no shows

Today marks the middle of week 5 (of 10) at school. The class I TA had their midterm today and two of my students didn't know which TA to hand in their exam to because, well, they haven't even shown up to one discussion section. In other words, they have no fucking clue who their TA is because they skipped the first 5 weeks of class. Better yet, one of my persistent no show students also didn't show up for the exam. I wonder if she actually plans to pass this class (not possible at this point). I wish we could hand pick students like this and kick 'em out to make room for students who give a shit and can't afford to just register for courses they have no intention of passing.

back

After a long hiatus I'm back. During my absence I completed my written exams, which I've blogged about and then 2 weeks later I endured my hazing which is a 1.5 hour oral defense of essentially everything I ought to know about my area of research as negotiated with my committee of four people before all this started and I passed! So now I get to replace the M.A. after my name with Ph.C. which means Ph.D candidate. I get the D after I write my dissertation which is looking like it's going to be over 200 pages and about 6-7 chapters long.

People unfamiliar with academia often ask the same questions so here's an FAQ:

1. So are you a doctor now?

No, not til I finish writing my dissertation AND survive an oral defense of my arguments. Probably another 1-2 hour grilling by my committee and possible others. I know at SFU dissertation defenses were public events. Luckily I don't think they do that at my school. So not until I finish and defend my dissertation do I earn my D.

2. When do you graduate?

It's more a matter of completing a project than a matter of time. I graduate when I finish writing my dissertation and pass my oral defense. The more scary question is when does my funding dry up. For me, December 2010. So if I'm not done by then I need to either find an assistantship (research assistant or teaching assistant or other teaching job) at my school to get the tuition waiver, or I'll have to pay tuition out of my own pocket to cover my dissertation credits while I finish up. Either way, not finishing on time will fucking suck the big one and really stress me out.

3. What classes are you taking?

I finished my coursework last year so when I say I'm in class, I'm either in a class that I'm auditing for fun (because it wasn't offered when I was taking classes) or I'm in an undergrad lecture for the course I TA (teach).

4. If you aren't taking classes, what the hell do you do all day?

I TA two hours a week, hold office hours a couple hours a week (when my students come with questions or help or whatever), and attend lecture for the class I TA 4 hours a week. Aside from teaching related stuff and attending talks from visiting scholars (pretty much an expectation for us), I'm not at school at all.

Instead I'm usually at a coffee shop or at home writing my prospectus, which is a 15-20 page detailed plan of what my dissertation is about. At the same time I'm trying to revise and edit old papers and submit them to academic journals for publication because that's kind of the academic scorecard at research universities like mine. Publish or perish (or teach a huge load at a community college).

And the other big thing we need to do continuously is present papers at conferences. So between teaching, trying to publish, attending conferences, and working on my prospectus, I haven't got a lot of spare time on my hands. Which is why when I was prepping for exams I had absolutely NO time on my hands. Essentially I had to do all that stuff PLUS read 2-3 books and articles a day for about 4 months. Now I'm back to a more normal and humane schedule. Thanks the gods for that.

---

So yeah, it's been 3 weeks since I passed my orals and advanced to candidacy so I've been resting, catching up on sleep and exercise, and I also just came back from a conference in New Orleans. Now I'm already behind on getting my prospectus done. It's kinda like running on a treadmill on level 10, constantly.

exams

So I said I would blog about what these exams are about. I don't have time to get into a lot of detail but basically it's this:

• 3.5 days to to write 4 essays (15 pages each, for a total of 60 pages)
• one essay typically deals with primary methodology we use in our research (mine is on cultural studies)
  
• the other three essays are topical (e.g. Asian American pop culture, development of Asian American studies as a discipline etc.)
• each essay should demonstrate our knowledge gained from doing a list of readings for each essay -- about 20-30 readings (mix of books and journal articles)
  

And here is my preparation schedule to date

April 2008 (early April): my first draft of reading lists sent to committee members to edit and add readings

Summer 2008: did a few readings after teaching A-term (2? credits); continued negotiating and refining the list with committee members

Fall 2008: took 10 credits of reading; continued negotiating and refining the list with committee members

Dec 2008 to Jan 2009: focused on getting through all the Cultural Studies methods readings

Sep to Dec 2008: took 10 credits of reading, 5 for each of 2 committee members (meetings with each every 2 weeks to discuss and review my understanding of the readings and how they are situated in the larger scholarly conversation)

Mid Feb: finalized a date for exams, booked meeting room for orals with admin

Feb 28: Completed 90% of all readings (5 books and 20 articles remaining), Completed final meetings with all committee members; got form signed and returned

March 1:
TO DO: Finish key readings e.g. Lowe, O&W, Wei, Almaguer; review Cultural Studies Theory/ist summaries online ; outline arguments by scholar and by concept for each exam question area, prewrite some arguments, read remaining low-priority readings only as needed in the pre-writes
March 15: rest and spa day??

March 13-16: written exams

March 17-21: grading of final papers for teaching responsibilities

March 22-28: staycation/mini vacation

March 29: review my exam essays

March 31: oral defense

coffeeshop

Been pretty much camped out at this coffee shop 4-5 days a week, 3-8 hours per day the last month or two with my friends who are also preparing for exams. Usually pretty uneventful. We have gotten to know the musical tastes of the barristas and who makes a better coffee. We even know when they are scheduled to work. Definitely recognize all the regulars. There are a couple women sitting behind me right now though, who are really pissing me off. One of them has her chair all backed up against mine and they won't shut the fuck up. Here an IM dialog between me and R I thought you might find entertaining:

(2:57:29 PM) me: i am going to strangle these bitches
(2:59:32 PM) R: I know they are SOOO LOUD
(2:59:36 PM) R: and the laugh!
(2:59:44 PM) me: what theyre laughing at isnt even funny
(2:59:51 PM) me: if i could laugh too i wouldnt mind so much
(3:09:55 PM) me: why is this bitch all the way up my ass like this
(3:10:01 PM) me: there is like 5' of space on the other side of the table
(3:10:23 PM) R: they were trying to get out of the sun
(3:10:34 PM) R: I don't think you're important enough to worry about
(3:10:40 PM) R: cuz, its all about them!
(3:10:50 PM) me: i should get your full spectrum light and shine it at them
(3:11:50 PM) R: the girl behind you just turned around and gave me a dirty look for talking
(3:11:55 PM) R: I guess Im bothering her
(3:11:58 PM) me: BITCH
(3:12:02 PM) me: shit is going down

school

I have come to realize that regular people really have no idea what the fuck grad students do. I'm going to do all grad students a favour and tell you all because there seems to be some mistaken idea that we just take courses and assist with teaching here and there and so we have all this free time to travel and fuck around. Wrong. So very wrong. Unfortunately I need to finish reading an article and half a novel (for the lit class I TA) tonight so I can't go into detail but I'll at least share what I did today. BTW, I should note that I have a particularly understanding partner who almost remembers my schedule for each day and recognizes my hell. Those of you who don't will have to send their partners a link to this blog as I edumacate y'all.

- checked my email to see if my paper got into this conference that I really need to go to or people on future hiring committees are going to wonder why I didn't
- there was no such email but I did respond to an email to say that I would be a reviewer of a manuscript for a journal even though I totally do not have time for this but need the experience and it will look good on my vitae (aka CV aka resume for academics)
- then I went to campus and held my 2-hour office hours which is when undergrads in the class I teach are welcome to drop in to ask questions, get help or in this case review a draft of a paper
- this was followed by a 2-hour lecture where we watched a film based on the novel the class just read (there are 5 novels, which means I have to have read them all before the students do)
- 2 hours is precious so I worked on reading the next novel while watching the film
- after lecture was our 1 hour weekly TA meeting where the 3 teaching assistants meet with the prof to discuss what we plan to teach in discussion section friday (which we run independently, 50 students to each TA). We also talked about deadlines for grading their 50 midterm papers due in a couple weeks
- took a bus home, went to a 75 minute yoga class, ate dinner, and now I have to read an article that is on my exam reading list and finish that novel before bed.

So that is a detailed day in the life of a grad student. Note, there is no room for much media consumption on this schedule. Sometimes I turn on the TV to catch the evening news while I cook dinner and eat, but after that, no TV.

Tomorrow I have no obligations on campus so I meet with friends at a coffee shop to read and take notes for our general exams. Last week we scoffed at the grad students at the next table complaining about having to read a book a day. Pssssht. We need to read MORE THAN a book a day to get through our reading lists which are comprised of about 25-30 readings per list (4 lists on 4 different topics so about 120 readings). List is a mix of journal articles (20 pages) and full books. Tomorrow I'm hoping to knock out two books on my list.

Next time I'll talk more about these gang initiations/hazings, I mean general PhD exams.

phone

I got a new phone and switched over to Sprint so I could pay $10 more for a lot more functionality -- commercial free streaming radio, Sprint TV, and mobile internet access. Unfortunately that also means getting really fucking annoying calls from some some company in Atlanta that I don't pick up. If you get weird calls, google the number and you'll probably find out it's some "marketing" agency wanting to ask why you switched or whatever. That or the call about your car's factory warrantee running out. I hate those.

I haven't had a chance to figure out all the things that I can do on the phone but I do know I can watch clips and deleted scenes from Ghost Hunters. Awesome (especially since I don't have cable).

scheduling

I really hate scheduling shit. I would hate my job so much if I were a personal assistant or executive assistant or secretary or something. I'm in general exam oral defense scheduling hell right now. Everything is on hold because of some classroom scheduling issues for my co-advisor so we have to wait on that until I can settle a defense date which will enable me to figure out my written exam dates, which means I'll finally be able to use the cool countdown feature on my new Samsung 520 phone, or what I call iPhone for poor folks with its WAP browser and inability to synch with anything meaningful on my laptop. Anyways, blogging is light because I have been doing nothing but reading and notetaking in EndNote. I have been doing some cathartic writing though on Yelp. Look for me by my first and last name, if you know it.

Anyways, it was funny. I just met K's "twin" downstairs at the coffee shop. He's a white guy but has the same name, is also into lindy hop, lives in the same building, and has a gf doing a Ph.D.

hang up

I logged on to the Sprint web site to activate my new phone today. Obviously they have some kinks to work out in their activation system as my online agent's (Matthew) instructions to make a test call (which I made to K) got routed to another customer service rep at Sprint who told me she was doing a "welcome call."

So I had one agent on the phone and one on my live chat. Matthew, my online agent, kept telling me to hang up on the lady on the phone but she was...talking. He insisted it was ok but it was all a little weird chatting to someone telling me to hang up on the lady from Sprint who was talking to me over the phone in real time.

Here's how it went down on the chat. Kinda funny:

5:11:59 PM		Me	making test call
5:12:08 PM		Matthew L	Ok
5:12:18 PM		Me	it put me thru to sprint
5:13:03 PM		Matthew L	Ok
5:13:03 PM		Matthew L	One moment please.
5:13:48 PM		Me	she's doing a welcome call? wtf
5:14:20 PM		Me	now she says she is doing my activation. this is confusing
5:14:54 PM		Matthew L	That is not supposed to happen. You can hangup from the representative.
5:15:06 PM		Me	she's talking...
5:15:54 PM		Me	she's telling me about billing cycles
5:16:02 PM		Me	and reading me fine print
5:16:09 PM		Matthew L	Ok, but if the steps went through then it is working.
5:16:28 PM		Me	i guess i should sit thru her call?
5:16:41 PM		Me	like will i have to jump thru this hoop anyways?
5:16:44 PM		Matthew L	No
5:17:01 PM		Me	oh i feel bad...
5:17:04 PM		Me	is she in sales?
5:17:14 PM		Matthew L	You can hangup, if it got thru to sprint then it works.
5:17:23 PM		Me	gotcha. thanks so much
5:17:30 PM		Matthew L	Your Welcome
5:17:35 PM		Matthew L	It is my job to ensure that I have fully resolved the issues that prompted you to chat with me. Have I resolved all of your issues today?
5:17:42 PM		Me	yup thanks
5:17:50 PM		Matthew L	It has been my pleasure assisting you today !!

always

Grad students "always and never have the day off." That's what one of my friends said today about today being MLK day. She was right because the coffee shop where we meet to study along with a couple other women in my cohort was packed all day today. Yup I spent my "day of service" reading for exams for 9 hours and everyone around us seemed to be studying diligently with their big huge calculators and big huge law and physiology and engineering textbooks. It's going to be like this until April 3rd or so when I complete the oral defence for my general exams.

creepy

It feels like we get notifications of "criminal incident" at least on a monthly basis if not more often. Mostly strong arm robberies, which is pretty scary. This one though is just creepy.

Timely Warning Notification of a Criminal Incident
1/9/09

Indecent Liberties - Seattle Campus

The UW Police Department is investigating a reported case of indecent liberties that occurred on January 9, 2009 at 8:30 a.m. in a men's restroom in Odegaard Library. A male victim entered the 3rd floor restroom and noticed the male suspect loitering by the sinks. The suspect started a conversation with the victim describing his own height and weight, and asked the victim how tall he was and how much he weighed. He asked several flirtatious questions while approaching the victim. The victim attempted to leave the area, but the suspect would not move. The suspect again asked the victim how much he weighed, said "let me check," and grabbed the victim in several places. The victim stated that someone entered the restroom, which allowed him to escape. The victim was not injured in the encounter.

The suspect is described as a tall male with a dark complexion, approximately 6'3", with very short hair in a "buzz" cut. He spoke with a strong accent, origin unknown. He was also reportedly carrying a small black 8" toiletry bag.

Now I'm all for not racializing people since race as a biological concept does not exist, but when it comes to practical matters like describing a fucking suspect so we can catch the guy, I think we need to be more specific than "dark complexion." I mean what the fuck does that mean? Even if they are socially defined, I think "races" (the quotation marks are deliberate and used correctly) at least allow us to use popular ideas of what people might look like because, duh, it is visible. Do we often guess people's race incorrectly? Yup, for sure. But dark complexion tells me nothing. But black or Asian or Latino gives me at least somewhat of a better idea of what this guy looks like.

restaurants

I got back from my two weeks in Vancouver (okay, actually Coquitlam, or what I call Shitquitlam, this shitty suburb of Vancouver where I grew up and my parents still live). I spent the first week totally snowed in. I'm talking over a foot of snow that I'd shovel only to have it come back the next day when my back was still sore from shoveling. So I gave up, hunkered down, and caught up on some reading for school. Apparently the BC south coast hasn't seen this much snow since 1971 which means it's the most snow my area has seen in my lifetime. It was pretty and all that but the novelty wore off quickly. Once the snow let up a little it was time to see friends for our favourite activity, eating. Just wanted to sum up for people in/visiting Vancouver the places we went to and the highlights (and a few lowlights):

Deer Garden. This place has the best curry brisket in the world, better than the famous Mui Garden curry. My parents get take out from here every time I visit.

Hon's Wonton House. We stopped at the New Westminster branch for some lunch and I got duck noodle soup (my favourite noodle order) for $4.35 with big huge pieces of duck. Delicous.

Rich Ocean. This place on West Broadway has awesome and cheap (before noon) dim sum. We ate until we were stuffed and even got dessert and it came out to barely over $25 for 4 people. Really awesome food. Can't wait to go back.

North Garden. This is where the old Lone Star Cafe and before that Fuddruckers were located. The beef and gai lan was a bit tasteless, but you have to go there for the peking duck. It is amazing. I haven't had Peking duck that good in a long time. $28 for two dishes -- the duck skin with wrap and duck meat with lettuce wrap. The hot and sour soup is particularly spicey but K liked it a lot. If you like your soup spicey, definitely try it.

Kingyo Izakaya. K and I walked down to Denmen from Robson to check this place out. Guu is still our favourite, but this place was excellent. Get the sashimi salad and tuna tataki. Oh and the black cod and also the crab croquette.

Rodney's Oyster House. Went here with some friends. Usually we try for the happy hour when oysters are a buck each but we came for dinner instead. It was delicious but pricey ($3.50 an oyster) so I'd stick to happy hour.

New York Fries. Kind of odd to go to a Canadian fast food place called NY Fries to get poutine but they make it well there and K was craving some so we did. Yum.

Blenz. This is kinda the Canadian Starbucks. Ubiquitous chain coffee shop, but the coffee is better than Starbucks. Definitely try the Belgian dark chocolate mocha. It was fantastic.

Ki Hon Sushi. We got a nice take out sushi party platter for 5-6 people for only $36 here. And that includes 15 pieces of nigiri and a whole bunch of rolls. Will definitely be back for my next take out order. Tekka rolls are only $2 and the other stuff is just as cheap and it's pretty good for a little tiny take out place. Definitely the cheapest party platters around.

Miki Sushi. I was just looking for a mutual location to meet up with friends the first night I got in before the forecasted snow storm. This place sucked hard. It had the decor of a 1960s mental institution including the pukey green wall color and shit generally falling apart. The fish roe sushi looked like food poisoning wrapped in seaweed so we didn't eat it (and they didn't take it off the bill). It was generally bad, dark, drafty, cold, and bad bad bad.

Finally, Taiwan Beef Noodle House. I didn't eat there because I was way too hungover from new years, but my friends had lunch there new years day and got food poisoning so I'm okay with never going there.

So I think I met my Chinese and Japanese food quota (as much as possible) while in Vancouver despite the snowy roads. Now I'm back in Seattle where happy hour rules but Asian food...not so much.

love

As an unmarried 32-year-old I obviously am no expert but I find strategizing in relationships a la Rules of the Game is manipulative, overly defensive, and self-serving. I can understand how it can be important not to just jump right in the deep end with unrestrained optimism and I can understand why wearing your heart on your sleeve all the time could invite heartbreak, but I don't like the idea of hard and fast rules aimed at self-protection like Women should'nt say 'I love you' first. I think, in my mind, I file this sorta thing under "thinking too hard" and "using your head when you should be using your heart" and "silly social rules that perpetuate a static and essentialized notion of gender and that reinforce traditional gender roles in heterosexual courtship." Okay why does feminist theory get into my musings about everything. Anyways, it is an interesting topic. What's been your experience?

holidays

So I made it through grading hell and survived the drive from Seattle to Vancouver. The drive was actually pretty easy as I took off 3 hours before the huge snow storm that blanketed the pacific northwest. I5 got a tad bit sketchy with compact snow up around Arlington, WA but with some slow and steady maneuvering it was fine. Even had time to stop off at the duty free store for some 75% off Lancome and liquor for some friends. Those of you who take the truck crossing northbound into Surrey, show your AAA/BCAA card for a discount, even on fancy cosmetics (but not liquor). This is at the first duty free store, not the second one.

First night I got to see a couple of friends and their awesome 6 month old who is rarely without a big toothless smile on his face. I can only hope for a kid as awesome as him. He even sleeps through the night.

After that it snowed and snowed and snowed some more. I've been stuck at home since Saturday as a result. It's not really a bad thing since I have a lot of work to do over the holidays. So far I've finished No-No Boy, a novel that I have to teach this quarter for an American Ethnic Lit class. Now it's time for exam reading which includes The Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity, which I've been dying to read.

I've also been appointed to cook/prep for the potluck Christmas dinner which means no fucking way I'm making turkey. Too much pain, too much time, and no one but my younger cousin even likes turkey. My older cousin whose family used to host each year particularly hates it. So we're doing Chinese food and whatever. I guess you could call that fusion even though I don't really fancy fusion restaurants.

Here's what I got planned:

Other people’s contributions so far:

Chinese mushrooms
Chinese cake (probably with that gross chestnut cream shit, ugh)
Others TBD

Mom buy/make:

Curry beef brisket
Roast duck
Gai lan with garlic, and oyster sauce

Me to make:

Salad with grated cheese, dried cranberries, sliced almonds, crumbled hard boiled egg, sliced ham
Honey garlic chicken wings
Tomato basil bruschetta
Goat cheese red pepper phyllo pastries
Mixed berry trifle

seclusion

I read this article about public schools locking up mentally disabled, autistic, and special ed kids in seclusion rooms where some have been left for hours. One even hung himself. Yes here in the great United States of America. How fucked up is that? If teachers aren't trained to deal with special kids then get some who are. Oh I forgot, not enough funding for such things. Let me just say that we had a lot of kids with mental disabilities in my elementary and jr. high school and they had a very small class and many assistants trained especially to work with special ed kids. A couple of my childhood friends are special ed assistants now. Do such positions even exist in public schools here? Maybe there is one for the whole school rather than several for one small class. Money needs to be allocated for things like this. But here money goes to senseless wars and things like building stupid fences at the Mexico border. Public education and health care are so pitiful here. I hope Obama is able to undo some of this mess.

ex-pat

So I read this headline, "Canadian Living in SF gets 6 1/2 years for soliciting 'girl' for sex," and thought for a split second, this better not be someone I know. Canada really is not all that big. Thank the gods, it's some old white dude. Freakshow.

shooting

Another shooting about 10 blocks from my place. This one is pretty ballsy. Someone shot someone in the head outside of a youth event protesting violence. 

In less violent news, I've been doing fairly well with my post-exam-grading, pre-going-back-to-Vancouver to-do list. I took most of the weekend to unwind but did manage to start on the list. Done to date: dropped off gifts to committee members and other helpful faculty, revised exam reading lists, returned library books, registered for some of next quarter's credits, paid bills, opened my stack of snail mail, filed my huge pile of miscellaneous unfiled shit, vacuumed, organized my closet, sent post dated cheques for January's rent and Internet, uploaded a few batches of old photos, and got some snow boots (just in time) and a new messenger bag cuz I just am not a carry a handbag everyday kinda girl and my two other bags have broken zippers from overuse. So. Hopefully I will be all ready to go by this Saturday and the weather will cooperate so I can get home safely.

But before that can happen I need to chip away at my to-do list a bit more yet. I still need to: fix my printer, shred my pile of shit to shred, change Oscar's cage, upload my friends' wedding photos, and finish up some sewing and hemming. The snow should keep me home most of tomorrow to work on all that I think.

sucks

Just spent a bit of time chatting with a good friend who recently had her second child. I went on her facebook to remind her to add some other friends so she could check out their baby pics. That led to a series of random clicks to the pages of our mutual friends, most of whom are in Vancouver. That was such a bad fucking idea.

Surfing FB and seeing all those baby, wedding, vacation, [insert other indicator of personal achievement/luck/success/stability here] photos reminds me of just how stagnant my life is. I haven't traveled overseas in 17 years and don't really have the time, money or travel companions (with compatible schedules or interest) to do it with anyways. We were thinking of going to Thailand, the one place I can maybe afford but now that chaos has erupted there, it's a no go. I did surf onto an old friend's fb page and it looks like she is doing a 180-day round the world honeymoon. How pleasant for her. I live alone in a dark rainy cold city (did I mention I have seasonal affective disorder?) below a couple of noisy racist assholes and the only thing certain about my future is uncertainty. I can barely afford my rent and bills, my department constantly fucks with me by forcing me to swap advisers, and even if I did have a lot of friends in this city, I wouldn't have the time or money to hang out with them. Pretty soon I get to go home for the holidays where my parents will test my patience by nagging at me for trivial things and I will sit in traffic alone trying to visit my happily married friends way on the other side of town. Being the fifth wheel rocks. Oh and if we go out and hang out with other folks, I will inevitably be asked the most annoying question ever. What are you going to do after you graduate?

Well. Let's see. I am on a student visa so I live in a country where I have no rights. At all. Most of the programs that are hiring are in the midwest (or some ridiculously small town) where I refuse to live. But that's okay because I have not published jack shit which will make it really hard to get a job anyways, as does the fact that the university would have to fork out some cash to deal with my visa issues and I doubt we'll be out of this recession by 2010. So what am I going to do after I graduate? To be honest, I don't fucking know and sometimes wonder if I even care anymore.

The other annoying question is where are you going to live after you graduate? Well. Let's see. I have to live where 1. I can find a job 2. I am legally allowed to work 3. I will not have to re-live the racial ignorance that plagued my childhood 4. I will not die of loneliness. I'm not sure that there is such a place.

I have a long day tomorrow and I really don't feel like facing it.

BlogHer

In my pursuit for distractions from exam reading I checked out the web site for BlogHer which holds annual conferences for women bloggers. There are various categories to which you can submit a link to/feed from your blog. Naturally I clicked on Race and Ethnicity. Browsed about 8 pages and nope. Not one Asian blogger. I think I'll stick to my other blog community - Rice Bowl Journals (btw, they moved so update your bookmarks).

late

I'm usually pretty good at getting to bed by midnight, earlier on school nights. But when I don't have an appointment or class in the morning it's hard to find a reason to get up and so I let myself go to bed way too late the night before. I just can't help it though sometimes. I get work done too so if I'm up doing work I let myself stay up even later. Obscenely late. Like now. This is going to foul up my sleep schedule tomorrow. I know it. Consistency with anything is so damn hard for me for a lot of things. It's almost as though I get bored or wound up when things run too much on a schedule and things don't change.

violence

So this rise in youth gang violence, and it is a real rise not just a perceived one, sucks the big one. This all happens just south of where I live, not too far south. Meanwhile up in the neighborhood around my university there has been a bunch of strong arm and gunpoint robberies, one just last week in broad day light a block off the main street we call the Ave. I'm not sure what's scarier, the combination of these two problems or the more organized crime shootings in Vancouver that are on the rise as well. Vancouver being a port city means various ethnic gangs and one that calls themselves the UN (members of a variety of ethnicities) are battling to head up the rampant drug trade up there and they seem a lot more organized than the street gangs of 16 and 17 year olds down here. But when you're carrying a gun and shooting people and catching folks in the crossfire, it doesn't matter your age or affiliation. I hate guns.