Mmm, opiates

I'm surprised to report that I'm not as sore as anticipated today. My right arm hurts, and so do my legs, but my back is quite fine! Woot!

SQUASHed like a bug!

Jill taught me how to play Squash today! I cannot believe how difficult that game is - it's a lot harder than it looks. Of course, this may have something to do with my total lack of hand-eye coordination - I missed some of the most ridiculously easy shots ever! Ha ha

My best score was getting 5 points (Jill still won)... Of course, the majority of those points weren't technically valid because I'd accidentally hit the ball out of bounds but we'd keep playing anyways. So technically my highest score was like 2. :)

I suspect tomorrow (err, I guess it's today now) is going to a brand new world of pain for me. Even though I stretched before playing (thank God Jill recommended it) my back was sore half an hour into the game. Since pain usually takes a day for it to settle in, I think tomorrow will be a challenge for me to get around. :)

Oh, and I also got hit by the ball twice - both times my fault. I got hit in the shoulder because I just stood there stupidly watching the ball come towards me (remember that lack of hand-eye coordination thing I mentioned? This was more of a lack of brain function - I don't even think I tried to hit the damned ball.) I also got smacked in the back by Jill because I was too stupid to get out of her shot LOL. Yup, I definitely need to practice this game some more.

Despite its difficulty and the pain that went with it, I had a lot of fun. I can't wait to try it out again.

Impossible to understand

I can't understand my landlords. It's not the language barrier that confounds me. It's their habits. I'm beginning to wonder if they're afraid of the dark. I also can't understand how as engineers they don't understand thermodynamics. I shall elaborate. Also, I should clarify that my landlords aren't that old - they're maybe in their late 20s early 30s, so senility isn't an issue.

First of all, they're incapable of turning the lights off when they leave a room. There's a light at the top of our staircase that is FOREVER on. It's on whether they're home or not. Even if it's bright daylight out, they have to turn it on in order to ascend or descend the stairs. I'll wake up at 7am and the light is burning brightly just to irritate me. One time they also left a mini lamp on downstairs overnight. The thing was so bloody hot when I turned it off the next morning I nearly burnt myself. (They had also left their laptop running overnight... I haven't got a clue as to what prompted that.)

I also have a beef with their refusal to be responsible with the house heating. I believe I've gripped about how they crank the heat up to 27 degrees at all times and while I keep turning it down whenever I see it up there. Now that the warm weather has arrived, I've discovered a new issue. They leave the windows open while the heat is turned on... And I'm not just talking about opening up a window here and there to quickly air out the house, I'm talking "leave them open all day while the heat is set to 25 degrees."

I'll admit that I was the first person to start opening windows when the weather turned nice. But I at least turned off the heat before doing so. And when I was done downstairs, or when the day began to cool down, I closed the windows on my way back up. The next day when I came home from school, the windows were wide open, and as I mentioned above, the heat was turned up to 25 degrees. I was flabbergasted. These people are freaking PHD engineers! They should be smart enough to know that having the heat on while the windows are open is not going to do anything except contribute to global warming! GAH!

And then this evening. Oh my gosh this evening. I'm in the kitchen drying my dishes. The heat's turned on again, but whatever. Shunde (the guy) is upstairs in their room. Shuang comes home and yells his name. She leaves the door wide open while waiting for him to come down. It takes about 3 minutes for him to come downstairs. Meanwhile the door continues to stand open, sucking out all the warm air of the house. You know what she called him for? To bring in the groceries. She had brought them all the way to the top step, but was incapable of bringing them those final five steps into the house. I was beyond flabbergasted at this point. I was speechless and trying not to laugh hysterically. And the sad thing is, it only took Shunde 2 trips (hell, can that even be called a trip when the groceries are literally just outside the door?!) to bring in the groceries. She could have done it faster than him for Christ's sake!

Nothing I learned from my time in Asia can explain this behaviour. Can someone, anyone, please please please help me understand what's going on here?!

The library is now closed.

Remember this post back in February? The one with the picture of the ridiculously large amount of books on my desk? Yeah. That's no longer the case.

I finished my research for my Hong Kong paper tonight! Yippee!!! I have 33 pages of pure quotes and research from all my resources... 33 pages of single-spaced research at that. And it's all for a 30 page paper that's going to be double-spaced and have footnotes! YEAH baby!!!

Winter strikes again

I used to be a big fan of winter. I loved the bite of the cold air, the pristine white fields surrounding the land, watching other people suffer. But I have to admit, I'm fucking sick of it now. LOL. Ever since I came back from sub-tropical Hong Kong, the cold has been an absolute bitch! And the way it keeps being a cocktease just makes it worse!

For a couple of days this week, the weather was AMAZING. It was so warm the snow was melting. I could walk to school with my jacket undone, etc. It was gorgeous. And it was that way yesterday morning - I walked around campus content as could be... But by lunchtime you could barely see across the street from the driving snow flailing us! By the time I left campus, I couldn't see where I was walking, snow was clinging to my head, and I practically had to climb over the snow drifts to get home. >:( (It didn't help that I was starving and sore from weightlifting and the vaccine I had just been stuck with.)

Other amusing happenings yesterday:

When I was in the SLC having a quick bowl of soup prior to going to the gym, I was watching people set up informational booths to promote things. Suddenly two people at one table get up and start doing random dances. And damn they were good. When I finished my food, I got up and wandered over there, but they didn't have anything signs - just a TV showing people doing ballroom dancing.

I don't like approaching tables in the SLC just in case they try to sucker you into buying things or are crazies who are advocating something I don't agree with. I ended up doing two laps of the SLC before I finally approached the table and asked them what they were promoting. Turns out it was UW's Ballroom Dance Club! Before you know it, I had signed up as a member and paid for waltz, jive, and rhumba lessons. (See? They suckered me into buying stuff!) The guy I signed up with was named Jesse. Today was supposed to be my first set of lessons, but with the snowday, they've been canceled. Whoops!

After signing up for the lessons, I had to scurry off to my weightlifting class. It's amusing because the instructor calls a few of us her "regulars" because we haven't missed a class yet. That makes me happy for some reason. *flex*

After our class was done, I then went to pick up a prescription for Gardasil I had ordered. (It's the new vaccine against the Human Papillomavirus virus - the one that causes some cervical cancers.) It was up to me to take it to health services to get it injected, so that's just what I did. For some reason, this needle hurt a hell of a lot more than normal. Well, maybe not a lot more, but it hurt more than normal.

I stuck around health services for 15 minutes afterwards just in case I collapsed before making my way home. As mentioned, my walk home was not pleasant. By the time I got home, I was dripping water EVERYWHERE. It was ridiculous. The snow clung to all materials, especially my hair.

Several hours later I was all snuggly from having a shower and being in warm clothes. I had vowed not to leave my house again, but alas, twas not to be! I had just gotten up from my desk when I saw a car right outside my house. It was stuck in a snow drift literally right across from my front door. It became apparent that they and the people who had stopped to help couldn't push it out, so I decided to do my good deed of the year.

Mau goes tromping downstairs, dons her boots, and goes outside to offer her help. The weirdest thing of all? The person stuck was Jesse, the guy who got me to join the Ballroom Dance Club. Ha ha. Even with three of us pushing, we weren't able to move the car, but luckily another car pulled up and offered to help pull the car out of the ditch. While they were waiting to find rope, I ended up going back instead (I was only wearing a sweatshirt).

While I was making myself some hot chocolate, I kept watching out the window to see if they were successful. Another car came by and offered the use of a shovel to help dig the car out a bit. That was what did it. Shovelling coupled with 4 people pushing got the guy moving. He stopped about 3 feet away and thanked everyone who then drove off. He got back in his car and started to drive away again. But he couldn't. That's right, the car got stuck a mere 3 feet away from his original place. LOL. So I went back outside and helped push again and this time we got him on to the cleared part of the road. LOL. (This entire ordeal began because he had pulled over to make room for a plow.)

Thus was my yesterday. While I was trying to read my textbooks later that night, I actually ended up putting in my ear plugs because the rain hitting my windows was ridiculously loud! Oh, and today's another snowday! YAY!