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I’ve been on a slight hiatus with any updates to this place. I’ve had a few ideas on what to write, but then when sitting down and getting down to it they just didn’t feel very inspired or interesting — even to me — and that would definitely lead to some boring reading. Like for example, just now, I totally got distracte with msn and trying to find a way to connect a Motorola RAZR to a computer to transfer some pictures. Since I’m talking about cell phones already, I’m still loving mine, and now Andrew has joined the Sony-Ericsson W810i club and all it’s awesomeness. Now, thanks to Andrew’s suggestion, I just have to spend $11 on mine to flash it to get rid of my only complaint with ringtones on this phone and add a whole bunch of extra cool and fun things to it, like way better menus and Zelda!

There’s been a slight good news, bad news momen with my don application. The good news is that they really want to give me the 2nd round interview and that was confirmed today when one of the RLCs wanted to talk to me for a moment. The bad news is for some reason they look at the marks for the last semester only, seeing as how in my last semester I was transferring faculties and definitely dropped some classes to save on time and money those marks are looking pretty bad from their point of view. So, printed off my entire transcript and going to grab my midterm marks from the two classes I have, on those I have a close to 80+ average, so hopefully that’ll resolve that problem.

I’m  going to stop now, since I can’t think of anything good to add, I got a replacement for the air freshener in my room. Last time it was mango, this time around it’s some kind of pine/fresh smell, I think I liked the mango more, but I still have 2 more flavours to try before choosing the best one. Either way it’s a nice change from a generic room smell.

Ok, so maybe in my school experience I didn’t really get a lot of picture books, but I did get to take art classes for at least 5 years and that was a lot of fun. It’s kinda weird, I only really remember 3 things I did in my arts classes. One was a drawing of a field with a single tree in full autumn bloom, the other was a clay bear with a white top and stripes and dots to make it more colourful and finally a musketeer on paper made out of different fabrics and other accessories that you could glue to paper and use. So, here we go, less writing more pictures, and a bunch since I finally brought my phone usb cord home with me to use it.

My ECON 211 notes, as you can plainly see I’m taking them very seriously

This is the tea I discovered as a present from RratedStar for letting him copy those awesome notes you see above. I’m still not sure if I really deserved it and it was amusing since I found it a few days later and was so excited and he told me he apparently let me know already when I was getting my binder back and I totally didn’t remember that.

This was the picture I took yesterday standing at the doors of the local Sobey’s. I didn’t think to take a picture of myself after walking there and going past Justin’s to wish him a Happy Birthday, but I was pretty much really beginning to resemble a snowman. Pretty sure I spent more time in the store getting all the snow off myself before it melted then I actually did buying anything.

On the way back from the LCBO on Friday. Before I even get to this I definitely walked down into some creeky with snow up to my knees carrying some shopping bags with tomatoes, peppers and cheese for the nachos and my backpack making some more sounds. What can I say, I was kinda joking around walking towards the downhill then Adam encouraged me : P It was really cold, but we spotted the ice rink in the field and had to check it out, this was what came after. A field of pure white and untouched snow is just too tempting: ‘Sh’ is for Sharon, ’squiggly wiggle’ is a heart, Adam pretty much spoiled the rest. Running through the snow was kinda tough writing all that out, so I definitely got to the end and just kinda fell back, it was really nice since it didn’t hurt at all!

From a while back, Yuek-Fen was feeling kinda down so Dave, Sharon and me ended up at East Side’s with her. We had to wait a really, really long time for our food, they got Dave the wrong order, most of our chicken was burnt and this is the free brownie we got at the end. After quickly taking care of the cherry and the whip cream we did the only thing we’ve ever done to brownies in the past

That’s about it for pictures, I’ll probably write something else tonight or tommorow, on a totally different subject and sans any visuals (unless I get really creative). I for some reason get the feeling that maybe I should be apologizing to someone for something, but I haven’t figured out yet if I should be, for what, or how yet, so I guess that subject is up for some more thought time.

I just wrote my first ECON 211 midterm earlier today, and while I may have been bragging about how badly I was going to kick this things ass for at least half of last week now that it’s finally happened it’s a spectacular feeling. I gotta be totally honest, for a lot of my previous midterms, even if I did well in comparison to the rest of the class it basically meant I was hopefully passing with a 65-70% mark. I’ve grown tired of those low average marks being the highs and constant bell curves and maybe just terrible classes like stats.

The point being is today I left the midterm and I don’t think short of a miracle of god I got anything less then 19/20 marks on it; by the way yeah that’s really weird, 20 questions that are all multipart and we only get a pass or fail on every one. I probably didn’t get the bonus question, but I’m almost as ready to say there was some sort of mistake in it too, since I vaguely remember optimization I’m pretty sure the solution shouldn’t revolve around imaginary numbers — I left my work and added the following comment: ‘I clearly didn’t eat nearly enough chocolates to solve this question : (’. Hopefully the questions protagonist Jimmy figures it out on his own
So, to you, the ECON 211 midterm I say you just got absolutely destroyed and now I’m going to go and enjoy my evening in a warm room, on a great couch and watching the long awaited return of some TV series like Prison Break, but who are we really kidding I’m here to see Heroes.

Before Sharon has anymore chance to exploit this, and without her assistance on the extra keyboard characters, I’m going to admit now that while submitting my don application I may have misread the “tell us why” paragraph to say less then 1000 words and not less then 1000 characters, but my comment is that it was a pretty awesome one page cover letter that I ended up writing and it was fun =D

Had a cold for most of last week, running around on the weekend had some definite side effects Ended up not missing work or classes, with one exception, but more on that in a sec. The result was really that I was absolutely tired by the end of the week. Usually there isn’t a lot that would make me say ‘no’ to going out and seeing some friends, but on Friday I got home and I was feeling pretty terrible. I had some dinner, and since there wasn’t anything too exciting to drink (I really need to get groceries soon), I had a Heiny with it. Things pretty much went downhill from there, I just kinda zombie’ed my way around the house for most of the evening before giving up and falling asleep, sucks when you can’t do something fun.

As I mentioned I missed a class already, well, it wasn’t missed. I went to it and asked my professor if he’d be doing more of introduction that he started the previous class, he went on a small rant: ‘Yeah that’s what we’ll be doing. Why do you know math well? Because if you do we’ll be doing nothing but for the whole semester, if you know math well just read the book and don’t come to class.’ As it was Wednesday and at that point I was once again just craving a warm room or bed I grabbed my things and on a ‘cya next class’ comment went home to do just that. I’m through reading the chapters of the book for our first midterm, I don’t see how I can not do well, so I’m actually looking forward to it. The guys sitting behind me before this in class talked about how at least one of them failed high school calculus, talk about some weird changes with these new classes and a new faculty.

It’s now Saturday evening, I woke up early, by routine — then forced myself to fall asleep again much later. I’m insanely bored right now, but at the same time it’s 10pm and since I didn’t make any plans, and the remainder of this cold make my options really limited. I just hope I don’t stay up most of the night, want to try and go shopping tommorow, maybe finally find some sandals for work, some clothes, some groceries and who knows what else.

Out of boredom today I’ve been thinking about something else. But I’m going to be one of those terrible authors at this point that allude to something, but then don’t give anymore inclination to what it is, except I have a reason. It’s one of those ideas that you probably only start to think about when you really can’t find anything better to do and you let your mind wonder. Part of it happened over new years, I think, but enough teasing about a tease — I’ll wrap this up and go for a really long shower, those pass time so nicely

Were down again this weekend! Ken and Allen continue to totally bail out and vanish when it comes time to visit Waterloo, but Nathan made it up this time, along with his new tattoo. Apparently it’s a family crest thing that he got just below the elbow on his right arm, his dad is still letting the family down by not having one under his strict policy of tattoo hatred =P

I think we left my place around 9 something and after walking through the campus to Molly’s we were once again not dissapointed by not being able to get in. Quickly we moved onto Fubar where we were going to meet some friends, our queue was the girl was wearing a red shirt — and we had no idea about any of the other ones. We figured at first it’d be easier if just one of us went to check it out, something like $10 later Mike had a shot, a stamp to get back in, and the realisation that there were like 6 girls wearing red that he saw on the inside.

So we decided to go to Frontrow since apparently even after eating my superb dinner Nathan was still hungry and so was Darcy, and we could actually get in! We got some drinks, some food, and had a few fun moments with our waitress — good times — by the way she does an amazing job pouring drinks better then anyone of us probably could. I got total dibs on that experience and I can definitely say it pays to finish first XD

Which is also where we found the ‘thing’, sometimes we can be such huge dorks, but check this out:

Yeah, we’re sometimes seriously weird. So after that it was back to Fubar! Apparently we didn’t actually have to pay the stamp ‘get back in’ cover charge, but for some reason I did anyway. Some random sit down and get into conversations later — which is really easy in Waterloo — in London probably would have gotten into a fight last night about 100 times over we went back to Molly’s and finally got in (just as always). There was this girl there that looks somewhat similar to Claire, the cheerleader from Heroes (mmm 22nd can’t come any sooner), a bartender that apparently really liked Mike since our rum and cokes had a whole lot of the rum and every order turned into a conversation. I tried to grab some hilarious pictures of Mike and Nathan through the fogged up Molly’s window, but I figured they’d turn out really bad anyway, so I just got this instead. There’s a whole story behind it, but let’s just say comparison.

There is really so much more to tell, but I wanted to for once write something shorter and it’s once again turned into something much longer. So I’ll just close it up now by mentioning that girls in Waterloo absolutely love Nathan as evident by the two totally random kisses he got after we let him leave with a group back to Frontrow, I heard the most hilarious “Oh no, you’ve got to be kidding me” as we were walking to Fubar and an unmarked police cruiser stopped right next to us on their way to arresting some guy (ab)using a tree for his personal reasons and the guys are starting to theorize that Sharon secretly hates them since she either has tonns of school work or gets sick whenether they come down, so get better soon!

Would have been the opening words of my economics lecture professor had his wife not curtailed his usual plans of starting every economics class he’s taught with a lecture relating to sexuality, and well sex. Apparently his opening idea on as he put it ‘interesting developing economic trends within the world of prostitution’ was outvoted by his wife as perhaps too offensive to some of the students in the class. Past that moment and for the rest of the course introduction there was nothing what I’d exactly call exciting to pounce on, but what I quickly realised is that this should be an interesting experience in how much I remember from high school calculus, first topics is really what’s a function, then things like linear equations, differentiation, derivatives and limited and unlimited optimizations. Now to the non-math students these may seem kinda hard, if you want a fun synonym Sharon “learned” how to plug in a mouse into a computer in her CS 100 class today, but to go on, for me this was like candy in form of free marks for the taking. Pretty sure I could never go to this class and get a 90+, but I’ll curtain my easy marks excitement until I see the practice exam.

Oh!

Remember what else I found interesting. In the lecture, the professor, began to do an example which he clearly stated will never be asked about and definitely said do not waste your time writing this down. I then observed an interesting social phenomenon as probably almost all the students of asian decent continued to faithfully copy the note word for word, while the rest of the population was split on the 50/50 option, I chose to stop writing, one girl walked out.

Not sure if I’m going to get into my 2nd class of choice, apparently there is a ninja waiting list for it, despite the fact that our course registration website still clearly says there are 6 spaces left. If not I’ll take it in the summer, for now, just to make sure I get a needed credit and have 2 classes I took a course on Russian Culture. Should prove to be interesting and I still love the country, it only makes sense.

Holden said there would be a party, then obliviously walked by me, talking on his cell phone on my way home and is still not back… maybe I’ll be able to take a shower today since our apartment isn’t freezing anymore and get to bed early…

today, after work. I had expected Holden to arrive at some point today. He’s my new roommate by the way, replcaing Andrew, who will be moving onto different pastures. I’ve known Holden since 1st year, we met through the whole RCC thing along with Joe and others. He’s certainly an interesting guy and good times will be had in the coming months, but that’s getting too far ahead of the events that took place today.

The downstairs door was propped open, so I knew someone at least had to be there. I walked into the lounge to immediately start tripping on a whole lot of things on the floor, only to realise too quickly that I was quite trapped in someone’s things and boxes. Looking around I didn’t really see anyone, then I heard a noise coming from the 2nd bedroom. Something moved around in there, and maybe making some assumptions I started making my way towards my room with some hops over and some relocations of things along with making a comment, something to the tune of “Oh em gee what is all this ‘effin stuff”. Now of course it was my carefully formed assumption that it was Holden in his room, seconds later that theory was totally (un)confirmed and I was saying ‘hello’ to his mom for the first time ever. I’m not entirely sure she heard all of my sentence, but suffice to say any part of it was really enough for an interestingly embarassing meeting. Note to self: next time go for visual contact XD

Couple of minutes later Holden finally came back, after the obligatory hi the first thing I was asked if I checked one of my older email accounts, I said not in a while (already going to the login page to see what the mysterious email from Holden was all about), turns out it was asking if he can have a random party tommorow already. Well I couldn’t really say no, and upon more questioning I still have no idea who’s coming, and with Holden you really never know.

Which brings me to the where it got really weird part. As if our meeting wasn’t awkward enough I found myself very quickly being lectured on how before the “parents” will leave that this apartment will be absolutely clean including the living room, which Holden’s dad was already thoroughly vacuuming, the kitchen and the bathroom. Now I have my ideas on how clean my apartment should be, and to be honest my room was probably the cleanest out of any of our areas for the last 4 months. So this was an interesting lecture to be receiving from someone I’ve just met. Without too much discussion we got the bathroom out of the way fairly fast, although I’m still not sure I’m willing to take a shower tonight, pretty sure we mixed some of those two cleaning chemicals that say specifically not to mix each other… anyway, it was weird, the water was  3 different colours by the time we were done filling and emptying the bathtub, stupid chemicals.

Next I found myself in the kitchen, this was the question that I was trying to answer “Are these dishes and pots here yours? Do you want them? Because otherwise we’re throwing them out!”. I was quite definitely unsure as to how to answer. The pots weren’t exactly mine, they were here when we got here, they come with the apartment. We have used them to cook our meals though, and this whole concept of throwing out was rather interesting. I was taking time to balance my answer somewhere between “Get out of my kitchen” to “That’s an interesting idea, let me think about that…”. At this point after managing to save the fate of my cooking utensils and at the same time voting for yet another dish rack and extra cuttlery.

So that concludes my awkward and interesting meeting with Holden’s parents, they’re still gone somewhere, I assume for dinner. And it’ll be interesting to see what turns out of this party tommorow, although I just realised as of about 30 minutes ago I actually have a class to attent tommorow, which I’ll have to start leaving work a bit earlier for on two days a week. I guess QUEST continues to be super annoying and I have to get a piece of paper signed for another class, but at least I got 2 of them that not only fit my scheduling needs, but also my program and credit requirements which is nice =D

Is a Nintendo Wii!

Ok, now that I got that totally out of the way, no really, I do want a Wii, but I’ll get it by myself, for myself and for my friends in the new year. And there’s my golden connector for this post, to my friends. I’ll be down in L. for this holiday season. It’ll be nice to visit what I used to call home for a while. To be quite honest though, and now more then ever since my mom won’t be around, I’m going to L. to see my friends first over anything else. Which in a way has it’s downsides since there are now so many people who I know from W. who I would love to spend a few days of the holidays with, especially considering how some of them are leaving for co-op work places again in January that aren’t anywhere close at all; At least some are coming back. Isn’t that an annoying perpetual cycle that our universities co-op program instigates? For all of its benefits it sure makes some relationships and friendships ridiculously hard.

Which brings me right a long to a reflection on a story from my childhood, it’s ok Andrew I was at least 7 or 8. When I lived in Estonia I had two best friends, Kolya and Roman. Romka went to my school, from our 1st grade right to when I left, we lived in the same apartment building, he was on the 11th floor and I lived on the 5th. Kolka went to a different school, and for a reason which I’ll explain in a second it made the situation that arrose possible, he lived about 5 minutes from my house. Our school schedules were like this, I went to school from morning until afternoon, but there was another option, you started in the afternoon and went until early evening, odd I know, but that’s how it is with schools there. So my two best friends, I don’t think there was anything that could ever cause a rift in those friendships, except I bring you to the hitch of this perfect trifecta is that Kolka and Romka absolutely hated each other. There was not even a moment where they ever got along, and I don’t mean it in a sense where they’d tolerate each other and actually do things together. No I outright mean I never did anything with both of them together. It was like I had two best friends with friends around them and I had these 2 groups that I could never see together.

Except, one time, there was a ring at the door, I opened it. And there they were, both standing there, together, calling me to go out. I was quite literally shocked, I remember us going down in the elevator and one of them saying, so could you imagine anything more odd that could have happened a moment ago, and I’ve honestly had nothing. I don’t remember what we did that day, or that week, but this event only lasted a few days. After that it was back to having two best friends that could never see each other for me, and while I would never give up having either of those friendships as I’ll remember them for life, how messed up is that, years of my life split between some of the best people I’ve ever met.

That day when I opened my door, wasn’t a Christmas day, it wasn’t New Years (my preferred day for celebration), but it may as well have been. The event, or the gift of that day was one of the best things that could have happened ever. I don’t think I’ve really ever told this story to anyone else, I knew, they knew, and we knew. But what a gift that was, no piece of a wrapped up present can ever measure up to gifts of spirit quite like that.

This brings me to these holidays and my opening statement of why I travelled anywhere at all, for my friends. I’ve made more friends this year, more close friends that I feel confident enough to say that I’ll keep for life, which is a hard thing to say for me given my previous experiences. I lived with Andrew for another 4 months, watched him make the right choice and joked with him in the evenings after work. I hung around with Adam, and hopefully helped him be a bit less comically emo. I think I finally made some headway into getting Allen to come out with us instead of spending 23.9/7 hours of his life on Caprice (all jokes aside she got seriously lucky with him). I heard stories of Ken going to see the forbidden movie. I saw Julian come to UW, after saying cya to him in high school. I talked to Flora again, something I haven’t done in a while. I really shouldn’t have started a list, no matter how long I write I will come up with more and more names of people I’d love to add. But one last person who’ll certainly be included is Sharon. I don’t have one defining memory of what we’ve done in the last year that I’ve known her, it would probably be too silly and too funny to explain in words, one of those ‘you had to be there’ experiences. But whatever random series of events led to our meeting, and it almost couldn’t have been more random, not to mention all the ties and similarities we’ve found since then, a huge ‘effing thanks to whoever (note the proper spelling ) arranged the events for that. If I could meaningfully translate the two Russian songs that just played while I wrote these last few sentences I would, but I’ll have to stick to just saying they were strangely perfect.

So you ask me what I want for Christmas and the holidays, and I tell you the answer is easy. My friends, my family would be really nice (but that’ll have to wait until next year) and all the events of the previous years, the good, the great, some of the bad. And to comment on one last part of Sharons post:

The only thing I’m worried about is how am I ever going to be able to leave them when I have to go to Japan?

Who knows really? But just speaking from experience, I’ve moved my life two times now, thankfully L. and W. are close enough that I won’t even count that as a move. And both the previous times I’ve had to say goodbye to those I knew and met, some of them I’ve lost over time, but some I talk to, or try to visit whenether the opportunity comes up. So why worry now, wouldn’t it be better to have now and have the memories and see what happens later then any other way around? =D

Or the 10 songs that have become the staple of our musical selection at work. Some of them are truly enjoyed, some jokingly selected, but all have an unique role in this collection.

Artist: Europe
Title: The Final Countdown
We’re leaving together
But still it’s farewell
And maybe we’ll come back
To earth, who can tell

Possibly the official closing song, but really it has served us so many times as a countdown song (what a surprise huh?) that it deserves to be at the top of yet another numeric list.

Artist: DHT
Title: Listen to Your Heart
Listen to your heart
When he’s calling for you
Listen to your heart
There’s nothing else you can do

It seems appropriate that this song for some reason comes on everywhere and at anytime, even when we leave the work it shows up on the radio and during grocery shopping trips. Andrew of course stole it from me, but he’s definitely taken the title more to heart.

Artist:  Paul Engemann
Title: Push It to the Limit
Open up the limit
Past the point of no return
You’ve reached the top but still you gotta learn
How to keep it

It first came up in a conversation way back in January with Joel. Talking about what songs get played while playing WoW over ventrilo. Since then it has integrated itself nicely and while doesn’t get played as often anymore still deserves this place.

Artist: Gigi D’Agostino
Title: I’ll Fly With You
I still believe in your eyes
I just don’t care what you’ve done with your life
Baby, I’ll always be there
By your side

Great candidate for most overplayed office song of September. We’re all in a way still hooked on it and I know for sure we sang it at least once at Bubble Tea yesterday.

Artist: Simple Plan
Title: Untitled (How Could This Happen)
How could this happen to me
I made my mistakes
Got no where to run
The night goes on

This song is a huge internet meme, but for us it’s just a fun thing to bring up when those dreaded moments come around where you just go “seriously, why the hell…”.
Artist: PPK
Title: Resurrection
Do, da da da doo di doo…
(Ok, so maybe there aren’t any lyrics)

It’s 8 minutes long, it’s easy to listen to and no one can say they don’t like it. Except maybe Greg, but his music choices are hella questionable in the first place anyway.
Artist: Geto Boys
Title: Still & Damn it Feels Good to be a Gansta
All along,
[still] it was a ghetto, nothing, but the ghetto /
Damn it feels good to be a gansta,
I mean one you don’t really know

Oh Office Space, is there really anything else that needs to be said about this. And yes, I cheated by having 2 songs in one entry.

Artist:  Chamillionaire
Title: Ridin’
They see me rollin’
They hating
Patrolling
And tryin’ to catch me riding dirty
We mostly consider this to be one of the theme songs to Nitish’s life. But to be honest we play the song enough ourselves that it belongs here. Of course there’s always the other version by Weird Al Yankovic, We be White and Nerdy =D
Artist:  Buckwheat Boyz
Title: Peanut Butter Jelly Time
It’s peanut butter jelly time
Peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time
Where he at, where he at
There he go, there he go

Now break it down and freeze…

Artist: DarkMateria
Title: Picard Song
Captain, Jean-Luc Picard! Of the U.S.S., Enterprise.
Mak-mak-mak-mak-mak-mak-mak…
He just kept talking, in one, long, incrredibly unbrroken sentence,
So that no one had the chance to interrupt:
It was really quite hypnotic… ‘notic… ‘notic…

You’d be surprised how long this song can be on and for some reason you just let it keep going and going. The sensible thing would be to stop the insanity, but that would just not be fun.

And now for a rambling of honourable mentions all in a disorganized format: YTMND soundtracks, because a lot of our songs are already from them anway, go popular cultrue. Backstreet Boys, since in high school no one would seriously admit to liking them. DJ Tiesto, the lifeline of one of the ResNet workers. Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, because Rocky Balboa has still totally got it. And finally a whole lot more dance ones which were just too numerous to fit in here, this time.