The Pimp Apartment

well, after a bit of cleaning it really isnt so bad. its canada day tomorrow, so i guess i wont get around to much this weekend, but one day we will have a cleaning bee (i hope) and get stuff organised.

in the meantime, it'll be fine, i dont spend a lot of time here, and when im here i just chill in my room -which is looking nice by the way. i just need curtains and a blanket.... about 10 minutes after this photo was taken, i couldnt see beyond those highrises for the rain and cloud....

canada day should be big, then its joeys birthday on sunday, but i really dont know if i should go. janaki might not go and i dont really want to go and torture myself watching him with his girlfriend! (who by the way is really nice -of course)

why cant i find someone just like him, that hasnt already been snapped up huh? story of my life.

Birthday Bash

ok, so it turned out pretty good. folks came round here for drinks etc. then we headed out. found a bar with $3 drinks -crazy. had a boogie. i foolishly fuelled my crush on a happily relationshipped man. and generally a good night was had by all.

Birthday Blues

so, today is my birthday (though technically my birthday is over by now back home...).

lesley went back home today to woodstock because her mum isnt well.
josh says he has to work now, plus his mum is in town so when he finishes he will probably go to dinner with her and might catch up with us afterwards.
eli 'has to clean his room' -hello? what a lame excuse.
i dont know about joey, but it may just be me and janaki -and maybe my new roomies...

it is also pissing down with rain, so no terrace party. well, there is a small undercover part, but really it just wouldnt be the same...

so i think i will just have to claim joeys birthday party as mine on sunday....

bah humbug.

janaki and les gave me a cool present, a canada polar fleece blanket and lanyard. very handy -and canadian.

and im trying to pack up my stuff to move into my new place tonight. grrr

and i bought a wireless card for my computer and cant get the bloody thing to work.

so generally the day aint going so great. i did get a lovely phone call from my sister though.

Statutory Rights

i strolled over to quebec province on saturday night for saint jean baptiste day. had a lovely time. janakis workmate henny came along and we met up with some of his friends -junior and xavier (how huge is xavier! used to be a pro footballer).

it was a lovely walk, about 20 minutes over the bridge. on the way back we had walkie talkies to keep us entertained. i am yet to use the walkie talkies cos i havent come up with a code name yet... any suggestions? (lesley: mamma spanky, janaki: happy hindu)

back in ottawa, we stopped in at another club, and then spent 40 minutes in a poutine queue. jesus! with THE rudest pricks in the world. oh well, finally made it out. poutine, by the way, is chips with gravy and cheese curd, some people say poo-teen, some say poot'en....

then on the way home, janaki and lesley wanted to go and pose with the statues in the park, and of course to do terribly lewd things to them. when we arrived at parliament house to pose with the tea party ('the famous five'), along came a police patrol car. though instead of sending us on our way, the lovely constable, posed with us!

he even pulled out his own camera! he let us wear his hat, and was a total tour guide -giving us lots of info on the statues and who the people were and then he took us around to find more statues.

so no, janaki is not being arrested as you may well assume from the picture...


later he let janaki and lesley look up people on his computer to see if they had a police record..... maybe a little bit naughty.....

Bald Heads and Big Boats

poor eli. well he kinda had it coming. we have come to the conclusion that eli has a problem with alcohol (among other things). he wanted his head shaved on friday night, so we brought him back to the apartment and i did the honours. naturally we had some fun first with a healthy mullet stage prior to the full chop. but when eli passed out on the couch we couldnt resist a little bit of fun and games. at the point when we stuck a panty liner on his forehead, he woke up and tried to leave the apartment. of course we feared for his safety walking home looking the way he did, but when eli wants to go home you cant talk him out of it.

he never made it out of the elevator.

5 minutes after he left, we heard bottles breaking in the street and got a bit worried. janaki and i went downstairs and checked around the block, but no eli. when we came inside to go back upstairs, the elevator opened and there was eli, curled up on the floor. we took him back upstairs and put him to bed on the couch. luckily in the morning, he was amused by the whole incident and greatly relieved that the pen was not permanent....

later that afternoon lesley and i went for a little jaunt down to mooneys bay, a little beach on the river, for some dragon boat racing. jolly good sport. 20 people in one boat. and such a beautiful afternoon! we didnt really watch the racing, just lay on the beach and looked for hot guys, but couldnt find many... i guess we should have gone closer to the beer tent....

N.N.A.A.

today was New North American Animals day.

i met some chipmunks -how cute


and a groundhog -just like puxatony phil!


all very exciting. i may have seen a gopher too, but janaki wasnt sure. he was very shy and hid in his little hole...


there were also quite a few bunnies hanging around in the park...

i also discovered this amazing looking cathedral behind parliament house.
well, i use the term discovered lightly... its not exactly hidden is it?

it was so hot today, and very humid making it feel like about 40 degrees C. gross.

had lots of fun the other night drinking free beer at janakis work after she finished with her workmate eli -cutie huh? janaki has dibs on that one...

Hot Diggety Dog!

now i got a job too!

just had it offered to me on the phone. its an outbound call centre at the national arts centre here, calling existing patrons and trying to sell subscriptions or get them to renew subscriptions. the boss guy is great, the money is pretty shit, but theres commission on sales, so hopefully my lilting aussie twang will help me along...

plus its a casual job, i can pretty much choose my own hours, wear what i want, and hang out with arty types! yippee!

start tomorrow!

Yee-Ha!!

i found an apartment!! such a sweet deal. 21st floor furnished condo apartment, $450 a month for phone, net, cable, bills, pool, spa, sauna, gym and pool tables.

i will be living with 2 guys, 1 of whom i havent met yet, so still need to get the ok from him, but the other offered it to me today. i am sooo excited -as are janaki and lesley cos they can come and use the facilities..... hopefully the guys wont be too messy. the ad said it wasnt furnished, but when we looked today, the room was still full of stuff and tyler said oh yeah, we need to dump it all, the last guy left it behind.... unless you need it? ha! perfect!

oh, and its so close to janaki and les -we can see each others balconies from the balconies... does that make sense??

so now i just wait a week for the other dude to get back from russia... and get a job... fingers crossed.... will check out a sports store round the corner that a prospective housemate told me about. plus call a few of the places i went to last week.

things are lookin up!

Getting Settled

so, it turns out that i was trying to connect to the wrong box... i can get on the net fine, but the connection is in janakis housemates room (lesley) so i sit in here tapping away. she is also unemployed so we surf the net together and then hit the streets looking for work.

ottawa is a very pretty city. i guess a big french infulence since quebec is just over the river. you can see it from parliament house.

so janaki is working across form parliament house, in a pub. we went there on wednesday night for a hip-hop night, it wasnt very busy, but it was very fun. her co-workers are mostly pretty cool. i got pretty hammered and was a little worse for wear the next day.

anyway, been looking everywhere for a job, handing out resumes, mostly in restaurants, but also a few office jobs. i looked at one apartment, but it was practically in an old peoples home. very weird. im looking at another this afternoon, sounds more promising. share house though, but very cheap. 400 a month for all bills (phone/net etc inc.).

so far i have only heard one or two genuine canadian 'eh's. and janaki and lesley laughed their asses off at me when i said 'howre you goin?', and then told all their friends....

Tokyo Pictures

meiji shrine in harajuku
courtyard 300 degree view

prayer cards at the meiji shrine

a traditional shinto buddhist wedding

daibutsu: the big buddha in kamakura

So I Made It ..... Just

what a nightmare.

would have almost missed my connection in dallas -except that the flight out of dallas was delayed, so they had to put me on another flight, i just made my connection in chicago, but i guess my bags didnt.

they should be arriving sometime today.. but since my flight was the last flight to arrive last night, and i was in immigration for so long, there was no AA staff to handle my baggage claim, so i think i was assisted by a security guard. i lodged a proper claim on the phone this morning at 5.30 am when i couldnt sleep.....

but guess what? i met a really nice boy on the plane... i think he thought i was really nice too. he's palestinian, but he's been here since he was 16. anyway, i think he is going to call me today.

janaki and her flatmate leslie, met them when they came out of the airport cos janaki had made a cute sign with my name on it. leslie said he semed very taken....

anyway. i cant get my computer to connect to the internet here. SUCH a pain in the ass. so still no more photos. or proper emails. sorry, cant be bothered emailing from yahoo. plus all my addresses are in my outlook.

grrrrrr


gotta write a resume, crappy crappy. look for a job, get a bank account.. blah blah

Lost In Transit

the easiest and cheapest way for me to get to osaka airport ended up being by plane... i just checked in to my flight to dallas, where i have to pick up my bags, go through customs, check in again... blah blah... so i will have checked in a total of 3 times during this journey and gone through customs twice. sooo boring.
but! the nice lady at the AA counter got me a bulkhead window seat for the 11 hour flight to dallas, so im pretty stoked about that.

so now ive really said goodbye to lots of people -although louis will be in new york later this month so hopefully..... mmm, hopefully i will have some money....

tom and michael rode with me to the airport this morning which was nice, especially cos they carried my bags (love you boys)..... im pretty hungover right now, we had a great night last night -tokyo was a blast. will blog again soon with pics of the big buddha in kamakura....

Celebrities and Sore Feet!

wow, what a busy few days. so after arriving on wednesday, i had lunch with louis and went on my little tour around harajuku with emily (my 2nd or 3rd cousin or whatever) and her friend kim. didnt see anything too crazy. a couple of girls in funny little outfits, but apparently the best time to go is sunday, so might check it out tomorrow. there were some crazy clothes stores though. the one photo i didnt get was of the mannequin with an outfit on and a sign sayng 'no pictures -Y10,000 fine or film taken' i just wanted a picture of the sign, the costume wasnt that crazy...... ha ha

wednesday night we went out for a lovely dinner with my 2nd uncle/cousin and his partner. it was kind of like yakitori, but all sorts of different things. lots of shiso and pork, but they called shiso basil which was very confusing. that was down the street in famous shibuya, and also my first experience of crowded tokyo streets. you know that stock footage of the giant intersection just packed with pedestrians...

on thursday i made my way across town to asakusa and a huge temple called senso-ji. and i mean huge. wandered around there for a while. unfortunlately parts of it were covered in scaffolding and also the taiko museum was closed for repairs.


on thursday night i went out with louis and his colleague and emily and her friend kim. great fun. we went to roppongi and had 2 hours of nomihodai. louis was absolutely trashed by the end of that. then we walked around roppongi being solicited by all the big black guys trying to get us to go to their bars. we finally went into one with the promise of Y500 drinks and a free tequila shot.

it was empty.

really, no other customers. at least we burned up the dance floor for a while, then ditched it. emily and kim took us to another place. i dont know what it was called i was too busy helping louis walk. but once inside and we escaped the waitress trying to make us buy a drink. emily pointed out jack osbourne to me. i didnt think it was him, but i guess it was. pretty weird. cos it was kind of like -wow jack osbourne. but then i thought, hang on.... he hasnt acheived anything that i should admire him for, so i dont really give a shit. it would be like if i saw paris hilton. people who are famous, just by association, are such lame celebrities. anyway, he didnt stay long, and i have no idea why he was in some seedy english style pub. louis started falling asleep at this bar, so we left. next stop, was free pool, and louis went to sleep in the back.... we had a little bit of fun while he was blissfully unaware....
after pool and back home -via the kebab shop of course...

tom and michael arrived yesterday. we met up and wandered around akihabara - the electric district, though spent all our time looking for one of those coffee shops that has waitresses dressed a french maids - we found something that was a foot massage by a french maid, and a sex shop... not quite what we were after, then ginza, then shibuya.

last night, dinner with louis, that turned out to be dinner while waiting for louis to patch up with his gf, after ignoring her the night before..... another few hours of waiting for louis, and then we sat in a nice park and chatted and had a drink. then back to louis' teeny tiny apartment where we slept 5 people like sardines. 2 in the bed one on the floor 2 on the couch. pretty funny really.

anyway. gotta meet tom in a hour and need to shower etc. later today we might go to a bottomless coffee shop -and that doesnt mean all you can drink....

And Who Said Tokyo Was Expensive?

yesterday i paid almost Y700 for a coffee.

thats 7 australian dollars, or 3 pounds & 50p.

it was just a regular latte.