should i be more patient with chinese immigrants who can't speak english?

probably, seeing as i was born to two of them.

there's this chinese grad student in my lab whose english is pretty shit-poor. to his credit, he's trying to learn the language, but the problem is that he doesn't understand some basic instructions, which, in a laser lab, can be rather hazardous. it's also hard to ascertain sometimes whether he does something because he doesn't understand the language, or because he's just plain socially inept. he is, after all, a physicist. he seems incredibly reliant on one of our lab's postdocs, who appears to have infinite patience. i both admire the postdoc's unflinching and unwavering commitment to help this putz out and am so, so grateful that i'm not in his position.

this chinese grad student -- known around the lab as 'sky' -- appears not to have learned my name, despite having worked in the same lab for a good six months. it takes about 10 times as long to get a concept across to him, and i'm not talking complicated physics-type concepts. concepts like, 'uh, you're not supposed to go into the laser lab without safety goggles. these. gog-gles. you must wear. wear goggles. no wear, then burn eyes out. gog-gles.'

anyway, i had a phone conversation with sky that went as follows:

'hello, nanolab. nori speaking.'

'enh... hello.'

'hi.'

'enh... is murray...enh...there?'

'nope.'

'enh... not there?'

'no. he's gone.'

'enh... gone?'

'yes. gone. he isn't here.'

'enh...who is this?'

'it's nori.'

'enh...are you murray's...enh...friend?'

(???) 'um...i guess so.'

'enh...is he...enh...will he come back?'

'i don't know. but i don't think so. his bike isn't here.'

'enh...bike? oh. enh...murray not come back.'

'no, i don't think so. i think he's gone home.'

'enh...home? okay. bye-bye.'

i hang up. twenty minutes later, he barges into the lab sans goggles and asks if murray's here. does he think that repeatedly asking will make it so?

apparently, as my sweetie's told me he's witnessed sky trying to fax a document to a number which was evidently wrong, and sky's strategy was just to keep faxing it to that number multiple times.

...

then he sends this e-mail out to the entire department. the whole department (this is totally unedited):

Sorry for bothering all of you,
      Now I am a graduate student working on nanostructure fabrication in AMPEL.This project will use a combination of a AFM and a borescope. But I don't know much about borescopes. It would be useful to make me get some information such as working distance, magnification, resolution etc., in advance, because I need to see a very tiny pattern on SOI surface, around a order of 7~8 microns, to be imaged with this sort of thing.
      Please tell me if you konw Who has such tiny device and where I can take a look? Thanks
Tian Si
Physics & Astronomy Department

my buddy SW writes an e-mail to a small group of us as follows:

To everyone@everydepartment.ubc.ca:
Sorry for bothering all of you,
Now I am a graduate student working on my thesis.  I don't know much about what I am doing.  It would be useful to make me get some information on what I'm doing such as doing some work, looking things up in books, on the internet, this sort of thing.
Please tell me if you know who will do all my work for me.
Thanks
Scott Webster

genius.

...

in other news, it's 0428h and i'm in my lab. it'd be a bit better if i were getting results, but after a frustrating day of one delay after another, i'm getting jack shit. it'll make the supervisor happy, i'm sure. i'm not entirely sure why the system's not behaving itself -- all i know is that i'm really really tired. after our spectrometer computer got devastated by a virus, the supervisor's all paranoid about connecting it to the network. i am without internet during scans, when i need it most. it was most likely some dumbass downloading a corrupt attachment to begin with. just having it hooked up to the internet isn't all that big a risk.

that computer has to work on windows NT 4.0 (shittiest...operating...system...ever.) because the software used to operate the spectrometer is hopelessly antiquated and won't work on anything more contemporary. as a result, the system is full of security holes and susceptible to viruses of all types.

it never ceases to astound me how backward this lab is. really. cutting-edge photonic crystal research, right here.

"uh...you don't have a toaster?"

about a year ago, i took a telephone survey which ended up being about the brands of my kitchen appliances. i'm pretty sure the survey administrator wasn't supposed to sound so incredulous, but suffice it to say that i don't have that many appliances. several of them were gifts, but i honestly don't have any that i don't use at least once or twice a month, which is pretty good, judging from the multiple pressure cookers and other wacky kitchen gadgets in my grandmother-in-law's basement. still, though, i don't have a toaster. i don't eat toast that often, although i might eat more of it if i had a toaster. for now, i get by with singeing the bread on my george foreman grill.

i indulged today by buying myself a couple of housewarming appliances -- neither of which is a toaster -- but i'm now a proud owner of an ice cream maker. and a blender.

ooh, i can almost taste the blackberry sorbet!

my consolation for the hassle of moving and cleaning. yep. that's my justification.

get out of my dreams...

...and into my car...

i had a dream last night: thomas was in it, but he was black.

it smells like someone really scared a skunk outside our building. maybe it was the fumes wafting through the window that triggered the dream.

what does it all mean?

well, thomas -- it seems that skunk spray = you are black.

word.

i still can't believe martha stewart compared prison to camping and herself to nelson mandela. she may as well have compared herself to jesus. the only way she would have offended more people...

ugh...
 
two short hours after showering and i already officially feel sweaty and gross again. curse this humid weather...

today, i ate:
 
a large piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk for breakfast...
 
three slices of canteloupe for "lunch"...
 
another slice of canteloupe, a freybe pepperoni, two fried eggs and five grape tomatoes for supper...
 
i am going to die.

despite my doubts, the MOMpop interdependence zine turned out much better than i'd anticipated.
 
i was on collating duty last night, where six of us accomplished more in less time than the twenty or so bodies at the collating party for the first issue. anyway, last saturday saw a few of us gather at AW's to try to come up with content for this thing. it seemed like we all had the same problem: the concept of interdependence was just a bit too nebulous and vague to conjure up anything that didn't seem either ridiculously obvious or incredibly contrived.
 
in the end, there was a collection of random mediocre art. the way it was put together, though, is pretty good. i mean, it is a zine, so we're not really demanding particularly high standards, but all in all, it's a lot better than i'd expected. there's a page on lichens, a page on symbiosis, and, yes, plenty of random art, but it's kinda funky. my favourite is the poem that cori wrote:
 

haiku needs poet

poet needs verse to exist

interdependent

 
today's MOMpop is supposed to be a picnic, so HT and we're going to pick up some groceries before heading over. it'll be fun: pedal-powered sound, dancing, picnic... i'll try to remember my sunscreen this time.

there's a new commercial out for tampax compak -- you know, the tampons that are so discreet, only you know it's a tampon? a dude is waiting for his date to finish getting ready. he gets peckish (oh, get your mind out of the gutter) and starts asking her if he can have a cookie, then a sandwich, and then a candy as he picks up the tampon in its wrapper.

see? it's so discreet, your date may mistake it for a sugary confection.

how the fuck is this a good thing!?

why is it that girls are made to believe that they even need to be discreet?

i certainly don't flaunt it when i get my period, but i don't pussyfoot around it, either. i'm not ashamed of pulling a pad or a tampon out of my bag when i need a change. on the other hand, i don't celebrate it like it's some sort of empowering goddess phenomenon that somehow makes women the superior sex -- i hate the wrenching pain of cramps and the mood swings and the grossness -- but it's a natural part of having the double-x chromosomes, not a monthly breakout of herpetic lesions...

gross.

about five weeks ago -- about when the laser broke and i stayed home to "work on my thesis" -- i started playing my guitar regularly: every day for about an hour a day. the first week was agony because the tension in my strings is entirely too high and i hadn't played that particular guitar in a while. after the week, though, i'd developed an impressive set of callouses. asbestos fingers. the strings didn't cut into my flesh anymore.

when smorg and gerry visted, though, i didn't play. for three days. just three days of not playing and a brief brining in the ocean by wreck beach, and my resilient finger pads just kind of fell off. now i have these rough patches of dead skin on my fingertips that are kind of peeling off and getting caught on stuff. it's irritating and frustrating. it feels like i've just squandered five weeks of dedicated callous-building.

interestingly enough, it looks like the area under my finger pads doesn't actually have fingerprint ridges. maybe now's the time to commit those homicides i've been planning.

i've been rather negligent in updating, opting instead to attempt to be something of a decent host for visiting smorg and gerry. their trip out to the coast was initially scheduled to be a house-hunting endeavour, but, being that they have officially signed to take over our current place, they were able take it easy and spend some time seeing the city.

sunday saw us hitting virtually every shoe store on robson -- and there are a lot of shoe stores on robson -- in search of casual but professional footwear for smorg (no luck) taking a brief stop in chinatown to procure some barbecue duck and chinese broccoli for dinner, and spending a couple of hours on wreck beach, where, among numerous boobs and penises, i saw the nude jockocracy try to pick up two chicks, one of whom clearly had implants, and some crazy dude wearing only a headdress and a belt came up to us and declared that men would one day be having babies. i love vancouver.

on monday, our guests went and signed the lease agreement for our suite and they took an excursion with my sweetie to the PNE's playland, an outdoor amusement park. i was too immersed in work and generally exhausted to go, but was treated to a story upon their return of my sweetie brutalising a twelve year-old in the bumper cars for jumping the rather extensive queue and generally being an indignant little fart. my sweetie seems rather proud of this, though any acknowledgement of this from me could only be interpreted as encouragement.

yesterday, smorg and gerry treated us to a thai dinner, before we dragged them both to what ended up being an incredibly lengthy city council public meeting, where, inspiringly enough, local kits residents proved themselves much more passionate and much less apathetic than their yuppie bo-bo images tend to imply, arguing fervently against a proposed home depot that may constructed three blocks from our apartment. the speakers' list ballooned to over 90 people, and at 11 pm last night, council only managed to get through a third of them. they resumed tonight, and are apparently still in session.

smorg and gerry left for edmonton this morning, leaving us with some of their possessions (including christmas gift wrap!?) that are really and finally driving home the fact that i am actually going to be moving, and in less than a month.

....

it rained last night and i could hear it both through my closed window as well as through the bedroom door and the open patio door. it made me wonder whether i'll be able to get used to the sound of rain directly pelting the roof and window directly above the bed in our new place.

...

the upcoming MOMpop (17 july) is putting together its zine this saturday. its theme is interdependence: living together and relying on one another. i'd like to make one or two contributions to this issue, but am currently devoid of any insights. ideas?

the more i see them, the more i resent how utterly imbecilic those women in the schick intuition commercials are portrayed to be. nobody has that much trouble shaving. the very existence of this supposedly revolutionary razor does nothing but infantilise women. dumb.

there's nothing grosser than, when eating, picking up a wayward crumb and putting it in your mouth just to realize that it is decidedly not food.

...

i was watching the next generation today instead of working on my thesis and the preposterousness of data (um, the character) really struck me.

as an aside, my sweetie's absurd first-year philosophy prof once used data as a demonstration of the fact that artificial intelligence exists -- no joke.

anyway, i was watching a mediocre TNG episode where a prisoner was talking to data and asked 'why do you have yellow eyes?' to which he replied 'i am an android.'

now, it seems to me that emulating the skin tone and eye colour of a normal human being is perhaps the easiest aspect of constructing an android. yeah, i know they made brent spiner wear all of that cake make-up to distinguish him from other characters and characterize him as a machine, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous. what, they didn't have any flesh-coloured paint when they put him together?

you know what i'm sayin'?

...

two...more...months...

pigfuckers.

some pigfuckers ripped off my sweetie's bike tonight. they took his handlebars, his stem, his pedals, his cranks and his seat. on a fucking BMX!

who the fuck would want to pay for or use the ratty old seat and the worn and sticky handlebars anyway?

he's on his way home now, by bus, if it's even still running.

why do people have to be such giant smelly shit-encrusted assholes?

after voting in the canadian national election today, i discovered a renewed sense of incredulous befuddlement at how the american election of 2000, especially the florida recount, could have gone so, so incredibly wrong.

remember how it took, like, two weeks for the official results to be announced? two weeks for the recount in one state? in unprecedented, the revealing documentary about how florida disenfranchised thousands of people -- most of them blacks -- the filmmakers discussed the negative impact of the confusing butterfly ballot. confusing!? fucking retarded, was what it was. the voters had to punch holes for a candidate on a convoluted list of staggered and alternating names. most of the voters -- the ones who were allowed to vote -- didn't even know whom they were voting for, and sometimes the hole punch didn't go all the way through and was never registered.

today, as i cast my ballot, i took a moment to revel in its beautiful simplicity: a list of candidates; you use a pencil to mark an x by the name of the candidate for whom you would like to vote. x. that's it. no hole-punching, no lever-pulling...the ballots are handcounted, but that's a pretty self-explanatory process.

during the american election debacle, my buddy JH remarked that it took four hours to count all of the ballots in canada when chrétien scored his threepeat; with a population ten times canada's, wouldn't it just take at most 40 hours to recount all of the ballots in the country, let alone those from a single state of geriatrics?

in november, the ambitious americans are tryin' out those crazy new-fangled electronic voting machines. let's see how far up shit creek they get this time 'round. do they think that implementing a new and barely tested (not to mention utterly unnecessary) technology somehow makes their brand of democracy superior? give me a golf pencil and a simple list of names any day.

...

in other news, go see napoleon dynamite. D&A treated us to it on their stop in town before embarking on their alaskan cruise and it's incredibly, dysfunctionally, hilarious.

also: i just fucked up my sweetie's rubik's cube. he took the news really well.

still squinting...

i picked up my laptop from compusmart yesterday. on thursday, the dude said on the phone that someone would likely call me before 11 am. i waited until 2 pm and finally called them. the technician says 'oh yeah. i had a hard time reaching you. the phone number here doesn't seem to work.'

FUH-UCK. did i not specifically call them up and tell them to change the errant phone number and verify on a subsequent call that the phone number was corrected?

anyway, as i suspected, the inverter needs replacing. $61 for the part, which actually isn't so bad. i'm just worried how much the labour costs will end up being...

they're supposed to call me when the part comes in -- they say monday or tuesday of next week. i suspect that i will have to call them on wednesday afternoon. *sigh*

...

i'm not as sore as i'd expected to be after yesterday's two-hour critical mass ride. it was pretty big -- i'm sure they got at least 600 people out -- but i don't have an official count and it felt a bit smaller than last year. i'm tellin' ya: there were lots of beautiful people at the ride.

the crowd was big enough to take over cambie bridge entirely. the police actually helped us out with a car on either end guiding the route and blocking traffic. i don't remember them being there last year.

as usual, though, there were the angry honking motorists and the supportive honking motorists. sometimes it's hard to tell which category they fall into if you can't see their faces. generally, the supporters give out a series of short meep-meep-meeeeeeps while the disgruntled drivers lean meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnh. we had a passenger in one of those fucking stretch-UVs (you know what i'm talkin' about), lean out the window, waving and smiling at us.

some just have no appreciation for irony.

friday, 18 june 2004: massive windstorms in the lower mainland knock out power from the fraser valley all the way up to downtown vancouver.

probably as a result, the backlighting on nori's laptop screen ceases to function properly.

nori calls toshiba's call centre. man who can't speak english tries to convince nori that the laptop was purchased in america and that she would have to have it repaired in the states. the man does not understand that alberta and british columbia are in canada. nori tries explaining the problem to the man. the man does not grasp the hardware failure and tries to get nori to adjust the screen settings on her computer to no avail. nori finally asks where she can take the computer to have it repaired, and the man lists off three addresses, compusmart in downtown vancouver being one such toshiba-affiliated service shops.

saturday, 19 june 2004: nori calls compusmart. punk on the other end of the line is patronizing and rude. tells nori to bring the machine in and that parts and repairs will take four working days. nori must wait for realtor to deliver documents and cannot leave the house. asks punk for the store's hours.

sunday, 20 june 2004: compusmart is closed. nori discovers that if she shines a bright lamp on the screen, she can still sort of work on the computer. she works, squinting.

monday, 21 june 2004: nori drops off laptop at compusmart and tells dude at the counter her contact information. she pays a $45 deposit. dude at the counter says 'when the problem is diagnosed, someone will call you. this will take two days.'

'if you need to order parts, can i reclaim the computer and work on my thesis while we wait for the parts to come in?'

'sure. sign this waiver that says if anything else goes wrong with your computer, we aren't responsible.'

...

tuesday, 22 june 2004: nori looks at the work order form and discovers that her phone number was mistyped. nori calls compusmart and has them fix the error. nori verifies that nobody had attempted to call the wrong number.

wednesday, 23 june 2004: compusmart does not call.

thursday, 24 june 2004: nori calls compusmart in the morning. dude says 'someone will look at it today and a technician will call you this afternoon with a diagnosis of the problem.'

'this afternoon?'

'yes. this afternoon.'

thursday afternoon arrives. nobody calls. 20 minutes prior to closing, nori calls compusmart. 'what's up with my computer? i was told i'd be called this afternoon.'

'let me check. oh. yeah. they haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but it's next on the list (nori rolls her eyes). they'll call you tomorrow with a diagnosis.'

'you have any idea when?'

'you could try calling at about 11.'

*YAAAAAAAAARRRGH!*

nori heads to campus, a 25-minute bus ride, for the sole purpose of checking her e-mail and venting on this blog.

...

if it's going to take 5 days to make a fucking diagnosis, tell me it's going to take 5 days. don't say 'someone'll call you in 2 days,' have nobody call me, then tell me someone'll call me in the afternoon when i finally have to call, then NOT CALL! i understand if something's taking longer than expected to fix, but they should have phoned me and said 'hey, it's gonna take another couple of days' instead of having me stay at home waiting for a call that ultimately never comes!

this tale of frustration continues tomorrow.

i'm on a food tv binge...

i promised my sweetie that we'd downgrade our cable when we move into our new place. it'll save us $20 a month, which may not seem that much, but the hope is that it'll get me off the couch. or maybe it'll just raise my tolerance for shitty-ass shows on basic. anyway, i'm taking in as much of the gourmet picture box as i can before i'm cut off forever. i'm not watching emeril or anything with bobby flay, though. god, i can't stand that asshole.

i'm gonna miss the food network. *single tear...*

did i just eat microwave popcorn for supper?

i sure did, and i was 13 kernels away from the perfect pop. my record is 6.

wtf!? how did this all happen in the last 48 hours!?

...

my sweetie and i just bought a condo!

...i can hardly believe it.

i haven't been writing about it because i didn't want to jinx it, but now: woohoo!

i saw the sign go up on tuesday, called, got an appointment to view the place thursday. we went to the bank earlier thursday to get prequalified for a mortgage and they gave us the go-ahead, pending documentation from our department that we were receiving an income. i was a bit anxious about that -- after all, i'm not going to have an income come september -- i essentially asked the grad secretary to commit fraud. anyway, we checked out the digs, and the place is really awesome. a bit smaller than our current place, but two levels, and everything is a lot newer and more updated. but it's in the same building, making the prospect of moving slightly less daunting.

it was listed for $209,900 and there was fierce competition for it, so we offered $227,500. yeesh. so. much. money. but our offer's been accepted! we're fucking homeowners. how bourgeois.

the sweet mother-in-law came through big time with a loan to top up our down payment, saving us thousands in insurance premiums and interest...

i'm still going to have to get a job in september, though, and the uncertainty has me a bit apprehensive. that and figuring out what needs to be done in the next month...

closing is 31 july, meaning we'd be vacating the first of august. hmm...i've already submitted august's rent to the property management company. i'll have to get them not to cash it.

it was a blessing in disguise that the first place i'd mentioned a few posts back fell through. the realtor claims that it was significantly shittier than the place we've got now. another blessing in disguise was us not having a realtor. the selling realtor just ended up calling her partner to represent us. i have no idea how that isn't a conflict of interest, but we pretty much got the inside scoop on competing offers and an idea of how much we had to fork over.

finally, since we're leaving in august, i offered our current place to gerry and smorg. if they take it, they can forward us all our straggling mail.

oh, and we'll have two good friends in the same building, but you know, whatever.

gerry is proposing a big-ass housewarming for all of us...pretty good excuse to use our new walk-out roof-top patio, if you ask me. but i want to wait until LB and dmac get back into town.

i think we blew all our karma points on the place, though. shortly after the realtor delivered the good news, the back-lighting on my computer died. it's going to cost at least $300 and four working days to get repaired. that and the dude at the store spoke to me like i was a fucking moron. yay?

no, seriously: yay! i'm kind of surreally euphoric about my new home even though i'm going to be poor for the next several years. i hope gerry and smorg can hook this place.

ew.

i just got hit on by a dude who looked about 34, in my neighbourhood. ugh.

i was walking home from the bus stop.

dude (faux blond, maybe 5'9", carrying a tennis racket): that's a beautiful green dress you're wearing.
me: uh...thanks.
dude: enjoying the weather?
me: yeah. it's gorgeous.
*pause*
dude: you're gorgeous. can i take you out for lunch sometime?
me: i'm married.
dude: oh. sorry to bother you. (runs off sheepishly)

*sigh of relief*

i'm so grateful i can say that. it stops the conversation, right there. married. bam. go away. no continued attempts at persuasion after 'i'm not interested,' and no need for me to lie and claim to be lesbian.

i was, however, tempted to say, 'uh, HOW old are you?'

'cause i don't really look my age. i'm still routinely asked for ID at pubs.

anyway, this never happens to me. i don't, as a rule, get hit on, much less asked out on a date. in public and in strange situations, i think i exude too much 'stay-the-fuck-away-from-me' intensity that most people who pick up on it don't bother with me. so even though the television says this kind of stuff happens all the time, i still find it really creepy when it does. should i feel flattered? i don't really think it's rational to be as sketched out as i seem to be, but i can't really help it.