Chan's Personal Blog

Well, this was quite an eventful and restful long weekend. I did absolutely nothing productive, which is a fairly good measure of a good weekend.

So, the weekend began with The Oasis (youth and young adults group) at church on Friday. When I pulled up to the church, there were three fire engines blocking the parking lot entrances. Apparently the alarm had went off four times earlier in the afternoon, and a bunch of cops showed up, with police dogs. They thought someone had broken in, so they were getting ready to send the dogs into the building. When the cops entered, they thought they smelled gas in the kitchen, so they called in the fire department and someone from the gas company. Long story short, false alarm. It was quite a fun scene to watch though if you were driving by the Mackenzie highway though. In either case, the service was pretty good. I even got a few games of badminton in afterwards at church (second favourite sport).

Saturday was my casual high school reunion at Beacon Hill Park. It was loosely organized, but about 14 people showed up, which is quite a few (we have a relatively small grad class). It was pretty fun seeing old friends. My goodness, it feels like everyone's got/getting a degree. Unfortunately it was kind of cold, and the forecasts were wrong. It wasn't supposed to rain, but it did. The following grad members showed up (in no particular order, I'm also using maiden names for those who have married for clarity, sorry for any omissions or spelling mistakes): Kara-lee W, Lenna W, Fiona C, Tim J, Tyler J, Bill G, Chris C, Steve W, Christa R, Andrea W, Rachel W, Kim P, Natalie L, and Bethany C. Thanks for organizing this event Bethany.

Sunday I had a fun time setting up sound and computer equipment for church. I'll leave it at that.

On Monday, Brian, Adam, Tyler, Bill, and I went to go see Star Wars III in the afternoon. The lines weren't bad at all. We waited about an hour and twenty minutes in line, but we got dang fine seats. We ran into Brittany from PCS as well (not evil Brittany). Don't worry, there's no spoilers about Star Wars III here. Overall, the movie was probably the best of the latest Star Wars films. However, there are still cheesy scenes that make you shake your head and make you wonder what they were thinking.

I think the most annoying thing about the movie was Lucas' attempt to take pot shots against President Bush in this film. It was very awkward how he incorporated it into the film. I'm mainly talking about the dialogue between Skywalker and Obi-wan near the end of the film. The things they debated about was awkwardly placed because they make it seem like that is the primary lesson Star Wars has been all about all this time, which it hasn't. What's even more annoying is all the people drawing parallels with Star Wars III and current events. I've heard Bush is like Darth Vader, I've heard the new pope is like the Emporer, I've heard Hillary Clinton is like Darth Vader, etc. At the risk of being accused of flamebaiting, I think drawing parallels from Star Wars as if it is some great literary art that George Lucas has created isn't all that great. Quoting and citing from Star Wars isn't exactly the most academic thing you could do, and I don't think it helps your arguments all that well. There are far better works to derive arguments from.

In either case, I was happy that they played Star Wars II on TV on Sunday. I got to watch that and refresh my memory before I saw Episode III. In addition, Teletoon had been re-running the Star Wars animated short films of Clone Wars. This was a collection of short films that take place in between Episode II and Episode III. It gave a lot of great background (kinda like what the Animatrix did for the Matrix, but better). The movie made a lot more sense after watching Clone Wars.


Anyways, it was a great weekend. God save the queen!

I was leaving work today, and ran into Natalie. Thanks to her, she reminded me about the G2K reunion thing happening this weekend. I almost forgot about it.... in fact, I didn't even remember that this was THE May long weekend.

So, just a reminder to all G2Kers, we're holding an informal 5 year reunion picnic thing at Beacon Hill Park on Saturday 1:00pm. Here's the e-mail that I got from Bethany who's organizing it.


Hopefully we'll have a good turnout. See you all there. I can't believe it has been five years already. I feel old.

I ride the bus to work/school every single day of the week. I've probably been using transit for over seven years now perhaps. In either case, riding the bus means you meet lots of interesting people. I'm going to share two stories of racism that I have experienced on the bus. It should be noted that 99.99999% of the time, I have had no problems with people on the bus, and these stories are merely for your entertainment. I don't intend to represent transit in a bad light, on the contrary, transit has been very good. The stories are true, yet I look back at them and laugh. I'm not looking for pity here, I'm looking to get a laugh.

Story 1
So one day I was riding the bus from work. The bus was fairly crowded, so I was sitting in the priority seating which is at the front of the bus. This is an area normally reserved for elderly people and handicapped individuals.

At the Town & Country stop, this old lady gets on, and sits near me in the priority seating. She gives me this dirty look and continues staring at me. I kind of glance away to avoid eye contact, and a little later I look at the lady again, and she's giving me this frown.

Finally she blurts out, you dang Chinese people are taking up all the space. You're every where!

Uhhh.... okay, this is a tad awkward. I just kind of smile politely.

She continues, you're taking up all the bus seats here in Victoria, and you're all flooding into the country. That's a dang tragedy. Where I come from, in Scotland, there aren't any Chinese people. There are no Chinese people to get in my way. People should stay in their own countries. Ah, Scotland, now there's a great place to live in.

Okay.... so there's NO Chinese people in Scotland? This demographic survey from Scotland seems to indicate that there's 16,000+ Chinese people living in Scotland. You can't stop the Asian Invasion lady. You will be assimilated. The big bad Chinaman is going to take your women and children j/k. It would be funny if I said that out loud to her. I just smiled and got off the bus when it was my stop.

In either case, it was interesting that the lady didn't seem to like immigrants, especially since it looks like she immigrated from Scotland.

Story 2
Another time, I was riding the bus to work. I had been reading a book by Victor Mordecai entitled Christian Revival For Israel's Survival. It was an interesting read as it gives a biblical perspective of terrorism and the middle east conflict. This book was published well before 9/11, and a lot of the things the book presented are totally relevent to today's war on terror. It was also very well written as it covered a great deal of history, and it contained many excerpts from secular sources like newspaper articles, and religious sources such as the Bible and the Koran.

In either case, this lady sits next to me. I see her kind of looking over seeing what I'm reading. At the top of each page I'm reading is the title of the book. The lady asks, uh, what's that? I answer, just a book. She asks to see the cover, and I show it to her. The front of the page had an Israeli flag on it.

She quickly said, you shouldn't read that.

I'm somewhat dumbfounded at this moment, as I'm wondering what the heck she's talking about.

She goes on to say, you shouldn't read that, throw that away. The jews are bad people, they're cursed. She then quickly gathers her stuff and gets up to sit elsewhere on the bus like she's totally offended. A minute later, she hits the buzzer and leaves the bus quickly.

Okay.... that was totally wierd.

Conclusion
I personally didn't take any offense to these two individual's comments; however it was very unexpected hearing that in this day and age. In either case, I look back and laugh at these stories. The funny thing is, I still occasionally see those individuals on the bus, but they don't recognize me. One day I should go up to one of them and go, BOO! I'm a scary highly educated chinaman here to steal your land, money, women, and children, and I've come to occupy your precious busses in this underpopulated land you call Canada, which way to the welfare office?! .

Anyone else have funny stories about racism?