On the way to school today

The man sitting in front of me on the 240 had (a thoughtful demeanor and a bald spot and) an instructional pamphlet for voters in the upcoming provincial election; when I next looked ahead, he had replaced it with a farsi newspaper. I thought about bilingualism, and what it must be like to be able to just switch between systems of meaning that way. I wondered if he found one easier to read.

Later, the Main bus paused for a while next to where a young man was leaning up against a wall, in a very "disaffected youth" pose, sort of British punk rock, and archetypical enough that I wondered if he'd cultivated it. Standing close in front of him was a girl with red ponytails, and after I'd watched them talk for a little bit, there was an interplay: she reached out and gave him a gentle punch to the chest, clearly just an excuse to establish contact; and he brought his own hand up to rest on her upper arm; and she leaned slowly but inexorably forward to rest her head on his chest for a moment - just a moment, perhaps two seconds, before she came back up again, because it had awkwardly dislocated her baseball cap.

The Main bus stopped again later, this time at a stoplight, and a japanese girl on the street corner smiled hugely and waved apparently right at me. After a long moment, I smiled hesitantly back, although I can only assume that she was actually looking at someone else, seated nearby; she had an air of assumed familiarity, and I'd never seen her before. On the pole next to her was a flyer for a show featuring "the Hounds of Buskerville", and, from Nanaimo, "the Kiltlifters".

My Asian Mythology teacher told us a story about the turtles who live in the pond outside Langara, but all I ever see is ducks.

Don't dive shallow in deep, dark waters

Tomorrow, I am going to go out pretty early to audition for this year's YouthWeek plays, especially the one David is directing. This will be my first formal audition ever; I'm apprehensive in an "I wonder if I still know how to act?" sort of way.

Instead of reading from one of the plays being produced, as I'd supposed, apparently I'm supposed to memorize and deliver a one or two minute monologue (one that "shows off your strengths", David advises). I'm not sure what I'll do. I don't own Saint Joan (and besides, that one would probably be too long); neither, alas, do I own The Real Inspector Hound. Shakespeare...?

Update

Pancakes are tasty.

So, I'm probably going to try to do the Hamlet monologue which ends, "From this time forth / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth". It's not ideal, but it's interesting, and I own it.