Delusion-Elle

These days, I'm not generally one to write out my thoughts. Part of the reason behind this is that I just don't have the time. I have a hefty amount of schoolwork to contend with as well as obligations to my family and boyfriend. Life is good, but it's giving me very little room to breathe and reflect.

I'm not exactly sure what the nature of this post will be exactly, but I came here with my head full of thoughts caused by a certain tumblr post as well as heart full of self-love... and of course a lack of motivation to do my homework.

The tumblr post in question is this one. If you don't want to click through to the link, I've posted the post's sole contents here. Yes, it is this image on the right here. I remember a time when I would've readily reblogged that to my own tumblr blog, but looking at it today, right now, I am disgusted and saddened. I get self-hate. I understand self-deprecation. I've mentally beat myself up many many times before. But the thing that I'm finding more and more with tumblr and its massive community is the glorification of this self-hate. And having been there, I understand why it's so popular. You're single. It bothers you. You hate yourself for it. Why can't I be pretty and desirable? Why doesn't anyone want to be with me? It's an easy and toxic state to fall into, and the fact that society seems to create the illusion of coupledom being the norm just makes the situation worse. It's expected of you to be in a relationship, even if your parents or friends don't expect it of you. No, this is a battle between you and society as a whole. And the way you cope is to attack first... even if it's yourself that you're attacking. It feels good in a twisted way. I know. I remember. It feels good reaffirming how you will be alone for the rest of your life. It feels good being able to "stick it to the man". Hah! You think that people get into relationships and fall in love and that as a person, it will happen to me? Well well well, you thought wrong, you son of a bitch. That can and will not ever happen to me. And it's not because I'm too good. Oh no, it's because I am not good enough -- for anybody. I am undesirable and I acknowledge that. I am incapable of being loved and here, let me tell you, let me show you: I am aware of it and it is a part of me and I will wallow in it.

I remember wallowing in self-pity. I remember wanting to be in a relationship so badly. I remember looking at friends and strangers, looking at all of the ones in relationships and focusing on them and their happiness. I remember going to work and plastering a smile on my face every time I dealt with a customer who had brought their significant other up to the counter with them. It hurt. It felt like the world wished to spite me. "Hey, you can't get into a relationship, so let me bombard you with happy couples! NYAH NYAH!" It was tough, and I truly had deluded myself into believing that I would be alone forever. And I was not okay with that.

See, the thing is that loneliness and being alone is intrinsic to existing and living and being human. There will be times when loneliness will strike. There will be periods of your life when you will be alone. And sometimes you may not even physically be alone, but isolation will still live in your heart. Being alone is natural. You need to be alone. Not all the time, no, for loneliness can be its own brand of poison, but for periods of time you do. You need time alone to sort yourself out. You need time alone to get to know yourself better. There is nothing wrong with being alone, and this is something that we as a society need to accept, believe, and champion. And that is what is wrong with tumblr.

Tumblr is no different from the rest of society in a way, but at the same time it's a more concentrated version. Tumblr is where the insecure teenagers flock. Tumblr is made for those who are alone -- infinite scrolling on a dashboard tailored to your tastes, tags galore to explore, unidirectional interactions in the form of reblogs and likes. However, on tumblr it is more obvious, the loneliness. This is partly due to the fact that it is a blog community and feelings are posted ever so often. As great as it is to be able to tag and share and spread posts virally, this viral aspect also results in what I think of as "widespread sadness". You start with one post bemoaning loneliness and pretty soon, the entire community is made aware of how much they hate being lonely and single as well.

I'm not one to write how-to guides on these kinds of things; relationships and self-help are concepts relatively new to me. And yet tumblr has incensed me so much lately with these self-deprecating posts belittling the state of being single that I am driven to post this to express my own feelings. First and foremost: There is nothing wrong with being single. We should all strive for the state of being happy while single. These are months/days/years/decades dedicated to you. This is the time where you can do anything you wanted to do. You can laze about and play games all day. You can read hundreds of books. You can pick up another language or two or three. You can work on that one project you've always wanted to do. And it is all of these things that add to your being, not whether or not some other human being likes you, loves you, wants to bang you. Being in a relationship enriches your life on a different level, but it does not generate that inner peace and happiness that is reliant solely on your relationship with yourself. This is something that a certain subset of people need to understand.

It's hard. I know that it is. It's hard finding good things about yourself. It can be insanely difficult not to compare yourself to everyone around you. But there was this one concept that stuck with me when I was muddling around in the throes of my own self-dissatisfaction: people only let you see the highlight reel of your life, and this highlight reel is what you are comparing against your own lowlights. So don't be too hard on yourself. I discussed this with my boyfriend once, and yes, a certain amount of self-hatred can be acceptable if its only purpose is to serve as a self-motivator. If you are able to look at someone and think that you want to work on being as good as them or better, then that is it. That is the only instance in which self-hatred is acceptable. As soon as you use another person's achievements as something to berate and belittle yourself for over and over again, it is time to stop comparing yourself against them.

The thing is that it can be done. You can get out of the mental rut. I don't know exactly if there is some sort of magical, universal solution, but for me, it was proving to myself that I was capable. I pushed myself. I went out and did co-op. I went into it with so many misgivings and insecurities, and I came out of it a better person. This I am sure of. Meeting more, good-quality people who were kind but who were also flawed (and these were older folks who were more secure about themselves and perhaps were more willing to show their flaws) really helped me accept myself. I went and did yoga. I went for walks at lunch to clear my head. I exercised every night and lost enough weight to physically feel better. I became more aware of what my personal style was and instead of trying to make it fit a certain mold, I let it go and started to choose close to support and enhance it. I learned to take pride in who I was. I am a good, kind, smart person who looks reasonably well-kempt and appropriate for my age, stage of life, and surroundings. I may fall within the confines of "normalcy", but that is okay. Being a rebel is great, as is being edgy. But for what I wanted my life to be and for the person that I wanted to be, I realized that being a normal, functioning person in society was right for me.

I can't say for certain if my "transformation" had any causal effect on the fact that I got into a relationship some months afterwards, but there is a possibility. Confidence was a part of my demeanour now and I think that it showed. My boyfriend tells me now even that when I am brave enough to tell him things -- whether embarrassing or weird or quirky -- he respects and likes me more for having that confidence. Confidence is sexy. And if you can't bring yourself to love yourself "despite" being single, then you aren't ready for a relationship. As simple as that. And even if you are still single then, then it's okay because you've already found a certain love and acceptance: yourself.

"It's been a while."

I feel like I've started many a blog post with those 4 words given how many times I go on hiatus. Well, I'm not guaranteeing that I will be back on here for long; I'm procrastinating right now and I'm not really in the mood for studying.

Let's just say that life is good. Sure, I may have failed the last final exam I had, resulting in possible failure of the course, but I know that I can bounce back. I can and will survive whatever school tosses at me. Heck, I am going to survive whatever life throws at me. Except death, I suppose.

It's been a good number of months since my last post. I suppose that I can recap the past term.

School has been... killer. Let it be known: never take 4 CPSC courses concurrently! It is absolute murder. The thing about CPSC courses is that each assignment takes an ungodly amount of time to do. And unlike with a lot of other subjects, ones that involve coding in particular have no foreseeable end sometimes. This is something that I don't think a lot of people outside of the field understand unless they are in close contact with a CS student. You write your code and logically it makes sense to you, your peers, your TA, and your prof. But then you find a bug and upon fixing that one, you find another. And this goes on and on until you reach the point when you can comfortably say "Okay, I've gotten this thing to the point where it's good enough. It's not done, it's not perfect, but it's good enough and I've already stayed up until 4am four nights in a row because of it." Of course, if you aren't a perfectionist, it doesn't really matter. But most CS folks are, it seems. Looking back on my courses, they were much like I had anticipated, although I did not foresee having a crappy group to work with for 310 and I certainly had not anticipated the good network of people I had to help me survive the term. After taking the year off to do co-op, I didn't think that any of my buddies would be left, but it turns out that they all did co-op too, so I had common courses with almost everyone I befriended within my faculty back in second year. I also reconnected with an old childhood friend and it's really just amazing how things worked out so that we're probably about as close now as we were way back when.

And of course I made a new friend. A new best friend, really. He is fantastic. I have no other all-encompassing word to describe him. No, he's not perfect, no one is. I realized somewhere along the way that it was not fair of me to project any weird ideas of perfection onto him. Reasonable expectations are fine, yes, but beyond that, it's just unfair to the person and I would never choose to be unfair to him. I'm thankful to have met him and I'm thankful that I took the chance. I remember being in a bad place mentally and emotionally less than a year ago, but I got through it and I think that all of the confidence and maturity that I gained from that year off doing co-op changed me. Maybe it didn't change the core of me, and to those who knew me so well likely saw little to no difference, but rather this change came out in my public self-presentation. I was able to crawl out of the hole that Accutane and mild depression opened up and accept myself and see value in me. That isn't to say that I don't ever tumble back down. There are still phases, but they pass and never seem to last more than a couple days now. But of course it never hurts to hear someone you love tell you that you're beautiful.

In short, I'm in a good place now and I hope that you all are too.

I've been back at school for a week now. Surprisingly, I'm not hating it as much as I thought I would. My workload (so far) has been very manageable, and today I actually get a decent amount of free time. I don't have all that much to report on school, though maybe I'll just briefly go through my courses again...

CPSC 314: Computer Graphics - "this is a hard course", the prof warned on the first day. "There will be a lot of math." Goodness knows that I'm not fond of Math in the slightest, but I do love seeing a visual representation of my work in (practically) real-time. So far I've been given one assignment for this course and I actually find the work on it rather enjoyable. The actual coding seems to be limited to the assignments, which is fine, really. The concepts that we learn about in lecture are quite interesting, and I love seeing the examples that the prof puts up for us to look at.

CPSC 310: Introduction to Software Engineering - I don't know what to make of this course right now. So far we seem to just be working on software engineering practices used in the industry, which is a bit boring given that I just came off a year-long co-op stint, but aside from that I haven't gotten too much homework from this course. Sure, we have the weekly lab, but the labwork so far has been introductions to using certain software. There's going to be a big group term project for this course and I'm a bit worried about that, but we haven't actually been assigned it quite yet so I'll try not to waste too much time thinking about it right now.

CPSC 322: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence - The prof is unfortunately a very boring lecturer. I've heard that he's quite well-respected in the field and that he's done a lot of ground-breaking research for the university, but then again, there's little to no correlation between how well one lectures and one's research abilities. The subject matter so far is a bit reminiscent of CPSC 221, but the examples are very much geared towards the AI aspect of certain algorithms. The first assignment for this course was pretty fun -- finding two examples of programs that use AI and writing about them. But then again, I enjoy writing (especially technical writing) so who am I to say how much fun most CPSC students would find it?

CPSC 320: Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis - This course is hard. I can't spin it any other, euphemistic way. I don't know if I'm quite so lost right now that I can say that I'm irreversibly lost, but the concepts are confusing. The only saving grace is that the prof is fantastic. He makes lecture go by much quicker than my 322 lectures. The first assignment was horribly difficult for me, but then I'm quite possibly the most illogical person (I run on intuition and intuition has no place in the study of algorithms). There is a tutorial, thankfully, and more exposure to questions and concepts is always good. (Tutorial is also a chance for me to pick the brains of smart people I might not normally have the chance to pick the brains of. Which is nice. I enjoy meeting smart, cute people who are willing to help me.)

MUSC 220: History of Music III - Aw yesssssssss, the Romantic era. I may or may not have mentioned this before, but I spent a year of my youth studying the Romantic era for the RCM History 3 exam, so in a sense, I was raised on this stuff; I knew about Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Smetana, and Berlioz before I knew of Niels Bohr. And I enjoyed it, even when I was 10. European history has interested me ever since I came into contact with books about the Tudors. Funnily, this course seems to be an almost exact rehash of my RCM one, although the works we study are different, and it's much better now because I understand what sorts of socio-political strifes were occurring at the same time. I get the context a lot better now. Anywho, the course itself is great -- the prof is hilarious and very energetic, we get passages of text every week to supplement our reading, we write about a different topic every week in tutorial, and there is going to be a term paper. I love term papers like you wouldn't understand. They are the easiest way of getting marks, and if you put in maybe 30 minutes of work every day for a few weeks, it's really a painless process.

Alright, so that's a summary of what I'm taking and my thoughts one week into classes. I don't know if I'll have much time to revisit this blog once the work starts to pick up, so here's until next time!

I swear that I am not turning this into a review blog. I swear it right now on my love for Kamelot and cats, and goodness knows those are some pretty strong loves. It's just that I recently finished Borderlands (the vidya gam) and wow, it was fantastic! Cue the fangirly ravings!

EDIT: If anyone's looking for a good deal for the Borderlands 2 pre-order, Green Man Gaming has a much better than Steam. It's a digital copy that can be added to Steam so don't worry about integration into Steam -- it's simple and easy!

Borderlands is a first-person shooter role-playing game, or FPSRPG for short. This genre in itself is one that I haven't seen before and Borderlands is probably the first of its kind to find such acclaim and garner this much attention. But this is definitely some well-deserved attention.

You don't usually see the letters FPS and RPG together, and there is a reason for that: how exactly are you going to take elements of a first-person shooter and role-playing game, and mesh them together in such a way that will appeal to fans of both genres and still be fun? Players of FPSs go into the game with intentions of shooting things, plain and simple. The storyline in an FPS is usually pretty scant, and that's totally alright. The plot is not supposed to be the focus in these games. FPS games offer quick gratification for those in the mood to just roam through a level and shoot things along the way, racking up as many kills as possible. Zombie apocalypse and war games tend to fall into this category. On the other end of the spectrum, you have your good old-fashioned RPG. These games are story-heavy; in fact, the storyline, supported by quests to move it along, is what drives the entire game. Coming in as a close second to the story is the actual role-playing aspect: your character. In most traditional role-playing games, your character grows with the progression of the story, a concept often captured with a skill tree or skill build. With a skill tree/build, a character is offered a series of abilities, but only so many points per level-up to put towards these abilities. This requires the user to strategize so that they first boost the abilities that would help them the most at a low level. Because of the intricacies and wide variety of skills available for skill builds, quite a few RPGs take place in a fantasy world in order to introduce magic skills. Also, magic skills are flashy and that gives their animators some work to do. :)

So. Borderlands. How did they do it? How did they take elements from both genres and make them into this crazy, fun, and one of a kind experience? The FPS element is an obvious one -- your character's perspective is (almost) always in first-person, and your weapons are all guns. But the way in which this is supplemented by the RPG aspects is really cool. Like in most RPGs you get to pick your "class", of which will be your character for the rest of the game. There are four options in Borderlands, but unlike the traditional 4 (close-range physical, magician, long-range with limited ammo, and quick-stealthy/balanced-basic damage), these are all ammunition-based classes: the Berserker, Soldier, Hunter, and Siren. Because all four of these classes use guns, grenades, shields, and a basic melee attack, the differences between them come out in their one special ability (which does follow the traditional 4 thing fairly closely). But, you may be wondering, where do the real RPG elements come in? Is there a storyline? Is there a skill tree? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes. The skill tree for each character is broken into 3 specializations which focus on skill with guns, the power of elemental artifacts, and their own special. And the storyline? Well...

What?! You think cel-shaded is always like Wind Waker cel-shaded? With cutesy graphics? I'll show you!!!

What kind of storyline would you need to have to make an FPSRPG work? Guns... fantasy... war games have been done to death and so have zombies (no pun intended), which left Gearbox with pretty much the only option of creating their own world, a kind of space-western with a touch of steampunk. Borderland's story takes place in the future on a planet called Pandora. The planet was left practically uninhabited after some large mining companies left so the only remaining citizens are rogue bandits and a few eccentric townfolk, a lot of whom look like they have gone through a war or two of their own. Our four heroes, the Berserker, Soldier, Hunter, and Siren, are all Vault hunters, a small group of people who aim to find and take the stash from a possibly mythical thing called the Vault. The Vault is not something that has been confirmed to exist, but along the way, you find out that it is indeed very real, and you go and claim what you came to claim. The atmosphere is gritty and the cel-shaded graphics are an interesting take on the situation. Strangely enough, it's a working combination. There is very much a post-apocalyptic feel to everything -- the dilapidated buildings, the junk piles scattered through the region, the clunky vehicles that you get to drive, the dusty environment, the abandoned locales turned into bandit hideouts.

Of course, there's a lot more to the story than that, but I want to come back to the FPSRPG elements, because yes, the storyline is again driven by quests. They are pretty standard quests, and as it is a first-person game, you get a different perspective when doing the "activate this switch" and "grab & fetch" type quests. You really do have to look for things sometimes, but it's a pretty painless process with the map system. As this is more of an RPG than anything else, Borderlands also has a level-up system, which of course means that you can train and purely focus on levelling up. The enemies spawn and respawn after certain periods of time, which is quite different from your standard FPS. But hey, it works! And what with the amazing variety in the amount of weapons/drops you can find, it becomes apparent that farming is encouraged.

L-R: Hunter, Siren, Berserker, Soldier

Another point I'd like to touch on is the multiplayer aspect. When I first purchased the game, I was a bit hesitant because the only multiplayer information I had noticed on the purchase page was something about player vs. player arena duels, and this is not the kind of multiplayer I usually enjoy. I prefer co-op games where you can team up with a few friends, work towards common goals, and get each others' backs. After purchasing the game however, I noticed that there was indeed a co-op mode. There were a few difficulties in setting it up -- apparently the PC version has a few more hoops to go through than it should -- but I was able to play through most of the game with my brother, which was a great help. The multiplayer co-op is done really really well in Borderlands. Like, really really well.

It's a different experience. True, the enemies are a little tougher (there's probably some sort of formula for determining their level for balance), but the fact that there's someone else to change the dynamic of the game just adds to the excitement. For example, I'm usually the kind of person who rushes into the thick of things (because I'm not patient enough to be a sniper), which usually results in me taking a lot of damage. But when my brother was playing with me (expert sniper that he is), it became a lot safer for me to play with my style. My brother also benefited because I am the type to loot everything and check every chest for money, meaning he could spend more time sniping and less time worrying about funds as the monetary loot is automatically split evenly. This is pretty standard for any co-op game/mode, but the best part about Borderlands co-op is that if one person finishes a quest, everyone else playing who also has to finish that quest, gets the same bonuses and rewards without even having to go in person to finish it. Although the environment is not completely open world, the maps are quite vast and there are usually several quests per area so it is great being able to split off, while staying in the one area, and do several quests at once.

It's apparent that Gearbox put a lot of time and hard work into this game, and truly it shows. From the atmospheric music that matches the environments perfectly, to the characters' dialogue, and the little details in the weapon design, it is no wonder that Borderlands achieved "game of the year" status and has become a much beloved franchise. The only weakness I have seen so far is the replay value, but as with any RPG, there is nothing stopping a player from just grinding on some enemies in order to reach level cap and max all their skills. The fact that they do offer subsequent playthroughs is a great idea, though, and my brother has already started his second playthrough because he just missed the game -- as simple as that. He missed the hectic pace, the variety of weapons, the satisfaction of gunning down enemies, the strategy involved, and building his character up to be equipped with the best weapons and skills. I have to say, too, that the game immersed me in its world and it really did become a major part of my life for a while. Maybe it's because Borderlands took two of my favourite genres and mashed them into such a perfect amalgamation, or maybe it's because the world was just built so solidly and consistently that it felt like home, but it is no doubt one of my favourite games in existence, and I very much look forward to spending more time on Pandora in Borderlands 2.

I don't generally post book reviews, and honestly, I don't intend for this to be a review. Reviews imply some sort of evaluation, and I do not think it even possible for me to properly evaluate this book, mostly because my thoughts on all fall within the range of "ASDFASDFASDFJL; AHHHHHHH" to even less coherent fangirling. Deathless, by Catherynne M. Valente, is the book in question. And yes, I really did love it. A lot.

This book pretty much shattered any delusions I had about my own writing abilities.

This is not going to be a spoiler-free post. You have been warned.

Deathless takes place in Russia just before and into World War II. However, if you are expecting a war story, you are mistaken, but only partly. The heart of Deathless is the world of the eponymous Koschei the Deathless. Koschei is a demon from Russian folklore who generally takes on the role of the antagonist. Valente's spin on this Russian folk villain focuses specifically on the tale The Death of Koschei the Deathless, but in a Communist Russia WWII setting. I am not particularly a big fan of Russian culture or Russian folklore and my knowledge in the subject was limited to the one demon Baba Yaga introduced to me by Mussorgsky, so I went into this story with very few pre-conceived notions about the mythos and the setting in general. Valente brought this taste of Russia to a level of accessibility that I not only appreciated, but lapped up. I made sure to read up on the folklore after finishing the book -- but only after finishing as I did not want to spoil any of the plot for myself. In hindsight, I probably could have stood to read up on the folklore as I was going because Valente's take on it was vastly different in some respects, although I feel that she kept the essence of them, and really isn't that all that matters? I won't go much further into the storyline as it essentially follows the folk tale.

Now, let's talk about that prose, that beautiful beautiful prose. It has been a long time, I feel, since I've read a book with such elegance and grit woven expertly into its text. It is clear that each word was chosen and placed with care. Valente is a wordsmith in every sense of the word, a master in her craft, sculpting a moving narrative out of words in precisely a way that may even brush perfection. The analogies and metaphors and imagery that she uses are a little odd, but it fits the exact flavour of the novel. A fountain that spews blood and a house that walks on chicken legs? Definitely odd. A committee of tiny house spirits, 3 bird-husbands, and a soldier-making factory? A little out there even for fantasy. And because of the nature of the folklore, it was only right that Valente's writing be... well, magical. In short, I just really wish that I could write like her.

The theme of magic is prevalent through the story, and I can only liken this quality of magic to that of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and The Night Circus. This brand of magic is one that feels natural and is intrinsic. These are magical worlds, but not in the sense that the magic is the focus. No, the magic is subtle and it tinges every aspect of the world without anyone batting an eye. It isn't strange. It isn't gimmicky. It belongs. It's hard for me to put into words exactly how magic was presented in this book, but it fit, just like how Valente's word choice and placement did.

Maybe I've been in a bit of a rut with all these YA books where the protagonist falls victim to the self-insertion bug, but I also truly adore the personalities Valente injected into these characters (although, hey, this is "adult fiction" so perhaps that has something to do with it). The folk tales don't offer much about their personalities sure, but Valente stayed true to the stories enough so that these were plausible, fully-fleshed characters. I think that the thing about these weak self-insertion characters nowadays is that they are a cheap way for the reader to feel strongly connected to them; if it feels as though you are the character, of course you would feel a deep desire for the character to get what he or she wants. In Deathless, you don't get that sense at all. These are characters who cannot be pigeonholed as "good" or "bad". They say bad things sometimes. They do good things sometimes. But with all of their actions, they are driven by their passions, and I reckon that there is very little more human than passion.

I suppose that this did turn out to be a bit of a review, but ah c'est la vie. I have nothing but good things to say about this book. The prose is beautiful, the characters are rich, and the magic is thick. Sure, the storyline may seem a bit spotty at times, but the magic fills in those gaps of belief, because in the end, this is a fantasy novel. It may be set during WWII and it may be based on Russian folklore, but it is pure fantasy through and through.

I've never considered myself to be a particularly proud or patriotic Canadian. Over the years and after travelling to Europe, Asia, and all over the United States, I  have noticed that my attitude towards my own country has improved; never do I ever feel more Canadian than when I am not in Canada. I'm able to be more appreciative of life here: clean (tasty!) drinking water, universal healthcare, general acceptance of different cultures, and favourable reception in foreign lands, to name a few.  All that being said, there's still this inferiority complex with regards to many aspects of American culture and European history. But I digress, this is a post about being Canadian, and like I said, I never really thought of myself as a "proud" Canadian.

FOR MAPLE SYRUP~~~

Funny thing, though. When I meet people who live here, and have lived here, for a number of years who refuse to become citizens, I cannot help but feel a prickly sense of pride in my country swell within me. Why don't you want to become a citizen? You've lived here for years and years; you enjoy it, and I have to say that it is a pretty damn good place to live. There is no conscription, our economy hasn't tanked as badly as the States', we don't generally face all that many extreme weather instances, most of us don't walk around with firearms. What is keeping you from taking that small leap from permanent residency to citizenship?

After talking to and getting to know a permanent resident, the topic of "being Canadian" did crop up in conversation. The segue which brought us to the topic is irrelevant -- also, I'm not 100% sure that I remember it exactly, but I think that it was about touristy "I love Canada" clothing -- but what she told me came as a surprise. For the sake of convenience, I'll refer to her as Friend A. Friend A did not want to become a Canadian citizen. She had no desire to associate herself with this country that she had lived in for the last 8 years of her life. She was proud of her heritage to the point of prejudice against Canadians, despite the liking she had taken to me and various other Canadian-born folks (i.e. descendants of immigrants but not actual immigrants ourselves). She said that she saw few benefits to becoming a citizen of Canada -- that the big draw of being able to vote as "useless" as she did not care what happened in terms of politics anyway. I remember feeling a combination of things. Shock was a big emotion, but I also felt offended by this. What, was my country not good enough for her? Every other sentence from her seemed to condemn Canadian habits and Canadian culture -- Canadians were "cheap", the men didn't pay for the women's share on dates, we changed romantic partners as often as people change their outfits, the women don't dress nicely, the weather is terrible, and on and on. From here, the anger in me rose and thankfully petered out eventually. But this led me to thinking... what is Canadian culture? What makes someone Canadian?

We are a land of immigrants. Same as with the United States, very few (or none, if you go back far enough) of us are of the indigenous people. If anything, it means that Canadian culture is rich. We were shaped by the combination of England, France, and America's tug of war for land, and then we were settled by people from all over Europe, Africa, and Asia. We, along with the rest of North America, are so different from where our people started. Canada itself is a funny case. We are caught in a crossroad of sorts. Unlike America, we love our European roots. We did not have some grand battle for our freedom and independence, and although that means that our relationships with European countries are not strained, it does add to the weird inferiority complex we have in regards to America. Ah, America, how we love and hate thee. When times are good, we look to them as an example of what we could be if things had gone wrong. Otherwise, we spend our time wishing we had their glamourous culture and boisterous nature (as well as their currency and pricing, but that's getting into specifics). Our love-hate relationship with America is as much a part of Canadian culture as our politeness. Is that what being Canadian is about?

Yes and no. There is more to us than that. There is a certain image of us: nice, polite, simple folk who live in regions of great wilderness with eccentric habits. To an extent, I believe that this image does shape us. We strive to uphold these views, and really, they are not particularly negative. That being said, we only strive so far. I think that I've touched on Canada's mosaic makeup of ethnicities versus America's melting pot before, but I think that there's been a gradual shift in our culture towards the melting pot, which I think is great. I'm tired of a Canada divided into little ethnic neighbourhoods where people cling desperately their Old World sensibilities and traditions to the point of rejecting Canadian values. I understand that people want to keep traditions and certainly I support the preservation of culture, but at the same time, this is Canada. We have our own values, beliefs, and culture (as jumbled and confused as it is). I don't support the complete desertion of tradition, but I think that if more people incorporated Canadian values into their lives, it would create a happier environment for all of us, and certainly it would make it easier for the younger generation, which oftentimes is caught between cultures with conflicting values. I know that it's hard to accept change, and as we get older it only gets harder, but I have seen kids struggle with this discrepancy in culture and they will be the ones left behind in the dust. In the end, we are in Canada and in order to succeed in this society, there is a certain amount of "Canadianness" that you need to have because you know what? Your kids are still going to be graded according to Canadian standards. They're going to be taught in school using Canadian methods and they're going to be compared against other Canadian children. And okay, I probably really have no business blogging about this, but it just frustrates me to see people here who blatantly reject Canadian culture, make absolutely no efforts to fit in, and then they go and tell Canadians off for having Canadian values.

But then this brings me back to my earlier thought: what constitutes "being Canadian"?

I just feel a bit weird now since I've never used the word "Canadian" that many times in one blog entry.

I'm not sure what the point of this blog entry will be today, but it's been a while since I've updated this thing and I do have a backlog of things I want to write about. It's just hard thinking of them once this text editor is open in front of me. Funny how that is. I'll keep this post to personal things and any other content will be pushed to another post.