doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

today’s a fine sunny day and I’m inside :O oh well, it’s for a good cause anyway—looking after the Baha’i Centre while a children’s class is at the playground down the street, in case parents come early looking for their kids. spring has come to Ottawa like a mad berserker, pumping the temperature up to 25 C with clear, bright blue skies and nary a cloud. the funny thing? piles of snow still persist after this winter’s heavy snowfall, so every hundred metres or so you’ll see a (dirty) pile of it—they’re shrinking though. I took my bike out and started riding it into work—such a treat! I’ve been waiting the whole winter to ride my bike again; it’s my favourite form of exercise. I’ll certainly need it after visiting a sugar bush last weekend… :P

For those of you who read childrensclasses.org, I’ve kept up with the regular children’s class at the Baha’i Centre with very few interruptions. It’s been a little difficult this past season—the winter brought me down a lot, mood-wise; I still haven’t managed to work in some good, regular winter activities to keep my spirits up when it’s cold and dark. Winter’s becoming less and less my favourite season because of it (although I still enjoy the month of December). Anyway, I digress. The class has been smaller this season, and a lot of the cooler activities and initiatives we’ve talked about haven’t really happened; I blame my own lethargy :P Still, the important thing is that we haven’t let up on it—we’ll be going on our fifth year of classes soon. Not bad huh?

A little personal note: I’ve started watching a lot of anime. I went through the entire Rozen Maiden series, and I’m currently watching Azumanga Daioh as well. I’ve gotten lots of recommendations from friends so far, so there’s no shortage of anime left to watch… maybe this is a sign that I’ll get over my dislike of watching TV and movies soon? One can only hope.

hey - still fasting. extremely busy at work right now, and pretty fatigued; as such I haven’t had much energy to put into creative endeavours (videos, etc) like I usually do. been reading Baha’i Views a lot, and ooh’ing and ahh’ing at all the marvelous content popping up on it. also discovered a wonderful blog called nineteen days, written by two Baha’i bloggers across the world from each other blogging their experience of the Fast.
going to Catherine’s place tonight to break the Fast around 7ish. I wonder if she’ll have more satanseitan pie ;) finding the Fast hard this year, due to the fatigue and health problems that have started accumulating (had a short kidney stone attack last week, and began the Fast with the remnants of a nasty cold/flu/whatever). more later…

merry christmas to those of you who celebrate it! to all the muslims in reading range, happy Eid! oh, and happy Hanukkah too, but that’s a little late. and happy kwanzaa too I guess. and shab yalda to all the persians. and happy solstice/midwinter/etc to… well, to whoever celebrates it.

i’ve been hanging around at home, resting, cleaning house, visiting family, etc. today (well, yesterday by now) I shuffled down the block to best buy and got myself a new monitor to replace my trusty rusty old apple studio display that has served me so well for eight years. oh, and a new canon powershot A570 IS.

more soon - I’ve been remiss in my blogging lately and hope to catch up at least a little before the end of the holidays.

huge snowstorm swept through the Ottawa area today, coating the landscape with white fluffy snow. the roads got pretty fouled up, so most people (myself included) stayed inside to do laundry, play with the cat, read, and blog. it was fun. it brought back memories of the snowstorm a few years back in Drummondville—you know, the one that preceded my accident. instead of spinning out on a major highway and landing sideways in a snowbank, though, I have a lithotripsy session to look forward to tomorrow (Monday) in order to break up the kidney stone that’s still hanging around inside me after causing problems in mid-November. that’s a whole other story which I’ll share with you later on; for now, prayers would be much appreciated so that everything goes well.

thank goodness the holiday season is coming soon; hopefully I should have some time to rest and recover from the treatment—no big trips scheduled for now, unless they’re short ones. I keep thinking I’d like to pop by Montreal for a little bit to visit friends but I suppose I’d have to hook something up first. argh planning! we’ll see. things are wonderfully busy here in Ottawa; I spent part of yesterday (Saturday) with another Baha’i friend, following up with some people we met during the Varqa Teaching Project in November. it was a really moving experience—we were visiting a neighbour of mine who seemed to be very receptive to the Message of Bahá’u'lláh and very open to learning more about it through further home visits and Ruhi Book 1. I felt blown away and humbled by the experience. Again, I’ll write more about that later on as things continue to progress; needless to say, it’s the first time I’ve felt so confirmed while teaching the Faith.

I want to give big shout-outs and much love to everyone from Malaysia who reads this blog. You know who you are. I was chatting with a friend over IM and she told me she had met someone from Malaysia who recognized her via my blog. Apparently, all of Malaysia reads my blog on a regular basis, so if you’re one of those 27.5 million people, whether you’re from PJ or KL, from Sabah or Sarawak, from Penang or Malacca, a most hearty welcome :D

On a side note, I also hope the floods abate soon :S

…so that’s why youtube was down yesterday. they upgraded! for those of you who are into it, check out the new look youtube (and big boss google) brought out of beta. pretty sweet… along the way, check out this short NBC TV segment on “Faith in America” that offers a quick peek at the Baha’i Faith!

random update time. I peaced out for the Thanksgiving weekend (yup, Canadian Thanksgiving) and went to Victoriaville to visit Craig and Geneviève, two terribly good friends of mine from back when I went on a year of service there in 2002. it was great to get back together with them. we hung around, took care of their kids, and had some of our good old prayer sessions like back in the day. theirs is a musical family, so there was sweet harmony and soft chanting melody. I spent some of my time on the train ride to Drummondville studying parts of the long obligatory prayer—in an effort to finally memorize the whole thing—and said prayers on the bus from Drummondville to Victoriaville. It was sweet to have all that time to pray. it really took me far outside of the harried and somewhat obsessive-compulsive mental state I’d been cultivating for the past little while back in Ottawa. just quiet and honest reflection. on the train ride back from Drummondville, I got through two more chapters of The Covenant of Bahá’u'lláh by Adib Taherzadeh. Deeply touching and at times heart-rending book to read—reading about the all crushing sorrows inflicted upon Bahá’u'lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá by the early Covenant-breakers is almost too much to take in one sitting. And I haven’t even gotten to the part about Shoghi Effendi yet. Anyway, I digress.

the weekend was an oddly productive one. I paid visits to and/or called up several other Baha’is in Victoriaville, and even stopped in to the Marché public to buy two bags of fresh local cranberries—which, in addition to the 2 kg bag of cranberries I ordered at work, should make some fine cranberry jam. I’ll blog the resulting jam session once it happens, with some recipes. hmm, I’m having cranberry flashbacks here.

what began as an Ottawa in-joke is growing into an international meme thanks to the power of the Internet. imagine my surprise at the uproar caused by an innocent photo of me and Hooman posted to flickr following a local celebration of the ninth day of Ridván (the same one where Eric Farr performed). Not only have people around the world discovered the hilarity of heyvooning, they’re doing it themselves—and posting the photos to flickr, where a new heyvoon group collects the fallout. Check it out, and be sure to contribute samples of your own neighbourhood heyvoonery.

hey! just a random note to say that I’m still alive, just working like crazy and juggling several different priorities—two children’s classes and a study circle doing Book 6 of the Ruhi curriculum come to mind. It’s labor dabor day weekend in North America; tomorrow, Julie, my mom and I will be at the Ottawa Baha’i Centre doing some garden-planting with the kids (part 2). It’s supposed to be 21 degrees C tomorrow, which is just warm enough for comfort. We’ll be sure to take photos. Then on Sunday it’s a devotional gathering / BBQ / picnic to welcome everyone into a new year of children’s classes - we went an entire year without stopping during the summer, and that’s pretty cool! yay for us!

first of all, my apologies to those of you who didn’t grow up in Canada in the 80’s. I did, and when I was a little boy there was a kid’s show called Harriet’s Magic Hats, about Aunt Harriet and her magic chest of hats. Aunt Harriet’s nieces would always go to the attic to try on the hats, and every time they did, they would be transported away to a place related to the hat they chose. For example, putting on a chef’s hat might transport one to a professional kitchen, putting on a firefighter’s hat would bring one to a firehall, etc. Personally, I credit this show with giving me an odd obsession with hats; as an homage to the show’s lasting effect on my psyche, one of the character attributes in the notorious what’s your pokéname? (yes, I made it) is a “magic chest of hats”. Now friends, thanks to the magic of YouTube, let us relive the glory of those golden days.

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks. since Marty’s been away, I’ve had to hold down the fort at work, which has been a challenge and a half. I’m looking forward to seeing his friendly, focused face across my cubicle wall tomorrow morning.

A group of brave champions has been gathering at my place lately to study Book 6 of the Ruhi Curriculum, entitled Teaching the Cause. This “study circle” has been intense so far, with some pretty good discussion. It’s the first time in a while I’ve facilitated this book from beginning to end—a welcome addition to my life, as studying the Ruhi curriculum is always a joy, whether as a tutor or facilitator or as a participant—no matter how you take part in a study circle, you’ll always learn from it. The challenge for us this time around will be to integrate practice components into the group’s study, as it’s the practice of teaching, more than just talking about teaching, that really brings the benefits. Something about it being the source of all courage and all. One of our number is currently on pilgrimage—such a bounty!—which should increase the overall emblazedness of the group several times over once she returns. I’m hoping it will, especially since Ottawa’s next reflection meeting is coming up in two weeks—July 27th!—and this will most probably tie into the aforementioned practice component of our study circle.

Ottawa’s Baha’i community commemorated the Martyrdom of the Báb on the 9th of July; fellow Baha’i blogger Philippe of Baha’i Thought wrote up an excellent post distilling key concepts in the life of The Báb—and in the lives of Bahá’u'lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—which brought me to a new understanding of the meaning of the Báb’s Martyrdom within the context of humanity’s path towards maturity.

Aaaaaaaand lots of birthdays too. Apart from Catherine’s birthday on the 5th and my brother Gabriel (freshly back from India) who celebrates his birthday on the 18th, lots of other friends have either had their birthdays this month or will have them soon: Sahba T and Sahba S (no relation), Sarah HT, Dru, Andrea, Shamim from Sherbrooke, and so on and so on… HAPPY COLLECTIVE BIRTHDAY

oyez, oyez! flickr, le site archi-superlatif et merveilleux d’échange de photos, est maintenant disponible en version française. c’est un site très utile, vu qu’on peut facilement mettre en ligne les photos, les organiser, y ajouter des notes et même les placer sur des cartes géographiques! Alors, qu’attendez-vous? Joignez-vous!