November Monkey

A call for a last minute November monkey over at Blork Blog has come in. This month the theme is “Border Stumbles:” unusual experiences crossing international borders.

Dakar, Senegal: I arrived at midnight with my Canada World Youth group. For the benefit of American readers, CWY is like the Peace Corps but without the locals suspecting you of being a front for the CIA. We walked from our Air Iberia plane into the airport where we queued to go throw Immigration. During the flight from Madrid, I was seated next to a Senegalese man who basically spoke nonsense to me. I didn’t pay him much mind, until, in the airport, I noticed that a group of military guys had pulled him from the line and into a small side room.

I chatted with my friend Tracy about the incident as well as other things, as we were all nervous and excited to be in a new country. It was then that one of my friends stopped me mid-sentence:

“John, your face is covered in blood.”

I looked down and noticed small splotches of blood on my shoes. We figured something during the flight must have ruptured a blood vessel because it was seriously gushing and everyone seemed suddenly very concerned. My friend quickly gave me her bandana to stanch the flow as my group leader pulled me out of the line to the arrivals area where I could sit and hold my head back.

As my group leader led me past the protesting Immigration official, he simply explained, “Sang du nez!” The official shrugged and I was permitted to go. At some point, someone must have taken my passport from me because it was stamped but nobody ever saw my face.

So, if you ever want to sneak into a country…

Paging Sarah Jessica Parker

Are the giant flower brooches not yet finished? I was trying to have a conversation with a colleague at work but was distracted by her giant flower brooch. It was really rather huge, bigger than her head even.

They’re different from you and me

This weekend, at some point between the Christmas shopping, the house cleaning and watching Rex Murphy and George Stroumboulopoulos yell at each other on CBC’s pep rally for history nerds (which I, of course, watched), the world stopped briefly out of respect and awe to await news of the birth of Julia Roberts’ twins.

The twins, a boy and a girl, are both healthy and should be expecting their giant horse teeth to be coming in any day now. The girl has been named Hazel but Roberts, for some reason, has decided that she already truly, truly, hates her son and has therefore given him the name Phinnaeus.

Maybe in twenty years we’ll be talking about the marriage of Phinnaeus Walter Moder-Roberts to Apple Paltrow-Martin. And their first born son will be named “Doug.”

It beats file footage of Parliament Hill, I guess.

So I’m catching a little Caféine on TQS before heading out to work (the show is a french language counterpart to say, Breakfast Television – morning news fluff, basically). While doing a piece on the scandal surrounding Immigration Minister Judy Sgro and that stripper’s visa problems, about 80% of the visuals were of file footage of exotic dancers. It went on for about a minute, with only a token attempt at censoring the naughty bits which mostly didn’t work. Viewers listened to a report detailing the accusations against the minister while watching two naked dancers touching each other. I had to start laughing because it got rather graphic and excessive.

So I still don’t know what that story is about.

Can you hear me now?

There’s nothing I love more than speaking on the phone with someone in Winnipeg who insists on using a speakerphone, even if we are the only two people on the call.