Post-Secondary Unknown

This year, I realize that every day of my life is bringing me closer to my graduation, and therefore to the beginning of life the way I plan it. Ever since I was born, life had just been a slow and peaceful river with everything planned for me. My parents fed me and gave me shelter and I had to go to school every day like all the other kids my age with no say in my destiny. But this year, everything is different. This year, i am going to have to make my choice as to what I want to do with my life and for the first time, I am more or less in control of what I am going to do. I could go to university, start working right away or take some kind of a gap year to decide. The irony is, during my whole life, I have been awaiting for the "liberation" when I would be free to do anything I want and be the one on the stirring wheel but now that I am almost at that point, I must admit that it is sort of scary. I know the years right after high school aren't that decisive and that by being resourceful and having a bit of luck, you can start from the beginning any you want but it is much easier to just get it right the first time. The only thing I am really afraid of is making the bad choice for the next few years because i don't want to be stuck with a job I hate. But I suppose it is like that for everybody or at least I hope so. Whatever happens, I will try and make the best of my post-secondary liberty, which, as frightening as it looks, I am sure will turn out very well.

Bon's off Broadway

            Far within the Eastern Quarters of Vancouver, at the crossing of Broadway and Nanaimo street lies a sacred place, a place of rest and food abundance for all the tired and hungry travellers, and this place has for name Bon's off. Bon's off was named after its owner, the short and mysterious Chinese man, Bon. Bon knew that young people were always hungry the morning after a good party but were too lazy to make anything, provoking hunger epidemics every saturday morning all over the city. Bon also knew that these youngsters also rarely had a lot of money to go to restaurants. That is why one day, Bon opened a "restaurant" for all the hungry people of Vancouver whom, upon hearing of the news, soon rushed to the restaurant by millions. The reason for that was that Bon had come up (but most likely stolen) with the idea of buying tons and tons of potatoes, ham, bacon, eggs etc at a very low price, which then allowed him to serve breakfast specials composed of potatoes, toast, any sort of egg and bacon, ham or sausages. Now of course you will say that there is nothing special to that but wait until you hear what follows. The noble Bon, who had heard the starving stomachs of young people, decided to offer those breakfast specials for only 2.95 (well 3.30 now because of the HST but who cares?). Here again, you might say, well this is getting better but there still isn't worth thanking god for. Well the one thing that truly makes this place epic wasn't provided by Bon's but indeed by us, the customers who made this restaurant a restaurant for young people only and gave it the good atmosphere which makes it so special. Because once you enter this place, you are at once hit by the amount of life that reigns here. Young people of all sorts (by which I mean punks, hippies and regular people like us) talking loudly and laughing, all that in a warm and friendly environment plus a good afterparty breakfast which will fill you up until dinnertime is as good as it gets.

Postcard assignment

I will post this as soon as I can but I sent it to the contest

Character Sketch

I just learnt that apparently, I should have posted this assignment a long time ago, so here it is, just a few weeks late. We were supposed to write about an imaginary character whose personnality was defined by 20 adjectives decided by someone else in the class.
          Wilfrid was a businessman in Toronto. He lived in a small appartment he had found right after graduating from HEC (Haute Ecole de Commerce), which was the best business school in Quebec. He had gotten into University at the age of 16 because he had skipped a grade due to his 95% average. And even after skipping a grade, Wilfrid sitll had had very high averages, even in University, and finally at age 20, he had his diploma and was hired by a bank. At age 20, he had already finished all his education and had gotten a job he would keep his whole life. This was due to the fact that Wilfrid had always been shy and dull. Because of this, people never bothered to talk to him, especially at school. To make things worse, he was an only child and he lived alone with his mother. So in order to fill in his lack of friends and love, Wilfrid had studied all the time, which, with time, made him very serious and even more shy. One day, as he was in the subway, a stranger with a lot of hair and a funny smell told him Jesus was his friend so he became very religious overnight. He started going to church every Sunday and made it his weekly routine, for his whole life. The terribly sad thing in his case was that at age 20, his life was settled and his personnality was complete, his personnality was the same as an old person's. 20 years later, he was middle aged and still worked in the same bank and still had the same rank. He still didn't have any friends or family, he was single, lived alone in a little apartment and the only person he talked to was his mother, whom he phoned every day. But surprisingly, this life suited him perfectly and he was happy that way because he had become very close-minded and had no desire whatsoever to do anything else than his daily routine.This had a bad effect on him because by age 40, he was already tired and worn down by life, or the lack of life, as an old person would have. He has become pale from never leaving his house or his office because his office was a little cube with no entry for sunlight. When he died, he left the world as he had found it, insignificant and uninteresting.

France and Strikes

Over the course of the last three years of my life, since I have arrived in Canada, a comment which I have often heard is that french people like to protest and go on strikes. Well that is absolutely true, as there is at least one strike every month somewhere in France, not to mention protests, for different causes. Now the trick is that there are two sorts of strikes: the small ones which are isolated and mostly teachers or subway drivers and which as I mentioned before, happen every month or so. The second sort is the one that outsiders enjoy the most for they are more spectacular. This sort of strike happen more or less every three to five years, and I think the last one was in 2005. This year, we had a huge strike all through september and is just starting to end. The reason this time was that the government moved the retirement age from 60 to 62 years. So as usual when there is a big reform, all unions went on strike one by one, starting with the opposition. Then the unions decide to march all together so the protests and strikes are more effective, which makes some schools close, transports a very perturbed, oil refineries are close and garbage piles up on the streets. This year, the inhabitants of Marseille got to see an unusual sight: soldiers picking up all the garbage on the streets. This year as well, the police had to forbid strikes in the oil refineries because there was only two days of gas left in the gas stations.
           But the part when protest get nasty is when students get involved. This happens because in France, as soon as of grade 10, when students enter the lycee, they have their own unions and are allowed to go on strikes. Usually, during strike periods, it is common for french students to block the entrance of the school so the school is closed and then go to the march althought a great portion of the students, such as myself, do it more for the fun and excitement of protesting than for the cause and that is of course because not everyone can be against the reforms, otherwise they would never be voted in the first place. The problem of students on the streets is that that is usually when some people infiltrate the march just to break windows, burn cars or fight with the police. That is usually inevitable during big strikes and in fact, a special police force has been created in case of protest turning into riots, the infamous CRS. They are known for their brutality but it usually enforces people's desire to go and annoy them.

My old high school on september 2010, sign reads: Buffon on strike

            Therefore it is possible to say that in France, strikes are more than just a thing to stop reforms from happening, they are a cultural thing. People from age 14 till death can be seen on protest march and one thing is sure, it is that the French will never give up these sacred ceremonies. In fact, it is unheard of that someone who lived in France and never participated in a protest.

Poem Theme: Night

Superflous are all these lights,
Which in our cities violate the purity of the nights.
All you need is to wait for the slow ascent
Of the majestuous moon's bright crescent.

Dog Mountain

             Two weeks ago, on a sunny sunday, two friends of mine and me decided to go on a little escape from the urban life and go on a hike on Seymour Mountain. The original plan was to hike up to the third peak (aka Seymour peak) using the ski runs deserted by the snow at first, and then various little trails that led to the top. I had already done that hike before and we had all done another hike on Seymour Mountain the year before, which made us pretty confident in our knowledge of this mountain. Half an hour after we had left from the parking lot, at the point where a little trail diverged from the ski runs, I thought it was the trail to the top and encouraged my friends to follow my lead. Unfortunately, I realized 10 minutes later that my memory had failed me and that this trail was not the right one. It would have been very quick and easy to go back to the main trail and take the right path but our teenage sense of adventure got the better of us and thus we deliberately decided to continue in the wrong direction which we saw on a sign was going to Dog Mountain. When we arrived on top of dog mountain an hour later, we did not regret our mistake. The view that was offered to us was magnificent and I realized that this view was actually better than the one on top of Seymour Mountain. Besides, on that day, Seymour was particularly crowded from the bottom to the top except here, on top of Dog Mountain, which no one had ever heard of, and therefore was free of any kind of unwelcomed hikers or tourists of any sort. Therefore, we can say that my mistake really was a good idea and so was our decision to keep on going on the wrong trail.

Where my world began assignment

Where my world began

            When I was little, at the beginning of every summer vacation and sometimes at the beginning of spring break, my brother, my mother and I went to Ablon-sur-Seine, a little town on the outside of Paris where our cousins live. Once we were there, my three cousins, my brother, my mother, my aunt and I packed everything into my aunt’s car. Then we left Ablon-sur-Seine, attacking bravely the 600 kilometers that separated us from Bonnieux, our family house in the south of France. After 600 kilometers of being squashed like sardines in a can, and with our mothers swearing to god they would never again take the car on this long of a trip with this many children –as they had sworn the year before, and would probably swear the next year- we arrived in Bonnieux where our cousins from the west of France always were waiting for us with our grandparents and only once everyone else had said hello to everybody could the vacation really start.

            In order to understand why the whole family adored this house as a living god, you would need to know one or two things. First, the house itself is a gigantic, majestic house that sits in the center of the region of France where the winter never comes. And since the house had as many rooms as the Caesar Palace, that allowed us as children to play endless games of hide and seek, hiding in old cupboards or under dusty beds full of spiders, but it had its charm in its own way. Secondly, there also was a huge field with grass that yellowed a little on summers that were too hot. And after the field, there was a forest home to many wild animals, most of which were only the creations of our imagination. And thirdly, there was a sandbox, a swing and a swimming pool. And all this is as good as it gets when you are ten.

At the dinner table, when the whole family was there, which, unfortunately became rarer as time went on, there was 16 of us: two grandparents, six adults and eight grandchildren. Of course you can imagine the chaos that reigned at the table when the whole family was eating together and because of this it wasn’t rare that the adults ate after us. But nevertheless, we often ate all together and we would just sit at the table outside in the field eating, drinking, talking and laughing while enjoying the beautiful sunset of Provence over the Giant of Provence, the Mont Ventoux.

But the one thing that made this house great for me is the fact that it was never empty because we always went there with all the family. After a few years, my brain associated this place with the family and it was unconceivable for me to go there without them. The house was the family. This holy house, because it really was sacred to most of us, the grandchildren, is where my cousins and I really bonded, and now we are all like brothers and sisters. Another great thing about this house is freedom. Once you were there, you were completely free to wake up at any time of the day, even when the sun rised long before you, and then you could do whatever you wanted during the day. We explored the region a little more every time we went, expanding our territory. We went in the neighbor’s cherrytree plantation and sat in the trees, amongst the branches and the fruits, eating cherries until our stomachs reminded us of their presence, bringing us back to reality with a stomach ache. And when the night was warm, we slept in the dark field along with nature’s scary appearance when you can no longer see it, but only hear its thousands of noises: owls hooting, rivers streaming, branches cracking and many more. But for some unknown reason, maybe Murphy’s law, the rain would always come out on the nights we were sleeping outside. The parents, who were only too happy to have peace for a while, would let us leave the property and explore the countryside as long as we were back for lunch and dinner, which really were the only obligations we ever had in this wonderful house.

As time went on, I realized that not everyone was as lucky as me, not everyone had a perfect family house, not everyone had a family to share their vacation with, and far from everyone had both which made me see this house as a blessing, and I think that my cousins feel the same way about it for we truly cherish that house and we all fear the day when we will have to sell it. That fear comes from the fact that of course, nothing is eternal and we know very well that as we grow older, we won’t come as often and once our grandparents die, we will most likely sell the house. But for now, we try to enjoy it as much as possible and especially me, because to me this house is like a book which contains my best childhood memories, it is a synonym for freedom and joy, and also, it is where my world began.

Il Gran Paradiso

           Last summer, my father decided to take my brother and I on our first mountaineering expedition. That me us both very happy for we had been hiking with him all over the Alps, (French Alps, Italian Alps and Swiss Alps) since we were 4 but it was always hikes under 3000m and therefore, in summer gear which is very nice, but what we were about to do was much more exciting because it was more extreme. Our father had decided that for our first big expedition we would go up the Grand Paradis (Il Gran Paradiso) just across the Italian border, in the Aoste Valley. What was exciting about doing this mountain was that its top was 4006m above sea level and therefore we would have to hike on the glacier with crampons, ropes and the whole attire. The first day we left the car at the bottom of the valley and walked during 4 hours to get to the refuge, where we were going to spend the night. The next morning, we woke up at 4, along with the other people in the refuge, some of whom had come from all the way across the world just for this. We left at five, and at this time of the day it was completely dark so all the hikers in the mountain had headlights, making the mountain look like a giant chrismas tree. Around 7, we arrived at the bottom of the actual glacier. Then we walked during 3 hours in the snow with all our equipment on and with a freezing wind whiping us. When we were almost at the top, my father went back down with my little brother and i stayed with my father's friend who was a guide because the last 50m were too hard for my brother. Indeed, we now had to climb on rock with all our heavy gear on, which was fine until i saw the 800m cliff one metre away from me. Even thought we were attached to the rock, i can assure anybody that climbing on a one metre wide "path" with that big of a drop is quite scary. But then, I arrived at the top and hung on to the Virgin (mary) that was there. I was scared and tired, but at this moment, I felt proud and happy, and I felt my love for the Alps, which is doubtlessly the most beautiful mountain range on Earth.

Meeting people on the bus

         For those of you who know me, you might know that I am a rather sociable person and that i try to be friendly with people I don't know in case they might be sympathic. But if there is one thing in life that gives me satisfaction, it is to meet and befriend with complete strangers that i would meet on the bus. Now some of you might ask: "But why on the bus, that's so random". Well yes the bus might be a random place to meet people but what is fun about that is that you will meet some people that you would have never talked to in your life, and also, I personnaly think that getting people on the bus to talk to you can be a very hard task and therefore, I sometimes see it as a challenge. Besides, being random never hurt anybody. I would even add that it gives a little spice to life.
           Now of course, there are rules to talking to people on the bus. It is usually not recommended to go talk to a gangster who has a gun sticking out of his pocket. Same thing with people who are obviously on cocaine. This means that of course there are some buses to avoid. For example, the 16 which goes up East Hastings isn't always full of well-intended people althought I would recommend it to people who wish to have stories to tell their friends. I would say the best bus for socializing is the 99 B-line because there are lots of people in it who are normal most of the time. For example, the 99 during the Olympic Games was just like a meeting website because everyone was talking to everyone.
            The only thing to know is that if you are looking for long-term friends, this will not work because you usually never see anybody again.

Hubert

"You remind me a lot of my sister"
"What?"
"No I was just saying that you remind me a lot of my sister. Your physical appearance but mostly the way you are eating that donut."

When it is 12:30, that you are in Tim Hortons just eating a donut after coming back from a party, that you are white and that a black guy tells you you remind him of his sister, you have many reasons to find this situation rather peculiar.

Upon seeing that this man didn't seem to be, neither agressive nor on drugs, i decided he seemed worth talking to. He didn't tell me much about hisself other than his name but that is because after seeing his clothes, i was never sure wether he was a hobo or not and, in all politeness, i decided not to ask where he worked so that an umcomfortable silence wouldn't follow the question. He was wearing some baggy pants, an old UBC sweater, dirty and with many holes and on top of his head sat one of those rasta hats colourless in which he stored a big amount of dreadlocks. After i told him my name, he asked for my birth date so he could do my astrological calendar or whatever it's called which turned out to be very positive. I talked to him during 20 minutes about my immigration to Canada, and the difference of culture and then left, thinking i would never see him again.

I ran into him again the week after, and the week after that so i got to know him more every time and now i think i can say that we are friends, more or less, but i still don't know wether he is a hobo or not.

Introduction

Well this is it: my blog, where i will be posting my essays and other forms of writing during this whole year and maybe even longer if i feel like it. Me being more of an outdoors person rather than a computer person i didn't think that i would ever make a blog but i guess Mrs Hughes decided otherwise so here it is, enjoy.
P.S: dear reader, you should not try to understand the title of this blog for it is a french inside joke but maybe one day, if i'm feeling kind and generous, i shall reveal the meaning of this title.