Tom Cruise Clairvoyance

This happened on Saturday, but I just remembered that I wanted to write about it now....

Anyways, while vacuuming I was thinking about how my mom likes to offer slippers to visitors to our house. Personally, I like to go barefoot (I like to feel carpet underneath my toes) and I sometimes think offering slippers to guests is unnecessary. I think it's because in Malaysia when my parents were growing up (and even now) most people wear slippers in the house because somehow the floors get really dirty there. I can attest that even in my grandparent's home to this day, there's always an abundance of slippers to wear and the floor did feel dirty when I walked barefoot on them.

But that's not the point of this post I'm writing about.

As I continued to vacuum, my train of thought somehow wandered to the scene in The Last Samurai where Tom Cruise tracks mud and dirt all over the nice hardwood floor of the Japanese widow's home. And then I remembered how he later learns to take his shoes off before coming into the house. And then I thought about the scene where the youngest son starts making faces at Tom Cruise during dinner. I love that scene because its so cute, and feels real.

I dare you to sip water as you watch this:



If I ever meet Tom Cruise, I think I'd like to try this, or better yet, that's how I'll thank my prospective employer when I go in for my next job interview.

Anyways fast forward a few hours later when I'm flipping channels on TV and what's playing on CBC? Yes, its The Last Samurai. Am I clairvoyant? Definitely not, because I didn't predict it to be playing on TV, I just happened to think about it.

But just in case, I'm going to try and think about foot-long hotdogs with all the trimmings, and crunchy Cheetos all day tomorrow. But according to the my logic, that would mean I would only be seeing these things on TV...

Hmm, I'm going to have to think this through more carefully. But I do like junk food!

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Saw gas today for 114.9¢/litre

Pointless Post #48

Haven't wrote anything in a while. Because I'm lazy.

Here's a very small snippet of what my life has consisted of in the past few weeks/months, in no particular order:

-Battlefield 2
-the Vancouver Canucks (and other Playoff hockey)
-Sriracha sauce
-the Duggars from Arkansas
-going crazy thinking that something is wrong with my computer, only to find out that it's Microsoft's stupid software that can't handle a semicolon (";") in a password (and just to add, if SQL Server Express were a person, I'd kick it in the groin)

That last one really drove me nuts. Sigh.

If I had a nickel for every time I went out and realized the zipper was not zipped up on my pants from when I was a little kid until now, I'd probably have about $1.

Here's a new Tim-video on my YouTube channel, starring Tim. If it seems familiar, it's because you have a good memory and saw a picture of it here, way back from Pointless Post #31.



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What are Pointless Posts?

CGA Recruit Process

It has been a relatively time consuming process, but I got an email saying my CGA application has been accepted and I'm now officially a CGA Recruit!

I'm one step closer to getting my accounting designation and becoming a Certified General Accountant!

YEAH!

Pointless Post #47

It was such a warm and beautiful day, I thought to myself, as I knelt down to pick up a warm, steaming pile of Lance's feces off the sidewalk.

Today was the eve before spring.

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What are Pointless Posts?

Spider-Man at the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion

As seen here:



Standing in line. The lineup to see and touch the Olympic medals is just ridiculous, and to wait in that line is also potentially ridiculous, depending on your priorities.



Royal Canadian bling (there's a loonie in his hand).



In a digital photo booth.

These should be the last Spider-Man pictures in a while. *shrugs*

the Terriblelands update - NEW feed, NEW "host"

Relatively important news (relative to me anyways)!

Do not check http://www.sfu.ca/~toh anymore!
It is no longer being updated!
It's been moved to http://www.theTerriblelands.com.

I've been publishing the Terriblelands using Blogger via FTP onto my SFU file space since I've started this site in 2005. Blogger won't be supporting FTP publishing very soon (by the end of this month) because of costs and resources and so while mucking around with my Blogger settings a few days ago, I clicked on something that I can't undo, so now my stuff no longer gets published onto "http://www.sfu.ca/~toh."

Everything now gets hosted at http://theterriblelands.blogspot.com (or now that I've paid for it, www.theterriblelands.com, which will redirect you to the blogspot address anyways). Its actually more convenient this way.

Also, the new RSS feed to subscribe to is:
http://theterriblelands.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Please delete the old feed if you used it.

For now, all my old pages (on my SFU file space) will remain up, but I plan to move all that stuff someday anyways, especially all the things categorized under "the Terriblelands Annoying Frame Menu". Expect many broken links in the future.

Please do not panic. Please return to your seats in a calm and orderly manner. That is all.

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Saw gas for around 113¢/litre. Hasn't been that high of an average since the past summer.

Pointless Post #46 - more Spider-Man, at Sochi House

More Spider-Man pictures:








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What are Pointless Posts?

Pointless Post #45 - avec Spider-Man pendant the Olympics

Here's two new Spider-Man pictures:


Spot him and win a prize!
(The prize will be you win at life)



I'm sitting on a ledge!

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What are Pointless Posts?

Back to "normal" life (post-Olympics)

I'm almost sick of the word "olympics." The keyword there is "almost" because I consider the fact that I got paid to do very close to nothing (which makes me feel good and bad at the same time) because of the Olympics. On the bright side, because "working" at the Olympics was so uneventful, I was able to learn how to solve a 3x3 Rubik's cube (done during "work")! I've only memorized the algorithms though, so it's not like I can analyze a cube and figure it out in a few steps. I have to do it step by step, according to Leyan Lo's beginner's guide. Basically, if I mess up one turn on the last step and something is out of place, I usually can't fix it, and I'll have to start again. So far my best time is 1:47 though. Thank you Leyan, for making it possible for slow people like me, to be able to appear to be smart.

I'm personally quite happy that the Olympics are over. No more crowded public transit. No more drunk people butchering the Canadian anthem as they scream it at the top of their lungs. No more woo-ing (eg. people screaming WOOOO!) in the streets for no apparent reason (with subsequent "echos" by other people down the street). No more lineups for silly things such as disappointing pavilions (I'm looking at you, Canada House, even though I didn't even bother to visit you!). No more of a lot of things. It was very nice for a time, but that good thing needed a good ending, which it did. Nothing and no one was blown up. God was merciful to Vancouver.

Also no more VANOC cookies (at least for now). I'm glad someone else wrote a post about them before I did. There's a picture in that link, and that's what they looked like. I averaged about 6 per day, with a grand total of 108 cookies. They're pretty good. The only disturbing part is that the cookies are all individually packaged, and they didn't have an expiry date on them. With all the additives/ingredients listed on the wrapper, I was slightly wary... but hey free cookies! Everything is A-OK!

I registered a domain name today: http://www.theterriblelands.com

I slightly regret doing it it, because now that life is back to "normal" it also means I'm unemployed again. Oh well.
Two weird searches have lead people to my site recently which are worth sharing:

"how to graph geraniums"
AND
"is 2 bowls of multigrain cheerios too much?"

Not random at all! I'll post more Spider-Man pictures soon.

Pointless Post #44

I almost can't believe it, but the last time I posted a Spider-Man picture was in December 2008! That's a long time ago. I had already planned to do this, but thanks to Jill's spurring on, it made me do it faster. So far, the fences are still up around it but apparently "engineers" are working on a solution to be able to get people to be able to get closer to the fire. I know this because a Montreal cop told me this as she laughed at me taking these pictures.







I at first wanted to have Spider-Man waving a Canadian flag, but seeing as how I didn't have any small ones, I made him hold a skewer of mini marshmallows, yeah!

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What are Pointless Posts?

Pointless Post #43 - Olympic Cauldron Edition

Here's an obligatory, stand-in-front-of-a-famous-landmark-like-a-tourist picture. I believe this was the most popular conservative Chinese person pose of the 20th Century if my made-up facts are not mistaken.

What should I do/how should I pose the next time I'm near it?

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What are Pointless Posts?

Vancouver Olympics, Day 1 - Cauldron up close

Day 1 was yesterday, but as I've previously mentioned, its sort of unbelievable the Olympics is finally here. After seven years of speculation and hesitation, we'll just continue to speculate and hesitate how it will unfold. And we may as well enjoy it, when possible.

I nearly cried a few times yesterday, once out of sadness and once out of joy. Within the past few years, my tear ducts seem to be easily triggered, but I always manage to keep it in at the last second (I don't mind crying, but I try not to because its messy). I woke up in the late afternoon yesterday and while checking my email, I read about Nodar Kumaritashvili's death. It saddened me, but like most bad news, I sort of brushed it off. While flipping through channels on TV, all of a sudden I saw the video of the crash and I cried out in shock. I pray that God can turn this tragedy into something good somehow.

The opening ceremonies was beautiful overall, with the First Nations welcome and representation from across Canada and Parade of Nations the best part. I lost interest after that because it got too slow. Long story short, I almost cried during the parts where Canada was represented. Again, in the past few years, I've gained a greater appreciation for this country, one nation under God, where He has dominion from sea to sea (to sea). If Canadians realized what they were praying when they sing "...God keep our land glorious and free..." during our national anthem, who knows what wonderful things God could unleash on this nation to use to bless the world with.

At work, anything Olympic related seems to be a popular topic of choice to talk about (that was sarcasm) and some coworkers have theorized that the majority of Vancouver has come around into embracing the Olympics because of the torch relay that went into so many communities. I literally only had to walk outside my home for 30 seconds before I was on the torch route. It seems to have been a good way to capture everyone's interest. Somewhat ironically, the cauldron that is now lit outdoors which was lit by the flame in the torch relay (presumably) is inaccessible to the general public, because if you were to go down there now, unless you have proper accreditation, there is a rather large fence that separates you from the flames (although you can still see it). My YouTube description will end this post:

This is the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Cauldron up close, in the middle of the Jack Poole Plaza (I think that's what this open space is called). This video was taken on February 13, 2010, around 5am. Just out of site are some police officers who guard the flames, probably chuckling at me because I look like a tourist (and I did). Unfortunately, it looks like the fencing around this plaza won't be taken down for security reasons since it's right next door to the Main Media Centre Venue (this plaza is connected to the International Broadcast Centre, aka the new Vancouver Convention Centre) so hopefully this video will suffice for now until it opens up to the general public. You can hear the gas burning and feel the warmth if you stand close enough. Its pretty windy as it's basically on the waterfront. If I get the chance, I'll try and bring some hot dogs to roast over it the next time I'm there.

A bunch of Olympic related stuff (work and play)

I've had four full shifts so far at the Main Media Centre venue. Not many guests have arrived yet so not much was done this week. It was pretty quiet. On the plus side, I've been trying to make use of these slow times to pray. I had a very good prayer time one night. If my prayer life was plotted on a graph, you would have seen a huge surge in activity at the point "Friday, 2am." A good way to make a true Christian feel guilty is to ask them how their prayer life is.

On the negative side (or is minus side the opposite of plus side?), almost all other Olympic venue workforce (other Event Staff, Games Security Screeners ("security?"), and police) have been celebrating the Olympics the same way I've been by planning to also, by eating as many cookies as possible. I speculate there must be a correlation between the amount of cookies we eat and the amount of work we have to do (and also not to mention the fact that we were promised cookies during our shifts). Truthfully, the cookies aren't actually that tasty. It just helps to eat something.

I pity some of the police from across Canada that have been brought in here to work the Olympic venues. Some of the cops I've talked to have shifts over 12 hours long, in a single location (ie. blocking off a tiny street with a barricade), only at one particular venue. Whoopee. They also have to be away from their families for 5 weeks.

Ok, so for something unrelated to my job, I happened to be walking along Thurlow street (the newest part, closest to the waterfront) and I saw what resembled huge helium tanks (but not quite... maybe it's natural gas?) being delivered behind some covered gates next to the International Broadcast Centre (the new Vancouver Convention Centre building). Inside those gates is a huge thing covered in white plastic so it just looks like a big white cube. Global BC news speculated a few weeks ago that's where the Olympic flame will be on display during the games, so that makes sense if it's true. And if it is true, I'll try to take a picture of it.

I can't remember what other stuff I wanted to say and I want to end quickly because I haven't killed zombies for a few days now, so if you are looking for optimistic news/insight/fun related to the Olympics, check out:

http://2010vanfan.ca <-- a super-optimistic and informative fan blog http://www.citycaucus.com/2010free <-- free stuff happening during the Olympics