Virtually Home

Saturday night at the State War Memorial January 26 is Australia Day. The occasion is celebrated in mid-summer, typically with drinking and barbecuing among friends, followed by fireworks. If this reminds you of the 4th of July, you're not wrong to draw the comparison. In recent years, some Australians have advocated for moving or abolishing Australia Day because the data was chosen to commemorate the arrival of a British fleet, and celebrating the colonial history of this nation, which is marred by numerous massacres and injustices against its indigenous people, strikes some as uncomfortable and inappropriate. Think of the vibe on Australia Day, then, as about two-thirds 4th of July, one-third Columbus Day. Australia Day is the only day of the year on which new Australians become citizens. We happen to know someone who became a citizen on this Australia Day, which I thought was pretty cool. This year, the holiday fell on a Saturday, with an official observance the follow...

I spent most of today reading my history textbook, trying to study for an exam that probably has very little to do with anything that the book has to say. We'll be given a text and asked to make a detailed outline of it, making a few points on no particular theme. This doesn't strike me as a very useful learning tool, and I'm kind of wondering what I'm going to say in the couple of hours we'll be given. Then I realized that studying won't really do much, since I'll be given a work to analyze, and Amy and I went looking for piercing jewelry on Rue Ste. Catherine. We got dinner at a Thai restaurant, whose tom kha gai was lacking a certain amount of flavorfulness but which was, at least, better than the utter void of Thai food I've been living in. We headed over to the fair so Amy could experience pineapple-flavored cotton candy. I had a crepe with Grand Marnier, because it sounded good and because I was incredulous at the idea. It turned out to be a pret...

Today I woke up feeling listless, and then I remembered I had a bunch of homework, re-evaluated what  "bunch" of homework meant based on my experiences this year, and felt rather like a letters major. Or, what I imagine letters majors should feel like when they're complaining about the homework they have to do. So this afternoon I've been reading some about the reign of Louis XV on the internet, and I've just started reading Rimbaud's Illuminations, which I'm supposed to finish by our class on Thursday, even though she's told us we're only going to discuss one of them that day. I'm not sure what etiquette on homework here is, as I never figured out in the linguistics department when the homework, which always seemed suggested, was really just suggested, and when it was actually taken up. This wouldn't make much of a difference on my quality of work, were I writing in English, but the difference between taking French notes for my benefit a...