I’m not really sure if I played up turning 25 like Hitoshi is angrily proclaiming. Yeah okay, I’ve been telling people that I’ve been getting old, but that’s because I’ve been _feeling_ old. Much older than I used to feel.
Come on! I’ve been writing about RRSPs here. I keep my net worth tabulated in an Excel spreadsheet! I’m constantly talking about ‘career planning’ and life goals. Seriously, what happened to me?
It seems crazy how different I am compared to just two years ago when I was about to start my final year of university. I had decided to end off school with a bang. Is that what happens when you cram in too much excitement at once? You settle down really quickly? Maybe if I stop having youthful fun I can stay forever young. I want to be forever young. I also want 80s hair.
Glenn Gould, born 75 years ago and died 25 years ago was a fascinating character and am amazing artist.
A CBC profile noted, “sometime between two and three every morning Gould would go to Fran’s, a 24-hour diner a block away from his Toronto apartment, sit in the same booth and order the same meal of scrambled eggs.”
Microsoft Quietly Lets Vista Users Revert to XP If you buy a Vista computer from Dell or HP, they’ll include a recovery disc that will let you downgrade to XP. Well, it’s a shinyness downgrade but a performance and usability upgrade!
Ahmadinejad, at Columbia, Parries and Puzzles The President of Iran spoke at Columbia University yesterday. His introduction by the university’s president was a 10-minute ‘verbal assault’.
I spent a good hour and a half today listening to the CBC Radio broadcast of the Ontario leaders debate.
I’ve been loosely following the happenings and the issues, and so far the campaign has been pretty boring. I feel unable to related to the views of John Tory and Howard Hampton.
After hearing all the name calling, accusations and promises, here is a list of things I feel like are going to be screwed up over the next four years no matter who goes to office. Public education. Ontario’s energy plan. Municipalities. Social programs. Public transit. Higher education. Pandas. The economy.
The 2007/2008 Toronto Raptors season gets started in a little over two weeks kick it off with a a few preseason games in Italy and Spain. And I’m prepping myself to be as pumped as possible.
For the first time in my life I can say I am the proud owner of one-half of a Toronto Raptors season ticket. It’s a crazy feeling - dedicating myself to the Raptors so wholly. Dropping all that money. All for the promise of guaranteed early access to playoff tickets.
I hate to admit it, but I’ve sort of neglected the Raptors while I was in university. I could barely keep up with new names and faces, and I’d only check out NBA standings maybe a few times a month at best. This year things are going to be different. This is the year the Raptors make it to the NBA Finals.
I’ve resolved to do my part as a Raptors superfan. I’ll figure out which socks are luckier for the raptors. I’m screaming my head off every time VC comes to town. And most important is Chuck Swirsky as daily reading.
Aaliyah died 6 years ago at the age of 22. I remember I was really digging her at the time - the sultry voice, the Timberland beats, the engrossing music videos. For me it was just musical bliss.
Maybe it was the timing of her death, or maybe it was something more. When it happened, it really impacted me. So strange, that so many years later I still feel a weird connection through her music to that time in my life.
I did it. I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t even wait a week.
Last Tuesday, the day after Labour Day, I was uncontrollably compelled to have an iPhone. They were selling for $499USD for the 4gb one. There’s the matter of taxes, the exchange rate, gasoline and the details with it not working in Canada. Complications aside, I left work early, drove to the Buffalo, and picked up the marvel of engineering (and some damn fine marketing).
The next day, Steve Jobs announces some fancy new iPods. Plus he tells us that the iPhone is on pace to sell one million by the end of the month, so in a holiday push the iPhone is dropping in price by $200. Err… a 40% discount on the one I bought.
Long story short, a week of sleepless nights, a trip to Buffalo to get some money back, some hoops jumped through later and I am the proud owner of a shiny new phone that makes me really happy.
It’s quite wrong for a gadget to make me feel this way. Pretty stupid actually. But I put away $100 a month since January planning to buy this thing. It just got to the point where it seemed like it was never coming to Canada (about 66 days after launch), and I could wait no longer. The extra $200 in my pocket sweetens the deal, because I was pretty much ready to sell my $700 of soul and net worth.
So there it is. I have an iPhone. Honestly nothing floats my boat more than the moment of technology zen when all the parts of your digital life come together and just seem to click. Now I know why people call it the Jesus phone.
This week on The Current is a series about mixed-raced Canadians and their struggle with identity.
The series is like an second generation experience crash course because although the number of mixed Canadians is growing, their numbers are still so small that they don’t have much of a community to relate to or fall back on.
There are a lot of recurring themes with Asian-Canadians and mixed-race Canadians, like half native-half white or half Asian-half European. The feeling of having one foot in two cultures, but not truly being apart of either. Dealing with cultural stereotypes that really have nothing to do with you.
I often think it would be really interesting to have grown up as a mixed kid. I would have gotten teased a bit more, and I’d have an even more diverse set of friends. I’d probably be more confused about the world - though I find it hard to imagine how that would be possible.
