The return of the number 3!

Shaftesbury High School Uniform

Toronto Warriors Uniform

After a nearly 8 year hiatus, the number 3 jersey is coming out of retirement!

I have my first 9-man volleyball tournament this weekend! It's the Canada Day tournament held annually in Toronto. All the Toronto teams participate and sometimes teams from Montreal. We're playing Saturday and Sunday in the parking lot of Rick Hansen Secondary School out in Mississauga. There'll literally be hundreds of Asian guys and girls playing volleyball on concrete. It'll be good times :). Come out and watch if you're in the area!

Why don't they make them like that back home?

You know, you see stuff here and you think to yourself, why don't they make them like that back home?

Use the friend key. You'll likely get it if you ask.

Show encrypted text

Minneapolis after an 18 hour drive

So I'm in Minneapolis for a conference. Whoopeeeee.... (that's sarcastic if you didn't notice).

We left at 5:45am EST and got to Minneapolis at 11:45pm EST (10:45pm local time). 7 guys in a 7 seater van. Fun times. We were stopping every 2ish hours to take a break, change drivers, and rotate seating, as the back seat fit 3 across and was not well suited for 3 adults. Being the last one in the van, I got sandwiched between two not-so-small guys in the backseat right at the start. That wasn't very pleasant. We had to overlap shoulders in order to fit. Oh, and I didn't know any of them beforehand, though a few look familiar from various talks and stuff.

We would have arrived sooner, but we got held up at the US border for an hour b/c of the Mexican in our party. Plus we hit some bad traffic and construction around Chicago.

The drive wasn't too bad though. I basically slept the entire time :). My knees are kinda shot though from being cramped in a small space for so long.

I didn't sleep the night before, so that probably helped my sleeping, but I tend to sleep quite well in moving vehicles anyways. I can't believe that even not sleeping, I just barely had enough time to pack and get ready. I may have been doing laundry from 1 - 3am and I may have been in my office at 4am printing out copies of my paper :p

We're staying in a hostel. The place is actually pretty nice. We've got a large room with 7 beds and I'm the only one up right now (just finished showering, so I'm waiting for my hair to dry and am continuing with my Internet addiction). The snoring level is reasonable...

Anyways, gotta get up early tomorrow for the conference.

Mishmash of stuff

This always happens. I go on vacation and then want to blog about it, but am too lazy to do so, and I don't want to blog about new stuff when I haven't blogged about the vacation, so then I just don't blog, until I have the need to blog and then I blog and then the vacation post just gets less and less probable of ever getting written. I'll try and write it. Maybe on the way to Minneapolis...

Anyways, here's what's happened in the last little while:

• Volleyball
  • Started practicing outdoors on concrete. Let the scraping begin!
  
  
  • Played my first ever 9-man game! It was fun! Not as much of a difference as I thought it was gonna be. It was still volleyball. Plus, we've been practicing a lot, so I was prepared.
  
  
  • Saw Gizelle leaving Scarborough Town Centre in her car while I was in the parking lot and we stared at each other, half recognizing each other, but not 100% sure it was the other, especially since we were way out of our usual environment.
  
  
  • Saw the Columbians (or some sort of Spanish speaking people) play on the 10' high volleyball net with a soccer ball again. I need to bring my camera to practice to snag a picture for you guys.
  
  
  • Finished my second week in a row of 20+ hours of volleyball. That's without playing beach... I've been going to the girls' practice to help out and get some extra practice.
  
  
  • Learnt how to fist serve and serve with a lot of top spin. Working on fixing my arm swing when hitting and snapping my wrist. Chris was very observant.


• School
  • Bio is not inspirational
  
  
  • Finished my poster! My first poster for a conference. I would have rather had a talk. You can't do posters too last minute b/c you have to get it printed and crap. It's an ok poster. Not a great one. At least it was pretty easy b/c I just needed to pull stuff from the paper.
    
    
  
  
  • Patent pending. All I had to do was sign some documents and now I have a patent pending. Neb filed it for us for the work above. We had to get it filed before the conference otherwise prior art would have been an issue.


• Procrastination
  • Procrastinated by coding. Hacking facebook to be exact. Details to appear later.
  
  
  • Tribal Wars. Justin and I are addicted. I need more wood!!!
  
  
  • Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert
  
  
  • Usual dicking around online
  
  
  • I get the National Post now. I'm not a big fan. I'd rather have the Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, or Winnipeg Free Press. But, it was free b/c of my Citibank credit card for 90 days.


• Outings
  • Serena Ryder in concert. Jeremy Fisher opened. The guy in front of me was really annoying b/c he was tall and he kept moving his head. It was obvious that he wasn't really paying attention and was there just b/c his boyfriend dragged him.
    
    
  
  
  • Clubbing last Friday
  
  
  • North by Northeast and FCUK fashion show with Tina, Donna, and Newton.
    
    
  
  
  • I was on the subway and someone was reading a Russian newspaper. I was able to read some of it over his shoulder :)
  
  
  • Lunch with DT fancy pants.
  
  
  • Seeing Chris Bosh at Holt Renfrew in Yorkville
  
  
  • Dinner with Cris and Teresa b/c I didn't want to break the streak of seeing Warriors everyday for the past week. Random event of the night: being served by Marieke at the restaurant.


• New music albums
  • Kelly Clarkson - My December
  
  
  • Missy Higgins - On A Clear Night
  
  
  • Mandy Moore - Wild Hope
  
  
  • Maria Mena - Apparently Unaffected
  
  
  • LeAnn Rimes - Whatever We Wanna
  
  
  • t.A.T.u. - Dangerous and Moving

Most random encounter ever!

Overheard at the club tonight:

Random girl: Do you have a blog at veenix.blogspot.com?

Russianified

I'm back in Toronto! By some miracle, I managed to catch all my flights and even my baggage made it with me! I can't say the same for my family, who is still stuck in Munich. Still not sure what went wrong or who to blame, but we can be sure it was the Germans...

The trip was very tiring, but I saw a lot and I learnt a lot.

My abstinence from my addictions didn't last long. My plane landed at 3pm and I was back in my apartment and online at 4:30 and on the volleyball court by 6 :)

--Винсент (Vincent in Russian)

Offline until the end of the month

I'm taking off in a few hours for my trip and will be offline until the end of the month. I'm not bringing my laptop and hope to not touch the Internet. It's gonna be great :). It's also going to be the longest that I haven't played volleyball since probably 2 years ago. It might be good though. It'll give me time to refocus, re-energize, and spark that craving for volleyball again :)

In the meantime, expect this space to be stagnant for the next 3 weeks and entertain yourselves.

I'm ready to invade Russia

I just got my passport back from the Belarus Consulate and now with my Russian and Belarusian visas, I can go on my trip and come back with one of those Russian brides :p. I'm also mentally prepared for my trip after playing at Antibes yesterday when the gym we had booked was cancelled without our knowledge. It's garbage ball at Antibes, but the low net and the Russians make things interesting. I felt right at home with the Russians, as I recognized most of the people there and they remembered me :).

My Northern Europe and Russia trip is a bus tour with my family and we're going May 11th - 29th. Here's the itinerary:

1. Denmark


2. Sweden


3. Finland


4. Russia


5. Belarus


6. Poland


7. Germany

We're doing Northern and Eastern Europe this time after doing England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and Spain back in 2003:

The guy on the right was not part of our bus tour.
He was trying to sell us souvenirs :p

I had planned on being in Toronto this summer instead of doing an internship, but I'm still going to be out of town quite a bit. Here are my summer travel plans:
Toronto -> Europe -> Toronto -> Minneapolis -> Toronto -> Winnipeg -> Toronto -> San Francisco -> Toronto

I'm the 'V' in OVR!

OVR: Oliver, Vince, and Reggie. The birthday boys!!!

Me with my "Out of Towners": Chris, Vince, Jon, and Jill

Me and the Ladies!
I'm always on the left b/c I can only take good self-photos right handed :p

Me and the Boys (I was being omnisexual)

More pictures

If you had told me back in high school that Jill and Chris would fly to Toronto for my birthday and that I was having my birthday bash at a club, I would've told you to stop taking drugs. For those of you who didn't go to high school with us, I wasn't friends with Jill and Chris back then (they weren't cool enough for me ;)). We were ok with each other, but we didn't talk or hang out b/c we just had different social circles. It wasn't until after when I was in undergrad with Chris and Rob did I become friends with them and then by association, Jill and others. Weird how things turned out the way they did, but I'm glad that we all had a second chance with each other. I'm still amazed that they both just came on a whim (they made independent decisions to come) and it was awesome having them here to celebrate with me!

Anyways, Saturday was the big party! It was a club night hosted by my racist volleyball team and a joint fundraiser for the volleyball club and a birthday bash. We had it in a private lounge and we filled it pretty good. Thanks to everyone that came out for my birthday and to support my club!

I had an amazing time! It helped that between the friends that I brought, the people on my team, and friends I knew but came with people on my team, I knew like 40-50 people there! Plus, I could basically get my way into any group as I would know the person that brought them to the club and then I could use my "I'm the 'V' in OVR" line :)

I was a bit concerned going in as I had probably a dozen people tell me that they were gonna get me hammered and wanted to see me puke. People seem to want to see me wasted. This is a trend that has gone on for a while. Probably b/c I usually come across as quiet, shy, and controlled to those I don't really know. It reminds me of the "Just shy, not anti-social (you can talk to me!)" t-shirt from xkcd.

Knowing that my alcohol tolerance is low and wanting to last longer than Vic and Nelson at their birthday party, I started avoiding people that were trying to buy me drinks around drink #9 and also passing drinks along to Chris and others :)

I had reached a sufficient amount of alcohol quite early in the night as you can see from the progression of the redness of my face in the photos. In my defense, it was really hot in there, so that didn't help my redness. I then proceeded to float around to say "hi" to people that I knew and to take a photo with them. My way of saying "hi" when drunk is to grind up against the person from behind and wait for them to turn around :). Girl, guy, I didn't discriminate! I was being omnisexual (reference to a tv show that I'll be blogging about soon). The jury's still out as to whether I grinded with more girls or guys :p. Oh, and I managed to cause one fight to break out :p

Can't wait for the next clubbing night!

Birthday / Weekend / Winnipeggers' Visit / GReunion 3.1 Recap

Just wanted to recap the past few days.

Thursday

• "Bong'ed" it up for "DV"
  


• Jill flew into Toronto from Winnipeg

Friday

• Lunch at Korean town with Jill. Mmmmm... red bean walnut cakes and red bean shaved ice!
  
  


• All-you-can-eat sushi with CCF'ers. The waiters were amused by the loud Happy Birthday singing. I got the full 26+ birthday beats outside.
  


• Phantom of the Opera movie at Innis where we had to change rooms half-way in after getting kicked out of the TV room

Saturday

• 4 hours of pick-up volleyball with my racist volleyball club


• Chris flew into Toronto from Winnipeg


• Cake! (it couldn't handle the necessary # of candles)
  


• GReunion 3.1: Jonny joins the Winnipeggers for dinner at Marche (aka Richtree Market)
  


• OVR Pass. The reason Jill and Chris were in Toronto and it needed its own post ;)
  


• Grub at Gold Stone at 3am
  


• Chris and Jill slept together... ok, well, they shared my futon :p

Sunday

• Stumbled out of bed around 11 and was not in a great condition after 4 hours of volleyball and 4 hours of clubbing the day before


• Brunch at Over Easy with the 'Peggers


• Wild goose chase for a bike store and a windbreaker for Dayna


• Centre Island
  • Not much open, but the view was nice and it was a nice escape from the city
  
  
  • It's a bit ironic being there with the Winnipeggers. People in Toronto view Centre Island as a bit of a getaway and a taste of rustic/country/small town living. But from a Winnipegger's view, it's just a fake version of cottage country around Winnipeg :p
  
  


• Finally sat together in the subway
  


• Cinn-a-ma-bun


• Drinks and food on the patio of Jack Astor


• Chris left for the airport and apparently didn't have a good trip back (see Chris's comment)

Monday

• The Hour
  • Jill got us (free) tickets to go watch The Hour, well, actually to go watch the host, George Stroumboulopoulos (of Much Music fame)
  
  
  • Took me 10 min. to blade down there from my apartment
  
  
  • I had never seen the show before, but figured it'd be interesting and I'd keep her company. It's a news/interview show.
  
  
  • Guests were Ishmael Beah (pre-taped) and Peter Krause (live). We also got to see the interview with Ian McEwan, which will be aired sometime in the future.
  
  
  • I was surprised that George took the time to talk to the audience during commercial breaks and after the show. He stayed for at least an hour afterwards to talk to us and to get photos with people. I chatted with him for bit and he's a pretty cool guy. Really down to Earth. Apparently, any time he mentions Wikipedia from now on, he'll think about me :)
  
  
  • There were a good half dozen or so Winnipeggers in the audience
  
  
  • I saw someone else with my ipod sock camera case!
  
  

  Me and George

Jill's covered this story as well

My pictures
Jill's pictures

Happy 3rd Blogoversary!

3 years ago, this blog was born! (Can't say that my first post was all that exciting or original...)

Here are other exciting things that have happened on April 25th:

• 2007 - Boris Yeltsin's funeral


• 2004 - Alan Kay, co-inventor of the Smalltalk programming language, receives the 2003 ACM Turing award


• 1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the space shuttle Discovery.


• 1983 - Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit.


• 1972 - Paula the cat, a ten month old tabby, survives a fall from the 26th floor of an apartment building in Toronto.


• 1964 - Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings 4 games to 3 for their third consecutive Stanley Cup. This is their second last time winning the Stanley Cup.


• 1961 - Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit.


• 1953 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.


• 1950 - BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and PEI sign an agreement with Ottawa to build the Trans-Canada Highway.


• 1945 - Nazi occupation army leaves Milan after a partisan insurrection. This day is taken as symbol of the liberation of Italy and is an annual public holiday in Italy.


• 1945 - Fifty nations gather in San Francisco, California to begin the United Nations Conference on International Organizations.


• 1719 - Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is published.


• 1507 - America got its name from German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller, who first used the term on a world map to refer to the huge mass of land in the Western Hemisphere, in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.

Also born on this day:

• 1981 - Chris Graham (Winnipeg triathaloner and OVR Pass attendee)


• 1976 - Tim Duncan (NBA player)


• 1969 - Gina Torres (actress - Alias, Firefly, Angel)


• 1969 - Renée Zellweger (actress)


• 1940 - Al Pacino (actor)


• 1917 - Ella Fitzgerald (singer)


• 1900 - Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (Nobel Prize laureate)


• 1284 - King Edward II of England


• 1214 - King Louis IX of France


• 32 - Marcus Salvius Otho (Roman Emperor)

Sources:

• Wikipedia - April 25


• Wikipedia - April 25, 2004


• New York Times


• Sympatico

Annoying light pollution

The ROM and U of T Varsity Centre are sources of light pollution

Taken later that day showing the stadium lights

Two recent developments here in Toronto have led to some annoying light pollution problems.

U of T Varsity Centre
U of T recently revamped it's stadium, which includes the dome I went to a few months ago. They deflated the dome in the last few days and I guess they were testing out the stadium lights because during the sudden rain storm yesterday, they had the lights on full blown and it was really annoying. It was really dark outside because of the clouds, but the stadium lights were blazing and was annoying me b/c I could see it in my peripheral vision through my window while on my computer and it was the brightest light I could see. Let's hope this doesn't become a habit for them, otherwise I'll have to write an angry letter. There wasn't even a game going on; the field was empty.

The ROM
The ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) is getting a makeover/expansion right now. The new design consists of a very reflective aluminium sides at angles that are not perpendicular to the ground. As a result, between 2:07pm and 2:12pm today, one side of the building reflects sunlight directly into my eyes while I'm on my computer in my room. It's like a little kid is using their watch to reflect the sun into my eyes, wait that doesn't happen because I do that to little kids :p. Hopefully the position of the sun changes enough that this won't continue to be a problem. I guess I could close my curtains, but I like the view and the natural light.

Love hitting the beach in April!!!

It went up to 25 today and it was clear and sunny. I obviously hit the beach to play volleyball :). It was a week later than last year. I wanted to smash that record by going in mid-March and I almost went. It was 16 one day and it was gorgeous; I just didn't have a net and I had some work to do. Anyways, today was amazing out. Great conditions. Something like 25ish people showed up in our group and we had 4 nets set-up just for ourselves at Ashbridge's. Most of the 90-something courts were set up and there were quite a number of people playing. I played a game of 3's at the beginning and then played 2's the rest of the time.

I actually didn't feel like an uncoordinated retard on the sand for once! My timing was actually decent. Usually, I'm a bumbling fool on the sand b/c I can't jump as high, I can't time the sets properly, I don't do the proper approach, I underrun the ball like crazy, and I get thrown off by the wind. Beach frustrates me generally b/c I can't do things I can do indoor. But, it was fun today and I actually played decent. I played from 12pm - 7pm :D. That's a total of 17.5 hours of volleyball in the past week :D. 10.5 hours of indoor and then 7 hours of beach :D.

I think I'm burnt

It's mid-April and I think I burnt my face already :s. It's minor, but it's irritating. I think it's from me rollerblading around so much since it's been really nice outside. And I mean more rollerblading than just to my office. Like, going to St. Lawrence for pick-up volleyball and to the Russian Consulate. It hasn't been super warm (like up to 15ish yesterday), but it's been nice, clear, and sunny. I remember last year I got burnt around this time, but it was b/c I had hit the beach for volleyball and figured that I would be ok without sunscreen since it was April. I was wrong. When I go this weekend, I'll be sure to lather on the sexy white stuff.

I feel at home with the Russians

Thursday is my Russian day :). I had to go to the Russian Consulate today to pick up my and my family's Russian visas and passports. It was like going home! I walked into the room and I recognized half of the 6 people there! It was so comforting! It was as if we were one giant family :)

Us Russians, we're a tight community :)

How the Russian visas work is that they give you a date when you can go and pick them up (2 weeks later) and then you pick it up between 4 and 5. So, a bunch of people that were waiting with me for an hour 2 weeks ago were there waiting to pick up their passports and visas. We also all knew the system of lining up where we'd sit down and know the person who was before and after you, despite our random seating. We do this because the Russians don't believe in giving out numbers to people waiting in line. It forces you to talk to the other people so you can figure out what's going on :p

It was a lot faster to pick it up, but when I went up the guy called someone and was gibbering off in Russian for a while on the phone and he was like "Niet!" and shaking his head, so I was concerned. Everything was fine though and I got the visas, so I bet he was just calling a friend to talk about a hockey game or something.

So apparently, my Russian name is Vinsent 3arl9z V3eung. At least that's what the code on my visa says :)

Those lights weren't there earlier this week

I was at that intersection on Monday and those traffic lights were definitely not there! There are now traffic lights at Bloor & Sussex Mews (who knew that that side street was called that??), which is actually nice because now I can cross Bloor to get from Dominion (grocery store) to Shopper's Drug Mart (drug store) without doing the whole Frogger thing.

Things on Bloor between Bathurst and Spadina change like crazy. Every time I go down that stretch (every month or so maybe), there are literally, new stores and restaurants. The turn over rate is pretty crazy.

I have this song stuck in my head

I heard it on the radio this morning and I also heard it when I was down in California.

Use the "secret" key (same as before). You might get the key if you ask.

Show encrypted text

Can't wear the same thing twice

Elsa and Me. Role reversal in that I had to get her to come to a CCF event instead of the other way around and I had to tell her peoples' names.

(Sung to song) Wilson, he can move the mountains, we're gonna miss him so much, but not really because, he'll still be, here at UT with us, cause Wilson is here to stay, always with us he'll stay.

Gizelle the Vice-Chair

"Chairman Lau" singing and closing off the night and the year

The problem with me posting pics online and blogging is that even when I go to events with a completely different group of people, I can't wear the same thing, otherwise it'll look like I didn't change, especially if the posts or photo albums are consecutive :p. Plus, even if they are not consecutive, there is a lasting record of my clothing, so you can see how often I wear things. I'm pretty sure that the fashion industry is behind the Internet and online photos. It's all a ploy to make all clothing (and not just prom and wedding dresses) one use only.

I pretty much never wear a tie. I only learnt how to tie a tie nicely Christmas 2005 while on a Mexican cruise waiting for one of the shows to start and one of my cousins from Australia taught me. Prior to that, I would have someone tie the tie for me and I would never untie it, otherwise, I would tie it badly. I didn't know how because I didn't go to private school and never needed it for work. It's a rare occurrence where I have an event where a tie is appropriate, yet I had two consecutive nights of ties! The night before was S Dance and then it was the UTCCF Grad Dinner to say goodbye to the graduating students and to close off the year.

The dinner was held at the 89 Chestnut residence, which I hadn't been back to since I lived there in my first year in Toronto. It was a bit odd being back. I didn't get a chance to look around much and the ballroom wasn't familiar b/c they are not generally open to the residents as they are reserved for special functions.

The food was pretty good, aside from the saltiness of the chicken. The speeches for the grads and the grad video were pretty funny.

So this year's graduating class are the people that started university when I first came to Toronto, so it's a bit of a weird feeling. Gizelle, the Vice-Chair, is graduating and we were on the same floor in that residence, so that was kinda funny. If you ask me how much longer I have, I'll point you to this link. I hope to finish before the current crop of frosh :p

S Dance 2007

Front

Back: MVP. I'm better than you, and now you know it

Glass I swiped from dinner. Not sure if we were supposed to take them, but it's not like they can do anything with them afterwards. They were way nicer and more practical than last year's mug-shaped oversized shot glasses.

S Dance is the annual engineering athletic awards ceremony, dinner, and dance. But because it's an engineering party, that really just means a lot of drinking. It's an undergrad party, but I feel that I am making up for my previous lack of participation in engineering related activities :). I went to get my wrist band and the chick at the desk looked over my ID: "81??? YOU'RE 81????". There were also shout-outs to the various graduating years. 0T7 is the graduating year, but there were plenty of 0T8's, 0T9's, and 1T0's. There were some boos for the 0T6's and the 0T5's were considered out of place (PEY + grad school). I kept my mouth shut about my 0T3 status :)

I got an MVP shirt for coed volleyball intramurals again! The shirts are way better than last year's because of the return of the slogan, "I'm better than you, and now you know it." Incidentally, Nastassja coined the term in response to the MIP's "I suck, now I suck less." shirts. I still don't have a stein... I'm determined to get one next year!!

The party was fun. I still have "S Club 7" music stuck in my head. The DJ was pretty crappy, playing a lot of country, 60's music, YMCA, and an inordinately high number of slow songs (to which Rob was my only outlet). Everyone was hammered, so the dance floor was still packed.

Me and Nastassja on the school bus to Scarborough. She was pretty hammered having pre-drunk with Ron at her place. I wasn't originally sitting there, but Ron had better things to do.

Ron trying to pick up a Romanian girl. Dejected and really drunk, he threw up after getting off the bus. He eventually got inside the place, but left early. I don't think he'll ever live down the fact that Nastassja drunk him under the table.

Me, Rob, and Steph

The celebrity (Robyn) and Me. Robyn won everything. Actually, 6 out of the 9 "athlete of the year" awards for the various years and sexes, went to people on the coed volleyball teams! Rob, Steph, Siobhan, Jess, Afjal, and Robyn. Woo-hoo! Go team!!!

More pictures

500th Blog Post

It's been over 6 months since my last milestone of 400 posts, so I'm definitely slowing down my blogging, since it only took 4 months between 300 and 400.

For such a significant milestone on my blog, I should probably do some reflection and say something interesting and profound or do some post of grand gesture or have a flashback post, like they do on tv shows. I knew it was coming, but I haven't given it much thought, mostly because I have been busy (DTD) and am too lazy to do anything all that time consuming for such an arbitrary milestone.

So while my blog has mostly served my own selfish purposes, I would like to dedicate this blog post to you, my readers. You have been there to encourage (force) me to write and reflect on things, even if I don't necessarily put them in words on my blog. By continuing to write, I am recording my journey though life and my blog helps me to remember past memories, which is very valuable to me and I thank you for helping me do this. Through writing, I am also connecting with my readers, whether they be geographically close, geographically far, old friends, new friends, enemies, people that think they're my friends (but aren't), complete strangers, openly reading blog readers, closet blog readers, or stalkers.

I hope to have a 1000th blog post and hope that you'll be entertained enough to still be reading!