Raincouver

I have lived in Vancouver all my life, but I had never heard of Raincouver until I started teaching ESL. My students claim that the word Raincouver is famous all over the world. Usually when they tell me this, I look at them suspiciously. “I’ve never heard of that before,” I say. Then, they just stare at me like I’m the weird one.

The rain affects my students quite a bit. Once, a conversation with one student started like this: “So Masa, how’s it going?” The student then looked out the window and said: “Um, not good.” Of course, he was looking at the dark, grey clouds looming over the mountains. (I guessed that the weather was supposed to indicate his mood.) When he planned his trip to come to Raincouver, he said he knew all about our weather. He had heard from his friends and friends of friends how wet it can get. But, it still took him by surprise. “We’ve only had two days of sunshine since I arrived!” he cried.

I optimistically remind my students that Vancouver is in the middle of a rain forest. I show them Kitsilano beach where a special poem is written on a rock about the rain in Vancouver. I teach them different words and expressions for rain in the English language. And on especially dark and dreary days, I even bring in cookies and funny songs to listen to like Garbage’s “I’m only happy when it rains!” No matter what I do, they rarely seem impressed. Then again, I can’t blame them - this city has the most rain they’ve ever seen fall in one month.

But, Vancouverites know it’s NOT the end of the world. The truth is once you’ve lived here for while, you get used to it. It’s not that bad, really it’s not. Summer is on it’s way.

What's the hullabaloo?

Drama, drama, drama! Have you ever noticed that some people get overly excited for no good reason? I have to admit that I can be at times guilty of being overly sensitive or reactionary, but lately I’ve realized that it’s totally not worth it. It just takes too much energy to be a drama queen.

The following is a conversation I overheard of a woman talking on her cell phone. It went something like this: “What? Are you serious? That is weird…so creepy. Like oh my god. What? I’m so angry! Okay, wait. Well you can’t do that with people who are not your friends, seriously!” I don’t know, she was like…” blah blah blah.

And that’s when I thought about how I used to be like that. It’s interesting how when you get older you care less and less about shit things like that. Now hold on, I’m not being a big jerk. Really, I’m a compassionate person…(maybe my friends would agree?) But I truly don’t want to get that involved in other people’s lives anymore.

It safe to say that women are the worst culprits of getting overly emotionally involved. We dish out the drama and we also eat it up. We are mentally, emotionally, and psychologically capable of gabbing, nagging and bitching for hours. And at the end of it all, we say we feel a lot better…but we really don’t. What happens is that gab/nag/bitch-fest lingers in our minds for the next few days. Some of us go on to retell our loved ones what was said and then we continue to dissect the “issue.” It never ends.

Well I’m here to say that I no longer want to be a participating member. I’m tired of it and so is everyone else. Let’s move on already! How about just letting it go? (Or better yet dealing with it personally rather than making everybody else suffer?)

People (especially women) get so worked up because they feel that it is their god given ‘right’ to feel or even defend. Furthermore, our feelings need to be validated. We sometimes attach too much meaning to feelings. “Well, I feel like this because… or that made me feel ‘blank’ because…” Basically, our feelings are a response to something outside of ourselves.

But, why does it have to be so? Feelings should be a direct correlation to us, and us only! No wonder women feel wiped out or like they don’t have enough time…because they sometimes spend most of their energy on things that don’t even affect them. I don’t know, maybe I really AM a big jerk. What do you think? Should people just shut up and keep their personal lives and negativity to themselves? Maybe that's just the way some of us are and perhaps some people can't or don't want to change.

But I want to ask you: " How does the world around you affect you?"