Enough seriousness. Re: the job I want, they called today and asked me to come down and fill out a few forms. This turned out to be for security clearance, and the first one is probably ten pages long. I have been trying for three hours to fill it out. You have to list all possible family members, including inlaws, and all their biographical data. So far I've had to call my mother-in-law (she has FOUR middle names and I didn't remember all of them, nor did I know where she was born) my brother in Calgary (left a message, don't know his new address) and email my other brother in Australia (what exactly do you do?). My parents are away for their anniversary, so I'll have to call them tomorrow. I know we arrived in Canada in 1975, but I don't remember the exact date, and it's needed. Heck, I was seven years old. I've also been racking my brains trying to remember old addresses going back ten years. I went upstairs to ask Kirsten if she recalled the name of the road we lived on in Lake Louise when she was six, and she said, "All I remember is that the house was brown. You should just put that."
But it looks like I've got the job, they asked me when I could start and I said, "I'm ready whenever you are." Although I've enjoyed my stint at the health centre, there are, as I mentioned before, a lot of politics operating, and while I'm immune because I'm just casual, I feel as if I'll get drawn in if I work there too long. At this point, when I'm asked for opinions on different staff members, I just say, "Don't ask me, I don't really work here..."
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
"Worry is usually about the future and most people are extremely good at worrying and often fail to stop and think how useless and absurd it is. Worrying about the future is meaningless. The person who's worrying is not the person who is going to experience the future. There will be change, not just having grown older and hopefully a bit wiser, but a totally different set of circumstances with different thoughts and different feelings. Quite useless to worry about the future... That doesn't mean one can't plan. Planning and worrying are not the same thing. Planning turns into worrying when one starts thinking whether the plan is going to materialize. Planning is fine, and then dropping the plan until one can actually put it into action, without being concerned with the future results." -- Ayya Khema, Being Nobody, Going Nowhere
"Over the years, I've noticed that sometimes the Dalai Lama is asked to boil his philosophy down to a single fundamental principle. To this difficult question, he often replies, 'If you can, serve others. If not, at least refrain from harming them.'" -- Howard Cutler and the Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness at Work
"When two people talk, they don't just fall into physical and aural harmony. They also engage in what is called motor mimicry. If you show people pictures of a smiling face or a frowning face, they'll smile or frown back, although perhaps only in muscular changes so fleeting that they can only be captured with electronic sensors. If I hit my thumb with a hammer, most people watching will grimace: they'll mimic my emotional state. This is what is meant, in the technical sense, by empathy. we imitate each other's emotions as a way of expressing support and caring and, even more basically, as a way of communicating with each other... Emotion is contagious. In a way, this is perfectly intuitive. All of us have had our spirits picked up by being around somebody in a good mood. If you think about this closely, though, it's quite a radical notion. We normally think of the expressions on our face as the reflection of an inner state. I feel happy, so I smile. I feel sad, so I frown. Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes inside out." -- Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
The first quote, the Ayya Khema, is one I return to when I start worrying too much about what's going to happen... Miguel is concerned about what will happen with my employment (as it's all over the map at the moment) but I keep telling him I'll deal with it when I have to.
The second quote has been rattling around in my head since I read it a few weeks ago. Is it enough to serve? It's all I'm really doing at the moment.
The third quote made me think that it's possible that we're wasting our time trying to convince our program participants that "you have to take responsibility for your own feelings, no-one can make you feel anything you don't want to". The men especially always argue this point, and I know that on some levels I agree with them. Someone who knows you well, who knows all the right things to say, can piss you off whenever their little heart desires....
"Over the years, I've noticed that sometimes the Dalai Lama is asked to boil his philosophy down to a single fundamental principle. To this difficult question, he often replies, 'If you can, serve others. If not, at least refrain from harming them.'" -- Howard Cutler and the Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness at Work
"When two people talk, they don't just fall into physical and aural harmony. They also engage in what is called motor mimicry. If you show people pictures of a smiling face or a frowning face, they'll smile or frown back, although perhaps only in muscular changes so fleeting that they can only be captured with electronic sensors. If I hit my thumb with a hammer, most people watching will grimace: they'll mimic my emotional state. This is what is meant, in the technical sense, by empathy. we imitate each other's emotions as a way of expressing support and caring and, even more basically, as a way of communicating with each other... Emotion is contagious. In a way, this is perfectly intuitive. All of us have had our spirits picked up by being around somebody in a good mood. If you think about this closely, though, it's quite a radical notion. We normally think of the expressions on our face as the reflection of an inner state. I feel happy, so I smile. I feel sad, so I frown. Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes inside out." -- Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
The first quote, the Ayya Khema, is one I return to when I start worrying too much about what's going to happen... Miguel is concerned about what will happen with my employment (as it's all over the map at the moment) but I keep telling him I'll deal with it when I have to.
The second quote has been rattling around in my head since I read it a few weeks ago. Is it enough to serve? It's all I'm really doing at the moment.
The third quote made me think that it's possible that we're wasting our time trying to convince our program participants that "you have to take responsibility for your own feelings, no-one can make you feel anything you don't want to". The men especially always argue this point, and I know that on some levels I agree with them. Someone who knows you well, who knows all the right things to say, can piss you off whenever their little heart desires....
Monday, December 26, 2005
I miss the sun. I miss rain, water shushing in the ditches, running to the sea.
I miss trees. The sound of wind cracking branches, leaves bursting mint-green in spring.
I chafe against the winter clothing, that narrows my view to a fur tunnel and holds my head forward when I want to look around at the sky.
I want to nap in the afternoons, when the sky is black at three, like a bird with its head under a downy wing.
And yet, the sky is limitless and streaked with aurora borealis, twisting and writhing overhead, shaken ribbons of light.
And then, the silence feeds me and envelops me, broken only by children playing hockey in the street, ravens barking on telephone poles and dogs singing in the evening.
Time moves sluggishly, becomes meaningless. My dreams are long and convoluted, like childhood dreams and just as colourful. I thought I had stopped dreaming. I thought nothing more would ever happen to me, and yet it does. I live in the Arctic.
I miss trees. The sound of wind cracking branches, leaves bursting mint-green in spring.
I chafe against the winter clothing, that narrows my view to a fur tunnel and holds my head forward when I want to look around at the sky.
I want to nap in the afternoons, when the sky is black at three, like a bird with its head under a downy wing.
And yet, the sky is limitless and streaked with aurora borealis, twisting and writhing overhead, shaken ribbons of light.
And then, the silence feeds me and envelops me, broken only by children playing hockey in the street, ravens barking on telephone poles and dogs singing in the evening.
Time moves sluggishly, becomes meaningless. My dreams are long and convoluted, like childhood dreams and just as colourful. I thought I had stopped dreaming. I thought nothing more would ever happen to me, and yet it does. I live in the Arctic.
Last year, while I was trying to cook Christmas dinner, Rachel was driving a remote controlled Bratz car around my feet. This year, my in-laws very kindly sent EACH of the children a tiny remote controlled car, and so I had three little cars buzzing round in the kitchen. Which isn't a big space at the best of times. But I only stepped on one, dinner got made and was eaten, we all wore our paper hats from the crackers and now we have enough leftover turkey to feed us for a few days. Kirsten emerged at nine this morning saying, "I think I'll have turkey for breakfast".
Miguel got us a satellite radio, which we've been trying to persuade to pick up some signals. No luck yet. I think we'll need a more powerful antenna. The radio here is limited to two CBC stations, one from here and one from Iqaluit. The station here plays requests, and they are eclectic to say the least. I actually heard the Numa Numa song a couple of weeks ago, followed by King of the Road. The one from Iqaluit is mostly Inuktitut talk shows. My vocabulary is not developed to the point where I could get anything out of the programming. I know a few words in Innuinaqtun, the local dialect: kinmik is dog, nutakat is children, an office is lunit, koana is thank-you, qallunaat is what I am (white folk), ilihakvik is school, tuktu is caribou, nattiq is seal, umingmak is muskox, kamik is boots, hivajaut is telephone... so unless the conversation is about putting your boots on and telephoning the school to tell them that your children are bringing muskox to the office, I'm pretty much lost... If someone calls the health centre when I'm answering the phone and launches into Innuinaqtun, I say "tatjaygu" which is phonetically what I've been told is "please hold" and I pass them to one of the staff members who understands the language. For all I know, I could be telling them to "shut the f*** up", but I'm hoping not. My son knows a lot of body part names (typical for 12 year old boys) and it doesn't sound like any of them...
Books this week:
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. This is a book I've been reading about in the newspapers for a long time, fits into my fascination with chaos theory, and I'm reading it slowly with pauses for thought.
A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey. First thing I did when this came in the mail was pick off the "Oprah's Book Club" sticker. I don't care what Oprah thinks about it, it's a good book anyway, and I got it because my brother recommended it.
The Idea of Perfection, by Kate Grenville. I'd never heard of her, but the book jacket had the typeface I associate with books published in England. Turns out she's Australian, and it was a very thoughtful book. It features a very well-rendered dog as almost a main character; it adopts the heroine and follows her around. I always like books that can do dogs properly.
Miguel got us a satellite radio, which we've been trying to persuade to pick up some signals. No luck yet. I think we'll need a more powerful antenna. The radio here is limited to two CBC stations, one from here and one from Iqaluit. The station here plays requests, and they are eclectic to say the least. I actually heard the Numa Numa song a couple of weeks ago, followed by King of the Road. The one from Iqaluit is mostly Inuktitut talk shows. My vocabulary is not developed to the point where I could get anything out of the programming. I know a few words in Innuinaqtun, the local dialect: kinmik is dog, nutakat is children, an office is lunit, koana is thank-you, qallunaat is what I am (white folk), ilihakvik is school, tuktu is caribou, nattiq is seal, umingmak is muskox, kamik is boots, hivajaut is telephone... so unless the conversation is about putting your boots on and telephoning the school to tell them that your children are bringing muskox to the office, I'm pretty much lost... If someone calls the health centre when I'm answering the phone and launches into Innuinaqtun, I say "tatjaygu" which is phonetically what I've been told is "please hold" and I pass them to one of the staff members who understands the language. For all I know, I could be telling them to "shut the f*** up", but I'm hoping not. My son knows a lot of body part names (typical for 12 year old boys) and it doesn't sound like any of them...
Books this week:
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. This is a book I've been reading about in the newspapers for a long time, fits into my fascination with chaos theory, and I'm reading it slowly with pauses for thought.
A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey. First thing I did when this came in the mail was pick off the "Oprah's Book Club" sticker. I don't care what Oprah thinks about it, it's a good book anyway, and I got it because my brother recommended it.
The Idea of Perfection, by Kate Grenville. I'd never heard of her, but the book jacket had the typeface I associate with books published in England. Turns out she's Australian, and it was a very thoughtful book. It features a very well-rendered dog as almost a main character; it adopts the heroine and follows her around. I always like books that can do dogs properly.