Summer 2009

I live a solid hour away from downtown by public trans, and I’m lazy, so I don’t go downtown often… but it’s summer and I’ve been to downtown three times in the past week. Going downtown, I think, makes me feel like I’m going out and exploring summer and taking advantage of the city and the weather and it makes me happy.

Trip #1 : Taste of the Danforth

This was last weekend, but I’ll still remember this… so much food! The weather wasn’t great (it was rainy) but the food was delicious. I would have liked a little more variety in the Greek food because it was basically souvlaki souvlaki souvlaki! Not that I don’t like souvlaki. I did see a booth selling kangaroo burgers though. Kind of freaked me out. I also met Jack Layton!

Trip #2：My friend dragged me to some sort of formal mixer near Harbourfront with a bunch of people adults. It was kind of awkward, especially considering most everybody was taking advantage of the free bar with over 60 brands/types of beer (or at least that’s what the host said) and you could see a red flush on a good number of people’s faces. We had to stick with gingerale. I also wore the wrong heels and walking to and from that place killed my feet. Aka BLISTERS.

Trip #3： Hello Yonge and Dundas! Two of my friends spent a day shopping there and the vicinity. We walked around the Eaton Centre, spending quite a bit of time at the beautiful (and massive) H&M there. I ate one of those vanilla glaze pretzels that are probably super duper unhealthy. And then we walked around on Yonge St, including splashing around in Dundas Square, trying to navigate through the frenzy at the messy and crowded Forever 21, and then walking down Queen Street East. We even scored a free shaken iced tea at Starbucks because the barista made a mistake on a previous order. Yipeeee.

The picture below, taken on Yonge St, is a sticker I saw on… I forget what that gray box was exactly. Downtown is the best place to find interesting things like this.

I love Downtown, and hope to go there at least two times more before summer ends. Maybe Yorkville, which is the closest substitute to walking down Fifth Avenue  before I move to NYC.  Designer stores like Chanel hate teenagers with no money right?

I realize I haven’t written anything for a while. I’ve been having a pretty good summer doing summer type things so I suppose that’s why.

Three days ago I went to my friend’s birthday party at her house, and around midnight I went upstairs to escape the music (which didn’t help much, it wasn’t a very soundproof house). I took a little nap, was awoken by music or screaming or something, and BAM I start noticing how itchy my eyes are.

I first think it’s the makeup, but then I remember, my friend has a cat and her cat hair is everywhere. Every time I go to my friend’s house, I come home to have eyes start itching like crazy, even if I’ve only just sat on her sofa. So this time, because I took a nap on her bed and sort of snuggled in her cat-hair infested blanket, oh god, my eyes were itching like hell.

And even worse, I planned on sort of just crashing on her couch over night, so it was bad. The reason I always forget about the cat is that I never see it. Apparently, she hides whenever guests come over. But her hair is everywhere. My other friend who crashed on the other couch awoke to have her black top… a fuzzy gray.

I’ve been suffering the past few days with itchy eyes and some cold symptoms. I spent most of Friday in bed sneezing with my eyes closed. My body really does not like cats. The interesting thing is that both my parents had cats when they were younger. So how come I end up with a severe cat allergy?

On this beautiful cloudy day I am sitting in my house, determined to learn how to play guitar.

I have an acoustic one from when I took lessons when I was younger. And then I quit, before making substantial progress. Earlier this summer I put “learning to play guitar” as #12 on my “Super Summer List of Things to Do” and I plan on living up to that, or at least trying.

For the past two hours I’ve been trying to figure out notes, chords, and strumming technique, with the help of the Internet and an old guitar book. I don’t know much, but I do know that  I wasn’t born with any natural talent.

Oh, and what’s more is that my fingers hurt! A lot. I don’t know how guitar players do it, maybe after a while you form calluses on your fingertips or something… But those steel strings hurt. It even hurts to type now. Thank god it’s only my left hand, because my right hand’s fingertips have suffered through some mild dermatillomania for almost a year (go search it up).

I’ll hopefully have some decent chord transitions figured out by the end of the day.

I got back two days ago, from a camping trip with my family to Ithaca, home of Cornell University, no doubt part of their plan to make me love and aspire to go to Ivy League schools. I left Canada Day and returned on the 4th of July.

Coming back, on Independence Day, we stopped in Niagara Falls. There were hordes and hordes of people, on both sides of the border. How do I know this? For the first time, I actually walked over Rainbow Bridge to the American side of the falls. I never knew standing with one foot in one country and the other foot in another country was possible, but now I do, because you don’t reach US Customs until another fifty meters over the border (as dictated by the sign that says “INTERNATIONAL BORDER”).

The American side of the Falls is much nicer, in my opinion, because there’s a big park where people can sit and eat ice cream, play catch, walk, whatever. It’s a much better preservation of all that green space. The Canadian side of the Falls, on the other hand, consists of a ledge in which one crowds around and looks over. Beyond the ledge there’s a road for cars, and then immediately there’s all this commercial stuff used to make money, including a shopping complex, bus terminals, hotels. And there’s a small, small strip of green space. And then you have the city. I was standing on Rainbow Bridge, looking at the falls from a side view, and I noticed that everything was balanced out, in a way. On one side, you have the Falls. The other side, you have money-making commercial shit for tourists.

The Fourth of July fireworks in Niagara Falls were disappointing. They lasted from 10 to 10:13pm. I had high expectations because of all the people that were there, how the traffic literally stopped for those thirteen minutes, and they even had live music beforehand. Oh well.

I spent today volunteering and hanging out with a friend. We somehow managed to finish a whole pitcher of Mountain Dew. I also applied for a job at Subway. It was spontaneous and therefore I didn’t have the full names/numbers/addresses of my supposed contacts, so I just had to give whatever I could think of on the spot. How smart.

Am I going list crazy? But hey, I’m like that. Being the dorky person I am I thought I’d make a nice and official reading list. I figure if I type it out it makes it more official, versus scribbling the names of a few books onto a post it and then sticking it onto to the wall next to my desk.

I visited Chapters for some reading material, but I don’t like buying books I haven’t read. Books are too expensive to be a one-time thing, so I then went to the library.

These are the books I plan on reading this summer. But hey, I can be a slow and apathetic reader, so it’s all just a guideline. Who knows if I’ll make the time to read anything other than Time articles.

1. Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
I listened to Anthem through an audiobook on my ipod in January and it totally spiced up my boring bus rides to school. So I’ll give Fountainhead a go, and then maybe Atlas Shrugged after.

2. Slaugherhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
A lot of my friends have recommended me Vonnegut, so I picked this up at the library.

3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
I reserved this at the lirbary but it turns out when I went to pick it up I accidentally reserved the Russian version. Oops.

4. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
I’ve wanted to read something by Oscar Wilde since I discovered that the guy has the coolest quotes ever. I have a button/pin/thing on my tote bag with one of his quotes “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” And I saw one of his plays. So might as well read one of his books, right?

5. 1984 by George Orwell / Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
I’ve been meaning to read both these books since the 7th grade, when we read Animal Farm. I know they’re two totally different books, but I’ll be content with reading one or the other. Which ever one’s available first at the library.

6. Poems
Just in general. I want to understand poetry better. It’s pretty. And concise, in a not-so-concise way. I like that.

I love how my anecdotes aren’t really plot summaries but plain, simple, dumb reasons for why I want to read something. I might read one of Obama’s books too, if I have time. And I might just cut out 5. because once something’s on your to-do list long enough it sort of loses its importance. But whatever, we’ll see.

Any suggestions/notes/opinions/reviews are appreciated