It's been a while since I updated this Wiki. These are the news: I'm in Toronto for the summer (2007) until August 25. I'll be doing a part-time unpaid internship and I might also do some circus training!!

I'm quite excited about it although I'm still not sure whether I will be able to do it, both in terms of schedulling and financially.

The picture to the right is the view from my room... I love it. Unfortunately next week I'll switch to a different place for the rest of the summer.

So this is an update of what I've been up to: I went back to Mexico for the holidays (Christmas and New Year). Last term was extremely busy as I was doing 7 courses (as opposed to 5 which is the regular maximum course load) on top of which I was a T.A. (teacher's assistant) for a Spanish course. It was lots of fun and I really had a good time doing it so this term I'm doing it again.

It's been interesting to see people learning my mother tongue, especially because I'm also a student of languages and the process of acquiring a foreign language has always interested me.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll keep you updated later on.

05.JAN.2007

See no evil

Hear no evil

Speak no evil

Where would you go?

Spring/summer term is almost over and I will have about a month off before starting classes again. During that month I'll be back in Mexico City, where I was born and grew up until I came to Canada for University in September last year.

Having lived in the City for 22 years means a lot of the things that tourists like to do and see I take for granted, as a part of the landscape, so to speak. So, there are a lot of places that I may never have visited just because I never really felt I had anything to do there.

Anyway, I have a friend who was going to go to Mexico City for a couple of weeks but in the end he couldn't go. So I've decided to do this: from now until August 12 I will keep a list on my MSN Space with the places I want to see when I go back, and also the places that other people would like to see if they could travel to Mexico City.

During the time I spend in Mexico I will try to visit as many places from the list as possible and take pictures of them and post them there as well. If there is any building, museum, park, street, theatre, amusement park, that you would go to if you were in Mexico City, add a comment to the blog entry there and I'll put it up in the list.

A few things: I may also visit places which are not Mexico City itself but that are close to it. However, I can't promise I'll go to those places. So... where would you go?

HAPPY CANADA DAY 2006!

Also there you'll find the pictures I took from my trip to Germany with the play (Our Country's Good, read previous entries in my Wiki for more info on the play).

DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS

18 April 2006

A couple of weeks ago I had to perform a monologue for an acting class. The monologue I chose was a 'people watcher' from the first act in Carol Shields's Departures and Arrivals. When I read the character it felt so like me and I've decided to write about it because I happen to be at the airport right now, waiting for my flight. But let me tell you how today's story began before I go on to describe the people around me.

There's a bit of a story before today's story but let's start from the point where I already had the flight scheduled for today -- April 18th -- to fly back to Mexico, leaving from Toronto Airport at 9am. Well, I checked the schedule for the airporter service and it left the university at 6.05 arriving at Pearson 8am. I thought one hour would be just in time to check in and catch the flight but I couldn't have been more wrong...

I went late to bed last night. I had to finish packing my things. I set my alarm to 4.25am this morning so I'd have enough time to fold my sheets, pack my pjs, check out my dorm room, and walk to the Student Life centre to take the airporter. Well, the alarm didn't go off at all and I only woke up, by coincidence, to some birds singing out of my window... at 5.45am! I rushed out of my pjs and into my un-ironed clothes (not as if I would have ironed them had I had more time). I packed the pjs in my suitcase, put the sheets in a plastic bag, and took them (along with my key) to the front desk of the dorm. Then I had to run to SLC and I did it just in time.

At 8am o'clock, as scheduled, I was at Terminal 1, Pearson International Airport, but it was pointless as I could no longer check in only God knows why. I had to go and re-schedule my flight but direct flights Toronto-Mexico City with this airline are at 9am. I couldn't think of anybody to stay with for the night in Toronto, I didn't have money enough to pay for a hotel, and going back to Waterloo would have been just as useless because the same story would repeat (the earliest scheduled airporter leaving Waterloo is at 6am), plus I would have had to pay for the ride back to Waterloo and then to the airport again in the morning.

Anyway, I spent a long time trying to figure out what to do. I ended up with more airplane tickets than I needed and now I've got to figure out how I'm going to use them. Well... I know most of the story doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But by around 10am at least I had (finally) a direct flight back to Mexico City, for tonight at 8.10pm (different airline). Jesus Christ! Up since 5.45am and stuck at the airport until 8 at night...

So, I've come to the eating area and I've been listening to music, reading the newspaper, and working on an assignment which will hopefully be finished and e-mailed before my flight departs.

As for the people around me: there are two old men right behind me with a case for golf clubs. A little further to my right a man having brunch, some kind of chicken thing and a beer. A balding man wearing a ridiculous green shirt is sitting at another table and a group of good-looking people (actually just a couple of them were good-looking) sitting some tables in front of me has just left.

A couple of old people just sat at a table 45°NE from mine. A bit further away in the same direction there's a beautiful woman with a salad and a bottled cranberry juice. She has a nice outfit and extremely flattering hair style. She's eating as she types SMS and makes phone calls.

There's three (well, actually just two) good-looking guys -- one of which is sitting with his not-so-good-looking girlfriend -- around. At a table to my right, some 8m from where I'm sitting, a very pretty, well-dressed, young woman is drinking a cup of coffee while writing something or working on her PDA. And just now a guy with that nerdy-look that I find so extremely charming stood and left from the table right in front of mine... but I couldn't see him before because between his table and mine there's a pillar which kept him out-of-sight from me all this time (figures...)

Anyway, typing about the people surrounding me is not half as fun as it is actually watching them eat, talk, unaware that someone (I) is watching them and writing a blog entry about them.

Now, going back to Carol Shields's 'people watcher', what struck me the most about the monologue is that it gave me a sense that the girl observing people was not aware of the way she looked to others, although she seems to think now she looks like 'someone who's... sort of figured it out'. Sitting at this table, I don't know whether I'm in that situation where I've got it all figured out. What I do know is I didn't have time to do anything about my hair -- which has been growing since last December --, I started growing facial hair again some two/three weeks ago, and added to the fact that I didn't get much sleep, most likely I look dreadful. I've asked the cleaning lady to take a picture of me so now you know what I'm talking about.

It's 1.20pm so I guess I'll just go back to working on my assignment and wait until I can check in.

This blog entry is also available at my MSN space: Antonio's_Space

OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD WEBSITE

Here's the link to the website for the play! Enjoy.

OurCountry'sGood

It's been a while since I wrote for the group so here's a quick update on what I've been doing: On December 2004 I decided to take a break from my university studies to think about a lot of things including my career goals. I ended up coming to Canada where I'm doing an undergraduate programme in Slavic studies. I'm also taking courses towards an option in fine and performing arts.

This term I'm collaborating with a fantastic group of students and an amazing director from the drama department of the university (of Waterloo). We're putting on a play called Our Country's Good, by Timberlake Wertenbaker. It's an amazing play based on a novel called The Playmaker, by Thomas Keneally, and it is set during the period of colonisation of Australia.

Most people in the play have two characters, in my case I'm doing a priest (Reverend Johnson), and a really bizarre character, which in the original script is an old, stinky, slutty woman called Shitty Meg. The lines for this character have remained the same as in the script but the costume has been made for a male character. It's a really funny part to play.

One of the major challenges for me has to do with the accent. Having a non-native accent to begin with, performing in English is difficult already. But then I have to do Cockney accent for one of the characters (Shitty Meg) and standard BBC English accent (RP - Received pronunciation) for the Reverend.

I'm pretty sure there will be a website for the production and I'll make sure to post the link so you can take a look at it. I'd also like to say that chances are we will take the play to Germany at the beginning of May. Exciting, isn't it? Cheers! Antonio(from Mexico, in Canada).