Giving up pretense

I had every intention of coming to campus to work on my history paper today, but here I am, sitting outside the SLC basking in the sun with my laptop. I did some work (namely grammar) but my creativity is being sapped by the sunny rays and the fact that natural sunlight makes it hard to look at my laptop screen. Anyways...

I'm done my exams! Yay! I kept telling everyone that my last exam (Humanities) was going to be my easiest, but it turned out that it was the exact opposite. My history exam went really well - I think I did well... But I know the prof is a really hard marker in that class, so I don't know how my final mark will turn out. (e.g. I thought I rocked the midterm but only got 75% on the thing!) As for my political science exam... I walked into the room, made the exam into my bitch, and spat on it on my way out of the room. I've never written an exam essay and known my stuff so well. It helped that the prof had given us the exam questions ahead of time, so we knew what to study.

My final exam was ridiculous. Our prof told us that three quarters of the questions on the exam would come directly from our online quizzes, so we knew to memorize the questions and answers to the quizzes. The rest of the questions would come from the chapters that we hadn't covered in class. Oh my god. I sat down at my table, and within 15 minutes I had answered 111 of the 160 multiple choice questions on the exam. I could not believe how fast I went through them! LOL. Then when I went to do question 112, it was like I ran into a brick wall - that was the start of the new information, so I actually had to stop and think about my answers. I finished answer the entire exam in 30 minutes... But the pain in the ass thing was that the university won't allow students to leave the exam room until at least an hour has passed. So I had to spend the next 30 sitting at my desk being bored. (Yes I did check over my answers, but it didn't take long at all.) Oi!

I've also been busy saying goodbye to my various friends who are graduating. It's strange - I don't feel like it's really a goodbye - I've known them for so long that it feels surreal that I might never see them again. This reminds me of when I was leaving Hong Kong - I had a hard time grasping that I would never see some of those people again either. Anyways, Tao and I went out for dinner on Wednesday as a goodbye, and Stacy and I did the same last night.

Speaking of last night, Agnes and I decided to go see "Hot Fuzz" at the movie theatre. That movie is so frickin' hilarious. It's a British film and is totally over the top. The funny thing about the whole movie-going experience happened while Agnes and I were in line to buy tickets. I was trying to tell her about an actor in a movie and when she recognized the name, I thought her answer was sarcastic. I told her, "Oh, I thought you were being facetious!" Suddenly this guy in line in front of us chuckled, turned to me, and said, "Excellent use of vocabulary!" It was so unexpected and random that I didn't know what to make of it. LOL.

I think I'm getting a little sunburnt now. I should get going - my laptop is melting in the sun, and I still have to finish packing so I can move home tomorrow.

Fare well!

Yup, it's procrastinatin' time

I'm on my blog quite a bit lately. It must mean that I have something due soon. However, my parents no longer have the right to bitch at me for my procrastination habits. (A fact I'm sure they're going to ignore.) Apparently my father found an article that found that people who procrastinate are something like 10% more efficient when they do finally work. I wonder if I can find that article... Maybe I'll get it framed.

I went to donate blood today at UW. The day didn't start off well for anyone. I slept through my alarm clock (again) - I'm going to have to test it to make sure it's functioning - maybe I just keep turning it off and forgetting.

I made it to the donors on time though. Unfortunately they were late in setting up due to the weather and traffic. No problem! That just gave me time to go get food. I was just sitting down to eat in the SLC when suddenly this weird buzzing sound starts, but it was intermittent, so we all just sat and stared at each other for a moment... But it continued. Fine, guess it's a real fire drill after all! We all filed out into the cold and had to stand around for 20 minutes while the firetrucks came and gave us the all clear to go back in.

While waiting for the all clear though, I was slightly annoyed by the one group of people I saw. They decided that it was too cold to wait outside like the rest of us, so they ended up going back into the inner set of doors of the SLC. Maybe this was smart thinking - after all, in all likelihood, it was a false fire alarm... But what if it hadn't been? I kept hoping the fire was real and was going to suddenly erupt and toast the twirps alive. I'm not irritated. Really.

Of course the alarm delayed the blood donors even longer for setting up, but soon all was good and I was zipping through. This donation went a lot smoother than the last time because I had all the places I had visited written down a piece of paper. Yay! Even the donation went very well. It took me about 16 minutes to donate my share (I found out the average time is 10 minutes), and since I had warned the nurse that I tend to have complications from donating (aka getting woozy"), she made me stay laying down for an extra 5 minutes. I think that really did the trick, because I only felt mildly shaky instead of wanting to keel over afterwards.

Stacy managed to find me at the donors (I was like 15 minutes late in meeting her due to all the delays). We ended up going to her new house for lunch (ha ha, it has retro 70s carpets!). I managed to con her into going to the mall so I could do some quick shopping and to see a movie.

We ended up seeing The Children of Men. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Stacy found it too violent for her tastes, but I felt the violence added to the atmosphere of the film. The premise of the film is that one day, for no reason, women stop being able to have children. For 18 years, no new children are born, and then suddenly a young woman gets pregnant. The movie is interesting because it shows how both humanity and certain individuals react to the dying out of the human race. I thought the entire film was very thought provoking and profound. I recommend you go check it out.

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. :)

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...

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.