Secrets...

You can try and message me for the key.

Decrypt text using the "E" key

Reminder: Sarah owes me

Sarah, I taught you Google Reader and because of it, you won a $500 gift basket. You owe me.

Won a shirt!

GO WEST

Never look back!!! www.wtssc.com

I subbed in for a 4's beach volleyball team today. Played with Ron, Rob (the Toronto engineering version), and Ashley. They were short players as the regulars couldn't make it and Ivana is in the UK now.

When I was asked to play, I was told that it was "playoffs", which I assumed meant that we were like gonna play quarter or semi finals or something, but no, it was the entire playoffs. Quarter, semi, and finals! First game we won by default b/c the other team didn't show (it was cold and windy). Semi's we won pretty easily, ditto with the finals. I was pretty disappointed in the competition though, it wasn't much of a challenge. It was best of 3 to 15, but I don't think any team got more than 10 points in a game.

The beach was pretty bad. Like the worst conditions I've ever played. The beach was really narrow. The water was so close that balls would roll into the lake. The sand was rough and had lots of rocks. And I don't mean pebbles, I mean like rocks bigger than toonies. It was also cold and really windy. Plus, we were playing the finals pretty late and it was dark out, fortunately, the lights from the boardwalk were sufficient to light up the court but were kinda blinding. It made for an interesting game (where's the ball??? where's the ball???).

I love that I won a shirt while only coming for the playoffs and didn't have to pay the league fees :). Whatever, I was there when it really counted :)

We went to the nearby restaurant (right beside the boardwalk), for food and beer after the game. Called Ivana to tell her the news. Ashley only had a minute on her calling card, which wasn't quite long enough for her to cry, though it was close.

Got that deja vu feeling

For the report on this weekend, just look at last weekend, but replace "Eaton Centre" with "Yorkdale" and "9 hours" with "5 hours".

Quite windy on the beach today. I felt like a retard b/c I kept missing the ball. I'd like go to where the ball *should* go, but I'd be like 3 feet off :s. It was quite frustrating and I played like crap most of the day. Depressing really.

Made my world famous (everyone that has had it has loved it... all 1 of them) chicken noodle soup today. I tried to make my own noodles this time like I said I was going to, but I failed miserably. They were indeed noodle shaped, but tasted like shit. Just tasted like flour. I'm quite sure the problem was that I made them too thick. Next time I'll roll out the dough much thinner. Ya, so I just tried to cook them longer, which made it just bad. The outside was overcooked, while the inside was still undercooked. I conceded defeat and used fuseli instead.

Clear sign that school has started

You go to the grocery store and you find that key things are sold out or in very low quantities:

• 2L bottles of pop of all varieties


• Cereal


• Pasta and pasta sauce


• Taco stuff


• Anything remotely on sale


• Canned soup


• Laundry detergent

Also, there are people in the grocery store at midnight on a Saturday.

Always goodbye and never hello

Goodbye Google interns.

So long Winnipeg friends.

Have fun in South Korea Mimi.

Good luck with Master's in UK Ivana (her going away party was at the Madison tonight).

I'll visit you in Seattle Sarah (leaving in a few weeks).


*tear*

Ok, I can blog again

Now that I have pretty much finished with the redesign of my blog, fixed a bunch of bugs (archive, navigation, spying/stalking aids, line height of post paragraphs, trackers, and feeds), browser/platform compatibility issues (Windows IE and Firefox, OS X Firefox and Safari), and added features (navigation between newer and older posts, labels to past posts, and random pictures), I can now return to blogging.

Still need to re-examine the colour scheme of my blog, change the bullets, and do some minor formatting, but pretty much the layout is set and done.

There's still an issue with the comment feed and I believe that because of my submission of the bug to Blogger and posting on the Google Group, it is now a known bug:

Comment feeds are only showing the earliest 25 comments, and pagination (the start-index parameter) does not work.

Once that gets resolved, the new and improved comment feed will go live and the recent comments on the sidebar will work again.

Starting fresh

Before

After

In several respects, I'm starting fresh back here in Toronto. My blog now reflects this with a brand spanking new redesign, which has been a long time coming.

The layout and background images are generally what I'm going to stick with, but there will be some minor cosmetic changes in the next little while. I only realized when redesigning my blog that it looked like crap on IE, but you should be using Firefox anyways :p.

Some of the fancy things I added (hacked) to my blog are no longer working b/c of the update to Blogger, such as the peek-a-boo comments, recent comments, and the comment feed is messed up. The random picture feature will make its reappearance in a day or two. New features of interest are the labels and the new archive display, which shows counts for the number of posts per month :p. If I get around to it, I'll go back and label my old posts (all 366+ of them).

I'm open to any comments or suggestions you have about the redesign.

9 hours of beach :s

Hit up good 'ol Ashbridges today and played 9 hours of beach volleyball! INSANE.

Damn Yue told me that we were leaving at 8:30 am. I was like, that's hardcore, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice. I call him this morning just before 8:30 and he was like, no, I said 9:30. He totally did not say 9:30. It was ok though b/c it gave me time to make spaghetti and use the left over sauce for a hearty breakfast.

Got to the beach just after 10 am and left at 8 pm. Yes, that's 10 hours, but I didn't play volleyball the whole time. I had to take breaks :p

I was playing 2's all day, which was particularly tiring as you have to touch the ball at least once per possession and you have to run around more.

Our group had like 5, but our 5th came when one of our original 4 was tired and stopped, plus some of his friends were there playing on adjacent courts. They were a pretty big group and had 4 nets to add to our 1. In total, I counted about 30 courts. Not bad for a pretty cool and cloudy day.

It was actually an amazing day for volleyball. No wind. No (minimal) sun. Not hot. No mosquitoes (until dusk, but even then just a few). Damp sand from Saturday's rain meant no dust, not hot sand, and you could jump higher :). Soft sand.

I was pretty pooped for the last couple hours, but oddly enough, I was actually playing better. I played some coed 2's on like a women's height (it was saggy) and was ripping them :). I think that gave me the confidence to play better when we went back to the men's height. I wasn't actually that tired, but my legs were giving out. They were like semi-cramping. I think I needed more electrolytes.

It's funny when I meet people and they find out that I'm not from Toronto, because the next instinct is to guess that I'm from Vancouver (I was talking to other Chinese people). It was cool, I met a fellow prairie Chinese, this girl from Edmonton.

I'm so done right now. The rest of my evening will be sitting in front of my computer and then rolling into my bed. Ultimate practice is gonna be interesting tomorrow. Hopefully I can walk...

My day as a girl, or at least, a gay man

My day started off with the motivation of going shopping. And by shopping, I mean clothes shopping. For those of you who are even remotely familiar with my shopping habits, your jaws probably just hit the floor.

I have never, and by never, I really mean never, have voluntarily gone clothes shopping, and heaven forbid, by myself. How, you may ask, do I have so many clothes then (for those who have ever seen my closet, I have a lot of clothes). Well, reader, this is how it works. My sisters and my mom drag me to go shopping. I follow them through the shopping mall standing for hours in womens' clothing stores and occasionally sneaking off to Electronic Boutique, book stores, etc. When we are however, in a store with both a men's and women's section, I follow them around and when one of them are done, follow them around the men's section as they pile clothes on my arms for me to try on. Recently, I've been told to wander in the men's section while they go through the women's, but I'm just kinda wandering until I receive some help from my professional shoppers. My function there is just to be a mannequin. The alternative, which occurs periodically is when I just get clothes, particularly when my family goes on vacation without me, eg. HK & China, factory outlet malls when they visit me when I'm on internships, but I'm at work, etc. They know my size and taste, since the consensus vote between them is my defined taste anyways. In short, I don't go clothes shopping.

So, you may ask why I don't shop, even in instances when I'm there anyways. I have a theory, but I've shared enough embarrassing things in this post already. This recently invented theory is like my own universal theory of everything. It explains everything from my own personal social interactions, musical aspirations, language, shyness, pickyness with food, and reluctance to change in some instances, but not others. I think that I have pinned down the root of all of these, but it's something that I'll blog about some other time.

Anyways, back to shopping, or lack thereof. The problem now is that I'm in need of clothing. One of my favourite pairs of jeans has a massive hole (to which you can check if I'm wearing underwear or not) and another has been worn out quite a bit and I just don't really like the rest. And I'm getting bored of my t-shirts. And I need more athletic socks. And more underwear. And a new pair of shoes. And a new fall jacket. Ummm... when it rains, it pours.

So, the plan today was to go to the Eaton Centre. Yes, it's still called the Eaton Centre and not something like City Centre (like how Winnipeg renamed Eaton Place to City Place). It's a big ass mall.

First stop, get my hair cut. Went to L'Attitudes. A step above my recently usual $12 cut at Top Cuts, but less than my adventure at Toni & Guy. It's a good compromise. It's not the first time I got my hair cut at a place like that in a mall. The guy used the typical razor on the sides and back, but instead of using scissors on the stop and then using the hair thinning one, he used the hair thinning scissors the whole time on the top. It was interesting b/c it gave my hair a lot of layers. Girl point #1.

Next off, I went shopping for like 3 hours. Went to like every store. Surprisingly hard to find jeans in my size. Either the waist is too big (I wear 30 with a belt) or the length is too long (over 30 I start tripping). I found a nice pair at American Eagle that fit nicely. I wanted to get a second pair, but didn't find anything. I didn't find anything that fit and I liked in terms of t-shirts, but I found a really nice long sleeve shirt/sweater at Abercrombie & Fitch. Oh well, it's fall season any how. Also no success on the other clothes necessities. I'm considering going to Yorkdale tomorrow for more shopping. Girl point #2.

I stopped by Dominion's on the way home to get groceries (finally). Girl point #3.

Then I cooked dinner. Spaghettini Bolognese. Girl point #4.

Then I cleaned (the dishes and kitchen). Girl point #5.

Then I watched The Notebook. Girl point #6.

By myself. Girl point #7.

And liked it. Girl points #8 - 10.

I'm feeling philosophical

If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original

-- Sir Ken Robinson

There's this conference, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), where people (such as Al Gore) give varying talks covering a wide array of areas. Many are fascinating and present some intriguing ideas. Some of the videos of the TED talks can now be found on Google video.

The quote above is from a talk about the importance of creativity in education. I'm kinda sad that I stopped doing art. I enjoyed it, I was decent at it, and it provided balance to my life. I've considered starting to sketch again, but haven't been able to get myself to do it.

I've also been thinking about something along these lines for a while now. The idea that people have the potential for many things, but never succeed at these because they don't put their full effort into it or stop entirely because of a fear of failure. I see how that applies to myself in several areas, esp. wrt language. I think it's also relevant to one of my previous posts about regret.

Another interesting talk I watched was one by the father of the life-coaching industry. I first heard about life-coaching when a life coach came to give a talk at U of T earlier this year. I thought both talks were fascinating. The story is basically that you need to decide what you're good at, decide what you want, how to satisfy your needs, and then how to do it. Not just professionally, but emotionally, physically, and spiritually. You need emotion. Passion.

My last little bit of recent philosophical trend has been with Aesop's Fables (link to Google book search, where you can now download books out of copyright for free! I printed it out 4 pages to a side, double-sided and it's only like 30-something pages)

Aesop wrote hundreds of fables, many of which you have undoubtedly heard in one form of another, with morals such as:

• Look before you leap


• Slow and steady wins the race


• Don't cry wolf

There are some really good quotes in these fables and are generally good words to live by:

• There are many silly people who despise what is precious only because they cannot understand it


• Skill and patience will succeed where force fails. Necessity is the mother of invention.


• Every truth has two sides; it is well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either


• Persuasion is better than force

I've done a lot of reflection this summer and I hope to continue that personal growth through this year.

You can call me Dr. Cheung

Snippet of an e-mail I got today:

Hello Dr.Cheung
  I am a graduate student of Virginia Tech.

*Blah, blah, blah. I'm asking you about something that isn't your research. I don't know how to read and I'm too incompetent to find the right source. Please help me*

I guess I'm done my PhD now that I'm a doctor. I guess my application for an honorary doctorate went through.

I get off the toilet when my laptop runs out of battery

See title.

Rollerblading + volleyball + 5k run + rollerblading + beers + stairs + washroom = fun

See title.

Happy Birthday Michele!

Happy Birthday Michele!

Hope your last day is a good one and have a good trip to Vegas! Remember, you can't get a marriage license after midnight anymore ;)

Natalie Dee Parody - No Stalking

Continuing my webcomic parodies, this time it's Natalie Dee. It's a pretty random comic. A lot of them are weird, but there are some good ones. Sometimes you have to read the filename of the image to understand it. Here are some highlights to get you started:

• Cake


• Rope climb


• Schoolyard taunts 2010


• Eggs

By the way, without context, you probably don't get my webcomic parodies :p

Haven't been on a Windows computer for 4 months

Back in Toronto. Thanks to Mimi and Nem, I got a hide home from the airport. That's the first time I have ever gotten picked up at the airport here. I usually just take a taxi (~$45). Oh, my luggage was overweight again (stupid inaccurate scale at home) and I had to pay $35. Damn airlines... I wasn't even over by much (54 and 57, with reshuffling I made it 52 and 60, so then I only had to pay for one overweight). The guy didn't think that me just taking a few pounds out of the 57 would have been enough. Apparently 54 was even too much :s

Not sure where "home" is anymore. Winnipeg has that home feeling, but it doesn't feel like home, probably b/c I'm just visiting and it just feels so temporary. Like, I don't have a desk to put my laptop on. I use a drawer thingy and I sit on my bed. Toronto does feel pretty home-ish, but something seems missing... We'll see how it feels once I get settled back in.

Things seem to have gone quite well here when I was gone. I was actually pleasantly surprised by some of the things Tony had done, like try and fix the futon/couch, vacuum, and mop. My bamboo is also doing quite well :)

It does feel nice to be on my desktop again. Fast. Solid Internet connection. Windows. Desk. Chair.

Packing is like having to pick your favourite child

Stupid airlines and their reduction in checked-in luggage weight.

*Shakes fist angrily in the air while mumbling something about a 50 pound limit*

Congratulations Mike and Anna!

Congratulations Mike and Anna! I'm really happy for your engagement! May all your children wear skirts.

Too many birthdays

People apparently get really frisky around the end of November for some reason...

Happy Birthday Alfred!
Happy Birthday Florence!
Happy Birthday Josh!

Alf's, then my Mom's, and then Flo's, and then Josh's. Insane.

For my Mom's, we went out with all the family here (including aunt+uncle+cousins, one set from each side of the family). Marigold was full b/c of a wedding, so we went to "Burger Factory". It's not Burger Factory, but it used to be, and me and my sisters don't remember the name of it, so we call it Burger Factory b/c there's still a Burger Factory sign next to the restaurant painted on a side of a building.

Cake, and then presents and my famous mango dessert when we got home.

Then, I went over to Alice's for Alf's surprise party. Brought a second pan of my mango dessert as it was a semi-potluck (hey, I take the two for one whenever I can :p) and had more cake as well :s.

It had already converted to a video game party by the time I got there (PS2). The drum game was retarded. It's so freakin' loud I don't know how anyone can play that indoors :p. Played Guitar Hero for the first time, and I was actually half decent. I contribute it to my training as a guitarist when I was younger (I suck at guitar, I tried again today for the first time in like 10 years b/c of this video, but can't do it). The first time I heard about Guitar Hero was just a few weeks ago from this xkcd comic. Upon reflection, the comic is much funnier now :)

xkcd Parody - Fan Time!

This is my tribute to xkcd, "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". The comic is hilarious, though you have to be at least part geek to get some of them :). Here are some of my favourites:

• Schrodinger's comic


• Fourier Transform of a cat


• I love you more

Rollerblading home drunk is the best

Me and Jill:  To Adam!

Me, Chris, and Dayna:  Self-powered commuters

Rob and Kelly:  7 more years until the wedding

Jill's pictures
Rob's pictures

Rob held a house warming party at his relatively new condo. It's ridiculous how nice of a place you can get for so cheap in Winnipeg :)

As it was Adam's last day at Google, Jill and I drank to him :). Thanks for the great summer! Have a safe trip home and good luck back at school!

Rob tried the whole, leave your camera on the table and hope that people use it strategy. It worked to some extent. Though, Jill brought her camera and Jill takes pictures :)

It took me just over 10 min. to blade to Rob's place (~4.5 km) and surprisingly not much longer to get back home a little tipsy :p. Rollerblading home drunk is the best :). Can you get pulled over for RUI?

Getting a new battery!

Apple's doing a battery recall as some of the laptop batteries can supposedly overheat and potentially cause your laptop to go on fire or something. I've never had any incident of my battery heating up, but I have found that my battery life has decreased substantially, from 4+ hours when I first got my laptop to ~2 hours now. It's just from frequent use of the battery.

I was just thinking about getting a new battery, but now I don't have to since I qualify for a free battery replacement :D

It says that I'm supposed to return my old battery once I get the replacement, but I think that I'll just keep it and use it as a spare (good for long flights).

That hit the volleyball spot (for now)

Met up with Kives, Alfred, and Erid (and his friends) for some volleyball at Assiniboine. It was actually pretty decent volleyball. We managed to crank the net to about men's height. The sand was quite shallow, meaning that I was able to jump high :)

I hadn't seen Erid in ages. We met randomly on the same volleyball courts maybe like 4 years ago. I think that I was just rollerblading by and asked to join in. After some random chatting, we figured out that one of his best friend's ex-girlfriend is one of my older sister's best friends. I don't quite remember how we got to that conclusion. I think it's b/c I went to Shaftesbury and my last name was Cheung. That would be what I'd write for our "Facebook story".

He's married now, which is crazy. Oh, and then in another bizzare incident, he some how finds out that I know Anne Pickering. They were in Education together at the U of M and I guess she said that she went to Shaftesbury and Erid probably spit out my name. Today, he was like, so you graduated with Bev right? I said I didn't know, but Alf knew her. I checked my year book and she kinda looks familiar, but was in Mech and likely was in Alf's year, not mine, but we graduated together. Apparently she knows me, or knows of me. Erid seems to have this thing about figuring out peoples' social network and how people are connected, but in real life, not on the Internet :p

I was pretty surprised at how many people were playing there today. There was us, and then a group of 4 guys that we played 4-on-4 with for a bit, and then a group of 6 high school students. I saw the same kids play last Wed when I was at the park. Not half bad, I wonder which high school they go to... The logical one would be Shaftesbury, being so close, but then Alf pointed out that they were actually good :p

Kives put on quite the show today. I was actually impressed. His game has improved a lot, which is pretty amazing since he hasn't been playing. His hits were like all in and he was pretty consistent. It must be the grunt :)

Becky (who Kevin and I met up for lunch at Saffron's with earlier today) and Alice didn't end up showing. Kevin missed out as he left for his cottage in the afternoon.

Can't wait to get back to Toronto to play some serious volleyball...

Found a place

It's the one in the top corner

Found a place in Saskatoon!

It's a two-bedroom, single bath apartment. Top (4th) floor. A bit smaller than my apartment in Toronto, but about a third of the price, which is nice since it's only for one. It's pretty close to the University (well, everything is close to the University) and on the good side of the river.

Like in Winnipeg, there's a stigma about crossing the river in Saskatoon. In Winnipeg, crossing either the Assiniboine or Red River is bad. Us South-enders don't socialize with the North-enders :p. There are some exceptions, but they are few and far between and they tend to be sketchy, like Florence. In Saskatoon, I heard from several different sources to stay on the South and West side of the river and that's where the apartment is.

 

I realized that in these last two posts that I may have "accidently" misled people to think that I was moving to Saskatchewan. After leaving Winnipeg and living in Toronto, Seattle, and San Francisco, how could I ever go back? And to something even smaller??? No. Sorry. If you thought otherwise, you probably shouldn't have skipped your meds this morning.

It's my younger sister. She's going to the University of Saskatchewan for Pharmacy and she, my mom, and I drove to Saskatoon to help her find an apartment. There were surprisingly few vacancies. The place we decided upon was actually one that we just passed by and saw a sign, as opposed to one that we had found online. We were rather efficient in checking out like a dozen places and settling on a place all in under 24 hours in the city! We didn't want to spend any more time in that place than absolutely necessary :p

Saskatche-what?

Saskatchewan. Hard to spell, easy to draw.

Moving to Saskatchewan! I made the ~8 hour drive to Saskatoon today to do some apartment hunting.

I had my reservations, but this place has its qualities:

Transportation

• Never get lost
• You can learn all the city streets in one afternoon
• You can see your two story hotel from anywhere in the city


• Amazingly efficient road system
  • Highways that run right through the middle of the city
  • No traffic
  • One highway gets you anywhere you need to go and can take you from one end of the city to the other in just 5 minutes!
  • Ample parking everywhere

People

• Multicultural
  • Every colour of white can be found here
  • They even have a Taco Bell!


• Everyone's Canadian!
  • There were lots in California, even more in Toronto and Winnipeg, but the number of Canadians here is just staggering


• No prissy girls, as all of them are farm raised, winter hardened girls who had to work hard all their lives (cute too)

Safe

• Safe from natural disasters
  • No earthquakes, floods, forest fires, smog, threat of rising waters from global warming, tsunamis, tornados, or Gozilla attacks


• No fear of terrorists
  • No targets, no terrorists

Shopping

• All stores centrally located in one area


• 80's and 90's era diners the rest of civilization has long forgotten
  • Bonanza
  • Chuck E. Cheese's
  • Fuddruckers (from the Wikipedia page: "Fuddruckers has one restaurant in Canada. It is located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and still remains popular. Other restaurants were tried in other parts of Canada with no success. ")


• All the stores you ever wanted, some of which not even available in places like Winnipeg, Toronto, or even California, such as The Real Canadian Superstore, Lululemon, and the Culligan store

Miscellaneous

• The University of Saskatchewan's campus is nice and the buildings all look quite new
  • The Agriculture building was absolutely stunning!


• We don't need no stinking daylight!
  • No daylight savings here, though it means having to switch between Mountain and Central time.


• Flat
  • But at least the girls aren't

Found a few promising apartments today. There were some incidences though. I knew I was in a sketchy neighbourhood when all of a sudden I saw a lot of minorities, when I hadn't seen a single one all day. I also found myself in a trailer park at one point...

Semi-Annual Engineering Dinner Redux

Rob, Rob, Florence, Andy, Alfred, Alice, Kwan, Becky, Vince, Nusraat. Chris is missing b/c he left early for "Bingo"

My amazing effect with the ladies! I love how Nusraat is COMPLETELY ignoring me. But between me and you, I think she was struggling to keep herself back so as not to come out with any incriminating photos since her boy toy (aka husband) wasn't there. I so do not have asian glow in this pic.

More Pictures (some pics stolen from Becky)

I was gonna call this post "Semi-Annual Engineering Dinner", but that was done already.

Again, 9 rings (11 people). Kevin would have made 10, but we're not sure what happened to him. Our best guess was that he was mauled by a caribou when he was at his cottage, but survived the attack, only to be pecked by two ducks while he was down and later devoured by a bear.

We went to the Paragon this time. Mediterranean in "downtown". Pretty much just randomly chosen. It was pretty dead there, so at least the service was pretty good. Nice inside, though we had the super long table, which sucks for socializing. Food was decent. But you know, if I have to pay for food, I expect it to be AMAZING, considering the quality I got for free.

Again, we hit up Rostecki's for board games afterwards (Rob, Rob, Flo, and Me). Again, not your usual board games. One was Toppos, a card game, and another was Thurns and Taxis or something. I apparently am good at Toppos (2/3) and just narrowly lost to Rostecki in T&T.

I got a phone call from my sister saying that the restaurant called and I left my camera at the restaurant. This is yet another reason why I don't like bringing my camera. Plus, my batteries were really low, so I couldn't take many pictures and the camera like shut off by itself when Florence was trying to take a pic (I was doing this new trick I had recently learnt). Anyways, I went back after board games as they were open until 1 b/c of the bar and got my camera back. Apparently the waiters had some fun with my camera :)
 

Running update #3

Sunday evening, I went for training session #3. 10 laps around the park (~8.75 km), ~65 min. I've been doing a pretty aggressive ramping up of distance, we'll see how long that lasts, but as long as I keep up the training when I go back to Toronto, I'll be ready for Oct. 15th. My next run won't be until late this week as I'm off to Saskatchewan tomorrow morning :s

Names to remember

Kives and Meghan had a dinner party on Saturday. Perhaps a more correct term would be Meghan's and Kives's Mom's dinner party as I don't think Kives did anything (except pick up my fondue and cooler) and his Mom made the brisket.

All the people there were Meghan's friends aside from me. I'm bad with names, so I'll write them down here for my own reference later on. There was Travis (who was also at pool the other day), Chris (Mr. PA), Ron (the DJ with 4 people in the bar), Nicky (who we had thought was Ron's gf), and Stacy (girl who had been everywhere and had a story about everything). The evening was surprisingly entertaining considering that most people didn't know more than about 1 or 2 other people in the room, yet we were there from 5 pm until 3 am! And that didn't even involve much alcohol!

I brought my camera, but in my typical fashion, I was too lazy to take it out to actually take pictures. I'm not a huge fan of taking pictures, but I like to have them. The best is when other people bring their cameras and then I just steal the pictures (like what happened this summer). Ron had a good idea upon leaving that I should have just left it on the table and then people would have used it, plus, then I'd also be in the pictures. I'm definitely gonna try that next time.

"Is he under 14?"

My new shoes

I got dragged into shoe shopping with my older sister and my mom. I got a pair of shoes from the Shoe Company b/c we had a coupon.

My mom was paying for my shoes b/c she had the airmiles credit card and the cashier asked:

Is he under 14?

AWESOME. Both my mom and me had to hold back the laughter. I haven't been estimated to be that young for a while :p. The reason she was asking was b/c at least in Manitoba, you can either get the PST or GST (sales taxes) off for children under 14.

We should have said "yes".

I totally need to go to that age guessing thing at the amusement parks. They have to like guess your age within 2 years. I don't know if anyone has ever been able to do that before :p

I was being responsible today

I was responsible today both in terms of my finances and my health.

Finance

I checked all my accounts (PC, TD, ING, CIBC, WaMu, FirstTech, Citi Canada, Citi) and paid my credit card bills. I also checked up on my investments and opened up a CD with WaMu to get some of my American money working for me. Also changed my address from Palo Alto to Canada.

Then, I gathered all the documents generated over the summer needed for tax purposes. I got this thing in the mail asking that I pay like 9k in advance taxes to the Canadian Government b/c last year I had a pretty big negative tax rebate since I didn't pay taxes all year (didn't pay upfront on my scholarship and then no Canadian taxes on MSR earnings). This advance tax thing is to prevent people like me from not paying taxes all year, collecting interest on it, and then paying it at the end of the year.

The catch this time around, is that I won't have to pay much in taxes b/c my scholarship is now TAX FREE! At least Harper did one thing right :). Basically what that means is that this estimate of 9k that I would have to pay in taxes is much too high as I will now have a huge portion of my income that I no longer have to pay taxes on. Anyways, my Dad does my taxes and wanted to see my pay stubs, etc. to estimate how much I'd have to pay in taxes for this year, and adjust that 9k accordingly, since I won't have to owe nearly as much taxes this coming year.


Health

I then went for a run in the evening/night. It's been a couple days since my last run. I blame volleyball/frisbee on Wed and golf on Thurs, and I was in no shape to run on Tues. To make up for lost time, I doubled the distance (8 laps, ~7 km). That's actually the farthest I've ever run! I did however, do it at a rather slow pace, about 50 min. (just over 7 min. kilometres). But I still had quite a bit of energy, and ended up sprinting the last half lap. I'm feeling pretty good right now and my legs are ok, so I can easily push a few more laps at that pace. I figure, I should get the distance down first before trying to go fast. One third of the way there! (The half marathon is 21 km). Not bad after 2 training sessions :p. Just under 2 months left!

The new blogger

I got the invite to upgrade my blog to the new Blogger today. I'm not making use of any of the new features yet (eg. tags, comment feed, different archiving links). That's b/c it doesn't let you edit the raw html once you convert to a new template and I have a lot of custom code in my template. Plus, I want to do a complete overhaul of the design of this blog when I do the conversion.

The best thing about the new blogger is that the pages are dynamically created. It's all backend stuff. You don't see the effect, but for me, when I'm changing the settings, I no longer have to "republish" my blog, which takes a while since my blog is pretty big.

Anyways, while I was looking through things, I made some cosmetic changes to my blog. It's all in the sidebar. The most noticeable difference is that I now show a picture on the side. The cool thing is the picture randomly changes everytime you load the page! It's similar to what Nusraat does, but I had to do it slightly different b/c I'm using Blogger and not hosting it myself. I just used a bit of Javascript to write the image tag into the document where the image url is randomly chosen.

Code snippet:

    <script language="JavaScript">
      <!--
      var numImages = 5;
      var imgIdx = Math.floor(Math.random() * numImages);
      document.write("<img src='http://www.blah.com/ImageName" + imgIdx + ".jpg'>");
      //-->
    </script>
    <noscript>
      <img src="http://www.blah.com/ImageName.jpg" />
    </noscript>

I was sure that I was gonna get West Nile

I had already come to terms with the fact that I was going to get West Nile tonight. The plan was to go to Assiniboine Park and basically do what I was doing at Google (coincidently) - play beach volleyball and throw around a frisbee.

Met up with Kevin, Rob, and Jill at the volleyball courts (like a 5 min. drive from my place :D). I was spanking the ball pretty good today. The ball was like bouncing off the sand :). This obviously had nothing to do with the net being low (~women's height at the sides, and low enough for me to touch the top in the middle, so about 2-2.5 "squares" low). The sand was much softer than at Google, and when you dig down the sand was actually damp, plus it wasn't dusty at all.

Usually the volleyball courts are literally swarming with mosquitoes. Honestly there are mosquitoes just circling around constantly, even when you have bug spray on. They are vicious as well. They would go right through clothing. I used to get something like 25 bites on each leg and arm. It was insane.

Today, none. Zip. Zilch. Amazing! I have never seen it like that before! Ok, well, in like the beginning of May, but never in August (like peak mosquito season). Apparently the new bug guy in Winnipeg, "Taz", is doing a good job this year!

We then switched to throwing around a disc (frisbee). My forehand is like way better than my backhand now, which is pretty crazy since I couldn't throw forehand like a month and a half ago.

Of course, afterwards, we hit the nearby 7-11 for slurpees. Slurpee capital of the world baby!!!! It was my first slurpee this year, though I've had many slushies (mostly fruit based, which are better and healthier than slurpees anyways).

Jill took some pics, but hasn't posted them yet... Watch her blog for the yang version of this post (or is that yin? I'm not sure which one I am)

OMG, STOP PEEING IN MY ROOM!!!

Earlier today, one of the two dogs we're babysitting for my older sister's friend peed in my room. I didn't even know the dogs went into my room, just that they were running around upstairs, and then I go into my room, and I see this wet spot :s. Not sure if it was Rafiki or Wicket... Those dogs are funny. They look a lot like Tiggy, at least in fur colour and size, and collectively, they are referred to as 3 cats or 3 dogs. It's a little ambiguous either way. I just call them all Tiggy.

Then, just a little while ago while, after I came out of the shower and clipped my nails (btw, clipping my toe nails was a bitch b/c I couldn't see my toes! Without my glasses (getting new lenses) and with me too lazy to put in my contacts right before bed to only have to take them out again, I'm useless...), I went to my laptop to kill time while I waited for my hair to dry and I notice that my bed is soaked.

MI-MI PEED ON MY BED!!! That's Mi-mi the cat, not Mimi the person. Not only did she pee on my bed, but she peed on my pillow! This is the SECOND time that she's done this! First time being like 2 Christmas's ago. It's b/c of my buckwheat pillow. She thinks it's fun to play with and kneed her paws on. It also has a similar consistency as litter and gives her the urge to urinate all over it. I had anticipated this behaviour and had covered my pillow with my blanket, but no, she found the pillow underneath and peed right through the blanket and got the pillow a bit wet as well. It's like not a small pee either, it's a monster pee when she does this. She's all acting friendly now and sitting next to me on my bed (with changed sheets, etc.)

You pretty much can't wash a buckwheat pillow, at least you can't properly get urine out of it. As such, I'm now in the market for a new buckwheat pillow. I guess it's actually good in some respects, as I was just thinking that I needed to do some much overdue purging and cleansing, and the pillow would have been the only thing that wouldn't have gone. I'll do the ritual when I get back to Toronto.


Update (Aug. 27, 2006):  I wake up at like 7 or something b/c I hear her scratching at the wall near the door b/c Mi-mi wants to get out. When I crawl out of bed, my knee feels wet... She had peed at the corner of the foot of my bed sometime in the middle of the night :s. It was too early to do anything about it, and it wasn't super wet or smelly, so I just curled up in the opposite side of my queen sized bed and kept sleeping :p

Weak in the knees

I got it bad. I didn't think that I'd feel this way again so soon. I was actually losing hope that I'd ever feel this way again. My legs are practically trembling when I stand. I'm short of breath. My heart is beating uncontrollably. My palms are sweaty.

This is of course completely unrelated to my return to training where I ran around the park across the street 4 times. I only did the South side so I didn't have to cross Grant, but it was about 3.5 km. I was doing about 5 min. / km, which isn't bad considering that I haven't trained for about 3 years, and is just over the pace I did in the Toronto Marathon 5k run in 2003. It felt pretty good too. Every day (or day I train), I will add an extra lap (~875 m). What am I training for? A couple things. Getting in shape for the U of T varsity volleyball try-outs, training for the Toronto half marathon, and just to improve my aerobic capacity (since most of the sports I play are anaerobic).

Flying blind, or at least blurry

I'm getting new lenses for my glasses b/c my health insurance will cover it and the coating on the glasses was starting to chip off (cheap HK lenses). As such, I don't have my glasses anymore. This is a problem when I shower late at night. I am too lazy to put my contacts back in just for my post-shower, pre-sleeping activities while I wait for my hair to dry. My neck is getting sore from having to crane to see my laptop screen, as I can only see the screen if I am aobut 6 inches from it. I'm told that my glasses will be ready by the end of the week. Hopefully I won't run into a wall, trip over the exploded contents of my suitcases, or step on a cat before then.

i an nto rsenopslbie fo rany tyops im tihs bolg psot,

I'm feeling multicultural

"Rum Punch", apparently an "Indo Tropical Paradise" drink

"Indo Tropical Paradise" dancing and singing

The rest of Jill's pics

Hit up Folklorama tonight. Folklorama is "the largest and longest running multicultural festival of its kind in the world". Basically there are all these different pavillions hosted in schools and community centres throughout the city, with each one devoted to a different culture, and inside you get to sample that culture's food and drinks as well as see shows.

I went with Kevin (back from Toronto like the exact same time as me), Jill, and Florence. I was just talking with Jill and Florence the other day about how they had never met, yet they are the two people, aside from my family, who's vacation plans revolve around Hotel Vince, as they visited me in both Toronto and the Bay Area (though at different times). They did however, miss out on Seattle...

We planned on going to the Cuban pavillion, out in the "North" (aka bad) part of the city. Ok, well, not super North, but we crossed the river, which is always a big deal for us South-enders :p. Jill was driving and it was my first experience with "Truck". I have to say that the "backseat" was not very ergonomic at all, but aside from that, Truck was very nice.

When asked over the phone if Jill knew how to get to the place, she was like "ya..." She didn't know how to get there. We got mildly lost, and being Winnipeg and not many cars on the road, at least in that area, we couldn't even use the "follow that car" approach. Had I known that she didn't really know where she was going, I could have made one of my famous hand drawn maps (3 lines on a piece of paper). It's hard to trust the people from the bad part of the good part of town.

The line at the Cuban pavillion was hella long. We waited and 11:15 pm rolled along, which is when the last show started and we were told that the place had reached capacity and basically that we had little chance of getting in. So, we moved down the street to the pavillion next door.

"Indo Tropical Paradise Pavillion". We were rather confused at what culture this pavillion represented. Our first instict was telling us Indonesia-ish. But, then there was a banner on the wall for "Indian Place" or something like that and one of the singers was introduced as one of Winnipeg's most famous Indian singers.

We eventually figure out that it was the "West Indies" (aka the Caribbean), which makes sense why one of the drinks was from Jamaica. The show was alright, but the rest of the pavillion kinda sucked. They took down the cultural display by the time the show ended, the food was pretty much gone by the time we got there, and the drink selection was pretty bad. There was a dance like thing after the show, but the music was insanely loud. Like my pants were vibrating from the bass (Mike, it's pronouced like "base", as in "all your base are belong to us", not like the fish).

We took off and hit a Mexican pub/restaurant in Osborne. I knew that I had been there before, but wasn't sure when or with whom. Seems like Rob (Carroll) was there.

The exciting bit was when Kevin got drenched by the waitress who was trying to take our orders while holding a bunch of dirty dishes and cups of water. Kevin, being quite mild mannered, took it well and kept his cool. She paid for his bill, which wasn't much b/c he didn't order much and no drinks. He should've ordered everything for us and bought us drinks :p. The waitress apologized like a billion times.

We spent most of the time at that place talking about what you would do if you won the $42 million Lotto 649 that was the current jackpot (and that's $42 million tax free b/c it's Canada ;)). Florence would quit her job immediately, Jill and Kevin would follow suit quite quickly. I think that I'd finish my phd and sit on the money, letting it earn some interest for me. Everyone seemed to agree that they'd want to use that money to travel. But you know, travelling by yourself can get lonely. I eventually decided that most of my big purchases would have to have some social aspect to it. Mutual vacations are a lot of fun, like take a bunch of people on a cruise somewhere tropical. Vacation houses/condos (like on a nice ski slope in the Alps or a beach in Hawaii or a lake in Australia or just buy an island) would be nice b/c you could invite friends over (like how Jill and Flo visited!). I would then need a private jet to fly people to my place. I also decided that I would only invite my current friends b/c any new friends I'd make would only be my friend b/c of the money. The problem of finding a wife came up, as she'd only be in it for the money. I decided that I'd have to leave town like right away, and keep a low profile (like doing a phd in Toronto). Marry for love, and then be like, oh, and I have like $42 million...

Jill has posted her version of tonight's events. Check it out to see how much BS I just fed you ;)

Strange things in that big dark room

Something I hadn't seen in ages.

There are these big flashes of bright light and loud sounds along with water coming from the ceiling in that big dark room that usually has the twinkly things and that big bright circle thing.

I was actually pleasantly surprised when it started.

Wow, that was a big flash from some ginormous camera! I saw the whole backyard when that happened! The sound of the water hitting the ground is actually quite soothing. The bad thing is that it's gonna result in an increase in mosquitoes.... yay.... I'm so getting West Nile this year.

Home sweet home

Home

Aside from the flight delays, nothing notable to mention about today's travels. I am surprisingly awake right now considering my 2 hours of sleep and 14 hours door-to-door, but I guess I got a couple hours of sleep on the plane and the time zone difference (2 hours ahead here) helps.

I haven't been back in Winnipeg for about 8 months. Mittens and Tiggy both remember me :). I'm quite furry right now.

Everything's pretty much the same here, though I've been noticing all these small things that are different. Drawers don't open like they used to, the banister seems narrower, the stairs smaller, the shower head higher, and the shower water in thicker streams than I remembered.

Dehydrated flying

Sitting in the Chicago airport. Waiting for my delayed flight back to Winnipeg. Stupid North American airports don't have free wireless Internet access.

With the whole UK->US supposed terrorist threat, you're not allowed to bring any liquids onto the plane. No water, drinks, lotion, cream, toothpaste, sunscreen, shampoo, hair gel, yogurt, etc. I thought that I found the loophole whereby I dumbed out my water bottle at the security check, and then filled it up at the water fountain outside of the gate, but no, no water allowed on the plane...

My flight out of SFO was only delayed by half an hour, which was fortunate b/c I was cutting it close. My flight out of Chicago is supposed to be an hour and a half late, which made the connection a little bit more relaxing.

Flying is always very stressful for me. More to do with packing (I went to bed at 5:30 am and got up at 7:30) and worrying about how heavy my luggage is. While packing and realizing that they were heavy, I mentally prepared myself to pay $50 / piece in overweight charges. At this point, I didn't really care. I hate packing and just wanted my stuff to get to Winnipeg.

Both of my suitcases were overweight (57 and 67 pounds), which is surprising since I gave a bunch of stuff to both my family and Florence to take back for me. The guy was decently nice and told me that if I just moved a few pounds from the lighter one to the heavier one that I'd only get charged $50 for the one.

I should have more time in Winnipeg to figure out what is in my baggage that's so heavy, plus I'll be leaving a bunch of stuff there (t-shirts, extra volleyballs, random crap, etc.), but I'll be adding my rollerblades and some books.

Anyways, I should move to my gate as the flight should be boarding soon.


Update: Fark. Flight delayed another 45 min. Looks like I'll be here for a while longer. I'm convinced that it's a big ploy to get passengers to spend what's left of their arms and legs at the airports for food. Guess I'll blog offline more.

Another update: 6:15. 7:45. 8:24. 8:45. 9:05. They better not delay it again. I just found a plug, so I can write more :p

Final update: Flight finally left at like 9:15. At least I met a cute girl from Winnipeg to talk to, so I didn't mind waiting.

Florence

With few plans in place, all my evenings when Florence was here were spent planning (and mapping) what we were gonna do the next day. Sitting here in the Chicago airport waiting for my delayed flight, I finally have time to blog, though I don't have Flo's pics yet.

Here's the rapid-fire bullet point version of the past week:

Wed., Aug. 2nd - The arrival

• Florence arrives


• Winning my volleyball game to come out on top of the losers bracket


• Posing as a U of M Masters' student doing an internship in the Bay Area, I get her into the Google Engineering Intern Open House. Having noticed that Janna indicated in her calendar that she was going, I invited myself as her guest :)


• The food was crap, the talks were ok, the free shirt is really what counted, and being able to sneak around security so I could show Florence around was great

Thurs., Aug. 3rd - San Francisco

• Big tourist day, though I had two things to do this day (lunch with Nevan at UCSF and Kelly Clarkson's concert), which we worked around, i.e. Florence shopping while I did other things


• Twin Peaks on a clear day, Golden Gate Bridge without fog, and walked all along the pier


• The Vegas plan falls through with Mike not feeling great, Adam's idiotic move of trying to stand on an oversized exercise ball and getting a concussion, and everyone else being wusses

Fri., Aug. 4th - Museums

• Asian Art Museum


• Chinatown


• Legion of Honor (for the Monet in Normany exhibit)


• Japantown


• Getting kicked out of Kan Zaman on Haight St. for not ordering a minimum amount of food at 10 pm when we just wanted dessert


• Gelati in North Beach


• Twin Peaks at night in the fog

Sat., Aug. 5th - Winchester

• Slow afternoon let me plan out the Napa trip


• Winchester Mystery House (a horribly built mansion where they charge an inordinate amount of money for you to see)


• FREE FOOD AT PANERA. Oh how I miss free food :p. Thanks Sean!


• Poker at Panera where Brian and me had a side bet to see who would drive to Napa. We both lost in the same hand to Mike. Brian kindly volunteered to drive, which ended up being a good idea b/c of his car's navigational system and my lack of a printer (and resulting poorly hand drawn maps)

Sun., Aug. 6th - Napa

• 30 wines!


• The key to the day was the schedule that I told people, and the contingency plan I had in place, knowing that we wouldn't make the original schedule


• Rubicon Estate (Francis Ford Coppola's winery), Beringer (crap), Beaulieu (meh), random small winery behind BV (suprisingly good), and Domaine Chandon.
  
• Some of the wineries we went to were way too commercial


• Nice find for lunch at some sandwich shop in St. Helena


• Mitsuwa for dinner, meeting up with Janna, Sean, Adam, Michele, and Jenny in addition to our group of me, Florence, Brian, Mike, and Natalia.


• Coldstone

Mon., Aug. 7th - Yosemite

• 400 miles of driving, 5 hours of hiking/walking


• In-N-Out for dinner

Tues., Aug. 8th - Tech company tour

• Nasa Ames, Microsoft, Google (for lunch at Cafe 7), Yahoo, Juniper Networks, AMD, Cisco, Intel, NVIDIA, Apple


• Victorious in Google's volleyball tournament finals part 1


• Snuck into the Google Dance ;). Not even "The Enforcer" could stop me!

Wed., Aug. 9th - The departure

• Xerox PARC, Stanford Linear Accelerator, Stanford, Jamba Juice, Cheesecake Factory, SFO

Thanks for visiting Florence, it was a blast!

Flight is soon (hopefully) and my battery is running out...

Still packing

4:30 am. The last of the people left at 2. I swung by Google one last time around 3:30 am to get my beach volleyball that I left on the court and also to fill up the gas tank.

Everything's pretty much folded, sorted, etc. and just needs to be shoved into the suitcase now. Flight leaves at 10:45 am, and I'll have to leave here around 8:30ish b/c of traffic and I have to return the car rental, etc.

Hopefully I'll at least get an hour or two of sleep. See you on the other side of the continent.

Vince 1, Mike 0

Victory after only a week and a half ;)

1. Go to Google.com


2. Type in:  Mike Perrow
   


3. Click 


4. 
   

Picture courtesy of Adam Hooper (and that picture was courtesy of Michele Battelli).


On another note, Googling gay pictures vincent gets to my blog :s


Update (Sept-ish): I stopped being evil and this joke no longer works

KELLY CLARKSON CONCERT, BITCHES

Free poster!

This is how I find a suitable radio station when I'm in a new city:

1. Press the "scan" button


2. If Kelly Clarkson is playing, stop.
   Else, goto #1

3rd time's a charm. First time, it was Sarah's fault. Absolutely 100% of the blame is on her. That was like Dec. 2004. Then, it just so happened that while I was at MSR, Kelly Clarkson was on another tour and was playing near Seattle! I had the ticket in my hand, but she cancelled the concert b/c of laryngitis. That was Sept. 2005. Another internship, another tour, and another coincidence! This time, I finally went!

It was awesome.

If you have anything bad to say about Kelly Clarkson, you will be kindly asked to leave this blog.

For the sake of professionalism, please refrain from making any comments about jailbait or insinuating that I went soley for that purpose. Yes, there was jailbait (and plenty of it). Even "Canadian" jailbait.

Why snowboarding is better than surfing

I went to Pacifica this morning to go surfing by myself (everyone else claimed that they had to go to "work"). The conditions weren't great, but I managed to entertain myself and get up a bunch of times on the white crumbly stuff. It's actually quite scary to go by yourself. One time I got my ass kicked by a wave and while I was tumbling around, not sure which way was up, I remembered that there was no lifeguard on the beach.

I realized while I was out there, that I like snowboarding a lot better. Here's why:

• Chair lifts
  • None of this futile work trying to get past the waves, only to be pushed further back from where you started at every attempt you take


• Snowboarding is warmer
  • Yes. You heard me right. Frickin' ocean in "Nor-Cal" is freezing, even with a wet suit. At least with snowboarding you can put on more layers.


• You get to wear a tuque


• You don't have the constant taste of salt in your mouth


• You get to stand up for more than 5 seconds


• There is food mid-slope
  • mmm... beaver tails :)


• You don't have to wear a frickin' wet suit


• It's possible to go to the washroom
  • You try getting out of a wet suit


• You don't have to lug around a massive board
  • In fact, you can just skate with it


• Your board doesn't try and knock you unconscious


• Mother Nature doesn't continuously try to drown you


• You don't have to plan your day around the tide and you can board all day long


• You don't get sandy


• People don't say hella
  • As in, "dude, that wave was hella good"


• It's an Olympic sport
  • 2010 baby!


• You don't get showed up by 12 year olds
  • You get showed up by 5 year olds

With all that, I still think surfing is fun, just that I'd enjoy it more if the surf was good and I was in say... Hawaii, where the water temperature is actually above the freezing point. Oh, and if there was a volleyball court on the beach ;)

Ultimate Skirt Pictures

Vince

Natalia

Adam

More pictures

Pictures from Ultimate Skirts. Unfortunately, the photos are quite limited (us skirts forgot to take pictures) and not everyone is in the pictures. Plus, we forgot to get a group picture :(

The best was when Anna, Mike's gf, called him up the day after and was like "So, you were playing frisbee in a hot pink mini-skirt?" Mike was flabbergasted because he hadn't told her yet. I apparently have a reader in Switzerland ;). The thing is that I tend to blog late at night and with the time difference, she read the post before Mike :).

Yes, I've had enough of linking to Mike Perrow and have decided to go with variety. Note that anytime I link to peoples' names multiple times in a post, they are generally to different (compromising) photos :D.


Here's a random picture from Six Flags Marine World last Sunday. It was 40-something degrees (Celsius) outside (HOT) and Brian left his Starbucks Cup in his car. It used be be a grande or whatever is a big size.

Melted Starbucks Cup

The end.

CAUTION: This is NOT a Hallway

Please do not knock on the glass
it scares the sea monkeys

Friday was my last day.

The picture above is of my cubicle, or should I say, was my cubicle. It used to be a hallway, but about a month and a half ago, I got e-mails saying that I was in the "Vibe Zone" and that they were going to reduce the vibrations in the area. And apparently their solution to reducing the vibration (from people walking in the hallway, which I never felt) was to eliminate the hallway and fit more people in the cubes. So, in the end, I was actually sitting IN the hallway (not on the side taking pictures). People were very confused, as it all happened over one weekend and would stare at my cubicle, often peering over and staring down at me, sometimes being surprised when I was stared back at them when they peered over. That's also a very high traffic area (outside one of the big meeting rooms where there are several talks a day), which made things worse. I decided, upon Mark's suggestion, to make a humorous sign :). I could hear people laugh as they passed.

If you look through the wall in the picture and over a set of cubicles, you can see the billionaires' office.

It was a pretty chill last day. I saw a "talk" by Leslie Jordan, aka, Beverley Leslie from Will & Grace. It was hilarious. Then, I watched Will Wright (the guy who created Sim City and the Sims) talk about and demo his upcoming game, Spore. Ya, there are some cool (and fun) talks at Google.

The whole exit interview thing was anticlimactic. Any questions or comments? No, I wrote them all down on the sheet. Ok. At least I got a sweatshirt and it's nicer than the one I got from MSR.

I hung around for a while afterwards b/c of the social TGIF. When I finally left, I almost forgot to return my badge. I did so, and got escorted to the parking garage (b/c I needed someone to open the door for me). That was that.

Michele just put these pictures up, and I felt nostalgic.

Typical lunch at Google

Adam and I had a hot dinner date and went for some Pho in MV. I then joined Michele, Jenny (and friends), and Jon in SF at an Asian club. Hadn't been to one of those since Toronto. It's still a novel thing to me. They don't have them in Winnipeg. The first time I had seen one was in Calgary I think when Becky, Alvin, Florence, Ching, and I bussed it over there and somehow stumbled into one. I remember being rather shocked as I wasn't aware that there could be so many Asians in Canada.

2002 Flashback: Alvin, Ching, Vince, Florence, and Becky on our Alberta trip

Last night was AsiaSF, where the "waitresses" are "gender illusionists". It was an experience. It was scary in that the waitresses were HOT. If you saw some of them on the street, you would have no idea. They did some shows on the bar. Periodically the lights would dim and one or more would go on the bar and dance, while lip syncing. I'll never forget the look on Jon's face. Huge props to them for being able to run, dance, and jump on massive stilettos. Mike keeps talking about being flashed from one of the waitresses/dancers on the bar and being teased with a pink feather boa. Oddly enough, I found a pink blob of fluff in the passenger seat today :p. I promised Mike that I wouldn't reveal all the details of what happened to spare Anna ;)

AsiaSF's menu

We hit the bar/club downstairs afterwards. Oddly enough, it was livelier at 9:30 when we were down there waiting for our table than at midnight after our meal.

Thanks to everyone that came out!


Oh, so I don't leave until the 10th. So, I'm not sure if these celebrations were "Vince's last day at Google", "Vince isn't working at Google anymore, so he's dead to us and here's his funeral", or "Vince, leave already". Regardless, these next two weeks will be a continous and sad goodbye. By far, what I will miss most from this summer won't be the free food, the beach, or the warm (?) weather, but rather, all the good friends I made.

I'll now answer the question that everyone keeps asking me (What are you going to do until then???). I'm going to relax and do things that I wanted to do here, but didn't get a chance to. Also, Florence (see above) is coming to visit for a week starting Wednesday, so I'll have company in my explorations.

New t-shirt designs

In response to this comment...

Playing ultimate in a skirt

I played ultimate frisbee in a skirt today. It was actually quite liberating. I felt very free. The scary part was that I was quite comfortable in it.

Don't worry, there's a story behind this and it involves a girl, a bet, and beer.

Kendall bet Natalia that she couldn't get a bunch of interns to watch/play frisbee in skirts. Beer was on the line. Well, he underestimated how crazy us interns are and what people will do for beer.

I was not alone. I was joined by Adam (in his smock skirt), Brian (in his tu-tu), Mike Perrow (in the hot pink mini-skirt), and Jason (in a knee-length skirt). Natalia was the only one with a "normal" skirt. I myself had like a longer than knee length skirt, which I tucked into my underwear to make it a mini-skirt so I could run properly. It was hot. I wasn't wearing anything underneath. If you're gonna do something, might as well do it right.

Beer and ultimate was interesting. After my third, I was starting to feel it, esp. on an empty stomach and while doing exercise. I think I might have actually played better because of it :p. I'm not really sure how the bet worked out though b/c both Natalia and Kendall brought beer. So, seemingly, we wore the skirts for no reason, but hey, it was hilarious and good times were had by all.

My calves are like totally screwed up. In yesterday's volleyball game (game 3, 16-16, rally point to 17, no win by two, and we serve into the net...) everytime I jumped, my calves like cramped up afterwards. Same thing today, but to a lesser extent as I was just running, not jumping. It's probably b/c I've been doing a lot of physical activity this week (everyday since Sunday). Rollerblading to work today probably didn't help. A little under 8 km, and I did it in just over 30 min., but I would have been able to do it in about 25 had my feet not started to blister (new rollerblades), as I eased up a lot in the last 1/2 - 1/3 of the commute. Plus my body was just sore (had difficulty bending over b/c my lower back was sore), and rollerblading around the block last night after volleyball probably didn't help things either.

Charlie's was out of food after ultimate. Stupid visiting profs hogging No Name and significantly reducing the amount of available food. We hit up In-N-Out. Not sure if I was just hungry or I hadn't had grease for a while, but it was good. That place is interesting. The menu is very simple, literally just hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, and drinks, but there's like this whole secret menu where you can get like 4 patties and 4 slices of cheese, hamburgers without the bun wrapped in lettuce, and others.

L-1-VD

It's the magic code that causes people to just appear outside my cubicle. With my lead, the interns I started with quickly started using the Google chat in the internal version of Gmail. By quickly, I mean like the first day. I soon somehow became known as the "food god", as coined by Mark, as I was responsible for organizing people to go for lunch and dinner. As I was the one organizing it and my cubicle was in a rather convenient location, I started telling people to meet me at my cubicle or just outside of it so that we gathered everyone up before heading out to one of the cafeterias.

Organizing everyone for lunch and dinner quickly became difficult and time consuming. I would be messaging like 7 different people and then walking to some nearby ones to talk to other interns. It wasn't scalable.

Then came the era of status messages. In Google chat in Gmail, you can put in a custom status message that appears underneath your name. Michele had the idea of putting "L-1-VD" in my status message and that he'd do it too.

Lunch at 1 pm, meet at Vince's desk.

Once displayed, people will just magically appear outside my cubicle at the right time. Sometimes there is a bit of haggling, because of meetings or other things, but it's been found to be quite an effective means of spreading the word about meals and gathering people together.

The code has stuck now for like two and a half months and is used daily. There are several variations, L-12-VD -> Cafe 150, indicating that we will be going off the main campus to Cafe 150 for lunch, or L-12:45-VD -> Seville, to note that we will grab lunch to go and eat at a talk in Seville. There has been some attempts to change the code to make it more efficient, like removing "VD", as it is pretty much redundant since people always meet outside my cube, even when I'm not there :p. However, tradition is hard to break.

People don't really seem to understand this role that I play at Google and how much time it takes and how much negotiating there is.

One time I had as my status message:

"(On the phone) L-??? Adam is in charge, bug him"

I had like 7 chat windows open and there was a period of half an hour where I couldn't do any work.
  -- Adam after I put him in charge of organizing lunch one time

It's not always that bad, but we were going off the main campus for lunch that time (to one of the 4 cafeterias outside the main 3), so more organizing was required.

I like to think that all my peons have a say in when meals are in our GDemocracy, but sometimes a hard stance has to be taken, resulting in me being the GDictator, which I think is a term coined by the dissenting citizen, Mike Perrow. (I am trying to make it so that when you google "Mike Perrow", you get to that picture :))

It's been more difficult recently to organize everyone b/c several people have moved off the main campus across the street to a new building, plus Mark left, a key member of the original crowd. Today was probably the last of the "classic lunches" as this is my last week and people are leaving tomorrow for weddings and conferences. We even got Heidi out one last time.

D-6:30-VD

The universal language of volleyball

When I tell people that I'm going to go play volleyball and they ask "with who" and I say "I donno, I'm just going to play", they give me this funny look. I guess they aren't familiar with drop-in / pick-up / open gym volleyball. It's where a gym is free to anyone that wants to play and people go there and play volleyball. Usually you have to pay a bit to play, like $3 - $7 usually, and then you play for like 2 - 4 hours.

I like going to random open gyms b/c you get to play with a lot of different people and meet new people. It's not however, generally recommended unless you're at a certain skill level. You can generally tell very quickly (like literally 30 seconds) if someone can play or not. There are many different things you have to do in volleyball and none of them are natural. If you haven't been coached before, it's very obvious. Generally, with good pick-up volleyball, there is little tolerance for bad players. If you don't know how to play, you won't get any sets and you'll get shunned. Call them asses, elitists, snobs, or whatever, but volleyball is very much a team sport and one weak link can ruin it for the other 11 players. You have to play at your skill level. Different pick-up volleyball has different skill levels, play at the appropriate level. You don't invite an illiterate person to a literary book club.

The cool thing I realized Sunday when I played at City Beach again, was the universal language of volleyball. I go on the court, I don't say a word, and I just start hitting in the hitting line (toss the ball to the setter, he/she sets, you spike it over the net). With complete strangers. Actions speak louder than words.

Then, when we're actually playing, a random group of 6 people go on the court on each side and people just know how to play. The defence sets up the same as anywhere else I've played, setters set, hitters hit, blockers block. It's pretty amazing. Complete strangers, yet everything flows automatically.

I remember playing with Irina back in Seattle last year at the Pro Club and it was the same with her. Even though she was from Germany, she knew exactly where to go, what to do, and no one had to tell her what to do or where to go, she just did it. Pretty amazing. I would love to just go to a random place, like in Europe, South America, or Asia, go on the court, and just play with complete strangers. There'd probably be a little bit of adjusting in positions, but I bet that even without saying anything, I could just blend in. That'd be awesome.

I went to the Campbell Community Center yesterday. Saw some familiar faces from the Sunnyvale clinic and City Beach (volleyball is a small community). It wasn't so good though. I got bored. There was one exciting moment though. The middle court was playing 2's (I would have played if I had a partner) and then all of a sudden, one of the guys starts yelling and picks up a chair and egging another guy to have a fight. People broke it up and the guy left, but not without a lot of shouting and profanity. I have no idea what instigated this and I have NEVER seen anything even remotely like that before. People generally have quite good sportsmanship in volleyball. This guy was like totally a basketball player converted into a volleyball player from the way he dressed.