Well, there's always Seattle...

Phone interview could've gone better. First one wasn't amazing. He didn't really ask many technical questions, but of those he asked, I didn't really answer them. On the plus side, he's old school buddies with Brendan and Nebojsa, ah, the joy of connections! Second one was better, though my brain kinda zoned out in the middle of it, but I managed to recover. Stupid cordless phone disconnected me, fortunately it was already after the time limit was up and we were pretty much done.

Girl jumps through basketball hoop

Crazy video...

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Happy Chinese New Year!

I'd contemplate doing something for new year's, but it's absolutely horrendous outside. Pouring rain and it looks miserable outside. Not that I have anything in particular to do or family to visit.

Chinese New Year is much more of a family celebration, than with friends or random strangers. It's like how Christmas you spend with your family - have a big dinner, exchange gifts, etc. Chinese New Year, you also generally have a big dinner with family, but instead of gifts, you get cold hard cash in "red packets" (lei see), given by the married couples to the unmarried. This is in contrast to the New Year according to the Gregorian calendar, which I consider to be a holiday that you'd tend to spend with friends or even with complete strangers in a big party, rather than with family.

I never had much family back in Winnipeg, so Chinese New Year was never a huge deal. I would only ever get red packets from 3 families - parents, aunt+uncle on mom's side, uncle+aunt on dad's. If however, I was in Hong Kong, where my grandmas live along with most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, I could imagine massive family dinners and just rolling in the dough (mom has 5 brothers and sisters, dad has 6).

As it stands, at least I have two red packets. My sisters brought them from my parents when they came to visit last weekend. I put them under my pillow when I slept last night. Apparently it gives good luck or something.

Strange IM conversations

First, someone with a Hotmail address containing the words "Jelli" and "Bean" adds me to their MSN. I was like weird, Jill opened a new account. Worse that she's doing this after opening her new Gmail account. I authorize the addition and see that the person's nickname is "anne bananae". I was like, weird, Anne opened a new Hotmail account and is now using 2 MSN messenger accounts.

I chat with "anne" for a while. Haven't talked to her in a while anyways. I'm told that she has a lot of reading to do. I inquire as to for what because as far as I know, she was done school. I was thinking maybe she had to prepare for teaching a class or something. She replies that it's for class in a way that suggests that it was beyond obvious. I don't think too much about it. She then tells me that she has to leave to go watch a volleyball game. Strange. I didn't know Anne liked volleyball. Apparently she was going to watch the varsity team play. I was like cool, I never did go watch the University of Manitoba Bisons play and they usually have a pretty good team. I figured that I'd inquire about this later.

Several hours later, it suddenly dawns on me that that was the Anne in Toronto! In which case everything makes sense! The classes, the volleyball! Man that was weird. I talked to her online later on and had a good laugh.

Lesson of the day: SHOW A PICTURE WHEN USING IM!!!

Fortunately I did not say more than I did and kept the embarrassment to a minimum.


My second instant messaging incident was also rather weird. Some random person messages me on ICQ (who uses ICQ anymore?!?!?). The person asks as to whether I'm Canadian. Strange. Anyways, cutting to the chase. She found me by searching for "Vincent" on ICQ (just a randomly searching a boy's name apparently). I find out that she goes to University in like the middle of China. We end up chatting for a while. When I mention that I might be in China in the summer, she gets really excited about the possibility of meeting me, but I won't be going that deep into China, just like Beijing and Shanghai. She's disappointed at this news. When I tell her that I'm gonna get ready for bed she begins to tell me how happy she was to meet and talk to me (I was just being nice after all), that she thinks I'm smart, must be good looking, and how her heart was comforted... Wow, umm... I'm flattered, but it seems a little much considering we just met and not to mention the age, distance, language, and culture difference... She kinda scares me. On the plus side, this could be the beginning of my first stalker.

Kneepads used every day this week and now my ass is sore

OMG you sick f*ck!!! The kneepads were for volleyball and snowboarding and my ass is sore from falling while snowboarding!

Snowboarding went quite well last night. I'm getting much more confident on the board and getting more control over my turns. Going down a blue run wasn't as scary this time. Next week I'll be able to carve down the blue's no problem.

So, Mimi ditched me for her tri-campus volleyball game (who has a volleyball game on a Friday night???). I would've done the same... I did however, find some people to snowboard with - my fellow novice snowboarders tearing up the bunny slopes.

The alternative title for this post is "I get older, the girls stay the same age". The problem is that I'm just too old for frosh now and all the cute girls in the ski and snowboard club are apparently 1st years and at Chestnut nonetheless :p. You know, with John turning 25 yesterday and hanging out with all these frosh, I'm really starting to feel old.

Blood, it's in you to give

Proud to say that that I donated blood for my 3rd time today! Not a huge number, but I'm averaging once a year since I started. I got a fancy little pin to mark my 3rd donation. Apparently my next "pin milestone" is 10. Here's what I've gotten so far:


I felt pretty good this time aside, from feeling a little light headed when sitting up right after donating. I even went and played volleyball tonight (about the 8 hours after rule that they suggested). Probably not the best sport to play after getting stuck with a needle considering my arm was getting hit with balls. My wound did bleed a bit b/c of volleyball, which obviously isn't a good thing, but it wasn't too bad. I was hitting pretty well though. I was actually trying to hit hard. I'm usually hesistant to hit as hard as I can because I'm not confident in my consistency, so then I end up using like 50-75% power. But lately, I've been getting quite consistant - getting my timing right, not hitting the net, and hitting well within bounds. So today, being just pick-up, I tried to swing harder and it worked quite nicely :). Next is to really go at it, really swing as hard as I can and get those ab muscles involved. My goal is to get the ball to bounce back over the net (bounce off the ground, off the backwall, and back over the net in the small GSU gym) or to knock someone unconscious.

$250 - $500???? Umm.... no thanks

The girl on the phone was nice and all and she brought me up to speed on what's been going on at the U of M. When asked if I could give back to the University and that they were asking for a donation between $250 and $500, I was like, ummm... how about I get out of school first and above the poverty line :p

Is this haircut worth $50?

I decided to go a little higher-end than my regular $12 haircut at Topcuts, in which I order my haircut by number (#3 on the sides and back and short on the top). I basically jumped across the spectrum of hair salons and went to Toni & Guy on Bloor in Yorkville (you know, where Gucci, Tiffany's, Chanel, etc. set-up shop). A few of my guy friends have gone there for successful haircuts. I went on the low end there and got a junior stylist, which still set be back $50.

I went in wanting something a little different done to my hair and this is what I told the stylist. I guess it was hard to tell what I had before as it's been about a month and a half since my last cut and it was rather long. I came out with basically the same hair style as I had before, but the cut is nicer and more natural than my regular cut. Well, I'll see what happens after I style my hair myself.

Well, you can see for yourself if my haircut was any good. Excuse the crappy pictures. The photography was an idiot.





That last picture makes me look like I'm balding. I'm not. Honest! The stylist even commented that I had a lot of hair. I think her hands were getting tired of cutting :p. Ya, so I just have a funny bald and flat spot and my hair back there does weird things.

The difference a day makes!

I'm in a much better mood today!

• Stayed at home in PJ's instead of going into the office


• Fences mended


• New web page launched (finally!)


• Painlessly reactivated my cell phone, keeping the same number and not paying any extra fees


• Borrowed a hammer and had a nice talk with the hammer lender (and found out some really interesting things about her)


• Built my shelf and cleaned up my closet
  
  Before:
  
  
  After: (look in the bottom left)
  


• Great volleyball game (smoked them 25-9 in the 2nd game!)


• Reached >$200 in pledges (but still short of my goal of $300)


• Watched the newest episode of How I Met Your Mother, which was a nice feel good episode, made even better guest starring the incredibly cute Ashley Williams, of Good Morning, Miami fame (a recent sitcom that ran from 2002-2004).
  
  

Webpage redesign

I finally finished redesigning my webpage (3rd time in 3 months)! Here's the progression of my webpage:

~1999 - Oct. 2005:  Old, old, webpage
This is before I knew about CSS.



Oct. 2005 - Jan. 2006:  Old webpage
My first CSS webpage. Was never satisified with the background image, which is a rip-off of Apple's default desktop image for OS X 10.4.



Christmas 2005:  Unreleased
Redesign attempt that never got released. First time using Photoshop to design a webpage. Also the first time I was using one of the online colour scheme tools. I was close to releasing it, but I never finished converting all my webpages to the template. Plus, I wasn't too pleased with the way it looked and colour scheme.



Present - Future:  Brand spanking new webpage!
New webpage designed over the past few weeks from scratch. CSS, Photoshop, and colour scheme tools. Finally put it all together and converted all my pages. Now that it's been built, I'm waiting for them to come.



I'll be looking into redesigning my blog soon. This ubiquitous template has run its course...

Tiggy dressed as my iPod

It's my blog, so I'm going to post pictures of my cats. Why? Because my cats are cute and they cheer me up. I have way more pictures of my pets than anything else. They are also more loyal than people and don't piss you off like people do. Plus, they don't steal your hammer, wrench, or umbrella condom! Ok, well, if you left an umbrella condom lying around, they might play with it and scatter it around somewhere, but it's cute when they do it.

Here's Tiggy dressed as my iPod:





This is an older picture when I was back in Winnipeg before Christmas. Mi-mi (cat, not person) doesn't like Tiggy, and is only resting so comfortably because she doesn't know that Tiggy is there :p. Yes, that is the same blanket cover as the one I have here in Toronto for my extra blanket. It was on sale at Ikea...

Really not having a good week

It's only Monday and I've managed to piss off 3 different groups of people. That's gotta be some sort of record. In my defence, I inadvertantly did hit two with one stone. Fortunately, things have been mostly mended regarding the volleyball tournament.

Sigh, and all this time I thought Canadians were smarter than Americans

Looks like we're gonna go back to being the 51st State with Harper.

The only good thing I got going for me

Damn it all!

I'm so not in a good mood...

The person(s) responsible for taking my tools will be severely punished. First my wrench went missing from my toolbox. Now I can't find my hammer, which is supposed to be in the tool cubby, to build my new shelf. Oh, and my umbrella condom is missing as well. I AM NOT PLEASED. Return these items now or suffer the consequences.

Plus, now I'm majorly wedged between a rock and a hard place. Just got word that the indoor beach volleyball tournament has no spiking or overhand serves in our division. So basically it's not volleyball. It's almost as bad as water volleyball, which by the way in no way resembles volleyball. It's akin to software engineering.

Now I'm stuck. I can either disappoint my friends, or disappoint my friends. Lose-lose situation. If we play, half the team will be grumpy and mad at me b/c it's not volleyball and we're paying quite a bit to play a lot of something claiming to be volleyball. If we don't play, then I disappoint my friend who's organizing it, no one gets to play, and I have to refund all the pledge money that I've already collected, and ditto to the others who've already collected pledges. Sigh. Things might fall apart without my control once the others get word of the "rules" and back out. It might not be that bad to play, we just have to have the mindset that we're not playing volleyball and that the money is going to charity. I'm ok with that. I don't know if the others are.

It's a good thing I can't find my hammer right now, or I'd be bashing in someone's head, or at least the wall...

I see dead people

Went to the Ontario Science Centre today and saw the Body Worlds 2 exibit.

Real bodies

It was pretty creepy. Real bodies on display. Paritally dissected. Enough to make your stomach churn. In the science centre itself, people were talking loudly, kids screaming, running around. In this exibit (separated from the rest), people were eerily quiet. Barely whispering if they were talking. Everyone was a little edgy being around dead bodies...

After the initial shock, it's really amazing to look up close to the displays. Brings back all that stuff I learnt in grade 11 biology. Hi, Mr. Madison! *waves*

The whole exhibit's half art, half science. The bodies would be put in different positions, like skateboarding, skiing, figure skating, throwing a javelin, kicking a soccer ball, yoga, and more. For the most part, the skin was removed, perhaps organs were exposed or removed, muscles opened up to reveal the bones and tendons below, etc. The different poses were used to highlight different parts of the body or different views of it.

The picture at the top is like a guy holding his own skin. There was one where all the muscles were removed and it was put right beside the skeleton so it was as if the person walked away from it's skeleton. Pretty creepy. There was a guy that had 6 toes on each foot and 6 fingers on each hand. They called it hexa-something disease.... it was weird to say the least. One display showed this fat guy sliced into like 10 vertical slices and the slices were separated and hanging. Another took all the muscles, bones, organs, etc. apart and strung each separately so it was as if the body exploded and you could literally see the ins and outs of the person. There was a pregnant woman and you could see the fetus inside the womb. Several other fetuses were displayed. Quite sad. Another had embryo/fetus at 5, 6, 7, and I think 8 weeks. Grows quite fast. You could already see little hands, head, and feet.

There was a camel and a baby camel who's stomach was opened up to see inside and skin was removed on most of the body to see it's muscles and how it compares to humans. The camel's head was really creepy. It was cut through the head and neck parallel to it's body and split into 3 slices and it was made as if the camel had 3 heads - one drinking off the floor, one looking forward, and one looking up, except that you could see it's brain, eyes, teeth, etc., but in slices. There was also a colt that was de-skinned.

After a while you sort of forget that they are real bodies. It's really weird after carefully examining a display as if it's a piece of art, then really realizing that it used to be a real life living breathing person. How do they feel being stared at and scrutinized so intently?

There were also all these display boxes highlighting the different organs of the body and diseases that the organs can have. If you smoke, you should see the real life lungs of a smoker compared to a non-smoker. Literally black vs white. Pretty disgusting.

The scariest part was looking at the little pieces in the display, like some bones with the muscles still attached, and thinking that it looked edible. Looked just like any other kind of meat... Really creeped me out.

The exibit's here until Feb. 26th. I highly suggest that if you haven't gone to see it that you go. I also suggest that you buy the tickets online beforehand because there was probably a line of about 40-50 people just to buy tickets!

I couldn't believe how busy it was there. You couldn't just go into Body Worlds either, you had an assigned time b/c they didn't want over crowding. We got there a little before 4 and our time was 7:30... We watched/slept-through the Mystery of the Nile at the Omnimax at 6 after the science centre closed (I was really tired after blogging really late at night, not getting much sleep, shopping, and walking in the science centre, and the chairs were comfortable and really reclining b/c it was the screen was on a dome ceiling). Oh, and I almost got to ride a segway, except that the museum was closing... maybe I'll get to do it at Google b/c I hear that they have a few :p

I've got two girls sleeping in my bed right now

The population in here has doubled and there's tons of crap in my room. Sisters got into town today and went shopping at Vaughn Mills and all I saw when I got back was them disposing of numerous shopping bags.

Big mistake of setting the precedent of letting my sisters sleep on my bed and me taking the futon because I couldn't reverse it this time. So, here I am, kicked out of my own room, on the futon, not that the futon's bad, I slept on it for like a month or two until I got my bed. This goes to show those of you contemplating a visit to Hotel Vince, the futon's even good enough for the CEO.

Don't expect the same treatment when visiting Hotel Vince, unless you're female and I'm also in my bed. And you're naked.

First time snowboarding and I'm still intact!

Tried snowboarding for the first time today! I had a good time. Conditions were much better than last week. Well, anything other than rain on the slopes is an improvement over last week :p

We had some informal lessons by a guy in the ski and snowboard club. I think I caught on quite quickly and managed to carve on both edges within an hour on the bunny slopes. Balance on a board took a little getting used to since I've never really been on a board of any kind before.

I was able to go down the beginner slopes quite well, and then craving a beaver's tail, tried to get to the village. Big mistake. I can't do intermediate runs yet. It was actually frustrating going down it because I was like, I could easily do this if I was on skis! I think I was just too scared. Scared of going too fast and getting out of control. When this happened, I just lost my technique and stopped putting my weight on the front of the board. I'm not sure if it's taking me longer than skiing or not. I don't think I was able to do intermediate runs until the second day of skiing.

The jury's still out on whether I like skiing or snowboarding better. I'll give it a couple more tries. Going down the beginner slope pretty fast and reasonably in control is a lot of fun. One thing's for certain, snowboarding boots are a lot more comfortable and look nicer.

Oh, and I had no idea that it was Mimi's birthday today (the person, not the cat). Happy birthday Mimi! Not that you read my blog...

Why won't you work???

Damn you blogger! Why you gotta be like that? I'm trying to post here...

(shut-up princess, I don't need my own server)

Visit me so that my room gets cleaned

Finally unpacked from Seattle. Only took me 2 months :p.

Nothing motivates me to clean more than guests coming to stay. My sisters are arriving tomorrow, so that means I washed my sheets, the futon cover, and towels, put away all my clothes, cleared off my floor, wiped down the bathroom counter, swept, vacuumed, took out the garbage, and general cleaning and tidying.

Didn't have time for mopping this time. Also didn't get around to cleaning my desk, but that's ok, they don't need my desk. And let's not forget the mighty mail pile, which is unfortunately still at full strength.

Not too bad for a quick last minute clean-up (i.e. between the hours of 1 and 3 am). All that floor you see in the pictures was covered like a week ago.