A bit of a recap since reading week: I did a ton of homework and wrote some remaining midterms. Also notable was our orchestra concert, which went okay for the most part.

Orchestra was a fun time this year; our section was pretty awesome both in the fall and winter. Both terms had three oboists each, which I find quite fun . For the winter, I was section leader for most of the songs except for The Village Dance (Bartok), where Jenny played first, and you can hear some pretty nice solo work in it~ you can visit this link here and judge all you like.

This term I took another Japanese course (JAPAN112R) which required us to do a group oral presentation. Ours was a television show about a guy who has a supernatural experience. I made the laziest paint art powerpoint presentation ever, finishing it at around 2 in the morning. Fun stuff. Although two groups filmed theirs, and those were sooooo cool… I feel slightly inferior in comparison XD But we had a lot of fun with it.

When classes ended, I got together with a bunch of friends and we had some fun at a friend’s place. It was nice to not be doing homework after working our asses off all term. There was much Brawl played, as well as Halo, Amnesia (it wasn’t very scary when we all crowded around Eli’s computer to watch since it is a one-player game), and other activities ensued. It was quite enjoyable, I found.

And then it was exam week. I had a pretty good schedule; 2 exams on the 12th, 1 on the 15th, 19th and 21st. They were spread out pretty well. Studying was quite productive for the first two weeks… but then it devolved into me marathoning two short anime series and apathy ensued. It was a good thing that the last two exams weren’t too hard.

So yeah… that was the last two months in a nutshell. Looking forward to work term, CUTC, and of course Anime North.

Easy A was a hilarious movie. For those who don’t know what the movie is about, it is a high school flick about a girl who is mistaken as a “person of loose morals” (as my music theory teacher would put it) after lying to her friend about having sex with an imaginary boyfriend. As the rumours get blown out of proportion, she decides that if everyone thinks of her that way, she might as well go with the act… and hijinks ensue. The lead actress Emma Stone does a really good job here, as well as Amanda Bynes, who proves that her movie roles are not limited to just chick-flick protagonists. Not bad, considering that many films about high school are predictable and waaaay too melodramatic.

Hm.  I don’t really feel like describing the rest of the films. Maybe later. Gotta study for the *other* two midterms I have after reading week finishes. Geh.

Currently studying for a bunch of midterms that are coming up this week: ECE124 (circuits), Math237 (calculus) and CS240 (data structures and algorithms). I also have cs240, cs241 and Japanese assignments due this week. Yay? Looks like I’ll have to be extra productive today. Time to get to work.

Just a quick post. It’s December, which means that winter and finals are here.

Winters in Waterloo are a lot wetter than in Winnipeg, from what I’ve experienced. For one, instead of ice on the sidewalks, it’s slush on the sidewalk. Also, the snow is a lot more moist. Unfortunately, I don’t have winter boots here so my feet are cold and wet by the time I get home. I will definitely have to invest some money in a pair of boots tomorrow, since I don’t want to be constantly coming home with cold and wet feet. Runners just don’t quite do the job.

As for finals: my final schedule sucks. My first exam is this Friday, followed by one exam the Monday after, two the next day, and the last on Wednesday. So that’s 4 exams within the space of 3 days. Lovely. So I’ve been attempting to do as much studying as possible now. However, I did get distracted for a couple evenings with manga. It’s seems inevitable that I get the most distracted during exam season T_T .

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well! I can’t wait until the exam season is over; then I can look forward to finally finishing Ouran High School Host Club, Zatchbell (Konjiki no Gash Bell) and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles; 3 series that have been done for a while now, but I haven’t finished reading yet. Perhaps I shall also catch up on One Piece… I’m officially over 100 chapters behind now.

I just finished all my midterms yesterday; thank goodness. The last test I had was statistics, and thank god it’s over. I do like math, but for some reason, I just can’t get excited over statistics. I suppose it might be because statistics is not “real math”. XD But I definitely have to thank two of my friends for lending me pencils, erasers and a calculator, because I was stupid and forgot my whole pencil case at home that day.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much to say about my life, except for the fact that it is pretty boring. My days usually involve either attending class, doing homework, or occasionally participating in club activities. I’ve become somewhat of a shut-in in terms of my social life, unless you count going over to friends’ places to study. I suppose there was that one time when my friend’s parent invited me to go to dinner with my friend and them. That was … interesting and unexpected. o_O But I am very thankful for the free dinner.

After my stats exam, I went to a tutorial being put on by the game development club on raycasting, which is basically an old technique of rendering graphics. There were vectors and trigonometry involved. There was also some C code too, but I never got to see it long enough to copy it down. Ah well.

I’ve still got homework, unfortunately, but I don’t suppose you really want to hear about that XD . The one thing I will say on that subject though is that we have to do skits for Japanese class, and our group has decided to do a “very serious” news show, which won’t end up being very serious at all. At least, that’s the plan.

Hm… what else. I seem to have downloaded an obscene amount of J-pop within the last month. I’m not quite sure why.

That’s all I can think of ^_^”" until next update

It’s been a while since my last blog post. So here’s what has been going on in my life:

1. I worked at Environment Canada last summer in Toronto, which was a great experience. I met a lot of cool people and learned a lot of new things about web development. While I won’t be going back in the spring, I hope to use the knowledge I’ve gained there and in my subsequent courses to get a job elsewhere.

2. I went to Wonderland with a couple of friends of mine. One bailed out on us at around 5, but the rest of us stayed until close. It was fun.

3. School is going alright for the most part; except for the fact that I’m in midterm season right now. And I finally managed to (hopefully) fix the toilet problems in the house.

4. I have randomly met twice the number of people I met in first year within the first 2 months of school, along with numerous people in my stream, which is always a good thing.

5. My finals schedule sucks: I have 4 exams within the last three days of exam period and the other exam is within 5 days of the end of exam period. Yay. >.<

I will try and update this thing a bit more often. Sorry for the lack of posts, not that anyone really reads this thing anyway XD .

I’ve been doing these two online courses; one is introductory psychology and the other is a mandatory PD course, both which have required papers. I’ve finished the psychology paper and submitted it, but I have yet to finish the other one, it’s almost done though.

I’ve also completed the main story arc of Final Fantasy, and the main story of Fire Emblem, both Lyn and Eliwood’s story. I was making my way through Hector’s story before I cracked down and stopped playing so I could get some work done. A co-worker of mine, as it turns out, also plays Fire Emblem as well… and he sent me a whole bunch of ROMs for the other games. Unfortunately, they’re either in Chinese or Japanese, so this should be interesting.

Also managed to finish off Magic Knight Rayearth. I didn’t know it was only 3 volumes long; I figured it would be a lot longer since it was a magical girl adventure story. Maybe I might review it later, if I’m not lazy. There is a second part, which is also 3 volumes long, but it’s mostly out of print so I’ll have to get them used from someone like I did with the first three. (12 dollars for 3 volumes? Heck yes! That’s how much one volume costs in Canada )

Anyway, that’s it for today. I’ll try to post more often after I finish this paper.

1. Singing anime and musical songs on the school bus to the point that the whole bus is more than slightly annoyed with you.
2. Drawing comics in Ms. Curpen’s class making fun of the half the boys in our class. Said guys find out and try to turn you in, but they grab a blank crumpled piece of paper instead of the stick figure drawings… so you casually make a comment about how those silly guys are always trying to set you up.
3. Teaching the level 4 class at cadets and getting very frustrated with kids who don’t pay attention and draw male genitalia on the walls… yeah, those kids were clearly messed up.
4. Riding the bus to Ottawa and getting accosted by my English teacher for doing math instead of English… and then telling her that you find mathematics to be a more interesting subject.
5. Being partners in crime!
6. Annoying our nice, yet boring jazz band teacher who always ended up soloing for half the practice.
7. The story on the chalkboard about a naughty percussionist who stole from Zellers.
8. Going out with the seniors to Kelsey’s.
9. Getting ice cream from Dairy Queen at the end of the power-walking gym block.
10. Watching kids in my 9th grade English class throwing pens at the ceiling fan while the teacher wasn’t there, but mostly watching the hilarity of the bewildered Korean boy hiding behind the door.
11. Having tea in class while listening to soundtrack music and doing physics problems.
12. Blowing up pumpkins in chemistry class… ’nuff said.
13. Watching a girl “propose” to a guy using a ring made out of a straw.
14. Utterly failing to review the book “Island of the Aunts” without having the whole class laugh at me. And it wasn’t because I was particularly funny either.
15. Going to the Evanescence concert and nearly losing all hearing capabilities.
16. Sitting in the cafeteria and stealing a kid’s food… and then offending him by telling him to take a shower … with soap.
17. Playing a card game in which the players created their own cards. My card was an emo kid, complete with guitar, floppy converses, slashed wrists and overly long bangs.
18. Band trips of any sort.
19. Getting rained out on the few days I actually had time to go gliding.
20. Blasting Lady Gaga’s Poker Face in the Ford Flex.

The bus ride was around 4-5 hours because we got stuck in traffic a lot… even though we left early and stranded at least 10 people because the bus was full, so I ended up arriving later than the expected time anyway.

After that, I met my friend Fang-ying and got on Ottawa transit, and … I left my small luggage bag on the bus DX . Not good, so I had to wear the same clothes all weekend which sucked, with the exception of the awesome shirt my sister got me that says “Domo Arigato” with a robot next to it. Get it? (Maybe ?)

Anyway, it was pretty late, so we just chilled in Fang-ying’s place on campus and the University of Ottawa (which is soooo nice, I’m jealous) and we invited Andre to come over since he lives less than a block away at a different UOttawa residence. Of course, we ended up staying up really late, and it didn’t help that I had to get up at 8:30 so that I could go watch my sister play at the National Arts Centre the next morning.

So the next day was mostly filled with watching the FRC bands play. The early performance was the Wind Ensemble, who played Incantation and Dance, Arabesque, and Eternal Father. Apparently Incantation and Dance was a disaster, but it didn’t sound that bad from the audience… I think that mistakes are a lot more obvious if you are closer up or actually in the band. The other two songs were new and I didn’t recognize them, so they could have done almost anything and I wouldn’t have known if it was correct or not.

After, I went out to the Rideau Centre with Fang-ying and her friend Michelle, and met up with some of the band members who were having lunch. Later, Andre rejoined us and Michelle left and we went to watch the symphonic band play.

In fact, what happened was that an old friend of mine named Danny who I met at Service band back in 2006 was actually one of the volunteers who was “chaperoning” the symphonic band, so it was really cool to see him again after a while.

The rest of the weekend was mostly spent walking around Ottawa. We went to Parliament Hill, toured the other Canadian mint and went to the tulip festival, but the majority of the tulips were dead… so that wasn’t too great I guess. We also went to Byward Market and had beavertails, which are the most delicious things ever . Other random stuff we ended up doing included watching “Fight Club” (which is the weirdest movie ever) and playing Mario Kart and Bomberman (which I epically failed at XD )

Tune in next time for updates on Anime North~!

But I have an excuse! Well, several, and none of them are very good… but here it goes:

1. I feel so lazy after work and don’t end up doing anything
2. I’m also taking PD2 and PSYCH 101 online courses.

And the final reason:

3. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 6.

Yeah I know, it’s an old game, and I’m playing it through an emulator for Game boy Advance… but MAN is it addicting~! And plus, the pivotal character’s name is Terra. Come on! That’s a game that screams “PLAY ME!” .

But yeah. Work is going pretty swell; learning some ASP.NET, VB and some basic SQL (mostly just to query for things, nothing really big) to help create a web application for clients who are part of the program side of Environment Canada… aka they do the actual environment work; we just make them stuff so they can do their jobs. Also met a ton of cool co-op students from Waterloo who are in the same section of building as I am .

Anyway, miss you guys in Winnipeg! Can’t wait until I see you guys again!