lust for life

Iggy Pop and Peter Gzowski
Check this link out, from the CBC archives.
I watched this with my dad last night, it's incredibly interesting.
Iggy Pop is pretty damn smart, cheeky and rude.

One good thing about midterms..

Quality time after school with friends.
We get off at 11am, which gives us potential to hang around for quite a while.
Today we walked to Kensington and had a very nice time.
The weather was great and the stress of an essay in social was basically over, although when we checked our blood pressure in Shoppers Drug Mart it seemed a bit high. Mine was 121/60! (Well, 60 is pretty low). Shoppers Drug Mart is quite an interesting experience, ironically it happens to be one of the highlights of Kensington sometimes (sometimes). We bought a card for my friend who is moving to Dubai very soon. It's for someone's 50th birthday...
Then we headed to Livingstone & Cavell and played with their toys for a very long time. After that we marched down Kensington road to 10th Street, where we craved some Crave cupcakes, did some window shopping and inhaled both the Roasterie and Tandoori Hut. After that it was Vietnamese at "a Touch of Ginger". I had vegetarian spring rolls on rice vermicelli and a mango juice. It was very delicious! Then we headed down the street, and stopped at Trend (the clothing store). After perusing through the shoes, we headed down 10th street a bit more. We decided to go into Hot Wax records, somewhere I don't regularly go when in Kensington. It always does have good selection+good taste though, so I like going in even if I don't buy something. And I was thinking of asking about their policy for exchanging records, I have a whole bunch of my dad's doubles to cash in on. But this old guy and jean-jacket guy with very curly hair and Buddy Holly glasses were kinda looking at us like we were annoying pretentious teenagers so I decided that it was cool. They were probably pretty nice, but when someone is silent when 4 loud kids come into their shop, you have to wonder... I'll probably come back though to exchange my dad's records, seems like a great place. Then we went to Crave and had cupcakes. Then walked back to my house. It was a fun day though, it's interesting to discover new things about places you go to regularly. In celebration of this, I will make a list of my regular places in this neighborhood. People probably won't be interested because a). they live 10 hours away or b). there are many other nice places in this city besides Kensington. Anyways,

Clothing/Accessories:
Manana kind of across from the Plaza on Kensington road. All imported stuff. They have very nice smelling incense, and cool hats. The staff are friendly and the merchandise is very interesting.
Trend fashion on 10th street at the end by Memorial drive. Sometimes they have some really cute stuff, nice shoes and nice shirts.
The Rocket custom T-shirts are always nice.
if you want shirts with bands on them...
head down to Charisma it's kinda gothy, but I find they have an excellent selection of Clash t-shirts.
There's this place called Manhattan-something that my mum likes to go to. It has nice clothing..
Mission and the Source are good if you are into skate-boarding, snowboarding etc.

Food:
Tandoori Hut on the west side of 10th street, my personal fav. for Indian. Great for special occasion kinda things. Good food, good service. You can smell the deliciousness from the other side of the street. Maurya is also good for Indian food.
Charlie Chan's under Swimco on Kensington is good solid Chinese food.
Two good Vietnamese places. Vietnamese Fortune which is beside Chicken-On-The-Way on 14th and Kensington and A Touch Of Ginger on 10th.
Nellie's on Kensington Road is good for breakfast. Bernard Callebaut on Kensington road is always delicious for chocolates (I recommend the little heart things). As well as Crave cupcakes (the icing is so good you don't notice how bad it is for you). On the west end of Kensington road you have Charlie's Bakery with delicious pastries and breads and stuff and Janice Beaton cheese (great variety of cheeses, a lot of them are really good). If you're a wine-ish person there's the Kensington Wine Market in the same area.
Cafe's:
There's a Higher Ground, nice atmosphere, but the coffee isn't very good. Or Starbucks beside it (yeah okay I'm a horrible person). There's also the Roasterie on 1oth. There are more then this, but these are the ones I've been to more than once.

Entertainment:
The Plaza Theatre is a great place to go, (you can go see Borat right now). Usually have good picks and they put on a mean Rocky Horror Picture Show. I spend a lot of time playing and observing the toys at Livingstone and Cavell, they have some cool stuff. Shopper's Drug Mart is entertaining for the teenager in you. Page's bookstore has a great selection of books. I saw Tommy Chong there..

Miscellaneous:
If you are a church-like person, Hillhurst United is an engaging and tolerant church. Urban Barn is great for furniture. Beadworks has expensive but very pretty beads.
Disappointments:
There's a store on the corner of 10th and Kensington that always changes. But the point is, it's always a crappy generic coffee shop, don't go there. Chicken On the Way is a legend, but a gross tasting legend indeed.

Now I have to go to sleep, I have a science midterm in less than 9 hours.

We had that meeting at school today where you plan out what courses you take for high school. I dislike talking about the future, because I don't have a clue about mine. I'm staying at my school (it's a ten minute walk). I'll probably do Math 20 Pure, some level of Science 10 (I haven't made up my mind yet), English 10 AP/H and some level of Social 10. Then we need fifteen credits for optional courses. So that's French 10, some fine arts thing and maybe Journalism 15. I have no clue about careers, but I know what I don't want to do. Which is anything to do with math or science. I'm not horrible at either, but they've never interested me. So I took a career aptitude test, to see where that leads me. Some of it makes sense, some doesn't really.

1.
Actor (I like performing arts, but I can't really see this as a career)

2.
Desktop Publisher(Interesting, but not really)

3.
Cartoonist(I like some of those cartoons in the paper on Sunday...)

4.
Animator (I'm not that good at animating)

5.
Anthropologist (I'm not sure if I would excel in this...)

6.
Comedian(My friends might think so, but I'm not sure about that as a career)

7.
Print Journalist(I like writing, but it would be a hard way to make a living)

8.
Critic(I'd probably be a little too critical, but it'd be fun)

9.
Writer (It would be very interesting, but also a hard way to make a living)

10.
Composer(Is that like Beethoven? Do people still do that?)

11.
Musician(Hard to become successful, and I'm not that good at guitar)

12.
Translator (I have a very mediocre knowledge of french, but I don't mind learning it)

13.
Medical Illustrator(Very interesting, I wouldn't be good at that though)

14.
Activist(It's an amazing thing to devote your life to a good cause, but I don't know if I could accomplish anything)

15.
Artist(Art's fun, I'm not bad at it. But I'm no professional)

In Humanities right now, we have a poetry anthology. We need a them and my friend was doing "Life's simple pleasures", I told him that was the most cliche thing I'd ever heard. So I decided to do cynicism. There's definitely no lack of cynical poems. But I wrote a haiku about smoking.

Bars deny smoke ban

We're already sick to death

Have another smoke

MS Paint Contest

I just had a contest with my friend Nigel, to see who could draw the prettiest sunset in Paint. We had ten minutes. The two judges liked each one, so we tied. Then we got Rohil to be the tie-breaker but he couldn't decide. He picked Nigel in the end, after eeny-meeny-miny-mo.

back (momentarily)

I'm sitting in my house, although I'll be on the plane to Vancouver in less than 24 hours.
Christmas + New Years went well. I got some stuff. New pair of boots, pair of flat from Winners (my mum got a lot of presents at Winners), some books, soap. I also got an mp3 player to replace my iPod which was stolen at school (I was too heartbroken to write about it, I guess). Oh, and a shirt from my brother from Junk Star on 17th. James got a lot of drumming accessories, cowbell, double bass pedal, crash symbol. Not to keen on this, but he was pleased. New Years went well, we watched some movie about the President and the secret service and murder, I can't recall the name. Probably because I read some Adrian Mole book during the duration of the film. Adrian Mole always makes me laugh. Before that we were going to watch that Ben Stiller movie at the local theatre, but it was cancelled. We spent an hour or so wandering around the town listening to the Flames game on the radio. Extra Foods in BC closes very early. Then we watched Ryan Seacrest and Nick Lachey and his creepy girlfriend and My Chemical Romance count us down to the New Year. We tried to pop the champagne cork on the balcony of the condo, but it took my dad a minute or so to get it to open. Oh well, it ended up going pretty far. I couldn't really see where it went because there was two feet of snow on the ground. It was very snowy. Which was good, cause I had a good time skiing. We also went to this town, Kimberley and skiied there, but the hill kinda sucked and the town was really, really weird. It was this Bavarian village sort of thing, with all these authentic German restaurants and dollar store. We went to the German restaurant and I had Brie cheese and Indian mussels. So, like I said I'll be leaving for Vancouver very soon to see my family, and that will be very nice. I hope everyones Holidays are going well!

PS. I was reading George Stroumboulopoulos' blog on strombo.com when I came across the interesting idea of making a mix CD and putting it in random places where people will pick it up. So I made a playlist and started burning CD's. It's supposed to be about songs that inspired you or something. I think these songs have inspired me, whenever I hear them I automatically feel really good/cool.

First Day Of My Life - Bright Eyes
Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) - Bob Marley & The Wailers
London Calling - The Clash
White Riot - The Clash
10:15 Saturday Night - The Cure
China Girl - David Bowie
16 Military Wives - The Decemberists
Redemption Song - Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
Warsaw - Joy Division
Tower Of Song - Martha Wainwright
Ohio - Neil Young
My Generation - Patti Smith
Chelsea Hotel No. 2 - Rufus Wainwright
Holidays In The Sun - Sex Pistols
Rollercoaster - Sleater-Kinney
How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths
Teen Age Riot - Sonic Youth
One Great City! - The Weakerthans
Substitute - The Who
Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Stepmother! - Sufjan Stevens
Music When The Lights Go Out - The Libertines

Yeah, the list is pretty extensive, but it fits on a CD-R. And yeah, I did include two Clash songs but I'm reading a very interesting book about them right now, and the Clash was the first band I was really into.
=)