Zin's thoughts of randomness

Some funny shots

2008-07-06T01:36:00.003-04:00

So here it is, more than a week later and Mr. White bunny is still at my place. I took him to the vet on Thursday and it was determined that he is a healthy adult bunny. He is going to get neutered on July 10. Poor bunny!

Another another note. I was eating lunch today and started to wonder where the cat was. Whenever it is quiet for more than 5 minutes, it usually means that she is getting into trouble. I got up to look for her, and saw her on the bunny carpet tower sitting and watching the bunny cages. I thought it would be a nice picture but of course the Lumix camera was at Donna's house; leaving me to resort to the BEAUTIFUL camera that is integrated on my phone. I pulled out the phone and tried to get her attention so she could look at the camera while I took her picture. Well this is what resulted from it:

Well, basically I caught the kitty when she was in the middle of a yawn. I don't think I could catch an image like this even if I tried to again. This is what the picture was SUPPOSED to look like:

The truth is, I actually like the first picture that I took more.

What to do?

2008-06-29T02:00:00.005-04:00

Anyone heard of deja vu? It seems to be happening to me more and more these days. Why do you ask? Well in October 2006 I was going for lunch with Donna and her mother at a place called Jade Dynasty located at Leslie and Finch. When we got out of the car, Donna spotted (no pun intended!) a bunny sitting in the parking lot. As we were proud owners of 2 bunnies, we got excited and wanted to get a closer look at him. When we approached the bunny, we realized that it was not a wild bunny; and it was likely that the poor thing was abandoned. In a nutshell, we spent 2 days in the parking lot and finally caught him and brought him home. The bunny is at my house as happy as can be that he didn't end up being some other animal's lunch.

Now let's fast forward to October 2007, when I was with Donna one day heading to her house at night. When we pulled into her driveway we saw a box sitting on her front lawn with a bag sitting next to it. Wondering what it was , we cautiously opened to door of the car only to hear a cat screaming at the top of its lungs inside of the box. We picked up the box and brought it into the garage and opened it up. Inside was a kitten, no older than three months old who was very hungry and stressed. We kept the kitten in the bathroom that night and then brought it home to my place where she remains to this very day.

So now here it is, in June of 2008. I was just leaving the Driftwood community centre after an evening of playing badminton. We were all going to go to Congee Wong to grab some dinner and everyone had left just before me as I was trying to gather my wallet and phone from my badminton bag. As I was pulling out of my parking spot, I so 2 red eyes glowing from the lights of my car. I immidiately got out of the car to take a closer look, and sure enough it was ANOTHER bunny! A little white thing took one look at me and ran up to me like he wanted me to save him. Another abandoned animal it seems, so I picked the little guy up and put him in the back seat of my car and took him home. The poor little guy seemed like he hadn't eaten or drank anything for quite a while, as he sucked back the food and water that I gave to him like a vacuum and stated begging for more. I gave the little guy some hay as well and he nibbled on that for a while. Afterwards I picked him up and examined him for any signs of illness or injury. He had some dirty stuff stuck on some parts of his fur, but luckily he had no obvious signs of sickness. I took a look as his hind legs and saw that there was some fur missing along with irritated-looking bare skin. I had some topical medication that I had left over from a previous bunny "issue" and applied it to the bare skin. The bunny did not like this, as he struggled to break free as it was apparent that this was hurting him. I put him back into his cage and went to bed that night. The next morning I went to check up on him to apply more medicine and to feed him. Luckily the second time didn't seem to bother his leg. Hopefully the little guy is starting to feel better. His "plumbing" is starting to look more "bunny like" which is also a relief. I won't get into any detail though, as you probably don't want to hear about it.

So of course, this leads me to the question, "what the heck am I going to do now?" It seems that I am starting my own army of stray pets; hopefully one day I can build one big enough to destroy the horrible people who abandon these poor creatures in the first place!

ALIVE AGAIN

2006-05-14T23:59:00.000-04:00

Actually, no I never died. Just didn't post for the last..... 8 or 9 months or so. But I have returned with a vengeance. Don't ask what I mean by that because I could not tell you.

In a nutshell in the past long while I took Geography in school. Things seemed to work out well this year. On top of that I was the president of the York University Badminton Club. But that wasn't too bad, because I had the best VP EVER! ;)

On top of all that, I also somehow ended off getting an A in the advanced modern standard Chinese course at York. Don't ask how I pulled that off, because I can't speak mandarin still :S

Well now that summer has started, I am back at the farm service working as a grease monkey setting up the new machines in order to pay the bills. It is better than working parts or service but is still not my job of choice. Maybe next year. I know that I always say that but I am going to have to go through it some point or another in my life.

That is all for now. Perhaps I will type something more substantial in the near future. Toodles.

2005-09-05T11:58:00.000-04:00

Well, as you all probably know right now, I have returned from my trip to the UK. I had not realized it basically until I was there, that I would be spending 5 nights in England. I had originally thought it was 3 nights in London and the rest was spent in Scotland.

Anyway, So I began the trip in Edinburgh. A beautiful city it was. The buildings and the layout of the city was ancient; there would be no way anybody could drive those North American SUV's through that city. The roads are way too narrow, and also have many twists and turns that could make almost anybody lost. The hotel we stayed in there was way too overpriced though, as was just about any other hotel on the trip. The bed and breakfasts we stayed at were pretty nice though. This is my favourite pic that I took in Edinburgh.

This is a pic inside of the Edinburgh Castle looking down onto the city.

Our second stop in Scotland was in a small town called Pitlochery. It was a pretty nice town, not much to do there, it was basically just somewhere to stay in between places that we really wanted to see. The next morning we went straight to a small town called Keith. There are two reasons why we went to this town. #1 my brother's name is Keith and #2 the distillery for my mothers favourite Scotch Whisky is in that town. So in that town we went to the distillery to learn all about how Whisky gets made. Exciting eh? LOL!

Theres my brother by the Sign for the Town Keith. As you can see, the town is more friendly than he is LOL.

After Keith we passed through a small town called Elgin for a quick break and then ended the day off in a town called Inverness. This place is supposidly the capital of the Scotland Highlands. The population is about 20 000 people or so. Still a nice little place as well, with its own castle, of course. The next day was for another important stop throughout our journey. My dad's favourite distillery which is located on the Isle of Skye. Basically a place in the middle of nowhere where whisky gets made. To get there, as was the case in much of the isolated areas in Scotland were single track roads. What this basically means is that the road (the only road) has only a single lane, for traffic travelling both ways. The only way to get around oncoming traffic is to drive into these little shoulders on the side of the road called "turnouts" which are about long enough to fit one car comfortably in there. These roads are quite dangerous, considering they are only one lane, and they do twists and turns around mountains so that you cannot see what is coming at you. There is also the problem of livestock in the middle of the roads as well, we had to stop once because there were cows all over the road, and another time because there were sheep all over the road.

We spent that night in a town called Mallaig. A place with a Beach in Scotland! At this place we just had to check the beach out. I never thought I would see a beach in Scotland. And on top of the fact that there was a beach, there were also SHEEP on the Beach!

The next day we headed over to another small town (thats basically all there is in Scotland LOL) called Craignure which is on the Island of mull. Not much here, just a quiet night. We had to wake up early for a big day the next day. We had to drive for an hour on a one track road to catch a ferry at 8:45 to an island/town where my family originally comes from. The place is called Iona, where my great great grandfather came from. Its a really small island, with a population of about 150 people or so, but it does have a farely long history. Since it is a small vaunerable island, it was attacked many times over the years but just about anybody. One of the largest structures on this island was a large abbey that has been destroyed and rebuilt many times over hundreds and hundreds of years.

These are basically all the houses in the town. This is a pic that was taken from the ferry on the way over to Iona.

This on the right is the abbey in Iona this pic is basically right beside the other pic above. The abbey was a little bit away from the rest of the town.

That same day, we had to take the ferry back, drive for another hour back to the town where we spent the last night and take another ferry across the waters to a slightly larger town called Oban. From Oban we had to make a 3 hour drive into Glasgow where we spent the next night. I was really not impressed with Glasgow, it did not really have anything good going for it. The city was dirty compared to other citys in the UK; it also lacks the crazy old buildings that you see in the other cities as well, because in the 1800's the whole city was torn down and rebuilt to make it more "modern". I just think it looks ugly. On top of that we staying in the Quality Inn. This was by far the worst hotel in the UK. The price was around 100 pounds a room, and the bathrooms were tiny and badly needed to be redone, the beds were so old, you would sink into the middle of them as bedsprings stabbed your back from all directions etc etc. We got out of Glasgow the next morning with a very negative impression of the city, and headed to our last stop in Scotland. To a town called Jedburgh where we stayed at the Spread Eagle hotel. Interesting name, LOL.

In Jedburgh and the immediate area, there were 4 old abbey ruins which were absoluty huge. This place is near the Scotland/England border so the abbeys have been destroyed because of Battles that took place in this area. We ended up seeing 2 of the 4 abbeys. Another thing to point out about Jedburgh, was the butcher store that sold "world class Haggis!" I had haggis for dinner in this town, as well as breakfast the next morning, and it was by far the best haggis I have ever had!

So the next day was over to England. We drove to a city called York. This is a very famouse tourist place because of its long history. It is known as a Viking town. Also one of the big tourist places in the city was the fact that the downtown core was completely surrounded by a castle-like wall. Inside the wall there was also the York Minster. This was the biggest church I have ever seen. They began building this church in the 1100's and apparently took over 250 years to complete! It was originally a Roman Catholic church but has since become part of the Church of England. The towers in this building were 275 steps up in a tight spiral staircase which was so narrow, you could not even put half of your foot on the steps!

After York, we were off to our final destination of the trip: London. It was a good 4 hour drive from York. We spent our last 3 nights in London, and believe me, that was more than enough. Sure the city is pretty nice; it does have its touristy things that everybody knows about such as Big Ben, the houses or Parlament, The Westminster Abbey, Harrod's, etc etc. I did not like London too much, it was an interesting city because it incorperated all the new buildings with the old, but it was way too much money for anything there. The London towers (which is a fortress, not a tower) where all the royal jewels are and all that stuff, costs 14.50 pounds each person to get in! A lot of the stuff we did not go to see in London because it was way too expensive. I had a very restless 3 nights there and was just itching to get home by that point.

Here is the last picture I will post up. Its just a pic that I took from a tour bus (as you can see someones arm on the right hand side) of Big Ben and the houses of Parlament right by the Temps river. If you can see closely, you can also see the top of the Westminster Abbey behind the houses of Parlament.

Scotland bound

2005-08-16T13:04:00.000-04:00

So I'm going to Scotland in a few days. I am leaving on the 18th and not returning until the 31st. To be honest, I do not really care about going to badly, but I guess it does give me some time to spend with my family; something that I have not really done for a long time. Ever since University started for my brother, we have not really been a whole family again. I really do not know if I can last for 13 days with my brother however. I think I might need a gun..........

So yea, after getting caught up on somebody else's blog, (you know who you are HEHE) I realized that I should probably get onto updating mine a little bit. Right now I am on lunch break, ate some Flinsen for lunch and now I am having some tasty watermelon for dessert. I really should be back at work now, because I have been on lunch break for about 50 minutes now, and it is supposed to be only 30 minutes, but I have gotten lazy in these last few days at work because I am almost done here. Well, actually, to be honest, I have been lazy here all summer. Nice, I just drooled watermelon juice all over this computer desk at my parents house. So yea, there are a few pros to working for your parents; they usually do not have the heart to fire their own son, mind you I have gotten some pretty sarcastic comments from them from time to time which I did not really appreciate too much. But C'est La Vie! Oh that's right, I used French! I am awesome. Well not really, but once in a while I do like to pretend.

Reverting to the old Childhood days

2005-07-31T13:14:00.000-04:00

So as of late things have been really interesting to me. I seemed to have been reverting to a lot of things that I used to do when I was a whole lot younger. I went to Oma's place this last thursady to help out do some yard work, such as cut her grass and fix her grape vines etc. Once I finished this I went inside and she made me some flinsen. I remember back when I was taking Montesory school in the morning and then Kindergarden in the afternoon. Between classes I would always get picked up and brought back home for lunch. This was back in the house on Simon Henry when my Oma used to live with us. I remember for almost EVERY single lunch Oma would feed me flinsen before I was taken over to Kindergarden. Even though I think I ate it every single day, it was something that I never got sick of. Eating the flinsen at Oma's on Thursday just really reminded me of those days that are now only memories. Its just something about the Oma's touch that makes them taste so satisfying and good. I know I have made them from time to time, but it just isn't the same when I make these things myself.

It was also quite interesting at the Cottage yesterday. Usually at least once or twice a day we would always do water sports behind the boat. When I was younger it always consisted of water skiing. Ever since we got ourselves a wakeboard, I seemed to have put the skis away for good. For some unknown reason yesterday, I felt like pulling out the old skis for old times sake. My brother thought I was retarded for doing so, he was like "What? No wakeboard?". I hoped onto those skis, a little rusty from not going for at least 4 or 5 years and had a blast. I only fell once which wasn't too bad; it felt kinda weird however standing on skis after being on a wakeboard for so many years. Once my ride was finished, my legs were burning! I must not have used some of the muscles for years! After that, my brother wanted to Ski again, so off he goes on the big slalom ski that we had and then after that my Dad wanted to toot around on the skis for a bit. That evening after dinner, I was so tired that I had to lie down for a bit. I survived however and also made it home in once piece. It was a true blast from the past! I kinda miss those days sometimes...............

Another rockout in Thorold

2005-07-17T12:39:00.000-04:00

So I had realize that since I have returned from China, I had yet to see Dan again. It was probably a good month before leaving on my trip that I had also not seen him, and I have been back from China for well over a month as well. So this weekend I decided that was enough. I called up Dan and tried to get something setup. I figured that I should call him up because everytime he tries to call me up to do something, Im always busy, aiya. So Alex, Sean, Keith, Sarah, Elly, Eric and I decided to all get together again and Rock the Thorold. This time was not quite so successful, as Dan's new apartment is really hot on the inside because it is on the top floor and there is no AC at all. And I thought my house was bad. There could have been a little more rocking, but we did other things to pass the night; climbing on the roof, breaking into Dan's Attic. The attic was interesting but it did not have nearly as much cool stuff as the attic in his other house that he stayed in where we found the muffler system up there lol!

So anyway during the past little while I have been trying to get a few more hours into work so that I do not run out of money. I made a rough estimate at how much money I would have for spending during the school year and I was shocked. Basically all I have been doing at work was trying to setup those stupid 47 tractors that the Toronto District School Board had purchased. There is also a total of 18 of them that I have to help the trucker deliver. So far we have delivered 8 to the south west end of Toronto. This coming week, there is another 9 that need to be delivered around the northeast part of North York. I believe I will start that on Monday.

Canada Day weekend I spend a few nice days with Donna. We spent some time at Wasaga Beach where the weather sucked that one day, and then spent the rest of the weekend at the Cottage. That was the first time this year that I was able to make it up to the cottage. It was pretty nice watching the crazy meteors in the night sky, and also biking to who knows where and having my bike chain break on me when we were as far from the cottage as humanly possible. That kinda sucked. I got myself a new chain from the Cyclepath in Woodbridge only to discover that the Chain that they had sold to me was too long. So far I have not had a chance to attempt to return it.

Last weekend I was once again down in Waterloo for the summer SOTF. I played doubles with Brian and we won The C draw for the second time. Also got to play mixed with Donna and we somehow got into the A flight which was not too cool. The second team we played was clearly better than us (well the guy on the team anyway) but we somehow defeated them really easily. (Mind you the guy did not look like he was trying). So onto the next round we go, with my right arm and both of my legs feeling like mush for the entire day. That game I could not hit the birdie to save my life and it was a very quick game. Oh well, it was all in good fun anyway. After SOTF we had our ritual; going to go Hotpot :D

I have also recently got myself many more fishies! I attempted to breed my bettas to no avail. So last weekend I popped into the Superpet to pick up some more female bettas as well as a larger tank in hopes to breed them. Female bettas were on sale so I picked up another 4. I got the tank setup shortly after arriving. As the week slowly passed, I made 1 trip to Pj's pet center and 3 trips to Big Al's. Now at the end of the week I have 5 female bettas, 3 male guppys, 3 female guppys, 1 neon tetra and 2 male bettas. I don't think I have enough time to breed my bettas before Scotland so that will have to wait until I return.

Ok time for me to go now, I have to get some dim sum which I have not had for a very long time.

Wow time sure flies

2005-06-27T20:07:00.000-04:00

I can't believe how long it has been since I was in China already. I got back on the 11th and its already the 27th! Thats more than 2 weeks already! Well, what have I done in the past 2 weeks? Im not exactly sure lol. Not all the things that I should have been doing thats for sure. Ive been to work a lot. Got myself a BBQ and got that up and working. Bike rack, got a bike from Dad. I also played in the Pointfore tourney last weekend. It was a lot of fun even though we didn't do so well. I have also started the restoration process on the infamous 55! Last tuesday I spent the evening with Alex working on the beast! We basically just took the thing apart and thats about it. We still need to somehow get the steering column apart and to also take of all the pulleys and sheaves on the mower deck. After that we go on to cleaning all the grease and oil off the machine so that we can sand all the good parts down to get them ready for repainting. Some of the parts on the machine are in pretty rough shape. We should probably replace the ball joints as well as the muffler. Other than that the machine is still in really good shape.

Work has been fun lately. We sold 47 john deere lawn tractors to the Toronto District School Board. Each one of these machines needs to be equiped with snow blades, which also means that they need wheel weights installed as well. Its a good thing that we are just shipping the blades with the tractors in the boxes. That means I do not have to install them. The wheel weights are a pain however, because I have to drill holes into the rear rims of every machine before putting on the weights. I was working at it almost all day today and only got 5 of them done! That means 42 more...... aiya!

Sorry for taking so long

2005-06-05T01:48:00.000-04:00

Hey guys, sorry for taking so long to post something on my blog. I just havent had enough time in any of the internet cafes to post anything up or even check my blog. So here it is, the start of my last week here in china and i finally am able to post something.

So a lot has happened in the past 2 weeks, there have been times where i kinda pointed at things at random on menu's cuz i couldnt read them. Ate lots of things that i didnt know what they were, and also had a disgusting hamburger at a western food place that was way too expensive in chinese pricing. You can get a beer here for 2.60 and the hamburger with fries was 36 yuan. Aiya.

So in the upcoming week I will probably have to spend most of my time studying and preparing presentations. This week i have a test, a 5 minute oral presentation and a 600 character essay to do in chinese. That seems like quite a lot, hopefully i can get it done in time. Friday im finished the course and i have the rest of the day to relax or just blow off all the steam that i have left. Just check out a lot of places before heading back.

One of the interesting things about china, is the fact that you can bargain people down on prices, i have even seen my friend here bargain our meal at a restaurant. I got lots of things for cheap that way, but people dont seem to like it all that much. Considering i am the white male, the person who every chinese person wants to rip off. At the black market some guy wanted to sell me some crazy chopstick set for about 150 yuan. I told him my friend got the bigger set for 60, and so that i would give him 20, i widdled him down to 25 and still told him i would give him 20. At that point he got so pissed off that he said in mandarin to me (20 dollars your mom!) So i just casually walked away and then he chased me down and said, ok 20 yuan. He was pissed.

And now my most proud purchase, the Armortec 80 000! I got it for 100 yuan at the black market yesterday. They guy tried to sell it to me for 350 yuan or so, but i got my female friend to bargain it for me since shes a female and they like them better, so we eventually got it for 100 yuan, pretty good price since thats only about 16 canadian (roughly) its a 6 to 1 ratio.

Anyway so i guess i should probably head back to the campus now and catch up on some studying. Talk to you all soon.

The Days are winding down

2005-05-17T22:15:00.000-04:00

So now its Tuesday night. Im flying out for China on Saturday very early in the morning. So what else is there for me to do? Well not too much. Working is one thing on the list, as well as preparing for this 3 week journey out of the Continent. This will be the first time for me every being outside of North America, so this is going to be a great experience for me.

As for how this class is going so far? Well I did really well on the 2 quizes that I've written so far, but I'm quite positive that I did really poorly on this test that I just wrote. There was a listening part on the test where the teacher only played the audio once, and there were about 4-5 questions for each dialogue. On top of this the dialogue was talking really fast, and I can't pick up on it when it flies by at a normal conversational level. Then there were the re-writting sentences into proper grammar. We all know how my my grammar is in English, we don't even need to take a look at my grammar in Chinese. Next was the translating English words into Chinese. This is the only section that I think I did really well on. The last part of the test was translating English sentences into Chinese. Again with the grammar, and not only that, some words that I can read in Chinese, but cannot write; so again this section, not so good. Oh well I guess, there always my tests in Shanghai to do better on.

Gotta go now, kinda jonesin for some 饺子 right about now.

Some things coming together, some things coming apart?

2005-05-04T20:23:00.000-04:00

Well, I have most of my plans for my China Trip planned out so far.

I only realized yesterday that I was supposed to get my own flight booked to go to China; turns out most of the student got that done a couple of weeks ago......

I got a flight booked, Im starting in Toronto, going to Vancouver, then its Shanghai from there. On my Toronto to Vancouver trip, I will be on a flight by myself; the rest of the way is going to be with the rest of the group in my class though.

I also realized yesterday that I was supposed to have everything paid off for my China trip by April 26th. Silly me, I still owe 600 dollars.

Well here is what my schedule looks like for the trip:
Depart on May 21st at 7:30am
Classes start on May 23rd at 9am. Classes run from Monday to Friday from 9-12 and then 3-5.
Classes end on June 10.
Return from China on June 11 at 9:30pm or so.

I'm also going to Scotland with my family at the end of August. Im leaving on August 18th and not coming back until the 31st. :S

As for things falling apart, well there are certain plans that are trying to be made over the summer, but things just never seem to work out in our favour. Its getting a little frusturating at this time, but I intend to make these problems work out. That will be the ZIN GUARANTEE!!!

Muah!

The Styles of Ping Pong!

2005-04-30T18:18:00.000-04:00

Another work week has come and gone. A lot has happened in this past week; I applied for my passport, wrote my g test and passed it, worked for 50 hours setting up countless lawn mowers at Nobleton Farm Service and Home Depot, played badminton on 2 occasions and went to go see a nice concert for L.A.T.

It is now saturday and I am about to head out to play badminton yet again. I was working in the shop until 3:00pm today, setting up machines and also making a delivery and teaching the customers how to use their new L111. I got home and chilled for a short while and then went to go play some ping pong with Brian for a little over an hour. I'm trying to stray away from the "Chinese Warrior" method of playing because I just cannot seem to get the proper backhand with it. I now believe that I am aware of the benefits and disadvantages to the Chinese Warrior style and the convensional style:

The "Chinese" style as some may call it (I don't really know a real way to call it, the one where you hold the paddle upside down) seems to be quicker when moving from your forehand to your backhand since you do not need to switch over hands when changing. However, the backhand with this style seems very awkward for me; it is really hard to get any top spin on the ball therefore its hard to keep the ball on the table. My forehand smashes in this style are a LOT weaker, but I can at least hit the table half the time with this style. The other disadvantage to it is see is that it seems limited in how you can serve, you just can't seem to get a good enough spin on the ball when you serve in the "Chinese" style.

Its kinda funny why I would call this the "Chinese" style, because out of all the Chinese people I know that I have played ping pong with, only one person hits this way.

Also just a fair warning to people who my think I'm somewhat good at ping pong because I am so bored right now that I am analysing 2 different styles. I actually reall suck at ping pong and I'm just saying all this stuff beacause I cannot seem to think of anything better to do at this moment. And having said that, its time for me to go and fold some laundry.

Another Summer "Holiday" has begun

2005-04-24T22:53:00.000-04:00

Why the Quotations on Holiday do you ask? Well since during the school year, I have about 15 hours of class a week and during the summer I have about 50 hours of work a week. To me that sounds more like the school year is a holiday lol.

So ANYWAY, the first week of work has passed. To be honest, it really was not that bad of a week. I actually do not mind my job this year at the shop. No more customers because now I get to work setup. I get to spend my long hours putting together new tractors so that they can soon be sold to people. My only wish was that I had less hours in a week however. I feel that 50 is too much and that I really don't need that many hours; I would prefer to have a little more spare time of my own but I guess I will have to deal with it for now.

On a more positive note, I have been appointed as the new President of YUBC for the 2005/2006 year at York. It looks like that is going to eat up a lot of my spare time next year but I'm really looking forward to doing it. I have a good feeling about this year for YUBC. Im not so as to why but I just have this feeling inside of me.

Also I am proud to announce that our house has been equipped with NEW TOILETS. Thats right folks, now you can visit my house without the fear of needing to take a poo, because if you do, the toilet will actually FLUSH! Isn't that incedible? If you have seen the toilets that we had in this house before, you would totally agree with me LOL. Ok thats all for now. Chow Chow :D

This really really sucks

2005-04-17T19:07:00.000-04:00

So I have to go back to work tomorrow for the summer. Awesome, another 4 months spending 50+ hours a week at a job I hate with a bloody passion. As everyday before I have to start working again I feel down and depressed, but today it goes beyond that. I realize that my summer will be just like the past 3, which does not make me feel any better since every year, the summers seem to get worse and worse. I guess I could try and find a new job somewhere, but right now I have to stick with what I've got, which is something I truely hate. It seems easy for people that if they don't like a job, they quit. For me its something more than that. Although I hate this stupid job, I feel like I can't go and find another one. I really don't understand why.

As I stand downstairs, cooking up some food to eat since I haven't really eaten anything today, the windows in my kitchen are open and all I hear are the screams of little kids out in the courtyard running around like little idiots. Now for those of you that know me well, you are aware of the fact that I do not like kids at all. Well now I think I have figured out why I do hate them so much. Its not that they are annoying or loud or seem to perpetually have A.D.D. I think now that its more of the fact that I envy those little buggers. Every year I grow a little older and realize how much it sucks to get older. Every year older I get, more and more responsabilities and commitments get dumped onto me. Then I look at these little kids running around without a care in the world. I guess I really envy these things that run around and scream their heads off and sort of wish I could do the same thing myself still. This seems to be the reason why I don't like these little kids. As anyone can agree, it sucks to get old.

I guess I gotta try and take what I can get and make the best of it. Usually I can follow my own advice, but right now I just can't seem to do it. I just kinda want to curl up in the corner and shrivel away into nothing. The fact that I can't see the one person in the world that I want to see right now is not making things any better.........

Rock out in Thorold

2005-03-19T18:41:00.000-05:00

So even though this is a little late, I gotta post up about the rockin weekend over in Thorold. Even though Thorold is a hole in the gound, it was a darn good weekend that we all spent there. Its been so long since I just got together with Al and Sean and just played until the early hours of the morning. I would say that we started at around 9 or 10 or so, and didn't fully stop until a little after 3am. Some times during the evening were quite interesting, like when I was supposed to play some songs that I have NEVER played before, as well as certain individuals trying to play the drums while under the influence of a beverage known as alcohol lol. But other than that, it was a damn good time. The breakfast the next day was quite a tasty one as well, over at the cosmo diner. The place was kinda a hole, but then again, everything is in Thorold, but the food was good. Any place that serves bacon is ok by me. The only problem that I had with the place was the fact that it didn't have quite the same atmosphere as the husky. And I'm also sure that the Afro sisters are not customers of that place, which we all know is a bitter shame. But all in all, it was a good place to go. Maybe next time I will try the 2.99 breakfast. Only problem is that ends at 11am, and we all know that I never get up before then. Peace!

8 legs does not mean a tasty treat

2005-03-14T23:24:00.000-05:00

So here I am, sitting in front of my computer with a cup of water sitting beside me that I had just filled before I went to bed last night. I take a sip from this water, since I didn't think it was that old and did not see it necessary to just throw it away. So I take a sip, then another sip. The water looks just fine, tastes just fine, just a little warm since it was at room temperature. A minute or two later, I take another sip from my water, but this time I experienced a strange sensation of some solid object passing over my lips, immediately I spit the foreign matter out of my mouth and back into my cup of water. I peer into the cup and stare in disbelief. The unknown piece of matter that had attempted to enter my stomach was a dead spider. I immediately run downstairs to dispose of the spider properly. As I now sit here writing this post, still with an uncomfortable sensation on my tongue where the spider had made contact, I think to myself; I should have known better than to leave ANYTHING sitting out in this house, and then drink it.

Losing its touch

2005-02-04T13:20:00.000-05:00

I seem to realize that on these blogs, it takes me more time to think of a title than it takes me to type out the actual blog itself. So this time I'm going to try something new for a change. I am going to type out the blog and hope that when I am complete, a title will pop into my mind. Don't Hold your breath now.

Anyway so it has been a while since I have done an update. I cannot even remember what I have done in the past few weeks. All I know is that I have been taking a lot of time off of playing Badminton. I think I am finally back in to the mode of playing too much each week. This does not really bother me too much though, since I have been kinda itching to get back onto the courts. There are a bunch of tournaments coming up soon; during the reading week time. I'm not sure how many of those I will be playing in, but as far as I know there are 4 that are occuring during that week. All I know for now is that I am going to play in the YUBC/Western joint tourney on the 19th of Feb. There is also that UTSC tournament in the middle of the week I could play in, but I would really like to get out of here for a few days before I go insane.

Anyway, I'm going to end here, I'm really starting to find it hard to find things useful to say on this blog these days.............

A Week of Unwinding has Begun

2005-01-17T23:40:00.000-05:00

So I finally decided to take it easy for a short while. This break was supposed to occur over the Christmas break, but was instead postponed due to having to make a few extra bucks. So now here it is in mid-January and I feel like my head is about to explode. I feel like every day of the week, I'm constantly running from one place to the next, without allowing ample time to relax in between. The first thing that came to mind when developing a plan to take a break for a week was to not go to school for a week. Seeing as how all of my classes take attendence, that no longer seemed to be a viable option. The second possibility was to take a break from Badminton. Considering that ever since school started, I have been playing for up to 16 hours a week. This on top of transportation from one baddy club to another, adds probably about another 2.5-3 hours a week; whether driving up to aurora, or walking over to campus. So now I decided to take a break from baddy. My elbow is pretty sore from playing too much and hyper-extending it, so taking a rest seems like a good idea. No YUBC, no ABC, no Driftwood, Nothing.....

Lets hope that when this week is up, I can go back to doing everything without being of the verge of exploding into a incomprehensible mass of insanity. Chow

Time for a new post

2005-01-09T01:19:00.000-05:00

Well then, it has been well over a week, so I guess I should update something before people start thinking that I died or something.......

So yea, Christmas ended, had a really nice new years, and started the first week of School for the Winter term. I would have to say that I didn't do to badly yet. It took 2 full days before I started skipping classes. I would have to say that it pretty darn good for me.

And on another note, the toilet upstairs in our house is flushing again!!!! It has been about 1 week shy of a month without flushing properly. Ever since the house party, and a certain individual consuming too much 151, the toilet seemed to have become permanently plugged. But magically, within the past few days or so, it decided to start working again........

Well I think thats about enough useless stories for now, stay tuned until the next time I have to procrastinate on a school assignment.

Another Christmas survived

2004-12-28T21:38:00.000-05:00

So you may all be wondering how come I have not posted anything on here for a while. Well the answer is simple. Lots of work, and my internet was down for almost a week. Yes, good ol' trusty Rogers internet, almost as trusty as its wireless............

In case you didn't know, I was lying lol.

So whats been going on, well I started to do some work in order to make up for the money I spend for Christmas presents. Also because my parents have been bugging me to help them out at the shop while I was on break. It hasn't really been too bad thus far. I had friday afternoon off, as well as monday, and I only have to work until Thursday at noon and then I am done until school starts back up again.

Christmas was alright; spent some time with the parental units and I got to see my brother. He's finally back from doing his co-op work in Nova Scotia. I've only seen him once since he left back in September, and that was during Thanksgiving. But eventhough I got to spend some time with family, eat some really good Turkey and Duck, there was still something missing out of my Christmas which didn't make things feel complete. Hopefully this will all change come New years.

It was also fun to get together with the Nobleton crew on boxing day to catch up on old times. Old times being, music, retarded movies that we all love, and lots of beer. Basically I purchased a 24 of Lakeport Honey for my "151" gathering, and perhaps 5 or 6 bottles had been consumed at that point. This beer was starting to clutter up my fridge space, so I decided to call up the chums from nobleton. The 4 of us sat around and played a few card games and the beer was finished off in notime. After that, nothing beats a good ol' bacon and egg breakfast when you wake up at noon the next day. My poor heart, someday I think its going to explode or something from all the bacon I consumed. I probably had a good 10 pieces of bacon, which still is not that much compared to my standards. After our breakfast we decided to head out and do a little post-boxing day shopping, which in the end we all basically got nothing except for a few belated Christmas presents and proceeded to go get some bubble tea. After that we decided that is was early, so lets go catch a movie. We ended up seeing "The life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" or something along those lines. Its the new movie by Bill Murray. It has been a long while since I have seen a movie in theatres. Probably the first time since school started this year.

Once the movie was done, I got dropped off at home so I could clean up and have a shower, only to head out and get Bubble Tea AGAIN. Heh, well doesn't bother me any, I could drink that stuff all day and all night.

I don't think I really have anything else to say. Im kinda in an indifferent mood right now and I'm not sure exactly what to feel right now. All I can say is that I am really looking forward to New Years, which is a change for me. Since holidays do not really mean too much to me. In my books it just seems like another day in the life. Anyway, peace out.

Another Holiday over?

2004-12-19T22:55:00.000-05:00

I know some of you have not even started your holidays yet. But I feel like after today, my holidays have come to an end. I completed all my school work on the 9th; 10 days ago already. Now I find myself sitting in front of my computer, wasting time before I am going to go to bed, only to wake up early in the morning to I can take a casual drive up to Nobleton and begin to work. Chances are I will be working all of this week and all of next week. The week after that school starts again. Which is ok with me. These holidays don't really seem like they are going to turn out the way I had originally hoped they would be, but I guess that is life as well. I'm sure that things will still turn out ok.

Well, last week was an alright time for me. Had a nice "151" gathering over at my place on Thursday, sadly to say though, only 2 people fell victim to the 151 and had to bow down to the porcelain gods. There was almost 3, but passing out on my bed seemed to be the saviour for that person, lol. A total of 4 people passed out on my bed at some point during the party, I say thats not a shabby number at all. I would post some of the pictures, but I don't think that too many people would appreciate that.

So on to Christmas. I did SOME Christmas shopping today, but I'm just not feeling the last minute panic yet. I mean, it IS only the 19th of December. I still have 5 whole days before I have to get my Christmas shopping done. That is a lot of time in terms of men. 5 minutes may be pushing it but 5 days is a really long time. Needless to say that I still have quite a lot of presents to purchase for people.

I am also sad to say that my days of being a vampire are now over. After successfully avoiding the sun altogether for about a straight week, I have to once again get back to some sort of sleeping pattern. In the past week, I basically went to bed no earlier than 6:30am and woke up no ealier than 4pm. My best day would have been yesterday, not getting up until 5:45pm. I still don't have the record for sleeping in the latest in this house yet; I still have another 45 minutes to go.

I guess thats about all there is for me to say right now, I was kinda in a shitty mood last night, but after attempting to sleep for three hours to no avail, I started to feel a lot better for some reason, and today I'm still feeling pretty good. Peace for now.

This is NOT cool

2004-12-13T22:49:00.000-05:00

So after three long months of waiting to get a foosball table for my house. I finally go with my mom today to costco to pick one up. I finally get the thing home, and decide to set it up so I can have it ready for the party on Thursday. As soon as I get all the parts together I start to assemble. This process lasted a mere five minutes before I discovered that there were a few parts missing. Two bushings that are supposed to be on the rods, keeping the players from smashing against the sides of the table. PERFECT. This is just what I needed. I pop online to find out that I can order these parts under warranty off their Sportcraft website (which is the company of my foosball table) but the stupid parts will not arrive for five to seven business days. Well thats just swell. This doesn't help that it occurs during a time where I'm starting to get a little high-strung. Once I was done my exams, I thought that I would have a little bit of time to relax. Well since thursday, (which was when I finished all my school stuff for the semester) I feel like I have been stuck in my car the whole time, trying to get things accomplished. On top of that, my parents are bugging me because they want to know when I am going to start working doing bloody inventory and parts organization at the shop. The last thing that I wanted to do over this break was work at the shop. But alas I do need the money so I can continue to live away from home. The Christmas season is not really brightening my days up much either. If you ask me, I could certainly deal without Christmas. I do not believe that the stressful days leading up to it are really worth a day or two spent with loved ones and all that jazz. I think That I would prefer to sleep in and not have to wake up those days instead.......

Thats ok, call me Scrooge if you want, I would probably have to agree with you on that on.

I feel like a Vampire

2004-12-08T05:35:00.000-05:00

So these past few days I have realized that I have not seen much of the sun. In fact on Sunday, I saw about 30 minutes of sunlight. On monday I saw about maybe 2-2.5 hours of sunlight. And today I seemed to have missed the sun completely. Jeez, no wonder I'm so white hehe. So I wrote my two tests on Monday, One seemed to go OK, and the other....... Lets just say that it is done and I don't have to worry about it anymore, unless I have to take the course again next year.........

So in these past few days, aside from sleeping at retarded hours of the day, I have also spent WAY too much money on Ebay. I now have to wait for 15 items to come since December 3rd. Some of them are for Christmas presents, some are for Donna, and the rest are for me lol. I'm not saying exactly what I got thus far, but all I can say is that I vow to not purchase anything off of ebay until 2005. Lets hope I can pass this test. Brian does not think that I can do it and frankly, I don't think that I can do it either. All I can do is hope right now.

And on another note, I FINALLY got "Encounters of the Spooky Kind". Its a Sammo Hung movie that I have been trying to find for at least 3 years now. After such a long wait, it is finally MINE!!!! I also got "A Kid From Tibet" that I have also been trying to find for about the same length of time. Its some crazy movie with Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah.

So yea, I should probably get some sleep or something. I have a take home test thats due on Thursday as well as a Jury for my Private lesson on the same day. After that, I am COMPLETE! No more School for until January. It will be nice to get that break because now I will finally have time to decorate my house, make it look half decent. I also need to rearrange my room in a different fashion than it is now.

Quiet? A little too Quiet

2004-12-05T02:59:00.000-05:00

So here I am in Nobleton right now. Had to come home for the weekend to take care of the cats and the dog. Man I almost forgot how much of a pain in the rear those things are, but I still love them. Anyway so my parents decided to take off to Phoenix to take a little break and to go and visit some family. Since this is basically exam time for me, I get to stay in North York and Nobleton to take care of the pets.
Spent a pretty quiet day here. Got up at about 1:50pm. Had a shower and headed out of the door to get Donna from work, then to head over to the other part of town to pick up Brian from the airport. After that I dropped Brian off at home and then came to Nobleton. Spent a rather nice time here, finished watching Rumble in the Bronx that we started watching during Thanksgiving but never had time to finish. We also had some Dim Sum for dinner, man I love that stuff. While Donna was steaming to soup filled dumplings and boiling the Pork and Chive Dumplings, I was making some "chewy" chocolate chip cookies. The recipe that I used was definately less than stellar. It did not really say anything other than "Mix ingredients and bake at 350 for 11 minutes". Thats about it. So anyway I guess I made the cookies too big and didn't really set them on the tray correctly, therefore it took a lot longer to bake than 11 minutes. Also the bottoms got a lot browner than the top of the cookies and they did not end up chewy all. All I can say is that the cookie dough was a lot tastier than the finished product. I could just sit there all day and eat cookie dough, until my bowels would burst of course. Anyway, maybe next time I'll make some better cookies. On top of that the soup filled dumplings stuck together so they all burst open when we tried to get them off of the steamer. No soup left, but they were still very tasty.
After all that excitement of cooking all that food, I find myself sitting at my computer at 3:08am, realizing that I have not really done much studying for my tests on Monday yet. Spent most of the time trying to think up what to get for people for Christmas and chatting on MSN.
It is really quiet in this house right now. Theres nothing other than me, my old dog and my three brain dead cats. Most of them seem to be sleeping right now so I am sitting here in silence. Its really nice to have things quiet for a change, but to me it seems like it is TOO quiet. I thought that it would result in me getting a little more school work done, but once again, I have been proven wrong.....

Almost time for the Grind

2004-12-04T01:56:00.000-05:00

Well, its almost time for me to have to do some serious school work. I've got a Test for my counterpoint class on monday morning, where I have to learn to sing 3 songs, and then also learn to sing 3 more songs but play another line on the keyboard that is different from what I have to sing. I haven't really started preparing for that yet. I also have a test for my NATS course on Monday evening. For that I have about 100 pages of the course pack to read, as well as my Lecture notes that I have to study from. About 3 days ago was the first day I OPENED my course pack and there was supposed to be readings for every week that I had that class. Once that is done, I have a take home test in Counterpoint which is due on thursday. I also have my "jury" for my private lesson on Thursday as well. I have a lot to learn for that. I am only playing two pieces for it, but one of the songs has a crazy rhythm that is hard to comprehend, and the other one I will have to play the bassline transposed into 3 different keys. After that, I will be a free man. Just one week shy of a full month off. Of course during that time, I may spending a lot of my free time at the shop, working for a few extra bucks. Some more money will be nice to have; living on your own is starting to get pretty expensive these days.

A Winner is ME

2004-11-29T01:22:00.000-05:00

Indeed a winner is me, after this weekend. It all started with a little clubbing experience. Well most of you that somewhat know me, know that I don't usually go clubbing for I'm not a fan of doing that sort of thing. But of course there are some special occasions where sometimes I find myself stumbling onto the dance floor. So anyway, it all started on Friday evening. Once everyone finally got ready to go to Distrikt, we all piled into my little 1000HP Cavalier (lol!)
We made it downtown around 11:30 or so, can't remember the time for sure. Anyway so it turned out to be a night where I did not want to drink too much, but that sure did not happen. First the beer, then the rum and coke, then the shots, then more rum and coke, more shots and more beer. I cannot really remember how much I had that night, still not too much, considering I am a lightweight and all (8-9 drinks is probably the MAX I had). So I'm of course feeling pretty good, making an ass of myself on the dance floor, as usual, then I decided that I should go to the washroom, after who knows how many drinks without a single break. Once I get out of the washroom, I realize that I had too much to drink (which was probably about 30 minutes after my last drink). So we finally leave the club at about 3:30, me not feeling any better, decided that I should settle for the finger down the throat routine. So I do that in a park near where my car was parked, not feeling any better on the ride home, I had a nice plastic bag to hold onto. Once we finally got home, which was at about 4-4:30 or so in the morning, I immediately jumped into bed and passed out for about 20 minutes, since that seems to be the cure to my sickness from too much alcohol. Once I woke up, I was feeling a lot better, but not really any less tipsy from the booze, I spent the rest of the short night, talking away with Dondon.

Why does that make me a winner you ask? Well the rest of the story is what makes me a winner. I had to wake up at 8 that morning to play and a Badminton League play in Bradford. So of course I spent the night talking so I didn't to fall asleep and was still awake at 8AM. Donna couldn't make it up so Brian and I headed to Bradford and left her at home so she could sleep. We arrived at the school at 9am after meeting up with Khoa and Nhi. I was of course, still in no condition to drive at that point so Brian drove my car. Thank goodness for Designated Drivers. So shorlty after 9, Brian and I had our first match, against the best men's doubles team that was there. So we both stumble onto the courts (Brian not really having much sleep that night either, if any) and we start warming up. I look up at the birdie and realized that I was still drunk! I'll tell you that it is not easy playing badminton at all after not sleeping the night before and being drunk all at the same time. Needless to say that we did not win our first match, but we still almost had them. We could have played better that game despite being in the condition that we were in. We ended up playing 2 more matches that day, but we won those 4 games pretty easily, suprising enough.

So once my matches were all done, I immediatly went home so I could catch some sleep. Me of course being an idiot, had a craving for an iced Cap on the way home. That is likely the reason why I still could not sleep when I got home. Eventually we all went out for KBBQ to celebrate........ the fact that we were hungry? Anyway so after KBBQ we went home, I popped on msn for a bit, as usual and headed to bed at 1:30am. Was awoken at 3 or so by a phone call and then went back to bed and did not wake up today until 3pm. Needless to say that this Sunday was a not very eventful one for me, just did some driving and took care of a few simple things.

Anyway so thats the end of my story, the moral: Clubbing, consuming Booze and playing Badminton should not be done in such small intervals from eachother. I'm lucky I actually survived it all lol.

No more Music and Cultures for me, for now anyway

2004-11-26T01:24:00.000-05:00

Yep so its been said and done. I finally decided to drop a course in University. I have been tempted many times in the past, but I was finally proded to do so this morning.

It all started yesterday when I asked my friend if there was anything coming up in our class soon, since I have only been to that class 2 times thus far. To my dismay, he tells me that there is a Test coming up the next day (which would be today now). So I decided to go home and think about studying for it. Turns out that I decided to go to Crappy Tire to get some things, as well as T&T to get some groceries. I get home about 3:30pm or so and decided to start cracking on the studying. Well of course that only lasted about 5 minutes when I logged into msn and decided to look at stuff on ebay. That took about an hour of my time, and by about 4:30 or so, maybe 5:00, I decided to take a nap. I hopped into bed, and my mind started racing. What the heck am I going to do with my room? I want to re-organize my room, but cannot seem to find a good method in doing so. My room may be big, but it was not designed too well, which makes it hard to set it up. So anyway, after laying in bed for about 10 minutes, I decieded that I did not want to sleep anymore. Again, I hopped onto MSN and starting talking with Donna about how I can rearrange the stuff in my room. Another hour or so passed, and we got nowhere, other than me keeping her from doing her essay that was due, sorry! So 6 o'clock hits and I decided to head into Nobleton to say hi to the parents and grab a few things to bring back. I wanted to be home farely early, like maybe 9 at the latest, but I did not get home until about 10:30 or so. Time to study? Heh I wish, MSN somehow got in the way again. So between 10:30 and 2:00, I think I got about a good half hour of studying to do. After that I went to bed so I could wake up in the morning to write the test.

The next morning rolls around and I decided to sleep through Lecture and go to class to tutorial, where the test would take place. I arrive at school at about 10:28 or so, and Tutorial is supposed to start at 10:30. I peek my head through the window of the classroom, and I see the Prof there, who doesn't teach the tutorial. This makes me think to myself that I had a few more minutes before tutorial, so I could study a bit longer. Next thing I know, its 20 minutes later, and Tutorial has not started yet. I walk over to the class, and I still see the Prof there, but it looked like the class was doing the test. Its not like I can walk in late to the test either, its a listening test and they only play the examples once. Kinda frusterated, I decided to walk home and drop the course. That test was another 5% down the drain. I've already lost 5% on the test before that one, as well as another 5% from attendence, and I also handed in the assignment for that class 5 days late. If I really tried, I could still pass the course, but I need to to better than that to keep my GPA up, so I'll try again with the course next year. And that is the end of mu Horrific tale, hehe.

Another Friend almost gone

2004-11-23T01:04:00.000-05:00

In about a week or so, it will be time to say goodbye to yet another friend. It just seems to me that in the past 5-6 months or so, that everyone is dissappearing to a different Asian country. First its Otto going back to HK, then Nathan dissappears to Japan. Next thing you know Nick is out in Korea and now Thu is about to go off to Taiwan. Although it is farely sad that each of these individuals is leaving, you cannot help to feel very proud of them at the same time. They are all taking their lives to the next level, following their own paths and knowing that there is nothing in their way to bind them to the societies that they have grown up in and became used to. All I can say is that I wish the best to all of them, wherever they may go or wherever they may end up.

On another note, just lived through a nice and busy week, and just started yet another one. Last week consisted basically of trying to promote the YCSA tourney, getting trophies, trying to keep Donna from going insane, as well as trying to do well on a Mandarin test. I think I did ok in most aspects, but of course, not perfectly. This week consists of an essay outline that I didn't do, a dramatic telling of one story in Chinese and a dramatic reading of another, travelling downtown for a makeup bass lesson, going downtown on Friday to party one last time with Thu, and also perhaps play in another tournament on Saturday in Bradford. Looks like no time to rest this week either, oh well.

I also have another thing that makes me ponder. It seems that a lot of the people that I have made friends with over the last year or so in University think that I am an alcoholic. I'm not exactly sure why they think this way. Sure I do enjoy the burnful taste of Jack Daniels and Bacardi 151, but not on a regular basis. Sure I can possibly drink more than most of my friends in YUBC, but thats only for one reason, IM WHITE!!!!! Compared to my high school friends back in Nobleton, I am a disgrace to all drinkers, and I kinda feel like I am going to be a disgrace to everyone at Distrikt on Friday. That is all I think that I have to say about the topic. My drinking habits are pretty weak for a white guy.

I know none of these topics I talked about seem to link in any way whatsoever. All I can say is that you are right, they dont link up at all, my mind thinks in very random ways, and that is all that I have to say

Some change needs to be done

2004-11-16T01:55:00.000-05:00

So I have been thinking a lot in the past few days, since I actually had some time to relax this weekend. I have been hearing some negative comments about how YUBC is being run poorly. And I would have to say that I totally agree. There are many things that need to be done in order to make the club a lot better place. There are no fingers to point in this situation however, this change needs to be done by all the members of the Exec, its not just one person who is doing things wrong. Sure we are all doing some things well, but others not so well. So basically today was the start of the new face of YUBC. Trying to communicate a lot more, since that is our biggest problem, communicating with the other execs, as well as communicating more with the members. I know that so far I have been doing a really poor job with communicating with the members. With the YCSA tourney just around the corner, this is a perfect time to show that we can improve. And I feel confident that it will.

So this week appears to be the "Week from Hell" for most people. I for one, do not fall into this category. I have a test in chinese on thursday, and thats it really for the whole week. Gives me more time to focus on other things. Too bad that since this is the "Week From Hell", I can't really spend much time with certain people. All I have is MSN and that program is so bloody impersonal its impossible to figure out what anyone means. Even with all the webcam stuff and all that, it still isn't close to being the same as really being with the person. For this reason, I feel that it is going to be a long week for me :(.

Man I can't wait until breaktime, no more stupid useless courses to worry about. Maybe during the break I can get everything that I want moved into the house, so I get one more thing off my mind.

Probably be doing some jamming with Alex and Sean during the break, that will be really nice. I haven't done that for a long time and I am really starting to miss it. Time is hard to find. Always wish there was more of it.

Sometimes I feel that a day should be so much longer than it is. It seems that the ideal day for me, since I love to sleep about 10 hours a day, and be awake for about 17, that the day should be 27 hours long. That would be perfect for me. Considering I only slept for 2 hours last night, then had a morning class and then YUBC. It would have been nice to get three extra hours lol.

So what else? Hmmm. Well this weekend was really nice and relaxing for a change. I really needed some time and I got it this weekend. Visited the parents on Saturaday, ate some great food and also went out for a nice dinner on Sunday. The only problem was that I missed most of Sunday because I didn't get up until 2:30pm. I really gotta stop doing that if I want to get some sleep the next night, considering I have an 8:30 class on monday morning :s. Well I guess thats all the boredom material I will shower you with for now, take care.....

Wow, Done already

2004-11-11T03:19:00.000-05:00

I think that I am starting to get better with my procrastination. I mean I have an essay due tomorrow morning, and I was finished it at 2:30am! I must say, that is likely the best that I have ever done on an essay. And the best part is that I started it yesterday as well! I wrote and entire 200 of 2000 words last night. I would say that is pretty good. Last year for one of my major essays, I did half an hour of research, and wrote the entire paper, all the day before it was due. So starting a day earlier is like uncharted territory. And what better way to celebrate, than to have some BACON AND EGGS at 2:30am? I would have to say that nothing gets better than that. Bacon and eggs always tastes the best at night before going to bed. Sure its unhealthy, but I could use a couple of extra pounds LOL.

So thats about it for this week. All the school work is done and now I have nothing to worry about until my Chinese test next thursday. Well at least I enjoy going to that class and want to learn. So studying for it will not be too big of a chore for me.

I really don't have much else to say right now other than I am really tired right now, have to walk to school first thing in the morning to hand in the really crappy essay I wrote, then walk all the way back home just so that I can pick up the car and get some grocery shopping done. We are almost out of everything again, and we just went. This house is averaging about 2 dozen eggs, 1.5 pounds of bacon, 8 litres of milk, 2 loafs of chinese bread and one loaf or whole wheat bread in less than a week. Oh well, there is no real reason to buy food other than to eat it so why not?

Updated

2004-11-10T00:13:00.000-05:00

Well well well. I sorta updated my page. Basically all I did though was add some other bloggers on the side that I read every so often. So I really did not actually update my page, well other than this post perhaps, but thats just squeezing the sponge dry.

Anyway, so yea, I'm still kinda pissed off with all this crusty school work that I have had to do this year. Take home tests that we have 2 days to finish and take at least 5 good hours to do. Also essays about music that I don't really care to analyse (Ie Gregorian Chants). Soon it will all be over. I really cannot wait until December. Sure it snows and its cold in December, but at least I won't have to worry about stupid useless assignments that I could care less about. I could really use a nice break too.

Well how about something positive for a change. Jeez, I'm starting to sound like Dan lately; all I type is about things that suck LOL. Just kidding Dan.

Its the weekend soon. Looks like this weekend is gonna be a fun one. Hopefully I'll have some time to stop by at home and chat up a storm with the parents. I'm sure there is a lot of stuff there I can steal from them as well, like maybe an umbrella and some more meat. We are starting to run out of meat, and I'll probably die if there is no meat in the house. Can't live without meat, thats just wrong. Hopefully I can get some new shoes one of these days as well. I mean, theres a hole large enough in one of them that I can stick my foot though. Now thats not a good thing to have during these cold winter months that we will soon encounter. A better winter jacket would be nice as well, considering the one I have now has no lining, so basically all it does is breaks the wind. While I'm at it some gloves and some long johns. Heh I could probably go on forever about stuff that I should get, but I won't. HA!

Anyway I think thats about all I should say for now. I need to finish my take home test thats due first thing tomorrow morning and I also need to find a topic, start and finish an essay but first thing on Thursday morning. C ya lates!

So much to do so little time

2004-11-06T01:29:00.000-05:00

I honestly feel like crawling up into a little ball right now and sleeping until im 40. That would be so nice. I'm not sure why, but right now I fell so drained right now. I feel like I am trying to do way too much, and not spending any time to just sit back and relax and enjoy all the good thing that I have right now. Does that seem like such a hard thing to do? Seemingly no, but for me it is.

It also doesn't really help that I decided to do a big gamble and bid on a Racquet on Ebay. I won the racquet, hoping it would be a real one since the seller said there was a serial number engraved on the cone. Well the racquet came, and there is a serial number. Thing is that the racquet is way to flexible to be an AT800 OF. Its also a little shorter than it should be. Other than that, it looks pretty good, has the right head shape and right grommet system. But its still a fakie, just a higher quality fakie, if thats possible LOL. Oh well, C'est la vie.

A Year older, but not a Year Wiser

2004-11-03T01:44:00.000-05:00

Well it seems that old age is catching up on me already. My shoulders are starting to hurt, my finger hurts right now, and my back is giving me problems. At this rate I am gonna be in a wheelchair in just a matter of weeks. Lets hope thats not the case. Anyway so things went farely well this weekend. Had Alex and Sean show up to do a little celebration of my Birthday. When the Nobleton crew comes over that can only mean one thing. Comsuming Alcohol! So they of course bought me the largest bottle of Jack Daniels that you could imagine. 3 Litres of JD!!!!!! That should last me at least a week. Heh just kidding. All I know is that it will keep me warm through the cold days of the winter.

School is starting to become a bother this year. I took a NATS course that seemed really interesting to me. Well so far all I have done was read this book, which also seemed interesting, and got confused by it because basically all it talks about is different concepts in Chemistry and Physics and does not really state why it does such a thing. Stupid book. The Professor isn't covering any subjects that are fun either. The whole first month she talked about how Scientists conduct experiments. This isn't the only course that is starting to get on my nerves. There is also my two Music foundation course I have to take this year; Counterpoint and Music and Cultures 2. So basically in Counterpoint we are learining how to compose songs from 400 years ago. I do not really care too much about that, I would rather learn more theory or something like that. In Music and Cultures, basically all we are doing right now is listening to Renessiance and Middle Ages music and analysing the songs to an unnessesary level. I don't see any point in that either. to me it takes the fun out of music. Just listen to the bloody song and enjoy it. The only courses that I enjoy this year are my Chinese course and my private lesson. I hope things will look up next year, because if they don't, I am not sure what I'm going to do.

綠茶, you are my only hope of staying awake

2004-10-28T01:59:00.000-04:00

Since I lack any coffee in this house (and also since I do not drink any), I have to rely on my 綠茶 to keep me awake. I have a giant beer mug full of it. It took 5 tea bags to make it taste half decent. It also does not help that we have no milk in the house. I always find that green tea tastes best with some milk in it. Oh well, it is still tasty. The reason why I need this tea to keep me awake, is because I have a test and an assignment tomorrow. The assignment (which I just started about 5 minutes ago, and am now taking a break from it to post this useless blog) Is roughly about 16 pages long. It is called a "Listening Log". Basically I have a template for a song that I have to listen to, which has about 1 page worth of writing on each one, explaining different features of the song and such. Well I have 16 songs in which I have to write about by tomorrow first thing! On top of that, I have a Mandarin Test tomorrow in which I have a good page worth of PinYin to learn as well! For this reason, I must find a way to stay awake until these tasks are complete, as well as eliminate all possible distractions which thus far, is not working out too well. Stupid Blogger!

Anyway the best part about having to do all this crap, is that it was my Birthday today. Yay for me, 20 years........ young. I would say thats a good present, having to stay up all night to do some stupid assignment that I really do not feel like doing. Oh well, you win some you lose some. Other than that, I had a really nice day today, starting at 4 and ending at roughly 12. I wish that it could have lasted longer, but even an hour would have made me really happy :). Thanks again for being with me ;)

Sleep is worth its weight in gold

2004-10-25T01:05:00.000-04:00

So I go to bed at 1 last night because I had to be out of the house by 8:00. I think I'm about to fall asleep at 2, but then I start getting text messages to my phone. Oh well thats ok, it was another night where I could not sleep. And on top of that, I wake up in the morning at 6:00. I do not have a clue in the world what it was that made me wake up at this hour.

Anyway so the reason I had to be out of the house by 8:00 was because I had to drive all the way up to Alliston (which is on hwy 89) to play in part of the Georgian Region league meet. I would say that it ended up being a successful day. There were two flights for mens doubles: A and B. The Director of our club told the people running the tourney that Brian and I were high B flight constesants. Our first game ended up being supposedly the top team in the B flight category. The first game we beat them 15-1. The second game they put on a good run but we still beat them 15-13. So our next game, for some reason, we got put up against the top team in the A Flight. Apparently this team basically wins most of the Georgian region Tournaments. They were a good team, but they definately are not invincable. Brian and I put up a good fight but still lost both games to them. Basically the reason that they edged us out was because of experience; Brian and I had a few more mistakes then they did and that was the difference in the game. They were both good games and I was really pleased with the outcome of them. We ended up playing a third game against what seemed to be a father/son team. They were both good players; the son being the better of the two, with a really strong smash, so we picked on the father and beat them both games. The second game was a little too close for comfort though, 15-13. We still held on though. Overall, it was a really good day.

And what better way to celebrate 6 good games of badminton than to eat a truckers breakfast at the HUSKY. There goes all the calories that we burned off playing badminton, but it was well worth it. 5 pieces of bacon, 3 eggs, homefries and TOAST. Definately cannot go wrong with that :).

Anyway so yesterday I tried to go home and change my oil, and do a good cleaning out of my car. All I had time for was to clean the outside of it and clean the windows. At least I can see out of the car now, but the oil still needs to be changed. Hopefully I can do that sometime soon, I'm 800km past due right now :S.

Also went to kareoke yesterday with Thu and his buddies, as well as some folk at YUBC. Good times. A little short though because I had to get up and play baddy the next morning. Only had a chance to sing one song, Beat it with Khoa. And let me tell you, I SUCK at singing, especially to MJ. It just doesn't work for me. It also doesn't help that I listen to old hippie music, and that no one else there does. You don't see many old hippie songs at an Asian Kareoke place either. Anyway, I guess thats about all that I have to say for right now. Cya.

Procrastination is Key

2004-10-21T01:34:00.000-04:00

Indeed it is. Here it is at 12:35 and I have a test in a class tomorrow that I have been to once thus far. Attendence counts as well in this course. So much for my participation marks. Anyway so I have this test tomorrow at 8:30am and I have not yet started studying yet. Why do you ask? I really have no legitimate answer for you, other than that I am really lazy. I have to listen to about 16 gregorian Chants and be able to distinguish them tomorrow. I don't even know where to start. Which is the reason for my post now anyway.

Whats happening in life? Well pretty much the same old. Lack of sleep, lack of school work and an abundance of Badminton. Have a tournament coming up this weekend in Allistion. Good ol' Alliston, home of the potatoe festival. And I thought Nobleton was hick :).

I have a confession to make. I am addicted to nuts. Eventhough I get threatened to not eat so much by an anonymous individual who will remain unnamed for now. She threatens to beat me up, to not talk to me, you name it. So far though, thank god, she has not lived up to her word. YAY.

I also just realized that the majority of my posts are pretty darn late at night, and therefore I am usually really tired writing them, therefore most of my posts basically make no grammatical sense. Thats ok, my English is pretty bad now these days anyway. Thats why I'm trying to take up a new language, Mandarin :D. Mind you when I can actually hold conversations in Marndarin, I will probably be brutalizing that language as well.

What else is happening these days. Well I apparently Finally got my posters that I ordered off of ebay. I bought them both in September and there are finally here now, almost a month later. But it is well worth the wait, I mean where else can you get an original TMNT movie poster from? Good ol' Ebay, the greatest website for buying things that you don't need.

I must say that life is really going well for me these days. I don't think that I have ever been happier in my whole life. Its getting tough these days to try and keep up with some friends though. All of my best high school friends are going to different Universities right now, and that keeps it hard to keep in touch with every one of them. Especially when I find it hard enough to see the people who also live really close to me right now. Many people have dissappeared to different Countries this past year, and the list is seemingly gettting larger and larger all the time. Before I know it, everybody is going to be gone! Lucky guys getting to travel! Oh well, I am happy here as it is, so I don't feel I need to go anywhere for a while. The people who I want to be with most are right here, so why would I want to go anywhere?

Yup, I am indeed a loser

2004-10-13T01:25:00.000-04:00

Yes I am aware that I updated this thing yesterday, but I really have nothing better to do at this moment. Well, technically it IS the 13th now, and my last update WAS on the 11th, therefore its 2 days. Hehe now I don't feel so bad.

Anyway, enough stupid talk. I don't really understand why, but in the past 2 nights, I have been really frusturated. May you ask why? Well, last night it was because I couldn't get my music program to work on my computer. And instead of looking deeper into trying to figure out a way to solve the problem, I was an idiot and just tried the same thing over. So here I sit in front of my screen, being angry and stupid and not thinking. Donna comes along and in 2 seconds, my problem is solved. She looks on the internet and finds a solution to my problem. 5 minutes later my program is working (except for a minor delay in the midi keyboard). Well, so much for men having the rational mind and women having the irrational mind. I believe its the other way around, beacuse I am certainly not the rational one, not last night anyway.

So anyway, on to tonight. Playing baddy at ABC. I haven't played for a few days, so what? It should not affect anything should it? It appears to be so. I played like absolute garbage; not so much as my shots (mind you I did hit way too many frames) but the way I was playing. So many stupid shots, I was just asking to be pelted in the face by a birdie. But then again, who cares? Its just a game is it not? So why do I have to get all bent out of shape because of a silly shot? Everyone makes mistakes, nobody is perfect. Maybe I just feel like I am not up to snuff with playing mixed with my partner, thats all. Maybe it was also because I did not really want to go play badminton in the first place tonight; I almost got convinced not to go, and I kinda wish that I didn't. I probably would have had more fun then, doing things that matter to me more than anything else in the world right now :). Next time, you will have to do a better job of convincing me, hehe.

Sometimes I feel like a moron

2004-10-11T20:15:00.000-04:00

So I wake up this morning (if you want to consider 1:30pm to be morning, I sure do anyway) and decide to make some progress in the home for a change. Went downstairs and pulled out the oven to try and find the bloody fuses to see if any had popped. I search high and low for the damn things, I took the whole oven out, removed the drawer, took off the whole back piece to get at the wiring, and find nothing. Behind the oven was a gross mess, so I decided to vaccum there, in the end, I vaccumed the main floor of the house, as well as my bedroom and the top floor (which consists of about 3 square metres). Cleaned up my room somewhat, and tried to devise a method so that my DDR mat would not slip anymore, which consisted of cleaning up most of the crap on the floor. It seems to have worked for now, but I haven't made the ultimate test to it yet; RHYTHM AND POLICE. I will do that eventually. Anyway I also cleaned up all the dishes, including my new ones that I got for my early birthday from my parents. Cooked up some fried rice and felt fat again after eating it. Messed around with my computer for a bit today as well. Things seem to be working much smoother now.

Parents eventually showed up to take a look at the oven. Dad found the fuses in about 2 seconds, which made me feel like an idiot right off the bat. But we noticed, after running through some tests to the circuits, that all of the fuses were fine. That means something else is messed up. We open the back and test all the wires with the mutimeter again. Everything seems to be working fine, so what the heck is wrong with the oven? Dad and I decide to look at the schematic diagram of the wiring for the oven. We find out that the timer must be set off for the oven to turn on. So we look at the dial for the timer, play around with that for about2 seconds, and the oven light turns on! Someone played with the timer setting last time they used to oven and thats what caused it to not turn on. Well don't I feel like moronnow. A 30 minute job solved in about 2 seconds. At least I will know now for next time. Now I can make muffins again!

Thanksgiving was good times. Anyday that involves turkey, Jackie Chan and Donna is a good day in my books :P. I felt so fat yesterday and tired after the turkey dinner, so what do I do about it? Eat pie and ice cream, then muffins, nuts and drink bubbletea. Now I really feel fat. I still feel fat a day later. I'm starting to feel that all the food I am eating is starting to catch up on me. Ok well maybe not, but one day I'm sure that it will.

What else happened lately? Hmmmm, well there was the YUBC kickoff outing. Was not a huge turnout, but still had some good times. Got to meet some new people, got to bowl really inconsistantly LOL. Also got to play some DDR for the first time in a good month. Man am I ever rusty. Almost failed on everything I did, Afronova Standard, Lets Groove Heavy and Max 300 Standard. I did nothing harder than 8 feet and I almost died. Of course the DDR machine was not the best. Pads too close to the screen, volume too low, and only one of the two mats was working. Once that was done, had some bubbletea and condensed milk toast. Also took a lot of useless random pictures. One more things to note: TMNT original cartoons is the best thing that has ever happened to mankind!

It only took a month

2004-10-08T01:14:00.000-04:00

It only took a month, but I have finally been to all of my classes at least once now. Yay for me and being completely lost when the Tutorial leader asked me a question and I haven't set foot in that class yet until today. I only missed a month of it so far, I don't think thatsTOO bad. Only problem being that there is attendance in that class for Lecture and Tutorial. Maybe missing a month is enough for one year, I guess we shall see. I do not really have an excuse for missing so much class, its just that I like to sleep in until the afternoon.

In other news, I had my first Mandarin Test today, and I think that I did farely well. I'm quite confident that I got all the characters right, only problem is that with the teacher I've got, it is quite difficult to distinguish what tone she is using in her words. Crazy Teacher I say, but thats ok, she's not the only one in my life whos CRAZY. Receiving text messages at 5:10am! Only a crazy person would send a text message at that time of day :P. Thats ok, I don't mind getting them.

What Have I been up to lately? Its kinda tough to say, spending lots of time playing badminton. Spending too little time sleeping, and making lots of trips to the WESTSIDE part of North York, which has been a lot of fun so far. Spending lots of time with what matters most to me right now, only problem is that time seems to be passing so fast now. Its already been over a month since school has started and it feels like yesterday that I was cutting out endless amounts of keychains for info fair which started in August. Its been a fine month and a bit though, good times.

Gotta pick up my brother at the airport tomorrow, so It might be best to get some sleep. Thanksgiving is coming, means time for TURKEY mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Stupid 8:30 classes

2004-10-04T01:41:00.000-04:00

Man, I can't wait until 8:30 classes become no longer a part of my every-day schedule. Here it is at 1:40 and I have an 8:30 class in the morning. Well, looks like I'm not going to be there again. I got enough stuff on my plate right now. Chow Fan being the most abundant at the moment, hehe. Anyway so yea, its not just the fried rice, I need to catch up on my Bass practicing, as well as get a book read, and write a test for Chinese class on Thursday. I also have laundry to do as well. I pretty much only have about four pairs of pants that I wear, therefore I have to do the stupid laundry very often. Hopefully I can perhaps get some*ahem* discounted jeans from somewhere near Bayview and Sheppard............

Anyway, moving on. Had a nice Kegger at Alex's house yesterday. There was a lot of people there. 180 or something was the count. It seems that every year that kegger goes on, more and more cops show up LOL. Got kinda hungry, took it easy on the alcohol comsumption, its more fun that way. And also learned that Bubbletea and Beer do not mix together too well. I'm now going to conduct and experiment. Which is worse; Bubbletea with beer, or cheerios with beer. I think that it is going to be a tossup between the two. Today was nice as well, much more relaxing, and probably one of the best days I've had in a while, eventhough I wasn't totally there, and the oven dying when we were trying to make muffins. But it doesn't really matter what happens in a day to make it good, its who you spend it with that really makes these moments some of the best times you can possibly have. I'm not sure if this post is making any sense anymore, I'm so tired and out of it I can't even think anymore. Maybe I should go to sleep.

A slow process

2004-09-29T18:59:00.000-04:00

I am slowly learning how to use this site. I'm learning 1 new thing everyday and forgetting 2 old things. Hey, at least its progress, I think. Just sitting around wasting time right now. I'm thinking that I should go to my class tomorrow that I have not been to yet this year. It turns out that the class has tutorials and the teacher takes attendance. That is definately not a good thing for me. We will see how I am feeling tomorrow morning when I wake up. Hopefully I will get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight. Nothing else really good to say today thus far, other than the awesome cd that Donna brought over today. The artist's name is Leo Ku. The album cover is the Fobbiest thing that I have ever seen LOL. And that's what makes it awesome. One of the songs has the pink panther song in the backgound, but someone singing overtop of it in Cantonese. What can be better than that. And on another note, splitting 9 eggs between two people in one sitting is a lot. I would not suggest doing such a thing on a regular basis, unless you WANT to have a heart attack. That is all for now. 再見

I don't know anything about this site yet!

2004-09-29T00:59:00.000-04:00

Yea, of course you may know that this page is new to me. Dan told me to get it probably about 5 months ago or so. I would have to say that I am a little bit behind on the times. I used to have a lame xanga site that I updated once every couple of months. I can see that happening for me on this site as well, but that will happen in time. As for now, I will update it semi-frequently as events occur.

Didn't do too much today. Woke up at 11:30 which was kind of early. Went to york at 1 to meet up with Donna for a bit. Came home, did some homework, then went to my mandarin class and made an ass of myself. The teacher went around asking all the white people in the class "Ni shi Zhong gwo ren ma?" And asked all the Asian people in the class "Wo Shi Jianada ren ma?" Of course, me being white, assumed that she would ask me if i was Chinese, so when she asked me, I replied "Wo Bu shi Zhong Gwo Ren, Wo shi Jianada ren". The teacher laughed as did everyone else beacuse she asked me if I was canadian, and i replied that I was not Chinese. Thats what I get for not listening I guess.
Also had ABC as usual on tuesday nights, spent most of the time beating Khoa and Nhi, (those two don't play well together) and then some old people. Poor old people, being so old. HAW!

The start of a new Beginning

2004-09-26T20:08:00.000-04:00

This is that start of a new Beginning. Why do you ask? More or less to try and stay in touch with friends whom I don't see much of anymore.