Revival

Wow. I didn't blog at all in 2015. That kinda makes me sad. I've always wanted to keep my blog as active as I can, but sometimes life just gets away from you. Now, it's 2016 and I feel like I have a fresh start.

I officially marked my 3rd year in Canada in December. I love this country. To bits. But I have to admit that moving here has not been without its challenges. To be honest, I didn't even notice that something was wrong, but I think being away from my support system, my amazing friends from back home, took its toll on me. I felt just a tad bit lost.

I think I'm finally finding my way.

Since moving to Red Deer in December of 2013, I have developed friendships with some wonderful ladies. I'm also now part of a kick-ass book club whose meetings I look forward to every month. I now hold a permanent position at work--as a systems analyst for the 911 Dispatch Centre, no less--a position that I am still in awe of every day. I even started a business!

I'm still working on getting my ducks in a row, but hopefully I'll get there soon. My biggest goals this year are to save for a house, work on my fitness, and of course, travel. It's been 3 years since my passport last got stamped. It's time to get on that again!

With that, I'd like to end my post with a photo I took 2 years ago, when I first moved to Red Deer. It was close to Christmas, and Bower Ponds had just opened for skating season. It was magical. The photo reminds me of a scene from a Christmas card, and I think I fell in love with Red Deer that night.

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The Art of Ukiyo-e

The other day, someone finally said they liked the appearance of my blog. That comes as a huge relief to me because I literally spent days--like 2 or 3--looking for a blog theme that I liked. I self-hosted my own WordPress blog for the purpose of being able to fully customize its appearance, but when time came for me to pick an actual theme, I was totally confused. I think I browsed more than 500 themes, and tried on more than 30, before I finally decided on the current one. After I made up my mind about it, I further customized it to suit my preferences.

This theme is called Japan-Style. I don't know how fitting a Japanese theme is to me, but I guess it's not so far out, considering Japan is the only foreign country I've lived in. At first, I didn't care about whatever was in this theme. The important thing was that it appealed to me. Upon closer inspection, however, I realized that this was no common Japanese theme with sakura or geisha. It showcased the ancient Japanese art of ukiyo-e (I confirmed this with Annie).

Ukiyo-e, translated as "pictures of the floating world", is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings popularized in Edo (modern day Tokyo) between the 17th and 20th centuries. Woodblock prints were produced when an artist made an original drawing on ink, which would then be traced by an assistant and glued face-down to a block of wood. The wood would then be chiseled to follow the print and later inked, then pressed on to paper, sequentially and often repeatedly, to achieve the desired painting. It was a genre that became popular with the "regular people" of society, because they could be mass-produced and were cheaper than original paintings. The subject of ukiyo-e was originally the city life, especially scenes from the entertainment district. Other popular subjects were sumo wrestlers, courtesans, popular actors, and then later on, landscapes.

One of the most recognizable ukiyo-e is Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura).

One of the original types of ukiyo-e, a single-color painting by Hishikawa Moronobu.

A colored print depicting the Eijuan Tea House by Suzuki Harunobu, the artist who developed the technique of multi-color printing.

If you can see, my blog's background depicts a couple of fish--koi, to be exact, also known as carp in English. Another meaning of koi in Japanese is "love or affection", thus the koi is a symbol of love and friendship in Japan. And that, my friends, makes this theme so much more meaningful.

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Oh, Well

It looks like I'm blogging again.

I am embarrassed by my inconsistency, but what can I do? Life and blogging have ways to be funny. If you're doing so many things, you can't blog because you're too busy. If you're not doing much, you can't blog because you have nothing to blog about. It's strange, but time and time again I'm surprised by how I always keep coming back to LJ. I checked my archive and saw that LJ has been chronicling my life since 2003--and that is amazing. It looks like it's this particular blog that will be able to tell my life story, except it skipped some...

For the past two years, I haven't been blogging much, and it's during this time that I've had the chance to meet some people who have made so much impact in my life--my Persian friends. For those who do not know, they are here in my city to study. And since they are only here to study, they  will be leaving soon. In fact, some have left already. And though some are still here, most are graduating. So because of busy schedules, we don't get to gather as often as before.

Now what am I getting at, you might ask.

While I was browsing my old entries earlier, I was deeply grateful because I have this blog that can help me reminisce so many wonderful memories. With my Persian friends however, and the past two years of my life for that matter, it looks like I'll have to do my best to keep memories of them on my own.

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Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is entitled Home and Abroad in English Literature, and for that class, we're discussing the unfinished autobiography of a classic English author, Jean Rhys. Rhys' most popular work is the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which is the life story of Mr. Rochester's lunatic wife in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Next semester, they will be reading Wide Sargasso Sea in this class, and since I won't be here anymore, our professor kindly lent me a copy of the book so that I could read it ahead. Undoubtedly, among the two books, Jane Eyre is more popular, and since it is the inspiration (or at least one of its characters is)--the "original", so to speak--I decided to read it before reading Rhys' novel.

And so, I just finished Jane Eyre and it's amazing. It is so beautifully written, and by god, it made me cry (more like sob actually) so many times. There were parts in the book where Jane totally exasperated me, as she is very stubborn, but in the end, I was thankful for her personality. All in all, I love this novel. It is truly a literary gem and would recommend it to anyone. Now however, I'm kinda apprehensive about starting Wide Sargasso Sea. In Jane Eyre, the lunatic is kinda like the antagonist. And then I move on to this book, where she tells the story--she's the main character. I think it's going to be interesting. I know that there are always two sides to a story, but I just hope these two books don't contradict each other very much and that I won't be disappointed.

[ADD-ON]
On another note, I entered the Philippine Blog Awards contest. Heee. I know my journal's not very good, but what do I lose by entering? Nothing. I'll probably fix up this page soon to make it look more, erm... sophisticated. ^^; Hehehehe. If you wanna see the list of all the entries, just go to their website. My link's on there, too. XD~

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Yes!

This is it, I've decided. This is going to be my new journal.

I'm going to post my last post from my 2nd, short-lived journal at Diaryland.

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New technologies

11:04 a.m.
2003-10-09

Yesterday, we went to Yokohama and roamed around. And, I bought a digital camera! *yay!* It's an Olympus μ-20 DIGITAL model. It cost me about 50,000 yen in all, including case, and tax.

At the moment I'm at the IT Center again, reading a Java book entitled SAMS Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days. This book is Uchida sensei's and she's letting me read it 'coz we're gonna learn it together. It's quite interesting. Hmm.. I'm really looking forward to learning Java. Hopefully, when I go back home and study it in my curriculum, I will have an easier time.

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If you want to see my old journals though, here are the links:
     http://mfgab.pitas.com/10_30_2003.html
     http://mfgab.diaryland.com

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Another day, another time, another journal.

And so here it is, again. A new journal. Fyi, I'm just testing out these sites to find out which is really the best one. Good thing is, this journal is very interactive--I think! 'Coz it allows people to comment on my messages. Hmmm. Not bad, huh? Well, let's just see what happens...

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