I swear it all has to do with racism and being screwed over as an immigrant

Too tired to re-write it all but here's the story in a nutshell that I wrote to the BF about the woes of the day:

Allo,

sorry for being m.i.a today but it was a wee bit of a harrowing day. Today was the day my dad and his coworkers voted on whether or not to keep or decertify from their union. The union lost and so my dad is really bummed out. Like really bummed out that he is already preparing his letter of resignation. Being one of the key people who brought the union to his company 7 years ago, management have made it clear that they would love nothing more but to get rid of him and his union buddies. Prior to the union, there were no wage increases, no job security, no benefits, no break times and generally no recourse.

So it's not so much about ego and pride that my dad's leaving, but more about the principle of equity and respect that he believes in, like most of us believe in. Blah. My dad's 60. He's not going to find work anywhere else, and last I checked, the market is over-saturated with bakers and Canada's not in a rush to hire any new helicopter pilots either. Like your dad, like most of our dads who have good work ethics and don't fear a hard day's work, it's more about having something to do on a daily basis that you know you're good at, even if it's tedious, but at least you feel like you have a function in life, like you're needed. With the decertification, I guess my dad would rather bow out first than have management tell him he's not needed anymore, that they can hire someone else at $8 hour to replace him because obviously they're overpaying him right now at $12.89/hr. It all makes me wanna hurl.

'Tis life.

Which self is the "kewl" one?

I'm not an awesome writer and writing does not come naturally for me. It is actually really painful and hurting and scares the beegeezees out of me. The feedback I get from most of my profs, in terms of writing strength, is the researcher reflexivity that I bring to my writing and my papers. My thesis supervisor keeps reminding me how important epistemological location is, especially so in the field of CYC and he's trying to encourage me to focus on the reflexivity when I'm stuck. So as I'm moving along trying to write stuff that makes sense and trying to be all smart and shiet, I wonder which one of my "selves" plays out the most: the research-based self (grad student, witness, interpreter, writer, observer), the brought self (the elements of self-identity that place me at a particular social, cultural and political location) or the situationally created self (shaped by the research process itself).

I don't know. And I don't know which one is the kewler of the three. The last one intrigues me the most because it's the only one I can't predict or control so it MUST be kewl. 'Tis life and as Mr. Walsh of biology 11 once said to me: "choose your own destiny". Yeah, ok. Whatever.

the struggle back to normalcy, whatever that looks like...

It's not like I expect people to want to talk about the shooting rampage that took place at Virginia Tech, but for the love of Christ, at least acknowledge the state of the world that we're all living in. How is it possible to NOT know what took place yesterday? How do you miss the headline "33 people shot dead"? Contrastingly, there are those who have been all too keen to take up the discussion pertaining to the shooter's status as "a resident alien." I think we all know where that conversation is going to wind up: lots of racialized kafuffle in relation to immigration, temporary and permanent residency in the States.

Then there is that other conversation that is inevitable, the one pertaining to America's second amendment. Virginia Govenor Tim Kaine stated in a press conference that this is not the time to discuss gun control issues and anyone who attempts to do so at this moment would merely be engaging in political hoopla, so to speak. If the deaths of 33 people don't warrant a discussion or at least an attempt to put gun control issues back on the map, then by golly george I don't know what it will take. In social services, especially in the cases of child protection concerns, you don't wait til the house goes on fire to intervene. The shootings that took place at Virginia Tech was a mutha-fucking inferno.

Maybe I'm just finding a reason to be pissed off and a reason to hate on something because to tell you the truth, I'm just a selfish paranoid android who fears for my own life in addition to feeling like the world sucks and would prefer not to have my friends, family or future kids wind up with bullets through their bodies.

I feel this way and I'm not even American.

Celine Dion's "new day" has come

It was a lovely sun-shiny day in Vancouver today, which prompted me to wake up early and "do something about my life." That whole carpe diem stuff, y'know? So the first thing I did was pick all the lint out of ma bellybutton. There was a lot of lint. It was a good and productive start to the rest of my day!