Got my preorder of the Planet Earth HD DVD from Amazon last week, and I haven’t been able to stop watching.  Here’s a mesmerizing clip of a great white shark devouring a seal from the first episode, slowed time 40 times:

Although Attenborough doesn’t provide any social commentary, the show does allude to the effects of global warming. One episode shows a polar bear unable to walk far enough out to shore to hunt for seals due to the ice melting too early — the bear is forced to swim out into to the ocean to look for food. You’ll see what it desperately tries to do out of starvation in the trailer.

I went to Utopia for the second time, and it didn’t disappoint.  We got lucky, beat the dinner rush and got a seat within 15 minutes.  The place is small, they take no reservations and there’s a constant lineup outside.  It’s worth the wait though — it’s so veggie friendly it’s not even funny.  The highlight this time was the poutine.  The gravy was vegetarian, but no one would’ve guessed.  For the carnivores out there, there’s plenty of choice,  including a Bison burger.  My friend loved it.  It’s great to have a place where you can bring your meat eating friends, but have enough choice for yourself if you’re a vegetarian.

Someone from my high school just posted a photo montage on Google Video for their 30th anniversary, which occurred last year.  You can take a look at it here.   It’s got a lot more pictures from the girls’ side since it was a female alumni who put it together, but I make a cameo at 7:01 (lower left corner), and you get to see my whopping graduating class of 7 people at 7:11

Some people may find it hard to believe an asshole like me could come from a place like that.  Believe it or not, a teacher asked me during graduation day whether I considered becoming a monk, because I seemed like a perfect fit.  Ha!

…my old high school now has a Wikipedia entry.  Many people are interested when I tell them I went to a Buddhist boarding school in California, and I struggle to explain what it’s like to grow up and go through puberty there.  These entries fill in all the blanks for me.  Check it out here and here. 

Yes, there were peacocks there and they were quite annoying in the mornings. 

I was starting to get sick.  I was still recovering from a strained neck, bruised talibone and a chronically sore lower back.  Yet I couldn’t resist when the call came.  My cousin knows the mascot, and he needed someone to do a skit during a timeout at the Raptors game.  In return, I’d get free seats and would meet someone who I might work with on future house-related projects.

When we got there, we got to prepare in the tunnel where the Dance Pak was getting ready.  The mascot purposely sent for us a bit earlier than necessary so we could ogle at them.  Meh.  I was feeling a bit too sick and nervous to try anything with them.  We put the sumo-wrestling suits on, got a few practice hits in and rushed out.  It all went by so quickly, but the feeling of being on the court in front of 15000+ people is hard to match.  Everything went well — I got knocked down a few times by the Raptor but was still feeling ok.  Just as we were about to leave the court though, he came and knocked me down again — and then he jumped on top of me.  That one hurt.  I felt a  sharp pain in my lower back, the same back that has been bothering me since last August.

Now my body feels like crap, I walk funny and my sore throat has gotten worse to the point where it’s painful to swallow and my ears hurt.

If I could turn back time, I’d do it again though!

I just finished reading Tuesdays with Morrie, and I’m putting one particular concept into good use right now.

“You know what the Buddhists say?  Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent”

But wait, I said.  Aren’t you always talking about experiencing life?  All the good emotions, all the bad ones?

“Yes”

Well, how can you do that if you’re detached?

“Ah. You’re thinking, Mitch. But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.”

I’m lost.

“Take any emotion–love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them–you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

“But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.’”

…

I thought about how often this was needed in every-day life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don’t say anything because we’re frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.

Morrie’s approach was exactly the opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.”

Same for loneliness: you let go; let the tears flow, feel it completely–but eventually be able to say, “All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well.”

“Detach,” Morrie said once again.

Too bad I only just realized I’ve been doing it wrong when the good emotions have gone and the bad have come.

Sometimes when I’m really into a song, I listen to it non-stop for the whole day.  Today, it’s Patricia Barber’s rendition of Cole Porter’s Easy to Love.

I can’t wait for the Raptors season to start!  I got to see the preseason Nets game, with Vince Carter back in town again.  There was a funny moment when Jorge Garbajosa, who is the first person to wear #15 since VC left town, checked into the game.  Vince stared at his jersey for a bit, then gave a smile to the broadcasters, as if to say “where’s all the love for me gone around here?”  Also, the lights went out for a while so it was different watching them play in near darkness.  It’s gonna be a much more positive season this year with all the changes made.

After the game, I went to the home of one of organizers of VITT, a yahoo group for vegetarians in their twenties.  Her mom showed a bunch of us how to make various Indian breads including roti, stuffed roti, puri and kachori.  Afterwards we got to eat them all…it was rare opportunity to have a homecooked Indian meal, and I loved it!

Oh yeah, I also got to check out Utopia Cafe this weekend.  Although there’s a wait (the place is so small), the food is really good.  It’s very veggie-friendly, and my meat-eating friend enjoyed his meal very much too.

Had a nice long Thanksgiving weekend…started off with the Chris Botti concert on Friday, went apple-picking at Watson Farms Saturday afternoon, locked myself out of my running car and then had Thanksgiving dinner with neighbour/friends AmyChris, JackieDerrick and Natalie.  On Sunday we went out to Century Room — it’s always nice to see familiar faces.

On Monday I saw The Departed.  It’s actually a re-make of the Chinese movie Infernal Affairs.  Both were very good, but I preferred the original slightly more.  It’s less vulgar and you could empathize with the characters a bit more.

After the movie I went to the Reservoir Lounge to see Sophia Perlman and the Vipers again.  I had planned to see her last week already, but on Saturday I got a nice surprise — Sophia posted a comment on my blog!  You can see it here.  I’m convinced I have psychic powers as something like this happened to me a couple weeks earlier too — I thought about a person I haven’t talked to in a while and she messaged me shortly after.  I wonder what sort of things I could do once I harness this power…

Anyway, we got to introduce ourselves to her and had a great time as usual.  October 23 is their one year anniversary so I’ll definitely be back for more!

Sometimes I think: why bother getting attached when you know it’s going to hurt so much when it ends?