typewriter.blogsome.com

alright so I’m attempting to make an zig-zag afghan.
Here’s part of the instructions:
1st row: (RS). 1 sc in 2nd ch from hook. *1 sc in each of next 9 ch. Ch 2. 1 sc in each of next 10 ch. Miss next 2 ch. 1 sc in each of next 5 ch. Ch 2. 1 sc in each of next 5 ch. Miss next 2 ch. 1 sc in next ch. Rep from * to last 19 ch. 1 sch in each of next 9 ch. Ch 2. 1 sc in each of next 10 ch. Fasten off. Turn. 224 sts.

what. in. the. world.

I’m hoping my mom will be able to translate this for me. She’s highly skilled in the crochet area.

Today was a day of trying not to laugh on the subway.
I was listening to Flight of the Concords during the morning trip (hilarious!) and this afternoon I was watching a TEDtalk by Rives.
Specially this talk described as “lyrical origami”:

I think he’s great.

I’m always intrigued by people who can speak so precisely. like, i don’t think he has any ‘um’s or ‘uh’s in there. And I feel like that wasn’t a completely memorized talk.
I feel like his other Tedtalk on “If I Controlled the Internet” is completely memorized. …which is impressive also.

During lunch today, I was watching another eloquent speaker and speech. It was Dr. Ben Dunlap’s The Story of a Passionate Life. Again, flawless speech!
really good story too actually. Though I wasn’t completely paying attention for the beginning portions because I was so confused about his accent! He’s speaking Hungarian, but sounds like he’s from southern USA…
I wish I had it on my iPod so that I could watch it again. oh wait, I do! YES!

haha, Cecilia doesn’t know what she’s started. I am addicted to these things! …I just had two separate long conversations in the past two days where I was trying to explain to my coworkers how cool these things are and how they should go and download a bunch of talks RIGHT NOW.
one of them doesn’t even have an iPod. …I told her to go buy one.
:)

anyways

I saw a Mothers Against Drunk Driving commercial today that said “let’s change the meaning of tie one on” (re: their car antennae ribbon campaign).
I don’t think I even really know that expression. …so I guess they’ve been successful?
I like that MADD commerical with the collection of empty glasses on the car’s dashboard.
I remember watching it as a kid and thinking that it was so cool! “That bus just came out of nowhere!! …wow drinking and driving sucks.”
And the fact that they’re still playing it today means that it must be as effective as I think it is.

anyways back to TED. (haha)

Yesterday I was watching a talk about the Seattle Library (and other new projects) and the guy said that libraries are one of the few free spaces where people can congregate. And I thought that was sad when I couldn’t think of many other places. church is another one of course, but any others?
My first thought was coffee shops but of course those don’t count.
bummer.

anyways, i like the portion of the library where people can meet and eat and hang out and do whatever they want.
reminds me of Weldon Library… mmm university life!

alright, I have 30 more minutes until my laundry’s done, so i’m going to pack up some stuff for my weekend roadtrip!

every so often I complain about doing laundry.
…and then i sit back and realize that “doing” laundry is basically doing nothing!

I mean, for me at least, doing laundry means rounding up my dirty clothes into a bag, walking down a flight of stairs to the laundry machine, pressing a few buttons, pouring liquid in a hole, and that’s it!
wait for half an hour and then transfer the clothes into another machine!

…could it be any easier?

so anyways, I usually like laundry day.
it give me random 30min and 60min time chunks when I think “what should I do for this small chunk of time before I have to go back downstairs?”

so that leads to fun activities.
sometimes.

anyways,
There’s a particularly cool Featured Seller on Etsy today!
It’s Paint and Dink.

I hadn’t heard of her shop before, but I think it’s fantastic!

Here’s a blurb from her interview:
I used to pin those National Geographic maps up on my ceiling and lie in bed, dreaming of places I’d go someday and dreaming of being a mapmaker. And now I am.

I think that’s great.

oop! gotta go put my clothes in the other machine!

the other day, I was walking back to my office at the end of my lunch break and I had a lightbulb moment!

offices should have patios!!!

it would be amazing!

well, it would be horrible for productivity, but if they said something like ‘1 hour a day, and only x number of people at a time’, it could work!
I mean, i would personally be completely unproductive for that hour, but 1 hour per day during the summer months, is a small price to pay for employee job satisfaction!

hmm, I have to put that in my ‘box of tricks’ for when I’m the boss someday…

next up,
(i’m trying to write all this during the SYTYCD commercial break!)

Hana and I met up on Sunday evening and played Scrabble in Starbucks!
haha.. it has started!!
Here’s a picture of the finished game:

can anybody see the ‘non-word’? (actually, it probably is in the dictionary, but it’s not a word that the average person knows.) I didn’t notice it at all, Hana pointed it out like 4/5ths through the game.
to my defense though, i was looking at it upsidedown

on a completely different note,
I finally put together a card design that has been plaguing me! well, not quite ‘plaguing’…. but it’s been on my mind FOREVER.

so I’m excited with the way it came out.

tadaa:

explanation needed?
:)

it’s a ‘Yo’ card!!

Basically, I wanted a card that said ‘yo’, but where the word wasn’t evident if you just glanced at the card.
so, I’m very happy with it!
..and actually as I was making them last night, I made a mistake on one of them and glued the cardstock slightly slanted on the card…so I get to keep it! (YAY!) it’s now sitting on my desk at work. and it makes me smile.

They just played a song by Hot Chip on SYTYCD. Hot Chip’s latest album was one of my ‘random cd’ purchases. (ie, judging a cd by it’s cover)
I like the cd though. it’s tres random…like with lyrics like, “I’m only going to heaven if it tastes like caramel.”

mmm caramel….

anyways, the non-word in the scrabble game is ‘Xo’
it was intended to be ‘ox’

~blop!

So I’m still majorly obsessed with the ‘Yes We Can’ music video.

I have it on my iPod now, so I listen to it like it’s any other song.
(well…any other song that I’m obsessed with…)

so, I’ve decided to list my fav parts!
just because I can… haha
(yay for blogs!)

My Favourite Parts:
(in the general order in which they appear in the video)
1. will.i.am’s voice. — I like him… well, I like him in this. oo and his collaboration with Sergio Mendes! it’s yummy. mmm
2. Common’s voice. — he has a good solid speaking voice. hmmm maybe I should start listening to his music…
3. the acoustic guitar (of course!) — good job Bryan Greenberg
4. Kate Walsh’s voice — more on this later.
5. The inclusion of Harold Perrineau, Jr. at the “a President who chose the moon as our new frontier” part — is it just me, or is there no audio for his voice?
6. John Legend’s ‘extraness’ — haha, love the ‘extra’ hand motions and gestures
7. The people standing behind Obama who look very uninterested in the speech. ooo maybe they’re undercover bodyguards!
8. The fact that Enrique Murciano (Without a Trace guy) is staring off into space — switching it up!
9. Hebrew! — yay!
10. Scarlett Johansson’s voice at the “yes we can heal this nation’ part
11. Sign language!
12. The editing of the part that goes “we have been told that we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics” — I like that it just shows Obama talking and will.i.am standing there.
13. violin!
14. Ed Kowalczyk hitting his guitar! (I love guitar percussion.)
15. the HOPE part when all the voices say the word at different times.
16. Eric Balfour singing “That we are not as divided as our politics suggest” — I LOVE this part! I think it’s the harmony…and the fact that he looks so into it.
17. Hill Harper’s (CSI NY guy) part when he turns around says “that together we will begin the next chapter in the American story.” - YES! I love this part! For whatever reason, the way he turns around and puts his hands in his pockets reminds me of those NBC celebrity public service announcements. Every time I watch this part I hear the “the more you know” jingle in my head. i love it.
18. Herbie Hancock doing a little dance in his chair! -LOVE that part! I always dance along …well, if I’m sitting…
19. Kate Walsh’s background ‘yes we can’ — you may have to listen closely, but Kate Walsh’s voice is saying ‘yes we can…. yes we can’ it’s kinda creepy, but in a good way. (and that’s why it’s on this list!)
20. At the end when will.i.am just barely looks into the camera.

yay! there’s 20 of things!
alright, so i realize now that some of my comments may come across as sarcastic, but they’re actually not…
and if I’m too nit-picky, I’m only that way because i love the video and have watched this way too many times…

cheers.
:)

there are a few little things I wanted to mention this past week:

this sign appeared in my apartment building one morning:

you’ll notice, some critical information is missing…the TIME that this will be happening!
(you may notice, someone wrote on the sign “from when to when?”)
well, by the time I came back from work, the sign was gone, so who knows what happened

last weekend I went with my family to my aunt’s house for dinner. I guess it had been a while since I saw that aunt. …like maybe 8 years or so. She lives in Markham or Scarborough or something like that.
anyways, I LOVE her house.
I wish I took more pictures of it. I felt a little weird though. I mean, going into someone’s house and randomly taking pictures of every ‘mundane’ thing? Who does that?
so, it “reminded” me of the 70s/80s. But in a fun retro kind of way. There was wallpaper everywhere, those old school bright orange and guacamole green colours, there was a mirror wall in her living room (normally, I’m not a fan of mirror walls, but somehow it worked in her place…)
Another thing I liked was that the house had like 5 different levels. Each level separated by like 8 or less steps! It was odd, yet fantastic at the same time!

so here’s the one picture I took incognito:

the wallpaper continues onto the ceiling!
love it!

last Wednesday I came home from work and decided to get some hair stuff for my hair appointment on the weekend.
now, the thing I’ve noticed about living where I live, is that it’s almost like instant gratification.
Like, when I decide that I want to paint something, I walk across the street and get supplies.
when I think about getting something from Dollarama, I hop on the subway and I’m there in less than 20minutes.
When I decide that I want a cd, or a book, or coffee, there’s a mall at the corner with HMV, Chapters and Starbucks.
If I want a slushy, there’s a 711 just down the street as well! etc etc

so, when I decided that I should get hair stuff, I just decided to walk down the street.
now, I had done some research and found out that there was a hair place pretty far down the street, but I figured that I wouldn’t have to go all the way there to find what I wanted.
so I walked along Eglinton Ave West and found some fun things:

like this house with a lime green window, and the neighbouring house with a red front door:

That house was close by to this apartment building:

I want to live in a building called “The” something!

“The favorite” (note the American spelling!!) works…. but so would…

The Eglinton!
haha

I didn’t take many other pictures… it rained a bit.

so, I ended up having to walk all the way past Allen to find what I wanted.
And after that I walked back to Eglinton station and took the bus back home.

I met up with a friend yesterday in Etobicoke and then took the subway home late at night.
for a while, I was the only person on my subway car! …that’s never happened to me before!
…so I took a picture.

So I was a vendor at the BIG on Bloor Festival yesterday.

IT WAS AMAZING!!!

I really hope they have it again next year, i thought it was a complete success! There were TONS of people, my table was close to a Long & McQuade stage, so we had continuous music and some cool special presentations: fashion show, dance show, karate demonstration. (The karate presentation had one of the guys from Jackie Chan’s stunt double team, and this guy was CRAZY! I was kinda standing far away so all I could see was his feet continuously in the air in crazy formations, and wood somehow being chopped at the same time. hehe crazy wood chopping flips.)

The weather was one thing I was ‘concerned’ about, because I heard that it was going to thunder storm, and so then I would have to pack up my stuff and wait out the storm …or leave.
but thankfully, there was only ’spotty’ rain!! And my cards are all covered in plastic, so there was no need to pack up! but it was great weather to be outside in, because it wasn’t too hot and sunny.
During one of the rain spells someone came by on a bike and bought a card, and then picked up my business card too, and was like, “Your business cards are waterproof!! How convenient!”
haha, sweet! who knew?

My company was great!
to our left was the Owner & helper from Covet Originals.
And to our right were friendly people from some NGO… I can’t remember the name though.

And i say ‘our’ because my friend Jen hung out with me all day!!! It was FANTASTIC! I haven’t seen her in a while so it was good to hang out with her for hours. AND she was a great help with taking stuff to the location, and setting up!
My parents also came by, which was fun! Somehow they arrived from two different directions, which I’m still confused about….but as always, my parents were very encouraging and supportive. Thanks mad! (lol, a new short-form! …I just made it up… “mom and dad”)

And as I’ve said already, the crowd was great! it’s so encouraging to do shows! First of all, it’s encouraging when people buy things, but also when they just look and are like, ‘wow, this is so great!’ and then they grab a business card and walk off. And then there are those people who are just really cool and have interesting things to say. I had some
fun conversations yesterday.
Some of my favourite moments are when people buy cards that I think are FANTASTIC but haven’t had much/any success on Etsy. I had a several surprises yesterday in that sense.

there’s much more I could say, but I won’t go into that right now… maybe later

new project alert!!

I’m excited, I have a new crafty project on the horizon!
Its a zig-zaggy throw! (or “rippled afghan” if you want to be technical.)

I was browsing blogs today and came across some inspiration so I’ve decided to make one in the colours of my rug!

brown and cream and red and gold and orange…
it should be fun!

now that I’ve got the colours down, all I need to do is learn how to crochet!
I’ve searched a bit on the net for really basic basic instructions, but so far I haven’t found anything that makes sense to me.
…maybe I’ll ask my mom to teach me!

as I write this I realize that I have a bunch of other projects that are still not completed… (I call them ‘works in progress’!)
my quilt, and greeting cards of course…
but, I’ve finished painting for a while, so I figure there’s room for me to start crocheting!

So, as I’ve mentioned, I’m now enamored with TEDTalks.

During my subway ride home from work, I watched one that presented a different view to African aid.
I was immediately intrigued when the speaker brought up the issue of western media constantly portraying Africa as a placed filled with despair,hopelessness, and civil wars…
He said:“The media is telling the truth about Africa and nothing about the truth”

So I’ve decided to transcribe this speech and put it here on my blog for people to read!

I took a 3hour nap today after work, so since I’m awake, I figured I’ll start typing now! But then I reached one page of text for just the first 5 minutes (and I skipped his introductory greetings) and I’ve decided to just link to the video/audio on the TED website.
I mean, they’re free to watch and download, so why not?!
plus… who would read 3 pages of text, when they could watch a 15min video instead?

anyways,
since I did write up the beginning bits, here’s a snippet:
you can read this and if you’re interested in knowing more, you can then watch the video!
..or, you could compare my text to the video and then tell me what I typed wrongly… (oh, that’d be great fun! …please don’t do that. )

Andrew Mwenda: Let’s Take a New Look at African Aid

“…I want to say that there are two things that we need to connect: How the media covers Africa in the west, and the consequences of that. By displaying despair, helplessness and hopelessness, the media is telling the truth about Africa and nothing about the truth. However, the media is not telling us the whole truth, because despair, civil war, hunger and famine, although they’re part of our African reality, they’re not the only African reality and secondly they’re the smallest reality.

Africa has 53 nations, we have civil war only in 6 countries. Which means the media are covering only 6 countries. Africa has immense opportunities that never navigate through the web of despair and helplessness that the western media largely presents to its audience. The effect of that presentation is it appeals to sympathy, it appeals to pity, it appeals to something called charity. And as a consequence, the western view of Africa’s economic dilemma is framed wrongly.

The wrong framing is a product of thinking that Africa is a place of despair. ‘What should be do with it? We should give food to the hungry, we should deliver medicines to those who are ill, we should send peace-keeping troops to serve those who are facing civil war.’ And in the process Africa has been stripped of self initiative.

I want to say that it is important to recognize that Africa has fundamental weaknesses. But equally it has opportunity and lots of potential. We need to reframe the challenge that is facing Africa, from a challenge of despair, which is called Poverty Reduction, to a challenge of hope. We frame it as a challenge of hope, which is Wealth Creation. The challenge facing all those who are interested in Africa is not a challenge of reducing poverty, it should be a challenge of creating wealth.

Once we change those two things – if you say the Africans are poor and they need poverty reduction, you have the international (?) of good intentions moving on to the continent with what? Medicines for the poor, food and relief for those who are hungry, and peace-keepers for those who are facing civil war. And in the process none of these things are really productive, because you are treating the symptoms, not the causes of Africa’s fundamental problems. Sending somebody to school and giving them medicines, ladies and gentlemen, does not create wealth for them. Wealth is a function of income and income comes from you finding a profitable trading opportunity or a well-paying job. Now, once we begin to talk about wealth creation in Africa, our second challenge is: who are the wealth creating agents in a society?

They are entrepreneurs.”
//

I had a tough time trying to find a place to stop that quote! …there’s so much more in the video!
…if it’s not obvious yet… I highly recommend!

that said,
I might as well just embed the video here!

alright, so I can’t stop watching the ‘Yes We Can’ video.

I’m definitely not American (and I have issues with the idea that America itself will save the world of all its problems) but still, I think the video is AMAZING!
like seriously,
a really great speech + great rhythm + fun harmonies + acoustic guitar + violin + Herbie Hancock on the piano…
!!!
what more could you ask for?!
(hmm, maybe clapping? lol. I don’t think that’d work with this though…)

anyways, here are the lyrics:

//
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can.
Yes we can.
Yes we can.
Yes we can.
Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea —

Yes. We. Can.
Yes. We. Can.
Yes. We. Can.
Yes. We. Can.
Yes. We. Can.

//

here’s the video… for anyone who hasn’t seen it..

I’m only going to watch it ONE MORE TIME!

(I just realized that there IS clapping! the crowd in the background claps while they chant ‘yes we can’! sweet!!)
okay, maybe I’ll watch it again….. but then that’s it!
…for tonight.

“no no no, no no no way jose”

So I’m not a HUGE Jack Black fan, but I do think he’s funny. Mostly his facial expressions and randomly breaking out into song.

I usually don’t like the movies that he’s in though, so I rarely watch his stuff.. For example, Nacho Libre. I saw the commercials for that movie and thought it looked pretty stupid.
I still do. …and have no intentions of watching the movie.

..but…

I saw this clip on the Mixed Plate blog, and just HAVE to share it.

look at his face!
cracks me up.

“I use my hand to wipe my tears”.

hilarious..