So long Toronto...

Summer passed by quickly. Sunday, April 30 the day I moved to Toronto seems like yesterday. When I knew I was going to spend the summer in Toronto, I anticipated going out to see the city every now and then, but I didn’t anticipate seeing and meeting as many cool people as I did. Overall it was a ton of fun, and tonight is my last night in this great city. So what’s next?

Tomorrow will be my last day at work, I plan on moving back home, throwing my stuff in my room and packing for an early morning trip to Montreal. This is the way me and a bunch of friends are going to end our summer. We’re spending two nights in Canada’s number one city for nightlife, and then heading back to Waterloo to use the last few days of summer to get into school mode.

This coming year is my final year as an undergrad. For the first time since I started university, I will have to do two terms in a row. I picked my courses for the1st term, and I’m finalizing my graduation project selection (which you will hear lots about as the term progresses). My blogging habits will get back to normal and you will be reading more of the stuff that you have been used to reading over the past two years.

I have a lot of decision making to do in the next 8 months, and I’m going to be seeking advice from my fellow bloggers and readers. Having met a number of bloggers in person, I realized how lucky I was to start blogging and get the opportunity to meet some of you. I am certainly proud of belonging to the Syrian blogger circle in specific and Arab bloggers in general.

I will leave you with this picture that I took on Tuesday night whilw visiting the Toronto harbour.

Facebook Wars

Every year people across the globe buy in to the myth that Mars will appear as large as the moon in the night sky. And every year I have arguments with people that such an event will never occur. I once gave somebody solid proof of the impossibility of the event (a link from NASA’s website), and she refused to believe what I told her. She shrugged it off saying something along the line of “who knows? it may happen, I’m still going to look up on that night.” This year is no different, but rather than seeing posts about it, I’m witnessing the frenzy on Facebook.

One girl created an event stating that the celestial event will occur on August 27th, which happens to be two days before her birthday. She was just a bit shy from suggesting that Mars crept closer to Earth just for her birthday. At the moment there are hundreds of “confirmed attendance” RSVP’s, and many replied with apologies along the lines of “I’m going to be in the US on that day,” one girl apologized saying that she was going to be in Montreal that night. Because as we all know the night sky in Montreal is drastically different than that of Toronto’s. On the other hand, and to be fair, I have seen many comments by people saying that this event is a hoax, although their attempts at telling the truth are being looked at as “party pooper” behaviour.

I’m not bothered by the fact that these people are idiots. Idiots are a fact of life, you have to learn to deal with them. What bothers me is the lack of critical thinking. Even if a person hears about this event, they should be able to reason that such a thing will not happen. First of all for Mars to appear large on that single day would mean that Mars has to accelerate towards Earth, leaving its orbit behind (after all, it’s the girls birthday), make an appearance next to the moon, and then quickly jet back into orbit. But since that sounds physically impossible I think another explanation might have to do. What if god held a giant magnifier somewhere between Toronto and Mars, wouldn’t ha make Mars appear larger? Or maybe god has a lot of time on his hand, and he decided to make another Mars (a birthday gift), and place it in orbit around Earth for a day. Other possibilities also include: hanging a giant poster of Mars in the sky, and projecting a picture of Mars against the sky. We can also never forget the possibility that Moon might be going to a Halloween party, and decided to dress up like Mars on that particular night. I can probably think of a few other possibilities for the event might occur, but I’ll leave that for your imagination.

So, in retaliation to the Facebook event, and to “poop the party,” so to speak, I started a Facebook group named “I think anybody who believes Mars will be as big the moon is an idiot.” I sent the invitation to many people on my friends list, including friend’s who planned on attending the “event.” The response for the group has been overwhelming; at the time of writing I have 13 members and 8 wall posts. One person in the group is a converted believer, as she bravely admitted. Another, thanked me for creating the group. To those people I say, thank YOU. It feels damn great to be an educator and to set people on the right path.

Three degrees apart

When it came to choosing an award winning book for my grade 12 English class independent study project, my teacher suggested that I read Frank McCourt’s memoir, Angela’s Ashes. She said that the book was about poverty in Ireland, and that was all the motivation that I needed to choose the book as the main piece in my anthology on poverty. It was either the same day, or soon afterwards when I dropped by my favourite used bookstore, Casablanca, where luckily I found a very decent copy of the memoir.

I’m typically a slow reader, but I devoured Angela’s Ashes. It wasn’t the suspense in Frank’s story, but rather the sheer sadness that kept me reading. Frank broke many rules of writing in his book, and I respected him for that. At that time I was struggling with my English mark, and to have a Pulitzer Prize winning book in my hands, that reads a hundred times better than any other “perfectly” written piece, was the best proof that sometimes you don’t have to stick to the rules to produce amazing results.

Frank told about his drunk dad, the Catholic Church, the lack of food his family had, the pride of the Irish, all in his special anecdotal style that leaves you crying and laughing at the same time. Angela’s Ashes had the tone of a 6 year old narrator, which brilliantly gave the book the extra realism. At the end of Frank’s journey in Angela’s Ashes he ends up going to New York on a freight ship, and this is where Franks second book, ‘Tis, commenced.

I conveniently picked ‘Tis as the main novel for my grade 13 English class independent study. Nothing beats reading a book that you actually like for a school project. The project I did on ‘Tis was a travel brochure to NYC, written by Frank McCourt. I earned a 93% on it…

A few years later I was grocery shopping with my mom when I saw Teacher Man, Frank’s last memoir. I wanted to pick it up, but the thought of reading his last book left me sad. The same sadness somebody feels when he watches the last episode of a TV series, or when he reads the last sentence in an amazing book. I wanted to save Teacher Man for at least a few years down the line. I kept the book in mind and continued shopping.

A few weeks ago a friend came to visit me in Toronto, and she had a gift for me. The gift as you might have guessed was Teacher Man. I couldn’t wait to read it, and I ended up reading the first chapter that night before bed. When I get the chance to read it I can never put it down, and the next morning I’m struggling out of bed. The book is written in McCourt’s classic style, full of anecdotes, honest, and funny. Although I have a short subway ride to work one day I decided to bring it along and read whatever I can. At work I put the book on my bag on the floor just so I don’t forget to take it home at the end of the day. At about midday, after coming back from a coffee break, the person working behind me turns around and tells me that the school on the cover of the book was his old high school, and that McCourt actually taught his sister. I meant to ask him more about what he knows about McCourt, what his sister told him about his teaching, but my boss came over and interrupted the conversation…

technorati tags: Frank, McCourt, memoir, six, degrees, of, seperation, Irish, NYC, literature

I repeat, It was NOT an act of Terrorism

I try to get my dose news every morning by reading the widely distributed Metro while on the subway. The picture of the collapsed bridge over the Mississippi river caught my attention, and I was curious to know as to what had caused the disastrous collapse. I read the short article eagerly waiting the conclusion. I anticipated something along the lines of “lack of maintenance and poor design lead to the collapse.” But to my disappointment there was no information on why the bridge collapsed, rather, there was information on what hadn’t caused collapse. The article read “The U.S. Homeland Security Department had no indication that the collapse was related to an act of terrorism,” which of course made the event much more tolerable. People have no fear, the Homeland Security Department is here!