I wanna know where da gold at!

I am bummed about my ridiculous schedule this semester. Three times a week, I have class until 9:15 at night, including Fridays. I am no longer able to attend frisbee practice Tuesdays and Thursdays. To add insult to injury, my Friday night class is a required course on the United Nations Security Council. I am still waiting for someone to give me a valid reason why I should be spending an entire semester studying an illegitimate, irrelevant, and useless institution that I don't care about.

Furthermore, my lame schedule is making it very difficult for me to keep up with the physical training I'm supposed to be doing for the national team. Being sick for the second time this month also didn't help. And I'm now developping a reputation amongst the frisbee community as the girl who sleeps through her alarm and can't make it to tournaments on time. This weekend was calm in terms of partying, and yet I still managed to show up at the fields ridiculously late both days. Although after the Sunday night party at Paganello, my teammates no longer believe me when I tell them I didn't go out the night before.

Last night a friend of mine got borderline beaten up by the RATP metro security. I can't say that I'm surprised, because those guys are notorious douchebags. But the situation was completely ridiculous and infuriating: he had just stepped off the metro and was walking through the hallways. He came upon a ticket check...about 10 RATP security guys lined up across the hall. He stopped for a second to search through his pockets to find his ticket and two guards immediately pounced on him and began to harass him, thinking that he hadn't paid and was trying to turn around in order to avoid getting caught. He pulled out a few tickets, none of which were the right one, so they immediately assumed that he was lying. They didn't give him a chance to explain himself, much less to search through his stuff to find the right ticket. Once he did find it, one guy pocketed it without checking its validity. Instead they pinned him up against the wall, took out his wallet from the back pocket, saw that he had money on him to pay the fine, and forced him to pay the 40 euros. At first he refused and told they to call the cops so that he could explain himself. He was told that the cops would take an hour and a half to get there. In the end he just gave up trying to reason with the assholes and paid the fine.

What makes this story so infuriating is that it is completely impossible to reason with the RATP security, no matter how calm and polite you remain while they are riffling through your pockets and getting in your face. This is definitely not the first time I've heard such a story, and it is unbelievable that these wannabe cops (with absolutely NO authority to search you) get away with this shit!

I recently discovered last.fm, this website where you type in an artist and it creates a playlist of similar music. This isn't very exciting in and of itself...but this site is awesome because of the detailed and highly informative blurbs that go along with each song/artist. Example: I typed in Yung Joc and the following information came up when a Gorilla Zoe song was played:

"Also, Gorilla Zoe appears to have a feud with rapper The Game, dissing him on the track "1 Sluggg". Gorilla Zoe claims that he made the track because he felt offended by comments that The Game had made on his single "One Blood" about Atlanta's hip-hop scene. Game has never responded to Gorilla Zoe or said his name, but has addressed his reasons for the comment, stating that it was not a diss to Atlanta or the South. Some claim also that Gorilla Zoe dissed The Game because of his friendship with JT Tha Bigga Figga, a rapper/producer from the Bay Area who claims he discovered The Game and is not currently in a beef with."

WHO KNEW?!

Finally, thank you Sasha and Chad for bringing to my attention the existence of this YouTube video:

bad habits

My suitcase has come back from it's round-the-world trip to land at my parents' front door. It took a month and a half, and I had to spend a bunch of money for new clothes while I was in Vancouver, but shit happens. At least I got my Bon Jovi 1990 tour shirt back!!! Also, now I have two Technotronik shirts, if anyone's interested in taking one of them off my hands...

It's looking like it's going to be a very long semester. I have a steady stream of assignments and projects due every week until the beginning of June. As a result, I've sunk back into old habits, namely not having time to eat 3 meals a day, and not sleeping enough. I'm also essentially dating the library. Sorry boys, this girl's off the market.

On Friday I went to Brussels for an internship/job fair put on by Sciences-Po and LSE. The morning portion was spent talking to various public and private organisations, all based in Brussels and focused on the European Union. Considering that most of the organisations attending were private consulting firms who dish out finance and communications advice to their clients, the event was probably more enriching for LSE students. That's what I get for chosing my Master's degree out of interest for the subject instead of consideration for the future. In the afternoon, we all split up and attended an information session. Unfortunately I couldn't get a spot for the International Crisis Group, so I had to suffer through an hour of the shittiest powerpoint presentation in history, care of the embarassingly incompetent communications department of the European Commission. The presentation was completely unadapted to the audience: we are all pursuing prestigious graduate studies, it's a little insulting when we are asked if we know how many countries are currently in the European Union. Also, it's the Treat of Rome, not Rom. Thankfully my iPod picked up on the Commission's free unsecured wireless.

It seemed like kind of a waste to travel all the way to Brussels just for a day, so I ended up staying the night at a friend's place and indulging in what the Belgians do best: liege waffles and good music scene.

back to school

Well, it was only fitting that this trip end just as badly as it started. Immediately upon sitting down in the plane headed to Frankfurt, I got hit with that nasty virus that was going around Vancouver. And so, during eight excrutiatingly long hours, I suffered through every possible symptom in the book, and the two babies near me made damn sure that I wouldn't get any kind of decent sleep for the entirety of the flight.

Needless to say, I can barely remember my fist week of class. I went through it in an ibuprofen-induced haze, and I'm not even sure where I found the strength to drag myself to and from school every day. Fear of failure is a powerful incentive. I think I slept more in the past week than in the entire first year of my master's program.

On my way back to Paris from Vancouver I stopped for a couple of days in Toronto. I still can't make up my mind about that city. Perhaps it doesn't help that I always seem to go there during the winter months, and so it's pretty difficult to try to discover a city when your only preoccupation is to not freeze to death. But I did come to the realization that young torontonians are freaks of nature, parading around at night on Queen Street West in - 15 degree weather in mini-skirts and dress shirts.

Ahhh, Queen Street West. Toronto's version of Granville Street in downtown Vancouver. If you ever want to get harassed by a douchebag or randomly punched in the face, this is the place to be. Where are all the skids? Where are the locally-run art galleries? Also, where did all the good vintage shops go? Kensington market has become dismal...unless you're looking to buy bongo drums and cargo pants. Any answers to these questions would be much appreciated.

So now I'm back to school, and of course with schoolwork comes...procrastination! So I've recently discovered the excellent Vice Guide to Travel on VBSTV. I thought the one on Bulgaria was pretty neat. The guys go to Bulgaria and find out how easy it is to purchase a warhead on the black market. But then I saw the Vice Guide to North Korea. Must see viewing!