As I pack up all my belongings accumulated during a year abroad, I feel more and more rootless. What has this year done for me? What’s it taught me? Do I have anything left at home waiting for me? No progress was made in my absence… but then is life about progress?

I’m really wondering what it’s going to be like when I get back. Everyone I know that came back from a year of living abroad found it extremely boring and felt like it was a mistake to come back.

I’m to try and settle down again. I feel like I should be moving still… always moving, and traveling and meeting new people. What’s going to happen when I get back?

During the most mundane of activities (hanging my laundry) I realised why I was nervous about my family coming to visit in 16 days: I feel like I have something to prove.

I have to show my parents (well, my mom) that I’ve survived and that I haven’t fallen apart without her watchful gaze.

Note to self: you will do it

Yeah, so of course, as I always do, I neglect my blog until it falls into disuse and there’s so much to catch up on that I just never do it.

Hopefully I’ll have more regular time to blog as I return to a regular class schedule.

Oh, the utter tiresomeness of Nuit Blanche (or Ennui Bland, as A says) blogging. Is there even really a point anymore? What with all the biggest Toronto blogs covering it already and Flickr and Facebook accounts exploding with pictures of all the same exhibits, the tedium really feels overwhelming.
I'll try to keep it short, then, anyway. 

The Fearsome Foursome that we had last year was unable to reunite since one member was sick so I was only accompanied by S and A this time around. 

Overall consensus about this years festival, for us, was about a B+, which is surprising since most people have been panning it as almost worst than last year's. 

The key to our enjoyment seems to hinge upon going in with zero expectations in combination with very minimal planning and rejection of maps, which, apparently, were inaccurate anyhow.
Learning from last year, we stuck exclusively to Zone C (West Queen West and the surrounding area) and didn't even bother with Zone A or B, both of which were unbearably crowded last year and for no good reason either. As a result, we were very pleasantly rewarded with surprises around each corner and no waiting or schedules to race to fulfill. 

Here's a quick smattering of photos that I took. I think I'll make another quick post when I'm able to wrangle pictures from A, who took both more and better pictures than me.

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I just went through one of the most painful experiences of my life – and paid for it.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t really have the body to need massages of any kind. I’m not a top ranking athlete that needs to be rubbed and chopped to keep in working order. The reason I’ve been going lately is because I’ve found out that the muscles in my neck and upper shoulders are tenser on the right side, therefore pulling my right shoulder up higher than my left, and massaging those muscles relaxes them and makes the condition not as bad.

So I’ve been going to an apparent “doctor” on these matters and he’s been giving me deep body massages that are nothing compared to the other relaxing massages I’ve had before. Today was my fifth appointment and never have I felt like all the fibres of my body were about to rip apart or like someone was stabbing me in the back with a dull screwdriver. In fact, I told the guy to ease up a couple of times and he would laugh and say okay but keep going at it; I’ll blame the language barrier. But laughing as he inflicted intense pain on my bones and muscles leads me to think that he enjoyed it a little more than he should have.

As I lay literally writhing in pain on the massage table, covered in pain-sweat, I began to think about what it would be like to actually be tortured. Would I fold because someone was poking my muscles or would I be able to hold out like Jack Bauer? What if someone was sticking bamboo chutes under my nails like Sayid did to Sawyer?

(skip to 4:20 for torture)

I’m not sure if I’m going to go back to that massage place anymore. I mean, at what point does pain stop being “for your own good” and just become torture? After all, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. It’s all about finding that fine balance, right?

My sister is back from Oxford now so we went to pick her up at the airport last Wednesday. I was parked on the side of the road, like pretty much everyone who doesn’t want to pay for parking, so I pulled out my DS since the flight was slightly delayed. I kept looking up into the rearview mirror to see if any of the regular airport patrol cars that usually just chase people away. I look up and see a pretty serious looking cop standing beside my car. Shit.

"Are you winning?"
"Uh,–"
"Because you’re about to lose!"

He asks for my driver’s license and then comes back about five minutes later saying that he’s only going to give me a warning because I have a clean record and that he’s not going to "bust my chops". I feel pretty thankful; I mean just look at the warning ticket (picture 1):

Picture 1; Picture 2

I avoided a $112 fine and two demerit points. And you know what’s the worst thing? He says, "you know there’s a free parking lot just around the corner?". Of course I said I didn’t. It turns out that Pearson has established these "cell phone parking lots" that you can go to and wait absolutely free but the signs that they’ve posted everywhere call them "reduced rate" parking lots, so who in their right minds would go there? I mean that’s why there were at least twenty other cars waiting on the side of the road with me. I don’t know how corporations get away with misleading signs like that. Don’t get me started on the City of Toronto either; their parking signs are the absolute worst and most deliberately misleading. I know all about those. Just look at picture 2. I’m definitely cursed when it comes to parking.

I’m going to end up like this guy someday:

It’s been a long road to this point of both my real life and my online life.

I’ll try not to wax philosophical here but every time I start a new blog, it feels like there was a massive change in my life, one way or another and I end up sounding too serious or too grave in the introductory post.

I started writing online in 2001 when I signed up for a LiveJournal account (username youthbridgade).  It was a cliquey, popularity-related affair due to experiences at Arts Camp. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for a Blogger account that ended up being my longest running journal, or at least it felt like it. I made several maundering posts a day and expected comments on each. It was called The Daily Satori (bandages.blogspot.com), an attempt at being a "serious writer" but actually was the exact opposite. My presence proliferated to the point of getting a xanga, deadjournal, and every other online journal I could get my hands on, for commenting purposes mostly. I even had a side, design-driven blog setup on my Rogers webspace. All my efforts, however, were angsty and stomach-churning drivel.

Finally, in 2005, I bought my own domain, called it Instinct Blues (instinctblues.com) after the White Stripes song and started trying to distance myself from my previous teenage rantings, putting more effort into writing cut and dry accounts of my day. Needless to say, it got really boring and I was eventually writing posts consisting solely of pictures so that readers wouldn’t get too weary. So after two years of that blog, I wanted to shift gears again and renamed and renewed the domain (at a really hefty price) to Charcoal Teeth (charcoalteeth.com). I didn’t touch the site once as I felt that all of my writing juices had severely dried up; and, indeed, the rest of my sites had fallen into sad disarray.

And now, especially with the advent of that new internet juggernaut, a lack of blogging willpower (or perhaps an overwhelming ennui with the blogosp– I mean, the online blogging community) led to small posts here and there in Note form on Facebook.

So why start writing again now? I guess it’s finally time, after an absence of almost two years, that I feel like I have things to say again. I hate to be one more drop in the bucket of an already saturated market of overseas ESL teachers blogging their experiences, but I think maybe I will need to start writing again — something that I haven’t felt in a long time. Who knows where we’ll go from there.