Happy Birthday Jane!

Happy Birthday Jane! Yes, it's still your birthday ;)

Dumbest thing ever

Went to the lab room to print something. I left and realized I left my wallet, with my door swipe card, inside the room, but the door shut on me a fraction of a second too soon. I would've gotten one of the people in my group to open the door for me except that I left the group lunch early so that I could go home and pack (I'm leaving for the airport in less than half an hour), which means that there was no one around to open the door for me....

Luckily, I'm not completely dumb. I went to the secretary and fortunately she had card access to the room, so I borrowed her key and got my wallet. Could've been serious trouble though...

Leaving for San Francisco for the big volleyball tournament!!! Then, gf arrives 1 week later (post about that to come :p)

Strange qualifiers

I've had some encounters with strange qualifiers recently.

Use the "A" key.

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Apparently I'm famous

Overheard at a paper review meeting for a conference:

Oh, Vincent Cheung is a famous vision researcher.

My prof was an area chair for one of the big computer vision conferences and him along with a bunch of other profs and researchers were off at some place discussing which papers to accept for the conference. Each paper gets peer reviewed by three people from the research community and then the area chairs use these reviews to guide them in their decisions. Apparently they sometimes look at the names of the reviewers to see how credible the reviews are and one time they were checking the names of the reviewers and somebody said the above quote. My prof found it amusing and just kept his mouth shut :)

I was also gonna post about the conference I went to a little while ago, but it's been a long time and I'm too lazy. It was kinda cool this time compared to 2005, because people were familiar with my work :)

Chris and Dayna's Wedding

The happy couple tying the knot

The high school shot

The cool kids.... eating Popeye candy sticks :p

My mosquito collection collected in the last few min. of the reception. I had forgotten was it was like to get bitten so bad.

More pictures

I've been procrastinating blogging for quite some time and I'm gonna get back into it now. What always makes me stop blogging is when something big happens and there are a lot of pictures. I feel obliged to put captions on the pics and write about the event, but I get lazy and keep putting it off. More often then not, I then don't even post about it (like trips), but I'm posting at least something this time.

Way back on July 15th, Chris and Dayna got married. It was a very nice ceremony at a beautiful outdoor place at Bird's Hill Park, about 45 min. outside of Winnipeg. My story about Chris is that we went to high school together, but we didn't become friends until we were in undergrad together in computer engineering. He came across to me as arrogant in high school, I was told by this girl, who I may have had a crush on for a while, not to like him, and we did not hang out in the same crowd. But come university, I found out the kind of guy he actually was, and he's a good guy that I have much respect for, and we've been good friends since. My story about Dayna is that on New Year's 2005 (2004?), which I think is when I met her, we were at Rob's, had a little too much to drink and fell asleep on the couch together... right in front of Chris :p. Apparently that's why she doesn't drink with us anymore :p. They're a cute couple and I think they suit each other well.

Something I find interesting is the perspective that people have about me depending on how they know me. I was at Chris and Dayna's house in the morning after the wedding for brunch with a bunch of other people and at some point got to talking to Chris's mom for a bit. Although I hadn't talked to her before, she knew about me through Chris since we were friends and had schooled together for 7 years. She later proceeded to tell other people (relatives I think) when they joined the conversation that I had gone here and here to work and stuff. I found it a bit odd, but amusing at the same time. I guess I just haven't been around parents for a while, especially ones who's knowledge of me is almost purely academic. In Toronto, most people know me outside of academia and I think they have a different view of me.

After blading home after the brunch, I got caught up in some tar on the road and took a bit of a fall. I blame the bad roads in Winnipeg, my old rollerblades, and the fact that I wasn't paying attention. I should've used my concrete volleyball experience and rolled instead of just breaking my fall by sticking my hands out. Over two weeks later and my hand is still scabbed.

Semi-Annual Engineering Dinner Summer 2007 Edition

Vince, Greg, Debbie, Anthony (Debbie's fiance), and Andrew

Vince, Andy, and Florence

Vince, Vanessa, and Erlyn

Alfred, Alice, Becky, and Alvin

As per tradition, a couple of us engineers that went to undergrad together got together for dinner yesterday. This time, the crowd was quite different than usual and I saw several people that I haven't seen since we graduated! I think we had a new record this time with 11 iron rings! We would've had more, but a number of the usuals (Chris, Rob, Kevin, Fan, Nusraat, and Rostecki) couldn't make it for various reasons (out of town, fiance's birthday, baseball, illness).

It all started maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago. Debbie, who I haven't seen since undergrad, found me on facebook (everyone's on facebook now!) and we got to talking and it just so happened that I was gonna be in Winnipeg soon and I told her of the semi-annual engineering dinners that I have been organizing. We combined forces this time and got together a good crowd of 16 in total. We had some issues with the restuarant, Joey's at Polo Park, b/c they didn't take reservations (though they said ahead of time that they could handle us) and the tables were small and not together. People were even cliquier than usual b/c of the small tables. People just sat with people that they see all the time (a natural tendency). The one exception was my table where no one, aside from the couple, had barely even seen or talked with anyone else since undergrad. That's how it's supposed to be, reconnecting with people. It's not much better when we have a big long table b/c you can't talk to very many people. I think next time, I'll host a dinner at my house or something. Maybe do a potluck and get people walking around more. It'll be tougher though b/c it'll be near Christmas and I'll only be able to properly host it on a Saturday...

Today's amusing quotes

...and how old are you now? (as if talking to a 12 year old)

-- New girl at the dentist's office

Is this for a gift registry? (was it that obvious??)

-- Cashier

I have no idea what it is or what to do about it.

-- Periodontist

Can you review 4 conference papers for me by the end of the day?

-- Prof

What happens in Grand Forks, stays in Grand Forks, except what gets posted online :)

Chris, the stag

Rob, the driver and best man

Justin, the onion enthusiast

Vince, the light weight

Golf carts made it much easier to find balls

Cactus Blossom!

10:30pm

Second wind: Chris and the ladies. Too bad one was married and the other was engaged. I somehow got the married one to buy us like a dozen drinks :)

More pictures

We went on a road trip to Grand Forks, North Dakota (USA) for Chris's stag (bachelor party).

Things overheard during the weekend:

• Rob: "Don't you know you're not allowed to take pictures at a stag?"


• Rob: "What happens in Grand Forks, stays in Grand Forks"


• Vince: "This is going on my blog"


• Chris: "Baja Rosa?"


• Chris: "Did you know your Mom and sister were gonna be here?"


• Rob: "No..."


• Vince: "They're the entertainment"


• "Let's put Gatorade-vodka in our Nalgenes and bring them on the golf course"


• "Golf... or something like it. The sequel."


• Chris: "Maybe you are left handed"


• Vince: "Stop driving over my golf ball."


• Vince: "Where's the key?"


• Hotel desk: "This is the group that may have problems tomorrow morning"


• Justin: "This is my 3rd Nalgene"


• Chris: "Mystery shots!"


• Vince: "I've never been so drunk in a restaurant before"


• Justin: "Cactus Blossom!"


• Chris: "Sandy will be very disappointed"


• Rob: "I can't believe you fit in that shopping cart"


• Chris: "Hit me"


• Vince: "I won 5 bucks!"


• Rob: "I won 50 bucks!"


• Chris: "Lost $45"


• Justin: "25"


• Chris: "The guy could've given me 1's and I wouldn't have known"


• Girl: "If I buy your friends shots, will they drink it?"


• Vince: "I somehow got a married woman to buy us like a dozen shots"


• "What's in a Chuck Norris shot?"


• Chris: "She made me do it!"


• Vince: "Are you on facebook?"


• Mr Clean: "I'll show you a picture"


• Rob: "Sleep on your back"


• Vince: "The bathroom door was locked, I don't know how you got in"


• Chris: "I really had to get in"


• Vince: "I was half naked going into the shower"


• Rob: "Transformers is the best movie ever!"


• Chris: "My heart hurts"


• Rob: "Too bad all the women we met were married or engaged"


• Vince: "I've slept with the bride and the groom"


• Justin: "With copious amounts of alcohol, you all turn gay"

Losing my Winnipegness

I'm back in Winnipeg for the next week and a half for Chris's wedding, as well as to visit family, friends, and pets. I discovered that I'm losing my Winnipegness. I asked Jill whether she was getting Internet for her new home from Rogers or Bell. First, she pointed out her allegiance to MTS, which is the telephone company that provides DSL service in Manitoba, not Bell. Not sure how I missed that considering that I worked for them back in 2nd year (well, Bell and MTS have affiliations). Second, Shaw provides cable service in Manitoba, not Rogers. I would've fared better if I had said Videon :p. Jill said that I was "sooo eastern now". I've been in Toronto too long...

Things in Winnipeg are the same as always. Mittens hasn't fully warmed up to me yet. It usually takes a day for her to re-accustom herself with me, and then she is glued to my bed.

Going to Grand Forks tomorrow for the stag. My schedule's pretty free otherwise, especially during the day since I'm a bum and other people have "work". Let me know when you're free and we'll meet up.

Transformers the Movie

Of course, I had to wear my Transformers t-shirt to watch the movie :). I had to resist the temptation to wear my Transformers wristbands.

I watched Transformers today! When I first heard that it was going to be a live action movie, I was a bit hesitant, but I knew that I would watch it (and love it) regardless. It was awesome! It was actually quite well done. It wasn't just a crappy movie using the characters to boost the movie, the writing was actually rather clever and funny and the acting was actually good! They even managed to stay away from cheesy lines, like "more than meets the eye", well, of course they used the line, but it was a slight variation of it and it was as a joke. They had all the lines they needed to have ("Autobots, roll out!", "Decepticons, attack!", etc.), but didn't overuse them and didn't use them in a cheesy manner. The special effects was pretty awesome and the transformations were amazing! I missed the transformation sound from the cartoon though. I also missed the Transformers song. The voices of the Transformers didn't sit very well with me. While Optimus Prime had the same person do the voice as in the cartoons, I'm not sure if it's the 20 years of aging or the fact that they made the voice more mechanical, but it didn't quite sound right. Same with the others. The worst was Starscream in that he didn't have the same whiny voice as in the cartoon. The Transformers cast was pretty small. I was hoping to see the Dinobots and the Constructicons, and have them combine and transform into the big giant robots :). The amount of product placement was kinda annoying.... *cough* GMC

The story itself was alright. It was a bit of a departure from the cartoons (where the Decepticons went to Earth to mine it for energon). The beginning had a lot of development and background stuff and was a little slow and then the end was a little fast and predictable. It can't compete, storyline wise, with the original Transformers movie from 1986. Spoiler alert!!!!......... (Optimus Prime dies!! Of course, he comes back in a later episode)

The movie's a good watch and if you're a fan, you obviously have to go watch it! The theatre was packed and there was a lengthy line-up outside for the next showing, so the movie is doing well. I wonder if this will initiate a series of other movies based on TV shows of the past. I want to see a Thundercats movie!!!

Whoa, I just looked up the Thundercats Wikipedia page and it says that there's a a CGI-animated Thundercats movie in the making!!!!!

Canada Day 9-Man Tournament Day 2

Playoffs: Warriors vs Phoenix A

Men's finals: Connex "B" vs Phoenix A

Various clips of the Warriorettes

More Pictures

The tournament ended on Sunday, but I have been too lazy to upload the pics and videos and write about it until now. Most of my pics are of the girl's team b/c it's difficult to take pictures while playing :p

The guys didn't play as well the second day. We couldn't get fired up during the first game and had to split sets, when we should've taken both. We finished 8 out of 12, which just qualified us for the championship playoffs (instead of the consolation playoffs). The way that the rankings were done were kinda strange since it only counted the 2nd round robin after the re-pooling and was based first on the number of sets won, and then the point spread. I feel that we could beat teams that were ranked higher than us. For instance, we beat Outtahand the day before and they were ranked 4th. I think they had an easier pool than we did. Anyways, being 8th, that meant we had to play the 1st place team, which was Phoenix A and we didn't fare too well. They're a good, seasoned team. It was single elimination, which meant that we were out.

The finals was Connex "B" vs Phoenix A. I say "B" b/c it was really a mix between their A and B team. Note the numbers of the Connex players in the picture at the top: 4, 4, 8, 2, 2. There are duplicates b/c there are players from both the A and B teams playing. The backcourt had A players as well. Connex won. Yes, the same team that we almost took a game off. Not bad for a new team :)

For the guys, we felt that we did pretty good overall in the tournament. It was a good learning experience for the team, we managed to beat some seasoned teams, and made it into the playoffs, not bad for a new team. There are things we need to work on and playing real games helped show us what we need to focus on and watching 9-man games shows us what we should be doing. I'm confident that with our hard work and consistent practices, we'll be in good shape for the big tournament in San Francisco! Here's my list of things that I personally want to concentrate on:

1. Pass more with my hands. I'm doing more than I used to, but could be doing more.


2. Serve more accurately, more difficult, more consistent, and adjust better to wind conditions.


3. Stay fired up backcourt and really dive for the ball (yes, diving on concrete). Need to learn how to roll better as well.


4. Learn to read the hitters through the 3 sets of hands blocking my view. I noticed that the players on other teams were better readers than I am and were in the right position at the right time.

The girls did really well in the tournament! They went into the playoffs in first place! They basically rolled over anyone in their path after their first game of the tournament. Unfortunately, they lost to Connex B in the semi's, a team that they had beaten in the round robin earlier that day. The finals was Connex B vs Phoenix A, coincidentally, the same as on the men's side :), except that Phoenix won.

The club is off to a good start and things are only going to go up from here!

Canada Day 9-Man Tournament Day 1

Toronto Warriors temporary tattoo using a permanent marker

Transformers elbow pads! (well, wristbands...)

Our camp site

Warriorettes playing on concrete (no pics of the men's b/c I'm playing :p)

Today was my first 9-man volleyball tournament! It was the annual Canada Day tournament. It was a blast! Good volleyball and good times. My hands are a bit scraped up from diving on concrete, but no serious injuries.

For a team of guys that just formed a team this year where 9 out of the 14 guys have never played 9-man before, we did pretty good. We went in as a bit of a wildcard in that we didn't know how well we'd play and if we'd get our act together, but we exceeded our expectations and shown that we can play with some good teams. We almost beat Connex (which was mostly their B team, but with some A players), which is one of the top teams in North America. In the second set, we were up 19-16 and then finished the game 27-25 (games to 21, win by 2 points) and we had a couple game point chances. We also split with Outtahand and Phoenix B, which are both seasoned teams, and beat Ngun Lam II in straight sets. We have definitely been practicing much longer than any other team this year (since Februrary), which we had to do for the men's team so that we could learn how to play 9-man :p. It definitely paid off today and we'll only get better as we get over the jitters, work out the kinks, and learn how to really play 9-man, and not play like a 6's player :)

The girl's team did really well as well. They took a set off of Phoenix A in their first game and then went undefeated for the rest of the day! The club as a whole was really doing well and was making a splash for the club's inaugural year!

The coach has a tattoo of the Warriors logo on his left shoulder, so to toy with him, I drew the logo on my left shoulder with a permanent marker to act as a temporary tattoo :). I printed out the logo on a transparency and using an exacto knife, I made a cut-out that I could then tape to my shoulder and colour in with my right hand :). It ended up looking pretty cool actually, but left a tan :p. There were some other bad tans too, like from taping up hands and fingers:

Helen and Donny's tape tans

Tattoo tan

I was also wearing my Transformer elbow pads, which are actually wristbands, but my arms are small enough and they are stretchy enough for me to use as elbow pads. They definitely helped prevent some scratches on my elbows during some dives and rolls. One guy even came up to ask me where I got them (online) :)

Anyways, tomorrow's the second, and last, day of the tournament, so I gotta rest up!

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.

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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