Post World Cup Blues

I read an article on Sunday in which one of the organizers of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa said that come Monday (so yesterday) there was going to be a nation-wide case of the post World Cup blues. I totally understood that. It is always so sad when a really great event that has been anticipated for so long is over. I always feel so sad when the Winter Olympics are over, knowing that I have to wait another 4 years before they happen again. Last August when I was in South Africa, people everywhere kept mentioning the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It was really cool to see how 10 months before the whole thing started, everyone was looking forward to it so much. And now it's done...For the last month I regularly watched soccer matches, (or at least checked scores), reminisced a lot about the last World Cup, and had numerous World Cup related conversations. So while I am sure I feel only a fraction of what South Africans feel, I can definitely relate.

I first started to pay attention to/like the World Cup only four years ago, during Germany '06. (Although I went on a school trip to Italy in June 1998 (the World Cup was in France that year), and I remember one evening in Rome there were huge celebrations going on as the Italian team had won one of their games. Rome became a sea of giant Italian flags, honking cars and smiling and exuberant people. I remember my 14 year old self thinking all the celebrations were cool, but the World Cup - and how it could inspire that kind of display - was completely over my head.) L., and her entire family are big soccer/football fans and thanks to her enthusiasm, L., K. and I attended many a game at the Starry Plough in Berkeley in June 2006, primarily cheering on Argentina. We were crushed (absolutely crushed! After the match, we stood outside on the sidewalk in front of the bar trying to cheer ourselves up by acknowledging that in sports there always has to be a winner and a loser) when Germany beat Argentina in penalties in the quarter finals.

This time around, I cheered on Argentina again (although I greatly missed L. and K.!) wearing the Argentina jersey my dad bought me at Winners. Sadly, Germany beat them in the quarter finals...again! It was awful. But even once Argentina was out I still enjoyed watching the other matches, all the way to Spain's victory in the final. I like the World Cup because I think soccer is a cool and fun sport in general, and to watch. And also because I really love the (mostly positive) relationships between team mates, between players and their coaches, and players and the fans. Hugs, high fives, smiles, tears abounded.

What I found most touching of all was the welcome the Argentine National Team received at the airport in Buenos Aires, the day after their loss to Germany. Between 15,000-20,000 fans came out to the airport that evening, singing, waving flags and cheering on the team as the bus moved slowly through the crowd. These fans didn't care that Argentina had lost, they just wanted to cheer on their team. Huge crowds (literally a mass of people and flags) turned out in Montevideo when the Uruguay team came home - you'd think Uruguay had won, not come in 4th. It's difficult not to be inspired by that kind of cheer and good will, and wish it existed all the time. Although I know a big part of what makes the World Cup special is that it only happens every four years; so with that, I already can't wait for Brazil 2014!

Home Sweet Home

When I moved back to Toronto last summer, I was originally determined to make some changes in my bedroom. My room seemed perpetually stuck in the year 2002, with a few 2009 (now 2010) calendars reminding me I was no longer 18. I hadn't changed anything since I was in high school - there were the same pictures on the walls (including a very faded cut out ad from the newspaper of my favourite movie when I was 15 : You've Got Mail) and the same glow in the dark stars on the ceiling above my pillow.

S. told me the last time I saw him in Austin a year ago that he only likes staying at his parents' place in Baltimore for at most a few weeks at a time, because because being there makes him feel like a kid. "I still have my childhood bed" he told me somewhat sheepishly. Then last September I read an interview with Gwen Stefani who talked about how crazy it was to come back to her parents' house at age 26 after a year of touring with No Doubt to find all this fan mail. She said she lay in bed at night in her little single bed, totally surprised by how popular the band had become. She also made fun of herself for still living at home at age 26.

Well, I'm 26, I'm living at home, I still sleep every night in the bed I've had since I was 6, and I totally don't feel sheepish! (I think it may help that I love my bed (and have loved it since I was 6!) as it's high and has bed posts which are super cool.) Maybe it's because I didn't live at home from age 18-25 and so I know I can get by and be happy away from home, but I've loved living at home this year. It's been very stress free. I also love all the windows and my bath tub (I will forever & ever love that bath tub) so much. My bedroom is also a corner room - which are my favourite types of rooms. I realized the other day that probably my love of corner rooms stems from the fact that my bedroom at home is a corner room. It's interesting how certain likes or dislikes become so ingrained that we don't realize where they come from. I lived in and benefited from windows on two sides for the majority of my life, so it's no wonder that that's the type of room to which I'm most drawn.

Usually I love putting up pictures and making a room my own, but I actually barely made any changes to my old bedroom this year. Maybe it was because I had slept here for so many years before, but it just felt so comfortable exactly the way it was. So I still fall asleep each night under my glow in the dark stars, and they still make me happy like they did when I first put them up when I was 13. I have to admit that I am looking forward to living alone again in the fall; but I will miss my bedroom, and my house, and my parents very much. I won't be putting up glow in the dark stars in my new apt, but I like that my bedroom in Toronto will always stay - and feel - the same to me whenever I come home.

Strawberries & Skyscrapers

Before I went to Japan, I had so many ideas and images of the place in my head. I had wanted to go there for so long, but I was a bit worried that it wouldn't live up to what I had imagined. When I was in high school, my next-door neighbour moved to Japan to teach English and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Over recent years, my imaginings of Japan grew bigger and more varied. Classical paintings of Mount Fuji or of majestic blue ocean waves juxtaposed with Tokyo's bright lights and skyscrapers from Lost in Translation. When I read Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood in the first (cold, snowy) days of January 2006, I couldn't put it down for many reasons, but I especially liked when the main character(s) would take long walks around Tokyo. That city seemed like somewhere I desperately needed to visit.

Before leaving Berkeley four years ago, I was loading up on supplies at (my favourite store) Avant Card, and came across this really striking card of a Japanese woman with long black hair and a peace sign necklace. For me, this woman, in ways I couldn't and still can't quite express, represented another facet of why I wanted to go to Japan so badly. She seemed so confident, and alluring, and the peace sign necklace came across as totally genuine - and added another layer to her 'personality' - instead of being cheesy or tacky. As much as you can say/know this about a picture, she was someone I wanted to be friends with.

Sometimes we anticipate something for so long or build something up so high that it almost seems inevitable it won't be what we hoped; that reality will be much less cheerful than what we expected. Fortunately this time for me, Japan in general, and Tokyo in particular, surpassed all my expectations. The country has gorgeous (green at this time of year) scenery, and genuinely cheerful, friendly, and helpful people. I was so happy to be in Tokyo. It is a city I would definitely live in, and a city I could see myself being very happy in. I loved the skyscrapers and bright lights I expected, but also the things I hadn't expected: the smaller streets with their little shops, the parks, the way the trains run right next to parks with tall trees whose branches and leaves lean over the tracks, the stationery stores that had better collections than I could have ever imagined, the outfits (both men's and women's), the French patisseries whose selection of cakes and tarts in the windows would give any Parisian patisserie a run for its money, and the preponderance of strawberries. I have long loved berries (raspberries the most, but strawberries are second) and the Japanese love strawberries. I found (and of course bought) some very sweet strawberry stationery, and I indulged in quite a few pieces of strawberry shortcake while there. If I really did live in Tokyo, I think I'd want to spend an hour (or more) each week, staring out the window at the city and the skyscrapers before me, while writing letters on my strawberry patterned paper and eating some strawberry shortcake.

Celebrity Withdrawal, Or Not...

Last December, sort of out of nowhere, I decided to stop reading two celebrity gossip websites (People and Just Jared) I had been reading every day for a long time. I'm not sure what exactly prompted me to stop. I think I just finally (and really about time!) got bored of looking at pictures of celebrities I really didn't care about go about their daily lives. I also realized how the approximately 20 minutes (give or take) I was spending each night looking at these two websites while I ran my bath, could be much better spent doing other things. I have not, for a second, regretted my decision. I now don't stay on the internet as late anymore and instead spend more time reading my book every night; as well, I now more regularly read and look at other, much more interesting blogs like Salon and Jezebel (which conveniently regularly mention celebrities...)

So in a way I quit cold turkey, except that I still read the Entertainment section of the Huffington Post almost every day. Clearly I haven't been able to tear myself completely away from celebrity gossip, and I wonder why? The desire to click through 30 barely different photos of Jennifer Garner (or any other celebrity) walking down the street is thankfully gone (was it even ever there to begin with? I'm not sure... It must have been in a small way, but it really became more automatic in the sense that I went to Just Jared and clicked through the pictures pretty much on auto pilot). But, the desire to know more about celebrities' lives is not. Every time I watch a movie or a TV show and like one of the actors in it, I always look them up later on the Internet Movie Data Base. I like seeing their birthday, where they're from, what else they've been in, if they are married or dating anyone, if they have kids, etc. etc. I think it's just because I am inherently interested in people, and different aspects of their lives. And aspects of celebrities' lives - though often in distorted ways - are out there on the internet, just waiting for me to find them.

When I studied abroad in Santiago, my parents came to visit me at one point. I asked my mom to bring me some gossip magazines. Feeling tired from their long flight, my parents went to sleep pretty early on their first night. I, on the other hand, stayed up late, wrapped in blankets (it was May, and quite cold being almost winter there), and caught up on months of celebrity gossip. After I was done reading US Weekly, Star, and In Touch, I gave them to C. so she could catch up too. At her birthday party a few weeks later, after we'd had the cake and sung Happy Birthday, one person found the magazines and soon everyone was gathered around, discussing, exclaiming,and savouring the link to American celebrity culture which wasn't present in Santiago. Looking back now, I definitely feel I've come a long way. But I still look back fondly on that first night with the blankets and the tabloids, and how, as sad as it may seem, I did get genuine pleasure out of reading those magazines.

The prominence of celebrity culture can also be found in unlikely places. In December 2006, while on a trip to New York, I had lunch at Cafe Fuego, a Cuban restaurant in the East Village (sadly now closed) that was owned by model (and also Halle Berry's then (but now ex, which I know thanks to Huffington Post!) boyfriend Gabriel Aubry. I had read online about the restaurant and how tacked to the bathroom wall were People and US Weekly magazine covers. Naturally I went to the bathroom to investigate, and sure enough there were 3 magazine covers - recent ones too, leading me to believe they were regularly changed. I still can't decide if I think that's funny and cool, or a bit tacky. Were they trying to make fun of celebrity culture? or embrace it? Probably a little of both, which is about where I am too.

Ash Clouds and Empty Cities

My friend N. was trapped in Berlin last month during the fall out from Iceland's volcano. Her three day stay turned in to a nine day stay before she was finally able to make it back to Oxford. N. explained that the city seemed to be paused, no one was leaving, and no one was coming in. I read an article by a journalist based in London who described how the city was empty of both many of its inhabitants (the volcano erupting during school holidays, thus trapping a lot of vacationing Londoners abroad) and of tourists, who couldn't get in due to the cancelled flights. He said he'd never seen London so empty, and that he really appreciated it like that.

These thoughts of static Berlin and London bring to mind images of ski towns in summer or beach towns in winter. I can never decide if I like them or not. On the one hand, it's nice to be somewhere that is normally bustling and crowded and instead have it all to yourself. But on the other hand, something seems really off. There is this lonely, abandoned, disused feeling that permeates and sometimes makes me feel utterly alone.

I was also reminded of a somewhat related incident closer to home. Last summer all City of Toronto workers were on strike. While the largest downside was the lack of garbage pick up (public garbage cans on the streets were the most disgusting as they were literally overflowing with trash...), there were some upsides, depending on who you were and where you lived. I read an interesting article in the Toronto Star in which a woman who lived on Ward's Island (one of the Toronto islands located in Lake Ontario, just across from downtown) described how she was actually enjoying the strike. City of Toronto employees operate the ferries which ship mainland residents and tourists to and from the islands (during the strike there was still one ferry running - maybe by a private company? - to let actual residents of Ward's Island get back and forth). So no regular ferry service meant the islands were very quiet. The woman interviewed said it was really peaceful, and that the island residents were savouring having their home completely to themselves during a time of the year when that never usually happens.

I've never been in Paris in August - the month in which most Parisians supposedly leave en masse for the beaches and sun in Cannes and St Tropez, and Paris becomes overrun by tourists. But the whole concept of that month fascinates me. The underlying implication seems to be that while the Parisians want to enjoy a summer vacation by the Mediterranean, they also want to get out of Paris precisely to avoid all the tourists. It seems like a mutual (unfounded) dislike in which tourists love to say Parisians are rude, and Parisians love to hate tourists. I, for one, don't find Parisians noticeably ruder than inhabitants of any other city, and I also don't find tourists in Paris any worse than tourists in other cities. I do, though, think it would be very cool if one August there was another volcano ash problem (or something along those lines)keeping all the tourists out and letting the Parisians -who for whatever reason did not go south- the chance to have their city all to themselves.

All About the Lace

Twice a year, in January and July, all the stores in Paris have big sales (soldes in French). I arrived in Paris in January 2007 in the middle of them. But preoccupied with finding a place to live and getting my life in order, shopping was forced to take a back seat. Luckily, I was still in Paris come July. Walking home one warm summer day I decided on a whim to go into this lingerie store I'd long had my eye on. One hour later, I'd tried on half a dozen night gowns and was leaving the store with a black nightie with lace trim. The next July, back in Paris doing research for my masters, I happily indulged in more sales and more lingerie - complete with lace trim.

It seems my favourite material just might be lace. It is the perfect compliment to clothing of any kind, especially lingerie. Somehow wearing a nightgown or camisole that has lace in it makes me love it all the more. It's very pretty and feels nice as a fabric too. Lace also works well on its own. I already have a lace shirt, and black lace leggings, and my dream is to one day have a lace dress.

But lace and lingerie aside, sleepwear (of all kinds) are my favorite type of clothing. Maybe it's because I really like staying home, in bed and in my pajamas, reading or on my computer. So I want to have a good wardrobe for those activities. I also like how sleepwear is supposed to be both comfortable, but also any number of other adjectives like pretty/cute/sexy/warm. A person can pick and choose depending on their mood. Even though I am asleep the majority of the time I wear any sleepwear, it's still nice to go to sleep and to wake up wearing something I like and that makes me happy.

I sometimes think about and miss Paris, and its (among other things) fabulous lingerie stores. But most fortunately, Toronto has good ones too, one of which (Beestung, see picture below) happens to be about a 7 minute walk from my house. After seeing and falling in love with a nightgown in the window, after walking by it several times over a two week period, I finally went in there on a chilly Sunday afternoon in March and bought it, despite the lack of soldes. I'll always love Paris for (among other things) introducing me to excellent lingerie, but it's nice to know I can still get my fix on this side of the Atlantic.

Across the Border, just a minute away

A few weeks ago C. and I went to Niagara Falls. It struck me, as we stared out across the falls and over to the American side, that the US-Canada border is fairly nondescript. Though I've never been to Niagara Falls, New York I imagine it is just an extension of Niagara Falls, Ontario; the same language, fast food joints, flashing signs, tacky motels and extra large casinos - all with the falls as a dramatic backdrop.

Two years ago, S. and I drove through El Paso, Texas en route to Los Angeles. My eyes were glued to the views of Ciudad Juarez, hilly and cramped, across the Rio Grande. There was no mistaking that Ciudad Juarez belonged to a different country. It was striking how different it was, and how the Rio Grande - not very wide in diameter - could have such distinct cities on each side of its banks. We could see lots of people, running or milling around in front of houses that had tin roofs, and looked more like shacks. El Paso looked more American - typical apartment buildings, familiar gas stations, nothing out of the ordinary.

I had a different border experience, however, out in the middle of nowhere. Last June, J. and I went to Big Bend National Park in West Texas, which is located on the border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila. Under bright blue skies and air thick with heat and adventure, we ventured to the banks of the Rio Grande. Big Bend is never that crowded, and was even less so that day, and so J. and I had the shores of the river, and by extension the whole border, to ourselves. It felt a bit like the wild west, like we were on the frontier and were about to make some great discovery, even though the landscape looked nearly identical on the other side. I had to keep reminding myself "That's Mexico!" In a sense it was similar to the two Niagara Falls in that there were no noticeable differences. I waded into the water (warm, brown, silty, and surprisingly soft on my feet) and though I didn't go far, I can't say I wasn't tempted by the idea of wading and/or swimming to the other side. It would have been so easy to cross that mysterious, invisible line (so mysterious, and invisible who even knows exactly where it is...) and seek my fortune on Mexican soil....