Sweet images

I saw this little poem/story on a web comic I like to read. I found it so beautiful (in a sad kinda way) that I wanted to share it with others. The comic is called Friendly Hostility. This excerpt was from a week the artist took off from the comic. It can be found here.

I knew it was the end when I woke to find you sleeping next to me, grave dirt in your hair, under your fingernails, streaked on your pretty face.

You smelled like the hydrangeas you'd been buried with. Your skin, your skin was translucent, thin and delicate like tissue paper.

It bordered on pale blue, bringing a moonbeam into the golden sunlit morning, into the cotton sheets tangled up on my bed.

I pulled the covers over us, pressed close and tucked your head under my chin like we used to before the accident, and went back to sleep.

Pre-pain status

I figured I'd type this quick entry out before the pain of my day truly set in.

I went snowshoeing today.

I haven't been snowshooeing since 2004. Cathy and I went to Gatineau Park and rented some snowshoes... We were walking around from 11am to about 2:45pm. I am so not looking forward to tomorrow when the pain sets in. My legs are already stiff and sore, and this is after a hot shower and an evening of relaxation.

We walked along two trails, the easy "Sugarbush Trail" and the "Blanchet Trail." The woman at the Visitor's Centre told us that the Blanchet trail had a few vertical climbs and whatnot, but that it was a good walk. She failed to mention that "vertical climbs" translates into "scaling a mountain"... That's right, somehow Cathy and I managed to snowshoe our way up the side of a mountain.

We probably got 98% of our way through the trail before finally turning back. We were both ridiculously cold and tired from hiking upwards... I can't decide whether going up or down was harder. Going up was difficult because we were climbing all the way, but going down was also hard on the knees/thighs because you were constantly leaning back to counteract the angle of the hill while wearing snowshoes. At least going down went faster than going up!

Despite my impending pain, I had a great day. It's so nice to do something different from staying inside, or going to a mall or anything else.

Entry denied

At my internship, we're occupying two different offices. We've got our main Peacebuild office, and we're also using a small office within NAPO's (National Anti-Poverty Organization) offices which are right beside our own.

We started locking out own little office within NAPO's offices and we keep the key in our main office. NAPO's main doors are locked with an electronic keypad, so entry is no problem.

However, this morning I happened to be the first person into work. So I went into NAPO's office to see if our office door was unlocked. No luck, so I go to get the key from our main office, only to realize that our main office doors are locked.

I ended up having to set up shop in the main lobby of NAPO and wait for my supervisor to get there so we could unlock everything and get the ball rolling.

The new KKK

I had a surreal moment on the bus this evening. I came out of my commuter daze to take note of my fellow passengers. At the front of the bus were three people wearing white winter jackets with their hoods drawn up. The fluorescent lighting on the bus made them stand out. For some reason, they reminded me of the KKK.

Early vs. late wakeup calls

Normally I'm bitching about the false fire alarms late at night around 1am. But I must recant my rants. I discovered this morning that it's infinitely worse to be woken up at 7am on a Saturday morning. At least with the night alarms it's easier to fall asleep again.

The amusing thing with this morning's alarm, was that once it was done, we were all trudging upstairs back to our rooms, when the alarm started going off again. We all kind of froze and were like, "Well do we go back to our rooms or back outside?!" Cathy and I popped into the lounge to look out the windows and when we saw that the firetrucks were leaving despite the alarms going off again. We figured it was safe to go back to our rooms, and sure enough, by the time we reached the 5th floor, the alarms stopped.

The worse thing about fire alarms these days is that you just can't roll out of bed and go out the door. It's too cold for that! You have to bundle into pants, get winter jackets on, running shoes, hats, and scarves.

After the alarm, I ended up staying up since I was awake from the cold. 2 hours later I was lying in my bed watching a movie on my laptop, when suddenly the alarm started going off AGAIN. I managed to get up (I finished knitting the line of yarn I was working on first), get into my jeans, and just as I was shrugging into my jeans, the alarm stopped again. Yeesh.

A story for my readers

Well it seems as though I've been in a non-blogging mood of late. Very well, I shall regale you with an amusing anecdote from my Christmas holidays.

My sister bought a new laptop back in the Fall. Its keyboard has all the special characters, and it also has special French keys on it. My sister didn't know how to use the French keys, so she asked me to play around with her laptop to try to figure it out.

I fought with her laptop for half an hour. I changed language settings, keyboard settings, I tried using the function keys on her laptop and nothing worked! I finally gave up, put all her settings back to normal and returned her laptop to her.

Mel started to check her email and then asked, "Umm, Mau? What's going on?" Whenever she tried to type on the right half of her keyboard, instead of letters appearing, numbers would come up instead.

I reconfiscated her laptop and rechecked that I had returned all her language and keyboard settings back to normal. Then I checked again, and again. I could not for the life of me figure out what her keyboard was still spouting out random signs and numbers instead of the letters. I even called my father in to help.

We were checking online help files trying to figure out what was going on. I finally clued into what was wrong when I came across a web page explaining how to use a laptop keyboard. That's when it hit me.

When I had been originally fiddling around with her laptop, I had turned number lock on! I forgot to turn it off! That's why half her keyboard was punching out numbers instead of letters.

I am so smrt!

Merry Christmas!

Ho ho ho, happy holidays!

Winter woes

I decided to be my mother's nurse during her recuperation. However, as of this afternoon I too am an invalid. I was outside shoveling snow and about half way through a swing, I felt a crack in my back followed by a not-so-pleasant stabbing pain.

That's right, I threw out my back. Again. I've been laying around with an ice pack on my back and have been taking pain killers. I also tried some cream for arthritis pain and nothing's helping. :( I tried to have a nap in my bed this afternoon, but trying to emerge from my blankets and get back up was ridiculously painful - my back started spasming and I actually cried - and I never cry with pain.

My parents are taking pity on me and fetching me whatever I need and are helping me to get up and out of various chairs.

I can't wait for this to be over.

My newest sibling

Two weeks ago my mom finally relented and allowed my father to get a new cat. They adopted a long haired grey cat from the animal shelter and brought it home... Where it promptly disappeared. Searches later revealed it to be hiding behind the dryer. Later it was under a couch. Then it was under a bed.

My father would have to lie on his stomach to coax the feline out from its hiding places, and this has been the pattern for two weeks. (The creature had been a stray, and then locked up in a cage for 5 months, so some shyness was expected.) He's been working on essentially "taming" the cat for human company.

The funny thing is though, the cat has decided to like everyone BUT my father (for whom the cat was purchased in the first place). A few days ago, when my parents were lying it bed, apparently the cat jumped up and was sucking up to my mother (who hates cats) and totally ignored my father's overtures.

For my first 24 hours at home, I didn't see the cat either. I heard it eating food and using its litterbox, but never laid eyes on it. Then yesterday, in the middle of the night while my parents were out of the house, I woke up to find a black mass at the bottom of my bed.

It was a bit disturbing to realize there's a creature on my bed that I've never lay eyes on. I managed to coax it within hand reach whereupon I started to pet it. The next thing I know, the cat is with me for 2 hours, cuddling, etc. I finally got up and went downstairs just as my parents came home. The cat disappeared again. The stupid feline hisses and growls when she sees him.

We're trying to think of names for the cat now. The people at the shelter called it "Mumsy" because it recently had a litter of kittens.

Our potential names include:

• Invisi-cat
  
• Phantom
  
• Reaper (because my mom used to tell my dad he could get a cat when she was dead.)
  
• AWOL
  
• Houdini
  

Kids say the darndest things

Bwhahahahahaa. My niece made me laugh tonight. I was talking with her on the phone tonight and then I asked if she had heard the news about her grandmother. (My mom has a kidney stone.)

Cara tells me, "Yeah, mom said something about grandma's kidneys being stoned."

I kinda paused, wondering if she was joking, and then I realized she wasn't. LOL. I laughed and laughed at that.

Perils of being a grad student

Last night I helped my friend Meg find our professor's office so she could drop off a paper. We couldn't find the professor's drop box, so she decided to slide the paper under the prof's office door. Her paper was 25 pages long and was in a file folder.

It wouldn't slide under the door.

We started laughing hysterically. "Holy shit! It's too thick! It won't fit under the door!!!" She managed to slide it under finally, but she had to remove the file folder and even then it was a tight squeeze.

It's crazy when your final papers are so big they won't even slide under a door anymore.

Lost on a straight line

Once in awhile I get the urge to go for a long walk. I can walk for a long time, provided I keep a quick pace and don't get distracted or stop for anything. (If I do, I suddenly get tired and lose motivation to walk.)

Today was one of those days. I finished my last exam, the sun was shining, I had a cup of coffee, and felt like walking around the city. You can see on the map below the path I took. all in all, it took me around 2 hours? But they were coooooold hours. It was only -4 today, but the wind was pretty miserable!


I was initially planning on just walking around the Byward Market, but I've been there so often, it seemed boring. Then I considered walking to the National Art Gallery, but I really didn't feel like it (although I did walk right beside it briefly). Then I walked behind the Parliament buildings and was going to walk beside the Ottawa River, but the pathway wasn't cleared and I didn't feel like slipping and sliding everywhere.

Finally, I decided to walk along the Rideau Canal back to my residence. The canal runs from the Ottawa river, through the city, all the way to my university. I can see the canal from my window! The walk was very nice, but as mentioned, cold. And I was also bitter at the lack of public washrooms along the path! About half way through my walk, my coffee came back to haunt me. (I did find one set of public washrooms, but they were locked - what the hell? I guess the city thinks people don't urinate during the winter.) By the time I got to Lansdowne Park though, I really needed to use a bathroom, so I found my way back to a major street and managed to get back to my residence before I burst.

It was a very pleasant walk, but I think I might wait until the spring before I walk it again. (But of course I'll be skating on the canal when it finally opens up...)

Apologies

I owe an apology to the masses. For years, I've been hearing stories of "the web/application ate my homework!" I've always assumed it was sheer incompetence on their part.

I hereby formally apologize, because I finally understand that even the technically savvy (aka: me) can suffer glitches.

I had to submit my final paper over the internet to my professor. We have to use this online software, WebCT, to do so. So I submitted my paper on Wednesday and chilled out for the rest of the night, basking in the glory that is having nothing to do.

The next day one of my classmates mentioned that the prof had already started submitting grades online. I spent all of Thursday morning/afternoon stalking WebCT, hoping for a mark. Finally I thought, "Maybe my mark is appearing on a different page..." I navigated through the site and found myself on the "Assignment Submission" page. That's when I noticed that beside the submission link, it read, "Status: Individual Not Started (Due December 5, 2007 15:00 Late)". Wait! What the hell?!

I immediately emailed my prof to ask whether he received my paper... I pounced on my computer everytime I heard the "Ding, you've got new mail" sound. Finally I got a reply and discovered that no, my prof hadn't received my assignment. Talk about a freakout. Luckily he accepted my assignment as on time anyways.

Therefore, I would like to apologize to everyone I've ever doubted before.

A portrait of Mau

... It's me!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Last week of classes

Today was my last Human Security class. Even though I had a hard time keeping up with the workload and contributing to the class discussions, I'm really happy that I took the course. It was was very enlightening, both about Human Security and the International community in general.

Our prof did his best to instill a sense of responsibility and humility in us, warning us that we need to be careful, because our decisions don't affect us - someone in some developing country pays for our errors. I feel like that was the most important thing I've learned all term. Heck, that's probably the most important thing I've learned since I've started school in general. It's easy to think about what *I* want to do, or how *I'll* decide to do things... But I've never truly considered the potential ramifications of my decisions beyond, "Oh, I might get in shit and get fired."

There was some amusement in our final class though. There were three final student presentations. When our prof was making the presentation topics, he randomly chose issues he knew about, and other ones he didn't know about. Well, today one girl had to do a presentation about a topic the prof wasn't aware of.

Her topic was about gangs recruiting children in India. She presented the different ideas of gangs, recruitment methods in general, etc... And then she had a slide in the middle of her presentation entitled, "Understanding Gaps in Human Security Research (Or: My Very Bad Day at The Library)." While trying to research gang recruitment in the Indian context, she could not find any resources on children in Indian gangs. She ended up talking to the prof and they changed her topic to be about why there's a dearth of information on the topic. She had three hypotheses and the first one listed was, "Hypothesis #1: I am not very good at researching." We all laughed and laughed. Her other hypotheses were interesting too, and the class discussion was also fascinating as we tried to figure out why there could be no information, or how we could look for the information in other ways.

This lack of information on gang recruitment of children in India is one of the things our prof was trying to warn us about. As he told us today, if there truly is no information available on this topic, it means that all other generalizations in the world on gang recruitment of children are made moot - India is the second most populous country in the world, so lacking information on this country means that we don't have all the necessary information to make a well-rounded hypothesis... I don't know if this makes sense to you, but to me, it was a pretty amazing concept.

Cleaning update

I talked to my roommate tonight about what she wanted me to clean. As I mentioned, I thought I was a fairly clean person. It turns out that I am. It's just that she's super clean. I think what it comes down to is the fact that she's never lived in a student apartment before. I'm used to student housing being slightly dirty (or in some cases, ridiculously dirty), so I'm used to ignoring small things like scuffs on the walls, etc.

I told her to make a list of things she wants cleaned, and then we'll take turns doing it. She kept protesting, "But I don't want to make you feel bad - this is your house too!" But let's face it, it's not like she'll lower herself to my decent standards. LOL. She wants stuff like the cupboards (near the handles) scrubbed, etc... Yeesh. I thought I left psycho-cleaner back in Owen Sound.

Spelling fun

I'm writing one of my essays right now and suddenly had a brain fart. I realized I didn't know if I should be spelling things, "per cent" or "percent." (I've seen them both ways in academic papers.)

After a quick google and a visit to the mother of all knowledge, Wikipedia, I came across their writing style guide that explained the differences between different countries and their spelling styles. I found a lovely little table on there that compared, Australia, Canada, UK, USA, and some other countries. I was amused to see how random Canada's column is. Our spelling varies from US to UK with a bit of French influence tossed in for fun.

I suggest you check it out here. It's amusing if nothing else.

P.S. Oh yeah, "per cent" is the British method while "percent" is the American. Since the queen is on our money, I think I'll use the British method... And it takes up more space on the page. ;)

By the power of Grey Skull!

Sometimes when I think over the past 5 years of undergrad, and where I am now, I can't help but feel like this... http://applegeeks.com/lite/index.php?aglitecomic=2006-06-23

The small things

Argh. It's amazing how one small issue can make you completely infuriated. I woke up feeling good - ready to tackle a new day, be productive, etc., etc.

After I got out of the shower and was just going back into my room, my roommate comes out of hers and asks, "Oh Maureen, do you think the bathroom floor is getting kind of dirty?" After I gave the stunning reply of, "Huh?" She repeated her comment...

It's like, "Just fucking ask me to mop the floors if you want me to!!!"

I can't really complain, it's good that I have a clean housemate. Admittedly she's a lot cleaner than I am - she's forever scrubbing things down while I subscribe to the idea that a little dirt is good for you in life. I'm tidy though - I also wipe down the counters, I do my dishes a lot more often than her (mind you, I create more dishes), etc. She's the one who cleans the bathroom most often and whatnot, but then again, I'm the one who thinks it doesn't need that much cleaning. If I do clean up, it tends to be while she's not home.

Anyways, the main thing that bugs me is that she had to flit around her question instead of asking me flat out. She has no problem confronting me at other times (e.g. this weekend we had to agree to keep my door closed with a scarf blocking the gap underneath it because I was apparently creating a wind tunnel by keeping my window open.)

It wasn't until she left the apartment and I sat down to eat my breakfast that I realized how much of a bitchy mood I had sunk into. If I had been a more confrontational person, I would have loved to have replied, "No, I think it still looks good," as I slammed the door in her face. :) But alas, I'm not, and I probably will end up mopping sooner or later.

Word Definition

I now know what the word "cacophony" means. It's when hundreds of Canadian Geese decide to migrate by your window at 2am in the morning. It was surreal to hear them honking and honking, and the sound never ending...

Suckerpunched by winter

Jesus Christ! I'm used to having weeks to get used to winter, where the snow will come and then melt and repeat this process a few times before finally sticking around. Not so with Ottawa. When I opened my curtains yesterday morning, the first words outta my mouth were, "Holy shit!" Everything was covered in 3 inches of snow. And it's more of the same today.

Judging from the weather forecast, it looks like there's more snow to come, and it's going to be here to stay. Wow. Prior to this, we only had two small small snow falls, where the flakes melted even before they hit the ground. Yikes!

Organic methods

Whenever I tell someone that I'm learning how to knit, they tend to give me the exact same expression. Their faces have written on them, "Are you insane?" even as they tell me, "Oh, that's nice, Maureen."

I like learning how to do/make things the authentic way. Yes, I know I can go out to the store and buy a pre-knitted sweater or blanket, but it's nice to know how to do it myself. I feel like I can better appreciate the hard work that goes into such creations if I know how to do it myself.

The same goes for cooking. While I love all the pre-made sauces and packaged foods out there, I prefer to know how to flavour my foods using real spices and whatnot. Plus, I feel it's healthier - those processed foods contain so much salt and random ingredients that you never really know what you're eating. It's so satisfying to try a new recipe and with the first mouthful think, "Mmm, this is so delicious!" and to know that nothing but your own hard work went into making it wonderful.

In other words, all these little pieces of knowledge just go to make me more self-sustainable.

Names changes and other occurrences

Huzzah! I finished my other presentation yesterday! I had to talk for 20 minutes on an indigenous group I found interesting. I decided to research and study the Aboriginal tribes in Taiwan. My presentation revolved around their changing status through History under the different governments of Taiwan.

The night before the presentation I had a ridiculously hard time concentrating and preparing for my talk. I ended up staying up till 2:30am trying to finish my outline, and then I could not not not fall asleep. I probably drifted off around 3:30 and woke up around 6am. When I heard Nasrin get up for her shower at 6:30, I finally gave up and also got up so I could practice a few time. The presentation went really well - I wasn't completely smooth in my delivery, but I felt it went a hell of a lot better than my Human Security presentation did. :)

To celebrate, I decided to go to St. Laurent Centre with Laura. (I keep forgetting her name is spelled Laura even though it's pronounced Lauda.) We wanted to go to East Side Mario's for dinner... It took us forever to get to the bloody mall! Because we were cold, we hopped on the first bus we saw that was heading to St. Laurent. This bus ended up taking us all the way out into the middle of nowhere, past every single hospital in Ottawa and only then did we get to the mall. Lesson learned: Always take the express buses.

Upon arriving at East Side Mario's, I gave the hostess my name because there was a wait time of 20 minutes. I turned around to talk to Laura when the hostess suddenly calls me back over. I swear to God, this is what she said, "Can you please listen for the name Maria? I forgot what name you gave me." I blinked and informed her that she could just call for Mo or Laura and the chick vaguely acknowledged me. 5 minutes later, I hear the name "Maria" belted out. Laura was laughing her ass off with me. I know these teeny-bopper waiters/waitresses aren't paid to give a damn, but really, to assign customers new names just to make their own lives easier? That was hilarious.

Another amusing happenstance was that a sales clerk at a clothing store tried to hook Laura up with one of her sons. Laura was trying on some outfits for a wedding she was attending and I was teasing her about being able to use the clothes for interviews. The sales clerk suddenly starts asking Laura if she's looking for a job and Laura explains how she already has a job because she recently graduated etc... Next thing we know, the lady's asking Laura how old she is and casually mentions, "Oh, I have a son who's 24." We waited until the lady disappeared before cracking up.

Tools of the trade

Okay, time for some amusing add-ons to my knitting exploits. (I had been too tired to write anything more last night.)

When my roommate first brought out the knitting kneedles, I didn't get a good glimpse of them and just thought they were extra long pointy chopsticks. Oops! Next, when we began our knitting lesson, I realized that I automatically held the needle like I would a chopstick. Then she had to fix my grip because I was holding the needle at the wrong end (with chopsticks, you hold the needle further away rather than close to the point). I don't know how we managed to survive the first part of the lesson because we were laughing hysterically.

As for the actual knitting - that was also a painful process. I don't know how she managed not to beat me up or leave me where I was. It's hard enough for me to learn to knit normally, but trying to learn from someone who doesn't have the vocabulary to teach me in English? Even funnier. I kept making my rows too tight and because they were so tight, I had trouble differentiating between the different threads of yarn so I'd randomly skip a thread here and there. She'd inspect my rows and then laugh when she found all the gaps in them. LOL

I can't believe how difficult it is to learn how to knit. Teach me how to program in a computer language? No problem. Ask me to figure out why wars start all over the world? Sure thing. Ask me to wrap yarn around a metal needle? Count me out.

She can be taught!

Dude, I'm totally learning how to knit thanks to my roomie. I'm teaching her French and she's teaching me how to knit. I completed four rows of my wannabee scarf tonight. (I'll just have to sew some buttons strategically over the random gaping holes in it.) I also think I'm getting the better end of the deal - my French teaching abilities suck. I kept having to check the internet to confirm everything I was telling her - right down to finding a pronunciation guide to make sure I was saying things properly. LOL

Sinification of my life

I've been totally geeking out on Asia for the past week or so. As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I've found a way to download Asian dramas on my laptop, so I've been devouring episodes of Taiwanese TV shows. I'm totally enthralled by them.

It's nice to be able to watch them and catch the various words I know in Chinese. I won't claim that I'm learning any new words, but I am learning different ways of using the words I've learned before. (e.g. This summer I learned the word "shi" which means "news/affairs". When watching my TV shows, I realized I can say something like "no affairs" and it'll roughly translate into "Nothing's the matter". So no one can claim that I'm not learning anything by watching TV. :))

By watching these TV shows, I'm also able to find their soundtracks on the web, so I've been listening to a lot of mandarin music too. It's a nice change from Western music and I find I can hear familiar vocabulary in the songs too.

Finally, all this Asian influence forced me to seek out a Chinese grocery store in Ottawa. My friend Cathy (who's originally from Hong Kong) took me to Unimart. It was just like shopping back in Hong Kong! I was so excited to be able to buy steamed buns and BBQ pork! I was like a little kid in the candy store. We're going to try to make these grocery trips into weekly outings.

Anyways, that's how I'm sinifying my life right now.

I am not a Hallmark writer

Cathy came to my room to make use of my scanner. She laughed at the motivational sign I've got taped to my wall above my laptop.

"Stop whatever you're doing because you're probably not enjoying yourself anyways.

Go do work!"

Safety second

I just removed my personal alarm from my keychain. I don't know if something loosened in it or what, but the bloody thing keeps falling off and activating itself! I'll be locking my room door and it goes off, unlocking the door to enter the main hallway and it falls off. One day it fell off while I was walking down the hallway and I had to scramble to deactivate it. Even though I was meters away from my door, the alarm was so loud that Nasrin poked her head out because she knew it was me and the alarm.

I guess I'll just keep the alarm in a different part of my backpack and only take it out when I'm by myself at night. Sheesh.

A whole bunch of nothing

It's been awhile since I've updated, so I thought I'd toss out a bunch of random stuff that's happened lately... And not so lately.

As many of you know, I went back to Waterloo from October 18th to the 20th for convocation. I had such a blast. I love Ottawa, but it was nice to be back in a city that I know like the back of my hand. I'm not going to recap the whole trip, but it was terrific getting together with Shruthi and Victoria to go dancing, seeing Alyssa for breakfast, harassing Stacy after her convocation, and dragging my mother to restaurants that she didn't want to eat at.

Amusing anecdotes:
When my family and I went to the Rude Native for my "convocation dinner," my mom told the waitress that she would just like water to drink. Right away the waitress asked if my mom would like bottled, distilled, or perrier to drink. The look on my mom's face was hilarious - it was a mixture of horror, indignation, and exasperation. "Uhh, tap?"

Just before I graduated from UW, it decided to implement a mandatory bus pass system. Students just have to show their UW id to get on the bus. Since my ID is valid until 2011, I thought I'd try to use and abuse the new system, and it worked! However, the one morning I wasn't paying attention and got on the bus using my ID... It wasn't until I had to transfer buses that I realized I had used my Carleton ID to get on the bus. Yup, them bus drivers check out the ID reeeeal good.

I gave my first presentation in my Human Security class last Wednesday. I have to admit, I had been dreading the presentation A LOT. Much of my dread stemmed from the fact that I didn't have a very good grasp on my research - I had tried to take on too broad of a topic. I managed to stumble through my presentation but it was a difficult process at best. It wasn't until afterwards that I found out that my prof was a veritable expert on my topic too - he had written a major (controversial) report on it before, so he started going on about all these things that I didn't even know about my own topic. Thankfully I managed to get a great mark anyways. Phew!

On Friday Carleton held a co-op information session for all interested Master's students. After the session, all I can think is, "Sheesh! UW soooo spoiled me co-op-wise." I'm so used to UW's massive and efficient co-op machine that Carleton's seems dinky. LOL. The lady holding the info session was so proud that they have 6 dedicated interview rooms. Meanwhile I'm laughing behind my hand because hell, UW just built a brand new building with 100 interview rooms. Oh well. I'm totally signing up for the co-op program just because it's a good opportunity.

After the co-op session I went to Lauda's to cook her dinner and go out for a night on the town. We went to Caliente nightclub again, the salsa club. I really like the mix of music there - it has the regular bachata, salsa, and merengue, but it also plays reggaeton, soca, cumbia, and regular dance music. I had a lot of fun, but by 1:30 I was exhausted and Lauda was unwilling to go home.

The very end of the night was beyond awkward too. By 2ish the club was practically deserted, maybe only 15 people left, none of whom were dancing. Some random guy came up to Lauda and asked her to dance, and she told him to come back when the DJ wasn't playing salsa. Well, two seconds later the music switches to merengue, so the guy comes back, but he brings along his friend who drags me on to the dance floor. My dance partner wasn't bad looking - probably a bit older than me, but dancing with him was like being on a non-stop merry-go-round. He did the same 4 moves over and over, in the exact same order and everything. I was so tired that it was hard not to laugh (he actually caught me smirking once and asked me why). When the music finally changed to reggaeton we ended dancing together still... But it was really awkward because it was only the four of us on the dance floor, and when some guy tries to grind with me while people are watching and I don't have the cover of anonymity, I weird out. LOL. Thankfully some bachata came on and we sprang apart like opposite poles on a magnet.

Oh, Lauda and I also found this fantastic mexican restaurant at the corner of Bank and Second. I forget the name, but it's the only latin restaurant there. It even met with Lauda's seal of approval, so it must have been semi-authentic in her books. :) I highly recommend it.

Lastly, I have been totally geeking out lately on Asian television shows (more popularly known as "dramas"). When I was in HK, I never watched much television because it didn't have English subtitles. But I was always intrigued by the dramas that were playing - I could watch them and create my own storylines in my head... Well I recently found a website where you can download subtitled dramas. I've been totally enamored with all the bad acting, cheesy plots, and hilarious hijinks.

I guess that's it for my randomness. I need to go grocery shopping today - I have noooo fresh food left in my house. Hell, I don't even think I have packaged food to contribute to my meals... And the frozen dinners in my freezer are for emergency/lazy purposes only, so it's time to drag my butt out.

The world is ending!

It's snowing in Ottawa right now!

Okay. Just a few flakes. But the point is, it's snowing in Ottawa! It's been on and off randomly for the past couple of hours. It's so cold out, I've had to don socks and slippers, and I've got my sweatshirt on and have closed my window.

Help, I've been defiled!

I totally just got ejaculated upon by my bottle of moisturizer, and boy does it have long range! LOL, I was moving my laptop off my desk and trying to wrangle my power cord around a bunch of books. I accidentally knocked my giant pump bottle of moisturizer off the desk and it landed on the floor... But in the process, it managed to launch some of its contents upwards and smacked me on the forehead, the bottom of my laptop, on my bed, etc.

High expectations

Sheesh I have some high expectations of technology. I was sitting here reading a document on my computer. I reached the end of the text on the screen and automatically looked up at the top of the screen again - only to realize that I hadn't yet scrolled down for more words yet.

Whoops. Someone needs to invent a mind-reading piece of hardware or something for doofuses like me.

Stop dancing around the issue

At times my roommate annoys the snot out of me.

Random encounters

I went for a perm last night. It ended up taking me 2.5 hours because the woman talked so much. It was so interesting to hear her life story.

It turns out that she was Vietnamese, and that her mother and brothers and she came to Ottawa during the late 70s. Her father used to be a head military officer working for the Americans during the war. She was telling me how they lost all their possessions to the communist, her father was sent to prison camp, and how the rest of her family had to sleep outside on the streets while fleeing the communists.

Apparently her mother organized a small boat for her family and 43 other members of their extended family so they could flee to Malaysia. She was telling me how she had to take swimming lessons in case the boat capsized and whatnot. When I asked why she and her family settled in the Ottawa region, she told me it was because her mother had been able to contact a former Canadian soldier that they used to rent a house to in Vietnam, and he vouched for them to come to Canada.

It was so crazy to listen to the woman talk. You hear about these kinds of things happening in movies and books, but to actually encounter one of these people was mind boggling.

Toy chest

I was surfing Hemmy.com and came across this page. It's a series of photos showing life inside the toy factories of China. It's rather surreal to think of the people who had to assemble my beloved childhood possessions in this context.

After seeing the pictures, I then remembered being shown several world maps in my World Politics class. The maps show the world proportional to the criteria requested. Here are two maps that kind of blow your mind:

Toy Exports


Toy Imports


For kicks, go to Worldmapper.org and look up the Arms Imports and Arms Exports maps too. The results aren't terribly surprising, but it's still mind boggling to see it laid out for you right there on the screen.

Words of wisdom

Don't piss into the wind nor sneeze into a bowl of cereal.

Mismash

To begin with, I shall start with a product review. I recently purchased Cover Girl's new Lash Exact mascara, specifically the one that adds volume to your eyelashes. After two days, I decided to make use of their money back guarantee. Yeah the applicator separates and defines my eyelashes and adds a crazy amount of length to them, but there's no volume! Anyways, my point is that if you want to have long non-clumped eyelashes, then by all means, purchase the Cover Girl Lash Exact mascara, just don't get it if you want thicker eyelashes.

In my Indigenous Cultures class today, we were talking about territoriality and property rights (err, the prof rambled, we tried to stay awake). In the middle of his lecture, he says something to the effect of, "I believe that around 50% of Native Canadians live off the reserve nowadays" and then he turns to me and asks, "Is that right?" I'm like, "Urk? Uhh, not a clue." Sheesh, this guy really doesn't get that I'm not knowledgeable about my culture! He asked me another question later, but I had totally tuned out and didn't even know what he was asking me about, so I shrugged and grinned. That seemed to satisfy him. God. For all I know he could have been asking me about the ancient sex practices of the Cree.

Best ice cream flavour EVER: Ben & Jerry's "The Gobfather." That stuff is sin incarnate.

Word of the day

lu·cu·brate
1. to work, write, or study laboriously, esp. at night.
2. to write learnedly.

Sign of old age

What I did last night made me feel so old. I'm on the computer quite a lot lately, reading online stories and news and whatnot. However, I found that I kept changing the text size to just one setting larger.

I finally cracked and changed my laptop's screen resolution last night. I went from 1400x1050 pixels to 1024x768... But I have to admit, the new size was driving me up the wall - it was too big. So this morning I changed back to 1280x1024 pixels. It's moderately better.

I just feel old having done so - whenever I visit home, I always change my parents' monitor from 800x600 to the largest resolution... But now I find myself lowering to their level. LOL

Technology is grand

So in an attempt to improve my productivity levels, I did a quick search on how to temporarily block websites.

I found a delightful Firefox extension that allows you either block websites in their entirety, or to block them after a you spend a certain amount of time on them. I quickly installed my new toy, inserted a random password so I wouldn't be able to cheat my way back into access of my sites easily, and yay! It seems to be working. (Of course, to disable my blocks, I could just uninstall the extension, but hopefully I'll never get that desperate.)

So far I've decided to block my fave websites so that I can access them for 30 minutes every 6 hours... I hope this will ensure that I surf them quickly and not get caught up in stalking people on facebook, or rereading the same comics over and over.

Stupid technology

Argh. I was woken up at 7am this morning by my cell phone ringing with a strange phone number on it. When I finally fumbled it open, I had the immense pleasure of listening to an automated message telling me I had a message for "IT Telecom" and asked if I was an operator, and if so to press 1 now...

I hung up.

Apparently my cell rang 15 minutes later while I was out getting breakfast. And now it just rang again at 7:30. This time I listened to the message in its entirety. It ended up giving me the option of telling the machine that "IT Telecom" was either away for an extended period of time, or could not be reached at my phone number.

Grrr. Oh well, at least I'm awake and can get to an appointment on time.

Not the smartest cookie

I had a "moment" yesterday.

I was walking down Bank St. with Lauda while looking at stores. We passed a porn store and I glanced at the name. It was called, "One in Ten."

I was confused and told Lauda, "Gee, that's a weird name for a porn store." Lauda gave me a strange look, but didn't bother saying anything.

Not even 5 steps away I suddenly stopped and said, "OooooH! I get it!" Lauda just laughed.

Being one of the big kids

I'll admit, I was getting a little worried about how grad school and I were going to mix. I have three classes:

• INAF 5209 - Conflict and Development
  
• INAF 5606 - Indigenous Peoples and Cultures
  
• INAF 5704 - Human Security
  

My Conflict and Development class was pretty intimidating for the first two lectures. The prof seemed to expect us to already be experts on the subject, and me, with my Canadian/European History background was certainly not feelin' the topic. Some of the readings made sense to me, and even enlightened me, but overall I was still feeling out of my depth. Talking to my classmates though, I realize I'm not the only one. A lot of people were freaked out by how intense the first lectures were. I'm heartened by this.

As for my Indigenous Peoples and Cultures class, I was a bit leery as to how much I'd learn in it. Our prof has admitted that he's an economist with next to no background in the subject, and that he's only teaching it because he was the one who suggested the course and therefore couldn't back out of it. He does seem amiable to new ideas and is interested in what the students have to say though, so that's a plus.

I did make the mistake of self-identifying as a Native Canadian though. And I made it clear (or so I thought) that I have no real ties to my culture, and that many people know more about Native life than me. Unfortunately he seemed to gloss over this fact and in the first lecture, kept asking me random stuff about being Native. I mostly made up answers or told him flat out that I didn't know the answer. LOL

My last class though, Human Security, is making up for everything else. I'm specializing in Human Security and Development, but to be honest, when I chose that specialization, I didn't really know what it meant. Our first "real" lecture was spent discussing just exactly what Human Security was. (FYI, the general definition is "The freedom from fear, and the freedom from want and need.")

Our prof is hilarious and speaks really really fast when he gets excited (which he seems to be all the time). His summary of the lecture was to go over his conspiracy theories of what's happening in the field of Human Security. He generated a lot of student discussion, and made the process easier by paraphrasing what we're trying to say. (That's a huge lifesaver for me, because sometimes I'll be trying to make a point, but I get confused and start rambling on, so he's able to get the general point I'm trying to make and clear it up.) He set us against one another, because it seemed like there were three different camps of thought in the classroom (and I created one of them).

Oh, I'm also amused to note that I only read 3 of the 4 readings for the Human Security class. While I was waiting for the class to begin, my classmates were complaining about the fourth article and how it was confusing and weird. As we nearing the end of the class itself, our prof suddenly mentions the article as well and says something to the effect of, "What did you guys think of that Brysk article? Wasn't that the most useless, ambivalent, and stupid thing you've ever read?!" Ha ha, glad I didn't waste my time with it then.

So yeah, those are my thoughts about my classes thus far. They're scary, but manageable I think. And I have to admit, I do look forward to that Human Security class.

I beseech you!

I'm going crazy. For an hour now, I've been searching the internet, trying to find a place to buy some makeup online, and I'm out of options.

When I was in Hong Kong, I bought an Ingrid Millet Perfect Eyeliner Pen. I fell in love with the thing, but for the past several months, it's been wearing out. (I use it more out of habit - often you can't even tell that I have eyeliner on now.) It seems to have completely disappeared, and I'm going crazy without it!

So I put out the following request - SOMEONE PLEASE BUY ME SOME! I have no idea where to get it. I've searched the internet, looked on ebay, and nada! If someone from Asia reads this, contact me - I'm willing to pay for some and have you send it to me! I'll pay the shipping fees and everything! (Err, don't forget my birthday's coming up though. LOL)

Once again, I'm looking for some Ingrid Millet Paris Perfect Eyeliner Pen. I don't care if you get it in black or soft black. I just want my eyeliner!!! :(

Speaking of gifts... I've updated my wishlist for Christmas/birthday shopping. It's located on the right hand side of my blog.

From Russia with tardiness

According to my roommate, apparently Friday night after I left the room, the girl who was supposed to live here finally showed up... Only to discover all my stuff lying around.

Her name was Ekaterina and she had just flown in from Russia. Can you imagine what a shock it would be to fly half way around the world and discover you had no place to live?! Nasrin said that the girl started to cry. Our don had to phone Housing Services to find out what was going on.

I hope she found a place to sleep!

Life as a grad student

So I've been at Carleton University for a grand total of 7 days. It's been fraught with activities and problems already. There's nothing like starting your graduate career off with a violent rape the day orientation begins as well as a strike by the administrative staff.

On our first night of orientation, all the grad students went for a Haunted Walk tour of Ottawa. I forgot how much fun those things were! We had a really good guide named Margo who made the evening really fun for us. Afterwards we all tromped over to a pub for a meet and greet.

Other fun activities have included campus tours (and yes, I classified this as fun), pizza parties, more pub activities (I don't think we've had a single activity that hasn't included alcohol), trips to Dow's lake, movies, BBQs, and so on.

Last night was the "highlight" of orientation week - it was a boat cruise along the Rideau River. It was so much fun! We had free food and could buy alcohol. The top floor was reserved for dancing and boy, did we dance! They even had a contest to find the worst dancer, who then won $500 in dance lessons. (The contest was done to "Dancing Queen" by Abba.)

After the three hour cruise, we ended up moving to the Byward Market to a bar named Helsinki. The place was uber-swank, but also expensive. :S It was nearly $9 for a martini! (Mind you, they were absolutely delicious!) By this time, I was losing my voice and getting tired of having to repeat the whole spiel of, "Hi, my name is so and so, this is my program, etc."

Another grad student, Clarissa and I ended up leaving the bar and going to a salsa club nearby with some of her roommates and their friends. I had such a blast. The place was called Rumba, and it had a terrific live band!

Luckily the bus system here runs really late, so I was able to catch a bus home around 1:15am. Huzzah!

On the academic side of things, life has been a bit chaotic. Because of the strike, students in my program cannot add or drop classes. Therefore people (like myself) are locked in classes they don't want to take, and can't find out if there's even room in the classes they do want to be in.

I went to my program's resource centre to try and get some of the readings that I are due for tomorrow's classes... That was such an ordeal! You have to photocopy the readings, and the only way to photocopy is to use your campus card... Which I don't have.

You see, technically I'm not registered with Carelton University yet. They still need to see my official grades from Waterloo which won't be available until September 21. So until then, I can't register for courses, get student bus passes, access the wireless networks, my school email accounts, do laundry, or anything! It's such an ordeal.

So that's what I'm dealing with right now. I guess I should go and finish my readings for class tomorrow. Wish me luck with my first day of classes as a graduate student!

Introducing Rosemary

My mother is beyond warped.

I would like to introduce everyone to Rosemary. Rosemary is a creepy ugly doll that my mom purchased at a garage sale for the grand total of $1. Why did she waste her money on this atrocity of a toy? So she could torment me.



I came home after her shopping expedition and entered my bedroom. On my bed sat Rosemary. Upon meeting its beady blank eyes, the only thoughts that coursed through my head were, "What the fuck?" I assumed it must have been Cara's toy (as they were visiting at this time). Then I hear my mother's snickering from behind me.

She bought the toy for me and me alone. I don't know what possessed her to do so, but even she acknowledged its hideousness. I have a thing against creepy dolls, so now the family persists in trying to bug with with Rosemary. The thing has been snuggled under my blankets for when I go to bed, it has been hidden within my suitcase while on trips to Toronto, hung on the back of a bathroom door to scare the hell out of other family members, and now, it sits on the top of my shelves here in Ottawa.

For the curious, the doll became known as Rosemary because it seemed appropriate. You know, the movie, "Rosemary's Baby?" Yikes, just typing about her is making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

You've got (a) mail(ling address)

I have a place to live! Yahoo!!!

As mentioned, I had been living on people's couches/air mattresses for the past week. I stayed with a high school friend, Sara and her boyfriend for the first couple of days. Their apartment was ridiculously convenient for accessing the school. They were also super helpful in helping me learn the bus systems and whatnot.

Then on Tuesday I migrated over to my old roommate, Lauda's apartment in downtown Ottawa. I had such a blast with Lauda. It was like we had never moved apart. Crashing at her place made me feel so much better. I have to admit, I was beginning to feel a little homesick (I was stressed over having to make new friends, figure out course registration, not having a place to live, etc.). However, within 30 minutes of being at her place, it was like being back home. Thanks Lauda!

Thursday was the residence room giveaway. Housing Services was giving away the rooms of people who didn't show up to claim theirs. So I had to go to the residence commons area and wait with like 50 other girls in hopes of getting room. I was so nervous, but thankfully grad students were the first to be given service.

Apparently there were only two empty female grad rooms, and when the housing services lady asked how many grad students were in the crowd, I was the only one. Yahoo! I just about melted with relief!

I ended up staying at Lauda's for one more night because I was too lazy to wrangle my suitcase on the buses over to residence. On Friday morning, I packed everything up and went to my new home.

My roommate seems nice so far. I've barely had a chance to get to know her. Her name's Nasrin and she's from Iran. My only complaint with her right now is that her dish soap is ridiculously perfume-y. Seriously, I feel itchy just smelling it, and that's all you CAN smell in the kitchen. If that's the only issue I have with her for the next 8 months, I think I'll survive. :)

I'm mostly unpacked right now. There are still some odds and ends lying around like my tupperware and spices because there's no room for them in my cupboards.

Smack

I just clocked myself in the chin with my own laptop. Ow.

Greetings from the Nation's Capital

Hello everyone!

I am now in Canada's capital city. My parents and I drove up on Thursday and we've had a relaxing weekend. Here's the situation for those of you who haven't heard.

I'm homeless.

I've been staying with my parents in their hotel for the past three days while we did the tourist thing and visited Carleton U for last minute purposes. However, now my parents have left a few hours ago and I'm homeless!

I'm hoping to get into graduate residence, but I've been wait listed for a room. I'm staying with a couple of friends for the first week until I can find out if I can get into residence. (On Sept. 6th, they're handing out the rooms of people who didn't show up for registration.) So until then, I'm at the mercy of my pals (one of whom I haven't seen since last year, and the other since high school!)

Tonight I'm hopping on the bus to go downtown and go on a Haunted Walk tour with other grad students and then we're going to a pub. Tomorrow's plans include tours of campus, pizza parties, and more pubs. (Hey, I'm in school, I have to drink!)

That's all for now I guess. I've been talking with my friend's boyfriend for the past couple of hours. He's been super helpful giving me tips and whatnot about the transit systems.

Miss y'all!

The 411 +1 on Mau's future

So you may recall from this post that I had decided to go off to France to work for a year and reapply to grad school in 2008.

I was going along with this plan happily. I had purchased photos for my French visa, filled out the application forms as necessary. Yesterday I even applied for a new passport so that I'd have more pages (I only had two blank pages left in mine.)

Well, yesterday afternoon I checked my email and there's a message from the fellow in charge of admissions at Carleton University. It turns out they're willing to waiver the requirement for my microeconomics credit and let me into the school as long as I complete my microeconomics before I graduate.

MOTHERFUCKINGHELLGODDAMNSHITFORBRAINSCOCKSUCKERS!

This means that I CAN go to the graduate school that I want to in September!!! My first instinct was to say, "Fuck it, I'm going to Europe anyways!" But after talking with my family and friends, and to my own conscience, I've decided to go to graduate school. Europe was my backup plan for grad school anyways, so I might as well get this stuff over with.

I still have to talk to the grad school guy - it's a long weekend so I'm still not "officially" registered, but apparently it's only a matter of time.

Expensive bread

Last night I dragged Mel out for bubble tea at Sweet Dreams. On their menu they have a "Taiwanese sponge toast" dessert thing. It described it as Taiwanese sponge toast - crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. It could be covered with a variety of toppings. I ended up ordering a portion with peanut butter on top.

The result? I paid $2.99 for an extra-thick slice of regular bread with melted peanut butter on top. Seriously - except for its size, there was no difference between the so-called "toast" that I ordered and regular white bread. I was bitter.

The 411 on Mau's future

Howdy folks!

For the past year or so, I've been contemplating what to do with my future. Since about 2004 I've been toying with the idea of going to graduate school and obtaining a Master of Arts (MA) degree. I wanted to get my MA even more after I did my exchange to Hong Kong - I was hell bent on studying International Affairs/Relations. Meeting all the exchanges students from around the world really inspired me to get involved internationally.

I therefore applied to a couple of graduate schools here in Canada. Throughout the application process I kept flipping back and forth on whether I really wanted to pursue a Master's degree or not, but in the end I applied to the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, both located in Canada's capital city.

I didn't realize until after I applied that Carleton's program was the #2 school in North America... Meaning competition for admittance was very tough! I realized this when I was wait listed by Carleton. I did however receive an offer of admission to the University of Ottawa back in April. I sent in my acceptance letter to them practically right away. I figured that there was no hope in hell of me being admitted to Carleton, so I should just give up. (I also suspect that one of my letters of reference weren't exactly the greatest because I didn't know my profs all that well.)

I was quite happy with going to U of Ottawa until about a month ago when I realized I didn't really know what the program ("Globalization and International Development") was about. On the other hand, when I had been applying to Carleton University, I had been totally in love with what they were offering as it seemed to be right up my alley! I discussed it with my parents and told them that if I didn't get accepted to Carleton University this year, I'd prefer to wait for one more year and then reapply. My parents endorsed my decision and that made me happy.

Well, much to my surprise, several days ago, Carleton University sent me an email saying that yes, I had been accepted to the program. HOWEVER! One of the requirements for being accepted was that I need an introductory microeconomics class... Which I don't have. I had been enrolled in Econ 101 at the beginning of this term, but when I gave up on the idea of being accepted to Carleton, I had dropped the course. Now it's too late to enroll in it (especially considering there's only like 2 weeks till exams).

I talked to one of the admissions officers at Carleton and they said that I could probably take a distance education course through Athabasca University (an online university) and complete it before the end of August... But that would be pretty stressful - I'm taking a full course load right now, my exams don't end until August 9th, and the online course has like 10 assignments in the meantime.

Also, even though life tends to be easier as a student, I have to admit that I'm tired at this point of my life. I've been in school for 5 years now, and I've done 3 academic terms in a row. The idea of going on to do two more years of hardcore school right away does NOT appeal to me in the slightest. I've had fun in these past few years, but I need to have a break from textbooks (well, I still need to take Econ 101 through distance education, but ignore that).

So now I have a year before I reapply to Carleton University. I toyed around with the idea of going back over to Asia and teaching English for a year, but it would take forever to get a visa and paperwork, etc. Plus I don't know if I could hack dealing with kids everyday. They're cute to see, but not to interact with. (My niece being the exception.)

Yesterday I suddenly remembered the Student Work Abroad Program (www.swap.ca)... Essentially it's a program where you obtain a work visa for a European country, fly over, and do temporary/casual work until your visa expires. Since I want to work for the Canadian government when I graduate, I figure that practicing my French would be a good choice... Therefore I'm seriously contemplating going to France for a year to work and travel. My parents are totally in love with the idea (since it means they could visit me - plane tickets to France are a hell of a lot cheaper than to Asia!).

So that's my plan for now. Work in France for a year, take my Econ 101 class through distance education), and travel. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Rebel without a cause

Le gasp! I skipped a Chinese class today! (Okay, so I was a good girl and made sure to check and make sure that I wasn't going to be missing out an any new/confusing grammar points... But I skipped none the less!)

Long live the technological age

I'm currently in the school library attempting to read a book on British colonialism that was printing in the 1970s. All I keep thinking is, "Thank god I live in the computer age."

This book was written on a typewriter and it kills me to try to read the text. I also keep having flashbacks to my Canadian history class last semester when my professor was telling us about when he wrote his thesis. He mentioned how you'd have to use whiteout, or retype a whole essay just because you messed up on one little section...

We take computers for granted now, but once in awhile, (this being one of those times), you have to sit back and truly appreciate the convenience in our lives.

Loss of a treasure

So sad! I was fidgeting with my jade bracelet that I bought in Beijing when I dropped it! It broke!!! :( I had already cracked it when I was in Thailand, so now it snapped along the crack and in another area, so it's now in two pieces...

Edit: So now it's the next day. I can't believe how much the loss of my bracelet is bugging me. I used to take it off once in awhile because it would be annoying clinking against my desk while I typed or did other stuff, but now that I can't wear it, I miss it like crazy! I keep catching myself shifting my arm or wrist, expecting the jade to slide up and down, or I'll go to dry my hands and automatically avoid the area where my bracelet used to lay... To alleviate my insanity, I've donned another smaller bracelet I haven't worn in years.

Fearing to obtain gainful employment

Our Human Resources professor had a slight problem communicating with us in class last night.

We were talking about Health and Safety in the workplace, and then she mentioned problems with workplace violence. She told us, "Workplace violence is the #2 cause of death in North America."

We were shocked. One girl even asked for clarification and the prof repeated her statement. The prof started lecturing again, but someone else finally interrupted her and asked again... Then she realized she had forgotten to mention that "Workplace violence is the #2 cause of death in the workplace in North America." Ha ha! Whoops. The entire class started laughing with relief because she had totally freaked us out.

I'm still around!

I seem to have lost my blogging mojo. I can't seem to find motivation to write down any of my wacky adventures (and believe me, they are occurring, but are fewer and further in number). I shall make an attempt to write more often, even if it's just little funny stories like the one below.

So for those of you who don't know, I've given up my monk-like way of living and have discovered the joys of the bottle. Er, bottle of alcohol that is.

When I first turned 19 years old in my first year of university I went and bought a crap load of alcohol (I had like 7 bottles). Unfortunately my friends and I weren't big drinkers and the bottles just got carted around from apartment to apartment, eventually ending up at my home in Owen Sound collecting dust.

At the beginning of this term, my friends Victoria, Shruthi, and I decided to go to Caesar Martini's on a Thursday night for some reason. We had so much fun we decided to go again the next week, and the next, and so on. It has become a weekly ritual to go out, even when both of the other girls have to be up and at work the next day.

Caesar's isn't the cheapest place to go either, so we make a point of pre-drinking at my apartment (since the bar is practically beside my house)... And we make sure that we get our alcohol's worth of entertainment out of the evening. We managed to finish off all my old alcohol, and have *gasp* actually had to buy some new bottles!

Case in point: About 3 weeks ago Victoria brought over a 26er of Mango Vodka. Between the three of us, we finished it off. (I wasn't aware of this fact until AFTER we got home from the bar.) We had drank about half the bottle before going to The Flying Dog (that has become another custom, first we drink, then we go to the Flying Dog for some fun dancing and wait for the line at Caesar's to shorten a bit). When we arrived back at Caesar Martini's, Victoria decided she wanted more to drink, so she went back to my place, filled up a water bottle with the last of her mango vodka and brought it back for us to drink in line.

Do you know how revolting it is to drink warm mango vodka straight??? Neither do I. I was too inebriated to realize how vile it must have been. LOL We didn't finish off the water bottle - we ended up leaving it outside the bar because we finally reached the front of the line. I'm still not sure how it happened, but later that night while I was on the dance floor with my gal pals, I managed to fall backwards on top of Shruthi.

Need I say more? That's a far cry from how I used to be in my last four years here... Don't get me wrong, I know I don't need to drink to have fun. As a matter of fact, I'm attempting to cut back a bit... (Last week I only had half a glass of some orange vodka beverage - yay me!)

I guess I'll leave off here. I just felt like typing something lighthearted and a bit fun... And I felt like procrastinating. :) I'm going to go read a book on Taiwanese history now. Cheerio!

Failure to communicate

While living with Feng can be irritating, it does provide for some good laughs. (Actually, after nearly getting fed up with his antics last week, he's back in my good graces.)

He's been super helpful when I've had Chinese homework questions for the past couple of weeks, and I've reciprocated by helping him with English words or explaining things to him...

Case in point:
He just came in and asked me what "sole" meant. The only meaning I could think of was the type of fish. He looked at me like I had two heads. I finally asked him to use the word in the sentence he was having trouble with... Uh, "Sole author" is not fish related. I started laughing - I had completely forgotten about that meaning of the word.

Status update

Just finished a 2 hour nap. Still so tired. Excuse me while I go to find a bottle of artificial tears so I can unglue my eyelids.

Mission Accomplished! (Unfortunately)

ARGH! Everytime I try to get into the on campus pub, Bomber, there's always a huuuuuge waiting line and my friends and I end up waiting in line for two hours just to give up and go somewhere else in the end. I finally broke the cycle!

Victoria, Shruthi, and I managed to get our asses over to Bomber by 9:15ish, and lo and behold, for once there was no line! We were so happy to get in without a hitch! Surprisingly though, the pub was kind of empty... Well, by comparison to a normal Bomber night. (Usually the place was packed... This time all the tables were full, but it wasn't packed.) We grabbed a table and hung around, hoping that things would pick up in a bit...

A bit passed by. More specifically, an hour later the place was still empty as hell. (Okay, maybe a third of the normal crowd was there.) We decided to cut our losses and go to another nearby bar instead, Phil's. To save on taxi fare, we decided to just walk to Phil's since it's only a 15 minute walk from my house.

Well, no sooner had we walked in, but we see that Phil's (a truly stank place) is even emptier than Bomber!!! What the hell?! We hightailed it out of there. Some guys laughed because they realized we essentially walked in and then back out. By now it was about midnight, so we decided to go back to Bomber in hopes that it would be busier.

No such luck! Bomber was slightly more busy, but barely so! We made a half assed attempt to dance with the other 20 people on the dance floor, but we realized it was futile and decided to call it a night. Thus was our night at Bomber. And Phil's. And Bomber again.

Oh, and now Shruthi's on MSN telling me to go to Revolution. I'm such a pushover! Adios!

Soggy Bottom Mau

I'm soaked from the knees down right now. That makes for a very unpleasant class. That's right, I'm in class as I type this. It's easier to have my laptop here because my East Asian Culture prof provides online slides, and I can just type up my own notes as I go. Anyawys, back to being wet. Outside it's flipping between downpours and clear air. I walked from my apartment to the SLC and it was clear as a bell. 5 minutes later as I departed the SLC, it was downpouring. I got soaked!

The term is going terrifically so far. Again I'm taking four courses:

• European Colonial History
  
• East Asian Culture
  
• Human Resources Management
  
• Advanced Beginner Chinese
  

European History is pretty intense - we're doing a lot of theoretical discussions which I've never done before, so on one hand it's a bit intimidating since I don't have the background in the theories we're talking about, but on the other it's kind of exhilarating to make the connections.

(Oh god, it's raining so heavily we can't see out the windows! And the lights are flickering from lightening! Wowsers!)

East Asian Culture is pretty much a survey course so far. I've studied all the things we've talked about before, but it's just being applied to an Asian context now. (e.g. Right now he's talking about national self-determination. Been there, done that.) Long live my laptop, so at least I can keep myself occupied for the next 3 hours.

The only reason I'm taking Human Resources Management is because my mother has been pestering (and yes, "pester" is definitely the word I'm looking for) to take it for the past 5 years. I've only had 2 classes so far, and I'm shocked to admit that it's not quite the burden that I thought it would be. Actually, in our last class, there was nearly a lynching. We were discussing the wage gender gap and one guy tried to claim that the gap existed because women were more maternal and family-oriented and men were more business-oriented. You could hear the women growling in their chairs. Myself included.

My fave class of the term must be my Advance Beginner Chinese class! I know that "Advanced Beginner" is an oxymoron, but it's true. This class is for anyone who has some experience with any form of Chinese. This means that the majority of my class either speaks Mandarin and can't write Chinese characters, or they speak Cantonese and CAN write Chinese characters. Then there's Mau who just has a smattering of everything.

Unsurprisingly I'm the only non-Asian in my class. It's okay though. I actually feel like I have a bit of an advantage because I've studied Mandarin before using the same methods we're using now, and so far our vocabulary consists of the same stuff I learned in Hong Kong, with a few differences. I was eavesdropping on some of the other students and it seems as though I'm also doing better on the oral/writing homework than some of them too. Tee hee!

I should also mention that I've finally completed my Chinese name. When I was in Hong Kong, my professor named me "Mo-Lin"... Now I have a last name, so now I'm "Bai Mo-Lin." (白莫琳) (Roughly translated it means "White Jade Forest." Ha ha!

Okay, I'm not paying attention to my class anymore. I should go back to my notes.

Grad school!

Happy news everyone! On Saturday night at 10:30pm (while I was slightly drunk) I received an acceptance email to the University of Ottawa. That's right baby, I'm going to grad school in September! I've been accepted to the MA: Globalization and International Development program. I honestly don't know that much about the program - the U of Ottawa website sucks, but I'm excited nonetheless. It's such a relief to know what I'll be doing after the summer. I hated being stuck in limbo.

To be honest, I'm rather numb to the idea of actually being in grad school - I think I'm more excited by the idea of living in Ottawa again instead. I love that city. I'm also happy because this is one step closer to my goal of getting an international job that makes a difference in the world.

While I would have preferred to go to Carleton U for grad school, I'm quite happy taking Ottawa's offer. It's rather strange for me right now about this whole Ottawa vs. Carleton thing. I can't think of a time when I wanted to get accepted to something and not gotten it. Usually when I apply to something it's just a matter of me working up courage to go for it... This time, I actually wanted into Carleton U, and despite my best efforts, I've been waitlisted until June. Even when I was applying to my undergrad schools I never had a problem with acceptance. I think Western U was the only place to waitlist me. I'm not really upset by not being accepted. I just don't know how to react. Should I be resigned? Sad? It's not like I can blame them. I'm not used to actually having to work hard to get something. This makes me wonder how I'll fare when working with other grad students... Time will tell.

Exam drunkenness

Egads. The 21st was a day of total fun. Even though I had finished my exams the day before, I trekked back to school the next day so I could work on my Hong Kong essay. I started off the day in the library, but then Victoria came to collect me and dragged me to work outside.

It was such a gorgeous day!!! We nabbed a picnic table outside the SLC and set up shop. It was hard to concentrate for me, both because of the good weather and because the sunshine made it hard to see my laptop's screen, but it was totally worth it. We were outside for so long that I got majorly sunburned - I didn't even realize it was so hot/sunny outside! Luckily the burn has faded now... But I was seriously scorched.

The plan for the evening was for Victoria to write her last exam then come over to my place so we could go out to Fubar for the evening. I ended up going home, finishing packing, and making dinner. Victoria also decided to crash at my apartment so that we could taxi it over to the bar instead of making her stay sober and driving. Needless to say, we got in a lot of pre-drinking before going out.

We met up with Sher outside of Fubar and managed to skip the line thanks to one of Victoria's connections. We had such a blast! I was already tipsy before even arriving at the bar, and within the hour I had had two more shots and another drink! There was much dancing and all around goodness.

Sher and I went to the bar again later in the evening. I had been intending to get some water but she ended up buying me more alcohol. While standing around, I saw a guy that looked kinda familiar, but I wasn't sure if it was who I thought it was. The next thing I know, I'm being tackled by Melanie and her school friend Grant! Of all the places to run into my sister! This is the first time I've ever seen her at a club or anything, so I was a bit weirded out, but it was all good. She was even drunker than I was. (Check out her porn dance shot!)

After last call Sher, Victoria, and I ended up going to Mel's Diner for some post-drinking food. After some much needed food, we went out separate ways. I think it was about 4am by the time Victoria and I went to sleep - normally I wouldn't have cared, but my parents were coming the next day to pick me up and help me move... Yikes.

All in all, it was a fantastic night! (Pics can be found here.)

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!

Let them eat cake!

I don't know WHAT possessed me to do this. I've only been home for Easter Weekend for about 4 hours. We had just finished eating dinner and then we broke out some maple sponge cake for dessert. My sister, mom, and I were sitting around eating and chatting... I went still.

Suddenly I took the cake that was in my hand, launched myself at my mom and smashed my cake into the side of her face. LOL LOL LOL. I of course immediately ran like hell afterwards, but as I was making my getaway, I realized my mom was grabbing the rest of the cake (3/4 of it was still left). I panicked, thinking she was going to retaliate, and grabbed at it too. I managed to snatch the cake away, but as I was running out of the dining room, it slipped off the plate and fell all over the carpet. LOL

I was laughing so hard that I was crying and couldn't talk. I'm in pain still from laughing so much.

The Bomber That Wasn't

So Wednesday was Bomber's last pub night. To make the evening more fun, the pub decided it would be a no-clothes event... Patrons were encouraged to make innovative costumes. I had managed to talk Victoria into wearing togas, but due to the sudden change in weather which brought snow and ice I wimped out.

Victoria picked me up but before we could go to her house to get ready, we had to stop off at a church so she could go to confession. I had already gotten dressed to go to the bar - so there I am standing in a church in my low-cut top and bitch heels. LOL, luckily I had my long jacket on so I could feel a bit more presentable in the house of the lord. :)

Anyways, we got ready for the bar, picked up Sher, and ran to the SLC. We got there just a bit after 9pm, but the lineup was insanely long! We waited in line and had a blast for an hour and a half just goofing around. (Check out the pictures!) Only about 10% of the people were dressed up - this group was one of the more innovative ones. We kept trying to trick people into leaving the line by loudly exclaiming, "What?! It's a 2 hour wait?!" (Actually, some girls near us nearly did believe us, except they had heard us planning this ploy outloud and laughed at us instead.)

Around 11pm we finally got tired of waiting and decided to leave and grab a bite and some drinks elsewhere. We tried going to the Flying Dog, but it was closed. So we ended up going to Symposium. Sher and I paid for Victoria since she was being our chauffeur. We had such a great time just goofing around and striking stupid poses.

One more term to go!

So yesterday was the official end of classes at UW. All my friends are so excited because they're either graduating or have the summer off to party. They keep asking me what my plans are and I gently have to remind them that alas, I'm stuck in Waterloo for yet another term. Doh!

I wasn't very enamored with my classes this term.

• My Humanities class was absolutely useless, and I told them so on the course evaluation. It's a 3rd year class, but it's stupid easy and the only reason ANYONE takes it is because it's mandatory!
  
• Introduction to International Development has been mediocre. I think I learned a lot more stuff in my Intro to International Studies class last semester that was more useful than in this one. The prof only scratches the bare surface of our topics. I guess I just don't like the feeling that I still don't know a think about international development.
  
• I did enjoy my American history class. It wasn't so much the topic that pleased so much as the prof. (No there is no innuendo there so stop snickering.) My prof was fabulous - you knew exactly what you were supposed to get out of each class and his viewpoints and presentation methods were totally effective. I would totally take more of his classes just because he was terrific.
  
• Last but not least was my Canadian history seminar. I've enjoyed that class a great deal because our prof tells us a lot of random stuff about academic life that we've never heard of before. He's also taught us how to write a damned good paper. The only infuriating thing about the class has been trying to schedule meetings with him. He never has time for his students! The one time I did get an appointment with him, he ended up missing it. I finally did get to see him, but it was only because one of the people he was supposed to meet had to cancel.
  

So now I have exams on the 16th, 17th, and 20th, and my Canadian history paper is due on April 28th. I shall worry about that stuff tomorrow though because tonight I'm going to the Bomber for the last Bomber night of the term! (Crazy! Some of the people I'll be seeing tonight will never go to Bomber again after this...)

Party hardy for a sibling

So last week was my middle sister's birthday. We had made plans to get together for dinner on Thursday, but after a mis-communication (or should I say lack of communication - something went funky between our cell phones and we couldn't get through to each other) we ended up postponing the dinner to Friday. I'm happy to report though that dinner was great - lots of fun.

Since several of Mel's friends also had parties around the same time, they decided to have a party at her place and then go out for a pub crawl. Apparently there's a clause in our sisterly contract that demands that the little sister be present for such events. I had only met two of the people before, so it was a bit awkward.

I ended up going to Mel's on Saturday evening and was there for the party. It's a bit odd seeing my sister get all liquored up with her friends. I don't really drink with her that often, and when I do it's usually with the rest of our family. So when I watch my sister get drunk and start directing porn pictures with her friends, you can understand how I could be weirded out.

Around 11 we ended up going out to the Heuther pub in Waterloo. It was a lot of fun - we all ordered food and alcohol. The best part of the evening though was that they messed up our bill and totally undercharged us. Rock on! For a group of 18 people, our bill only came to $115. I totally dug that.

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!