Hep Cats and Hippies

It had to happen.

One moment I was your run-of-the-mill cold-hearted bitch, hardened by Smirnoff, magazine internships and Toronto boyfriends. Then I moved to Northern California for five months, took up Bikram yoga and started eating avocado, a food which I had hitherto gagged at.

Now, about a year later, give or take, I find myself hearkening back to the Bezerk-ley days all too often. I recently had to complete a written test for work (ugh, don't ask) which included several pages on wine knowledge, such as term definition (e.g. "round") and suggested food and wine pairings ("what would you suggest with oysters?") When I got to the question asking for outside factors on wine production, I was a little surprised at my own (figurative) balls when I wrote down "social responsibility and carbon emission awareness - more and more people are realizing how detrimental it can be to insist on wines from overseas when locally-produced vintages have a significantly smaller impact on Mother Earth."

Oh God. I actually capitalised "Mother Earth". This is not the type of stunt to pull in a restaurant that prides itself on a wine list with 300+ different labels. Oh, but this was after my morning spent shopping at the Farmer's Market, where I stocked up on organic flax-seed breakfast rolls, vegan brownies and locally-made dolmas.

But I'll be dead in the cold, cold ground before I trade in my heels and (real) leather jacket for Birkenstocks and sarongs.

Adaptation

Did you know the world is experiencing a food shortage? The price of rice rose 60% this year. Countries like India and China and Vietnam – which account for 25% of International exports – are shutting their borders to foreign exports.

This means that one of the cheapest foods, consumed as a staple in billions of households, is straining the most strained budgets in the most impoverished countries. All over Africa, South America, and Asia people are experiencing the culminated impact of poor growing seasons and economic fragility.

I can picture a local lunch stand in Ghana. Business people in collared shirts line up as women with thick forearms spoon out hot fish stew into plastic take out bags. As word moves through the line that prices rose people start to complain. “Ach! It's too much” a woman says, shaking her head. The price raise – from 20 cents a scoop of sticky rice to 30 cents – causes grumbling and a scramble to find the extra change. It isn't just the rice and it isn't just this market.

An indigenous product to Ghana, the rice market previously suffered with the influx of cheap, bleached, American instant rice. Now the inflated costs affect those with the least resources to cope. All over the West African country fruit and vegetable vendors must adapt to new budgets. Rice, fuel, water, vegetables. It is all the same.

It is an International market crunch. Try telling that to people in rural villages where families eat from large pots, brewed over coal fires or refugee camps where thousands line up each month for bags of rice, maize, and iodized salt. Sellers must hike their prices. Portions decrease. The government in Haiti collapsed after extensive protests.

Me? I chop yellow peppers and garlic for a pasta sauce, strawberries for a salad. Snow is gradually melting outside but hothouse growth and affordable greens grown in Florida ensure my entrees are complete. I try not to remember the feel of the heat as I waited in that lunch line for eight months. I ignore the bargaining as I bought tomatoes by the bucket in a stand constructed across an open gutter. In Canada these sensations are easier to dismiss.

Gerald Caplan eloquently, and I would say accurately, states that the West is suffering from “compassion fatigue.” We are plagued by our inability to curb a global epidemic. Pandemics, outbreaks, droughts, massacres: they're all painted with the same brush of blurred faces and unattainable figures. We're weighed down by anxiety about our complicit role in future destruction. We want to help but we're simply unable, we're stuck within our own systems of privilege. Our houses are made not of glass but of concrete and brick and isolation. They don't fall down. We're padded with comforts and isolated in our excess.

I cut my finger mid-way through the salad. Unlike the Liberian girl I used to live with, I am not skilled in the art of peeling with one hand on the knife and the other on the lettuce. I like standing in my warm kitchen with stainless steal appliances that beep when they're left open . I'm listening to CBC radio and news is entertainment. I am part of the problem and I will continue to be. Organic foods and energy saving light bulbs aside, I will lead a lifestyle that many envy, others aspire to and the part of me that operated with one bucket of water a day abhors. Still, life, as I know it, continues. Happy Earth Day.

Love Is Blind

"Now I know why they call it a blind date... after I saw her, I wished I was blind!"

That sounds like something Rodney Dangerfield would say. It also ties in nicely with the mini-post that I want to make, in as general terms as possible, about the world of blind dating.

Many a blind date have I been on; the real estate agent, the computer technician, the frat boy (God help me), the one who wouldn't actually tell me what he did for a living (Columbian drug lord?) I approach each one with equal parts dread and anticipation, which are really two sides of the same coin. I know that, at worst, I'll have a funny if embarrassing story to tell and at best I'll meet the love of my life.

The latter has yet to happen.

I have my little stock of "deal-breakers", many of which are superficial and some of which are downright insane. The following will result in a "oh, sorry, I don't actually have a phone... give me your number and I'll call you!"

-tribal armband tattoos
-first names beginning with the letter J
-windbreakers

If there's anyone out there who actually reads this other than Liz and I, I'd love to hear YOUR deal-breakers. If there's not, well, I hope you don't have a bad tattoo hidden under that windbreaker.

Pots and Kettles

I am lusting after kitchenware.

This weekend I bought a colander. It is red, luscious, shiny and all mine. It called out to me: Love me, choose me, pick me. Obviously I couldn't leave without it. Buoyed by the high only a quickly hidden credit card receipt gives, I made a list of all the must-have accessories that will furnish my as-yet un-attained apartment.

There is something strange about the transition from wanting jackets, jeans, and nights full of fancy drinks and trendy appetizers to thinking about investing in stainless steel pots. It follows after dinner parties replace funnel contests as the appropriate use of a kitchen.

After setting my beautiful new strainer in a box along with my future mugs and salad bowls, I started browsing my friend's wedding registries. This was a foreign concept until this year, the year that apparently marks that transition into the “mid-twenties” and the rest of our lives. I was pleased to find that I could show up with a delux garlic crusher or $300 blender.

Happiness for these soon to be newlyweds aside, I take issue with registries. I know that there was a Sex and the City episode about this and let me say this won't be the last time we overlap subject matter. You can only talk about so much when you're single and fabulous.

Given today's lifestyles and that people move out, live together long before they get married, shouldn't showers be revised? Isn't the whole point to help people starting out in life? What if I never get married, don't I deserve designer kitchen knives? Couldn't we have a one-time only big shower - first degree, first big job, first apartment?

My mother said something to this effect. I joked that couldn't I have a "I could have gotten pregnant but chose not to" one. She did not look impressed. Sometimes it amazes me to remember that I'm not the only one who still considers myself 16.

Greener Pastures

Some people would call me lucky. I have a job that I get to leave when I clock out (and yes, I do actually clock in and out). My job is fast-paced but not inherently stressful, I walk away with cash in my hand at the end of a shift and I get free food. However, I often look at my situation and realise that I live below the poverty line, I have no form of medical insurance and my hours are incredibly uncertain. I could work 50 hours in a week or 15, and the cash at the end of the night could barely be enough to cover my taxi home.

Last night a man tipped me $15 on a $32 bill when I ran it to him. He was a lonely (albeit slimy) businessman, and when he asked me what my plans for the night were I refrained from snapping that I was a waitress and not a callgirl and instead politely told him that I had plans with my boyfriend. Note: there is no boyfriend.

It's a good life if you don't weaken.

Other friends of mine have settled nicely. We're at that age where marriage and planned babies aren't that far off, and talk of retirement funds and health benefits begin to edge in along with bands we like, bars we frequent and who was just eliminated from America's Next Top Model. This isn't a big city; we like the simple life more than we care to admit. Picket fences, yellow labs...

Those who call me lucky are those who haven't yet had the chance to swim in the Aegean Sea, trip along Pompeii's ruins, drink Bewley's by the river Liffey or had an affair with a French Julian Casablancas lookalike worth of Harlequin. I've done all these things and more... but I still look at my insured, salaried friends with a detectable amount of envy. Imagine being able to make it a Blockbuster night instead of slinging on heels and traipsing out on yet another blind date, or not really sweating another cavity because you won't be paying for it out of your pocket, or knowing that you can make plans at least a week in advance because your hours are set for you.

Am I too young to want this? Or are they too old to do what I've done? Is age a number, a state of mind or an amount in the bank?

Step Out of the Vehicle

“So you're asking for your third I.D in the past 18 months? Can you explain this?”

Apparently I am at high risk to recycle my drivers license for booze hungry children. Either that or I've been pegged as a terrorist. And yes, I may have an issue with misplaced identification.

“Well, you see I was on a Subway in New York City and my clutch got stolen...” I trailed off. The DMV attendant seemed disinterested in the irony of surviving eight months in Africa without getting robbed before this. Falling asleep on a 4am train headed to the Bronx less than 48-hours after arriving at JFK just tempted fate. I didn't tell the woman I was still more upset about losing my favourite lip gloss.

“What about your previous copy?”

“Oh...” It took me a minute to remember that on my 22nd birthday I lost my ID on the floor of a bar called the Ranch. Ten complementary drinks later and I barely knew who I was, let alone that I lost proof of it being my birthday. That had been a good picture and I regretted losing it.

“It got stolen in Edmonton,” I added to save face. One skeptical eyebrow raised. I would like to attribute this to the rarity that people who travel need new drivers licenses. I suspect she thought I needed to get my head examined.

I got the glamour shot in the end. It isn't half bad. A good I.D photo is always worth the shower and effort of putting on mascara. Bouncers aren't hot but cops sometimes are. If I lose this copy I may have to endure a “lengthy interview.” The woman, Brenda, looked at me severely and told me to report both lost I.Ds. “You never know when identity theft can happen,” she insisted.

I hope some underage punk commuter is raising martinis to me in Manhattan as we speak. I also hope that I won't have to visit Brenda again. If I do, I will I put on a little more bronzer. Nothing kills a good shot like sallow looking skin.

Can't Hardly Wait

Once upon a time I was a highly motivated A grade, type-A student who had a very admirable life plan and absolutely no spare time. Now I have two degrees, an extensive knowledge of post-modern theorists and no clue about how to proceed. Usually I start with a leisurely breakfast.

John Mayer called it a quarter life crisis, John Lennon put it better when he said “Life is what happens when you're making other plans.” I don't think much of John Mayer and don't what to rely on cliches. I do, however, think there is a rut that I fell into sometime after returning from an overseas internship, somewhere before starting the rest of my life.

I surfaced from this decline in motivation, style, and general well-being to find myself in high school. That's right, high school.

Six years after graduating, I am sitting in my parent's basement wearing that same red track pants that weathered every early class of my freshman year. Unlike those mornings, I am not hungover and have no exciting stories to tell. I am the success story schools want to produce, fallen to the wayside.

I am a substitute teacher who needs to get her life together. I wait for a call each morning and arrive in front of a classroom ready to appear capable and confident.

Do you remember high school? Frizzy hair, braces and awkward social moments, all before class starts. Today I stood in front of 25 aspiring science students. Though I struggled to pass grade twelve chemistry, I neglected to tell them this as I assigned questions on iodizing equations. From a secure vantage, I enjoy the weird satisfaction in knowing that life does get better beyond these walls.

Just because I am penniless and live with my parents and watch TV on Saturday nights doesn't mean that it always has or always will be this way. I'm in a slump, don't you know? I am entitled to whine until my liberal arts overeducation pulls through and bumps me up to a satisfied, smug, [insert occupation here] future that involves restored Victorian apartments and well stocked wine racks.

High school is, of course, temporary. I escaped once and I'll do it again. Someday I will have a grown-up job where I do not feel out of place in the staff room. I might even have health benefits. In the meantime, the concept of such a job is abhorrent. I am far too transient, I insist. Yet I have started to like this snug mid-point to the rest of my life. I can be a hermit to social obligations and sink back to a simpler time, when someone else pays the cable bill and fills the refrigerator.

Immediately upon entering a classroom, I can pick out familiar patterns in the mass of I-pods, lululemon, and skinny jeans. Different faces, different names. Same stances, same attitudes. Most people look desperately insecure. I suppress the urge to yell at those who don't. They're usually the people who talk during lessons and roll their eyes when called upon. Or, better yet, they leave for extended trips to the bathroom.

“Enjoy it,” I want to say. “This is as good as it gets for you. Savour every moment because in three years you'll be washed up and socially stunted and wish you had a cafeteria to watch your every move.”

Since there are few of these people and they will find this out eventually, I keep my mouth shut. Why ruin it for them. I take deep satisfaction knowing that I have better shoe/outfit coordination than they ever will.

Going back to high school has its high points. I now know that orange juice and vodka is overrated, that good marks are not, that proper hair products work wonders, that Junior hockey does not make someone attractive, and that people should seriously reconsider platform shoes and excessive eyeliner at 9am.

For a rut, I have begun to enjoy this stopping point. My crisis has been stayed by retrospection free from nostalgia. I did okay during the past six years. I'm not exactly a beacon of morality or stability or great life choices but I'm not pregnant, bankrupt or working at a check-out. To top it off, teaching is actually fun.

If I got a report card it would say, “shows potential.” This gives me an edge when I start class everyday. Those kids still have the hard stuff ahead of them. I'm taking a breather until the fun starts again.

Confessions of a Cafe Voyeur

First post!

For the past three-odd weeks, I've been without Internet at my apartment. Due to my nomadic tendencies, I'm hesitant to set up anything with even remote echoes of permanence... phone lines and Internet hook-ups included. Cellies and stolen wireless work for me, thanks.

However, my ISP (aka my neighbour Jen) has recently moved, taking with her a strong and easily-accessible wireless signal. After a three-second argument with myself (to Eastlink or not to Eastlink?) I decided to keep the ties cut and picked out a nearby wireless cafe to park myself. This has grown into a daily ritual, and one which is good for more reasons than simply the obvious one of making me shower and dress... it satisfies my voyeuristic tendencies in a way that Slice never can.

I've seen first dates, writers' meetings (some local authors hold them here on a weekly basis) and an endless parade of people grabbing 4 PM pick-me-ups. This evening I'm sharing a table with a guy marking a stack of papers on... genetics. Seriously. The initials DNA keep cropping up, although I'm trying not to be too obvious in my leering. There are three other people here alone with either their books or their laptops; I wonder how many people are doing the same thing that I am, and how many books are just props in the whole facade.