My first blog post. Not bad for someone who only recently caught on to the whole scanning photos onto the computer malarkey. And due to Samarra's brilliant advice, I have ventured into the unknown world of internet banking and found it to be miraculous. The things I can do at the click of a mouse! But now, what to say?
Well, here I am at work on a Friday in Vancouver. It's not a bad job, though by no stretch of the imagination an amazing one. I recently read "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robbins and they had a bit about Job Charming-the idea that one day a wonderful job will come along and make your entire life perfect. And did that ever resonate. But at the moment I'm not interested in a Job Charming-the rent is covered, there is money for exploring all the touristy nonsense that Vancouver has on offer, and the people are nice. So much better than my Scottish bank job-after that one I suspect I may be easy to please for the rest of my life. Thank Maude I finally escaped Mandate Centre hell.
Surprisingly, the aforementioned book was taken out from a library! By me, the person who has many a time complained about the annoying habit that libraries have of wanting their books back by the due date. The person who could come up with numerous reasons for being a huge "literature abuser" who never once sets foot in a library. Well, ok, occasionally I have, but only for university purposes. Never for pleasure. But I have to say, I quite like it now. I will no longer have to consider selling my kidney to support my book buying habit and I seem to be handling the whole due date thing rather better than I expected. I have had the two fines, but they were small ones. I do have a horrible habit of not even attempting to read a book until I have renewed the maximum amount of times possible and the due date is about 48 hours away, but there you go.
And that is precisely what I've done with Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Due tomorrow, finally finished on the bus this morning. Granted, it might have been finished awhile ago, if I ever found time to sleep and was able to stay awake to read a book on my morning commute on a more regular basis. But I can't rave enough about this book. It really was fantastic.
My literary addiction continues, but my film addiction seems to have abated with the move to Vancouver. In Toronto, I couldn't see enough films. Here I hardly ever make it to a theatre, though I've seen the occasional rental. However, this has been replaced instead by an addiction to ticketmaster.ca. I now get more tickets in the mail than bills (and far more than postcards and letters, my lazy friends!). The Barenaked Ladies was the most recent, and it was fantastic. Two audience members were dressed up in chicken suits, Lisa and I sat near security so we got to see many a concert goer hustled out, and there was a choreographed dance portion, reminiscent of a boy band, but with shopping carts. Genius. I went in February to Rock for Choice, also with Lisa, where I was introduced to Hayden-now a favourite of mine. A talk by Romeo Dallaire (yet another signed book! I'm an addict, I know), and an upcoming one by the Dalai Lama. And tickets to see Sarah Harmer with Jenny, and La Traviata by myself-where are all the opera lovers? Anyone?
Soon I will be 26. An age that rounds up to 30 no less. But I will have to leave it there, as my break is now almost over and I have a few Korean teaching job chores to do. I'm not a big fan of the job hunting process. I find that generally it requires you to be on your best behavior, while potential employers can be as rude and inconsiderate as they like. I may follow the rules and do the whole "thank-you for the interview" call, but they have no need to ever call back and tell me the outcome of that interview apparently! Between my, Jenni, and Alan's experiences, Vancouver employers have proven to be a particularly rude lot, though it is possible the problem is bigger than that. So job hunting by internet has it small advantages.
