Angela O'Hara

For my son’s third birthday, I organized with my friend Sinara an amazing birthday party and puppet show. Her husband, Richard, even built a puppet theatre! I wrote a script and made rod puppets, too and Sinara, Paula and I enacted an original version of the ‘Reluctant Dragon’ Great fun was had by all! I feel very happy that I accomplished something unique and memorable for Zein and his friends and we will continue to make puppets from now on-I had such amazing fun making them. My next project will be making a life-size puppet for the pagan “Festival of Lights’ procession at Kensington market this winter!

Just got the good news-accepted in the PHD prohramme at the Dept of Communication and Culture at York!!

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Angela

Well, it looks like this is going to happen! I registered for a graduate course at UotT in Intensive Arabic and I pretty much expect it to live up to its name with three classes a week and untold homework! I’m really looking forward to studying-it is something so practical and useful for me and will open up great possibilities for me in the Middle East. I am also looking forward to focusing on something neither intellectual nor creative this summer!

I have finally contacted a jungian psychoanalyst and it turns out that she knew the analyst I had in Dublin! Small circle. I begin my sessions tomorrow and I’m very excited. I have forgotten that I am supposed to keep a dream log but I am having difficulty remembering my dreams in the morning. I have to improve on that. Amyways, woo-hoo! This was a big one!

The night before I cooked with chipotle chiles..they are sooo tasty but really HOT! Nearly burned my mouth off. chicken with chipotle sauce…yumm! Reminded me of my trip to Oaxaca and the crowded markets piled high with a hundred varieties of smoked and dried chilles. I loved that trip!

Last night I cooked swiss chard . i’m proud of myself!

I aginized and agonized over this! where to have the party and who to invite? I have a very compact apartment and now the weather is miserable so the garden is off limits. I really feel a summer would be a better time to have the party so the kids can run around the backyard. So a friend of mine whose visiting from Ireland and I had the brainstorm of going on an outing for his birthday and ditching the who party thing. so we decided that we would go to Niagara Falls for his birthday! It’s perfect. Zein’s grandmother is also over from Gaza for awhile so it would be great for her to see this wonder—and can you believe it? I have never been there myself! So we’ll go to Niagara Falls and have a nice lunch with a cake, hats, and balloons. I think that will be memorable!

I think I’m finally getting around to this mamoth task! I have a domain name wwotw.org and am taking this interesting course: digital publications with this great filmmaker Judith Doyle. I’m so excited to actually start bringing it together! Long overdue!

But this is a wonderful goal and just because they don’t, doesn’t mean you can’t. I have eaten breakfast in many parts of Italy, and lunch and dinner and can report that everything tastes better! A typical Italian breakfast is either a quick espressor downed in a single gulp or a latte and small pastry. They need to save space for the real meal at 1:00 and then things get serious!

Of course I didn’t know it was haunted but when I woke up in the middle of the night to dancing lights up in the corner of the room that came from nowhere (the room was otherwise pitch black)-I knew something was afoot. I wasn’t frightened becasue I didn’t know what they were. The next morning I asked if the hotel was haunted and it turned out it was! Subsequent research has informed me that these lights are actually an early form of paranormal manifestation

The last time I saw a ghost was in my mother’s house in the Maritimes-a two hundred year old house in the countryside and well known for being haunted. I had experienced some odd things before there such as the smell of perfume filling a room, and the dogs have always behaved strangely, staring and barking for no apparent reason. However, the last time I visited I felt a deep feeling of anxiety being in the house and then I saw a black form of a person dissappearing into the bathroom. I was so sure the person was real that I followed it there but there was nothing! Very eery. (My stepfather has also reported seeing a black shape in the house) What I am curious about is what is the difference—some ghosts are shadows and others are made of light?

I did get a taste for it in the Yucatan peninsula, especially around the incredible ruins of Palenque—but it wasn’t the full jungle experience.

Ever since I had my son this has been a challenge but I also think I need to develop the discipline again of remembering. It was so amazing. Last night I had a very vivid dream about ghosts! I dreamt i was in a small haunted house and I was sharing it with a friend. I kept seeing ghosts around me but no one would believe me. There was even this rocking chair that locked by itself. Creepy. What does it all mean??

Sea horses and beetles! Apparently they eat them in China but I don’t think i’ll go that far.

Just for fun though, I’ve compiled a list of the most exotic or strange things I’ve eaten for posterity:

wild boar
truffles
escargots
mezcal with scorpion
frog’s legs
blood pudding
octapus

Hey, this is pretty tame compared with the things people have eaten!

I had this pasta with truffle sauce in this wonderful restaurant in Tuscany, it was divine!

For everything, getting in assignments, sending stuff of in time for due dates..I am chronically late and it hasn’t improved with time! Help!

Thinking about it, ever since I started this goal, I have opened myself up more to talking to everyone and I think my attitude has changed, so much so that I don’t even think twice about talking to someone I don’t know! Of course, the ‘all the time’ bit is really not realistic as sometimes you just don’t feel like being chatty, but in principal I think I’ve accomplished this. My behaviour really has changed! Astonishing!

I have decided to plan a meal that uses at least two ingredients that I have never cooked with before! Since oriental cooking involves lots of such ingredients, I did a search for ‘unusual ingredients’ and came up with quite a few used in chinese cooking and which I have never used: all types of seaweed, lotus leaves, ‘wood-ear fung,’ snow pickle. If anyone has a recipe for any interesting dish, I’d love to hear it.

I have yet to find my dream snake, the one snake that was destined to be wrapped around my neck for the few moments required for a photo to be taken! Snakes seem to be few and far between in Toronto but I have not given up on this goal! The search continues! In fact, I am thinking of placing an ad. So if any one knows a snake that is willing and able and in the area, please let me know!