|
|
18.07.08
On Monday I went through a particularly torturous dental appointment (the ultrasonic thing wasn't that uncomfortable before, and you don't want to know about the root scaling), and after waiting for the requisite half-hour after my fluoride treatment, I went and ate a giant piece of chocolate cake.
On Tuesday I made the best dinner I've had since I moved out.
On Wednesday I went to the beach during lunch and found a dead seal.
On Thursday I used trigonometry at work.
Today I took photos of a curved, half-metre ribbon of ivory labelled an "authority stick".
And how was your week?
10.07.08
I was in the shower the other day, when the curtain rod fell, leaving me surprised, exposed, and splashing water everywhere. Shower curtain rods held on by nothing but compression may be the most stupid design decision ever. When trying to attach a structural beam to wet, smooth tile, of course the answer is to push really hard. Once I had turned off the water, dried off a bit, and found my glasses, I inspected the damage. It seemed that whoever manufactured the thing decided the best material for the end supports, the ones under the most stress, would be thin, brittle plastic painted to look like metal. The contacts were rubber disks, but hollow in the back, so that the force would be concentrated around the rim instead of evenly distributed. And of course, the forces didn’t travel in a straight line, since the pressure from the rod pushed in the middle, thereby creating a situation like having a bowling ball in the middle of a trampoline. Unsurprisingly, the plastic had cracked, and the plastic disks, which were hot glued on, had become completely detached. Someone also decided to put “Made in China” on the faces of the end disks, so that they were only visible before the device was installed, or after it was broken.
I attempted to just put the thing back up, but all the bits were wiggly. I haven’t been here that long and still had yet to bring a lot of tools. Improvisation seemed to be called for if I was ever to finish my shower. The story of the curtain rod’s repair is a gripping tale of suspense and intrigue, but to be properly explained, it requires several diagrams and many hand motions. Suffice it to say I re-installed that ill-conceived device using only candle wax and a quarter. It’s more secure than it ever was, but I still don’t trust it.
09.07.08
I spent almost an hour on the phone with my internet service provider, most of it trying to get them to actually locate my account, regardless of the fact that I called them less than a month ago to get it set up. My name and the account number weren’t enough, instead they chased wild geese in the form of a phone number I don’t actually have and my email which has nothing to do with my internet account. This was after navigating their voice-recognition menu of doom to reach a guy with an accent I could barely understand. During the numerous times I was put on hold, I listened to bad country music, a version of “Ring My Bell” which seemed ironic for a telecommunications company help line, and two different kinds of silence interrupted by bilingual directions not to hang up. After finally reaching someone to address the problem of my internet not working, I ran through the paces of making sure that, yes, all the little wires go to all the right places, and after being put on hold for “3 to 5 minutes” which stretched to 20, they flipped some invisible magic switch on their end and everything was back to normal.
I then called them again about billing, only to be told that my name did not exist within their system and they couldn’t tell me anything. Could someone please design a call centre system which doesn’t have to be the most annoying thing of your day?
06.07.08
Whistler Snapshots
Vacations are condensations of our regular lives; these people and their quirks concentrated into this small a space, in this measured a period of time. Our experiences are also distilled, the lake water colder than at home, the sun hotter, the boredom more boring.
Going north turns back the clock on the seasons: the Narcissi are still blooming, the peonies are tightly packed buds, the irises have yet to go to seed. This week is also when summer decided to show up and make up for its tardy arrival with excessive heat. The afternoon sun hits the closed wooden blinds of the unit and heats up the small space. People have propped open their doors to let in the cool air from the hallways. The lobby and pool are also refuges from the heat. In the village, people wear garments (or the lack thereof), which definitely speak to the heat winning out over looking presentable.
Some part of me wants to dress like a skater in Whistler; the long baggy shorts, skate shoes, and indie-brand emblazoned tee, with long and casually unkempt hair; a look that speaks of counterculture and wheels rolling on mud. Of course, on me it's disingenuous, and considering the cost of living here, the anti-establishment mentality is slightly hypocritical on anyone. Ah, what the kids are wearing these days.
I read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves (wait, did that title use the Oxford comma?) two books ago, and it still took me until page 235 of A Complicated Kindness to realize Miriam Toews didn't use a single quotation mark to denote anyone's speech. I did find it a little puzzling to figure out the limits of what was spoken. Next up was In the Skin of a Lion, in which Michael Ondaatje uses a double indent and a hyphen to open direct quotations. It seems authors have been playing loose and fast with quotation marks, no wonder confusion arises as to their use. I guess it doesn't really matter, as long as you're consistent.
I drove from Whistler to Vancouver on Canada Day. If you live here, you'll know why this is significant. I came back fairly early in the afternoon, leaving just after the Whistler parade and a quick lunch. My plan was to make a stop in Burnaby to pick up various needful things from the parents' house and make it back the apartment in time to make dinner and prepare treats for work (as it's my turn), before getting a decent night's sleep. It was going well; a beautiful day and a scenic drive. I had a tape playing with songs I'd mixed back in the early days of university and was wallowing in nostalgia. Closer to the city I tuned into the local stations and heard nothing but unremarkable music. I passed Taylor Way and saw traffic backed up to beyond the highway; suckers. My plan was to take the Second Narrows into the suburbs and drive back out to the West Side avoiding downtown completely. Just past Lonsdale, I drove into a solid wall of immobile cars on the highway. It was then that the radio decided to tell me that the Second Narrows was completely closed.
People were driving the wrong way up an off ramp just to escape the highway; and as if it made it safer or less illegal, they drove backwards. One pickup decided to drive onto the sloping land between the concrete barricades in the middle of the highway to go in the other direction. I crawled for a half hour to the next exit and drove back to Lonsdale. The radio was informing me of the collateral damage done to the arteries feeding Lion's Gate, as well as the carnage on the bridge itself. I did some non-perishable food shopping and decided to wait it out. My plans to accomplish a multitude of tasks were scrapped, I skipped the detour to Burnaby, and I still didn't get home until almost 9pm, where I attempted what would ultimately be a disastrous round of cooking. For the moment though, I was trapped in North Vancouver, with the lines of people waiting for any open restaurant in the unrelenting heat, and I found a park and lay in a patch of clover, reading a book in the shade of a walnut tree, all because a woman was trying to kill herself on a bridge that knew death within its bones.
|
|
©d.tan  |
