"It's trippin' balls."

You won't find that in an ESL textbook.

Wouldn't it be great to strap voice recorders to a bunch of native speakers and pool all that data to see what we actually say? Wouldn't it be fun to laugh over all the weird utterances? Wouldn't it be better as a learner to study all the expressions floating through buses and bathrooms and bars?

Mottos/mottoes

Resolution or death.

That one held my hand through times of confusion. Whenever I feared the anxiety pit would swallow me whole it reminded me that, eventually, the problem would either be resolved or I would die. Since death is improbable, resolution is the almost certain future.

It is what it is.

That's my mother's.

When people show you who they are, believe them.

That's Kath's mother's.

It's hard to evolve in a vacuum.

That summarized my feelings at the end of the Galapagos stay.

Maybe these are not mottos, but then neither is UBC's "tuum est" (it is yours).

What will my next one be, I wonder.

"Vegetarians have more fun"

Bathroom graffiti at The Biltmore. Someone added words so that it now reads:

"Vegetarians have more fungus in their diet."

The Biltmore falls well short in toilet literature. Considering how many hip young things frequent the cabaret, the wit level if nothing else should be higher. Instead you drop your pants to read juvenile back-and-forths about the sex lives of overweight women. What a shame. The best I've seen in Vancouver is at Café Deux Soleils, where the scrawl is both positive and insightful.