new relevant information

To : Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities of Québec

Bonjour, Madame/Monsieur

In response to your email following my application for a Certificate of Selection by Québec, I do have a few new pieces of information concerning my current situation here as temporary resident. I hope they will contribute to a favourable view of my case.

1. My previous roommate left Canada and as such left me in full possesion of various pieces of furniture, kitchen implements, clothing items and a number of house plants, some of which might be said to have attained tree status (see attached photos).

2. My current roommate is designing me as `owner` of our live house pets (fish) – (photo attached)

3. As a new signer of a lease, I opened an account with Hydro Quebec, for which I had to pay 50$ (see copy of receipt).

4. I have entered a form of verbal agreement with the salesman in the shoe shop at Rachel corner St. Denis, that signifies my desire and intention to purchase a pair of black leather winter boots (value 200$, reduced from 350$) upon receiving my next paycheck (I wish I could attach a photo, or transcript of conversation, but, alas.).

As result of above mentioned events, I am becoming increasingly aware of the weight of responsibility I am taking on, as a caretaker for Québec-based live beings and as an investing participant in Québec economy.  I consider that my actions speak clearly of my awareness and acceptance of the high taxes and tough winters so specific to Québec – and, moreover, of a willingness to surround myself with the elements required by a steady, `settled` lifestyle here.  I hope your final decision goes in agreement with my current spendings.

As a sidenote, based on previous personal experiences and lessons learned thereby, I can also promise in all clear conscience to not date anglophones, or at least non-French speakers, ever again for as long as I live here  – consequently, my future children will be at least trilingual, with French their solid daily used second language.

Vive le Quebec!

Yours truly ___

more dayshift lore

erik:

“what is the difference between admiration and inspiration?”

“it’s a sin to be able to do more, and be satisfied with doing less.”

[i am actually not quoting, but paraphrasing, of course]: “a lot of immigrants come to canada for an escape, and then, instead of starting to live in reality they go on living inside their heads.why did you come here for, then, if not to be a real person in this country?”

(pitching my unwritten posts)

happy new year, people! well – it’s happy new chinese year by this time, but you know what i mean.

a vicious combination of busy+ lazy+  good weather+ impending changes vibe has unfortunately prevented me from ranting on here in 2010 so far. (i ranted in my diary instead – whatever works – also, haha, with good reason: you DO NOT  want to read that). but , before the ‘see you in montreal’ day, i’m thinking of trying this:

i’ll ‘pitch’ the things i would have written about, ~ twitter-length, for whoever is interested. and i promise to develop on them in a separate post each, but only upon request. (mmm actually very transparent way of checking who the hell is still reading this blog.)

okay: my topics.

1) again, why do we write? and, what to write about? addressing the impact ‘precious’ (the movie, and the sapphire book) has made on me, and tied in with dave eggers’ “what is the what”. how do artists as relatively privileged people get away with addressing painful issues from the point of view of the pained.

2) pro and anti olympics. yes, both. guilty and entertained, righteous and exploited and joyful and proud. lining up for free concerts, mouthing the canadian anthem. arguing about shane koczyan’s poem. attending protests, and blackout poetry projects, whatever that is. cheering for gold. ogling speed skaters.

3) sweet encounters – bacon cake, donut birthday cake, new year’s leftovers, bake sale as haiti benefit, and MUFFINS. desserts from the aching perspective of someone who finds it too hard to cook and too easy to overeat. obesity, balance, and having a good heart.

4) “i don’t care” is the most hurtful sentence in the english language. discussion, with concrete illustrations, and reflection upon how i use it to hurt others. possible translations/equivalences in romanian.

5) popcorn at the movies. this one’s about routines, cultural or otherwise. but mostly personal. how i laugh at others’ small addictions but i would freak out so fast to be deprived of mine. (on a second thought, i think it’s about that primarily: seeing a stranger’s tics with an unforgiving eye. the opposite of kindness – the opposite of topic 3)).

6) new place. moving out and moving in. testing squeaky floors:). plans for a new start, from wild hopes to resignation and back to color samples and garage sales. trying to sublet sight unseen. going with insight versus trying rationality. this is an ongoing ~thing and too close for comfort, but funny.

* walking on air as the most (over)used metaphor for my own life. every step forward in a relationship is taken through a leap of assumption that the other person already likes me. if it weren’t for hubris i would never talk to anyone ever. (insert cartoon of scooby doo or whoever walking over the edge of the cliff and keeping walking, and only falling once he becomes aware.) (on a second thought, i think this really is everything i have to say on this topic.)

7) jd salinger and howard zinn and how their deaths (as a double-impact shock) affected me even if salinger was 91 and i’d never heard of zinn before. concluding again that i want to be a storyteller rather than a historian.

partying “in the pacific northwest”

- once i said “on the west coast” in reference to something vancouver/portland, then i realized i was talking to matt who’s californian and i basically have no idea about california things, i.e. where it’s sunny all the time and people really.can. not. live. without.a.car. so i stand corrected.

- the first thing to keep in mind, my parties here have all been house parties. (intelligence from matt again: in NYC no one’s space is big enough for partying haha so they have to go to bars) and i’m not counting readings as parties, even if at points people were drinking hard – a reading is a cultural event, so there. of course they were drinking. that’s the way to imbibe culture. but seriously i don’t think i’ve been in a ‘club’ in vancouver. i’ve seen line-ups on weekend nights downtown though, and weren’t they a pretty sight. i’ve also seen young people stumbling and staggering and puking all over granville and the b-line. so it must be cool.

-but wait. a party is a cultural event too. more than anything else.

-i’m writing this because i’m getting a bit anxious for the NYE party (last one at sonja’s) and i basically have 6 hrs to kill and it’s raining like crazy and i don’t feel like plucking my eyebrows, which would be the alternative right now. also because i’ve been pounded stupid w the phrase “xxx of the decade” these days, and all my facebook feed by now is full of happy new year wishes and  it’s already 2010 in romania, which makes no sense, romania is one year ahead? haha old joke. but, you know. all this stuff.

- i never know what to take to parties, except for myself and my willingness to cry and argue. it could be argued (and cried) that this willingness has served me well  to some extent…and of course, on the other hand undermined my efforts at being taken seriously, except…what were those efforts? oh.  so  i think i usually take a bottle of wine. no one will open mine anyway . i mean any party is supposed to be BYOB (‘bring your own booze – i had to google it oct ’07) but it’s not strictly so…because…it’s a party, not a workshop for drunks. i always hope someone does open my bottle, my poor generic wine bottle, randomly chosen based on name, country of origin or amount of money i have to spare – in the end…i feel a bit bad for it (~her) to abandon her in a foreign fridge. a box in a box. as lonely and befuddled as me.

- then i mingle. well no i don’t, i go straight to the buffet and sample. i remember autumn ’07, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the spectacle of two dozen kinds of dips. ok, dips still don’t make much sense to me. so on the one hand i want to see the difference. on the other hand, i keep liking the familiar for a long long time. unless it’s cumbersome. or unless the familiar was the reason that pushed me to move. mingling is harder than it seems; it involves doing your own thing in a way that keeps stuff homogenous. (cue “dip in” and all sorts of corny follow ups.) mingle. ok.

- well instead of mingling what i normally do is talk to mostly one person the whole night. or at least focus on them. it’s easier. it helps that people are polite, and in ’07 it helped that i was a bit of a rare species(i still am to some extent bc i keep meeting new people, but already vancouver seems a bit small, i dunno:) ). and it’s not that i start off as very interested in that person, but it’s just comfortable to…be following someone, to gravitate around them. back in cluj i always ended up DJ-ing…but here i’ve accepted my inferiority in matters of musical taste so there – ground ceded, that’s that.

-i sort of have a record of losing earrings on couches, which is funny and of course not as dirty as i tried to make it sound.

- i don’t think i’ve ever had to dance. oh, i danced once at the oddball – not a house party but an eastside one so not your standard club fare. i never remember anything about dancing – my memories of parties are always of talking and drinking. yes i drink at parties. it’s fun. i mean even if it’s not fun it becomes fun after 2 glasses. which is the obvious point.

- things that can happen at parties: biographies in a nutshell/having your palm read/starting a crush and getting over it by the end of the night/watching fish and stealing toys (that was the most memorable party of ’07 – i’ll come back to it over and over again)/ overdose on cheese/ mixed tapes/ listening to people reminisce/discuss their childhoods or their common background vs. yours. anger. desire. breathe in, breathe out, go out on the porch, or in the street, or on the balcony where a circle has gathered to share a joint. join in for a puff, cop the feel that you ARE joining something, that you are present. rinse, repeat.

- extra things that can happen at writers’ parties: someone starts actually detailing the subject of a book. someone asks for feedback on a specific point, and an impromptu workshop flares up for 10 mins. the dialogue jumps around very quickly because there are always people wittier than average. or young and easily bored. or both. you learn so many names and titles in the easy flow of just words that you feel maybe you should take notes. you feel the need to sting, scandalize, pull them back with you. say something sudden. you usually shrug and wait to get drunker.

- extra things that can happen at east side parties: people talk about social work all night. people bring foods that they’ve cooked or baked from scratch, everything is organic and vegan. people talk about how organic and vegan things are a great deal. at one point you are convinced you are paranoid. and mean. and uninformed and parasitical. all your good impulses are choked and conflicted. you feel like wide is narrow and all-encompassing is shallow and that you’d rather smash a bottle against a pole.

- when i look around the room and start asking myself how much every one earns a year i know it’s time to switch to juice for the night.

- knowing when to leave is essential. leaving in groups is what vancouver does, because public transport is lousy and because taking joint rides is environmental, or something. people send a text to check when the last bus is. people hunt for cabs. then they get home and add you on facebook before they forget. then they forget.

fun timeline

apr 29 – hand in thesis

apr 29- may 20 – moping post-thesis/ waiting for potentially interesting guy to call. (in case you’re curious about that development: he doesn’t. end of story)

may 20- rest of summer and continuing: OMG ADAM LAMBERT

ADAAAAM

(?   !    ?  !   ? yes, i know, wtf)

july 31st – start collecting papers for extension of stay in canada (realize i could send application in same day if only i had a credit card. shrug.)

aug. 5 (ok, there was the long weekend in between) – papers collected

aug 6 – send application

aug 7- fuck! application is incomplete! have to wake up early to catch human person on phone at CIC, with instruction on how to send the missing paper; afternoon =send missing paper. breathe.

aug 10-17 – early mornings try to call CIC and find out if file is complete/when they’re dealing with it; fail to engage with humans

aug 17 – human on the phone from CIC (= immigration canada) says file will take around one more month in line, as at the moment they’re just opening files arrived first week of july. “please inquire again one month from now.” same human says she doesn’t know if a work permit would allow me to work in quebec. she says call quebec and gives me a number: it’s robots!

aug 17  – half an hour later – i give notice at my job

aug 18-30 – i tell everyone (including creepy person on the bus, AEGEE friends, random chat interlocutors, regular customers and co-op neighbours) bits of my sad story.

aug 19 – plane ticket bought for cluj

aug 19-28 – bits of random packing: bunching up clothes i want to give up; tearing papers; inventorying books. making lists.

aug 20-23 – i take online quizzes to determine my points for immigration from romania to canada/quebec (i have different scores for different quizzes. at least some of them look hopeful. i need french. i need a job offer.)

aug 27 – last day at work

aug 28- morning leave for seattle

aug 30 – arrive portland

aug 31 – email from ef. telling me work permit arrived in mail

sept 1 – i want to go back to cluj and visit; but then i want to return. this is plan A. i like it.

sept 1/2 – back in vancouver; plans A through D written down neatly. work permit turns out to be for 3 YEARS! SHIT!

sept 2 – morning – phone CIC. human voice!!! realize once i leave canada i need a visa for re-entry. complicated. but visa is formality. phone quebec. the person in quebec does not know whether i’m allowed to work in quebec or not. suggests i call CIC. i’m like, forget about it! i have fun day out, all serene and shit.

sept 2 – evening – mum agrees with anything, as long as i go home ; i say i’d have to resign from sincai, she’s like ok, whatever. then suddenly : “your father’s not very happy here” BOOM

sept 2/3/4 – argue; break for sleep; argue; break for lunch; argue; break = can’t sleep; argue; break for a nap (nightmares); argue.

sept 4/5 night: sort of an ultimatum. “flip the coin” moment. i do not flip the coin. because i do not fucking need to flip a coin. ok?

sept 5 – morning – yes, i catch another human voice at CIC. human voice says yes, an open work permit allows you to work in quebec. any other questions you had? NO! THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!

sept 5 – evening – write resignation email to school/send it.

sleep

eat. sleep.

walk. eat. read women’s mags. throw torn papers. sleep.

sept 8 – got shitty job back.

the future is ours.

STAY POSITIVE

= one more week of holiday. actually staycation but who cares

= no jet lag

= cancellation of all possibly teary goodbye drinks&such : replacement with non-teary non-goodbye drinks

= sonja gets to buy me the hat! yes i hereby demand the hat. hat hat hat hat hat

= writing!! readings!! writers’ festival (i get to see richard ford !!!! <3)

= montreal ’10. wait: matt in montreal ’10

vancouver says goodbye…to summer

- 2 days at wreck beach- one swimming and suntanning with lora, the other a picnic plus hardcore gathering blackberries w/elena &sonia

- when i was the most *heartbroken* – 2-3 afternoons, straight off work – i’d just go to jericho and sit next to a log and watch the ocean and try to write. one day i had a huge coffee thermos. omg, energy drink buzzz, by the way!

- sam , on and off commercial one sunny day

- sandwiches and milkshakes with yael&co. on their ‘porch’

- salads and indigequeer shorts with lora one night – walking alone downtown at night, never fails to…impress me. it’s so alien.

- twilight. with e. and lora. and commentary by ovidiu online

- romanian dinner w/ nadia at ‘transylvania’ restaurant. haha, i couldn’t have left without it. (also, when nadia returned from europe she was *accidentally* on the same plane/almost same class w/ matt damon!! i freaked out!!)

- planning. forever smiling and planning. explaining to people that i’m not sad. except i’ll have to give a lot of books away. oh well, bygones

- following: goodbye parties (trying not to think about) aaand my last US trip for a while. what’s not to like??

seagulls at 5 a.m.

i.e. WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT VANCOUVER:

- a bunch of people (not more than 10 all in all), close enough to be thought of /remote enough to be obsessed about – plus their partners, pets and own weirdnesses

- a bunch of places: desk by the window view yay; 99 bus route (got the timing down by heart); the freaking campus (SUB/ library); table at ‘our town’; main broadway to 30th; commercial broadway up to napier; false creek waterfront; wreck beach, jericho, spanish banks, kits; lora’s downtown bit; 1067 granville

- weather between the *presumed* seasons: no seriously: the no-thick- coat-in-winter, the fog, some rainy days when rain is a relief (about 1/20 of all rain that occurs but w/e), late nights in summer, the awesome blooms in spring

- bookstores, literary journals, free magazines (mag boxes), newspapers available in cafes – that is the way to go – not having that will be fucking crippling!!(i’m almost crying, so moving on…)

- readings: the blenz/rhizome grouplet, the pulp fiction/montmartre one.

- along the same lines of ‘people read the books i read’ – although the statement is blatantly false and the situation far fuzzier: my ‘current news’ being closer to canada’s current news than to romania’s. i guess they’ve always been. and yes, it is a matter of being left-inclined and of going global in order to flee the bleak reality under my nose blah blah. sue me. (i am in pain over possibly not being able to read ‘dilema’ at home any more…i’ll freaking get into political arguments all the time with people i do respect…hell.)

- i’ve got monopoly on righteousness (of the outsider who’s had it worse in the other place)

-from far enough away, i’ve been told i might look glamorous. only in vancouver/on west coast, though. i have too much respect for montreal to presume it would work there

-close to U.S., i.e. i can use my visa for cheaper (not that i wouldn’t go cluj-new york as soon as i get the money lined up…that visa is too precious to waste)

[under construction]

prelude to montreal is postscript to limbo

this is the story of how i first heard of a band called “of montreal”, late 2007. well it’s not much of a story, and some of you already know it. they were playing in a club in athens, georgia, one night end of october. someone told me about that. i obviously looked the band up, right? back then i was planning to visit montreal as soon as school was over, i.e. dec. 07.

why montreal, back then? it was a place to go. mostly it was about leonard cohen if i well remember.obviously. but then, all of a sudden,

“of montreal^[2] is an American indie pop band formed in Athens, Georgia. Fronted by Kevin Barnes, it was among the second wave of groups to emerge from The Elephant 6 Recording Company.The band was created by Kevin Barnes and named after a failed romance with a woman from Montreal, though the story changes in various interviews” (wiki)

as much as people (sonja) don’t like to accept it as a serious reason, THAT is the main reason for people to get excited and make things. well one of the main ones anyway. isn’t it??

alright, off to a good start: we’ve got a sad ages old infatuation with an old man, plus a pathetic online stalkerish interest in a band named after the place of a failed romance. what could NOT work in the relationship between montreal and me?

as for how i personally feel about “of montreal”, the band: hmmm, i like the music but don’t love it. i think they have some of the best titles of songs ever (“the past is a grotesque animal” et co.), i love their official videos almost with no exception, i think kevin barnes is obviously crazy, which is good because it gives you/me the option of not taking him seriously ever, while at the same time listening and possibly enjoying whatever you/i can out of that cocktail of madness.

which sort of defines life right now, through my vaselined lenses. wait:

love, c

storytelling festival

so i went to see what it was about, and it was nice. it still seems strange to me, this idea of telling stories in such a frame, but hey it’s the west coast of north america, wtf. and a lesson is to enjoy anything, or the available-for-enjoyment bits of anything you get. anyway: the story about this storytelling night is going to be that it cost 20 bucks. well i kindof expected it wouldn’t be free, right? and neither was i very very indignant at the thought of – hey, it’s 1/45 of my fucking monthly wages, right? ultimately it was funny, just knowing that once i’ve decided i want to do something, i will never change my mind on account of the cost. but i still feel free to carp about it. the moral of this short story, for anyone who still comes here (passed along with the slightly nonrelated insights that a) i’ve been having bad stupid dreams for 4 nights/days in a row, and b) i’m leaving soon for a class where we’ll talk about fucking storytelling, so how can it not bug me?!?!) is: my dear lovely people -

- in this time and place, storytelling is not for free.

so i’ll take a bow, and clamp my mouth shut because asking if you got the message would fucking ruin the performance. ooops.

climax of my year 2: yes. we. did.

this week. tuesday, november 4.

versus the rest of the week, and the year.

it’s not change. change is not like that. i don’t feel more triumphant these days. maybe i feel nicer: because since wednesday morning i’ve probably smiled non-stop at work, my cheeks hurt, plastered in a rictus. sometimes it goes down cause i’m tired, but reappears in the instant of interaction: i thank everyone for everything. i get teased and complimented on my smile. but there is not an abruptness to it, as in yesterday i was sad today i’m happy. i’m probably not even happier: i “knew” we were going to win before, right? and obama is still guarded by the secret service and basically under threat non-stop, right? and victories fizzle out, and ok, maybe this is a short honeymoon but we all know what happens to honeymoons.

i’m not sure if people (and which people) expect an account from me on what i did and felt on that night, the cnn projections, the crowds. it’s simple: i don’t know what i felt. it was good because i could scream. i screamed a lot. in the yaletown brewery i positioned myself at the bar, under the screen, in a completely full room. in non-fiction i spent the last hour of the course with nadia’s laptop on my knees, after kinda announcing i wouldn’t be participating in the workshop. i let loose, and it was good while it lasted. but i was noticing myself doing what i assumed was expected of me. i noticed myself gasping, facebooking people from the bar, jumping sites to check maps, yelling stuff about senate races, talking to americans, hugging the only kenyan in yaletown (who, of course, was tearing up) but it was ok, because. we were winning. why not?

my voice almost went, and it was raining. after 4 beers, on the skytrain, the science world lights swung by dangerously close, and i was alone. who is the ‘we’ in yes we can, yes we did? downtown vancouver knew there was a president-elect obama, and they kept on their way to clubs, they kept walking in groups, soberly, chattering lightly. no one outside of yaletown jumped up or embraced someone next to them. and when i asked for directions, with my delirious eyes, and my smile, they didn’t even smile back. i wanted to put my tongue out at them, or take a stick and beat them. i knew in DC people were shouting at the white house gates, i knew in grant park they were trying to prolong the moment, later i saw youtubes of dancing in the streets in seattle. running on commercial in the rain, to sonja’s, i wanted to be in the US. (*not then: in general. it’s the US that i want – in the good moments and the bad). then a guy selling books under an arcade (at 11 ), and i couldn’t help myself and asked. “you know obama won?” and he said yes, and nooded at me smiling, finally. a group was coming down and they cheered and gave me a high-five. further – empty. a girl on a bike passed by and looked at me and mouthed ‘obaaamaa’, but lightly, almost a whisper. i entered, and sonja poured me champagne.

i woke up smiling every day since. my boss gave me hot oatmeal to repair my voice. i smiled collecting newspapers from tables, folding them with the first family picture neatly on top. i thought about it long – the moment of the speech – and discovered i hadn’t cried. at all. lots of people cried for joy: apparently i only cry for sorrow. (cecilia, the boss’s wife, looked at one of the huge pictures, and what she had to say was, “poor guy, his grandma died”.) i see obama’s face, tired and deeply lined, his posture the moments before he spoke. somehow it makes it harder in retrospect to see what the cheering or the crying was for. the guy freakin’ just got himself a job. (and no, i’m not cynical. i’m trying to be…nuanced?…)

whatever. my point is that i understand elation, but when it lasts more than a few minutes it’s harder to understand. so i feel good. we’re better positioned for the US to get well under an obama administration. (again, what am i doing in the ‘we’??) and tuesday night was not the purpose for me. i’m still in it. for the serious and non-serious reasons. mumbling “president-elect obama” from time to time, tasting it like soft icecream. reading about the first presser, the cabinet, looking forward to jan 20 and beyond. it’s the only way i can adopt a country, apparently. by being a freak about that country, while i’m someplace else. (and yes it’s all my illusion & wishful thinking, thank you very much.)

but from now on it will be harder for me. silenter. i can’t expect any canadian, hell, any american, to keep up with these things as much as i’ll keep keeping up. i understand that the election caused interest (though, i mean, ‘canadian enthusiasm’ is after all an oxymoron), and that is over now. nevertheless. (“yes we did” sounds way sadder than “yes we can”). but yes, we still can. it’s a fine beginning my friends.