You besmirch my character, and I don't need to take that. Let me be alone in this time of heavy emotion, and recover from the shock of it all. All this time I was waiting for a new blog, I could have been writing more pages of my mundane Ottawa life? Say it ain't so!
Fortunately for you all (as I'm sure my lack of entries has been quite a shock for you as well), you needn't grieve any longer! Hang up your mourning garments, your shawls of despair! Weep no more, my compassionate women! Cease the beatings upon your breasts, my courageous men! There is hope, for I have an In-Case-of-Emergency entry for an occasion such as this.
All is not lost! You will have a glimpse into the new year for Veronica Tang yet! Take heart, gentle friends! Read on!
January 4, 2010. 11:10 p.m.
It’s back to the life of routines and schedules. I can’t believe Christmas is over already and it’s winter semester. We’re more than halfway done our first year of university, and supposedly a great deal smarter than we were in June when all we had was a high school diploma. We’re university scholars now, founts of knowledge and worldly insight to be honed and refined into profound brain things!
I don’t feel a whole lot smarter, just older and greyer. I daresay I’ve sprouted more white hairs and etched a few more lines into my face (from all that furrowing of the brow that comes with reading mind-numbingly boring material). Ah yes, such are the fruits of our labour!
But that’s enough philosophizing. On to more pressing matters, like the welcome I received from my beloved Carleton University.
The snow in Ottawa has become outrageous. It was nothing like this when I left for Christmas break. There’s at least 30 cm of snow on the ground and there are snow-shovelling trucks everywhere, ready to run over any inattentive students. At first, I thought it was a pretty good deal. All our roads and sidewalks would be snow-free and ready for pedestrians to use by 8:15 a.m. There’s a small catch. The snow-ploughing people choose which roads they’re going to clear, and they don’t particularly take an interest in short cuts. I learned that the hard way.
I was on my way to class from the library, separated by a big open courtyard known as the Quad. Normally, there’s a path going right through the Quad so you don’t have to make a detour and go around the perimeter of this enormous square. The perimeter happens to be one of those routes deemed worthy of shovelling and they’re all wonderfully clear. I assumed that the Quad was shovelled too. NEVER ASSUME! You know what they say: When you assume...you end up stranded in the middle of the courtyard, up to your knees in snow! Half of the path was shovelled and the other half was left au naturel, all the better for students to admire Mother Nature’s winter beauty. Ah Mother Nature, I can only offer you the words of Sheldon Cooper: “Thou art a heartless b****.”
Like I was saying, I was stranded halfway to my destination. I couldn’t go back because at the time, I thought it would look stupid to just turn around after I’d gotten so far. So I settled instead for the dignified alternative – plunging onward into the deepening snow. I slipped and slid and flailed and teetered my way to the edge of the Quad. “Success!” I think to myself. But I spoke too soon. I lifted one foot to start climbing up the stairs, only to find a steep, snow-covered incline where the stairs should have been. What else could I do? I climbed with all the grace a girl can have with buckets of snow packed into her boots. It was most unpleasant.
And here’s the real topper, because my journey wasn’t enough of an embarrassment. The building I was trying to get to is made completely of glass (on the outside at least) – large, squeaky-clean glass windows. And all along the side of the glass were students with their faces pressed against the glass taking in every graceful step of my harrowing journey.
I flung the doors open, marched inside, stomped my snow-filled, sodden boots on the mat, dug out as much snow as I could by the handful, brushed off my jeans (which were already soaked from the melting snow), and walked off to class with every single student in the building watching me.
Still the motto remained: Dignity. Always dignity.
3 comments:
what about the underground tunnels?
Please. Those are for tunnel rats. That's the kind of congratulatory comment I get for braving the outdoors and breathing in the sweet air that our forefathers died and fought for? (Well not OUR forefathers, obviously. I was referring to the greater "we" - the "we" of the Canadian people.)
LOVE the gene kelly reference hehe
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