A24

The past two months have been a hell of a wave to ride. I juggled four paying jobs with a full course load of school at one point, to earn enough for spring semester's tuition. I was at my behavioral intervention job, did babysitting for the two most adorable, precocious kids in the world, am assisting on a library research project, and I work for the Students' Union, still. To be honest, even with all that, I still managed to do pretty decently in uni. I got into a fellowship scheme for spring, which gives me a tiny stipend for books, and is actually a cross-faculty book club I have to be part of for the semester, so it's going to be even more work on my plate, but hell, if I have to be paid for something, it might as well be for reading books. I also won the Alexandro Malaspina Award for interdisciplinary excellence, which is easy for me, as someone taking a Political Studies Major and a Liberal Studies Minor. The latter award came with $500 cash, so now I have $7000 saved, of my $12,000 spring semester's tuition. And yes that's twelve grand for the next four months, half of which I don't have. People here/domestic students don't seem to really wrap their head around the number until I show them the invoice on the school's website. But you know, we'll see how things go, I guess. So anyway, despite doing decently well in school and work, the issue of the Palestinian genocide weighs heavily on my mind, possibly even more so, because both the country I come from, Singapore, as well as the country I reside in, Canada, are allied much more closely to Israel than they ever should be. I've been to pro-Palestine marches here in Nanaimo, but it's a very small community that attends, and it's disproportionately people of color as opposed to the majority white people who live here. It gives me a constant headache and perpetual existential crisis. I have a Palestine story highlights on my Instagram, if you should need it to be aware of why you should be pro-Palestine. If you're here, reading this, I assume you're already aligned somewhat to most of my beliefs, so I don't think you'd need them, but they're there. They're also resources for you to have conversations with the greater public if you ever wanted to do so. 

NOBODY'S SON, NOBODY'S DAUGHTER

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This week, I went to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia and where the BC Parliamentary building is located. I went with the BCFS and other student constituent representatives to propose and push our lobby document initiatives. If you'd like me to explain our asks in person, lemme know, or if you'd like a copy of the document I could also send it to you, otherwise the campaign that we're lobbying for can be found here. 

We met with different MLAs and ministers across the political spectrum. It felt very much like I was stepping into AOC's shoes for a bit, and I was very thrilled to be there. We also sat in to watch a question period and it was very much like a catfight between the government and its opposition parties. 

When the week was over, we had one day left in Victoria, so Cole drove us to Beacon Hill Park, where we went to the petting farm, and the fall colors in the park made me fall in love with the city of Victoria. Nanaimo needs to up its game so much! It was a great week, but I am zonked out now, and I have to get back to my school coursework. The grind never ends, even though all I want is to live in a cottage and pick mushrooms all day.

MR. DRESSUP

Last week, Alessia and I were entertaining the idea of fostering a kitty in our apartment. Unfortunately, we asked our landlords and they said no, so that was a short-lived dream. Jeremy had won a pair of tickets to see a film as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, and then we bought a couple more tickets, so I went over to Vancouver last weekend to watch some films. While staying over at Jer's, I also got to spend time with his cat, Barbara, and she's a Maine Coon, so that was nice. The first film we saw was La Chimeras. Both of us felt it was a little long and some of the scenes seemed disjointed at times, but overall I thought it was amusing and the story was a very interesting, intriguing, surprising one. I'd say I liked it and Jeremy gave it a 7/10. The other film was Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe. I hadn't heard of Mr. Dressup prior to the film festival, but apparently he was the Canadian counterpart to Mister Rogers (they were both friends). It was lovely to watch the film and be introduced to a decades-long icon of Canadian children's entertainment, and to such a stellar personality. Ernie Coombs, who played Mr. Dressup, as well as the show he put on, were both so wholesome and heartwarming. I watched as the entire theatre of young and older adults who'd grown up with Mr. Dressup cried as they felt waves of nostalgia at seeing the father figure they'd grown up with. I clearly cried as well, because it was so good to know of such a hopeful persona and TV show, and also because I cry at nearly everything. Jeremy was moved to tears, which is a big deal, because he has trouble crying, and he gave the movie a 10/10. After that movie, Jer took me to MacLeod's Books, one of those old bookstores that are just overflowing with piles upon piles of books and nothing else, no merch and all that. I hadn't known before I stepped in, but apparently the place is a Vancouver institution and well-known among Vancouverites. Whilst browsing, I saw the book Ishmael, a book that I'd seen and read sometime during my travels in LA, and that I very much enjoyed. I made my way through the towering stacks and saw books that reminded me of my professors, one of which was The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, a book that Mark Williams loves to quote from. Whilst I weaved through the tight corners, I heard the elder bookstore owner quiz his two younger employees. When one of them asked the elder where to categorise one of the books and why the author's name sounded so familiar, the older man said "he was the guy who came up with the word 'robot'", and the three of them kept going back and forth about other books and authors. I observed them, entranced, and I told them it was like watching an episode of Jeopardy. I asked the older man if he knew everything in the world, so he responded that he didn't, but when he was back in school way back then, his friends called him a walking encyclopedia. I told him I believed it. I don't really enjoy the dropping temperatures and the start of rainfall, but last weekend was one of those weekends where things felt enchanted and I felt lucky to be alive. It was just one of those days.

RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT ME

I can’t believe it’s been three months since I went to see Taylor Swift live. A lot has changed, a lot has also stayed the same. 

In personal news, Adam is back in his hometown doing his part for wildland firefighting. He and I still message each other sometimes, though it’s never been anything dubious nor sexually misleading in the past three months. He’s a decent guy, and I think he and I both really liked each other in the day-to-day of things, so that makes things harder, of course. I still think about him when I want to talk about the big things, or the smallest of details in my day.

On the political front, I’ve been to a couple of BCFS meetings and skills workshop weekends. BCFS is the British Columbia Federation of Students, which is basically the union of students’ unions across universities in British Columbia. Two weekends ago, we spent a weekend at Loon Lake Lodge in Maple Ridge on the mainland, it was the perfect weather and I swam properly in Canadian waters for the first time! The week before that, the VIU Students’ Union met with Jagmeet Singh and Lisa Marie Barron, to speak about inflation and how it’s affecting affordability for students. It was surreal to be in a room with Jagmeet Singh, I remember watching his speeches from way back when in Singapore. And now I’m here, representing students, talking about my own experiences, doing the damn thing! I am getting closer to my VIUSU family, and I’m truly glad I’m spending this summer back in Nanaimo instead of working elsewhere.

Speaking of work, I got a job as a care worker for youths with behavioral disorders. One of them has ADHD, is severe on the spectrum disorder, has sensory processing disorder, and last week, because he couldn’t go out for a drive (it’s one of his regulatory activities and we were out of gas), he smashed a window in with his head. It was a lot to deal with, but he’s not very cognisant of things, especially not of fear and danger. I’ve met my therapist Art since then, and it’s interesting to unpack things from my job with him. I wouldn’t have thought I’d do exceptionally well with a high-stress job, but with my kids, it’s like I’m a fly-on-the-wall observing them and their inability to recognise that despite the enormity of their feelings, certain things are simply not urgent in the grand scheme of things. It’s a good lesson to apply for myself.

Summer is lovely, and I guess I’m right where I’ve always been.