14 September 2007, early morning
TIFF 07 was looking to be a bust till my coworker informed me she had grabbed me a ticket to see the Hong Kong action-flick Flash Point. Flash Point was kick ass. The night before, Limin called me out of the blue to let me know I needed to rush over to Varsity: she was at the front of the Rush line, but someone had just sold her a ticket to the film about to play. So, I also got to watch the Iranian drama Unfinished Stories. Next year i’ll make sure to buy a coupon book.
Life
6 September 2007, the wee hours
I bumped into my friend Mike on Queen St. It was pretty random: I haven’t seen Mike in a few years now. He told me he was downtown because his band was playing at the Horseshoe later that night. I figured if I bumped into him randomly on Queen that was a good sign that I should go to his show. I am so glad I did. Mike’s band is awesome. And I’m not just saying that because I know him. Vinnie and Raju showed up as well, which made the night all the more enjoyable. Be sure to check out the Hots when they are playing next. They play rock music you can dance to. What else do you need really?
Life | Music
5 September 2007, mid-morning
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all! — Mario Savio, Sit-in Address on the Steps of Sproul Hall, December 2nd 1964
Mario Savio was a student leader at Berkeley during the 60s involved in the free-speech movement. He sounds like an amazing fellow. I learned of him from watching Battlestar Galactica of all things. In the season finale for Season 2 of the show, Lay Down Your Burdens, Chief Tyrol gives this stunning speech to his workers — It’s a really great scene. It turns out the speech just paraphrases some of the things Savio said in his speech on the steps of Sproul Hall.
Tyrol’s union speech is an almost word for word quote of Mario Savio’s address during the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964. According to Ron Moore and David Eick in the podcast, they even got permission from Savio’s widow to use it (even though, due to the way copyright laws work from back then, they could have just used it without permission, they felt they should get it). As a result, it’s even listed in the credits: “Mario Savio speech excerpted courtesy of: Lynne Hollander Savio”. Actor Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol) actually studied film of Savio, so all of the hand gestures Tyrol makes when he gives the speech are gestures that Savio actually used.
Battlestar Galactica is by far one of the most interesting shows on television. I am dying to see season 3. (Television Executives: There are lots of reasons people pirate television. Off the top of my head, waiting months and months and months for a DVD set would be one reason.)
[1] Life | Quotes
4 September 2007, mid-morning
Shima organized a picnic in High Park, inviting anyone and everyone she knows. Early in the day, while waiting for people to slowly trickle in I get a call from Limin, who is one such person we were waiting for. High Park is big and she isn’t sure where we are. It turns out she was calling from a pay phone at the Cafe just North of where we decided to sit. I’m about to tell her where she needs to go when she interrupts me: “Ram, I think I see Shima’s brother." This is interesting because Limin, whose been outside of Canada for a while now, has never met Shima, let alone her brother. I hear her yelling, “Excuse me, you wouldn’t by chance happen to be Shima’s brother,” then, back into the phone, “Yeah, that’s her brother, I’m going to follow him.” I learned yesterday that plastering photographs of your friends and family on the Internet can actually serve a useful purpose.
[3] Life
30 August 2007, late evening
It cost me 6 pounds, over $12, to visit Heather and Ben and Maida Valle. Now that is an expensive trip. We went to two pubs. They were both quite nice. British pubs make the Canadian ones look kind of lame. — Me, in London, May 7th 2007
I use my Moleskine Sketchbook as a sort of poor mans scrap book, since I can’t actually sketch.
[1] Life
29 August 2007, late at night
You may recall that I was using GMail as a way to read and reply to email all over the place. I had 1&1 (and then Dreamhost) forward all my email to a GMail account, as well as storing it for download via POP3. GMail lets you send emails as if they were from another account, so this worked well enough, but it was far from perfect. Emails I sent from the GMail web interface were stuck on Google’s servers unless I forwarded them to myself. Related to this, people started emailing me directly at this dummy GMail address. The dummy GMail account was supposed to be a mirror of my actual email account, but this wasn’t the case. Finally, I like using desktop applications. As nice as GMail is, I still find it slow and kludgey. This convoluted set-up existed because 1&1 didn’t support IMAP properly — or at all, as far as I could tell; Dreamhost, on the other hand, does.
Read the rest of this post. (713 words)
[5] Technology | Life
29 August 2007, early evening
Shima and I bought the new Kate Nash CD. We heard it playing in HMV. I have no idea who the lady is, but the song playing was pretty catchy. She sounds like a bunch of other singers, though I can’t think of who at the moment. I haven’t bought a CD just because in ages. (I also bought the M.I.A. CD so I can replace my MP3s from oink. You shouldn’t pirate music. Those artists need to eat.)
Life | Music
28 August 2007, early evening
The right side of my mouth is partially frozen. The last time my mouth was frozen like this I had just taken lost 4 wisdom teeth; today, I had a cavity filled. My old dentist was a little bit more gung-ho in his approach to dealing with cavities. Dr. Singh would look at my teeth and say to himself, “I think we can do this without freezing.” He would then proceed to drill a hole in my teeth. I managed to get two cavities filled this way, so clearly, he could do it without freezing. Still, I wouldn’t call either event pleasant.
[3] Life
19 August 2007, early evening
Somedays I find myself alone downtown. Today was one such day. It wasn’t till 2:00 till I decided to venture off into the city in search of something to break what would otherwise become a monotonous day. A book in hand, I made my way to the Montreal Bread Company. I like the sandwhiches at the MBC a lot. The coffee is good too. The only drawback to the place is that it’s pretty pricey. I spent $15 dollars on my Cajun Shrimp BLT and Americano. MBC is a nice place to sit and read. Its in Yorkville and has fairly big patio, which is nice if you like to people watch. I just wanted to read, so I sat inside, sipping on a coffee and working away at my book of the moment. Yorkville is a strange place. A middle aged Chinese woman sat with her family across from me. She was wearing LV pants (I could tell because of the LV logo plastered all over them) and some Channel sunglasses. She was quite the sight. Every so often someone would pop in, a Lululemon bag in hand, to order something new. The girls in Yorkville would be pretty if they didn’t all walk, talk, and look the same. At around 4:00 I decided to wander around again. I started making my way to Bloor, but decided to double back to Cumberland cinema to see what was playing. Sunshine was due to start in 20 minutes. I hadn’t seen a film by myself in quite some time.
Life
19 August 2007, the wee hours
I bought Delicious Library a good while ago, but put off importing all my books into the damn program till today. It was about half way though the scanning process that I realized the best way to scan stuff with the iSight is to pass the barcode over the faux-scanner bars moving from the top to the bottom. When I started doing this, the program did a much better job of scanning things. Now that I have everything in this system, i’ll hopefully be able to track my DVDs a bit better. (Right now, my system of emailing random people asking if they have my DVDs works, but I don’t think that scales well.) I have way more books than DVDs, but I don’t really lend them out. (I’m sort of neurotic about my books.) Sadly, Delicious Library actually doesn’t let you do too much interesting stuff with the data it collects. Its a very bare bones application. Version 2 has been in the works for what feels like ages. Hopefully it is a worthwhile upgrade. (I suspect it will be.) As it stands, Delicious Library is essentially a really slick list. Still, sometimes that’s enough.
[1] Life | Technology
15 August 2007, the wee hours
I love opening my mailbox and seeing a new issue of Harper’s sitting there. (One of the perks of subscribing is that you get issues of the magazine a couple weeks early.) I like getting Harper’s because I’m treated to articles like, “Schoolhouse Crock: Fifty Years of Blaming America’s Educational System for Our Stupidity.” It’s like the magazine was written just for me.
Life
7 August 2007, late afternoon
Today I met up with Mezan and Steph for lunch. My long weekend was made extra long by my taking another day off. (I’m not being completely lazy, I have to see the dentist in about an hour.) On my way out I checked my mail: the mail box was empty. I cursed Koyono under my breath, and left for downtown.
I ordered the Slimmy from Koyono on the 16th of July. For those paying attention, that’s almost a month ago. I suppose I’ve been spoiled by stores like Amazon and Indigo, which manages to ship an order out in a couple days — tops. Koyono let me know my order was good to go on the 27th, 11 days after initially placing my order. When I got back from the dentist I checked my mail box again: the wallet had finally arrived. (So it spent another 11 days in the post.) I had actually planned to write them today, complaining about how slow the whole process was. Now that I have the wallet, I don’t feel like doing that anymore. I suppose it’s cool to take your damn time shipping out a product if it’s as slick as this Slimmy Wallet: I can’t picture someone taking it out and still harboring ill feelings towards Koyono.
The Slimmy is a small wallet you’re supposed to keep in your front pockets instead of your back. It’s a fairly thin wallet. The one I bought is in black leather with a red lining, and it looks quite nice. It comes in a static bag that contains the wallet and a little card suggesting what to put in your new wallet. I’m replacing a wallet i’ve been using for the past 7 years: It’s going to be a weird couple of days.
[10] Life
23 July 2007, early morning
Gary and I went to the Drake hotel past Friday. Gary had never been before. We were more or less killing time till Krishna bought his Harry Potter book. We’re standing by the fire place, drinking some beer, when I spot Tiff’s friend Amy. (This is the second time I’ve seen her out and about downtown, the previous time was at the Rat Race event. It’s a small world.) Amy was sitting with a friend on one of the few remaining sofas in the lounge. They were waiting for some DJs to start spinning in the underground. They weren’t too impressed with the lounge; Amy mentioned how out of place she felt. I took a good look around.
The Drake is a very strange place on a Friday night. The crowd looks to be transplanted right from the clubbing district. I imagine it’s full of people who don’t want to pay the cover for This Is London. There were plenty of cocktail dresses and dress shirts to be seen. (For some context, I was wearing my blue Sri Lanka cricket jersey and had some seriously scraggly hair.) Everyone was snapping photos of themselves — to put on Facebook no doubt. The music was really good: it was all old school hip-hop and R&B for the most part. Not that the crowd was dancing mind you. They weren’t doing much of anything really: people were mostly checking each other out while lining up to get to the Sky Yard. The act of lining up to move between floors at a place is straight out of clubbing district. (“Dude, the 3rd floor of Inside is hype, lets go.”) So the Drake on the Friday takes everything bad about the clubbing district and moves it to West Queen West. Well, at least there is still no cover. The Drake is totally different on a Wednesday.
The Underground was a much different scene. They were playing that sort of hipster dance music thats popular with the kids nowadays, with all all that boom boom and scratching scratching. You know? People were actually dancing. It had a much more laid back vibe. I quite liked it. Gary and I didn’t stick around too long. Krishna called to say he had the book and so we were off.
Restaurants and Bars | Life
23 June 2007, the wee hours
I got off the subway at 1:45 AM. I was surprised to see a small group of people getting off with me. I guess people don’t like taking cabs home. I had expected Bloor and Lansdowne to be a bit more shady at this time, but it looked about the same as it always does. I think I need to venture towards Dufferin to see something a bit more sketchy. The walk to my condo, heading towards Dundas West, was without drama.
[3] Bloor and Lansdowne | Life
20 June 2007, early morning
I met up with Haran at the Drake. I was there to see Sean spin a short set of music. For some reason, Haran and I only meet at the Drake. The last time I saw him was when his friend Paul’s band was playing at the 5 bands for 5 bucks event. I think we’ve been to the Drake together at least 4 times now. The drake is probably now officially our place. For a bunch of amateur DJs, Sean and his friends all played pretty good sets. I’d say it’s a good night when you hear both the Smiths and the Pharcyde.
[1] Life
13 June 2007, mid-morning
I popped into the Kiss Cup Bar & Restaurant before heading off to yesterday’s DigIn meeting. The bar has a reputation for being a bit sketchy — that’s a polite way of saying it’s a place to go if you are all about the crack. The place wasn’t too busy: there may have been 5-6 people tops, split between two tables; no one struck me as sketchy. An old Asian dude was sitting by the bar; his feet were up on another bar chair and he was sleeping. I stood by the bar for a few moments, looking for whomever was in charge, when the dude who was sleeping woke up and looked at me. I guess he was in charge.
— “Do you have a take out menu?”
— “Wings.”
— “Uh — do you have a take out menu?”
— “Wings.”
— “You don’t have a take out menu.”
They didn’t. Well that was a misadventure. Before leaving I asked how much beer was. It turns out it’s three dollars. That’s pretty cheap. I guess that counts for something.
Update: I spoke too soon; the Kiss Cup Bar is pretty good. It may be small, and the patrons may be a tiny bit unruly, but you can buy a glass of “cool” beer for $2, and really, isn’t that all you need? (The running theory of the night was that the beer on tap was probably Lakeport, but no one knew for sure.)
Bloor and Lansdowne | Life
11 June 2007, early morning
Shima, her mom, and I were out on Bloor this past Sunday planting flowers in the planters between Dufferin and Lansdowne. There were a small group of us planting, with support coming from Spiro and the bouncers from the House of Lancaster. I find it strange that of all the shops on the strip, the one that seems to be the most helpful when it comes to this sort of thing is the House of Lancaster. Strip Clubs aren’t usually agents of social change. It will be interesting to see if the plants die, or if the planters stay clean.
[1] Bloor and Lansdowne | Life
7 June 2007, evening time
The concert was amazing. Damn. Jemeni opened the show with the poem from the Dragonfly Intro. Following the poem, Esthero took the stage and spent most of the night taking requests from the audience, drinking jagermeister shots, and talking smack — there was lots of shit talking going on. Word. Her voice is still as brilliant as I remember it sounding. Esthero didn’t sing I Drive Alone, despite the fact I was screaming it out at the top of my lungs. I can forgive her: she played pretty much everything else I wanted to hear. Esthero can do a damn good Björk impression. She belted out Army of Me, instead of singing Breath From Another, and spent a few minutes rambling on as if she was Björk. It was impressive. The first time I heard Heaven Sent I thought it was a new Björk track. I wonder if this was a common occurrence. (I also enjoyed her cutting to Baby You Got Me midway through one of her tracks.) Midway through the concert, she had her back-up singer come up front and perform. Her name was Alexis Taylor I believe, and she could sing — and I mean really sing. The crowd was going nuts. So yeah, the concert was incredible. I’d say it was perfect, but she kept us all waiting an hour and a half before taking the stage. Still, once she started singing I forget about all that.
[3] Music | Life
6 June 2007, early morning
I’m going to see Esthero tonight. I can’t wait. The last time I saw her live was at Closer to the Heart V. She’s doing an acoustic set at the Mod Club. There are still tickets as of last night, so if you are a fan you should definitely check it out. I’m not sure how her new album would sound done acoustically, but I can certainly imagine her first album done this way. I’ve been listening to the EP that came out between her two albums over the past few days. I had always thought it strange she dropped I Drive Alone from the full length album that followed the EP — it’s such a great track. I suppose it’s a bit understandable, the song is very much like her stuff from 1998. The stuff on her last album is fairly different for the most part. I enjoy both albums, though I think I have a soft spot for the first. I think this has as much to do with when it came out as it does with the fact its all laid back trip hop. (I wonder where most of her fans stand on this subject.) I’m hoping this concert is in preparation for a new album. I’d hate to have to wait till 2012 for another album from her.
Music | Life
4 June 2007, early morning
So I have now attended four weddings in five weekends. That there weren’t any conflicts in my schedule is pretty amazing.
Gopi and Abiramy were married in London late last month. It was a fairly big wedding, with around 500 people or so, but there was still some drama in that they didn’t manage to invite everyone their parents wanted to. Tamil weddings are usually big affairs, an excuse to have a family reunion. The wedding took place outside of London, in a University Hall. The food was vegetarian, and there was no drinking that day — well, officially anyway; it’s quite common for people to drink at their cars during Tamil weddings — so in that regards it was a pretty traditional wedding. I quite enjoyed the wedding; it was a nice time to be back in London.
This wedding was followed by one for a family friend of ours. I didn’t actually know either the bride and groom; I was told my cousin was going to be at the wedding, so I thought I’d show up as well. (He was told I was going to be at the wedding, which is why he decided to come.) It was a very Tamil wedding: a small army of people, lots of talking (though they tried to stop this), vegetarian food, it started an hour or so late, there were no booze, and it was long. As traditional Tamil weddings go, I think they did a very good job. The priest was a bit too hard boiled for my liking, but other then that it was quite nice.
Wedding number three was Yang and Rajib’s. They were planning on doing an abridged Bengali ceremony. (The “short” ceremony was still something like 45 minutes to an hour.) The wedding was remarkable in that they kept the guest list down to 50-60 people. That is nothing short of a miracle for brown people. Anything else they accomplished with the wedding really does pale in comparison to that feat, in my humble opinion. The wedding took place at Host, and was a very casual intimate affair. I really liked how they organized it.
Matt and Kathleen were married this past Saturday in Ball’s Falls. It was the only wedding that didn’t involve any brown people. They were married in a small chapel out in the the wine country of Ontario, and there was a reception in a barn to follow. As with Yang and Rajib’s wedding, it was a very casual and intimate wedding. The actual wedding couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes long — that’s how you get married people; God damn Hindus need to turn a wedding into an endurance trial. The reception was really quite amazing. You wouldn’t think a barn would clean up as nicely as it does. I’m not sure the pictures I took do the venue justice, but it was a really cool space. (Also, I hope and pray that someone had to foresight to record Matt’s brother speech, because it was something else.)
And with that I’m done all my wedding going for the summer. I am exhausted, but it’s nice to attend weddings, especially those for your friends.
Life
1 June 2007, early morning
I had a dream where I was listening to my music at work. I take my headphones off, my iPod still playing, and realize that there is so much noise spilling out from them. I then realize my coworkers have music blaring at their desks to counteract all my noise. I feel bad. Then I can’t remember what happens. I kind of feel like I was working on a city plan or something, instead of programming. My dreams are pretty boring.
Life
25 May 2007, early morning
I used dd, something I’ve never done before, to clone my fucked up compact flash card. This is something I normally wouldn’t do, but I saw instructions on how to do it, and it seemed like a good idea. I then proceeded to try and resurrect my card. Most programs for OS X seem to suck at doing this. One program looked like it was going to fix all my problems, but it couldn’t stop crashing. It would scan about half of the card before giving up spectacularly. And after a few tries, the program stopped finding any photos at all. Some how the card had got even more futzed up. God damn it. I need to dump the clone I made of the compact flash card back on to the card itself, and try once again. I’m thinking i’ll need to look at programs for XP that do this: I was thoroughly unimpressed with all the OS X offerings. Lexar (who make my compact flash card) also have software for recovering photos, but I stupidly threw away the disks that came with my card. (After all, when would I ever need to recover photos from a messed up CF card. Damn it Ram.)
[1] Life | Technology
23 May 2007, early morning
I bought my first suit when I was in grade 12, many years ago. It was a plain black single-breasted suit with 3 buttons, and I bought it from either Moore’s or Tip Top for not much money at all. I picked it because it was one of two suits they had in my size. And when I say, “in my size,” I am using the term very loosely. (Ahilan actually bought the exact same suit for his formal a few years later: same jacket, same pants, same size. Talk about selection!) I got by with my suit for many years. I wore it to both the formals I attended in high school, interviews for jobs during University, my graduation ball, my graduation itself, a few weddings, and probably a few events I don’t recall anymore. I hated wearing that suit; it was such a piece of shit.
My formal wardrobe has only got worse since leaving school. I work at a software company that doesn’t have any issues with me wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I used to worry about wearing my FCUK zip-up to work, but all of our executives have seen me in it now, and they haven’t fired my ass yet. For a long time I had no incentive to buy a proper suit, so I avoided doing so. Instead I built up a serious-ass collection of Threadless t-shirts. (One that almost rivals Dave’s. He buys shirts just to have more than me, that punk.)
For most Hindu weddings I would wear an Indian suit my grand mother bought me. Doing so allowed me to avoid wearing my suit. This is what I did for Rishi’s wedding, which was filled with lots of brown people, none of whom were dressed like me. I should have known something was up when Rishi himself was wearing a suit to his wedding. I don’t mind sticking out, but I remember thinking, “maybe its time I buy a new suit.”
I didn’t want to get another off the rack suit. There wouldn’t be much point in that: I already had one poorly fitting suit, I certainly didn’t need two. I ended up doing something I never thought I would do, the sort of thing I make it a point of mocking Mezan about: I bought a bespoke suit. And it is awesome.
[8] Life
21 May 2007, the wee hours
I should have known better than to plug my compact flash card into my brothers eMac: the god damn computer crashed, taking my very important photos with it. I know they are still there, some where. My camera can’t see any photos, but it knows the card is full. Krishna’s stank eMac certainly can’t see them. I think i’ll have to spend tomorrow trying to figure out how to recover the photos. God damn it.
[3] Life
18 May 2007, early morning
Yesterday night a bunch of us surprised Patrick for his birthday at Barberian’s, a steak restaurant in Toronto. Jaclyn did a great job of rounding a lot of us up for the night. I met all the other people Patrick hangs out with — his Bizarro friends if you will — who I sort of remember from my days at Waterloo. We had a table for 15 or so people in the back room of Barberian’s, and I’d have to say they did a great job of accommodating us throughout the night.
The place is on Elm, just north of the Eaton’s Centre, in a fairly nondescript building/house. The place doesn’t look like your typical haute Steakhouse; one half of the place looks like an old pub, the other half is ever so slightly more fancy. I think the place has a nice feel to it. The room we were in was large enough to seat a fairly big party. There is also seating down in the restaurant’s wine cellar, which is supposed to be quite nice.
Barberian’s serves steaks — and a few other things. I don’t think there is much point going there if you aren’t going to buy a steak. The steak I had was amazing, and I am pretty sure everyone else enjoyed theirs. (Patrick has been described to me as both a “Steak Snob” and a “Steak Princess”, so maybe he can chime in with how the place stacks up in the grand scheme of steak restaurants.) The price of a meal ranged from about $30 – $50 dollars, depending on the entré you got. As Steak places go, I don’t think it’s particularly expensive, and I thought what I had was well worth the money. The wine list at the place is something to behold. The wine my friends and I split was quite tasty.
I think Barberian’s caters to a very diverse group of people. It didn’t have the sort of old banker feel other steak places sometimes have. I could certainly see it appealing to that crowd as well, but at the same time they had no issue with a group like ours. There were all sorts of people eating when we arrived. The staff were very helpful throughout the evening. The owner popped by briefly to wish Patrick a happy birthday. I found it to be a very friendly place. On the whole I think Barberian’s is well worth checking out.
[1] Restaurants and Bars | Life
