Sour Milk

Hot hot hot here. Humid. But I am enjoying the heat and summer-like weather. I met with Christina who is in town with her mom and we shopped and had lunch and had wine in their hotel and then had amazing dinner with Fisher at the most delicious Big Daddy's Crab Shack! Mmmm. From there we head to karaoke! And sang and sang and yelled and sang. Wonderful (albeit painful on the ears) times.

So I walked home in the heat and peaceful night and checked my email only to find the following statement (amongst a bunch of other blather):

Although we feel that you are a good candidate, we have other candidates that closer match our requirements. Unfortunately, we will not be offering you employment.

Bite me. After 5 interviews and a bloody assignment, this is what I get? GRRRRRrrrrr! They must have read my blog entry about how I was having doubts, right? Well, I'm still mad that I didn't get it. I would have taken that job. There are still a few people that I might hear from about jobs this week but this is certainly a blow to the self esteem and my plans.

Anyway, life goes on.

Why am I up so early on a Saturday?

Strange dreams lately - the other night I had a dream that I had a glass eye and people were all making a big deal of it (including some potential employers). They either wanted to hire me because of it, or they thought I was a freak and wanted nothing to do with me. Then I had a dream that I ran into this bloogger Dooce and her kid on an island during a monsoon and she was really hostile to me. Then I went on a boat and it capsized and I had to hold my breath underwater for what seemed like eternity.

There is a discouraging trend lately. I am walking around town, and suddenly I see a cute guy. But then as he gets closer, I notice something. He is pushing a stoller. Yikes.

Jill, still in Kenya wrote me about strange cell phone habits of Kenyans in Kitui:

"in kitui, they hung there mobile phones on trees and clotheslines. they also said they get better signals when it's windy."

Ah I miss Kenya.

Lastly, here is another link to a bizarre Japanese game show that has 6 guys in a library. Hard to explain. Better to watch.

Random

Marginally Crazy Lady Next Door
Originally uploaded by Kattaka.

1) Next door neighbour is an old lady who comes outside and yells at her reflection in garage entrance reflection. Is it mean that I took a photo of it? It is just so strange to witness and kind of sad.

2) This is just wrong on so many levels. But hilarious and that is what really matters. Thanks to CityCrab for pointing this out.

3) Camel Library. Whoa. Loretta from Chateau Nice gave me this link. I had never heard of it done that way. Novel idea (GET IT?!). The only thing I heard of like that in Kenya was the travelling movie theatre to allow villagers a chance to see motion pictures for the first time in their lives.

4) I had 2 interviews today. The first was at 8:30am so I woke up at 6 and had lots of coffee just to make sure I was fairly alert by the time my interview started. They both went fairly well. I have to say that the more BIG CORPORATE company that I interviewed with was really tempting. I think I might want that job. It would just be nice to work for a company that is growing like crazy, has lots of money, and would send me off to different places in the US and UK for conferences/trade shows. Now I just have to do an assignment (press release and 4 page brochure) by Friday. And have another interview Friday. Second interviews will be next week if I get any call backs. This whole job search thing is TIRING!

Screaming at Strangers

It's been a pretty fun weekend (and there is even an extra day!) I went to visit recently married Lucy in Pickering on Friday. It was like going for a vacation to the coast because they have a great view of Lake Ontario from their house. On Saturday I did some shopping and then Brent and I had some food, drinks and dancing at one of the decent clubs that are 2 minutes from my house. It is so much easier to stumble home intoxicated when it is such a short distance away.

Today Mariza and I had all you can eat sushi (after which I thought I was going to projectile vomit rice because I was so full by the end of it). Then we met with Jon and Dez and went to a rehearsal space (complete with lights, microphones, amps, drums etc) and played around and made up a couple of songs. It was so fun. We are pretty horrible but there is only room for improvement so we'll see how this goes.

Then I went to this fancy shmancy hotel bar that hosted a games night! We played board games and sipped over priced drinks! I played Jenga, Taboo, Operation, Apples to Apples and Guesstures. Super fun. I don't think I have screamed at and laughed with strangers so much in my life.

Fighting "the disease"

When the first lady of a country tells kids not to use condoms it is hard to believe anything will ever change.

link to "Kenyan First Lady in AIDS Storm"

2 points

I played my first game of ultimate frisbee tonight. No one on our team knew each other or had ever played in a league before. So we were beginners to say the least. But we did ok. We got 2 points. The other team got 19. Oops. But it was the effort that counted. And the beer that we drank after that really helped. It is really all about team-building.

I can hardly lift my arm up it is so sore. And it has only been a few hours. I don't know what tomorrow is going to be like.

I am finding that I swear a lot. I noticed I did that when I was doing rock climbing too. Whenever something was really hard I would start sounding very much like a trucker. I have to work on that. I don't think it is very ladylike.

I have uploaded a bunch of photos from the last 2 - 4 years to flickr. Ones that are most worth a view are the 2 of me when I was little and had short hair that looked more like an afro than anything else. Those were some dark days for me. I am glad I can laugh about it now! My account. Try not to laugh too hard.

Waterlogged

Michele got these free tickets to see a sneak preview of Poseidon last week. It was during the day so she gave them to me and I took Christian along to thank him for all those great documentary tickets he gave me - totally a fair trade, I don't know what he was complaining about. I must say that despite it's bad reviews - the movie can be a really great time. Really, I haven't laughed so much in a film in a long time. The key? Play "name the Kurt Russel movie this was from". I'll give you a hint - Backdraft is the answer half the time. Overboard, anyone? Tango and Cash? Capitan Ron? I didn't realize how many Kurt Russel movies I had seen until Poseidon revisted them all. Mix it in with a little Armageddon and you've got yourself a BLOCKBUSTER! I was hoping all the way through for some sharks for the sake of Richard Dreyfuss but it never happened. (Sorry for the spoiler).

I've found some interesting things online this week (when I should have been job-searching).
This link is for Brokeback to the Future. I have seen a couple of these Brokeback Mountain rip offs but this one is the best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uwuLxrv8jY&feature=MostReferred&page=5&t=t&f=b

Then there are these guys who are skateboarding across Canada to raise money for Breast Cancer. I will donate money to them once I have a job. And its not just because they are skateboarders and I used to have crushes on skateboarders in highschool. Really.

http://www.pushforthecure.com/main.html

The last thing is this New York cabbie who keeps a food journal. He is funny and makes me want to eat burgers despite my distain towards beef. The guy sure is having a lot of fun being a cab driver.

http://www.famousfatdave.com/blog/

Just so you know...

I tried not blogging for a while. I felt a little weird blogging and having my family read it. Some how when I was in Kenya it was a good way to keep them up to date on my activities. But now somehow I feel like it is too much. There are some things I don't want to tell them via blogging.

But I miss writing. And I miss forcing myself to come up with something interesting that has happened to me in the past couple of days - whether it be written in a positive tone or not.

So this is my solution. New blog. Gypsy K.

Heart of Gold

Yesterday I was lucky enough to get tickets (thanks Christian) to see 2 documentaries at Hot Docs - one was From Dust about Sri Lankans trying to recover and rebuild their lives after the tsunami and all the obstacles they faced - particularly from the money-hungry government who used the tragedy to kick out residents from the prime real estate along the ocean shore and sell it to resorts. So the people were left homeless - promised to be relocated but most were left with nothing. All this after so many of them had lost friends and family and their livelihoods to the tsunami. It was so frustrating to watch. It was the same sense of frustration I felt when talking to people in Kenya, knowing there was good people who were dealt a bad hand by the government - the ones who are supposed to be there to help you. And you are stuck unable to do anything to change it.

The second film was called Uganda Rising - it was about the Lord's Resistance Army in the north of the country and the terrible things that have happened in the past 25 years they have been around. It was incredibly graphic. Close ups of dead bodies still sizzling after being burnt. Heads cracked open with the brain spilling out. Limbs and heads hacked off. Disturbing close-ups of a survivor who had had her ears and lips cut off and her throat slashed. It was hard to watch but I think necessary to include such footage to show people the extent of how terrible it is. You can't tone down something like this - that would just act to dishonour the people whose lives have been destroyed because of this.

I felt so happy to be at that second screening and to hear the director and producers talk. I asked a question and they knew what I was talking about and I felt like I was around like-minded people somehow.

Sometimes when I try to explain things to people here about my experiences they don't understand what I am saying and make a different assumption about what I am saying. And there is no way for me to explain it in a way that they would understand. And that is really frustrating. There are so many things I want to talk to people about but it is like I am not speaking the right language. I don't even know how to explain it right now.

Tonight I saw the film Neil Young - Heart of Gold. I love Neil Young. His voice is so comforting somehow.