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!