William Matheson's Journal
Dec. 27th, 2007
01:32 am - shuttle, Artifact, optical media, CPA night, don't make your papers too perfect
Okay, Christmas is over. Time to sit back with a glass of Rickard’s and take stock of things.
I wrote those two sentences in a coil-back notebook. Also, one of the Christmas gifts I received was a hardbound paper journal with a magnetic cover. But I just can’t bring myself to use either most of the time. When faced with the choice between chicken-scratching on the couch in the sunroom or typing in Word on Uncle Shane’s desktop computer, the computer usually wins. In Ukraine I wrote by hand a lot, but that was only because I didn’t have access to a computer very often; in most cases, I really only had time to type posts as opposed to composing them.
So here I am on the computer again.
I’m in Souris now, and staying with my aunt and uncle for two nights. Getting here on the shuttle was the usual torture – we had the crazy driver (but I’m used to him now, and he’s a friendly fellow), I kept nodding off and bumping into my seatmates every time we rounded a corner (he wasn’t particularly smooth going into and definitely not smooth coming out of turns), and the guy on my right had the zarking SMUflu and was sniffling the whole godda -shdarned trip. I don’t feel myself getting sick though, so maybe no harm was done. But the sound of his breathing through his nose drove me up the wall.
And to top it all off, we rush and tear and beat the band only to be dropped off earlier than our ongoing rides expect us to be, and so we wait in the cold in front of the Burger King for an extra twenty minutes or more.
The shuttle is also crowded, there’s little legroom, and forget about congenial space to work on anything, or even to take off your coat (I had mine on until Oxford!) And then there’s the whole dichotomy of public and private space; you’re riding in a van (a private sort of space) with total strangers (so it’s a public space). You’re sitting so close to people that it’s impossible not to acknowledge their presence (unlike the usual situation in a full-size transit or coachline bus), and yet you have to remain strangers – you can’t make small-talk (trust me, I’ve tried), and you have to ride out the hours in stony silence. God, it’s awkward.
So at least one thing is settled: when I make my fortune and come back here for the holidays in the future, I’m darn well renting a car for the month. But the shuttle isn’t all bad. The owners gave us a “Happy Holidays” note, chocolate, and a discount coupon. Well, it’s only valid for January, so I won’t be able to use it, but it’s the thought that counts. =)
* * *
I’m happy to tell you that Artifact has now been completed and is currently being distributed on DVD to cast members (the ones I could find at the CPA reunion – more on that in a moment), fans, and a few others who are connected with it. I made less than thirty copies, but I have the ISO, so I can always make more. Further to this, it’s easy to duplicate the discs already in circulation – I included no copy protection, and anyone with a DVD writer and a few gigs of hard disk space should be able to copy the movie bit for bit. I unofficially encourage this, since it’s a heck of a lot less work and trouble on my end. I only have a notebook DVD burner, and getting jewelcases for the discs is a pain in the butt.
Let’s take a moment to talk about DVD. DVD sucks. In this day and age when we can carry 2-4GB on a $25 wafer in our pockets, DVD isn't quite so magical anymore. Remember when CDs seemed limitlessly HUGE? Whatever happened to those days, and will something like that ever happen again?
That being said, Artifact on DVD is quite okay. Or at least the main feature is. I had to compress the crap out of the featurettes to get everything to fit. And don’t ask about how I discovered that you pretty much have to route the paths between your menu buttons manually, lest the user’s cursor wander into a no-man’s land (not an issue when you’re watching DVDs on your computer and have the mouse cursor, but a serious issue when you’re using a standalone player – you can quite literally get stuck and have to restart the player!).
Still, that can easily be fixed, and in my case, it was. But the larger issue remains: 4.7 gigs just ain't enough. (Dual-layer is prohibitively expensive and not really an option (and then there's the bloody layer pause); it would have been better to just publish on two discs, but I couldn't bring myself to the extra work that would have been.) Or, more accurately, it’s not enough for consumers such as myself. We don’t have access to the fancy high-end media encoders that the Hollywood studios use, nor the time to painstakingly manage the whole encoding process on even a scene-by-scene basis.
HD-DVD (17GB) and Blu-ray’s (25GB) extra capacity will be nice, but even they will still require the use of compression, although Artifact could fit onto a single-layer BD-ROM with only intraframe compression, so it would still be pretty darned pristine. But that’s just standard def! What we really need is a cheap format capable of carrying at least two hours of uncompressed 1080p video. It’s time to be talking in fractions of terabytes. Wake me when we get there.
(And, yes, HD-DVD and Blu-ray are also dual-layer capable, but as with DVD you are dramatically increasing the cost of the media, significantly decreasing your recording speed, and you’re subject to the whims of how DVD/BD player manufacturers engineer their players to handle layer pause. No thanks.)
Artifact has also been converted to both high-bitrate / quality (for Google Video) and 100MB (for YouTube) WMV versions, and will be available on those services and willmatheson.com sometime in January. I’ve still got some web space issues to work out before it happens; I don’t want to upload to Google or YouTube before I have the new webpages and media (such as photographs) to support the release. A lot may also depend on when I get internet access in my Japanese apartment.
(Hey, wait a second. Why should YouTube be dictating how I chose to encode my movies? Who do they think they are, when other services like Google Video operate without any time or filesize limits? They’re just making me go through a whole heckuva lot of extra work because as anyone knows, 100MB is enough for an hour of watchable video (thanks to the magic of QuickTime for Macs and the suprising utility of WMV in Windows Movie Maker), but not an hour of clear, fullscreen video. I’ve spent hours and hours encoding and reencoding my videos, and those are hours I would have gladly spent doing other things. Man.)
Oh, and last night while I was clearing up my render files and other junk from Artifact (but I’ll keep the raw footage and edit decision files; I’m not crazy!), I started playing around with something, and let’s just say that there will be a little low-fi bonus surprise that I’ll release to YouTube, Facebook, and willmatheson.com the day before Artifact.
Anyway, if you’d like a copy of Artifact, call me sometime on the 28th – 31st, and you can come by and pick one up or (preferably for me) get one burned onto your blank disc. You can also come to my going away party, since I'll have a few copies there.
* * *
Here's food for thought: It turns out that DVD-R and DVD+R aren't equal. I had known that there were drives out there (like on older Macs) that could only write DVD-R, and as recently as a few days ago I encountered a DVD-ROM that could read -R discs but not +R discs. But I didn't know why.
DVD+R is technically superior to DVD-R, with superior error correction, speed compatibility, and read/write efficiency. But I burned Artifact on -R, and now I'm glad that I have, for the simple reason that -R has (wow) a five-year head start on +R, and is therefore playable on a wider range of devices.
So use -R for wide distribution, and +R for your personal archiving, such as your photos.
* * *
Oh, yeah, the CPA (high school mini-reunion / Christmas) party. It stunk. There were a few people I knew there, but none I could call more than the casualest of friends. (Don’t get me wrong; I was happy to see them. But it’s hard to spend a whole night drifting among casual acquaintances.) The crowd was also young. It would seem that our time has passed, and while I won’t say that I’ll never go again, I can safely say that I’ll never go out of my way to go again.
The part that I hated the most was waiting for the 6am bus to go back to Bedford. I went down to Saint Mary’s (it being Christmas Eve morning, I was the only one in the McNally East computer labs – I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before) with the intention of blogging about the night in order to kill time, but I wasn’t able to get my password correct on the first few tries, and so I got locked out of my network account. I could do nothing but lean over the table and doze, and hope that the security people wouldn’t throw me out. That wasn’t much fun.
But it wasn’t over yet. Once I made it to Bedford, I had to wait at the Tim Hortons for almost two hours for a ride (I would have walked, but it was pouring rain) because Mom felt that our street was too slick to drive on. And then she wanted to wait for the Sun to rise fully so that she could see better.
Ah, crap. That wasn’t much fun, either.
Why can’t we just have 24-hour bus service? I mean, really. While still at the Palace, I came very close to giving in and dumping the $40+ on a cab ride home. But it offends me that I have to pay so much for the “privilege” of sleeping in my own bed. Crap crap crap.
Man, I’m going to be so happy to be living within a real city, within walking distance of everything, OMG like REALLY.
And I have my passport and visa now, so everything will be above board. Then again, so were Heinrich Himmler’s papers – true, a person the world doesn’t miss, but mentioned here because it’s the most famous case I can recall of someone arousing suspicion because their papers were too perfect. There are no guarantees in life, not for students, nor for officers who had been in charge of concentration camps and death squads who are attempting to escape prosecution, and thank goodness for that.
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tiredJan. 9th, 2007
02:27 am - new Flickr photos!!
Will's Photo Sets
Usually I put a fancy photobox in here, but I've really got to get to bed. Ryan's party is up, and so are the photos from my Christmas in Sherbrooke. Enjoy! More to come very soon!
tiredDec. 29th, 2006
12:09 am - a Facebook Christmas
I was present for some of the MacClure Christmas tonight down at Louise's, which was a lot of fun. I feel privileged to have been there. I also got a phone call from Mrs. B. tonight. OMG LOLZ OMG OMG memories, etc.. etc.. I suppose I'll have to find a way to revisit while maintaining my so-called pride. It was really nice to chat with her again after... gee, two-and-a-half months, maybe? I used to see her twice a week.
I'm starting to feel my way around Facebook - OMG the features! For every one thing I think is clunky (it's way too hard to search for people not in your network, for instance), it does a dozen things with incredible slickness.
There I am. If you haven't joined yet, you probably should. Also, if you're reading this and have Facebook and know me, please add me proactively as I think I've hit just about all the easy-adds, and it could take months for me to stumble onto you randomly. Please, help a poor stalker soul-searcher.
Your Friend,
~ Will
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accomplishedDec. 28th, 2006
02:25 am - winter driving terror
Well, I made it to Souris safe and sound last night. For the curious, I drove from Sherbrooke to Antigonish, as the driving was initially slushy, so I thought it best to avoid the Blue Mountain Road, which features, among other things, fire towers, sharp curves, steep hills, and a total lack of cell coverage. I took the extra half-hour detour to Antigonish to stay within civilization.
Antigonish and on was great. It was still a little slushy until New Glasgow, but the two-lane freeway was a tremendous improvement over Trunk 7. After New Glasgow, the rural divided freeway was clear as a bell, and I set the cruise control at 110 km/h and felt perfectly safe. Ah, it was splendid.
I stopped in North River, but my cousins weren’t home.
I drove into Amherst and out again in search of a Petro-Canada that happened to be at the interchange at the other end of the town. They have a surprisingly pretty downtown.
I reached the Confederation Bridge, and all seemed well, though the deck wasn’t perfectly clear.
Then I touched down on PEI, and it got worse by the mile. I skidded around the first corner on the Trans-Canada. Wet ice. The temperature was about freezing.
From Borden to Charlottetown, I did OK, averaging about 40-50 km/h. A couple of shocks to the system, but no serious incidents.
Charlottetown onward was another matter. I got into a skid simply going downhill in Cherry Valley, and when I got on Highway 3, it turned out that it wasn’t really ploughed. I lost control of the car many times, once or twice when there was an oncoming car in the other lane. I frantically flashed my brights in an attempt to warn them that I was out of control.
Highway 4 looked OK, but only the centre line area was bare – the sides of the lanes were pure wet ice. I continually skidded to the right, and the only way to maintain control was to drive in the middle of the road. When a car came, I slowed down from 15-20 km/h to nothing, or simply pulled over if I was freaked out enough. Before descending the hill on Alley’s Mill Road (the one with the 48 Road / Highway 5 crossing at the bottom), I was pulled over for about 30 minutes, catching my breath and phoning ahead for advice. I flipped through my car manual, desperate for any insight. The other cars on the road seemed to be getting along fine, what was wrong with me?
For the record, I was driving a big, heavy 1991 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight, with front-wheel drive, threadbare tires, and broken ABS. It can be a deathtrap in fine weather thanks to its temperamental brakes, but I never imagined I’d be having this much trouble in a little bit of wet ice, especially when not braking.
Anyway, after many, many stops and about an hour or so of terror, I make it up to Albion Cross. Uncle Shane came down from Souris to get me. As I write this, the car is still parked there. We think I was having trouble mostly because my front tires got all gummed up with the icy slush, possibly because they were the drive wheels being pressed into the road much more strongly than my rear tires, which were clear of the snowy debris. There might have been other factors at play, but I think that one is the chief cause. I’m going to talk to our mechanic about it the next time I see him, which I hope isn’t too soon for pecuniary reasons.
Right now I’m worried about how I’m going to get that boat home. It’ll snow in August before I take that rig on a winter road trip again. I’m glad I didn’t have any passengers, as they would have altered the course of events with their screams and possible desperate acts. The ditches looked way too deep to safely slide into.
I got an MP3 player for Christmas! Or, to be more accurate, I will get one. Uncle Shane found the same model online for half-price, so we’ll return the one I unwrapped without opening the packaging, and wait for the sale item to come in the mail. It’s quite comical, really.
I’m diving into Facebook tonight. Look out, world!
PS: I had a fantastic Christmas in Sherbrooke. It was incredible to have everyone there – I can’t remember the last time we did. Some of my cousins weren’t even born last time, most likely. Flickr to follow, as it will for Ryan's party.
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hotDec. 11th, 2006
11:58 pm - the term paper, the squirrel, and Halifax's famous friendly people
I wrote my Contemporary Canadian Fiction final tonight. I think I did pretty well, and I was bolstered by the fact that I got an A+ on my term paper, on “The Cross-Cultural Appeal of Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief.” I’ve never gotten an A+ on a term paper before – not in any course, not even Intro Lit.
I also got an A as my mid-term grade in Chaucer and the 14th Century. That’s nice, though the hard work in that course is yet to come.
The bus ride in was annoying, and I would have driven were it not that I had plans for a few celebratory pints with a buddy of mine (which fell through, much to the relief of my wallet). Anyway, the 80 was about ten minutes late, and this lateness snowballed so that I was five minutes late entering the exam room. First I entered our classroom, which was the wrong room of course, but then I ran into Dr. J.B.’s assistant Cheryle and she showed me to the correct door. Better to be born lucky…
I start off the exam by writing 300 words on one of two things when I was supposed to write 150 words on each thing. This slowed me down quite a bit, and finishing each of the essays to my standards meant I was the last one to finish. That’s the only thing I don’t like about exams: that socially awkward end. You’re technically allowed three hours for an exam, but if you even take two you’re going to be the only one still there, and your professor may ask you if you’re writing a novel.
I discovered the Gorsebrook had closed (at 7:30!!) and texted Jer, then I headed for the Spring Garden Road library to slip the novels from this course back into the book drop. There were a lot of sketchy characters about; one guy put his fists up to me after asking me for a light the second time. Ass.
While waiting 40 minutes in the cold for the 80, I ran into the Book Mark on a whim and got Mom’s Christmas present. So that’s done, at least. Then the 80 finally came and all was fine until some really smelly person wound up in front of me, and it was many stops before I could quietly and unsuspectingly move to one of the lateral benches.
Well, there but for the grace of God go I.
I got off in Bedford and scraped the ice of the car, then came home. It was garbage night, so I had to hang around outside for a bit more, and Mom and I saw a flying squirrel. They look a lot different then the regular daytime squirrels; this one had pitch-black eyes and flaps of skin around his legs. He climbed up the side of the house and took off as I was placing the recyclables and garbage cans in the van.
OMG those cans were cold tonight. I think the problem was that one of them was a little wet, and the temperature was about freezing. My fingers are still a little numb as I type this. Eyahh.
Anyway, that’s the story of my night. I just wanted to tell you about the term paper, the squirrel, and the d*****bag with the fists. Good night!
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soreDec. 4th, 2006
05:10 pm - Ode to a Christmas Teacup Somewhere in the Back of the Cupboard
Ode to a Christmas Teacup Somewhere in the Back of the Cupboard by William Matheson
(To its tune of "Silent Night")
I will officially lose my mind
If I hear that beeping one more time
Where in the heck is it coming from?
That little computer beeps 'Alleluia
When do we get any peace?
When do we get any peace?
Dec. 1st, 2006
01:49 am - in which I experience many awkward moments
I’m going to restrain myself tonight. I am going to have this entry finished in an hour! Yes, that means minimizing Google Maps and Wikipedia links, which are probably my favourite part about blogging anyway. Yes, some intrepid e-friends of mine such as ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kitkatlj will pen thoughtful, almost academic entries about the most important social and religious issues in our world today. Others such as carrieko have an exciting life abroad. But I continue to boldly forge my blog on the anvil of idiocy, in the name of having the best idiot’s blog on LiveJournal. Let me know how I’m doing if you get the chance.
Okay, 11:45pm, I’m on the clock! Paul and I just got back from groceries. It’s a shame I didn’t have my camera with me, as they’re selling buckets of chicken-bone candies at Sobeys in Clayton Park for $124. I kid you not. The scary part is, two of them have been bought since the last time we were there!
I had a few really awkward moments today (but some of them were pretty funny). Let’s start in the morning.
I’m on the bus, sitting near these two guys having a chat:
“How was the missus’ last night?”
“Oh… well, I was exhausted this morning, let me put it that way.”
They laugh.
“How’d you like her ta-tas?”
“What? … Oh, yeah she’s got really nice b***s. Really nice.”
“Yeah… so what’s her name?”
“A***l.”
“Is that really her name or just a nick-? Wow, that’s just too f***in’ weird.”
“Yeah, her family’s Portuguese but she was born in Kuwait.”
“Where is Kuwait? Is it in Iraq?”
“No, it’s another country.”
“It’s small,” I throw in. (We had exchanged a few items of small talk already, because the questioning fellow had his suit hooked on the handbar above us, which is a good conversation starter.)
He turns to me, “I thought there was a city in Iraq called Kuwait.”
“There might be, but Kuwait the country was invaded by Iraq – that started the first Gulf War.”
“Oh.”
Suddenly a woman’s voice is heard a few rows up, addressing the answering boy. “Are you A**x?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m her sister.”
The worst part, after two of the three of us stopped chortling, was that we were on the 80, and we weren’t even at China Town yet. Boy, was that ever a long, awkward bus ride.
After my fin de siècle quiz, I puttered around for a bit and then met up with K. for lunch. First she needed to bring her books to the used book buyback, and since she had so many left over from previous semesters, she was dragging them along in a wheeled suitcase. When I first saw her I thought she was going back home today. Anyway, we took care of that as much as we could, but while some of her books would fetch $50, others would fetch $.50, so we dragged most of her books back to her apartment! (I’ve never sold a textbook yet, and I’m beginning to think that I’m not really any worse off financially for my restraint.)
On our way through the South End, we met Paul (Angela’s husband Paul, as opposed to my stepfather Paul) on the street on a coffee break with his co-workers. Paul invited us to tag along, and we chatted about our travels and the new baby Zachary, and K. knew Angela, so the conversation was easy. They left, and we went on our way, eventually coming to St. Mary’s Basilica in order to complete K.’s Religious Studies homework. (By now we’re starving.) I flipped through some hymnbooks in a vain search for something familiar while K. walked around taking notes.
She didn’t get finished, though, because we were all but forced to leave early after I walked by a guy sitting at the rearmost pew, and he murmured something “Jesus… soul,” that seemed to be directed at me.
“Pardon me?” I asked him.
“Yeah, you don’t … [indistinguishable] … FRIGGING IDIOT!!!”
At this moment K. took my arm and led me behind the wall of vestibule. “You don’t want to talk to that guy.” And K. decided that rather than risk catching his notice again, we ought to leave quietly. I feel bad for being so naïve (and essentially making K. have to come back tomorrow); I didn’t know he was a loon. But I feel even worse for him, because in running away we were being rather unkind, weren’t we? I can think back to how I was so rudely treated in high school, and a lot of it boiled down to my inability to deal effectively with other people (most of the problems arose from my negligence of letting others feel important). But when people ran away from me, it didn’t teach me anything at all, it just caused me to feel even more resentment. That poor fellow at the pew must have decades’ worth of pent up rage and frustration. It’s heartbreaking. But yet we’re both unwilling and unable to do anything about it, and we go back to our own blessed lives. It seems almost un-Christian, and yet there we were in that Christian church.
So we finally eat, at the Shoe Shop. We walk back to K.’s apartment. In order to deambiguify things, let me add that she shows me a picture of her chic-looking Cuban boyfriend. =) I go my merry way, and about a frillion minutes later I’m back on the bus heading into Bedford.
Just as we’re approaching my stop, I look out the window into the Sobeys parking lot where I’ve parked my car. It’s still where it was in the morning, except now it’s surrounded by a Christmas tree lot.
When I approached my car, a gaggle of kind rednecks poured out of their trailer and offered to move some of the trees so I could get out. I thanked them but declined, and tried to get out on my own, already embarrassed for having left my car in their way for the past eight hours. I promptly back into a tree, tipping it a few degrees askance. Then I try to pull myself around some kind of rack, and by this time I’m getting hand signals, and basically by the time I got out of there I wanted me and my car to disappear into the evening mist.
I think that’s everything, and I’m way over my time limit. Tomorrow I’ll present my thoughts on the Liberal convention – IF I get my Contemporary Canadian Fiction paper finished. If not, then no dice. Also, I have it from castusalbuscor that we may hear about our Twelfth Night auditions tomorrow. I’d better get some sleep so that I don’t answer the phone, “He-uh,huh-wha?”
tiredDec. 25th, 2005
01:55 pm - the run-up to Christmas
(Composed Thursday, December 22nd)
Now, when I said “tomorrow” yesterday, I obviously meant “the next day that there’s internet.” Last year the internet at the Academy was out for six weeks during the Holidays and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it since the internet seller’s wife had defected in Edmonton. She can’t defect again, of course, because she’s still there, and so there’s hope this might be a one-day thing. If not, thank goodness there’s a cybercafé in town, and I’ll go there tomorrow evening if there’s no internet access tomorrow here.
An aside: All the crazy stuff that happened with my NetCorps group has had a significant impact on the way the subsequent program is being run. As you might imagine, they’re watching the participants a mite more closely this time around.
But all that’s neither here nor there. Somehow, I always find a way. It’s also sad that I was able to live up until 1997 before caring one lick about checking my e-mail or updating my website or blog. We’ve come a long way, yes, but is this accessible information overload really helping humanity? I mean, my current lifestyle would be almost impossible without all these technologies, but I can see my Ukrainian friends living perfectly happy lives – most of them don’t even have e-mail accounts, and if they use the internet, it is very rare. I’ve seen a few people using instant messenger services, but they’re never communicating in Ukrainian – they’re using Polish or English to talk to old friends abroad.
I’m sure all this will change eventually; as it is, the infrastructure at Ostroh Academy would be woefully inadequate if everyone started using computers and the internet like Westerners do. I feel rather guilty sometimes for even maintaining my blog; I can hardly say I’m adapting to the local culture if I’m still using technical resources as if they were cheap and ubiquitous, can I? I take a cab home many nights now, but most Ukrainians would just grin and bear it unless they were trying to impress someone. I kind of felt like a spoiled pig early this morning when I stood in front of the taxi stand, hoping someone would notice me. All the drivers were asleep (some with their engines running) – I tapped on one window that looked promising, but to no avail. Afraid to wake anyone up, I walked home, and I’m glad I did because it felt good and nothing happened.
And now, I have the ultimate in luxuries: a laptop. I’ve seen a handful of them here – they’re rare as hen’s teeth, but I think one or two students might own one. The first time I brought this lovely appliance to my home it elicited a lot of curiosity. I can understand that; there was a time when I used to gawk at laptops myself. And as far as friendly curiosity goes, we could use a little more, for reasons I’ll explain in another post.
I intend to use this machine to collate my photos and music, write about my experiences, and send some hitherto un-typed potential screenplay material to Mike. Is it wrong that I’m doing this? Is it also wrong that I’m doing it in English? Am I a bad person for not being a polyglot? I think about this every day. Maybe I don’t think sensibly enough.
So I had a pretty good day at work today. I finished off the Shakespeare section (I wanted to catalogue it as well and as thoroughly as I possibly could, so it took longer than any of the other stretches of shelving.)
But enough of this; you want to hear about good times, right? And I want to share.
Kat, Sasha’s half-Mohawk trilingual girlfriend from Québec (and she’s even more unique than her categorical description would imply) arrived here earlier this week. Her friends from her previous program put up mock “WANTED” posters with her picture and description all over the Academy. It was cute.
I finally happened upon them all in the restaurant behind Irena (a store), and I stayed with their group for a few minutes until Ataman and his buddies came by. We ended up filling the night with drinks and karaoke – I didn’t volunteer for the latter, but the MC came by and was like, “Kanady?! Kanady?!” and got me to sing “Yesterday.” I loved it. It was great fun. I later snuck in “Michelle” – I wanted to do some other Beatles songs (they were the only ones in the book that I liked), but they wouldn’t let me. They had me sing “Yesterday” three times, and they were still asking me to do it again. I can see now why they wanted me to stick to the simple songs, and why Yesterday is so popular here (and why my host siblings played it almost twenty times in a row on their computer one morning, seemingly without tiring of it – they were still humming along at play fifteen).
Yesterday, lyrically speaking, isn’t exactly the most complicated song in the English language. All an English learner (or non-learner) needs to understand is:
Yesterday.
My troubles seemed far away.
Now they’re here to stay.
I believe in Yesterday.
Suddenly I’m not half the man I used to be. (few can interpret this line; Ostroh vocalists tend to blah and murmur their way over it)
There’s a shadow hanging over me. (ditto)
Why did she have to go?
I don’t know.
She wouldn’t say.
I said something wrong.
Now I long for yesterday. (they have trouble with this one too; I had to explain what “longing” meant)
… anyway, you get the idea. It also helps that it’s printed in virtually every ESL textbook I’ve laid eyes on. Maybe people really like the melody.
Last night we gathered at Taverna to say goodbye to Shelley and Amy (and probably Lindsay, too – I likely won’t see her again until I get to Kitchener). We had a good time; for a while one of the rudest drunk people I’ve ever met was harassing me (feeding me my own French fries; continually demanding more Absinthe even after we’d put the bottle away, etc.. he even began by brusquely critiquing my beard and saying that f-word-you phrase that everyone knows*) but eventually his girlfriend came and they left together and things calmed down. It sucks that she has to be with an alcoholic. The guy gets drunk every day and acts like a three-year-old. It was discomforting just sitting next to him.
* - Amy, on a subsequent hearing: “He’s practicing his English!”
Aside from him, we had a pretty good night. Oh, it was melancholy of course – it always is when people you care about are leaving. I’ll really miss those girls.
And of course I’ll miss Ukrainian girls – Inna and Nina gave us little gifts and wrote personal messages for us, for which I’ll be eternally grateful. It was the sweetest thing ever, but I guess you had to be there. Dima (a different Dima than the one most of my readers would think of) even got us laser pointers! and Sasha (a different Sasha) wrote us little English haikus.* He wrote for me:
Last glass of beer
Last night here
First good-bye
* - It’s the rare person here that’s especially interested in Japanese or other Oriental culture – they’re not exposed to a whole lot of it, for one thing. But I have met a few devotees. It’s quite encouraging; it was the last thing I expected to see.
(Composed Friday, December 23rd)
There’s no internet today either, but I’ll pop into the cybercafé just as I said.
After we left Taverna, we went to Apricot, and then to Yaro (in safety this time), and then to Trek. I met a political science student and her boyfriend along the way, and we had a great chat about the Orange Revolution, development, and nationalism in general. We all stayed out until the cows came home; my watch said “six” as I entered my house. For all that, I was pretty much on the go the following afternoon.
On Thursday I did some errands for Shelley and Amy (including picking up a bag at their host family’s apartment – I was astonished by how clean and tidy everything their room was, now that they’re gone!) and that night I got home at a decent hour and had a shower. I don’t think I’d ever been so dirty in all my life. I shampooed my beard; my hands came away smelling like grease and cigarette smoke. Yuck. I feel like a new person today. My host family hates it when I go out after taking a shower (“it’s Winter!”) so that precluded ANY showers for a while because I had to be out so late into the evenings. Come to think of it, they also hate it when I drink plain water or eat too little and quite frankly I’m sick and tired of not doing what I need to do just for the sake of their superstitions. My cultural acceptance quotient has been dangerously low lately.
However, one thing I’ve realized is that I can’t blame Ukraine for not knowing me or my culture. Of course, if you posed that question to me as, “Would you blame Ukraine for…” I’d answer, “Absolutely not!” But I’m doing so – I am blaming Ukraine without realizing it. Most of my complaints about people being rude, for instance. They don’t know anything about me, so of course they’ll be curious. And, some of them will try to score points at my expense. Why shouldn’t they? I’m such an easy target that it’s only natural.
But I’m still tired of being a target. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want…
I want to go to Poland.
And next week, I’m going. I have the unofficial ability to do this, since the program was technically over last week to allow Amy and Lindsay to go home for Christmas. Shelley’s taken advantage; she’s in Kyiv now with her cousins. I was talking to Lee the other day, and he asked me why I was staying here.
Good question. Almost that moment I began typing an e-mail to Monika. Soon I e-mailed Czarek, Przemek, and Katarzyna as well. Marcin even proposed spending New Year’s in Pluznica.
You’ll have to wait to hear about the lunchbox; I’ll probably write about it on the train in between refreshing my Polish. I’m glad I brought along my phrasebook, dictionary, and maps. Poland won’t really be that much better than Ukraine, but I just need a distraction.
It’s time to go now, in more ways than one.
(Composed Saturday, December 24th)
I did go to the cybercafé but the connection went under before I could really do much of anything. I got e-mails from Czarek and Monika – it looks like I’ll go visit Czarek first, then go to Pluznica with Monkia. I was a little bit overstressed by the futility of my situation sitting at that computer waiting for things to get better, and after a while I decided to go home and take out my frustrations on my laundry, and so I did.
In fact, I’m really lucky, because the temperature’s been slightly above freezing, so it may even dry. I was smiling and sashaying about while I was hanging out my whites this morning. Maybe it was because it was the last time I’d be hand-washing my clothes for a while. Maybe it was because I had a really nice lunch. Maybe it was because it was a nice day. Maybe it was because I was excited about Poland.
But I’ll miss Ukraine, when all is said and done. We’ve had some really, really good times here. Maybe we were here just a tad too long, but I still wouldn’t trade this experience for all the tea in Sri Lanka.
I’ve had a wonderful, productive Christmas Eve. In addition to leaving my laundry in the hands of Nature, I’ve shaved my beard and I’m ripping a set of MP3s to give to Lee as a sort of Christmas present. Lee and I are now the only ones left here. I guess you could call us Mini Micro Corps now.
This morning I also typed up my quarter-finished screenplay and I’ll e-mail it to Mike at the time you’ll get to read this. It had been sitting in a binder, untouched, for almost ten months. I was really happy with parts of it, but overall I wasn’t really hitting on a theme – anyway, I hope Mike gets some use out of it. He plans to shoot in a couple of months with his version of the screenplay. I really shouldn’t have left it sitting around so long, but I kind of got busy with these exchanges, and this is the first time in a while I’ve had unmetered computer time.
Tonight I’ll join the NetCorps team at their cottage for Christmas.
And, Merry Christmas to you, wherever you are.
~ William
(December 25th)
Had a great time at the cottage. Took a lot of pictures. It's really wet and snowing today; it looks like I might be going to Poland with the clothes on my back and nothing else.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
chipper