Three years ago today...

Take care
-J-

Hi

Not much to report from the last couple of weeks. Did 54 hours at work
last week, but only 30 this week, and the unpredicatability of the pay
is adding stress to my life, especially since there's virtually
nothing in the way of excess cash in our current sitaution. A slow week
translates directly into financial hardship. So, once again, I'm giving
some thought to jumping ship to something with better pay and steadier
hours. It's a constant dilemma, since in many ways I hate change, and I
like my current work environment. Plus, at this point I'm most likely
going to be jumping once again into something I don't plan to pursue as
a career, which is tough -- I feel like I'm treading water, and maybe
even losing valuable time...

Haven't made much progress on the apartment lately. During the busy
week at work I was only getting home at 8 or 9 in the evening, too
tired to tackle any painting. We've decided that we're going to take
the color we were going to use on the living and use it in the kitchen
instead, and use a sort of cafe-au-lait for the living room. There's
still plastering to be done in the bedroom, as well as hiding the new
cable wires behind the baseboard mouldings, and then a bunch of paint.
The bathroom's the furthest along, needing only a final coat on the
ceiling to make it complete. Still not sure how we're going to be able
to put up our posters and paintings, since the walls are made of cement
board and can't be thumbtacked, but I'm brainstorming a few different
ideas.

The other thing I'm excited about is a concert I'm hoping to attend on my birthday. It's John Renbourn, one of the world's top acoustic guitar players, performing in a tiny venue that seats only 35 people. Byron
and I saw him in London back in 2000 and it was a mind-boggling show.
All the tickets are sold, but they said they're most likely going to
open up a few extra standing room spaces, hence my suspense. I really,
really, really want to get tickets, but I'm trying not to get my hopes
up. The show is on my birthday (Sept. 17th), so I'm hoping I can use
that fact to aid in my sweet-talking

Speaking of music, I finally set up a site where some of my
non-Ticklish-Brother music can be listened to. While the majority of my
songs are intended as Ticklish Brother
material, I also enjoy playing traditional music, and I do write the
occasional instrumental piece. This new site makes those available to
anyone who might happen to want to take a little listen. There are
three pieces there at the moment -- a clarinet instrumental take on Amazing Grace, a British traditional song called Love Is Teasing, and
an instrumental of mine called Trance Build, which is my first
experiment with mixing computer-generated and acoustic sounds. If you're interested, check out the new site at http://www.soundclick.com/justinburnett and let me know what you think.

Well, that's it for now. Hope you're all doing well. Thanks for dropping by.

Take care
-J-

Hi all

I feel the need to give you a bit of the back-story of the last
month-and-a-bit. Here we are in the middle of August already. The time
has been flying by lately, and autumn is looming just around the
corner. It's been unseasonably cool here the past few weeks, which
pleases me greatly. As I never seem to tire of saying: heat bad.

Two weekends ago I had a wonderful time at the Mill Race Folk Festival
(the pictures on that site, at the moment, are from last year's
festival). This was its 12th year, and the first year that it was
stretched to three days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). I volunteered as an
MC for a couple of shifts (about 9 hours total) and had a blast
introducing the acts and making announcements. It's nice to use some of
my stage skills every so often. The caliber of the entertainers was
absolutely top-notch, so it wasn't hard to be enthusiastic in my
introductions. Volunteering at folk festivals is a family tradition. My
family volunteered 4 or 5 summers at the now-defunct Hangashore Folk
Festival when I was younger, and it's something I've really
missed.  I had a blast at this one, and you can bet that I'll be
there again next year, if we're still living in this neck of the woods.
(Of course, I do harbour a secret hope that I might be able to perform
at next year's festival, but we shall have to see...)

The apartment is slowly shaping up. By the time I get home from work,
I'm always really tired, so it's hard to find the energy to get the
painting done. 3 1/2 walls in the bedroom are finished, the living room
has one coat on 2 walls, the kitchen remains untouched, and the
bathroom is all done except for a final coat on the ceiling. The place
is slowly starting to feel like home. We're still suffering from a
pronounced lack of furniture, which means that a lot of our stuff is
still in suitcases and cardboard boxes, which means that it still feels
kind of like a dump. But oh well. Nothing much to be done, since our
finances are too tight to buy anything much. We did get a fabulous desk
for the computer. It's about 50 years old -- an oak desk like the ones
teachers have, except this one was used in an office instead. It's a
bit beat up in places, but it's massive and solid (we had to remove
both the front doors to get it into the apartment), and it cost exactly
as much as the cheap-ass particleboard desk I was trying desperately to
avoid buying. Forty bucks at the Goodwill and this behemoth was mine.
It really makes the room look better (matches the floor and
everything). My big goal at the moment is to get to the point where we
can start
putting up our paintings and posters -- that'll really make a
difference. I took 'before' pictures of the whole apartment, which I'll
eventually post here along with 'after' ones, but not any time soon at
this rate.

Work's been slow these past 3 weeks, ever since the rush at the last
round of closings. My hours have been pathetic, which puts an extra
strain on our finances. Thankfully, my wife's salary is now being added
into the mix, and although it's certainly not her ideal job, she's
sticking with it. She's just finishing her training period as a Sprint
PCS customer service tech at a local call centre. Unfortunately, while
her hours so far have been pretty bad (3pm-11:30pm), as of tomorrow
they get even worse for a while (4:30pm-1am). Those of you who read
here frequently know that I'm a night owl, and I rarely go to bed
before 2am, but even so we hardly see each other as it is. With these
new hours, I'll only see her for half an hour a day, except for
weekends.

A couple of entries ago, I recommended a book, so I might as well tell
you what I've been reading lately. Let's see. I just finished Oryx and Crake,
by Margaret Atwood. It's a post-apocalyptic one, and I really enjoyed
it. The reviews are really polarized -- people seem either to really
love it or hate it, so if you read it and hate it don't blame me .
I'm currently reading Stardust,
by Neil Gaiman. It's a lovely fairytale, written in a light and
accomplished tone. I'll probably finish it tomorrow. Before that, it
was Buying A Fishing Rod For My Grandfather,
a book of short stories by Gao Xingjian, the first Chinese winner of
the Nobel Prize for Literature. Other than novels, I also read various
writing, art, technology, architecture and home design magazines, and
various other bits and pieces of non-fiction.

Well, I'd better stop myself there, before this entry gets any huger.
I'll leave you with a recent photo. This is my wife and I with her aunt
and uncle. We visited them for a lovely dinner a few weeks ago.

Well, that's that then. Thanks for dropping by and reading and
commenting. It really does brighten my day to hear what you have to say
and read what's going on in your world.

Take care
-Justin-

I have a monitor!

(And a great boss).

So I'm back to my computing ways. Today, I was finally able to get to
the computer store. They sell all sorts of used stuff, including
off-lease monitors. I got this nice 17-inch Sony Trinitron for $39.
It's a 1996, and it won't go above 1024x768, but you can't beat the
price and it brings the computer back to life, and it's really quite a
nice monitor. A new optical mouse completes the package. And although
I'm currently sitting on the floor, while the monitor and keyboard sit
on empty cardboard banana boxes, it sure is good to be back online.

I mention my boss because he was nice enough to drive me to the
computer store, hang around while I picked through the monitors, then
drive me to two more stores so I could buy a mouse, then home with all
of my new loot. This job may not pay worth a crap, but it sure is a
friendly work environment. He's off to a wedding in Florida, so I'm on
an extra-long weekend, since I don't work when he's not working. I
guess it'll be a good opportunity to put in lots of hours on the
apartment. There's a lot to do, as my wife and I are lamenting the
cruddy shape the place is in at the moment.

Anyhow, I'm too tired to write anything more, so that's it for now.
I'll be easing my way back into my usual state of
computer-connectedness, so hopefully I'll be around to visit your sites
soon and catch up on what's been going on.

Take care
-J-

We have to be on the lookout for moments of beauty.

It's been way too hot these past few days, and the air has been getting
progressively smoggier. Today was particularly steamy, and only a
breeze blowing through the house we were working on kept me from
melting away to nothing. When I got out of the van after work, it was
still sunny, so I grabbed a coffee and a couple of groceries at the
place across from where I get dropped off, and started walking
downtown. Within 5 minutes, it was absolutely pouring with rain, and my
umbrella was in the van.

The quality of light was wonderful -- sun slanting across under the
heavy dark cloud, and a wind stirring up the river. Thunder rumbled
happily. For a while, I darted between patches of shelter along the
path, but eventually it got to be a case of diminishing returns. So
instead of feeling pissed off, I embraced the situation. Walking along,
soaked to the bone, I realized it had been far too long since I'd
walked in a heavy rain without an umbrella. It's such a lovely feeling.

I got to the library, and the rainbow I'd been expecting finally
materialized. I stood there in the parking lot staring at it for
several minutes while people drove by, staring at me strangely.Once
you're soaked, why worry about getting rained on? It's amazing how few
people ever look up. I noticed a woman coming out of the library with
her young daughter, focused on getting the library books  into the
dry shelter of the car. I pointed out the rainbow to her and she was
delighted. She called the little girl over and showed her. It was the
3-year-old's very first in-real-life rainbow.

What an honor, to be able to show a child their first rainbow.

Take care
-J-

Hi all.
A quick update from a man who still doesn't own a computer monitor and
has thus been offline lately to a degree largely unprecedented in the
last 10 years. But the time is full so that's helping to dull the
impact a little. In fact, the last three weeks have flown by. Work is
busy (over 50 hours this week), the apartment is still in need of a
great deal of work, and we're slowly settling into a lifestyle which
was just not possible when we were living with my wife's parents.

Landlord came by today to fix a malfunctioning ceiling light and ended
up uncovering some extremely serious flaws in our electrical system.
Things were exploding, circuits were going dead, and it was all a
little unsettling. Currently, and I kid you not, when you turn on a
burner on the stove, the light above the sink turns on. Seriously. It's
very weird. So a proper electrician is coming by tomorrow to figure out
what the heck is going on behind these walls and get it fixed.
Electical weirdness of this magnitude makes me edgy.

I've been reading a great book. It's a diary of a guy who spent a year
living in North America's largest shantytown, Tent City, in Toronto.
It's fascinating. I won't try to describe it more. Check out an excerpt here
.

Anyhow, I should be going again. If all goes well, I'll be getting a
monitor this week and be back to my old online self. Hope you're all
keeping well and taking care of yourselves. If you're not, do so for my
sake

Take care
-J-

Hi all

This is going to be a bit fractured. I had a bunch of ideas for writing
this week, but I may or may not remember all or some or none of them.
We'll have to see. Things are a bit busy here, but I wanted to post
before my internet hiatus since I don't know when we'll get our
internet hooked up.

So today is moving day. All the big stuff is over there, with lots of
small stuff which we'll probably move over the next few days. The
utilities probably won't be hooked up until early next week, so the
weekend is going to be a bit like camping, with no hot water or
electricity. But oh well. Just being out on our own again should be
enough to eclipse most of the problems for us. The apartment is going
to take some work. My wife and I are the kind of tenants that landlords
like, since we invariably leave the place better than when we arrived.
There are a number of things that will drive me crazy until I get them
fixed -- wall paint slopped all over the wooden moldings, a hole in one
wall which would be covered by the washing machine if we had one...
stuff like that. Oh well. It'll get done, and soon the place will be
our little corner of paradise

In addition to being model tennants ( ), we're also the kind of
customers that managers like. Ate at McDonalds yesterday and had an
unpleasant experience (some might say "what other kind can you have
there", but hey...). I ordered McNuggets for the first time in a while.
They're my favourite. I popped one in my mouth, but the texture was
like goop. Turned out, the nuggets were mostly raw inside, all pink and
cold. Not good. I took them inside to the manager. I'm a quiet person,
and I don't like to cause trouble. I disapprove of people who think
they're entitled to a million bucks for getting a bad nugget. The
manager was very accommodating. He immediately refunded the price of my
meal and gave me the burger of my choice (oddly, I had lost my appetite
for McNuggets). I know that if I had kicked up a stink I could have
gotten all sorts of stuff, but that's not my style.

Anyhow, one more random observation and then I have to sign off. You
know those mufflers - the kind that people put on souped up cars so
they make lots of noise? Well, I've always thought those were kind of
dumb. But the other day I saw something which led me to a realization:
as dumb as they are on a standard souped up car, they're ridiculous on
a car with automatic transmission. They sound like a combover looks.

Okeedokee, that's the skinny for now. I don't know when I'll be back
on. Hard to say. Internet probably won't be hooked up this week, but
who knows. But then again, with my recent posting frequency you guys
probably won't even notice

Be good, stay safe, and I'll see you soon.

Take care
-J-

Hi everyone.

Sometimes I get paralyzed by the things I have to do. One might even
say it is often like that. I have these things that I need to do, but
somehow I just freeze and it doesn't happen. And then, of course, other
things back up behind... It's something I've been struggling with for
years, and although I'm improving, it's still a constant problem. It
even happens for things like weblogs, hence the gap between now and
when I last wrote.

I've had all sort of ideas for things to write about, and lots has
happened, but the longer I go without writing, well, the longer I go.
So for now, I'll just give you guys a quick update in order to break
the vicious cycle, and then hopefully I'll be able to proceed on
shortly with the more structured writing.

Ok, so here we are, middle of June. I guess the best piece of news is
that my wife and I have found an apartment we like, and will be moving
there when July rolls around. It was getting a bit stressful, as we
were shown through a number of apartments which were pretty awful, or
at least not really to our taste. Our current income level dictates
that we're only looking at the very cheapest places, so it wasn't
really a surprise that we weren't exactly thrilled with what was on
offer. But we finally found a place that grabbed us. It's an add-on on
the back of a big old stone house. It's a great location, and the
massiveness of the building shields us from the noise of the main road
out front. It should also keep away the noise from the apartments in
the main house, as will the fact that there's nobody above us. It's got
hardwood floors in the bedroom and living room, tile in the kitchen (so
no carpet needing to be cleaned to deal with my allergies)... All in
all, it should be good. It will certainly be good not to be living with
the in-laws any more. They deserve to get their home back. The
situation has been wearing a little thin

Hmm. What else? Work is work. Still looking for more ways to get
involved in the music scene here, now that we've decided to stay... Our
bicycles are on their way here by mail, which will be really nice for
the summer... Still slowly writing songs....

Ok, I'm going to just unceremoniously end the update now. Just wanted
to get something out there, to reassure you that I'm not dead  
Thanks for the great reaction to my last piece. I think I'm going to
start writing more of those themed sorts of pieces again, get back into
practice...

Hope you're all well and happy. See you again soon.

Take care
-J-

What I'm about to say has to do with people I
know from my 'real life' -- people I've worked and played and
studied with, in the flesh. I'm only addressing them here, since those
of you who are my friends through words don't have to be missed. I have
you right here with me, at the other end of however many miles of wire
and fibreoptic cable.

Thinking Of You

I've never really been the kind of person who hangs out regularly
with friends. There are very, very few people I would call up and
suggest that we hang out. For some reason, that's just not a part of
who I am. I was always a loner when I was young, for various reasons,
and even once I got into a better place in life and was able to find
positive social situations, I still never made that leap to
actually seeking out the company of others. If I meet people, I'm
always happy to see them, we can sit and talk for hours, but I
don't actively draw people in.

If friends are those people you call up and say "hey, want to hang
out?", then I have few or no friends. However, I don't think that
that's the best criteria to define friendship. There are actually quite
a few people who I would consider to be good friends of mine, and who
hold a special place in my heart. The fact that we only run into each
other every few years doesn't change that fact.

After university for example, my classmates, with whom I had become
fairly close, scattered to the winds, since most of them were not from
Corner Brook. I even lost contact with most of the ones who live in
Corner Brook, and it's only a town of 20,000. Again, it has to do with
the fact that I don't call people up. However, I still think of them,
wonder what they're up to, and I still consider them to be my friends
even if I haven't seen them in 4 years. Whether they feel the same way,
I have no idea.

Right now, my wife and I are living in Ontario. We don't know anyone
here. We haven't been back in Corner Brook in over a year and a half.
As well, added to the list of people we miss are all our friends in
South Korea: my co-workers, the people we met, my students, even those
we interacted with every day in our little community -- the shopkeepers
and street vendors and bus drivers... We left pretty abruptly,
without managing to tell most of them that we were leaving. We just
sort of vanished, there one day and gone the next, and we haven't made
contact since.

Which brings me to the real point of all this: even though I hold
these many people in my heart, wherever they may be in the world and
whatever they may be up to, they don't necessarily know that. Friends,
people I knew in various communities, former teachers... they don't
know how fondly I think of them or how I sincerely wish for their
happiness and success. They don't know that they are still important to
me, even if I haven't seen them or talked to them in years. Most of
them I don't have any contact information for, and I'm unlikely to run
into any of them in person any time soon. We're cities, provinces,
countries, even continents apart, each travelling on our own little set
of tracks, our lights twinkling away in the dark.

So, even though I know that the people I'm talking about are
unlikely to stumble on this little piece of writing, I still want to
put it out there. I want to reach out and say this, even if nobody
hears, at least with their eyes and ears:

I miss you.
I think of you.
I sincerely hope that you're well and happy.
You made a difference in my life.
You're important to me.
I hope to see you again.
Take care of yourself.

-Justin-

6 months.

My apologies to those who have come here for a little cheer. Someone just posted a comment saying she loved my attitude... Well, this post is of a slightly less rosy hue, unfortunately. Both the optimist of my last post and the pain of this post are the truth. They represent different perspectives and emotional responses to the same set of events and circumstances. I am both happy and sad, as I think we all are.

Anyhow. 6 months. 6 months ago today, my contract in South Korea ended and my wife and I returned to Canada. For the last 6 months, we have lived with my wife's parents, and through their generosity we have slowly been rebuilding our lives. I didn't really let it show here, and I posted no details (nor will I), but the last few months in Korea, and the time since, has been the most difficult period in my adult life. We've been through pain so intense that life became baffling, and each time it seemed safe to feel that it couldn't get worse, it did. Gets tiring after a while.

So here we are. The world feels heavy.

I had plans to talk here about some of the things I've done during our stay so far in Ontario, but I'm feeling too drained. I have just enough energy to make a cup of tea, then pass the brief time between now and bed. Sorry. This entry turns out to be both depressing and brief. But as I said, both the happy and the sad attitude are me. Forgive me for indulging the latter. I usually just try to dwell on the pleasant side of things here.

Anyhow, I'm trying, but I can't seem to wrestle or revise this into an artistic little package. I think I'll give up on the attempt and just post it. Always time to get one right later on

Thanks for dropping by.

Take care
-J-