I feel like I owe some people some updates around here. It’s definitely been a while since I’ve posted anything meaningful. Okay, okay, comics don’t completely count. But adopting ninjas is a serious issue!

So lets get on with this, shall we? First of all, about half a year ago Alice sent me an email to join Twitter. At the time I definitely just skipped over it, but now that I’m finding that Facebook is more and more of a waste of my time and I can’t seem to keep this thing updated; Twitter actually makes sense! So more frequent and possibly more pointless updates there

Those flowers were really pretty — when they were around. This is now about a month old now. Yep, took me that long to get around to getting it from my cell camera to here! But it also makes a really nice cell phone background, maybe it’ll work well on the new iPhone?

We’ve been getting a lot of rain here lately. Which is really nice, especially when it’s been warm. If I had the time I’ve usually taken the opportunity to just go outside and bike around in the rain and through some puddles. It’s sometimes hard around here because you gotta find the puddles where the geese haven’t made a mess!

Yep, getting really used to clouds like that. It was just raining earlier and there was lightning, really high up though, the thunder takes forever to get to us.

In exchange for that we’ve been getting some fantastic sunsets. While I haven’t captured them all and my camera continues to be pretty much a failure in comparison to anything that’s actually a camera, I thought I’d still share some of them with ya — time flies by the way — these are over the length of a month that featured midterms, games upon games of volleyball and soccer, a bruised something in my chest and a walk in the Relay for Life.

It rained later that night. On the way back from volleyball.

It was really, really awesome to just see it over the whole sky. This was over CIF on my way back from a volleyball game.

This was a rarity for a while. The sun just peeking out of the cloud.

Just took this one about an hour back, the burning sky in the background

And that’s about all for now. Say hi in the comments if you haven’t in a while!

It’s like 1:30am. I’m trying to finish laundry. I am sooooo tired from the last few nights of fire alarms, prank phone calls, prank door buzzers and people playing football in a snowstorm outside of my windows. Tomorrow is a big day. I have a Public Speaking class persuasive speech to deliver. I am actually really looking forward to it, but it took me a long time to pick what topic I wanted to do and I don’t feel as ready as I’d hoped I would be at this point.

I think I’m going to take tomorrow morning off from another class and polish this speech, it’s 35% of my mark in that course and I actually feel like I want it to be meaningful beyond just that mark. Maybe I’ll try and post it at some point, who knows, I like to improvise so much during speeches that it may not even be what I end up delivering XD

It was Alice’s birthday recently, for those of you that read and know her, hint, hint.

Oh, we played another volleyball game with our floor team today. We were off to a rough start as we’ve not played since before reading week. Amazingly we’ve had the most people out since the first game and actually had two people to rotate, which made things easier. The game was in a different gym though and there were games all around and we kept having to restart because a stray ball would end up in my or my teammates feet, annoying. The coolest thing though is that Yuichi, who was my Japanese TA, was playing on our opponents team. I gotta say he’s really, really good and a lot of times when I thought we totally had a point, he’d run out from the other side of the court and somehow get it in this amazing one hand dive. It definitely made me be like “Ok, Sergey, you gotta step it up. Don’t suck!” — which was a lot of fun. We had this amazingly long rally where I think the ball went over at least 10 times and we finally, finally got the point after a lot of effort.

As is true of our team, we lost the first set. I think we spent more of it remembering how to play and talking to each other, haha, we’re so pro! The second set we were definitely down, but then we came together and squeaked in a 26-24 victory, tight. There was a lot of cheering, high fiving, double high fiving and general celebration In the 3rd and deciding set we started off really well by losing our serve and going down 8 to 10, then 8 to 12 then 9 to 14. Oh this was going to be rough. But in true team “as long as it’s over” style we managed to put off screwing up a serve or losing a point and brought it all together with a one point win!

Oh well, I should run and take a shower now. I’m pretty sure I smell. And then of course I’ll feel wide awake when I actually need to be sleep. Sigh to that. Cya!

The door tags and the poster designs I decided to go with for this terms theme.
For those of you not too familiar with it, the robot comes from the game Portal and so do most of the quotes. I ended up making some up because I was short and because I was talking to Alice while making them. So far 3 people asked me where the theme is from and 2 said they got it — more on this if it develops.

To be honest, I may have not entirely cleared the use of the name XD

It’s similar to the last terms design in the format, but stronger, harder, better!

Welcome back from the intermission and in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the first part that you’re looking for.

I actually had to do a double take on the closing of part 1 since I couldn’t remember where it was exactly that I stopped. So, with that done, here we go!

Indecision. It’s sometimes awesome, and sometimes it’s kind of annoying. Our plan was to walk somewhere, and do something. Which basically resulted in us talking and walking up some street just to do a u-turn because we’d realise there was absolutely nothing in that direction. There were several aspects of Toronto that I suppose are worth mentioning at this point. The taxi drivers are out to hit something, or someone, no exceptions. If they can’t accomplish plan A, then they will do their best to drive with a vendetta as plan B. There are a lot of homeless people who need some of your change for whatever reason they give you. I sort of like the ones that just don’t give me a reason at all, I want to believe them more XD

We found ourselves at the movie theatre, we actually came to this decision after Andrew insisted on us going to see the Much Music building because he hasn’t been there himself. I actually think I have. It was closed, and dark, and disappointing. We were going to make an effort to see Elizabeth, but since we lacked the power to traverse through time, and the last show was more then 4 hours ago, we opted for the only available option in American Gangster. Interestingly enough, someone has leaked a DVDrip version of this movie earlier last week and it seems that just about everyone had it before the movie was even out. We bought some drinks for the movie and bought our tickets, both of which made Andrew’s recent post on the value of entertainment that much more painful to our bank accounts

I won’t spoil the movie, but it was good. It is rated 18A and does live up to that rating in covering just about everything that those labels talk about as far as bad material. What was annoying is that there was someone’s car outside for large parts of the movie that was blasting music and it was really annoying! We joked about asking for refunds, then actually tried to find the customer service desk and failed =/
On the way out, there were a lot of flashing police lights, lots of police cars, lots of police on horseback, and eventually even 2 trucks from the special task force. A couple of guys were “spread” over the hoods of the cruisers and there was a large crowd. We didn’t stick around, but it was like the movie we had just seen continuing for real. It was based on a true story after all!

After getting our north/south direction (no seriously) figured out again. We went off towards Andrew’s place of residence. All the public transport had stopped, even though we felt since the clocks were brought back an hour the subway was technically still open. I guess the operators didn’t agree with us on that one. It was a pretty cool walk and it was around 2-3am, but we did visit Andrew’s campus, which he was so proud of, dodged some light posts in an apparent game that I’m awesome at, figured out what another building on campus was and finally caught a cab for the rest of the trip.

My name’s Bond, James Bond

Sometimes I like to think that I’m totally normal. And every second that I don’t have those thoughts something happens to prove otherwise. Since Andrew we couldn’t invade Andrew’s private sanctuary (I heard that he has an Apple tree there and keeps a caged Steve Jobs under it) we got a room for actually really cheap. The catch! The room was for one person, and for some reason having a second person stay in it was more then the room in the first place! So with a cell call initiating our dastardly plan and synching the timing I went to get the keys while Andrew and Alice snuck in through the back door. It was actually amusing because the person at the desk has all these camera monitors and he turned to check them out and I got his attention again by asking something I can’t even remember. Turned out the guy working the desk also spoke Russian. Mission accomplished and we were in the building safe and clear.

I guess we haven’t had any pictures yet, ok, here we go:

In the morning we discovered the TV had a choice of about 6 channels, which were really mostly static, but at least 2 of them were those channels where one guy sits in front of the camera and talks about something religious.

We actually examined the room in an effort to find something shady and wrong. But we were pretty tired so that didn’t last long. That brown blanket thing is a static making machine, it hurts!

The floor was nice and uhm, nice. It actually wasn’t too bad, except it was pretty cold. Also I snore, it was described as sort of like a “machine” that might be a “lawnmower”. That kinda sucks! XD

Andrew had left to perform at a church service, so we were on our own, and after sleeping in for a bit we finally made some plans. After having to unplug the alarm clock because through joking around about it having a USB port to charge a BlackBerry, Alice somehow set it off and we couldn’t find the off button!

We mostly just walked around and looked at things like tourists. It was Sunday morning and a lot of everything was still closed. Our only real goal was to get some breakfast somewhere, pickup some cakes for someone’s birthday and then catch the bus.

We finally decided on this nice, small place called who’s name I have now forgotten. It was “Samantha’s Place” or something like that. It was pretty nice and we got some breakfast there. One of the reasons it stood out was because I actually realised they had the Food Channel playing on the big LCD TV they had hanging above the counter area. I thought that was really clever and interesting.

It was seriously like $10.00 for that. I ate the pickle :p

The bread was the best part, but the chili was good.

Sorry for the bad picture, I chickened out when one of the people working there started to walk towards the screen. But the lady on the Food Channel was wearing this really low cut shirt thing, and it was probably not the best thing for a cooking show where you know, they show your midsection and what you’re doing with the food.

We walked around a bit more around the fancy and expensive part of Toronto where we found ourselves. I think I saw a lot of over $100,000 cars. Alice took me to this Italian style boutique food shop she found earlier. Everything was really fancy and pretty and expensive. I only got one picture off before we were informed that they were so exclusive that we actually weren’t allowed to take pictures there. So here you go sweet tooth lovers, rejoice:

At this point it was pretty much time to wrap it up. The cake lady opened her store on time at 11:30, we grabbed the cakes and made our way to the subway. I can actually say I’ve been on the Toronto subway now, because I’m pretty sure I haven’t before. The bus back was at 12:30 and was absolutely full. We grabbed a bus that headed to Kitchener instead and was almost empty, it even got there an hour earlier, I take that as an overall win.

Well, as they say all good things must come to and end, and so must this one. We were on our way home, tired, but happy about the weekend. Pretty much slept the entire trip on the bus. So here’s one for closing time (it turns out neither one of us has been to the CN Tower).

Thank you once again for coming here and actually reading this junk and leaving your thoughts. I thought I would give you a fair warning on this one that once again this is going to be one of those patented wall of text performance style posts (although I do try to use proper breaks and grammar). If you’re ready for some of that, some fun and some pictures then please buckle your seat belts, remain comfortable until we’re well on our way through the first couple of paragraphs and that’s that

I didn’t officially have this weekend off from donning, but I did make arrangements that there was a very good chance that I won’t be around Saturday evening and most of Sunday. The story begins with a concert performance in Toronto of “St. John Passion” by Johann Sebastian Bach. Through her intricate network of connections Alice managed to snag some tickets to the show. Originally Andrew was supposed to go, since he needs all the chances to see how it goes, since we expect him to be performing for us in the near future now! That plan was of course scrapped when it was beginning to look like Andrew would actually be performing in this show, as part of the main choir. Go plan changes! Of course it was to our great sadness that we later discovered that that would actually not be happening, guess what, plan change!

Alice left on the Greyound early Saturday morning, she had to meet some friends and I opted for the sleep in and catch a later bus approach. When I finally went to get my tickets around 10 I realised it was tour day here on campus. So many people, groups and families it was crazy. Our Student Life Centre (building to hang out at and do work at and live at) was absolutely packed with presentations from all the faculties on campus and people eager to digest that material. I weaved my way through the mass of bodies to the Turnkey Desk and got my tickets. They keep changing these tickets and how they work. Apparently now they’re technically for a specific bus, but at the same time as long as the source and destination is sort of the same you can still use them on almost any Greyhound, even though they say they’re for a time and a bus >.< They totally contradict themselves! Which did lead to a conversation with the girl who was working at the desk:

Me: "So, I don't know which bus I'm taking back"
Her: "Don't worry about it"
Me: "But this ticket says it's for a specific bus, which I'm not sure I'm going to take!"
Her: "Don't worry about it"
Me: "..."
Her: "There's another bus at 7pm"
Me: "Ok, so..."
Her: "Don't worry about it!"
Me: *blink* *blink* "Thanks!"

I got to the bus stop about 30 minutes early. Good call me! By the time the bus left there were 5 or 6 people standing with the promise of more seats when we stopped off at Kitchener. By the time we got there and everyone who needed to get off did so, and those that were standing seated themselves we had 1 empty seat left and about 30 people who needed to get on. I felt kinda bad for them, but I guess they were going to have to wait for another bus close to an hour later. I did benefit from this a bit though as we weren't going to stop in Cambridge anymore or any other stops and headed straight to Toronto instead.

So there I was standing outside of the Royal York Hotel. Really expensive by the looks of the clientele. As Alice was bored in Toronto for at least the last 4 hours she was actually pretty close, in fact, she was probably inside of the Hotel. But it did lead to what I for some reason found to be an absolutely hilarious conversation.

Alice: "Where are you?"
Me: "By the entrance"
Alice: "Oh, ok, well, I'm kind of lost... no actually I'm totally lost inside"
Me: "o.O"
Alice: "So which side are you on, north, south?"
Me: "I see the, uhm, CN Tower from this side"

I don't know why, but when I hung up I was definitely laughing. The fact that Alice was lost and asking me which geographical side of the building I was on in a city where I haven't been for in a good year, so I definitely had no idea, to me it was hilarious. I'm easily amused, ok, I'm sorry!

Pro-dinner tip: if it says meant for sharing, it’s really meant for sharing. If it says it’s for 1 person, they’re lying (it’s for 3)!

From a quick conversation with Shannon, one of the awesome Dons on my buildings team, I was told you either “love it or hate it” about the building that the concert was taking place in. I’m going to go with the former. It looked really interesting in its design and was definitely different and lively enough to impress. I’ll save the detailed impressions, which will make reading this unbearable, and just stick to some pictures!

The performance was fantastic! I’m really not an overly religious person, and the theme of the performed piece was, but that didn’t matter at all. It was just nice to listen to and see. I’m sorry I don’t have more pictures, and especially didn’t get a chance to take one of the soloists, but there was a no picture rule in effect and I decided to obey it. Speaking of which, the last post was made from Alice’s BlackBerry. We’re such stereotypical UW students it’s amusing. But what we also found through this process is that as soon as intermission was over, that both our devices lost signal completely. They’re probably using some kind of signal blocker, which is curious for the geeky. The only negative I have to mention is that the gentleman who sat next to me was falling asleep for most of the performance, or at least listening to it with his eyes closed, which to me seemed to defeat the point of him changing his glasses every time the show started! I think he snored a couple of times, and he kept using my ribs as the stopping rest of his elbow!

Having fully taken in the performance we were on our way out and had a chat with Andrew! He was totally blowing us off and giving us such a hard time with where he actually was, bastard! XD It was easy though, as he was actually waiting at the doors where we came in. Making our way there we found him talking to some people who were in fancier dress then us. We just waited outside and had a fun conversation about how Andrew is now a big shot somebody and how we’re just his previous university friends from way back when. We thought of taking some pictures and taking bets on how long he’d be before he noticed poor us — but it wasn’t long, and some guy walked into the picture totally ruining it. The last remark is the trio was together!

Stayed tuned, or even better take a break, part 2 coming later!