[NON BLOG] A Final Offline Entry
Jun. 3rd, 2004 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI’m offline right now, listening to Dave Stewart and the Spiritual Cowboys, drinking a Molson Canadian, and looking at the receipt for July 2004’s rent (paid in advance via cheque), and feeling a bit out of sorts.
I had wonton soup and General Tsao’s chicken last night for supper, at a Chinese restaurant located on the northwestern corner of Yonge and Wellesley. I hadn’t known just how junky the chicken was when I’d ordered I, but I didn’t mind since I was in the mood for that kind of thing. One marvels at the many innovations associated with Nationalist generals--Taiwan’s economic miracle, opium-growing parastates in Burma and Thailand, certain types of Westernized Chinese food.
The day was spent mainly in the pursuit of work. After finishing editing some copies of my résumé, I went down to a nearby Kinko’s to print off mass quantities. Since it was raining, I also bought a plastic transparent folder to tote around the résumés; I’d been smart enough to take my Queen’s University-emblazoned umbrella with me, so that helped, particularly since I was wearing shorts and the rain was cold.
I made my way down Yonge Street, making occasional side excursions to Church on one side and Bay on another. I concentrated on bookstores and the like; I tried to talk directly to the manager whenever possible, or to people who seemed to be in some positions of responsibility. We’ll see, I guess, just how successful this set of approaches was.
Some interesting things happened:
One thing, incidentally. It was a rainy day, and cloudy. It was interesting to walk down Yonge Street, or later at 7 and 8 o’clock to stroll through the Financial District starting from Front Street, and to see the skyscrapers rising into the clouds to be hidden. It made me feel as if I should have an aesthetic reaction to this sight more profound than a sort of distant wonder.
Now that this stay in Toronto is done, I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning at around 11 o’clock for Kingston, and I’ll be back at class for 3 o’clock tomorrow.
Dave Stewart and the Spiritual Cowboys is over now, played to its end. I’m listening to Neneh Cherry’s "In the Still of the Night," and Annie Lennox’s "Ev’rytime We Say Goodbye," this ranks among my favourite tracks from this album. Neneh Cherry’s take strikes me offhand as one of the more credible updatings of Cole Porter’s work in contemporary style, as something that’s neither a slavish rendition nor bizarrely innovative. (Cf the Thompson Twins’ contribution.) I wonder what she’s doing now.
Now to me and my concerns. I haven’t done anything like this before in my life to date--confirming an apartment rental, for instance, is something I’ve never achieved by myself, not even now that I live in Kingston where I live in dorm. The question of a job is still open, though I’ve hopes that something will pan out, and if worse comes to worse a simple low-level service sector job is open. (It’s hardly as if no one has heard of a queer waiter before.) My ultimate career path, of course, remains entirely undetermined. (Not that I ever really had a hope for a single career path, since the belief that anyone can enjoy a unitary career for the length of one’s unitary life is archaic even Generation Xers.)
Things feel loaded with extra meaning right now, with additional import and the threat of menace lurking as a subtext. Risk is something that always exists, of course, and always has existed for me. It’s just that now, risk is a factor that I have to take responsibility for, since I’m now an adult. It’s all mine now; I’m free to prosper or suffer as I’d like. This is a peculiarly energizing feeling; it’s also quite terrifying. Advice (and/or job offers, apartment offers, vast bequests of money or property, et cetera) is welcome.
Ah well. We’ll see what happens, in one month’s time, in two, in three, in a year. I’m just happy that I’ve paid my Livejournal account through to the summer of 2005, so that I can at least continue to write about the outcome.
11:29 PM, 31 May 2004
I had wonton soup and General Tsao’s chicken last night for supper, at a Chinese restaurant located on the northwestern corner of Yonge and Wellesley. I hadn’t known just how junky the chicken was when I’d ordered I, but I didn’t mind since I was in the mood for that kind of thing. One marvels at the many innovations associated with Nationalist generals--Taiwan’s economic miracle, opium-growing parastates in Burma and Thailand, certain types of Westernized Chinese food.
The day was spent mainly in the pursuit of work. After finishing editing some copies of my résumé, I went down to a nearby Kinko’s to print off mass quantities. Since it was raining, I also bought a plastic transparent folder to tote around the résumés; I’d been smart enough to take my Queen’s University-emblazoned umbrella with me, so that helped, particularly since I was wearing shorts and the rain was cold.
I made my way down Yonge Street, making occasional side excursions to Church on one side and Bay on another. I concentrated on bookstores and the like; I tried to talk directly to the manager whenever possible, or to people who seemed to be in some positions of responsibility. We’ll see, I guess, just how successful this set of approaches was.
Some interesting things happened:
- Lunch was at an Indian restaurant on upper Yonge street, Mr. Maharajah’s, at a buffet. I think that I’ve come to the preliminary conclusion that I’m not overly fond of Indian or Thai food, since food from both cuisines (Vietnamese too, I suspect) are a bit too heavily spiced for my liking.
- Popping into a used CD store that I decided to drop as a prospect, I saw Dave Stewart’s solo debut CD, mentioned above. The shopowner said, though, that it looked scratched, and gave it to me to keep or to toss as the disc’s state indicated. As it turned out, incidentally, save for one moment on track 11 ("Jack Talking") that might or might not be Dave Stewart as producer at work, it’s playing quite nicely. Also, I’d cheaply picked up a graphic novel based on the Alpha Centauri computer game, at a bookstore whose owner told me he wasn’t hiring.
- I had dinner at Le Bon Marché, where I’d eaten a year and one month ago with
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lesslyn. (Quarter-chicken with potatoes and vegetable, fruit tranche with vanilla sauce, Schweppes ginger ale and an iced coffee spiked with some Bailey’s.)
One thing, incidentally. It was a rainy day, and cloudy. It was interesting to walk down Yonge Street, or later at 7 and 8 o’clock to stroll through the Financial District starting from Front Street, and to see the skyscrapers rising into the clouds to be hidden. It made me feel as if I should have an aesthetic reaction to this sight more profound than a sort of distant wonder.
Now that this stay in Toronto is done, I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning at around 11 o’clock for Kingston, and I’ll be back at class for 3 o’clock tomorrow.
Dave Stewart and the Spiritual Cowboys is over now, played to its end. I’m listening to Neneh Cherry’s "In the Still of the Night," and Annie Lennox’s "Ev’rytime We Say Goodbye," this ranks among my favourite tracks from this album. Neneh Cherry’s take strikes me offhand as one of the more credible updatings of Cole Porter’s work in contemporary style, as something that’s neither a slavish rendition nor bizarrely innovative. (Cf the Thompson Twins’ contribution.) I wonder what she’s doing now.
Now to me and my concerns. I haven’t done anything like this before in my life to date--confirming an apartment rental, for instance, is something I’ve never achieved by myself, not even now that I live in Kingston where I live in dorm. The question of a job is still open, though I’ve hopes that something will pan out, and if worse comes to worse a simple low-level service sector job is open. (It’s hardly as if no one has heard of a queer waiter before.) My ultimate career path, of course, remains entirely undetermined. (Not that I ever really had a hope for a single career path, since the belief that anyone can enjoy a unitary career for the length of one’s unitary life is archaic even Generation Xers.)
Things feel loaded with extra meaning right now, with additional import and the threat of menace lurking as a subtext. Risk is something that always exists, of course, and always has existed for me. It’s just that now, risk is a factor that I have to take responsibility for, since I’m now an adult. It’s all mine now; I’m free to prosper or suffer as I’d like. This is a peculiarly energizing feeling; it’s also quite terrifying. Advice (and/or job offers, apartment offers, vast bequests of money or property, et cetera) is welcome.
Ah well. We’ll see what happens, in one month’s time, in two, in three, in a year. I’m just happy that I’ve paid my Livejournal account through to the summer of 2005, so that I can at least continue to write about the outcome.
11:29 PM, 31 May 2004
