Mini-Referendum

Speed Speed Saeed is holding a mini-referendum: Do you think Quebec should separate from the rest of Canada? Yes or No?

After this referendum he will use the results to stimulate his Quebecois (if yes) / Canadian (if no) flag enterprise and sleep soundly, knowing how irrelevant a referendum question is to actual secession.

Brazil

Features Article The McGill Daily

Sitting in the busy Miami International Airport (MIA (not missing in action)) I am preparing to board my plane to Brazil. I attempt to write this article a la famous Hunter S. Thompson style – as I go along my journey into the heart of darkness.

Already I have stuffed myself with Pizza Hut chicken wings and a small Hawaiian pizza. I am ready for any savageries that await me over the next four days at the Pre-Conference to the United Nations World Youth Conference. I am representing Canada along with four other people that I have not yet met.

Thus far I have not come into any kinds of problems except having to explain how the “objectives” of Youth Against Racism Inc. are not things that I could explain in five little minutes to a customs officer. There is an anecdote about the Columbia University Philosopher Morgenbesser on wikipedia that goes as follows: he was smoking as he was about to leave the New York subway, was stopped by the police, and when asked to put it out even though he was leaving the station, asked the officer, “who do you think you are, Kant?”, then got arrested for a couple of hours for offending the purblind uniform.

I just checked into my hotel: it’s the nicest hotel in the city. I’m on the 14^th Floor. I didn’t check whether it’s actually the falsely-named 13^th Floor on the elevator panel. The air here is so full. You can tell that you are only miles away from the Amazon Rainforest. This is what every person in the world dreams about having: the waves, the hotel room, the sense of doing something good for the world. I’m thinking about my wife and girl a lot. I wish they were here with me. I’m thinking already about bringing them back down here with me sometime. But when?

Brazil. Blessed spot of land. You could just lay-out on the beach and you’d be okay for like a week just because of the richness of every natural element around here. People look so much better here than anywhere else in the world I’ve been to. So much clean air, so much perfect weather. It’s paradise on Earth.

I could use a nice cigar though. Maybe I’ll have lunch outside since it is not provided to us here for the conference. It doesn’t look like there is going to be much to do for this period of time, except maybe unifying the Americas group in preparation for the World Youth Conference.

Later in day one, I find myself sitting with my feet up against a balcony view of the roaring sea, and I’m smoking a Brazilian cigar. I find it to have been a great honour to have been invited here by the Brazilian government to take part in all this. The work I’m doing is hugely important. And for all intents and purposes, so is the work of every McGill Daily reader.

I flew over Miami and saw how everything had become cooky-cutter. It was like looking at one big carpet woven by American machines. Salvador is a jungle in the truest sense of the word. I saw a bit of graffiti somewhere today that said Poesia Urbana, it is what holds this planet of the apes together. I wonder what Montreal would look like with perfect temperature, coconut trees, and endless beach? Would we have those chilly separatists to haunt us? Would we continue fighting each other on the ice and off the ice like we do now?

It is not merely a matter of how things work out for us in the end, but how we constantly make them work out for us in the present. What kinds of lives do we want for ourselves? Do we seek to be happy? How can we go on living in a world without…these people have everything and coconuts. It is time to plan a cultural invasion. Any volunteers to join me for a good old fashion Crusade into the past that has become Salvador de Bahia in 2010?

A whole day of listening to speakers talk about the same thing over and over and over again. All this is so petrafyingly boring. At least I have the ocean to listen to now that I’m back in my (cleaned) room.

Apparently you can buy an ocean-front property from as little as 60,000$! Amazing, considering average prices in the Laurentians are around 180,000$! I should convince my wife to move down here with me…if only more for these people spoke English. Yet another reason to invade this country. I can see it now: Nouvelle Quebec!

There really isn’t anything impressive about this conference, other than the fact that Canada decided to ignore it again, leaving me as the sole Canadian participating in it. It’s a lonely place sometimes at the UN when you don’t have your own government to talk to. You feel like a kind of orphan. All the other NGO’s get invited to Embassy parties and Mission meetings, but – thanks to the Ultra-Mundane Conservative party – I’ve nobody, once again.

Later the same day not really the same way: I’ve been drinking again. I tried to stay sober, but you know when all you want is a little break from a long day of work and two colleagues offer you a glass it’s really hard to turn down. I turned it down but then said okay. Does that make me any less of a man? Any more? It was a safe environment, I drank excessively and in moderation. Drinking in moderation…what a phrase – do you stop when you’re no longer thirsty or when you’re no longer sober or when you’re no longer a moderate? Can your views be allowed to change so abruptly that you allow yourself the pleasure of the moment, even though there is an ocean of waves just waiting to thrust upon the dashing rocks my seasick weary bark? Now I digest – all that barbecue! Wow! I had every kind of meat available. I even had chicken heart – by accident. It was so gross. It tasted like chicken hearts.

Tomorrow is an even bigger day than today was. But at least it will all be over and done with this time tomorrow night.

Drunken thoughts: I’m and Iranian-Canadian living the American Dream in Brazil; Canada is trying to kill me.

The morning after: not so bad when you wake up to such heavenly waves and everything is taken care of for you. Also gotta work.

The first stage of the writing of the declaration is through. I got the votes I needed to make it fly and it is flying. Much more work ahead but, a lot of fun. The moon is so high down here (below the equator) and it shines like a lamp at least 20 km out into the open sea. I wish Audrey were here to see it too…

Made it back. Upload on June 14, 2010.