oi, feels like i haven't posted in awhile, and i haven't. i did spend about an hour typing up a post about my first crime scene investigation course and first simulated crime scene last weekend, complete with photos, but somehow ended up erasing it and gave up.

i haven't posted in awhile because i've been so busy. i'm back in school three nights and one day a week, and working four days a week. this term my courses are:

Forensic Biology: DNA Analysis

Crime Scene Investigation Techniques

Criminal Law 2: The Evidence

Forensic Pathology

so far all is good. i'm back on my regular schedule of buses and skytrain all the way to school and home. late nights standing on willingdon in the cold trying to get home and stuffing in with the masses on the train around rush hour. the commute sucks, but gives me time to do some reading and the crossword...and people watch...or people SMELL as it was today.

i got on the skytrain at nanaimo, found a seat, and settled in for the trip to granville. this fat, pear shaped, man with oily greasy hair stuffed under a toque sat in front of me. between his torn track pants and shirt, wrapped tight around his belly was a crack of skin, like a belt, revealing a nasty sweaty bum crack. his shirt was covered in stains...and the smell...the smell!!! it was like rotten cheese...what is wrong with these people? he wasn't a bum, he had a cellphone and a wallet sticking out of his pocket...he was just disgusting...

it comes on the brunt of a long a disgusting conversation i had at work with a friend today. she sat at the bar folding napkins and i cut lemons and limes as we recounted horror stories of nasty grossness...onion smells and crusty cheesy things and other vomit-filled stories we've experienced.

there are crazy people in this city. a few weeks ago, i was walking past earls fir street. two asian girls in their teens, nicely dressed, were happily walking together and chatting, minding their own business. a rough looking woman walking the other direction suddenly reached out and grabbed one of the girls' hair, pulled it and twisted her head around. then let go, and kept on walking. she saw the horrified and surprised look on my face and yelled at me...spittle flying "call the cops...you saw it!!" i turned around "what the fuck was that you crazy bitch!?" she continued walking...unphased...the girls were okay...but just as surprised as i was.

today, i walked out of the skytrain, down georgia and towards howe to the bus stop. this strange looking woman (i've seen her many times before) with a shaved bald undercut, bowl hair cut and dangly earrings...walked past me and punched me in the arm...then just kept walking...i yelled out "what the fuck?!" yes, what else could i do? why? i'll never know...

the most important news, and the main reason why i haven't been posting much is that i've met someone. i've met the most amazing girl. the kind of girl that floors me every time she opens her mouth, every time she looks at me she stops me in my tracks. the kind of kisses that mean something more than just the meeting of lips. glances across the room that say a million things, but mean just one. she seems to get me, she knows things about me that even i don't, she's honest and we work. and for the first time in a long time i've found someone who has every ounce of my attention. we've spent many days and nights together over the last three weeks, getting to know each other, talking, laughing, sharing bottles of wine. i miss her just writing this. right now, it's not going to go much further than it has...there are situations out of my control. and as shitty as it is to say this, if the last three weeks are all i end up getting out of this relationship, i'll be content. i don't know where it all came from, and it happened so quickly...but i can't help but think that there has to be more. i want there to be more. and i'm not one to ever give up easily...

|

there are certain places i can never go...


this is one of them...

it's funny how every time i walk by, i feel this urge to go in now. mostly just because i feel i should be able to go wherever i want and i hate not being able to do that.

on the side, and i should say something about, i kind of got involved in this situation at work with somebody and it's gotten a little bit messy right now. it bothers me because it shouldn't have ended up like this, even though it was inevitable...people might have to quit over this and i don't think they should.

|

whatever...i hope....

|

i'm feeling nostalgic today. i pulled out my old green day cds and they've brought up a wash of memories from those summers long ago...

when we were kids, i used to get my parent's car for the afternoon and drive around surrey picking everyone up. we'd head straight to ricky's coffeehouse in evergreen mall and drink 20 cups of coffee each, never leaving a tip, making a mess, talking about the universe and how cool it will be when we grow up. the waitresses were nice enough, putting up with our shit for some reason...and wayne, the manager, would come by after an hour or so and try and kick us out.

we'd pile back in my parent's silver station wagon and listen to free sample tapes i got from hmv of sepultura and prong...snap your fingers, snap your neck! and korn, bobbing our heads, the devil salute...then we mellowed out. it was smashing pumkins 1979 that was our anthem...parked outside convenience stores trying to get someone to buy us smokes...or the sure sell, at green market, where the little indian lady would never question us. and green day...christie road reminds me of the point...and nirvana and pearl jam, temple of the dog, weezer...so many summers ago...this was 1994.

across the overpass to the point. just like in the movies where people make out, at the end of a road in an upscale neighborhood. just up from the train tracks and overlooking new west and poco...the lights across the fraser river spelled out 'i heart pot' with an arrow through the heart. i wonder if they still do.

sometimes, i'd skip school and we'd drive all the way to langley to go to the giant petstore there and look at all the fish. then to willowbrook mall and distrito, the coolest store ever. just wandering...

down the street from scott's house, in the gulley or the greenbelt, we'd spend countless hours standing on a giant rock, the ROCK, staring up at the sky and smoking cigarettes. on weekends or schoolnights or whenever, we'd split a 40oz'er of golden wedding whiskey, or whatever we could muster up and drink it shot for shot straight out of the bottle until we were wasted and then run around the streets at night.

sometimes someone would bring a guitar, and we'd huddle on the bleachers in lionel courchene park down at the back, before they built the elementary school, or in the bush and chad would play his harmonica and deven would strum, as chad sang...one day old, one day old...

we'd put feet into the chainlink fence behind the baseball diamond and climb the three stories of the scorekeeper's tower and sit on the roof, then climb all the way back down again for no reason at all. sometimes, we'd climb the roof of the highschool, it was dangerous, but no one ever got hurt. i remember one part where i had to hold on with my chin, hanging two stories above a concrete barrier...that was lucky. we'd get on the roof and run back and forth and when the alarm tripped and the cops would drive by we'd lay flat in the cracks of the corners as they shone their spotlight. i never got caught.

we had two parks in our area, lionel and berkshire, and when the cops showed up too often at one...it got 'heated' out, and we'd move to the other, back and forth. berkshire had a small bush at the back and we'd light a huge fire and drink 40's of olde english. one time someone called the fire department and they ran into the bush ready to put it out...."scatter!!!!" we yelled and booked it back across the field.

no one had a cell phone, but you didn't need one. to find everyone on any night, you'd make the rounds, lionel, the rock, berkshire, brad's garage...and last resort was ricky's...or towards evergreen mall at least...there'd surely be someone standing around the corner trying to get a boot.

one day matt and paul and i decided to go down to the gulley with some kid's sidewalk chalk i had found in the culdesac. we wrote swear words, and drew nasty pictures all over the walkway through the park for hours...laughing to ourselves. the next day matt and paul went by and signed it with our names...idiots...within hours the community had banded against us...i had no idea how they knew where we all lived. there were parent's at all our doors complaining and we had to go back the next day and wash it all away. matt was in deep shit and decided to run away for the evening. we got burgers and sat at the point and watched the sunset over the city listening to him say "i'm fucked, i'm fucked, i can't go home..."

later we got older, cars got involved, pagers...but we were always in the same places...the same faces...

those were the days...

|

when i was sixteen, nirvana released their fourth and final studio album, in utero. song #2, scentless apprentice, was based on the best-selling german novel, perfume: the story
of a murderer by patrick suskind. i read the book and it became one of my favourites. i did an english project on it in grade 12.


a baby is born in 18th century france, jean-baptiste grenouille. a baby born with no scent himself, but an incredibly overdeveloped sense of smell. he grows up in an orphanage, learning the smells of the world. his nose is so powerful he can use it to see, closes his eyes and walks the streets navigating by smell alone. as a young man, he becomes a perfumer's apprentice and creates the most extraordinary scents for sale throughout france. one day, he falls in love with the most delicate and unique and intoxicating scents he has ever happened to come across...that of young virgins. in an attempt to forever capture and preserve this scent he murders several young girls, and using a special perfumers technique, stores their scent in a small vial. he uses this smell, the most incredible on earth, to send crowds of people into orgasmic ecstasy and eventually uses it to take his own life.

Nirvana - Scentless Apprentice

Like most babies smell like butter
his smell smelled like no other
he was born scentless and senseless
he was born a scentless apprentice

Go away - get away, get away, get a-way
every wet nurse refused to feed him
electrolytes smell like semen

I promise not to sell your perfumed secrets
there are countless formulas for pressing flowers

I lie in the soil and fertilize mushrooms
Leaking out gas fumes are made into perfume

You can't fire me because I quit
Throw me in the fire and I won't throw a fit

the book has now been made into a film. the movie tells the story, but not much else. dustin hoffman plays a perfumer and does a horrible job of convincing me he was in it for nothing more than the paycheque. the guy who plays grenouille, switches between a weak french accent to american and british throughout the movie. the scenes of 18th century france are incredible and the director did do a god job of depicting odiferous streets filled with human filth and rotting vegetables and animals, the general smell in medieval cities at the time.


during the European Film Festival Last Month, I had planned on seeing a bunch of films, but only managed to see one. Luc Besson's (La Femme Nikita, The Professional, The Fifth Element) triumphant return to directing in Angel-A. Filmed entirely in Paris in black and white, it follows the story of a young man (Jamel Debbouze), who is down on his luck. He owes so much money to loan sharks and can't seem to get a break, he decides to commit suicide, by jumping off a bridge into the Seine. Right before he jumps he looks towards heaven and asks god "Why have you forsaken me?" And then comes Angela, a sevent foot, blond haired, beauty, whose life he saves and who in turn goes along to help him save his own life. It was an excellent movie, funny and dark, and the acting was great too. Jamel Dabbouze is one the biggest actors in all of France right now, you might remember him as the grocery helper-boy in Amelie.

last year, i made it my mission to get to as many movies as possible for the vancouver international film festival. i saw three.


the first was from south korea, the host (gwoemul).

It starts when a US Army medic orders a Korean junior to pour gallons of formaldehyde down the drain. (This is based, of course, on an actual incident.) Some time later, a monster appears in the Han River in Seoul and begins seizing people from the banks. One of the first to go is the schoolgirl Hyeon-Seol, daughter of the slightly simple-minded Gang-Du (Song Kang-Ho), who works in his father’s snack-food stand by the river. Theirs is an averagely dysfunctional family. Gang-Du constantly irritates his father (Byun Hee-Bong) and is more or less estranged from his sister (Bae Doo-Na), an archery champion, and his brother (Park Hae-Il), a slacker. But when the authorities declare a state of emergency and announce that the monster is believed to be host to a deadly virus, the family has no choice but to pull together to try to rescue Hyeon-Seol.

the movie was surprisingly well-done. the cg graphics were incredible. i went mostly for a nostalgic view of seoul and was treated to an excellent monster movie, funny and touching at times, with lots of explosions, blood and guts and gore.


next up was, a new day in old sana'a, from yemen. i chose this movie because a friend of mine, glyn, had just moved to yemen and was living in sana'a. i wanted to see what it was all about.

The first Yemeni fiction feature is a bittersweet romantic comedy boasting a keen wit and a charming lightness of touch. Unfolding against the amazing architectural backdrop of the ancient capital city, it tells a story of love, class and mistaken identity in a traditional society slowly undergoing modernization.

Tariq, the handsome son of an aristocrat, is about to enter an arranged marriage with Bilquis, the daughter of a judge. Although the two have never met, Tariq's sister assures him of his fiancée's great beauty and other fine qualities. As is customary, the groom sends the bride-to-be many gifts, including a splendid white dress. When Tariq wanders the streets late one night, he spots a beautiful girl wearing the billowy gown that he sent to his betrothed. Assuming her to be Bilquis, he falls madly in love. But things are not quite what they seem and soon Tariq must make a devastating choice between following his heart and protecting his family's honor.

Writer-director Bader Ben Hirsi (The English Sheikh and The Yemeni Gentleman) had to overcome many hurdles to shoot in Yemen. Groups seeking to stop the production fabricated rumors that the storyline was salacious and that the crew had shot a sex scene outside a mosque during prayer. An actor was even stabbed. Best Arabic Film, Cairo Film Festival.

this movie was also very well done. it was hilarious, the characters felt real, the cinematography was gorgeous and i got to see the old parts of sana'a. i could imagine glyn wandering around doing karate and yelling at people.



number three was the australian film, ten canoes. the majority of this movie was shot in infrared for a very cool effect and tells the story of a group of aboriginals in australia in modern times and thousands of years ago...

Let us now praise the men and women who spent weeks in the bush of Arnhem Land in the Australian Northern Territory and waded waist deep through tropical swamp alive with mosquitoes, leeches and crocodiles to give us the awesomely beautiful Ten Canoes. Unquestionably the best and most perfectly realized of the many films Dutch expat Rolf de Heer has made in Australia, Ten Canoes was developed in collaboration with traditional communities living in Raminining. It tells their stories and is spoken in their dialects, although David Gulpilil provides an amusingly nonchalant English narration. As a group of Aboriginal tribesmen sets out on an annual goose-egg-gathering expedition, an elder pointedly regales his restless young companion with an ancient tale about a young man desiring the youthful wife of a senior tribesman... Breathtakingly shot in CinemaScope, the film is remarkably successful at using different colour treatments and camera styles to distinguish layers of time: events in living memory echo those in historical time and all are folded into the archetypal tales of the dreamtime. If any film demands to be seen on the giant screen, this mesmerizing vision of time outside time is the one."-- Bill Gosden, New Zealand Film Festival

"To watch this is to enter into a whole new language of symbols and meaning, the likes of which I have rarely encountered in cinema... Ten Canoes is a celebration of the art of storytelling..."--Scott Foundas, LA Weekly

now this movie was a real treat. the cinematography was like nothing i had ever seen before. the plot line wound over centuries and showed the parallels between these small family groups living in the australian outback today and long ago. we learn of ancient aboriginal legends and of the unique family dynamics in these small communities.

Labels: a new day in old sana'a, angel-a, euff, gwoemul, movie, perfume, ten canoes, the host, viff

|

new years was a blast at sun peaks resort near kamloops.

i met jaime and dominika at the skytrain station in surrey. my first task was to unlock her roof-rack. twenty minutes and at least as many failed attmepts later, we gave up, stuffed the snowboards in the back with me and were on our way.

the coquihalla through the rockies was pretty snowy.


dominika and jaime pose near the tollbooth on the coquihalla


jaime driving through kamploops

we got to kamloops after four hours or so and stopped at a little grocery store for smokes, food and drinks. sun peaks resort was about another 30 minutes away.


sun peaks, three mountains, one resort

new years was awesome. we had dinner at this terrible, terrible, chinese/thai/japanese restaurant, one of only five in the village, called toro. the sweet and sour pork was crispy and not sweet, nor sour, the handmade sushi rolls were nastomatic, rolled by australian snowboarders behind a curtain and made with old tuna that tasted like cardboard, the pad thai, my god, the pad thai, it tasted good, but i would've mistaken it for italian fettucini marinara if i hadn't known what it was supposed to be...yuck, that was our new years dinner.


me and dominika display our disgust at toro

from there we wandered around the village...every bar was sold out, every pub, every seat, every place and so we headed back to the hotel to make our own party there.


having fun with jaime


having fun with dominika

we drank and drank and drank. we had a flat of beer (that's 24 for you americans), a 40oz of vodka, a 26oz of rum and a 2L bottle of shitcreek wine. new years came and went, we went into a texting flurry, it was 2007! we started singing and dancing and yelling out onto the streets and then we passed out.

the next day we all got up and went for breakfast in the afternoon, missing our "free hotel continental breakfast" that cost $25, to mackers on the mountain. it was good.




breakfast at mackers

then it was off to the mountain for tubing (or toe-BOCK-ahn-ing as i call it)...




on the belt up for tubing...


tubing down the mountain

tubing was fun.

then we got wasted again. we decided to have a pretend new years eve on new years day because everything was booked up and now it wasn't so we could actually be out for new years.


jaime told me something that made me sad, see how happy she is that i'm sad


dominka's new coat


jaime had a shower and then decided to go out for a smoke before changing

then we went back to our hotel room and partied it up some more, we were drinking and singing and pretending it was new years eve all over again. at about 3am we decided to go to sleep, when suddenly there was a knock on the door. it was the night manager of the hotel.

i answered it in my long johns with sleepy eyes (somewhat fake sleepy eyes)...

"hello?"
"yes sir...we have received some complaints about your room?"
"what?! what do you want?"
"we have received serious reports of singing coming from your room!"
(trying to hold back laughter)"what!? singing!? we've been asleep for like an hour!" (totally lying, and jaime and dominika giggling)
"well if you keep it up, we'll have to remove you from the hotel."

the funny thing was that the most serious complaint they received was singing? singing? c'mon! where were we, an old folks home! we couldn't have been the worst room in that hotel, for singing!?!?

the next day the owner of the hotel came by and yelled at us again. he was angry. he accused us of smoking and singing in the room and not taking his night manager "seriously."


jaime and dominika finally go boarding on day four...


the mountain was beautiful


the icicles were big enough to kill a man, and an elephant, if they so ever tried to walk underneath during an earthquake...


the homes and buildings of sunpeaks are designed to look like swiss alpine village homes and are all painted and decorated pastel colors...

and that was new years. the coquihalla on the way home was crazy...


jaime zooming down the snowy highway home...

other than that, school starts on tuesday. i'm happy for lots of reasons and i'm going to be busy...

all of our new years pics can be seen here.

Labels: new years, sunpeaks

|