Ottawa Cat show

This time, it decided to put the photos in reverse order.

Today, I went to a cat exhibition in Ottawa. I used to love street cats back in Iran, and I would pet them on my wa,y and especially in the university campus, where they were more tame to the strangers. 

Here, people keep cats inside, and house cats develop different behaviour than street cats. I would call it that they carry more personality and feelings with themselves. More preferences about what they want to do and how they feel affect what they want to do deeply. For example, a street cat may want to have food even when you are a stranger, but a house cat chooses whether or not they are going to eat when you are around or not.

I met a few cat breeds here that I have not seen before in person. We will get to them.

 

This is Gambit, the cat that I am applying to adopt. Gambit is a boy and has big-boy energy. I know he is leash-trained, so I can take him outside for walks. This photo is after the cat judgment competition. I found him in the next photo, contemplating. 

After the cat's judgment, he was down to himself

This cat was leaning towards its own reflection on the wall

Gambit, performing for the people

A cat before Gambit

Another cat

This one, I think hissed at the judge

Cat handling by the judge

This cat was in a stroller, and I wanted to take the photo in it, but it would lean down. So this lady picked it up, and I got both of them in the photo

Black cat

I always thought these cats were naked and only had their skin with no hair. But they actually have peach fuzzy hair on their skin.

A maine coon, big big cat

Another cat

Another judgement, a few differernt ones in different categories were running, pure breeds, companions, etc.

This one

This one was a deaf cat

And this was new to me, it was called Devon Rex. It has long ears and wavey short hair

Like a rabbit

Another judgement

Another judgement

More cats

A ton of people

I had to wait in a relatively long line to get in

To me, it felt odd that humans take a childish joy in seeing these furball creatures.

Week day

It is Monday morning and something is waiting for me

Something that because of it, I didn’t sleep late

Something that is going to want to drain me if I am not careful

Something that drags me into thinking about pieces

And makes me need to wear glasses and lose sight of

What happens in the big picture

But it pays me and allows me to break the problems

Into manageable abstract form of convoluted things

That I need to open up and decipher

I don’t know how long this run will take

But I hope I won’t burn a fuse or be drowned this time

Good thing is it pays me

Money is a problem which I cannot resolve by myself

And it allows me to be in an environment 

Which I encounter people daily

And the funny thing is I see them more than my friends and family

That is not the joke,

The joke is the reason we were put together was mainly because

We could solve a problem that looked similar

This arises a mismatch 

And each mismatch is an opportunity to learn

To fill in the gaps

Or set boundaries 

Palestinian breakfast

 I came to a breakfast restaurant which surprised me when I first entered. I’ve been to the same place with the same decorations before but for dinner. I asked the waitress and she said they have changed their line of service to bbq and breakfast. 

I ordered a couple dishes and some tea. When it came back, I was surprised by how much I liked the combination of texture, presentation, and the taste of these dishes. One of them with hummus like overall but had crispy pieces inside of it and that made me think of Iranian tah-dig but with a surprise of not getting soggy and staying crunchy even though it was deeply embedded under loads of hummus and oil. The other dish which I first thought is going to be only fried tomatoes and spices came with eggs and cheese and that was also delicious. It was made in a cast iron dish which I think is the best way. I don’t use cast iron at home because it needs maintenance but I appreciate when I am served in a dish that holds heat and feels heavy. 

It reminded me of the kind of food my roommate would make. I never ended up tasting any of his food. He believed in peace through business. He even had a book about economics written by himself. Thick book that I never ended up going past few pages of it. It makes me wonder now how would one approach providing a solution to a complex problem to the world? A problem like economics that is basically the description of the veins and vessels carrying the life force through the body of society must be complex. 

Nevertheless he had a book about conspiracy theory also, maybe as thick as his economics book. And that makes me wonder, power and money, one seemingly more visible than the other but both at the top of what is human experience at the current point of time. 

Are these problems?

There are problems as long as one is not satisfied with their own position in their grand scheme. And funny thing about them is no one can force themselves to attain a position in a sustainable manner. It’s organic and made out of humans and their connections. As much as we want to be detached and free, this detachment comes only with a healthy attachment to parts of this system. We sometimes also see a glimpse of what is going on further away from where we are, how wealth is distributed or how power is enforced upon others and we tend to empathize as humans to make it more humane for others to be. Part of it is also the fear of how the coin could flip at any moment and how fragile our existence is. The kind of tolerance we have built by the comforts of modern life are not sufficient to deal with the harsh truth of reality when Mother Nature wants to see hairless humans acting as good as if they had inches of concrete on their skin.

That’s why it is beneficial for all to have an equilibrium where in all places in the system a certain standard of living is followed. This can slow down the progress that could be achieved by tyranny but nowhere in history, tyranny has lasted more than the life time of the rulers. In contrast, legacy remains and it is not about one and their own family. It is a problem of millennia. A slow but steady movement towards expansion and evolution with the hope that the magic of life still prefers humans to be incarnated and maybe at some point, it is going to have enough of us and prefer the more logical and less sensitive silicon life forms or anything else. Beggars can’t be choosers and that submission to the will of the time and what wants to be seen at the scene of life is the pinnacle of immortality of human beings. We have the choice to choose as if we are in charge but in return, we get to be treated as if we, in our own special form, are as little as a speckle of dust in the grand scheme of things.

Glamp near Perth, ON

 It was my birthday and I booked an OTenTik tent to stay. Short review, cleaner and easier to use than most cabins I ever booked, cheaper, but the downside is it is a tent and gets super warm during the day and extremely cold at night. To the point where I wasn't able to get out of my sleeping place till morning. No heating inside, no electricity, but the washroom was pretty close, and there was a dishwashing sink outside.

A short week; I only did Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but I genuinely felt burnt up Thursday morning. I was planning to go shopping and be ready to be there at 3pm, but after an hour of deciding stuff in the morning, I fell asleep on the couch and found myself back at 2pm. 

Again, the photos are arranged by themselves and I leave it as is to give a way for the entropy of the universe to aligns the story

A cave painting appeared on the log I was burning. Did the cave paintings appear by themselves, or humans did them?

A happy person. This is day two, after a night of being frozen and trying to sleep, and rowing a boat in all the different ways possible to keep it straight. But you know what? Those were things that were keeping me from smiling, and I needed them.

I was remembering how I solved control theory problems for a row passing a river with a current flowing in a different direction in my undergrad. At points it appeared to me that I am not dealing with a stable system at all.

Contrast

I realized the outer shell of wood logs is extremely resistant to flames, and they keep the inner core from burning. That is why people chop the wood to burn it.

And this is how I began the week. With 4 lanes on the highway closed for a questionable reason

This is the canal I was riding my canoe in. There were locks and boats on the other side of the lock.

Beautiful trees

Looked to find a frog on one of these lily pads with no avail

A tree stopped me and made my boat hit the spider web in this branch. I felt like it was holding me till I take photos from it and left me to do the mission

This is the tree which was holding me

same tree but I took a few photos

This is how it was holding on to me. It may not seem obvious, but I was locked in its branches

There was an empty nest on the branches also

some other fallen trees now where hosting spider webs

A symmetric view

These cat tails reminded me of the war movies I watched as a kid. Iranian soldiers rowing their boats between Iran and Iraq in wartime. I felt how grateful I am that I don't need to be quiet, so I don't get shot or bombed by a mortar. The whistling song plays in my head whenever I pass by an experience in which I smell the blood of fallen soldiers in my peace and freedom. The same happened when I went for a drive in my car and on many other occasions. An ongoing generational mourning for a generational trauma.

beautiful colors of green, orange, and blue with the shining bright light from that little spot in between.

do not so special leaves get to be shot?

gradient of greens in the background of blue sky

Oversaturated colors

trail taking a turn

Life speeds up

Greenery and more greenery

fabric of the wooden log

These guys were biking nearby

The dude and his drink

The OTenTik spot

The heat lies in between

And sunset with me and my car