A Backlog of Updates

• Wednesday, I went down to Meeko's restaurant on Victoria Row for lunch (a pita-bread pizza with salad), where I met Emily, as waitress. Between the food, our intermittant conversation, and a really interesting book called Lost Languages about undeciphered scripts.


• Thursday, while working in the library just before lunch, I ran into Henry Srebrnik (Doctor, Political Science department) and his wife Patricia (English department) looking for books. While his wife looked for videos, Dr. Srebrnik and I had a nice conversation about Poland's recent membership in the European Union, Russia's fate, and the prospects facing isolated Kaliningrad. Just before I left, I pointed him to a fascinating book, Lost White Tribes, which details the author's experiences with isolated white populations in the tropics. (That one of the groups surveyed were Poles in Haiti was the clincher for Dr. Srebrnik, I think.)


• Thursday afternoon after work, I ran into Meghan McCarthy (a long-time friend from elementary school days) and Courtney MacFarlane (friend from high school) at Café Diem. We had a nice chat--it turns out that Courtney, after graduating in Ottawa, has spent much of the last while as an English language teacher in East Asia, in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. She gave me her E-mail.


• Friday and Saturday, while going to Café Diem to buy a panini for lunch, I ran into Richard Haines. He's currently teaching at Charlottetown Rural, as a teacher of art and photography and drama.


• Saturday evening, I went for some drinks at the 42nd Street Lounge with Steve; the Bloody Caesar was nice, but the blueberry-chocolate martini just tasted like cheesecake. We sat and drank for an hour, then we split. I crossed the street to Gahan House where I met up with Joel G. Maria, and Steve from the memoir-writing class; we drank beers, talked about Latin America and thigns, and then drove up to Stanhope to see Danny Murphy's estate. 'Twas a good evening.


• Saturday, after going to New London with the family for church supper to celebrate father's day, I met Allan and Erin at the Comic Hunter to talk about things which need to be done for the play, and then we played two games of Carcassonne.

Graduate School News

• Residences at Queen's University will be allotted by lottery on the 18th of this month. Following that, they will be assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis. Here's hoping I get one, preferably in the lottery but hopefully later. If not, it'll be off-campus residences for me. This wouldn't be a problem, I suppose, since other people I know have managed it. It will be an unprecedented step towards independence, though, which will be a decided change for me. (It will also mean I'll really have to sell some stuff for supplementary income, but never mind that. I've too many books as is.)


• And on the general theme of "How will I support myself?", calculations suggest that at my current income the PEI student loan people will require that I save roughly 3900 dollars in order to qualify. Which is fine; that amount will be subtracted from the amount that Queen's believes is necessary for my sustenance, tuition, books, et cetera. From that amount will also be subtracted the amount that Queen's is giving me. So, it's conceivable that I won't have any student loans at all. This will be good, assuming that I will actually be able to live on that amount; if, as I've been told, it isn't, I'll have to seek alternative financing.