Is done.
10 items or less January 3, 2009
Not a grade A+ movie but it makes an interesting dinner topic.
Essentially, 10 items or less… likes and dislikes.
ER- hop! December 27, 2008
Hop!
There I was, in a wheelchair. My right foot was covered in snow but the size didn’t measure up to my left swollen ankle. Isaac took off my socks and pushed me through the entrance to ER. I couldn’t tell if I was happy or shocked that I had recognized the security guard at the door – the chinese McNeil kid with a giant afro who also helped minimally to organize Richmond Idol in grade 12. How did he end up here?
A filipino nurse registered for me. He might’ve been the most annoying guy trying to make me laugh.
“So what happened?”
“I rolled my ankle when I was playing badminton.”
“Badminton? In the snow?”
I paused. “Yeah. In the snow. It’s fun, try!”
“Snowboarding?”
“Sure, let’s go together tomorrow.”
Then I waited again in the general waiting area. Three elderly blacks sat in a row – only the lady in the middle was covering her face with her dry raw hands, saddened. The two on either end seem to chat carelessly, glanced at me occasionally, “why is this girl crying so hard and watching the basketball game on TV at the same time?”
“Agnes Kwan, station 1 please.”
This boy in his light blue Superman shirt was nicer. I contemplated at each question whether he was deaf. His eyes were never off my lips. He reminded me kindly that I really should carry my wallet with photo identification cards and my Care card. I was classified “low extreme injury”, I’m still not quite sure if that’s laughable. But this know:
“Where were you?”
“A badminton facility, Richmond pro on Minoru road.”
He looked at me with more curiosity, “So this was indoors.”
“Yes.” Stupid filipino nurse.
“It’s probably the tendon at most.” I didn’t know what else to say when the boys and I were waiting yet again in another space – again, a TV at a corner, uncomfortable worn-out seats and some old magazine sitting like land mine of germs and diseases.
Migrated to F25 Bed. Then I waited there another 15 minutes for doctor Chan, who came to tell me that I will wait for someone to bring me for an X-ray. Another maybe 10, 15 minutes of waiting. I called mom, Daniel, and Eric. I wished the boys came with me to F25 bed, which was allowed, because talking to someone helped me stop crying. Eric felt bad that he made me run on the court, rallying. I told him I have always been prone and needed to work on better footwork. Also, asian ‘kankles’ didn’t quite help the situation.
The same nurse that brought me to F25 pushed the wheelchair through the Do-Not-Enter door. I passed by Nuclear medicine section, many fire hazard signs, no patient, no doctor, not glaring white but dimly lighten hallway with its glory taken away by the snow and maybe Boxing Day.
A doctor like a silver rat helped me to the x-ray room. He never offered help and ordered me to try and hop to the bed. I laid down. “No, sit up please.”
“Ow!”
“I won’t press on it.” Dude, you just did.
The x-ray machine turned on. I’d hate to say, I could only relate the sound of it to the awakening of a robot. A box of light with shadow of a cross at the center and a red-beam horizontal line focused on my ankle. He played with the ankle, seemed as though the red-beam had to be perpendicular with a certain bone. No more noise.
“Okay. Do you remember where you were?”
“F25.”
I never knew which facial expression to display or where to put my hands when I passed by the waiting room where the boys, well, waited. Then I waited again.
Doctor Chan came back but to another patient. She also busted her ankle – no crack, just rest for a few weeks and visit maybe the physiotherapist. Chan turned around behind me because the silver rat put me facing the wall. ”No crack.”
“Well, you probably heard what I told the other girl. Pretty much the same thing.”
Thanks.
He also told me that I have this kink-bone that’s probably normal and due to a previous recent injury. I confirmed his statement.
“Goodbye, thank you.”
I hop!
Toast with nutella helps me forget about my cold toes October 22, 2008
Here’s my stab at a post in English. It is so pathetic that I could only feel comfortable writing that dry french – business french is what my prof would like to call it.
Life isn’t actually so miserable despite some mishaps. My soul is forgotten at a corner of a room with not a trace of what I desire. My soul is like a crunched up ball of paper that was once used to be a draft for a pencil-sketch and now forgotten to be recycled.
Questions you might have for me:
1) Um, why are you married to this girl named Tiffany Ho on facebook?
Yes, it’s a lame fb relationship. She is the president of the Ballroom dancing club, for which I occupy the post of treasurer. How I got involved was last summer when I joined the club as a joke to spite someone. There’s too much drama in this club – a really melodramatic version of Karlee-me falling-out from grade 12. The moral of this story, for me actually, in a nutshell, is that I still haven’t learned how to put my energy to good use with people whose hearts are at the same place as mine.
2) What’s this dealio with your mother?
Basically, business is haywire. Lawsuits are tumours to your wallet, your family and your own life. They might not be detrimental to your life in the long run but the quality of your life at the moment is definitely affected.
A little side note from dictionary.com, out of my own curiosity:
The term is first recorded as a noun in a debate in the Canadian House of Commons (1917), so it is a Canadianism[...]
Anyways, fortunately she’s found a new product that she’ll be introducing to the market in China. I don’t like the concept of it, however. Think of a box. A metal box. About the size of a mini-refrigerator. Now this little box sucks in air and spits out (okay, fine, release) clean air for you. It is sensible to have one maybe in an apartment in urban city locations only due to the air pollution, smoke, carbon dioxide… but that’s taking us further away from any notion of cleaning the environment in the greater sense. It’s saying – let’s just clean up the space where my bodies must cross on a daily basis, so that would be our homes, our working space, schools, a giant shopping mall, maybe some fancy fine-dining restaurants, movie theater and car dealerships. It’s like we had an ocean and now we’re choosing to go into a fish tank. Goldfish only grow as big as allowed by the size of their fish tank. Jumping out of the fish tank will be suicidal when their bodies are accustomed to the filtered air. What else is there left to filter?
3) So how are you managing?
Well, I thought about what Irene suggested – concerning my antsy energy, my dissatisfaction with school and life/lack of hobbies in general. Unfortunately, what I would like to do – photography, dancing, singing, maybe badminton lessons – are all $$ and thus out of the option.
Here’s what I have done, plan to do/ Daniella, Beth and Mike should force me to do:
- when the class was practicing to write une lettre de commande (ordering certain items or services in a letter form), I chose to order a stripper, a belly dancer and a fire-eater for a year-end party. Thanks Office. That gave me two hours of ab workout.
- every morning I go on BBC. My favourites: when they provide short excerpts from different journals from different states/countries to show their perspective on one subject; when they provide the profile on a country. I dropped Geo but I’d still like to learn about the world in my own way.
- I really need to start reading – french english chinese. BC tea collective leaves: book club/ gathering/ movie every Monday? Sunday? Let’s decide on a day. I need to lovely human contact weekly, please. Dying please.
- Toast with nutella.
I love you and I apologize for being incommunicado for periods of time.
Demande de renseignement October 22, 2008
Madame,
Monsieur,
Nous accusons réception de vos messages au cours d’année scolaire (misérable). Vos partages généreux de vos pensées, en dépit de vos vies aussi d’étude et d’un emploi temps chargé, nous ont beaucoup plu.
En ce qui concerne notre organisme, il est en fonctionnement défectueux. Le cadre de nos cours, consistant le français, la philosophie politique, les méthodes politiques de statistiques et la linguistique, nous mène dans une routine (souffrance) de travail (fade). En plus, notre gérante (maman) m’abandonne afin de porter secours à son entreprise qui face la possibilité de faire faillite.
Nous souhaiterions obtenir les renseignements suivants :
- les détails de votre vie en rose (lavande, tournesol ou même cactus;
- des mots, des photos, des vidéos, des activités ou quoi que ce soit qui vous fait rire;
- des recettes simples de pâtisserie;
- votre sourire et non pas votre encouragement de mots miellés.
Dans l’éventualité d’un autre message en anglais de notre part, nous vous serions reconnaissants de nous faire parvenir ces renseignements le plus tôt possible.
Nous vous prions d’agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l’expression de mes sentiments les plus distinguées.
Agnès Kwan
Another personality? January 20, 2008
Yes, maybe potential-step-father from the looks of it.
Changes thus far:
- salty salty foods
- replacing beautiful Itzchak Tarkay paintings with ugly paintings or photos (by him)
- awkward conversations followed by my mother scolding me afterwards for my attitude
- unable to fall asleep because they are always talking/ cooking/ washing/ drinking/ being present
- mother disappears on random trips to the States
- no more normal exchanges of words with my mother in any context, thus, losing touch with everything that has to do with each other’s lives
- increased consumption in a general sense: more pieces of clothing (unappealing ones, might I add), foods: juice, juice, juice, nasty juice, meat, meat, meat, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, alcohol, emphasis on alcohol, cellphone,… the only one I might enjoy later is the stereo system.
Simply in the way I’m analyzing this… it seems like I’ve drawn myself away from the situation mentally.
I don’t know what to do about it and so I won’t.
I just want to skip all these years of depending on my mother and then proceed with eloping, conceiving, and dying.
My teacher is Janice. January 20, 2008
So now I have the same nightmare as Chandler. Marvelous.
She is my post-Confederation Canadian history teacher, 29, who just came out to B.C. to finish her master.
She just wiki-s our lectures, for which she refuses to post up the power-point or the digitized lecture.
Also! This is a three-hour course.
The lecture takes 2 hours; the lecture follows right after a 10-minute break.
The most ridiculous, stupid bureaucratic part of these Wednesday afternoons is that, during those 10 minutes, all of us, twenty-five students and Janice, has to run through the Academic Quadrangle corridors*to another classroom; even though! the class in which the lecture takes place is not occupied afterwards anyways.
*Academic Quadrangle (AQ) is a building that is shaped as a rectangle/box. So there are N, E, S and W corners while the center is hollow and on ground level, has a now frozen pond. That frozen pond is trashed by idiotic, perhaps frustrated students. They throw chairs and garbage cans into the pond. Ah!
I’m sorry but I can’t read lips November 6, 2007
Afternoon classes right after lunch are just not my cup of tea.
I always fall asleep in that boring French Oral class. I would love to try harder but I just fall asleep in that muggy hot room (someone, insane one, turned the heat to 30degrees and decided also to shut every single window and door.)
I turned around, and this boy gestured. With much energy I would say.
I didn’t want to interrupt the class just to tell him I don’t read lips, so I gestured ‘I love you’. Safe measures. Then he had a short moment of shock, and motioned ‘me *peace/2*’ in response.
Later on the same day, in the grossly blue and mundane French student common room, now my dear-er friend, my shelter, Hanna, brought up this exchange I had with the boy.
“Ben really snapped at you today eh?”
“What do you mean?”
“In French class?”
“Oh I had no idea what he was saying.”
“I’m pretty sure he mouthed ‘Why the FUCK are you staring at me all the time?’ “
“…oh. Well I only understood the ‘fuck’. I thought it might had something to do with the midterm…”
Do I stare? Well, I apologize. I have no interest in you, you republican, capitalist asshole. My eyes are just big and you were just sitting in the direction away from the annoying Chinese guy, or the teacher, and I can’t exactly turn completely around to stare out the window wishing to jump out.
This must be so epic of me. I wanted to see if he would say the same thing again if I’d asked.
So I tested it. On Facebook.
His reply
“well it wasn’t very friendly I’ll tell you that much”
Well post it on my wall, say it again, if my staring bothered you that much
let the WORLD know! AGNES STARES!
Fuck.
I wake up lonely October 23, 2007
I asked for jugo de naranja but the waitor gave me coctel de camarones. My mother apparently parle courramment in spanish too. She ordered pastel de manzana. She offered to share some but I’m not really an apple-pie gal. To my left, a shadow. Future-ex-boyfriend. Il me met en colere – boring man should not travel if he isn’t going to be excited about anything. I ran off to the beach and engaged in a debate why speed-dating could very well be a natural technique to meet other lonely souls in a certain age group – and penguins can proof my point!
That is a summary of my brainactivities.
I begin to hate debates.
These are the topics we have covered so far in French 212 (Oral class):
1. Are we still judged by our looks?
2. Is speed-dating a good way to find marriage partners?
3. Reincarnation.
4. The paranthesis of life. (=inexplicable irrational actions out of the character)
These would be such interesting topics in our group. At least just as discussions.
In my highschool-cohort context, they become arguements over pathetic points.
Absolutely no one understands when I say “that is an invalid point because it is too subjective, or at least relative only in our culture background.”
Ok, so I rephrase. “we should avoid (boring) certain words that are really quite ambiguous, like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘normal’.”
Then I emphasis. “the fact that we’re arguing whether is “good” makes the topic more controversial than it is. This is too ambiguous.”
Why? Why is it so hard to accept ambiguity?
Because we’d have nothing left to try and figure out?? That’s not true, world! It just means we have more to understand and find out.
“Yes, but to ME, speed-dating is un-natural and just icky.”What do you mean? what do you mean?! Have you been speed-dating, 18-year-old girl?
