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July 20, 2005
Escape
I'm tired. I'm tired of waiting. It's been four months (I know, I know) and everyday I run home to see if there is a glorious letter from Canada in the mailbox for the next step - and every day I am disappointed. I did get a Maclean's today though...yeah!
(Mason and) I have been doing research and it seems as though the average wait time for people is about 12-months, give or take a few months. So that got us thinking this weekend. In reality, we have 8 months before we are given the green light to move (hopefully...crosses fingers, toes, everything...) and there is a lot we need to do in the meantime. Fix up the yard and house, get it ready to sell, get rid of stuff, etc...
It's the waiting that I think hurts the most. If I had a date, if I knew, if I could make it black and white I'd feel better. I'd see the horizon and know that I will make it to the end of it.
Sigh...
Posted by Nikolas at 09:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackJuly 16, 2005
Homesick
This was on Canadian Exatriates blog that I check often- the title is Homesick
The past few days have been arduous and leave me little time to enjoy my life. This weekend is a blessed reprieve in an otherwise hateful and disliked week. I think about Canada often now, not as a mean of escape, but as a chance to change and grow.
A place to repot tired roots in a vibrant soil...I think about what the future holds now and I see it within grasp. If anything I thank my good friends here, there and abroad for teaching me and showing me the things I need so that I am successful no matter where I end up. Like this:
C and J are leaving Austria. The experience of living in Central Europe in a country they know nothing about and little of the language has ended. I think for other reasons to her and J, they are going to try the UK for a bit, but I have the feeling they are returning to the United States. There is a rumor they might settle in Ithaca NY - near Rochester and the high speed ferry to Toronto. I'd like to think that this is the Universe's way of pointing us in a direction. C and J have been some of the closest friends we have ever had and to know that our friendship (and dinners) might continue fills my heart with joy in an otherwise abysmal week.
I don't see them returning as a failure, I see it as an adventure. How
often can you say you lived and worked in three different countries and got to experience culture and travel and good and bad times. I look forward to their adventures and stories from wherever they land....I just hope it's on the same continent :-)
July 13, 2005
Sigh
I know I say this every few weeks or so, but I am really ready to move.
I'm ready anytime Universe...OK?
Sigh...
Posted by Nikolas at 09:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackJuly 12, 2005
Something I should have written about yesterday
I remember back in the early 1990's having arguments with many of my friends regarding why I was not supportive of the United States going to War with Iraq in order to free Kuwait, but why I was supportive of us declaring war on Serbia in the Bosnian War. I sat there and argued how thousands of people were being exterminated (ethnic cleansing, I think, was the appropriate word back then) but because there was no oil in Bosnia there was never going to be a reason for us to be involved. So what did the greatest power on earth do? It sat back and watched. Flew a couple of air superiority missions, carpet bombed Sarajevo and allowed the Srebrenica Massacre to happen.
There are days that as a human race I think we have failed. That I think it would be OK for God, Gods, Goddess, whoever to wipe the slate clean and give the cockroaches a chance to do better - and this is one of them. Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of that horrific act. Over 8,000 people were murdered, exterminated, and their killers have never been found and never been brought to justice.
So we keep fighting this war in Iraq and Afghanistan killing more people and creating generations that will hate our children and our children's children, but we did nothing in Bosnia.
Sigh.
I just had to recognize the day...it's something I should have written about yesterday.
Posted by Nikolas at 04:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackJuly 06, 2005
Born on the Fourth of July...or close to it anyway
Excellent movie by the way! I highly recommend it to anyone - even if it does have Tom Cruise in it (another famous fellow July 3rder)...it's before he became a Scientologist and an ass.
I put out the flag on Monday...first time since last Independence Day - as much crap as I give about living in the United States these days - it's still the home of my birth and it's ideals will always live on...long after the current President trashes them and runs them into the ground. We may be fractured and divided, splintered and angry, but deep down inside we believe in the values that we stand for (at least I hope some of us still do.) Here are some inspiring words from some great Americans - I hope people take them to heart:
You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free. ~ Clarence Darrow
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. ~ Edward Abbey
No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities ~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. ~ Mark Twain
A politician will do anything to keep his job -- even become a patriot.~ William Randolph Hearst
Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. ~ Adlai Stevenson
A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. ~ George William Curtis
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. ~ Susan B. Anthony
First they burn books, then they burn people. ~ Anonymous
When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses. ~ Shirley Chisholm
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. ~ Judge Learned Hand
If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. ~ General George Patton
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group ~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction. ~ President Thomas Jefferson
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." ~ President John F. Kennedy
July 02, 2005
I'm not a Social Worker for nothing...
So I'm perusing stuff on Canada (as I sometimes do) to try and find out more about the country and the political system. As I'm reading through Wikipedia I find that the NDP is associated with the Democratic Socialist Movement which I discovered in my early college years speaks to me.
When I move there I'll actually be able to participate in a party that speaks to me. If I ever get my citizenship I'll be able to vote for a party and a person I believe in - and they might actually have a chance to win!
Sigh....I love this system.
Posted by Nikolas at 09:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackJuly 01, 2005
Happy Canada Day!
Before I go to sleep I wanted to wish all of you Canadians (and soon to be Canadians) as well as everyone else a Happy Canada Day. Here is to hoping I'll be able to celebrate it in Toronto next year!
Here's a pciture I took this week from the Toronto Islands...fitting, eh?
