wow, four years.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Oh, it's good to be back. Lots of cool stuff has happened since... oh, May. That was a really long time ago. Yeah... let's see how fast I can go.

After my last entry, my aunt and uncle came to visit from Vancouver for some psychiatry convention (for my uncle) and I spent a week chauffering my aunt around Toronto, buying saris and meeting people and having lunch dates and taking humourously circuitous routes to Little India. Come June, I started working at Ontario Place full time, which was fun, boring, irritating and amusing - all at different times, though. Made many friends, met many interesting people, learned the fastest way to get from Agincourt to the CNE.

I stopped working in August, in preparation for Road Trip 2006 or Hopefully The Last Time We'll Ever Do This. We went to New Brunswick, PEI, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia; we can now make the somewhat interesting claim that we've driven nonstop from Digby, Nova Scotia to Toronto. I'm a little bitter, because I managed to find a "haunted ghost tour" for almost every stop we made, and we didn't do any of them. It could have been Haunted Ghost Tours Across the Maritimes, but no, there were more important tourist attractions.

And then back to school. In case you haven't figured it out, the only reason I'm typing is to avoid my assignment - in this case, statistics. It's easy. Statistics for the Life Sciences, how hard can it be? I also have a big compsci assignment for this Friday that I'll do at the last minute and it'll be really bad because I actually don't know how to do it. It's sad, because it's supposed to be my bird course: Concepts for Advanced Computer Usage. The assignment is about Excel macros, which I plan to master at around 11pm, Thursday night.

I went outside a few minutes ago to take the garbage out. It was really cool and misty. Taking the garbage out at some ungodly hour (the latest was around 3 am, I think) has become a Tuesday night ritual, because I always expect my sister to do it and then she doesn't. But it's nice; I've had some of my most transcendent moments out there. I always stomp out there grumbling and throw the garbage at the curb because I'm angry my sister didn't do it herself, but then notice how calm and quiet the neighbourhood is. Especially when it's snowing. Night-time snowing is the best snowing.

Oh, is this where I complain about professors? My organic chemistry prof is the worst. He is arrogant, he belittles students when they ask questions (even though he clearly never actually understands the questions), and he says 'Whatever,' way too much. He also has a thick Chinese accent, which isn't his fault, but doesn't make things much better. And worst of all, he has this laser pointer that makes a bright green point. I mean bright, to the point that you are mildly blinded to everything else on the slide. He seems to have a psychological need for it to always be on, be it pointing at the words he's reading, or circling the diagram he's talking about, or just shaking around and damn near giving the class a collective seizure. Worst part: he knows we don't like it. He's been told that it's annoying and distracting. His reason for using it? "Well, it's really expensive."

Anyway, bye.

posted 12:23 p.m. |

Friday, May 26, 2006

Well, it's time again for my monthly entry. Life is lovely and leisurely right now: I only work weekends until summer, and I have little, if anything, to do during the week. This past week, though, my aunt and uncle came from Vancouver, because my uncle had to attend a psychiatry conference downtown. I've spent the last few days driving my aunt around town to various sari shops, malls, relatives' houses, restaurants, and even the Rajah Ram catering company's kitchen. You know, my life is more complete after seeing an industrial-sized rice cooker.

My ashamedness at my nonexistent parking skills has reached all-time highs. I can barely even do the normal, front-in parking anymore - I usually overshoot and have to back up a few inches, and when I try to compensate for that I undershoot. And reverse parking? I try not to think about it. I associate a high level of emotional trauma with reverse parking - first from my driving instructor, who would eventually exasperatedly take the wheel from me and do it himself. Then from my dad, who would just keep repeating the same instructions over and over again, louder and louder, until I gave up and drove away. Most recently from my little brother, who can reverse park flawlessly: he just laughs and laughs. And then asks me to let him drive, and I take much pleasure in refusing. Oh man, my dad wants me to take (and pass) the G2 exit test in June.

posted 10:08 a.m. |

Friday, April 21, 2006

Almost, almost done. Mentally, of course, I've been done since last week. Tomorrow (today) I write exams for my two labs, chemistry and physics - lab exams being the in-jokes of the science exams. Instead of studying, I've been doing all of the promotional da Vinci Code online mysteries, and congratulating myself for getting them all by myself. Even though they're pretty simple.

I'm coming home for the summer on Saturday... I'm sure everyone is blogging about it, but it's just so strange. Not just that it's so early to start summer, but that we've all made new homes for ourselves in less than a year. Maybe that's just me: my family's lived in the same house since before my birth. I'll miss this place... and I'll be worried that my sister will inadvertantly burn this place down. However, I won't miss the noisy neighbours, whom I can hear right now despite supposedly noise-blocking headphones.

This term has turned out to be the term of finding out how little work I can do before my marks go down the tubes. I don't know exactly how badly I'm doing, but I'm sure it's pretty darn bad. Calculus especially. Way back in January, I forgot my first assignment for the course at home (on top of the microwave, of all places). That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the term. Don't even get me started on Sociology. I will never, ever, ever take a sociology course, and I'll be wary of any and all humanities for a few terms at least. The way my prof taught it, I've come to the conclusion that there does not exist a more boring or phony area of study. This has become my standard for bad courses. Look at it this way: I'm keeping all my other courses' books, but sociology? Will go in the charity box at the bookstore.

I asked my sister to rent The Incredibles, because I saw the first half at Ontario Place Orientation Day (yeah, and we got paid for that. Well, not exactly - it was lunchtime - but they did project it up on the IMAX screen in the Cinesphere. You have not lived until you've eaten lunch in a half-filled Cinesphere, watching a Disney movie on the IMAX screen.) and I can't leave a movie like that. So she goes to Blockbuster and gets Sailormoon R: The Movie. What am I supposed to do with that, huh? Hmph.

posted 12:40 a.m. |

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Hah, I should really, really, really be studying for my calculus exam, which is tomorrow. And I haven't started yet. I am inexplicably calm. Something like when a small animal goes all frozen and glassy-eyed right before a large predator pounces on it... yeah, exactly like that. And yet I know, on some level, that it'll all come together.

I came home to Scarborough on Monday night, to go to a volunteer info session at Scarborough General Hospital on Tuesday morning. It was cool just to walk around the hospital on a weekday morning, listening to the doctors with their doctor talk. I hung out in the cafeteria for twenty minutes listening to the nurses gossip... and there was this one doctor, sitting alone, looking out the window. I'm assuming he was Scarborough General's equivalent of House.

Also, I'm such a nerd that I actually felt nostalgic taking the TTC.

After tomorrow, I have no exams for a week... and after that, I'm coming home! I'll have just over a week free before I'll have to start coming in to work. I've got some amazing stuff planned; little of it will actually be done, but it's fun to dream. Case in point: my list includes dethatching, overseeding and fertilizing my parent's lawn, which I will almost certainly not do. But it's still on the list. Also, I plan to learn how to slipcover a sofa, because that sounds like a good skill to have; however, I know from experience that I won't do it, because I've been planning to do it for years with no discernible progress. It's good to have goals though.

My sister stole my brother's old N64 and is playing Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. She's a little behind on the video game scene, I guess.

posted 09:04 p.m. |

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the aptly named, "Boring Layout". I think this is the eighth layout I've had. If I were better about keeping my old files, I'd do a retrospective, but in fact we've gone through multiple hard disk reformats since those fateful grade nine days. I'll just say that those were some crazy days.

In case you're wondering - which I am quite sure you aren't - the boring picture up there is one of my shots from last summer's cross-Canada drive. I wish I had kept better records about the dates and things, because I can't tell if it was Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Probably Saskatchewan. Seriously, all of Saskatchewan looks like that.

I went to the first training session of my Ontario Place cashier job last Sunday, and I can now say with some confidence that I can operate a cash register. I can split a bill between cash, debit and credit! U.S. cash, too. But you have to be careful with US and CDN cash for the same bill, because the computer can't do that, so you have to calculate it manually.

Right now, it's those lovely days between classes and exams. I woke up at 11, watched TV, made breakfast... my sister left the car here, I think I'll go grocery shopping. Later days.

posted 05:34 p.m. |