Confession Category Archive
*right now*
The age of the information one has access to, and the age of one's assimilation of it. The present, is a separatrix between the past and the future: the line that exists only as the point where memories and dreams...
A cruel trick
(written December 19th, 2006. Forgot to publish until December 31st, 2007) My thoughts as I ride a taxi out of Delhi towards the domestic airport on my way to Bangalore, turn to the chaos, the disorder, the disarray, disrepair, destitute...
2007 in quick review
Started the year in Tokyo, after having travelled from Delhi, Bangalore, Singapore and Bangkok. Ended it in Tokyo, after travelling to London and Paris. Spent a week in Hong Kong setting up a blogging platform for the HKU Journalism department...
Right then...
That was a tad dramatic, wasn't it. Where was I......
Reminder
Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) - Wild World Now that I've lost everything to you You say you wanna start something new And it's breakin' my heart you're leavin' Baby, I'm grievin' But if you wanna leave, take good care...
Patience
This post started while thinking about "who do I look to as role models", which is a whole other post. I'm pretty much an exact 50/50 blend of my father and my mother, in every respect, including temperament. My...
Optimism
Humanity is unsustainable; designed for extinction. The only sustainable solution is the eradication of the most developed (overdeveloped?) societies of humans on this planet. Yes, that means you and me. Since we will not make that decision and take that...
Télépatexto
I just sent an empty text message ("SMS") to someone. It happened because I was thinking the message as I went though the process of creating new message, adding contact... and send. woops. désolé Izo....
A place or a feeling?
Bruno throwing snowballs at me and TyOriginally uploaded by Shawna Nelles. Last night at Laïka, I had a brief conversation with Michael, founder of Ile Sans Fil and good friend, about various things, including how places are not just geographic...
No way
Tomorrow at 3pm I am meeting someone who was instrumental in introducing the Shibuya Kei style of music to North America in the 1990's. If it hadn't been for this, I would never have heard of Pizzicato 5 and my...
Homesick
Me too, oh man, me too. (Today was such a total clusterfuck, I'm crying listing to this.)...
So out of shape
(sorry about posting these... having fun ;) And the course I ran, mapped on GMap Pedometer. (Funny how mapping a jog like that brings the enormity of Tokyo down to a personal, human scale. If my lungs held out,...
this is the time on sprockets vere ve ... pump yoo ahp
After Jan called me a weakling in that heavy german accent that could only remind me of Hans und Franz ("you are litta giwly maan! we are gonna pump j00 up!"), because I said it was too cold to...
"I should blog that"
I think it was sometime in 2002... I hadn't even started this weblog yet, in fact that stuff to me was still just personal websites. (that's all it still is to me, really) On a lark one Sunday afternoon I...
Acht Jahre
Papi passed today 8 years ago. Depending on which metric I use, that's anywhere from 2 to 10 lifetimes ago for me. Sad you couldn't have watched me go through them. Strange coincidence: the only thing I can remember from...
Mémoire courte
Je ne me souviens plus de ce que je croyais. Tant mieux. Beliefs are memories twisted out of shape by desires....
White Day
Dah White Day is a festival that was created by a concentrated marketing effort in Japan. White Day is celebrated in Japan and Korea on March 14, one month after Valentine's Day. On Valentine's Day, women give gifts to men;...
Withdrawal
Well shit I guess I'll just have to go outside then. :p...
Year of the ... wait what am I?
So year of the pig (or hedgehog or whatever) coming up in the Chinese zodiac, and I forgot what chinese year I am. Quick search and, oh hey cool I was born in a year of the Tiger. It kills...
2 and 4, 1/2 and 1
Two weeks from now I am arriving in Delhi. A month from now, Tokyo. The next 4 weeks are going to fly by in an instant, and then... and then... ? Update Roughly: Montreal -> Narita -> Delhi (4 days)...
A consciousness
(get past the melodrama and the fact that it's an anime / "oh it's cheesy scifi" ;) Just as there are many parts needed to make a human a human there's a remarkable number of things needed to make an...
Platitudes
The MacBook was repaired earlier this week and I am now on it full time. Sadly, it is hotter than the G4 Powerbook it replaces, and noisier (the HDD). It is also markedly faster, so the tradeoff is... acceptable. India...
Everything
(rambling alert!!!) Everything is a node. And every node can be, at once, part of many contexts, and can also, just by being, create many contexts. Every node has many properties. And contexts can add and modify properties of nodes....
Well stated
Lucas Gonze puts into words what most iPod/iTunes users haven't quite become aware of yet: why you need more music from Wired -- The Day the Music Died: I thought at first I had misheard him. "... library of 90,000...
32
Made it this far. Time for a gift. I mean upgrade. Haha....
Dream team
Can't really get into why, but I wish, I dream, one day, OMG would it be amazing... to be able to work on projects with Aaron Straup Cope, Michal Migurski and Maciej Ceglowski. There is nothing we couldn't do. (Though...
Royducord
This afternoon, Boris zipped into downtown, to return a pair of heavenly soft flannel black wide-set chalkline pinstripe slacks because, frankly, he just can't get into slacks. Even though they were a size too small, the feeling of nakedness was...
When
life throws you off balance, dance. Someone, somewhere recently placed the notion in my mind that dance, amongst many things, is a voluntary throwing off balance, whose joy and pleasure is derived in playing with this state and the pursuit...
Sofas and the malaise they create
Had I known what kind of a monumentally feel bad day I would have just because I decided to get rid of this sofa today... I woulda carried it out to a beach somewhere myself and burnt it. In 1985,...
Break
An email I just sent to some of my colleagues at GlobalVoicesOnline: Hi gang, In the last 36 or so hours, the site has gone down twice. In both cases, the culprits were simple, yet monumentally stupid oversights on my...
Productive day
Somebody in my network today said: A way to deal with bothersome emotions beyond reason is either reading about human physiology as science, or doing some very basic mundane tasks such as cleaning. I read this after an IRC meeting,...
Work much?
This is what my "Virtual Desktop" pager looks like right now, a more or less busy average Sunday night. That's 3 separate "jobs" open concurrently AND taking care of a task for someone who just pinged me in IM. Normally...
Fall
I had a very strange and in some ways worrisome experience early this morning. I went out last night; a going away party for a filmmaker friend and then some chilling out at Laika. Nothing extravagant or crazy. I did...
glasses
i am rather shocked by how often i need to wipe my glasses clean... it's like, before i had glasses, i used poke myself in the eyes ALL the time. with my greasy fingers... NOT wtf. I don't get it....
Withdrawal
I've been back from Tokyo for 2 months now. Funny, it feels far far longer than that; more like 6 months. I've eaten japanese-style food once. (it was my favorite place. I was so disappointed.) I've not watched a single...
Every day, in the morning*
Lieber Boris, wir haben zwei Fotos von Edi gefunden. Vielleicht sind sie interessant fuer Dich. Lass mal wieder was von Dir hoeren. Der Dutzi (Erhard) war bis heute bei uns, er sagt Du bist haeufig in Japan. Herzliche Gruesse,...
Noise in the background of my head
Here is a "signature of the music I listen to", analysis of my iTunes playlist, based on 60 most listened tracks. Take a peek. Generated by the sparse yet full operational "iTunes Signature Maker" by Jason Freeman. Nicely done. Warning:...
Rewiring
I've long been telling stories about how I seem to be quite aware of many of my thought processes, and often these stories take on computer jargon analogies. Stuff like "the scripts I have running in the background" to make...
10 years on
I just came across this interview with Joi done in 1995. Reading it I am struck by a few things: - 10 years ago Joi was roughly my age. - He saw very very clearly what was going on, on...
Spreading wings
(written on thursday... i think...) This morning I got a handshake for a lease to be signed this weekend for an office which i will take possession of in two weeks. It's 300 square feet, 3 blocks from home...
Good sign
My motor-memory of which way to turn the taps in my shower to regulate water temperature... is gone. Conversely, my motor-memory of how to quickly zig-zag my way up through traffic on The Main... is still full in effect. Thankfully....
Off we go
About to settle into my last night in Tokyo. Three months. In 24 hours I am over the Pacific again, heading back to Montreal. I feel anxious anticipation; I wonder how I will react to diving back into my old...
À propos de rien
Barlow had these lines in a recent email about a friend of his' death: Fighting clinical depression is inevitably a lonely struggle. What could be less conducive to compassion than a disease that make you whine? Laymen and loved ones...
Pummeled
Original by cr2joe. For as long as I can remember now--memory fails when the brain is deprived of oxygen--I've been stuck in an unrelenting onslaught of waves. Each set is unaware of the sets before it, the sets coming...
Thoughts on this morning's train ride
There are 6 billion kinds of people in this world... Fast food slows you down. It is incorrect to say "A was drowned by you and you were drowned by B". More correct would be: "A allowed herself to be...
One of those days
Woke up feeling like cordwood; stiff, dead, stacked up and left to dry. Bad night's sleep. The number of motorcycles and heavy trucks that pass down this supposedly quiet street at 3am is... remarkable. The number of times a night...
Different perspective
(a collage of conversations) So, Boris, where are you from? Montreal, Canada. But I just got here from Tokyo. Oh wow, that's pretty cool. What are you doing in Tokyo? You must have big clients there who can fly you...
Bo Pack
Among the many many lessons I am learning on this trip, one of the most salient, and indeed one that I pretty much knew about, is the fact that I am nowhere near as mobile as one would think,...
Time floating again
It's May 1st. I don't know what day of the week it is. I don't know how long I've been here. I don't know how long I am staying "away". I don't know if I am going to California next...
Reminder to self and others
No one likes it when you wear your heart on your sleeve and lose your head. Pop your heart back in where it belongs and strap your head back on tight. Everything works better that way. ;)...
Gentle brush past my shoulder
This is so close to me it's not even funny. Nokia and Yahoo! add Flickr support in Nokia Nseries Multimedia Computers You can upload your full size photos to Flickr directly from the camera or image Gallery application on your...
Dumb.
Some days, I tell ya. Here's an example of how sometimes, try as I might to do something smartly, I end up in a stupid situation. On my way back to the lab early this morning, I decide to turn...
I am missing something
I'm missing dancing. The long late nights in little cozy sweaty lounge clubs. The breakbeat, rare groove, afro-electro-house. The uninhibited moving, grinning, flirting. Till 4 am. Oh, I will be home soon. Just no set date yet....
Cue music
I had a funny daydream waiting for my chashumen the other day... A medium sized ramen shop in Tokyo. The last bars of "Our house" by Madness are fading out on the radio, Our house, in the middle of our...
Reset
"Air Canada Reservations, how can I help you?" . . o o O O ( ( ( my visa's good till mid June ) ) ) I'm not coming home just yet. I hope you all understand....
End zone
I'm on a fast railroad down my last days here. For the first time in my life, I do NOT look forward to going home. This is going to be tricky....
circadian cycle clusterfuck
Just when I had overcome the jetlag... Between 2am trans-global conference calls between Tokyo, New York, Boston and London; 14 hour time-shift work schedules; and hanging out with Joi: I don't know, as they say, if I am coming or...
fragments
on lies: a necessary and healthy feature of sociality is lying. Lying is a feature, not a bug. The great dream of a utopian society is a system where lies are not necessary; the great nightmare, one where it...
Too much seating
I am doing a giant cleanup of my apartment before I leave so that my house-sitter, Steven, doesn't feel like he's living in my junk, but also it's just a good opportunity to do so, and get rid of a...
Clearing communications
The key to telling a joke that will get you laughs, is telling it the way the audience would (if they knew how). Same goes for clients. If you cannot tell the joke, then perform it. Slapstick. Generally folks don't...
So fast
The last time I marked the anniversary of my father's passing here was 3 years ago. He passed 7 years ago. So fast. Sigh....
Job
- "Hey how's it going?' - "Good good. I'm really tired though. I woke up at 5am, flew to Toronto, had a bunch of great meetings and conversations. I just got back." - "Wow, that a pretty crazy job you...
I forgot something...
My writings here have dropped off for about a year now because I seem to have forgotten something that had previously been a hard won affordance: don't worry too much about what people think of you. If you've been reading...
On the success of weblogs et al
The success of all these things such as weblogs, websyndication, etc, is directly attributable, I think, to one basic fact: weblogs are basic, rudimentary Content Management Systems. At risk of over-simplifying, I say that human intellect, human intelligence itself, in...
Give and take
(to no one in particular, and if nothing else, a reminder to myself) Are you really so rich, not necessarily in possessions, but in knowledge, wisdom and experience, that you truly believe that you can afford to be so cynical,...
Impotence
Well, no election for me... Canada's upcoming federal election is this coming monday. By the time the polls open I'll be sitting on the tarmac on my way to Cambridge for 3 days. "But you could have voted in advance!"...
Where's my head?
It's not that I am going senile or any such thing... it's just that... "my memory space is being flattened, in places, especially recently, by prolonged use of asynchronous text-based tele communication" In other words, I am beginning to suspect...
Self medicating... sort of
I imagine it may possibly be a placebo effect but... I started popping some pills about a week ago and holymoly do I feel better as of yesterday! More energy, able to concentrate, and the winter blaaahs don't seem so...
Accepting
"Have the courage to change what you cannot accept, the strength to accept what you cannot change, and the wisdom to know one from the other." I've long admired this proverb but it never quite sat well with me. I...
time X place
Past The past is a comforting place. It is your old room; a box stuffed with boxes stuffed with memories. It is warm and cozy, everything in it's place; predictable, known. It is stuffy, the window hazed with condensation and...
There's nothing that is in between?
Prologue Just on the border of your waking mind There lies... another time Where darkness & light are one And as you tread the halls of sanity ...
What was I thinking?
Rough day. Long before the time I usually wake up at, I had taken my best friend to the airport as he moved to Tokyo, I dropped off some stuff at my mother's house, I drove by my old high...
A funny thing happened on my way to...
I did a lot of walking yesterday. At 1:15 I visited the apartment I mentioned here previously. Arriving at the address, one of my suspicions was confirmed: it was indeed the same building that an english professor of mine from...
Getting my hopes up
On saturday early afternoon I have an appointment to visit what could very well be my dream apartment. I was not actively searching for a new place, but I came across its listing online and though "this I cannot not...
Good lord, what was that??
It took five days. Five days for the ecosystem that is my mouth to free itself of the violent shock I had inflicted upon it on this Wednesday past. I can now actually move my mouth more or less normally...
They're out
So it took about an hour, 3 got pulled. The 4th apparently wasn't worth the hassle. Amen. The pain killers are doing their job, but I feel like my jaw is wired shut. And oddly I have a headache from...
Construction ahead
Yesterday afternoon, on our way to dim sum in Chinatown, Karl and I drove down Avenue du Parc. At the foot of the mountain, where the street bisects Parc Mont-Royal and Parc Jeanne-Mance, roadwork crews had torn out the sidewalks...
Je dors
La vie est un rêve et je dors. Les moments passent, bons et mauvais, puis je me réveille. Je ne me souviens de rien....
Wisdom
On my way home from my last dentist's appointment I got a phonecall. It was them. The first thing I thought, and in fact said out loud was: "This can't be good..." Before leaving, the dental hygienist insisted on doing...
Short notice
Ok ok. So yeah it's my birthday. 31. This is official notification to all of you, that I will be at Laïka (4040 St-Laurent) from 7pm onwards. Do drop by if you are so inclined. They serve foods, café and...
It snowed on my birthday
Is this uncharacteristically early? I can't remember. I was walking around at 3am again and it was snowing. "Slushing" more like. The kind of snow that melts on contact with the ground. It was quite stormy actually; a transparent snowstorm...
Cold
So I caught a cold. I first felt the scratch in my throat last friday, but it went away and I thought "hrm, ok, good thing that didn't develop." Monday morning it came back and was pronounced. You know when...