Exam goodness

Egads! I had my final exam (in international studies) yesterday and I forgot to mention possibly the funniest exam story EVER in my entire academic career!

So the professor managed to arrive 5 minutes before the exam began. He started handing out the exam papers and booklets. First off, he didn't hand out enough papers so my row didn't get any exams. No problem, hand goes up, I get a paper, life is good.

I begin to read said paper. Dear god! It's talking about pollution in a factory in Ontario. I'm totally freaking out - I can't think of anything this has to do with International Studies! I then tried to peek at the girl's paper beside then I realized her exam sheet and mine don't look alike. I raised my hand and when the prof approached, I asked him if I had the right exam.

He starts giggling hysterically and snatches it out of my hand. Apparently he had given me the exam for his Business Ethics class. Oh my god - I had never been so terrified in my life! LOL And apparently the girl beside me only received half the exam paper instead of the entire thing.

Anyways, after the exam, I ended up going to the mall, bought a random book (from the romance section!), came home and FLAKED OUT. It was amazingly wonderful. (The flaking, not the book.) Later that night, after Tao had written his own final exam, we ended up going out for a couple of drinks at Caesar Martini's. That's a pretty swank place. I liked it a lot! And then today, he and I went for dim sum at Cameron's Seafood Restaurant. I am now so full that I feel like bursting!

Complete!

Yeah baby! I'm done exams, I've got a place to live next term, and my prof has apparently just tossed my reference letter into the mail! Life is GOOD!

Axl Rose you are not

Dear Bryan,

I'm pretty sure you're aware that blasting your music past midnight is a no-no. It's very distracting. What's even more distracting is you singing along to the music. Your musical talent is disgustingly lacking and your voice sounds like a 3 year old with a cold.

Regards, your upstairs housemate,
Maureen

Mmm. 3am McDonald's.

A big thanks goes out to Victoria for inviting me out last night. She rounded up a bunch of her friends and we all went to Revolution for a night of dancing. Even nicer - she (well, her friend at least) got 3 of us in there for free on the guest list. Woot.

The night was fun. I had a good time hanging with the girls - with the exception of Victoria, I only knew one other girl, and I had only met her a few days ago at my Canadian government exam. I have to admit though, I'm not a huge fan of Revolution. I like people watching there, but otherwise the music kind of bites. The people were for the most part in a great mood and were really funny. There were two fights though. We ended up leaving the club at around 2:45am. I think that's the latest I've been up in a few months!

So what do 6 hyped up girls do at 3 in the morning? Go to McDonald's of course! LOL - trying to get our ordering done was a task in itself. But the time we got to the ordering speaker thingie, Victoria was laughing so hard she couldn't speak, so Venus had to take over. Even then it was a painful process. Venus apologized to the guy through the speaker, "Sorry, we're a little crazy in here" and we got the reply, "Yeah, it sounds like it."

With 6 of us illegally smushed into a 5 person car, we needed to find some place to eat our food. (Only the drive thru was open, not the restaurant part itself.) While arguing over where to go eat, two of the girls had to go to the washroom so we stopped at a Tim Horton's. We began arguing over whether we could eat our McDonald's in the Tim Horton's... Well, apparently the two girls who went to use the washroom asked the staff there if we could do it... Then next thing I know, we're eating McDonald's take out, in a Tim Horton's at 3am. Too funny.

My feet have the plague!

Ewww. Stacy and I went to look at an apartment yesterday. There were two apartments - one upstairs and one downstairs. Ewww. I don't think they've cleaned either at all since September.

There were dustbunnies lining the upstairs hall that threatened to swallow me whole. And I'm pretty sure that when I ventured into the downstairs bathroom, the toilet tried to reach out and grab me. Seriously! There was MOLD growing in it. MOLD! Not just dirt... Actual mold. It was revolting.

Stacy and I ended up fleeing upstairs ahead of the landlady. I laughed because we were both scraping the crap off our feet before putting on our shoes.

On the plus side, when we mentioned our err, disgust, with the common areas, the landlady agreed and mentioned maybe something could be worked out. Unfortunately I received an email from her husband today and all he's offering is a $50/month discount if one of us cleaned the common area, or $25/month off if both of us cleaned. This would be a sweet deal, but the apartments are already overpriced. And I don't want to be in charge of cleaning up after such pigs. Plus I saw a bong in the basement downstairs - that's not a smell I want to live with. :S

Oh happy day!

Today was my Canadian Government and Politics exam. I did terribly on it. Luckily, I wasn't the only one. I discussed the exam with a few of my friends, and eavesdropped on other students - we were all surprised by the exam. How so? Well, the midterm in that class was insanely hard - I've honestly never had such a difficult midterm (and a multiple-choice one at that) in my life. Therefore, we were all expecting something similar for the final.

Alas, twas not meant to be. Instead, the questions were ridiculously easy (list these, list those)... Unfortunately I hadn't really studied for that kind of test, or studied hard at all (see? I'm taking SOME responsibility for this). And then there was a final essay question. I don't think I've ever written an essay with absolutely no substance behind it. There were lots of pretty words, but no meaning to them. I actually read the essay question first, muttered, "Oh shit" out loud, then went back to the fill in the blanks questions.

I don't know if this exam was difficult in itself, or whether I've just been spoiled by all the other profs. Normally professors will focus on either the textbook, or their lecture notes for the content of their tests. This prof though expects us to know both (hence the stupid question regarding the Privy Council - it was mentioned in like, ONE paragraph in the entire 400 page textbook. How would I know to memorize that one small section???). While one part of me is like, "Yeah, it's fair of him to demand that," the other part of me is like, "This isn't like all the other classes I've ever taken?! What the hell?!" So there's pros and cons to his style... I just wish there had been more tests and whatnot, so we'd get a better feel for what he wanted in his essays, etc.

Anyways, I exited the exam feeling like shit because of the piss poor job I did on it. Then I remembered that I needed to pick up my marked paper for the same class. We had written this paper back in November and it was only returned today. I entered the classroom that the papers were in, grabbed mine, and left again because I didn't want the prof to see my reaction or talk to me when I looked at my paper.

Out in the hallway, I ignored any comments he had written on my paper (a book review), and skipped straight to the marking sheet. 95%. Eh? No. Something must be wrong. So I flip back through the paper trying to find comments. Nothing is written except for a request for an example at one of my arguments. I honestly could not believe that I got a 95% on my paper. I was so convinced that something was wrong, that I actually went back into the classroom and asked the professor to confirm that the mark was right. LOL. He assured me that it was and sent me on my merry way. I STILL can't believe it! This paper is worth 40% of my final grade! (Which is fantastic considering how poorly I did on the final exam.)

The most amusing thing about this paper is that I essentially wrote it the day it was due. And I was in one of those headspaces where I could only stare at my computer screen in dismay. I had NO idea what to write. I remember that I was so frustrated that I just began to type up random crap. I deliberately avoided discussing two whole chapters because I had no clue as to what the author was talking about in them.

So yay me! And, since I'm so damned pleased with myself, here's the essay I just talked about. (Minus its cover page and works cited page.)

♪ Why'd you have to go make things so complicated?♪

Jill - I totally stole those music notes from your blog. :) And the song title idea... Mwahahahaaa.

Anyways, regarding my laptop, I ended up calling HP and they sent me a box for my laptop so I could send it into them for servicing. Amusingly, they spelled my name wrong on the box. Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Maureen Darrow now.

That's not the point though. Nor is there really a point. I just felt like sharing this with you guys. Since I'm going back home soon, my parents and I figured it would be best if I just had my laptop shipped back to Owen Sound instead of Waterloo. At first I was just going to slap on a big sign to my laptop saying "When fixed, send this laptop to this address blah blah blah."

Luckily I figured I'd phone HP to make sure this wouldn't cause any problems. Gah. 20 minutes later (10 of which was spent listening to some terribly cheesy/funny hold music), and now they're sending me a new box with my old and new address on it yada yada yada. I think the guy also attempted to slap me on the wrist for the havoc I created on his "logistics team" but I couldn't understand him. Neener.

So it looks like I'll have the net for a few days more. This isn't good for my studying plans...

Must... Not... DESTROY!

Today is the closest I'll probably ever kill Bryan. Thank God - well, Bryan had better thank God, that Agnes woke me up before he did.

I was woken up by Agnes' moving around in the kitchen around 8:30. Less than 15 minutes after I dragged my butt out of bed, music starts BLASTING from downstairs. I can hear the lyrics, and feel the thump of the bass through the floor. How fucking rude do you have to be to play your music so loudly before 9am?!?!

A pleasant day indeed

Hoorah! I managed to guilt my mom and dad into coming to visit me this Saturday. ("I miss you guys!") Suckers. Little did they know, I did it all for free lunch and help with Christmas shopping. LOL. Just joking.

We had a terrific time together. My dad was dropped off at Chapters as usual. My mom felt guilty about leaving him there all day, but Melanie pointed out, "John? Bored by being at Chapters all day? Hell, he's probably so happy he's doing snow angels!" This was greatly amusing.

We girls ended up tromping down to Fairview Mall do try to get all of our shopping for the people living up North done. Since Mel had hurt her knee and was on crutches, mom and I got her a wheelchair for our shopping expedition. Wow! I think I need to go shopping with people in wheelchairs more often. I was pushing Mel around and we had people constantly leaping out of the way in the aisles. It was fantastic! This was espcially amazing since it's Christmas time and a Saturday - the mall was busier than normal and we still had great luck.

There were only two times when we had issues. Once, a couple of teenie-boppers accidentally hit Mel's leg causing her to yelp and her leg to spasm. You could tell the girls felt bad, but what could they do? The second time was my own fault. I wheeled Mel into the elevator and while I was trying to manoeuvre her inside it, I accidentally knocked her foot on the wall. Whoops. She forgave me though, so life was good.

Possibly the most shocking part of the day was dinner. My mom actually suggested we go to Cameron's Seafood Restaurant again! My mom did! My mom! Holy crap! I swear my jaw nearly hit the ground. Despite my surprise, I jumped on the chance. We met up with Scott at the restaurant and had another amazing meal. (My sibling wasn't too keen on the chinese brocoli though.) I had a great conversation with our waitress - I had ordered our rice in Cantonese (at my dad's badgering), only to find out our waitress spoke Mandarin. So we chatted for a few minutes. She was very impressed, and I was very pleased with her being impressed. :)

Afterwards my parents took me grocery shopping quickly and then we returned to my house. I had been excited to go back home, because Bryan had been gone the night before and I assumed he was gone all weekend. Alas, twas not meant to be. In fact, not only was he home, but his friend had moved in too. Damn. So now I'm crabbed out and keep catching myself deliberately finding reasons to be annoyed with them. Not that they've done anything (well, Bryan did blast his music for awhile, but that's nothing new). In fact, the house is a lot prettier now that the new guy had moved in. He's got all kinds of shiny cookware, garbage can, etc. I'm a little shocked - first of all, I can't believe Bryan has a friend who's so tidy, and secondly, how the hell can a student afford all this stuff? Dad? Never complain about moving me around ever again - this guy brought a huge TV, a couch, microwave, plates, etc, etc, etc. Egads!

Anyways, Agnes returned home and she brought me a gift! The recipe for her mom's apple cake! It's funny to read the recipe because it's translated from Polish, and her mom makes it from memory without measuring stuff. So when I read "1 cup of flour," she means 1 coffee mug of flour. :) (She even included that little explanation on the side of the recipe. LOL) I can't wait to try to make this baby! I seemed to be anxious to bake anything, because I ended up also baking a quick batch of shortbread cookies. They are very tasty.

Gnawing on rubber

Before I forget, I MUST recount this story.

I believe I mentioned it already, but to recap, I went to the dentist several weeks ago and found out that I've been grinding my teeth a lot in my sleep. The dentist suggested I get a mouthguard or retainer thingie to wear at night so I wouldn't damage my teeth anymore.

I finally ended up buying a mouthguard and accidentally melted it partially during the forming process. (One side is slightly lumpier than the other, but it serves its purpose despite its flaws.)

I ended up wearing the mouthguard that very night. When I woke up, I was like, "What the hell's in my mouth?" and proceeded to try to chomp it out whatever it was. That's when I clued into fact that it was my mouthguard... Yeah. Here I am, chewing on plastic at 8am in the morning. I was pretty amused by the situation.

Birthday Dinner

First of all, I must share with you a hilarious conversation that went on in my Canadian Government class today. :) We were discussing the pros and cons of the new Liberal leader. My class is 260 people, so the prof and student were having to yell over like 20 rows of chairs.

Prof: What are some of the pros and cons of Dion as a leader?
Student: He's a Frenchy!
Prof: You must be from Saskatchewan.
Student: No...
Prof: Oh, it sounded like you had a Saskatchewan accent.
Student: Actually I have a retainer.

We all burst out laughing and you could tell the prof was flabbergasted. It was hilarious. The girl actually got applause from the class for her quick reply. LOL

Anyways, it seems as though I may have killed my laptop's LCD monitor. Last night about one fifth of the screen decided to go slightly dim and nothing I've tried has rectified the situation. I'll try calling HP tomorrow and troubleshooting it with their IT support, but I've been asking for help on the HP forums and so far it seems as though the only solution is to send it in for servicing. Doh! I think this is a sign I shouldn't be playing games on it and should be studying instead. My parents will be pleased.

In other news, Saturday was mine, Agnes', and Rana's birthday bash. (Pictures can be found here.) It wasn't really much of a bash - all of Agnes' and my friends ended up bailing, so it was mainly Rana's friends. :) Oh well, we still had fun. We were supposed to go to Mongolian Grill for dinner, but there was a 40 minute wait, so we went to East Side Mario's instead. Afterwards we ventured over to Symposium for a couple of pre-clubbing drinks. I think I'm still partially blinded by all the photos that were taken! We ended up going to Revolution for dancing... That was my first time in Rev. I found it fun, but I wasn't too keen on most of the music. Overall I would describe the night as a success.

The name is Bond, James Bond.

I'm pleased with myself. I made homemade tea biscuits for the first time yesterday. Err, I guess I should say that I made the tea biscuits correctly for the first time. (The first time I tried making them, I accidentally used baking soda instead of baking powder... They were inedible.) I didn't know how much/little the dough would rise though, so my biscuits ended up being ridiculously tiny. (They look like little discs.) Oh well, now I know for next time.

I've had a pleasant few last days. Most of my classes are done now. I have two on Monday and then I'm done for the term. My final History seminar was especially fun. I was in charge of leading the discussion... Well, procrastination ended up striking and I didn't finish doing the readings for it till about an hour before the class began. :) We ended up having a good conversation though - we got on to a lot of tangents but that was good because it meant I didn't have to talk as much. :)

Yesterday Stacy and I went for some more apartment hunting. The one apartment seemed nice, but the roommates were totally not a good match for us. They were kind of ditzy and you could tell they'd party a lot. The second place was an absolute ghetto. I have low standards, but not THAT low! The first thing we saw upon walking into the apartment was a mountain of empty old pop cans (at least 100). Next! The final place we saw yesterday was really nice but too too expensive. Oh well.

Our plan had been to go see Casino Royale last night. Unfortunately the bus was about 15 minutes slow, so by the time we arrived at the theatre, the movie was sold out. We ended up bumming around the mall which was nice - neither of us get off campus as much as we should. I ended up phoning my pal Victoria and seeing if she wanted to come and see the 10 o'clock show with us. She agreed and then we went!

Casino Royale (the new James Bond flick) was so much better than I anticipated. I heard lots of good things about it, but I honestly did not expect it to be THAT good! There were NO gadgets in the movie, the dialogue was witty without wanting to roll your eyes, and the action sequences were (as one newspaper put it) "gritty!" Can you tell that I loved it?

I was especially amused by Victoria's reactions to the movie - she hadn't seen a James Bond movie before, and she has become a total convert to them. LOL. She was freaking out the entire time. But it was totally warranted. The film kicked ass!

Tonight's the "RAGNES Bash" - a bunch of us are headed out to Mongolian Grill for dinner and drinks to celebrate Agnes', Rana's, and my birthdays. (Our b-days were Nov 22, 29, and 24 respectively.) I intend to have a good time. :)

Prof quotes

I believe that I've mentioned that I adore my International Studies Prof. He's hilarious and swears a lot in class. This evening I wrote down some of the things he said to give you an idea.

Discussing the midterm results:
- "Two of you were tied for 94%. One of you should have gotten 95%, but I don't know what the FUCK you were thinking!"
- "In the definition questions, DO NOT USE 'etc.'!!! Don't fucking put it in a defintion question! Can you tell it bothers me???"
- During class, while he's coughing, "Gotta pop a pill. Not a good one unfortunately."
- Discussing a book by a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders, "Apparently all these NGO types fuck like bunnies."
- "When driving, don't you wish your car would shoot out missiles?" (I can't remember what we were talking about at this point... I think it had to do with world government.)
- Discussing having people join a united world government, "If they don't want to be a member, then fuck 'em!"

Papers = done!

Woot! I just finished the last of my papers! It was technically due this morning at 10:30 in class, but the prof hangs around the school until 10pm, so that's the real deadline. I should probably mention this paper was a book review... And that I finished the book this morning at 8:30am. And that I wrote the entire paper today.

It was harder writing about this book in comparison to my last one. This book was about global modern slavery whereas my last one was about genocide. My biggest problem with this current book is that it inspired no passion in me. I didn't have the sudden urge to get up and fight for the rights of slaves. The book I read on genocide though - that one actually made me cry and feel angry, etc. etc.

Anyways... Now I have to cram down a bunch of readings for my history seminar on Wednesday (err, the one that I'm leading), then I'll be finished for the term! YAY!

On to other news... I'm a HAG! I turned 23 years old on Friday! LOL. I actually don't care about my age - heck, I didn't even realize that I was going to be 23 until my mom mentioned it. I mean, I knew it was my birthday, but I never really associated myself with a new age.

To celebrate my birthday, my parents came down to Waterloo (actually they came down because my dad had an optometrist appointment, but I'm sure they would have come down on the weekend anyways). We had lunch and then I dragged my father off to a public seminar on Canada-Taiwan relations. The seminar wasn't what I was expecting - it was mainly a lot of statistics, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Afterwards, we met up with my mother and sibling. Melanie managed to tear something in her knee so that she has to wear a brace and hobble around on crutches. I accused her of trying to steal my birthday thunder. Tee hee.

Anyways, after a short argument, and an attempt by myself to strangle my mother with my scarf, we all went to Cameron's Seafood Restaurant in Kitchener. SO FREAKING DELICIOUS! They had REAL Hong Kong style BBQ Pork!!! I honestly nearly wept with happiness. It was so delicious! Mel, dad, and I shared a variety of dishes while mom kept to her bland-Canadian-style Chinese food. So sad. Amusingly, Mel badgered me into ordering a veggie dish... But to her dismay, it came with deep-fried tofu that I absolutely adore... But she did not. However, I also experienced some dismay in that the dish also came with chinese mushrooms and various other fungi. I'm not too into mold thanks very much.

The rest of my weekend passed relatively quietly. I spent all of Saturday doing laundry and procrastinating on my paper, and the procrastination continued on Sunday as well.

Anyways, I'm starving and am going to go die now. Bye!

University Life

Agnes just forwarded me one of those emails, "You know you've been in university for too long when..." and a couple of them really stood out and made me laugh. Here's my edit of the list...

1) You'd rather clean than study especially if an essay is due.
2) "Oh shit how did it get so late!" comes out of your mouth at least once a night.
3) Parents' cooking becomes something you desire, not avoid.
4) You schedule your classes around sleep habits and soap operas.
5) You live for getting mail.
6) Looking out the window is a form of entertainment. (Even more true when it's done at the Dana Porter Library.)
7) Rubbish cheap $1 shops are so cool.
8) The weekend lasts from Thursday to Monday.
9) Highlighters are the coolest things on earth.

And now for the "Before I came to University, I wish I had known" list (Mau's edit)
1) That it didn't matter how late my first lecture was, I'd still sleep through it.
2) That if you wear polyester everyone will ask why you are so dressed up.
3) That you can know everything and fail a test.
4) That you can know nothing and ace a test.
5) That Psychology is really Biology, that Biology is really Chemistry, that Chemistry is really Physics and that Physics is really Maths.

And here's the "Top 10 Reasons that University is like Elementary school"

10) You cry for your mother.
9) You cross the street without looking for cars.
8) Snack time is a necessity.
7) You bundle up for the outdoors without caring what you look like (because everyone else looks as stupid as you do).
6) You stay at home and play games with your friends.
5) You wear your backpack on both shoulders.
4) You wear big mittens.
3) Playing in the snow is a legitimate activity.
2) You take naps.
1) You look forward to cheese toasties.

There you have it. I found these to be pretty damned laughing (especially the one about looking out the window as a form of entertainment, and the dressing in polyester one.)

And, if you haven't guessed, this is merely one of my ways of procrasting on my historiographical paper. Now, back to work!

Proof that I should have been a Political Science major...

Oh my gosh. I'm so confused. Confused but happy. We FINALLY got our book reviews back in my World Politics class. (It's been over a month since we submitted them.) I got an 88%! Yay me!

I just wish I knew why my paper was marked so highly. I honestly honestly honestly thought I'd do really poorly. It was written during my "week from hell," and I distinctly remember freaking out when I realized that I had done the paper differently from how the prof wanted and trying to scramble madly to rewrite several pages. It came to the point where all I could think was, "Well, this will have to do. I can't give this paper any more time."

So there you go. I got a stellar mark but I don't know why it was given such a good rating. I think I'll have to go to the prof and ask, otherwise my next paper will be a disappointment for him.

We all fall down

Ugh. I hate donating blood, but if I don't, I'll feel like a total ass to the rest of society. I went to the donors today between classes. I figured that an hour and a half would be PLENTY of time for me to give blood and get to my senior seminar. Wrong!

Turns out they had to do an inquisition's worth of paper work due to me going off to Asia. Apparently most of the places I travelled to (including rural Hong Kong) were areas where I was at risk of malaria. Ha. That was unexpected. My poor nurse was having a terrible time trying to figure out where I'd been to - I couldn't just name the major cities I had travelled to - I needed to know the Chinese provinces! Ugh. Of course I don't know the province names! I actually ended up leaving her half way through and running to the washroom I was in there for so long. Luckily she has assured me this is the only time I'll have to give so much information - the next will go more smoothly. She even jotted down the information for me to hand in next time. Yay her.

Anyways, I donated the blood. It took forever because I have small veins. By this time, everyone who had been in line BEHIND me had already donated and left. After the pulled the needle out, I got to sit up.... Then I had to lay back down because I was feeling sick. They did the whole elevate the feet thing, ice cloths, etc. I feel like such a putz for caving into a little blood loss. LOL

I ended up being half an hour late to my senior seminar. Luckily the prof didn't care. Yay her.

Oh, and check out this video. At first it's funny, but then it kind of inspires you. Kiwi

Memories of Asia

Oooh. I'm excited to see the movie, "The Painted Veil"!!!!!!!!

It's filmed in Guilin, China - a place I went to in December 2005. It's got such a beautiful landscape! I actually watched the trailer for the movie first and immediately recognized it - China's Guanxi province is the only area in the world to have the mountain formations it does. So pretty!

Plus I'm psyched because the movie also features one of my all time favourite Hong Kong actors, Anthony Wong.

So excited...

Gourmet feast

Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! I finally subletted my room! Yay! That's right! This weekend I showed the house to two groups and within 3 hours, one of the groups had returned and we haggled out a price and signed stuff and now I'm free of this hell hole! If you can't guess, I'm rather ecstatic by this turn of events.

Not much to report lately. My cold knocked me on my ass again - I keep having relapses. On November 5th, some students vandalized the school. I've never seen the movie, but it was a reference to something from the movie, "V for Vendetta." I have NO idea how the students accomplished this, but I thought it was pretty damned impressive. :)

On Saturday evening, I ventured out to Melanie's to sleep there overnight. In exchange, I had to cook Mel and Scott an authentic chinese meal. Well boy did I go crazy! I made not only Chinese, but Korean, and Thai as well! Check out my gourmet meal! In the picture you can see my attempt at making Mapo Dofu (a recipe Peggy taught me but that I haven't tried to make until now... It turned out okay - it wasn't as "wet" as it should have been... And I don't think I used the right sauce on it), Fried Chicken with Almonds (one of my fave Thai dishes), HOMEMADE springrolls (see below for a story about THOSE), and Sesame Asparagus. Frickin' AMAZING man! Mel was my grunt worker (aka chopping girl) and I did all the cooking.

As for the spring rolls... It's been awhile since I deep fried anything... And when I was in Hong Kong, I used chopsticks to do all my stir frying. Well. I goofed. I had the oil too hot, so when I put my first spring roll in, it immediately began to burned - oil was flying all over the place. I had to yank the pot off the stove, but with the spring roll still in it, the oil continued to sputter all over my arm. I was freaking out from the pain, and because the spring roll was turning from pasty white, to tan, to charcoal. I finally got a fork and managed to toss the damned thing out of the pot. The end result of it is below...



Mel and Scott could not stop laughing at this poor pathetic excuse for food. It honestly looked like a turd sitting on the counter. LOL.

Except for the spring roll incident, the meal was excellent. Scott also finally used his spicy peanut oil that I recommended to him. It was funny because before he had tested it, he got some on his finger and without thinking, licked it off. He immediately turned red and began coughing. Hee hee. He can't say I didn't warn him!

Anyways, that's about it. Agnes and I rented The Lakehouse tonight (Keanu? Can I have your babies?) Prior to watching it though, I decided to try a recipe from my health magazine. It was supposed to be this icy banana/chocolate smoothee thingie (consisting of chocolate soy milk, cocoa, and bananas, mixed in a blender). Well. It was banana-y. That's about all I can say. LOL. Agnes took a bite and then stopped and watched as I ate it. It's kind of indescribable.... But I ate mine anyways - it was healthy. Not bad... But no flavour beyond the bananas. LOL

That's weird. I mentioned yesterday that when I woke up, I immediately wanted to die from being sick. I spent most of yesterday wandering around in a comatose like state. This morning I feel 110% better... I just find it odd to have such a crazy turnaround. I still need to take some Dristan, but I feel much better than before. Rock on.

As for last night, I dragged my comatose butt back to school at 8pm with Agnes. It's International Education Week here at UW and thus the school has organized a gazillion little booths/activites for the week. Last night, they had a journalist named Seymour Hersh come and give a speech entitled "US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib to Today."

I had a bit of a hard time following the speech, either because I was medicated or because I was sitting to the far right of the stage... It could also be that the guy wasn't a public speaker per se, he would mumble and change his pace of talking, but the parts I did catch were neat. He pointed out various things about the Bush administration and pointed out the outright lies they've made, etc. etc. He started off his speech by giving us the bad news (there are 803 days left of the Bush reign) and then the good news (tomorrow, there will be 1 less day).

Agnes and I arrived rather late to the lecture hall, so we had to make do with the first two seats we could find (they didn't open up the balcony until afterwards). I was getting kind of annoyed with the older gentlemen (sitting by himself) beside me because he kept fidgeting and making noises. Finally he turns toward me and asks, "I'm a reporter from The Record [the local newspaper], would you mind telling me what would bring two young people to an event such as this?" Ha. Before you get all excited (like I did), no, the guy did not try to interview Agnes and I, nor did he quote us. Instead we just chatted and then got on to the topic of exchanges because his son wants to go on exchange to Paris. Tee hee.

Okay. I need to go out and buy some medicine and bus tickets now. I have a dentist appointment in 2 hours... Bleargh!

Oh no! I missed my first class of the semester! Oh well. I woke up this morning and wanted to immediately die. My throat was so sore, my body ached, and I was exhausted. I got up long enough to brush my teeth, then I called it quits and crawled back into bed. I'm up now though, and I'm dragging my butt out for my second two classes today. Yay me.

The funniest thing EVER happened to me today.

I was having a nap at a personal study desk on the main floor of the library today. Suddenly, something moved nearby me and woke up me. I glance up and see that a guy has sat down at my desk (and this desk is only meant for one person). I said "Hi" and glanced around, saw a girl standing around the corner of a book stack and then put my head back down and ignored him.

I figured that either one of my friends was playing a prank on me, or these two people were being assholes and trying to make me move from my seat so they could have my desk. I decided to ignore them and pretend to sleep.

The next thing I know, the guy picks up my book and starts reading it. (My eyes are closed, but I can hear him doing all this.) When I don't react, he picks up some random papers on my desk, starts rifling around in my pencil case. I refused to rise to the bait. He picks up my book again and I finally give in.

I raised my head and just said something to the effect of "Yeah, if you aren't asleep yet, that book will knock you out." Then I put my head back down and the guy replied "Yeah, looks like it."

He then gets up and leaves the table (my eyes are still closed) and the girl follows him away. Meanwhile I'm thinking, "What the fuck?!" I open my eyes and watch them wander away. By now I'm totally freaked out. I get up, find and tell Agnes about my episode. Then I see the couple sitting with a Chinese girl. I sent Agnes on reconnaissance (aka: walk by them and eavesdrop) and apparently they're doing some kind of survey).

Well, that answer didn't suffice for me. After the couple left the girl, I ended up going up to her and asking what their deal was. She starts laughing... Apparently they're a couple of students in Speech Communication classes performing experiments on how people respond to having their personal space invaded. LOL

I had kind of expected this to be the case, since I had this experience once before in first year where a random guy came and sat with my friends and I in a cafeteria. (Of course, we just assumed that he was a friend of someone at the table.)

So there you go. I got punk'd by Speech Comm students!

It seems as though all I do on here is bitch about my housemates, but I can't help it. I want to KILL THEM ALL! (With the exception of Agnes that is.)

Part 1) As previously mentioned, Agnes and I went on strike against taking out the garbage. I finally ended up writing a snide note and taping it to the front door officially pointing out that we would NOT take out the garbage anymore, followed by another note explaining proper "Take out the garbage" procedures. Well, finally someone took the hint and the garbage has been removed. I shall have to create a garbage week roster so that this won't happen again.

Part 2) Bryan had been leaving his multitude of dishes on the counter for the past several days. When Agnes and I came home today, the first thing I noticed was that they were gone. Yay! Then I went and peeked into the sink to make sure they just hadn't migrated down there... Fucking hell. Yeah, he washed his dishes, but he left all the debris at the bottom of the sink - and there was A LOT! And when Agnes confronted him about it, he blamed Matt and Margaret... But I know that it was his mess. Matt and Margaret of course denied it was theirs as well.

Bryan and I avoid talking as much as possible now. We'll say hi if we must, but for the most part, we just try not to be in the same room together.

Bitch session done.

Oh. And I finally bought a UW hoodie. This has made me happy. I don't feel like typing anymore, so I'll leave off here.

Farewell!

Life is good. I've been having a good time lately, which has contributed to my overall good mood. :)

That being said, it's odd to look back and think about why I'm in a good mood. On Thursday and Friday, I was at the library with Agnes till about 10pm both nights. I didn't realize I could do that and not go insane. Admittedly I did slack quite a bit while there - but some work was accomplished and that's what mattered.

On Saturday I had a slack day with Agnes. We had decided to go to her classmate's Martini Night - I didn't realize till the day before that it was a costume party. I didn't have a costume. Eek. I ended up scrambling and tried to pull together an Egyptian costume... It didn't quite work though, since people kept asking me what I was. Oh well. The party was a lot of fun. Not many people showed up, so we just played a couple of drinking games. Some of the costumes were really funny. The host was dressed as the big yellow man from Curious George. Very funny. We ended off our night with a trip to Bomber. Unfortunately due to drinking and miscommunications, Agnes forgot her purse in the DD's car and got left out of the club. We didn't realize she was sitting there waiting for us till we got kicked out of Bomber.

On Sunday, I got to sleep in (thank God for the extra hour of sleep) and then my mom and dad came to visit. We had a very pleasant day. I dragged them to the Rude Native for lunch - apparently even THAT menu was too exotic for my mom. Sheesh! Afterwards we went for a stroll around the downtown area. There's a lot of cute little stores off the main streets that I never knew existed! My mom and I dropped my dad off at Chapters and went for a bit of a shopping trip. I guess I was bringing her energy down with all my yawning, because she finally made me sit down and drink a coffee. Yay caffeine! We predictably ended our evening with dinner at Benny's. I cannot get over how much damned food that restaurant gives you when you order from it!

As for today, I had a great time with Stacy. We went skating - I spent most of my time oggling some Asian skater who was cute. I blame him for me falling down at the end of our skating session. I only hurt myself slightly. :P After the skating, Stacy and I went and bought ourselves some hoodies from the UW Shop. I finally own a UW hoodie! It's so fuzzy and comfy. :) It makes me happy!

Apparently I come equipped with my own personal invisibility mechanism. LOL. Today I was meeting Rana and Agnes for a snack at Tim Horton's. I was at the first cashier and saw Rana walk in (Agnes was at the cashier beside me). She did one of those things where her eyes passed over me, but she didn't actually SEE me.. Just as she was passing, I decided to step out and totally bump into her.

She jumped back and said, "Oh! Sorry!" Just as she was about to walk away, she realized it was me and started laughing. She hadn't even realized I was there. Woe is me. LOL.

My week from hell has officially ended. (Ignore the fact that today's Wednesday.) I had 2 papers and 2 midterms, all due within 3 days of each other. Death to Profs and their evil plans to make us all suffer! Ahem.

I guess I should try to put things into some kind of chronological order. It took awhile to happen, but I have finally attended Oktoberfest in Waterloo! If you aren't aware, Kitchener-Waterloo has the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany. Yay us!

I was supposed to go in a large group of people, but most of them bailed out at the last minute. In the end, it was only Agnes and I going... And I'll mention that we also didn't feel like going, but went just to spite all the people who stayed home! Agnes hooked us up with some tickets through one of the campus fraternities. It was amusing to see all the kids on the bus were had either already pre-drank, or who were in the process of pre-drinking (and not too stealthily at that).

Agnes and I had a lot of fun people watching, but that was essentially it. Since we were at the university Oktoberfest, there weren't very many interesting people. (Okay, I have to admit that the guy who was dressed up in the inflated German maid outfit was a variant of "interesting.") I would have preferred to hang out with the older crowd, but these tickets were cheaper and more readily available. (Speaking of tickets, Agnes managed to hawk off the extra tickets she had before we got into the stadium. Ha ha.) Overall the night was fun, but not as much as I had anticipated. It was essentially just another excuse for university students to go out drinking. Agnes and I also tried to go dancing for awhile, but the floor was so sticky from the spilled beer I kept nearly falling.

In other news, I got scammed. I had posted my room on the sublet board at UW. Some girl responded and we arranged that she would send the money to me. The money didn't come, didn't come, didn't come. I finally sent her another email and she replied that fine, when the money order comes, I could cash it and send it back to her via Western Union. The UW sublet website mentions there has been a lot of rental scams out there... And it turns out this person was also part of it. Grr! So now I'm stuck with my room (I've already lowered the rent, and I've been mailing every single individual on the Housing Wanted site)... Hopefully the guys who are coming to see it next week will like it. :(

Speaking of the house... There's now an all out war brewing. First of all, our landlord came by for cheques for the Internet the one afternoon. While he and I were talking, Bryan, the guy who lives downstairs, came upstairs and essentially tattled on one of the other housemates that his girlfriend was living here as well. I understand that the landlord needs to know these things, but Bryan only told out of spite. He doesn't like the guy and his girlfriend, and I guess he had been hoping to get them kicked out. His plan has failed, but I don't know what happened exactly. All I know is that the guy and girl hate Bryan.

I am also part of the "We love to hate Bryan" fanclub. I have never met someone so rude and inconsiderate in my life. There's a whole list of things that aggravate me about it, but the thing that snapped me was his inability to take out the garbage. Thus far, Agnes and I have taken out the garbage and recycling every week except for twice when we kicked other people's asses into doing it. We finally asked Bryan to take out the garbage... He ended up taking out only the small bag of garbage that was in the kitchen, and the one box of recycling. He totally ignored the three bags of garbage outside of the house, and couldn't be bothered to pick up the recycling on the floor beside the blue box. GRRR!

Agnes and I have totally gone on strike - we refuse to take out the garbage or do anything. As a result, there are now 5 bags of garbage beside the house, and the recycling is overflowing. Unfortunately I know that these small rebellions are all in vain, because Bryan simply won't notice, or if he does, he'll just ignore it (and he'll do so easily).

Let us move on to topics that don't raise my blood pressure, shall we?

As mentioned at the top of this piece of writing that's turning into a novel, this was my half-week from hell. I had to hand in a book review, a paper on why Lester Pearson is a historical pop culture figure, and write my International Studies and Canadian Government midterms. I believe that my papers were done well (I'm quite proud of my Pearson paper), and my International Studies midterm went well. (I'm such a drama queen - I had to write a quick essay on the idea of an "American Empire" - reading what I wrote, you'd have thought that I was writing a movie drama or something.) What did not go well was the Canadian Government midterm. OH MY GOD. The midterm was insanely hard. It consisted of 20 multiple choice questions, but they were all "Choose the false statement." Gah! And they were very analytical questions... And although this probably sounds odd, we haven't really been taught how to analyze the topics we've learned in class. Therefore I have absolutely no idea how I did on it.

I think that covers the highlights of my life since I last wrote. Oh... And I've completely become hooked on the Hemmy.net site. It's so random and fun. As a result of that site, I've also discovered Worth 1000, a photo manipulation site. It's hilarious.

However, the site that I have become most infatuated with recently is the Where the Hell is Matt website. Essentially this site is dedicated to an American named Matt who quit his job one day and travelled around the world till his money ran out. He takes videos of himself dancing (badly) in all the places he has travelled to. It sounds ridiculous, but see all these locations he's been to is really inspiring. The areas are beautiful and fascinating. His dancing video became so well known that a chewing gum company sponsored him for another trip around the world. Wow!

Ahem. Not quite what I had in mind when I said I'd try to post more often.... But here's a couple of things:

1) Fan-friggin-tastic ads found around the world.

2) Go and rent the movie Kinky Boots. It's a British film and is absolutely hilarious.

Egads! I'm so terrible with updates lately! Not that anything interesting has really happened. I've been good so far this term and have actually kept up on my reading! *beams with pride* Well. Nearly kept up. I did have to devote this weekend to finishing my 500 page book on genocide... I'm nearly there.

I went home for Thanksgiving Weekend. I got minimal work done while I was there. Instead I test drove my parent's new satellite dish. And I watched lots and lots of movies. I ended up watching "Hank Williams: First Nation." It's a movie filmed on a Native reserve in Northern Alberta. Part of me was like, "Wow, this movie is really stilted!" Then the other part of me would remember, "Oh wait, this how they actually talk!" I also went to the movies to see The Departed. I enjoyed it, but to be honest, I was offended by the gratuitous profanity in it. You all know me - I don't mind swearing, but this movie went overboard. All in all, I preffered the Hong Kong version of the movie better.

Not much else happened that weekend. I was amused to realize that this was my first Thanksgiving back at home in two years! (First I was off in Vancouver, and then Hong Kong. Very cool.) I had a scrumptious turkey meal (also my first time having turkey in fooooorever). I ended up making my parents drive me back to Waterloo earlier though - I was getting no work done at all and felt that was a bad thing.

The week was spent alternating between work and slacking. Then on Friday, I went to meet my sister. We both had to run some errands so we turned it into a lunch date. I dragged Mel to a Korean/Japanese restaurant and we had so much fun. Mel's inability to work chopsticks amuses me endlessly. Our drive to Cambridge and back lasted a lot longer than anticipated though because there were so many car accidents. It was crazy!

Also on Friday, Agnes and I went to Oktoberfest. We were supposed to go with a couple of other girls, but they ended up bailing out on us at the last minute. This was my first Oktoberfest ever - we went to the University night at the Kitchener Auditorium. I had a good time, but I wish I had gone on a non-University night. I think it would have been funner because all the students just wanted an excuse to drink beer. Agnes and I got up and danced for a bit (oh, the polka band rocked!) but I kept nearly falling over because my heels were sticking to the beer soaked floor!

That's about it I guess. I'll try to update my blog more often... I just find it difficult to sit down at my computer lately.

Oh, and I highly recommend that you rent the movie "Thank You For Smoking." It's so freakin' hilarious. Lots of big name actors in it too.

Oh, and now you can check out my Christmas wishlist online! (Ha ha, x-mas is getting so hi-tech.)

Mmmm. Hot chocolate. How I have missed thee... In Hong Kong I could only get "drinking chocolate" - it wasn't as sweet as hot chocolate, but when I was cold and miserable (like I am today), it was a godsend.

Why am I cold and miserable today? Because my housemate Agnes passed her cold on to me. It's not too bad yet - I just had a bit of a sore throat last night, but my nose is plugged up today.

The worst part of it all though is that my shoulders and back are ridiculously sore. It's like I slept on a pile of even rocks. I wanted to die last night they were so painful. To rememdy the situation, I decided to take some ibuprofen and nearly did end up killing myself by mistake. :P I was fumbling around (it's was 4am) and had the bottle of pills on my nightstand when I accidentally knocked it down... And it fell upside down right into my glass of water. Like 30 pills fell into the water and immediately began disintegrating. It was neat to watch them dissolve... But creepy to think that I had a suicide cocktail in my hand. I ended up getting up and dumping the glass out then and there, because I knew I'd forget what happened and drink from it in the morning. That wouldn't have been too pleasant.

Another amusing story is that of my work disturber on Tuesday. I had been sitting in my room for the last 2 hours, getting super irritated with this neighbour's kid. I didn't know why, but every once in awhile, I'd hear the kid yell, "Mwah?" (aka something monosyllabic and completely incomprehensible). I was like, "God, can that kid be any more irritating?" I didn't even know what the kid was yelling, or to who or anything, since they were the only thing I could hear. I just assumed it was a mentally challenged child.

I just heard it again, but this time after the Mwah came another screech. That when I realized that it was a goddamned BIRD I've been hearing! LOL

Anyways, I need to walk to school soon, so I shall say goodbye for now. Good bye!

Funniest freaking user icon ever.

I've been wondering when I'd have the time to catch up on my blogging, and I guess the time is now: When I should be studying... Since it's been a month since I've posted, I'll just gloss over most of the boring mundane details of what's been going on and try to capture the big things.

Moving back to school finally has been odd. This is my first time being back on campus during the Fall term since 2003, therefore it's been a long time since I've been around froshies. I think that the contrast between myself and these bright-eyed freshmen is what struck me the most this term.

What does that mean? It means that I feel older and wiser this term. I know it's silly to say - after all I'm only 22 years old, but after accomplishing so much over the past 4 years of university (sky diving, co-ops, Vancouver, Hong Kong, etc.) I can't help it. I've done so much in the past few years that I never expected to do. It makes me happy. I never truely believed that I'd have the willpower to actually go through with all these adventures.

I can't help but see the difference between myself when I first started university and myself now. I have more direction in my life (as in, I have a general idea of what I want to do for a living, but I'm still pretty confused as to the specifics), I'm more confident and so on. I've done most of what people are expected to do in post-secondary, and then some more. To put it plainly, I like where my life is right now.

Now, that's not to say that everything is completely kosher. I'm currently freaking out about grad studies. I only just realized that I might not actually get into them (I don't think my marks are high enough), and now I have to start contingency planning on what to do if I can't make it into them.

Also I'm having issues with my housemates. I'm living with 3 guys and 2 girls (although 1 girl is living here without the landlord's knowledge). They're all pretty nice people, but the one guy is ridiculously dirty. We have a dish washer but he seems to be physically unable to put his dishes in there. Agnes and I had to ask him 3 times to wash his one pot and he finally did it after a week and several notes. The other guy smokes a lot of pot, but that's okay since we never hear him otherwise.

My classes are quite interesting this term. This is probably the nicest thing of the term so far - I actually feel like I can apply what I'm learning instead of just being a passenger to the knowledge I'm collecting. Of course, this term there's a lot more work as well, but I guess it's a sacrifice I have to make for the interesting stuff. :)

There's been a few amusing anecdotes as well... In my first World Politics class, a girl came up to me and our dialogue went something like this:
Girl: This is going to be a strange question, but do you have a sister?
Mau: Yes...
Girl: Is her name Melanie?
Mau: Yes...
Girl: Is your name Maureen?
Mau: Yes...
Turns out the girl and my sister used to work together and she recognized me from the pictures in my blog that Mel shared. Ha ha.

Anyways, this is enough procrastination for now. Wish me luck in the upcoming 2 months!

I have internet! FINALLY! Crap. There goes my productivity...

Double crap. Now I have to blog about all the things that have been going on.... Okay, that'll come later. :)

Yesterday my mother and I watched over 10 hours of TV non-stop. By the end, I was so tired I wanted to die. What caught our attention? I happened to come across a marathon of Project Runway. I only left the living room for 2 things: Bathroom breaks, and a quick junk food run to the Shoppers across the street. I believe we tuned into the program around 11:00am and it didn't finish until 10:00pm. I feel so dirty.

Today is the day I've been waiting for for the past four months. Today is the last day of my second term at Bruce Power. And boy oh boy, has it been a long and dreary wait. When I woke up this morning, I was immediately ecstatic and excited to realize it was my final day. The night before I was hyper with the thought of not having to go through a term like this again. (I'm aware of the fact that it could, but right now I'm being optimistic.) I cannot wait to break the monotony of my current life.

Last weekend my mom and I had some quality time together. On Friday we chilled and watched a movie together. On Saturday, we ventured out to look at mattresses for my new place. For the evening, I made a delicious recipe called smothered chicken. (It was a mixture of spices sprinkled on chicken, topped with fried onions, mushrooms, green peppers, and cheese.) Finally, on Sunday, I was the perfect date for my mom. I took her out for brunch at the Rusty Gull. We then ventured out to the movies to watch Step Up. (Cheesy but cute.) Afterwards, we went out for a bit of shopping. It was a very pleasant day indeed.

As for my final week in Port Elgin, I spent a lot of time hanging out with Tao and Lauda. On Monday night we went to Strauser's, one of the local bars. It was deserted! We were honestly the only people in there. We ended up ordering a lot of appetizers and playing pool. For pool, Lauda and I teamed up against Tao. Oh my gosh. We got schooled by him. Tao's a freakin' hustler! He would sink every ball in less than 3 turns practically. I of course played like I was in pre-school. I only got off 1 or 2 good shots and the rest were pitiful. But I have to admit, I really enjoy pool... As long as I don't have too much of an audience to mock me.

The following night, Tao's department had a farewell dinner for him at Queen's. Lauda and I also tagged along. I have to admit, I was not impressed with the food or service that night. Every single time I've been to Queen's, I've had terrible service. I guess the entire table felt the same way, because afterwards Lauda heard the waitress make a snarky remark about our table being a "waste of time."

I was amused when Tao whipped out a mooncake to share with everyone. (Mooncake is a traditional treat at the mid-autumn festival in China. It's made of preserved duck egg and lotus paste.) I had had it before and didn't care for it, but I figured I'd try it out again. I ended up leaving my small slice sitting on a napkin. LOL. I forgot how salty the middle was. Lauda also left hers alone. I think the rest of the table felt the same as we did but were politer in actually finishing it.

I was also amused by Lauda's attempts to enjoy her dinner. She and I bother ordered cocktails for dinner, but hers was a strawberry daiquiri. And we were sitting on the patio. And there were wasps. At one point there were 6 wasps crawling around the sugar rim of her drink. LOL. She'd try to shoo them away and take a quick sip. I was impressed because she nearly finished the entire thing! And even after the waitress took away the glass, the wasps stuck around because Lauda was wearing perfume. Poor girl.

Last night was spent finishing up my packing. I felt like thumbing my nose at all the things that had aggravated me over the past few months at this apartment. But I resisted. Instead I hung out with Jean and Liz and cooked myself some dinner. (More correctly: I overcooked myself some dinner.)

And now the end is at hand. I'm packed, and ready to go. I'm counting down the hours till I can escape...

Las comidas estas muchas deliciosos! (Translated from Spanish: The food is very delicious!)

Oh my gosh. Last night, Tao and I went to Lauda's parent's house for an authentic Spanish dinner. We ended up having real chalupas for dinner! (Flat deep fried hard tortilla shells topped with goodies.) Lauda's mom cooked everything from scratch. From scratch! We had refried beans, guacamole, chicken, beef, etc. etc. The only things that she didn't make were the 3 sauces - green salsa, pepper salsa, and tomato salsa. They were SO DELICIOUS! *dies* I ate so many, as did Tao and Lauda. The nicest thing about them was the variety of toppings that were available. I'm used to eating Mexican food with the same generic toppings (Old El Paso sauce, lettuce, cheese, and tomatos - nothing else). However, when you added the other things like refried beans etc., they added a nice new texture/consistency and subtle flavours. It was mucho delicioso!

After dinner, they prepared us some drinks. Lauda informed us that having alcohol with every meal is a very normal thing to do in Latin America. Her father therefore made me some Kahlua with cream. This is when another cultural difference came into play. I'm used to my Kahlua cocktails where it's like ¾ milk, ¼ kahlua. I pretty much got the opposite mix for my drink. I could barely sip the beverage because there was so much alcohol in it. But trust me, I got it all down. :-)

Amusing anecdote: While chilling in the kitchen, I happened to get a glimpse into the cupboard holding their liquor. I immediately laughed out loud. Right beside their stockpile of liquor was their stockpile of prescribed medications. Excellent combination.

And then, to make things even better, her mom had made this AMAZING dessert too! It was vanilla ice cream with some kind of soul-eating crumbly stuff on top! Soul-eating not a good enough description? Well then. I believe the crumble stuff was a mixture of flour, pecans, brown sugar and butter. And on top of the crumbly stuff was even more soul-eating goodness. Caramel sauce. It was frozen all together and absolutely amazing. I'm glad we only had a bit, because it was so rich, any more would kill us.

After we were done gorging, we retired to the deck to watch the sun set. As you can see from the photo, it was a gorgeous view! What a perfect evening!

One of my fave pics from the night: Spider in the sun.

Before I forget, I should mention one other thing. I'm on Facebook.com. Well, several days ago, someone named Catalina added me. I recognized her name, but couldn't remember from where.

It turns out that Catalina was the co-op student who came after me in Business Objects. I had exchanged emails with her giving her advice on the job and tried to help her find a place. That was the last I ever heard from her until she added me to facebook.

Well, lo and behold, yesterday I got another email through Facebook being sent out to all UW students... It was a request to help vote for Miss Universe Canada. And sonofabitch, Catalina is a candidate!

That's so random and cool.

I had the most wonderful weekend from the 11th to the 14th. I, along with my sister, Melanie, and mother, ventured up into Northern Ontario.
We had to take my niece up to Timmins and drop her off at her dad's. It was a wonderful drive up there. It takes about 9 hours to drive to Timmins. We stopped in North Bay for lunch and I had an excellent sandwich/salad/soup combo. We made it into Timmins late at night and simply fell asleep right away.

The next day we met up with my other sister June - she had come down from Moosonee to meet us. We hung out for a bit and then ended up splitting up. My mom, Melanie, and I went to visit my grandmother while June ran some errands.

I was very happy with my grandmother's visit. I don't see her very often (e.g. I haven't seen her since 2004) and her mind is a bit frail so her thoughts wander a lot. However, this time she seemed to focus on me for a lot of the visit. She kept asking where I was and making sure I was nearby. Why's that you ask? Because I'm "the strong one." Let me elaborate on this. My family and I decided to take my grandmother for a trip out to the mall - she has a difficult time walking and therefore hardly ever gets out of the nursing home. Getting my grandmother from her wheelchair to her van is an ordeal in itself. She was afraid she was going to fall, but we kept reassuring her. Essentially Melanie and I had to drag/shove her (although in a much more gentle fashion than I make it
sound) into the front of the van. She was so happy that we were strong enough to get her in there, that's why I was "the strong one." My mom was able to converse with my grandmother in Cree quite a bit. The most I ever had to say really was answering her questions as to where my mother was.

After our visit, we went back to the hotel room and chilled out for a bit. We couldn't decide on what to do, so we ended up just going to the Casey's restaurant next door and having dinner. However, that wasn't the end of our plans. One of my siblings made the brilliant suggestion of having a couple of drinks... It was SO MUCH FUN! Every time the waitress came to our table, we'd order a different cocktail/margarita/martini. We had 5 rounds each of different beverages and they were HUGE! Needless to say, Mau got a bit drunk. We were especially amused by the fact that our drinks were taking forever to make. It turns out that the bartender that night wasn't the regular bartender, so she was unfamiliar with all the drinks we were ordering and whatnot. The chick was probably a pro by the time we were done with her. My top 3 favourite drinks of the night were the Drive by Fruiting, Raspberry Fusion, and the Vanilla Creamsicle. So.
De. Li. Cious.

On Sunday, we followed a similar pattern. Wake up, go shopping, visit grandmother. It was fun. Nothing more to be said. (See? Who says I can't keep my stories short?) Oh yeah, before the shopping/grandmother part, we also went for a picnic (a.k.a. buy fast food and sit in a park and eat it) and played mini-putt. That was the first time I ever had a salad from McDonald's. I've gotta get those more. Except for the deep fried pieces of chicken spread on top of it, it was pretty good! I also realized that I truly suck at mini-putt. I was in second last place! :-( That made me sad. (Ha, and I should mention that the only "hole-in-one"
that I got was courtesy of June - she knocked her ball into mine and got me in the hole!)

For dinner we ventured downtown for Chinese food. Unfortunately at this point, the past two nights of sharing a bed with my mom caught up with me. I was exhausted, sore, and had a killer headache. The others went for a walk downtown (apparently some hobos tried to pick them up) and I snoozed in the van instead. Precious sleep ensued. We returned to the hotel. My mom and I decided to chill out in the hotel room (we were both tired). Mel and June went back to Casey's for a couple of drinks/dessert.

Oh yeah, Melanie attempted to smother my mother in her sleep. Apparently Mel doesnt' like it when people snore non-stop for 8 hours.

Then it was the end. The next morning we left and began the long drive back down to Owen Sound. It was an okay drive - it rained a lot, which made the drive seem longer than it was. We decided to stop in North Bay for lunch. Mel and Mom wanted to eat at a place they had stopped off at the last time they were in North Bay. They only things they could tell me about this restaurant was that it was a truck stop and that it had super powerful hand dryers in the washrooms. We therefore drove ALL the way through North Bay, past all these delicious restaurants, in search of a place we weren't even too positive of the location of. (We got slightly lost while looking for this stupid place.) Eventually we made it (darn it) to the restaurant. It was a cleaner truck stop... But amusingly, upon entering, we saw a sign that the restaurant would be closing in a week. Ha. Maybe they should have installed more hand dryers in the washrooms to attract repeat customers.

I finally made it home. I can't recall if anything interesting happened over the past week... I mainly just vegged out and relaxed. It's odd to realize that this week is my first full week of work in like, a month.
(I've been taking a day off each week with the time I banked.) I did go see a movie with Henry and Liz - we saw The Devil Wears Prada (this is my 3rd time). Henry was practically the only guy in the theater. He claimed he felt all girlie afterwards.

My weekend went well. I mainly relaxed, watched movies, and played on my computer. I have another story from the weekend to tell, but it's still unfolding... I shall post as soon as I feel it's safe to do so... It's gross but funny (well, funnier for those who aren't around me - but from my point of view, it was funny, but is now exasperating and frustrating).

While on my Timmins trip, I read a giant novel (well, it was a kids book, but big) and started on the second. (I highly recommend reading it
- it's called The Amulet of Samarkand and the main character is freakin'
hilarious!) I got my dad to get some books from the library for me...
I'm now attempting to read Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte), Wuthering Heights (by Emily Bronte) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde (by someone who's name I can't remember.) I'm try to read classical novels because let's face it, they're famous. I want to know why...
(Although after having read the original Dracula book, I don't know why it was so famous... It was boring and the ending was anti-climatic.) I've also been on a real magazine kick lately. I guess it's because they're fun, light, and pretty. I just like the random advice they provide...

Anyways, I should end this off. Hopefully when school starts, I'll post more often. Can't wait to see everyone!

Oh the horror of it all! It's been over three weeks since I last updated my blog. I wish I could say that I was busy studying for the exam I finally had last week, but I'll be frank and admit that I was procrastinating in various ways. I read non-textbook books, watched children's movies (shrek 2 and The Emperor's New Groove, etc.) and played the Sims 2.

In the midst of all this procrastinating, other events occurred. I was originally supposed to go to Niagara Falls on a family vacation. We were going to meet my oldest sister and her family unit there, but at the last minute, the trip was cancelled. I'm not terribly disappointed. Niagara Falls holds no real appeal for me - it would be neat to see again now that I'm older, but the only reason I wanted to go in the first place was to see my sibling and niece. Instead, our plans were changed so that June and Cara would come to Owen Sound instead. I was quite pleased since that saved everyone a great deal of driving.

(Okay, this post is beginning to sound rather 1950s... "This was pleasant" "How quaint" blah blah blah. Must modernize it.)

Anyways, to skip past a lot of boring stuff, my sister ended up arriving last Friday. I took the day off of work so I could be there when she arrived. Our first night was uneventful - just a lot of yapping and whatnot.

The second day, we wandered around downtown, but I was exhausted and ended up leaving early. That night we went to see Pirates of the Carribean 2. Dad and I dragged mom and June out to see it with us. I enjoyed the movie thorougly. There were parts which I'll admit I could have done without, but overall it was great - some old gags, some new ones. Old characters and new characters. The only part that kind of ruined it for me was the company - mom and June kept bashing the movie afterwards which of course brings down the overall mood you're in. Oh well.

On the third day (this is beginning to sound like Genesis) we all piled into the van and drove down to Kitchener to visit Mel. We were hell-bent on doing as little shopping as possible and doing as much quality time as we could. We failed. Okay, not failed... But in the afternoon we went to St. Jacob's market to putt around. That was fun, but it was still essentially shopping. The only shopping I like to do nowadays is food shopping. I bought myself a samosa and some other goodies I can't remember.

When Mel was done work, we ventured to Kitchener to buy some dinner. We went to the same Chinese buffet that I went to when I first arrived back in Canada. I'm sure you won't be surprised if I say that the food was as bad now as it was then. At least this time I didn't burst into spontaneous bouts of laughter. (Actually, we were accused of being "troublemakers" at this restaurant by a waiter - we were loud and unruly (like normal). My sister and I had a random wrestling match in the bathroom of the restaurant - each of us trying to soak the other one.)

After stuffing ourselves and making asses of ourselves, we ventured out to Mohawk Casino. As most of you know - I don't care for casinos, but I sucked it up, and went along for the ride. (Ha, as if I had a choice!) It took me about an hour to even put money in a machine. I then promptly lost the $20 I limited myself to. Quelle surprise. I spent the next few hours wandering around the casino, watching Melanie win $400, watching my other sister and mom lose their money, and oggling the main guitarist of the band that was playing. I suddenly get the stereotype that all musicians are hot...

Everyone was pretty hyped up after the casino (probably due to the stimulating decor that all casinos have) so we went to Moose Winooskis (I know I spelled that wrong) for a midnight gorging. We consumed more alcohol before finally heading back to Kitchener.

The next morning was fun filled with sibling irritations. With 4 women in one apartment and only one shower, a lineup formed. June declared she would be next in line even though I had already claimed the position. Mel then decided to leapfrog over the both of us and declared her intentions by running into the shower when my mom finally vacated it. The problem was, Mel didn't take off her clothes when she ran into it... So I got my revenge on her by turning the tap on while she was still dressed! Unfortunately for me, Mel got her revenge and threw a bucket of cold water on me while I was having my own shower...

We had been planning on going and playing mini-putt and doing stuff other than shopping, but our plans were nixed by a torrent of rain. Therefore we did what we always did in KW - we went clothes shopping. Just before we left, we went to the Chinese grocery store so I could do some quick shopping... I bought chicken feet! Tee hee. My sisters were absolutely horrified. Mom and June then drove me home so I could go to work the next day.

A week flew by, and then suddenly it was Thursday and I had the next 3 work days off. Melanie arrived in the afternoon, and soon thereafter, June, she, and I ventured out to Sauble Beach, one of Ontario's most popular beaches. It's been YEARS since I've been down there. Unfortunately I didn't have a bathing suit, so I just flaked out on the sand and read my textbook (my exam was coming up in 2 days). June and Mel did their own flaking thing and swimming. Afterwards, we wandered up and down the streets, poking in and out of the difference shops. I bought myself a couple of sunglasses because the pair I bought in Hong Kong finally broke. I dig my new sunglasses, but they scratch really easily.

When we finally dragged our butts home, it was time to commence drinking. We ended up staying up till about 1am. (I know that sounds wussy, but remember, we're all used to getting up by 7:00am) I think I went to bed even earlier - remember, my morning call comes at 5:30! We had fun though as usual. Much alcohol was consumed.

The next day Mel and June drove up to Huntsville to pick up my niece and bring her back. They stopped at Wasaga Beach on the way home. I on the other hand got to chill in good old Owen Sound and study for my exam that was the next day. I wish I could stay I studied hard, but I spent half the time reading a library book my dad left within my reach. I finished the library book... But not the studying. I don't remember what happened after that, but by the end of the night, Cara and them had returned.

The next morning, Mom, Mel, and June went out yard saling while I stayed at home to do some final cramming for my exam. I believe my siblings and niece went to Sauble again. I went to write my exam. My exam centre was in Georgian College. That's another place I hadn't been to in a long time. I think I did okay on the exam. Not stellar though (and no, the reading I had procrastinated on wouldn't have helped me). I just felt very rushed - 4 short essays in 2.5 hours is a very odd timeline. Oh well. I was just happy to get it over with.

The next few days were filled with random bits of shopping, relaxing, and whatnot. On Saturday night, we went to Pizza Hut and threw Cara a surprise belated birthday party. It was a blast. Everyone was in a great mood and there were lots of laughs.

Finally on Sunday, we ventured out to Toronto to go to ROM and Ontario Place for the Chinese Lantern Festival. We stayed at U of T's Victoria College Residence... I have to agree with the rest of my family - that residence sucked ass. It stank, was dirty, most things were broken etc. I was not impressed. But the residence experience was lessened by the trip to ROM. I hadn't been to ROM since I was Cara's age, so I only had a few vague memories. I enjoyed it. It was amusing to walk through their Asian exhibits and realize that I've actually BEEN to the places they were talking about! (e.g. there was a whole section dedicated to the Ming tombs.)

Ontario Place I'll admit though turned out to be a bit of a flop. There were gazillions of lanterns, similar to the ones I saw in Hong Kong during their Midautumn Festival, but that was about it. There were only a few food vendors and shopping stalls. The food wasn't very tasty/authentic (they sold chicken balls - how authentic can that be???), and they only sold the type of waffles I didn't like. :'( Plus the bargaining was a total bust. They wouldn't bargain with me! And I tried hard - I spoke Cantonese, I spoke Mandarin. I used my "I'm a poor student" line - nothing worked! I was bitter. I was also bitter because my brand new batteries decided to die, so I only got a few photos before it died.

The next day we fled back to Owen Sound. June ran off to Sauble Beach again with Cara. Everyone just relaxed after all the running around we had done. That night I bade my sibling and niece adieu and went back to Port Elgin.

(Finally, we're catching up to the present...)

This past weekend was the civic holiday, so I had another long weekend. (Yay holidays!) On Friday, we chilled in the house and watched TV/movies. On Saturday, my mom, niece and I went to the Markdale Ice cream Festival. Here are the pics! The festival is a non-profit deal - Chapman's, the ice cream company, donates ice cream to the festival and all the profits made from the ice cream go to charity. I have to admit, the festival has definitely improved since it first began. There was live music, dog shows, rides, dancing, etc. It was fun. Cara had the most fun at the petting zoo. You can tell she's a real animal magnet - even the goats were kissing her! I got totally sun burnt at the festival - I didn't even think about sunscreen... And getting home was a nightmare. Due to the longweekend, traffic was horrendous. It took us about twice as long as it should have to get home.

The next day I took Cara to see the Ant Bully in the theater. It was fun, but when we emerged, I checked my cell and found out that our ride (aka my parents) had ran off to Hanover! The NERVE of them! We ended up getting a taxi back home and chilled out, playing on our separate computers.

On Monday, we went our for some shopping and ended off our day with a family dinner at my Uncle Bill and Marsha's. My dad's cousin was visiting, so we made it into a family occassion. The food was fantastic and filling.

I believe this post means that I'm all caught up on my blogging. I apologize for the delay, and for all the typos. But it's a pain trying to play catch up on my life... It doesn't help that I just uploaded a month and a half worth of photos to my flickr account. Go check them out, since most of them aren't alluded to here in my blog.

Catch ya on the flipside!

Finally alone!

I had a good weekend. Nothing terribly exciting ocurred, but it was enjoyable. I think the thing thing I enjoyed the most was having the house to myself - my dad had to work and my mom went with him so she could work on her van. This has been my first time since I've returned to Canada that I've had the house to myself.

So how did I take advantage of this time? I cleaned. And cooked. Does that seem as backwards to you as it does to me??? Despite what this sounds like, I enjoyed doing this. (Maybe I enjoyed the fact that I knew my parents wouldn't be home to mess it up within 5 minutes. Hee hee.) I operated for most of the morning on a couple of donuts my mom had bought, and by 2pm, I realized I was starving, so I ran over to A&W to buy some fast food.

For dinner I made the executive decision to have kebobs for dinner. I cannot recall ever seeing my family make kebobs, so I thought I'd rectify the situation. By the time my parents came home, I had all of the meat cut up (beef, chicken, and pork) as well as our veggies. (Green/orange pepper, zuchinni, and onions. I forgot the stupid cherry tomatoes in the fridge!) Dinner went very well! There were some good lessons learned:

• Don't bother including dad in the kebob eating experience - he ended up snagging an uncut piece of pork chop and tossing it on the BBQ. Buttmunch!


• Soak your skewers for longer than 2 hours. I've heard 24 hours mentioned before...


• Make sure you create some kind of system so you'll remember who's kebobs are who's. Mom and I could only tell after we bit into them - hers were honey garlic and mine were hot and spicy.

I've discovered that I've become obsessive compulsive about going to Blockbuster on the weekends. Even if I'm not in the mood to see a film, I ALWAYS go there! And I never come out empty handed! I ended up renting Evolution, and Legally Blonde.

I don't recall what I did on Sunday, but it was more of the same. I played on the computer a lot... I remember that much. Oh yeah, and I went grocery shopping. I'm attempting to plan my dinners each week. Fridge space in my new apartment is at a premium! (As a matter of fact, I'll be bringing in ANOTHER mini-fridge in order to alleviate some of the problems.) Tonight my plan is to make pad thai... Hopefully it won't be soggy like the past few times.

Anyways, as usual I'm at work, so I'm gonna skidaddle!

My fault this time...

First off I'd like to admit that I was in the wrong last night. Lauda and I had decided to go out for dinner and catch a movie. She then invited me to go to Queen's for some drinks with Tao and his girlfriend, Denise, since she was visiting.

I was okay with the plan, but Lauda wanted to stop by her apartment (a.k.a. my old house) to change first. I had absolutely no intention of entering that place. Lauda kept asking me, but I refused. When we got there though, Michelle's car wasn't in the driveway so I figured it'd be okay if I just went to Tao's and Lauda's little livingroom.

Things were going well. And then Michelle came home. Lauda and Tao didn't do anything or say anything. The door to our little area was closed. At first I tried to keep quieter, but gave up since it was pretty obvious that I was there. Nothing happened. We all got ready to go out.

As we were leaving, Lauda called out "Bye" to Michelle. Michelle didn't respond. Lauda tried again (she was calling around the corner - we couldn't even see Michelle but we knew she was in the livingroom). This time she said, "Bye Michelle! We'll see you tonight!" Michelle asked, "Is Maureen coming back with you?" And both Lauda and I answered with a "No." Michelle then replies, "Good because I don't think my dad would like having her here." And with that, we left.

Lauda was pretty shocked by that parting remark. Where the heck was she for the last week I lived there??? I was unsurprised really. The only thing about that that really bugged me was that she laid the blame on her dad - the problems are between us - I did nothing to her father. I guess the other part of what bugged me was that she said t to my face. Understandably that comment was probably aimed at me as much as at Tao and Lauda, but if you have a problem with your tenants' guests, you should tell them instead of the guests themselves. Of course, I'm not a guest, I'm more of an enemy now.

For the rest of the evening, I harboured a lot of aggression about the incident. But the more I thought about it, the less I can really blame Michelle. I mean, who'd want the source of so much tension back in their house? She's probably angry about the July cheque she missed out on with me. (And I don't blame her for that - I gave her very little notice.) It must seem like I have a lot of nerve/gall to go back to that house after all that happened between us.

There. I feel better now that I've gotten that off my chest.

Drinking at the Queen's was a lot of fun. We didn't stay there too long - we left at about 11pm. (See? I finally was out of the house after 9pm!) Afterwards I walked home, had a shower, and surfed the net till nearly 1am. Yikes! Now all I can think about is going home and sleeping sleeping sleeping.

Oh! And one more FANTASTIC thing about coming home yesterday after work... Kyle, my new roommate, is a complete hottie! When I got home, he was wearing nothing but his boxers in the kitchen. I did my best to avoid gawking/drooling, but I guess I failed, but immediately after I arrived, he went back upstairs to put on shorts. DARN!

Shattered hope

You know how you can sometimes pinpoint the moment your spirit breaks?
Today, I could hear the shattering sound that signaled that all the hope I had carried that something better might come along was lost. What happened to create this awful realization? I had had no work to do yesterday. I ended up reading my textbook for the most of the day before I finally contacted a lady who had mentioned she might have work for me.
She told me to talk to her the next day and she'd have something for me to do.

Well this morning I came into work and when she finally contacted me, she told me to ask Donna (a lady in business services) for work. I track down Donna and she leads me over to the shelves that act as mail boxes.
She tells me that they had devised a "big project" for me to work on.
She then proceeds to hand me a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Windex... My big project? Cleaning the shelves and relabeling them.
That's the moment when Bruce Power finally broke me.

(Sorry, there was a bit of exaggeration there. When I got back from lunch there was a message on my phone from another coworker saying they have a bigger project with more responsibility to work on from now on. I hope they're right, because if I had to do two more months of this stuff, I think I'd crack.)

Other than work stuff, the rest of my life is good! I had a great long weekend. On Friday I went to Waterloo with my mom to visit my sister. We ended up going out for cake at Symposium and playing mini-putt. On Saturday I dragged my mom and dad out for a walk around Harrison Park.
It was a great walk. Later that night, my mom and I went to see two
movies: The Devil Wears Prada (hilarious) and The Lakehouse (adorable).
I can't recall what I did on Sunday night... I think my mom and I watched Desperate Housewives and we did the same thing on Sunday.

I've moved into my new house without a hitch. I don't have much to say about it yet. It's much cleaner than my old one... The sounds echo like crazy though because it's all wooden floors. My housemates seem very friendly and chatty. All in all, I feel pretty encouraged by my first 2 nights here.

Won both the battle and the war

I win! Ha ha. What did I win? The war with the landlady!

By noon I had managed to work myself up into such a state of agitation, I actually phoned my mom and work and arranged for my dad to come and pick me up after work. I was willing to sleep in Owen Sound for the final two nights and DRIVE to work. (This would require me getting up and leaving the house before 5:30am!

Anyways, when I got home, I was ready to start packing my things when Tao mentioned there was a letter from the landlady. Turns out she's gone until Thursday morning. Mwahahahaa! I drove her out of the house! Hee hee! So I've cancelled my ride home and enjoying the apartment for the last bit.

(I'm especially enjoying the fact that it's nearly 6:30 and I haven't started cooking yet. Mwahahahaaa.)

Stress makes for a sleepy Mau

Somebody help to wake me up! I'm at work right now and I'm fighting SO HARD NOT to fall asleep... So far I'm failing. I fell asleep for about 15 to 20 minutes just awhile ago. Since my catnap (done on purpose), I keep drifting off and jerking upright. Trust me, I'm not being stealthy at all about it.

In response, I tried drinking lots of water. That didn't work. I turned on my fan to blow much colder air on me. That didn't work either. Now I'm trying to eat a sugary snack bar to help keep me awake until break (15 minutes). I'll even bring some money so I can buy a sugary cappucino and hopefully that will work. I don't get why I'm so tired...

Well, that's a lie. The truth of it is that I'm exhausted from the stress of living in my current apartment. Last night the landlady finally spoke to me, to inform me that my last month's cheque had been dropped off. I kind of stood there and then screwed up my courage and told her, "Oh, well what about the July cheque? I've already put a stop payment on that one too." Ha. If I thought she was mad before... She was even worse. It's not like she said or did anything different, but you could practically feel the temperature in the room drop. I gave her dad a call to confirm they wouldn't try cashing the cheque and he was quite pleasant to me. Ha.

Lauda came home shortly thereafter and I asked her to let me know when she was going to be cooking - I can handle being in the same room as my landlady as long as someone else is also there. After less than an hour of me being home, Lauda knocked on my door to let me know that Michelle had left the apartment. While there's no way I can confirm it, I suspect she went back to her other city in order to escape me. In an effort to keep the avoidance game we're playing going, I went and cooked my dinner/lunch, prepared my breakfast, and had my shower all before 6pm so that I could hide out in my room. Luckily Michelle didn't return home last night. I'm hoping that she'll stay in the other town, Walkerton, until the weekend.

So that's why I'm so tired. I'm stressed out from last night (I was constantly jumpy, thinking I heard her car in the driveway) and now I'm stressing out about going home tonight. Oh well. I refuse to be run out of the house because of her.

On to happier news... After several weeks of oggling cell phones on the internet, I finally bit the bullet and bought one. My dad's union has an excellent contract. To summarize the plan... I have free call waiting/answering/conferencing/etc, 250 anytime minutes, unlimited weeknights (6pm - 8am) etc. Unfortunately it's a 3 year contract, but hopefully I'll use the phone enough to justify it. Amusingly I got the EXACT same cell phone that my friends Henry and Rishi have. (Henry had it first, then Rishi bought one, and now so have I. I'm a sheep. Bah.)

I guess that's all for now. I feel better getting that off my chest. Only 2 more sleeps in my apartment, then I'm home free!

Prepare for liftoff!

It's the weekend! Yay! I have been oddly excited about this upcoming weekend for some reason. I suspect it's because of the stress of the last week. Let me divulge the story of my life since you last visited...

Last weekend I ventured home for the night. My family and I decided to have a night out and went to see the Davinci Code. It was a good movie - surprisingly faithful to the book, although the ending was quite different...

Upon returning to my house, I was pleased to find out that the DVDs I had mailed to myself from Hong Kong had finally arrived. My parents were amused to see how movies are sold in China. I ended up tossing Serenity into the DVD player and watching it. Luckily it worked (mostly) and my dad and I watched it together.

The next day my mom and I ventured out to do some shopping and buy my dad a father's day gift. I had decided I wanted to buy him some headphones. My dad likes to listen to music quite often, but his current headphones are so disgustingly greasy and old that I can't bear to look at them. I bought him some freakin' expensive ones (supposedly they drown out outside noise) but he later determined they weren't comfortable enough. (He blames it on his
baldness...) So the plan for this weekend is to return his old ones and buy him a new set.

We ended up ordering pizza and watching another movie and then my parents drove me home. Why did I return home after only one day? Because on Sunday I had planned to go to Wonderland!

Everything went according to plan. I got up at 6am so that I could wait for Cory outside. Cory's a co-op student also working at Bruce Power. I had met him twice before and that was about it. Well, if I had known what his TRUE colours were, I would have told him to shove his offer of a ride up his wazoo! I was TERRIFIED on the drive to Toronto. He was driving 120 to 140km/h on the backroads, and when we finally hit highway 400, he managed to get up to 175km/h!!! Needless to say, there were times where I wanted to claw at the windows.

Another example of his stupidity was on a backroad near a small town. We were driving uphill and coming to a stop sign. Well, on the road were those strange marks that cause your tires to make weird sounds that warn you a stop sign is coming. Well, suddenly Cory swings into the wrong lane and finishes his drive up to the top of the hill in the wrong lane!!! That was the first time I felt like freaking out. I was NOT impressed.

Wonderland itself was great. (Photos are here!) I didn't actually get to go into the park until nearly 11am because one of the cars that was picking up a friend of mine was late. (We were supposed to meet at 9:45am.) Overall though I had a fun day. My friends Stacy (my old housemate) and Minnie (a friend I met while in Hong Kong) showed up to spend the day with me. I was so happy to see the both of them. We ended up hanging out the entire time I was there (Stacy's friend Max also came, and he was fun too).

I think I've gotten past the stage in my life where I need to go on rides at Wonderland. I only went on about 6 rides while I was there. The rest of our time was spent chilling out and eating. (Err, eating and rides... Not a good combo - I was more worried about getting sick than about the ride itself.) We ended up leaving the park around 4:30 and getting dinner in Orangeville. The ride back home was much saner and had good music. (Note to self: Steal Ana's CDs!)

The next few days were uneventful. Our landlady had been around for them. She was working around the house - painting it in order to get ready for her daughters to move in. She had seemed a bit stressed out and not too friendly, but I couldn't blame her for that - she'd been working non-stop. Well, on Wednesday she left the house with her daughters. Tao brought some of his friends over and left them in the dining room alone while he made some phone calls. I was in the kitchen for awhile (right beside them) and then left to go to another part of the house. I heard the landlady come back and nothing else. When I went back out to the kitchen, she asked me, "Maureen, who are those strangers sitting at my dining room table???" I mentioned they were Tao's friends, but that I'd send them to our common area. Nothing more was said.

The next morning when I woke up, there was a three page essay by our landlady attached to our bathroom mirror. It seems as though someone had stolen $400 from her purse that had been sitting on the dining room floor behind the table. She wrote that she was not happy and proceeded to write out some "new rules." These rules included having to eat and be out of the kitchen by 7pm, have our showers by 9pm, etc. I understand that she was upset by the money being gone. She thinks it was one of Tao's friends who took it. Personally I think it was her own daughter or her daughter's friend. (Her daughter's 12 and smokes and hangs out with a "bad crowd.")

The only problem I have is that now we're being told to stay in our little common area (which is very tiny) and stay out of the rest of the house. I'm paying too much damned money to be restricted to a small house and be treated like a child. There were a lot of other problems too - it took forever to get things fixed, they had dogs even though they said they were getting rid of them, etc... Therefore on Thursday, after discussing it with my parents, I decided to tell the landlady I was moving out. I was totally prepared to have an all-out fight with her. I approached her and said, "Michelle, I'm not happy with the living situation here. I've decided that I'll be moving out by the end of June." Her response? "OK." That was it. I was totally thrown off balance by such quick acceptance. When you're expecting a huge fight, that's not the response you would expect...

I was very relieved to hear that, but for the rest of that night, and Friday when I saw her, and even today when I returned home, she hasn't said a word to me. And I have done nothing but been pleasant. I greet her, but she ignores me. It's nice to see one of us can be mature about this.

Luckily for me, my pal Henry at work said his landlord had some empty rooms available. By the next day, I had signed my lease (for 2 months) and given my deposit. I'm going to move in on Thursday. Lauda and Tao are sad to see me go, but I just can't handle the friction in the house anymore. (Oh, and I should mention that Lauda told me that the landlady was very friendly and helped Lauda carry stuff into the house this evening... The same evening she ignored me.)

The rest of the weekend was just as relaxing as I had hoped. Now I know that the anticipation I felt for the weekend was due to the stress of living in this apartment. I'm already looking forward to next week when I move into the new apartment.

Tonight I was transferring all my photos from Hong Kong (currently on CD) to my harddrive so that I can burn them to DVD next weekend. I ended up glancing through most of the photos - I got all nostalgic and sad seeing them. I miss my friends from there. I miss the comraderie and sense of family between us. I did laugh though seeing some of the photos... I was sad though to realize I've forgotten some of the names of the people in my photos though. I need to go through them and add descriptions before the memories fade completely.

That's all for now - I have work tomorrow, so I should be off to bed soon...

P.S.
Tao had his 25th birthday two weeks ago! Here are the photos!