibre-optic anything.

I'm going to wait a few hours until it's dark out and see. It's just pissing rain today, otherwise I'd try to go up the mountain and see if some poor slob has to climb up there on a ladder and change all the lightbulbs.

(by the way, the trip to Japan was really cool. I'll write some stuff about that and back-date it when I get the photos developed.)