11 posts from March 2008

I've been neglecting this.

I went home on the weekend which was fine. It snowed twice this week but goddamn itttt... it's basically warm now. It all melted really fast. Though there's still lots of old snow on the ground.

My philosophy paper was a huge piece of shit, and so is my Bioethics paper, but 133% as huge, since it is longer.

I haven't played majiang since the weekend, and I want to because I am getting quite sick of school. I am so so so far behind in everything.

Started playing Pokemon again. Nothing wrong with that.

I participated in a study today about this thing. Oh panopticon society.

A friend of mine has started bombarding me with Táng dynasty poetry to help me practise my wretched pīnyīn. This is my favourite, which I will render in pīnyīn because I don't have any software for hànzì. With tones because it's useless without it, damn it!

It's called Jìng Yè Sī (Quiet Night Thoughts) by Lǐ Bái.

Chuáng qián míng yuè guāng
Yí shì dì shàng shuāng.
Jǔ tóu wàng míng yuè,
Dī tóu sī gù xiāng.

I finally bought myself a májiàng set. $40, which is not bad... nice good-sized tiles I guess. So yeah got a lot of people playing last night, drinking soup, and having a good time until the small hours of the morning. It's surprisingly addictive, and easier than you expect to learn. And everyone seems to want to, though usually they think it's the same as on the computer, but that's mahjong solitaire. Whereas the actual game requires 4 people - which is one of the benefits, since it gets everyone together! I brought my set home for easter, and everyone in the family is pretty hooked.

Oh the one thing is that the box smells like formaldehyde, which is a little off-putting.

I got the science camp job. Which is good except that it takes up 2 complete weekends for training, and I really really can't afford that considering I'm already wading in backlogged homework. But I guess that just means lots of late nights at the libraryyyyy.

Ai...

Oh well. I have like.... 3 more weeks of school. Ho-ly! And then exams for a month....

I didn't study for my calc test, and it went okay, and I knew that because of that, I wouldn't study for this chem test. And I basically didn't, and it went fine, so that doesn't bode well for finals, since I know I'll totally slack. But yeah, it was easy. But as usual, no matter how hard or easy anyone individually found it, everyone acted like it was completely average in all respects, because that's being "polite", which very often involves lying, doesn't it?

Oh and the main reason I didn't really study was St. Patrick's Day. See, I completely didn't drink or do drugs in 2007, after an interesting 2006, and I still rarely drink. So I'm not sure exactly what my rationale was behind getting completely wasted on a Monday night before a Wednesday midterm. But it happened, and I had fun. Boy was I opinionated that night. Now, even sober, I'll take any opportunity to make some sort of angry feminist argument, so with some alcohol in me, well, there was a lot of slurred shouting about "71 cents on the dollar", and "the angel in the house". Other favoured drunk topics of mine, including most aspects of white guilt, were well covered that night.

Aaaand.

Winter is over, motherfuckers. The city is melting, birds are chirping, plants are coming up. Of course, everyone's going a little overboard.... it's not quite shorts weather no matter how people try.... But we're getting there, and I can feel the warm weather already.

The St Patrick's Day parade is going past my window. Except we're not on their route - they're on their way to the route. So they're just sort of... walking past. Not parading. But at least I'm getting to see it, because I'm not going to otherwise.

It seems weird that we have this Irish holiday. Do we even have that many Irish people? Okay yeah according to Wikipedia we really do. 15.6% of Ontario. Bizarre.

So my grandmother gave me a jade plant. That means that my room is home to the following macroorganisms:
- Homo sapiens sapiens
- Dionaea muscipula
- Crassula ovata
- Kalanchoe sp.
- and sometimes, Mus musculus

It is warm out lately.

Oh and Friday night I saw "Me and You and Everyone We Know", which was amazing. Well-scored. Themes include fantasy and reaching out to strangers.

Man sometimes life just comes at you all at once.

They always tell us, "Don't put off work to study during midterms." And that's really hard to avoid, and I did it, and I thought it'd be no problem to catch up, but it just keeps coming and coming. And if I get this job, I don't just have to catch up, I have to be ahead, because I have to throw away two weekends for training. And I need weekends for coursework.

Good events, however: Last night at the newspaper, the Politics editor wasn't going to show, so I got put in charge of the section. It was kind of a shame, though - I started off with 4 pages, then Opinion ate one, then I had to give up another because a long article I was counting on never showwwwed. Oh well, there ended up being a good collage on that page. This issue is going to be awesome.

Too bad the presses are kind of broken.

Oh, and related to a comment-conversation I was having recently, at the production night, some of the American ex-pats on staff were discussing how pot is a "big deal" in America compared with here.

Also, Americans use "AIM" instead of MSN.

Okay so that was one good thing. Another good thing... Uhh today was pi day so we ate pie. Wikipedia actually has Pi Day in its "On this day..." section, which is where they have holidays. And historical events.

For some reason, the DST change really messed me up. Circumstances didn't help.

I had an interview this morning at 9, so I figured I'd try to go to bed early. 11:30. Of course by ~12:45 I was still rolling around in bed practising my pronunciation of rudimentary Mandarin phrases, because this is what I do when I ought to be sleeping. Anyway, then my friends [using initials is getting lame, so we'll call them...] Bizarre and Pineapple knocked on my door to remind me that the time was changing. Which was very very helpful of them because I had no idea and would have missed the interview. But it was kind of unfortunate because there went another hour. Eventually I ended up getting about 4 hours, and I don't do well on low sleep.

Uh yeah and I didn't know that on Sundays our caf opens at 9 so.... breakfast was a Rice Krispie Square from last night. Classy.

Anyway the interview went fine, ended at like 11:20. And then I went and got lunch, played Wii with Bizarre for what I thought was an hour and then.... it was 4:30. And then I fell asleep. I felt jetlagged, to tell you the truth.

So I woke up at 6:30, had dinner, and then tried to do this online homework we get in Chem due Sunday night (hence doing it now). And this stuff is damn easy - everyone gets basically perfect. But I kept fucking up. Like... arithmetic. I was getting upset, and that wasn't helping. Anyway, so the point is, uhh the new DST schedule didn't go well for me. Damn you Yankees!

China has only one time zone when it ought to have 5. The ROC says it does have the 5, but the PRC puts everyone on Beijing time.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
That map is hella outdated, if anyone cares.

Okay there is totally a word for this bizarre thunder+lightning+snowstorm business. It is not creative: "thundersnow"! But apparently it's very rare. So rare, in fact, that the time that it happened here was notable enough to be mentioned on Wikipedia. Rare, yet it's happened twice in a month.

So my across-the-hall neighbour A was showing a mutual friend some music.

A: Oh, Peach Plum Pear is such a good song!
Me: Oh no, you like Joanna Newsom? Figures...
A: Who's that? I've never heard of her.
K: But you just said Peach Plum Pear...
A: It's by Final Fantasy.
K: Ohhhh. That's a cover.
At which point I play her the Joanna Newsom version, and she makes a shocked/appalled face. Because Joanna Newsom is not pleasant to listen to. I'm sorry everyone, because it does seem like everyone I talk to likes her. Come on!

That being said, the Final Fantasy cover is quite good.

I also don't like CocoRosie. At all! There! I said it! Call me a philistine!

Hey last entry was bitter!

This year is going by wayyyy too fast. I was reading a friend's Livejournal, and she was reflecting on her progress on accomplishing her New Year's Resolutions. And I could so clearly remember talking to her on the phone on New Year's Eve and her telling them to me... it feels like last week! And it was 2.4 months ago! Where did my life go! I don't want this year to end. Summer = home + work = lame.

However summer also = warm. And this weather is ridiculous. We're getting 36 hours of snowfall! Someone claimed we're in for 50 cm... I don't know about that, but it's certainly coming down. The melt is going to be gross.

Song!

Not terribly upbeat, I admit, but good for evening-time. A friend of mine called Black Moth Super Rainbow "trance". Err.... I'm not sure exactly why. I think the vocoder's just gotten a bad reputation. But what does she know.

Notice how there's just silence at the end. Another untitled track follows it on the album... I guess it's supposed to be "secret"? That worked on casettes, but not so much on CDs.....

Matt & Kim? Seriously? :-(

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

On a related note, we watched a movie in Sociology on "Coca-Colonization", the process by which Coca Cola is well on their way to becoming the most popular drink in the world. They sell the stuff to villagers in Africa who hardly even have access to clean drinking water! And they're trying to supplant tea as the most popular drink in China, and tea is damn integral to Chinese culture. I felt sick, and I'm glad I don't drink that crap.

The movie also showed a man protesting on the street about multinationals and McDonalds, and some guy comes up and heckles him, saying "Man why do you gotta bring us down, see what I'm eating? This is a good quality Big Mac! Maybe you should be eating this stuff - you look like you have AIDS! How can you talk like that about McDonalds?? This is the American Dream!" And if that wasn't bad enough, a good portion of the class clapped. Clapped! I just yelled out "Augh, fuck this culture," and it was a little too loud because I said it when they were clapping, but they had sort of quieted down by the time I'd said it. You know how it is. Yeah I sort of thought... jeez wasn't I supposed to be angsty in high school? Aren't I a little old for that?

But learning more about the world, globalisation, all that crap... doesn't help the feeling of anomie, really. I want to get out of here, but pretty soon, there isn't going to be anywhere left to go. I swear to god I'm just going to go off somewhere and become a subsistence farmer.

On a more positive note, and because where would I be without a comment on the weather... it's warm again! Sort of. Snow is melting. Slowly....

Yesterday was way above 0, and it was a lovely spring day in all but the piles of snow on the ground. And those piles were quickly melting. It rained in the evening, and when I woke up this morning, I could see plenty of green grass.

So what is the deal with this snowstorm!

But more importantly, what is the deal with the thunder and lightning? Prior to this year, I had been completely unaware that you could even have thunder and lightning in a snowstorm, but it's happened twice this year, and the thunder always lasts extra long (denser air I guess). So yeah that's the weather.

My calc midterm also went well. Or at least okay. And now I'm done everything until finals!