Up Too Late: An Endless Search for Mr.Right & Other Important Things in Life

Some of the discussions this afternoon with the lady that ended up at emergency last night include these excerpts: ...

"My son was taken away by the police at the age of 17 because they were afraid he'd join the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army]" ...

"I was afraid to speak to my nephew because he had joined the Serbian police forces...fearing other people seeing us together, I asked him not to talk to me in public....he was shot six months after he started working...Six months before his death, he was sent 50 kgs of flour, 10 kgs of sugar, 20 kgs of beans, potatoes and other vegetables...they told him that he would die when the last of these foods was consumed, unless he resisted the Serbian occupation."....

"I haven't seen my sister in twelve years...She has turned blind ever since...She will never see me, even if I see her."

"Don't tell anyone, but the reason my remaining son in Bosnia was booted out of the refugee camp he was staying in is because he fought with a knife the man that ran away with my 19-year-old granddaughter"

"I think my heart problems started when we landed in Saranda [she means Toronto]"

"Because one of my sons was beaten so badly by the Serbian police, the neighbours killed a sheep and wrapped him in the bloody sheep skin, so as to stop the swelling all over his body...It worked."

Thanks to Gina and Angelica [a colleague at work], I am enriching my non-existent Portuguese vocab.

Labels: albanian, hospital stories, integration, Kosova, Kosovo, Serbia, St.John's, work

Last night's rain and snow in the middle of April, combined with sleeplesness (I had to write the infamous sociology paper...I am still on page 4 of 15 :P ), would usually have made me cranky, but not today. In all, I slept 2.5 hours last night.

In the school I work in, I am doing a series of classes focussing on homosexuality, to ultimately end the series by coming out to them (many of the students wrote "I've never met a gay person in my life, but I think they're cool". This way, they will have met one). Last week, I came out to the first group (there are six). They took it well.

Today, I had class 1 of 2 on sexuality, with another group. Their comments almost made me get emotional, they were so good and accepting. I will try to post some of their notes on here soon.

Miranda Bradshaw and I had a talk last night, since our coffee outing around the corner didn't take place after all. Before I leave Montreal, we are to do the following, in no particular order:

1- Go out thrift-clothes store hunting.

2- Go dancing.

3- Go to a male strip bar (it will be my second time in a month...someone who didn't know me would think I go every day).

4- Go to the Contemporary Arts Museum.

5- Go to the Fine Arts Museum (there's an exhibition of Botero's works ;))...Maybe I'll invite the MSN flirt to come along, though I have a feeling I will get a "no" as an answer.

Labels: miranda B, Montreal, work

I can't believe that I am writing this much about religion in the last couple of days, but I am finding that so many things seem to happen and they all seem equally important to mention. Funny enough, they mostly seem to be of religious nature.

I got back to Montreal today. I had a wonderful holiday with the family and friends. It helped me fuel up for another semester of French, three jobs and 0 Mr.Right candidates.

I boarded the plane, which, as usual, was late. Every time I'm on a plane, I get stuck sharing the seat with the following:

1-antisocial, geeky girls who bury their heads in the novels they read;
2-seniors who are dead quiet and will not say anything, no matter what I ask them;
3-seniors who can't be quiet no matter how quiet I am;
4-men who think making conversation is flirting.

So, naturally, I was surprised to have a rather attractive, blue-eyed, twenty-something guy sit next to me and start talking. I wasn't really into talking and for the first time, understood what the antisocial, geeky girls I share seats with feel when I try to talk to them.

Noticing that I am becoming someone I don't want to be, I decided to talk to the oddly dressed stranger [khaki pants and a sky-blue shirt that reminded me of Future Shop salespeople]. He told me he was a technician for dialysis machines [fun...]. When I asked him where he was from, he said he was from Montreal, which made my day, especially when he said he was Francophone. I could practice my French! So we started talking in French.

He asked me where my name came from. I explained...He asked what the religion in Kosovo was. Upon hearing it was Islam, he asked if I was Muslim, which I thought was a bit inappropriate, but hey, it was also a good conversation starter...Next, he asked: "So, are you religious?", to which I answered that I was religious. He said he didn't believe in public displays of religion, including women's hijab and burka. I said I agreed with him to an extent, but that people had a right to their religion. He said he disagreed. I asked what he would do about the crucifixes in the classrooms of the school i teach in. Should they remove them? I mean, the nuns gave those schools up more than a decade ago, yet the crucifixes remain there... All this fuss about kirpan, hijab, and there's a crucifix as big as me in the classroom.

We get talking and the guy starts to make completely condescending remarks to the point that he reminds me of the Latter Day Saints guys who say that if I don't embrace their way of thinking, I will not be saved when time comes.

Since I don't want to relive this horror of having a Jehovah's-Witness-alike sit next to me [and you thought having them knock on your door is a nuissance], I won't bother writing about the details this "religious" man shared, including the fact that Jesus will only come to save the good Christians...I asked him: "So will Muslims and Jews not be saved?" He paused and said "Not unless you accept Jesus in your lives". Then he said I should consider converting to Christianity because it existed before Islam, therefore it is righteous.

I was kinda having fun with this guy until he started being completely disrespectful about Islam, calling it a new religion, one that stole from Christianity, whose members have forced and continue to force the faith unto others. This was enough. Guess what I did next. I said: "I am finding this repulsive. I can't believe you call yourself religious. I respect your religion and expect you to respect mine. I have no time for people who in the name of reasoning plant seeds of prejudice." I kinda thought I fetched it a bit far by the last sentence, but he got the point. I took the headphones and untangled them [that took an hour], then tried to play a movie on the touch screen LCD monitor in front of me. It was slow, so i got frustrated, tried it another dozen times and then continued reading Necla Kelek's "The foreign Bride", a book on Turkish life in Germany [in German, too...I'm proud of myself, I'm reading German!].

The rest of the day was ok...I started working as a teacher's assistant in an intermediate English for Business course. It's ok for now. The work doesn't seem too hard and the students look pretty friendly, and most importantly, the prof is kinda friendly. I say kinda because today, in class, I was taken aback by something she said [and then i just laughed...it was too funny not to].

She gave her students an activity whereby they had to decide, in a list of priorities, what was most important for building a chocolate factory. When one of the students pointed out the level of pollution at an area as a factor important to him for building [or not] a factory, she turned to me and said: "Don't you think they come up with the craziest ideas? I mean, who the hell would build a chocolate factory in an area that's polluted? They sometimes don't realize the difference between home and here."

photo: radiopooh

Labels: Canada, Islam, Montreal, prejudice, work