Rien.

Surprisingly busy, though not many things due. Now its just life in general to deal with.
That doesn't make much sense. I'm not even going to bother. Because I'm not sure I understand myself. And now I make no sense. Poor nonsensical grammar fills the screen.

An old man (with an earing!!!) sat beside me on the bus today. He reeked of cigarette smoke. I noticed he was doing a sudoku puzzle. I didn't care. You know why? Because I did one yesterday! And it took me 16 minutes! Ho ho ho haaaa! Isn't it beautiful? Yeah yeah I know...."Very Easy"....shut up.......I'm going to go cry now. Boo hoo!

Sinking ferry and Suicide seeds

I had a 10 page (le double epacé) paper due Tuesday. Today being Wednesday, it means I’ve finished the essay, and it’s out of the way (though I only had about 6.5 pages… ahahahee hehe…eh..hehe ..heeee... [continues nervous laughing]). Now I have a 4 pager for Friday. Should be oodles of joy!

This morning, soon after waking up, I’d heard the news that a BC Ferry had sunk. Wow. My jaw dropped. I’m still a little floored by this. I was on a BC Ferry a month ago and while boarding, I remember walking around the inner deck (whatever its called) and I saw an employee doing a pre-trip preparation thingy by counting out life jackets at a muster station. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be funny if I went up to the guy and asked him to save me one, as a stupid tim-joke. You never think this kind of think will happen, and then BAM, Murphy’s Law kicks in for the Queen of the North ferry, today. Makes me take a step back to think.
Oh yeah, funny thing on the news (not “haha funny” but “interesting” funny), the reporter said something about luck saving all (except 2?) of the passengers safely. So much for Providence.

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In my POL 100 class, the TA likes to write words that relate to current events on the chalkboard that we have to guess/discuss in tutorial, and one of them yesterday was “suicide seeds.” Basically, they are genetically modified seeds that after being planted will die after one usage. So that when it’s harvest time, there’s no new seeds to get that can be used for the next planting season. That means the farmer has to go and buy new suicide seeds from a company, each time they’re done planting/harvesting. Something about this just screams evil. Why? For one thing, they’re genetically modified. Uh, not a good idea to try and upstage God. And another, the business in charge is trying to take away the livelihood of the farmer. There’s so many other negativities, I don’t know what else to say. Most of it has already been voiced somewhere. When I get time, I’m going to visit PercySchmeiser.com and read more about this.

Time for a sigh.
Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.
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I saw gas for 106.6¢/litre yesterday. Why’s it so high all of a sudden?!

Pretty meaningless post…handwashing? fortune cookie?

Still busy. Still working on the whole time management thing. La dee da.
You know, it’s funny, I was thinking a while ago, it feels like I’m getting more sleep now, as I’m in uni, than I did while in high school. I haven’t pulled many all-nighters (but I might pull a few next week, whoopee) but I remember staying up late to finish junk quite semi-frequently in HS. Maybe it’s because my classes start later too. Hmm.

Recently, I’ve had to visit the library (WAC Bennett of course........hahaha! whack Ben! o dear that wasn't funny at all) a number of times to do research and other boring etc etc. And while there, I usually check my email on a computer and try to start doing work. But whenever I’m done, I always feel so dirty…so contaminated. The library computers are used by who-knows-how-many people each day and I try not to imagine what people have or haven’t touched, prior to coming to the library. I almost feel renewed after I wash my hands, getting rid of that sticky, oily, grimy feeling from my palms and fingers.
And you know what? I’m grateful for public bathrooms with free cleaning soap agents.
And hot water.
And an apparatus to dry your hands with.
So fresh and clean!

Before I end this pretty meaningless post, just for fun, I was at an average Chinese restaurant a few weeks ago, and we all got a fortune cookie at the end of the meal. And wow, aren’t I special, I found FOUR “fortunes” in mine. Below is the pic of what I found in my cookie. The last one made me laugh. Ha, if that were true…I’d probably be acing 254. Stupid accounting….grrr.

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This Just In: the Terriblelands is ranked first on Google for "squirrel fishing video" and "Squirrel fishing videos" heeheeeheee.
Edit: April 11, 2006 - no longer have this ranking. boo.

Busy busy busy and Tag Four Clap

So I’ve been busy the past few weeks and will be busier in the coming weeks, probably until about the end of the month. Also, especially recently I haven’t been using my time efficiently and so I’ve got to work on that. I’m very easily distracted. And I have trouble concentrating when I study. Sigh.

Snowed a bit yesterday, and more today (melted already…snow/rain on and off) and more tommorow maybe.
Appparently I was tagged by Jesslyn and Bernice quite a while ago. So here’s my reponse (as if anyone cares)
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TAG FOUR
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Four jobs I’ve ever had in my life:
-general labourer for school/church/family etc
-stalker. I mean stocker.
-tutor (pffff)
-couch potato

Four movies I can watch over and over:
-I like to watch movies
-a lot
-but not over and over
-cause then I’d get bored of it

Four TV shows I love to watch:
-Amazing Race
-Everybody Loves Raymond (grrr, no more NowTV)
-King of Queens
-Seinfeld
-I like to watch a lot of TV too
-so I’ll stop here

Four places I have lived:
-Canada (various places)
-that’s it

Four places I have been on vacation:
-Malaysia
-Australia
-America
-Canada

Four websites I visit daily:
- mail.yahoo.ca
- cockeyed.com
- bigwhiteguy.com
- sitemeter.com
- google.ca

Four of my favourite foods:
- I like food
- right now, I like donair.
- I crave a big smokey with relish
- I like more food

Four places I would rather be right now:
-various roller coasters
-comfy bed with pillows
-the Motherland (aka China)
-Heaven

Four people I am tagging:
- Ray Romano
- Sinbad
- Dat Phan
- Russel Peters

You’ve probably noticed a bunch of those categories have either more than 4 or less than 4 things. Fohgeevuhness pulease.

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Seemed like gas was relatively “stable” 3 weeks ago. I noticed that it didn’t go higher than 94, and it didn’t get less than 89. Then I saw 88.4¢/litre on March 2. And today I saw 99 point something ¢.

Over the 49th parallel

So as previously mentioned, I've been busy, but it was a good busy, spending time with famille. Over the weekend, me and some famille visited some other famille over in Washington because one member of the famille (from Kangarooland) hadn't seen the other famille in ages.

Some stuff done in pictures:

We got to stop at a Krispy Kreme.

And visited Pike Place Market (Pah-blek Mah-ket, hehehe)

Read the sign to the left.



I saw a rainbow by the Space Needle.

Didn't go up it though.



We saw the Pacific North West's "Mt. Fuji."

No, it's Mount Rainier. Pretty. Grouse looks like...um...how they say in the olden days.... a dunghill in comparison with this mountain.

And possibly one of the most beautiful parts of the trip - visiting the Walmart Supercenter in Marysville. Wow, I get goosebumps thinking about it, a SUPERCENTER! It was huge! Pringles for $1! A dozen eggs for 78¢! A "wind-resistant" superstrong umbrella that folds into a reasonable small size and feels like a small club for $9.97 (can't wait to try it out)!!!

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain;

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood,

From sea to shining sea.

[wiping happy tears off face, with a gigantic smile]....the Supercenter....wow........[sniffle sniff, grinning] 8^D

Post-reading break, not a real post

Reading break was the past Monday and Tuesday (Feb 20-21) and I guess I should have done more reading. Heeheeeheeeee...I've been busy the past couple days, I'll post junk up in the future.

Meanwhile, here's something cool I camera-ed with on my watch today. See the picture to the left? This only happens once a year, every February the Twenty-Second, at 10:22pm. Well, at least I think it's cool. 8^p pbbbbbbbbbbbbb!

What's on my mind? Tim Hortons commercial

(go to this page to Watch the Commercial HERE) <-- EDIT August 19, 2008: this link is broken, but you can view it here on YouTube

The Tim Hortons commercial has been on my mind- the one that’s been playing on the CBC during the Olympics stuff. Here’s the basic summary/description of it, taken from here:

Lou, a Chinese immigrant, raises his son, Jimmy, to study and work hard. When Lou finds young Jimmy playing street hockey, he expresses his disapproval. Many years later, an elderly Lou enters a hockey arena with a tray of Tim Hortons coffee. He heads into the stands, and hands a coffee to Jimmy – who is an adult now. Jimmy seems surprised to see his father there. Lou explains that he has come to see his grandson Tommy (Jimmy’s son) play hockey. It is soon revealed that Lou used to secretly watch his son play at the same arena years ago, and that he always enjoyed a Tim Hortons coffee while he watched. Lou and Jimmy share a moment, as they each enjoy a delicious Tim Hortons coffee and proudly watch Tommy play.

First impressions: Wow Chinese-Canadians in a commercial! Wow, Chinese-Canadians in a national commercial! Wow, Chinese-Canadians in a commercial where they aren’t completely stereotyped!
Also, hey wait. The commercial's kinda cute and it’s going to give some people a nice warm happy feeling inside of them that makes them go, “Awww…”

But not me. At least not anymore. Gaaaah…it just bugs me (a little...maybe...) every time I see this because the old man’s dialogue is so forced as he speaks chopped up, broken English, when it’s very clear that he’s fluent!!! After living in Canada for so long, it’s obvious he would have gained a larger vocabulary (since his adult son speaks to him in English, not Chinese) and even the “old” him in the flashback has him speaking a semi-decent grammatical English sentence!!! But yet, as he talks to his son as he watches his grandson play, he says things like, “I come watch” and “You right-wing.”

[Tim bangs forehead on table] Am I the only one who sees this?
Yeah yeah, I know. It’s just a commercial. No biggie, there’s more important stuff in the world happening now. If there’s one thing positive to say about the commercial though, it’s nice to see they capture the grumpy-old-man aspect as he says without a smile, at the end, “Gimme my picture back.”

I did a search on Blogger’s blog search thingymajigbob-eroonee (sort it by date, and the earliest post that talks about this should be around February 10, 2006), just out of curiosity to see what other people are saying. Mostly females are writing about how they feel about this commercial and how it brings tears to their eyes and etc etc diddly-squat (I should have known).
Congratulations to the marketing department who thought of this commercial. No congratulations to the script writers for the cheesy old man’s lines and the old man for speaking bad English on purpose.

And for the sake of pointing my finger and criticizing (just because I can): This person thought (but used to think) its a a commercial about an "Asian-American" family, and this person thinks the people are Japanese. Ha.

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While walking home yesterday, I saw something dart to the right of me onto someone’s driveway, and I thought it was cat. And so I looked, and there was a raccoon, sitting, staring back at me. We stared at each other (haven't seen one in years), and I started to talk to it and it stared at me some more, as if it didn’t know what I was saying. And then it started to walk away, and when I pretended to follow it for a few steps, it just looked at me and kept walking away, not scared at all. Cute little thing. I wished I had my camera.

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Cheapest gas I saw today was 88.7¢/litre.

Random Thoughts-FunRunSiteTrendPeopleWatch

Bad grammar throughout this whole entry. Sorry for headache caused by my bad reading, disconnected thoughts all over.

Wow middle of week 6 in semester already. Don’t feel like it though. Olympics been very calming for the nerves to watch whenever I flick on TV. Anyone notice the TV-crazed athletes in the “mosh-pit” of the Opening Ceremonies? Waving and jumping around whenever the camera pointed near them? While the important Olympic officials/presidents/whatever tried to say elegant speech stuff? Funny stuff. Men’s hockey at 4am. Groan. Time Zones.

Know what’s fun? Running from Skytrain to the Seabus, hoping you catch it before it leaves otherwise stuck waiting for 30 minutes for the next Seabus. I call it the FunRun. Panicky and motivating to see big red digital countdown clock tick down (see picture), under a minute while racing up and down the escalators to hopefully catch sailing and not get stuck. Phew. Unless you’ve done it before, you won’t understand very well. It’s very gratifying and semi-humbling experience when you able to make it, or not.

Some website trends on Lands of Terribleness. Students at Canadian universities (eg. U of Manitoba/ Waterloo/ Western Ontario/ Nipissing/ York/ Laurentian/ Dalhousie tend to google and find my site via searches relating to this post. Whereas students at USA’n universities (eg. Michigan State/ Stanford/ CAL U of Pennsylvania/ Ohio Northern/ Minnesota) tend to google and find my site via searches relating to this. Funny to see, the interests of students divided by 49th parallel.

On more serious note, its strange how you can notice people and know they exist, but they have no clue you exist. While on bus I saw a young guy again, who I've noticed before a few times. Pale, lanky, crew cut, looks like 15 years old, always dressed in very dirty construction looking yard clothes, always wears a hat that’s too big, and head looks to be too small for the body. Doesn’t make loud noises/talk/draw attention to self, just sits quietly like a good bus passenger. Very strange to me. I wonder how come he’s riding the bus, not in school, why dressed like that, what will he do next. Can’t help but wonder. Some people look out of place, not look like the rest of the “normal” society, and just happen to notice them. People watching. You do it too, admit it. Big place world is. Many people. Wandering around. Yep.

WorldnewsAdVanpicOlympiccount

Read this article first. It’s from today’s 24 Hours free daily paper (and they got it from Reuters).

Now assuming you’ve read it, wow hmm? That’s pretty harsh stuff. And sad as well. All that misdirected anger. I saw a part of the evening news tonight and it showed some clips of the Danish Prime Minister apologizing(?) and appealing for peace around the world, as well as Christians(?) and Muslims in Denmark having some sort of peace march together to show that there’s reconciliation. It doesn’t look very good for the peaceful Muslims around the world, as other fundamentalist radical Muslims are gaining bad “publicity” (for lack of a better word) with all the violent protesting and burning down of embassies and such. It’s probably only a very minuscule percentage of Muslims that are doing all the super-uber-extremist stuff too, but their badness is reflected onto the others. I sense ignorance and hostile problems to come forth. Sigh. I don’t completely know all the facts about this situation, but this is something I’m definitely going to follow for awhile in the news as this is BIG.
(‘?’ means I’m unsure of the info I’ve posted)
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I think this is one of the best Superbowl ads for this year, just because the character punts a small animal at the end. Hohohooo! (Did Federal Express officially change its name to FedEx? Looks like it.)

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Some lousy sour tasting eye candy (par Moi) of the Vancouver City skyline. Didn’t turn out as I wanted. The nightshot part is extremely fuzzy. But it’s pleasant to look at from afar for a few moments. Copyrighted to me.

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Note to self (and others of interest): the XX Olympic Winter Games of 2006 is 3 days away (I believe the Opening Ceremony is at 10am this Friday. Poop. I’ll be in class). Apparently 1/3 of the world’s population will be watching. Narf! Four years has been so long…

Hair memory

I think it was yesterday while I waiting for the bus when I thought of this (yup, my memory is that bad sometimes), and I’m not really sure why it popped into my head, but it’s a funny memory so I thought I’d share it since nothing else exciting is happening with me currently.

I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Disneyworld in Florida, and I remember while in line for the Snow White and 7 Dwarves ride (it’s a stuuupid ride, don’t waste your time if you go) a black family behind us started to pet me. I think one of the parents stroked my head, and then one by one, a few of the other family members started to stroke my head as well. I think they were fascinated by my smooth straight hair, because they all had curly hair. I was about 7, still extremely shy, clingy to my parents, and when they started to pet me, I semi-freaked out and tried to press myself into my parents to get away from the black people’s hands.

Why are these people trying to touch me?! [whimper whimper] It’s not too vivid in my mind what happened after, but I think my parents were laughing at me and then my Mom started to talk about hair with the other family or something like that.

It’s funny to me today (it was scary then!), because if this were to happen nowadays in a similar crowded, public place, the reaction I’m guessing would probably be more negative and more defensive. I’m pretty sure that touching other people’s kids wouldn’t be as “accepting”. Interesting to see how times have changed.
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Check out this intelligence test (from Mensa?) if you feel like wasting time. I got 15 (see pic to left) before I gave up. That means I’m “intelligent.” I’m content with that. Answers are here.

And, I added a new banner/header/title thingy. Looks good if I do say so myself.
And I'm no longer ranked number one on Google for "stupidnes." Bummer.

Boring Post about Gas Prices

Gas was 89.9¢/litre today, while it was around 93 a few days ago. I also saw 87.4 (or something like that) too, but that was because it was a small gas station, and it subtracted 3.5¢ already from its face price, instead of having that dumb gimmick (that all the big large chain gas stations) with a sign saying it will subtract 3.5¢ when you get to the pump. That was really bad english.

How exciting my life is, that I talk about the price of gasoline all the time. Whoopee.

If you need a laugh, read these (have I posted about this before? I can’t remember…). They’re the funniest ratings/comments given on ratemyprofessors.com. They are veddy veddy funny. Funnier than squirting ketchup into your parent’s mouths when they sleep (I never did those things, I’m a good boy.)

Everyone Has a Story...

www.everyonehasastory.ca

What's your story?

Google Conspiracy Theory

I’m in a pretty good mood. Just had a quiz (labeling the provinces/cities of China, Korea, and Japan) and we had to know 66 items on them, but were only tested on 20 of them. I felt like I had enough time and since I studied all 66…I didn’t want that studying to go to waste….so I labeled everything (that I could remember), not just the 20. Pretty geeeeky I know.

Cheese is great. Melted cheese is better. I don’t know how cheese came to be, but I know that it’s beautiful. There are many encyclopedia articles written about it, maybe even books about cheese in the library. There’s probably a very concise article at Wikipedia, which I’ll probably read later to satisfy my curiosity. What I like about cheese, is that they’re like humans, in that there are different races or ethnicities of cheeses which adds diversity to make life interesting. Like processed, limburger, swiss, cheddar, feta, the kind with the red wax on it, and my current liking mozzarella. A few crackers (salted) or if you’re feeling fancy, tortilla chips, a few pieces of cheese on top, a few seconds in the microwave (o, microwave, how I am grateful to thee) and BAM instant eating temporary pleasure.

I like Google a lot. I use it exclusively when I search stuff just because it’s so easy, like when you want to find a specific site with the phrase…say, “kumquat recipes,” and poof, only the site with that exact phrase will come up. I think you’d agree. And so would possibly hundreds of millions of people too as there’s a Google site registered for almost every country out there, (Google Estonia, Google Malawi , Google Bolivia and the new Google China to name a few). And they have beaucoup des services and it seems like they’re always expanding into some new territory. I can’t remember it exactly, but I remember hearing that Google made a suggestion they would consider to venture into a market and a company already functioning in that market lost points on it’s stock, just because Google was considering to do something. Amazing.

So here’s my conspiracy. Maybe they’re trying to take over the world. Peacefully at first and not harmful so far, but who knows what they’re capable of in the future? Maybe they’re the beast that’s talks about in Revelation (actually I have no idea what I’m talking about here as I haven’t studied that book o’ la Bible yet)? The tracking technology that’s available now is pretty sophisticated and with Google’s might, it can be scary thinking of what they’re capable of doing. Maybe we might get Google chips implanted in our forehands and hands (like the mark? Still, I have no idea what I’m talking about, so I should shut up about that). Ok, so all I’ve said seems pretty farfetched, but it is something to daydream about. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to Google in the fact that their services are so useful, (as my site is powered by Blogger) and their business (or any category) ingenuity is something to learn from. Sigh. Whoah, I had a thought, imagine if there was a Google Cheese? Mmmmmm.
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I saw gas for 93.2 and then 90.2 ¢/litre yesterday. It's been in the high 97+/- for a while now. And I saw 89.9 today. lovely.