It's (going to be) a cruel summer

It's not even June 21st, and Mother Nature has decided to gear up to make my life just a little worse between now and until I die.

Oh, and yes, the title is pretty much ripped from the line of the song Cruel Summer.

I may have been born in Hong Kong, but for the record (for about the 237th time), I was born there, but it doesn't make me any more tolerant to heat, even if it should have. Humid hot is the worst - the air is heavy and wet, you're all sticky and you're struggling for each breath. Mother Nature's chokehold just about suits this phenomenon, and she probably wrestles too. It isn't made anymore comfortable by the fact my room is just above the garage. Roof shingles are generally asphalt-y, and asphalt, being black-coloured, absorbs light, gets all hot, and I can probably see the wavy lines during high noon. The window faces the direction the wind blows, so I get no wind. That is, my window opens to the right. Conveniently, the wind blows from the west, which is obviously my right. Entertaining as it is, even if my room were converted into a meat locker, it'd still be warmer than any other room in the house, plus, heat rises. Damn physics, I've been had again by you.

This means I've always liked to relocate into the basement, or the family room (I'd call it a den, but it's far from one) until the sun sets. During the long, hot days of summer, sleeping on the couch is a luxury (particularily because I'm not married and have a wife force me down there for thinking/doing/being stupid). I do wish pillows had more sides though, because as soon as that side you're resting on is warm, you switch it over. But what happens when you have to switch it again? That "still cooling down" feeling.

And to touch on the subject again regarding women's summer ... appearance (for lack of a better word). It's been pointed time in, time out - they dress as if to be stared at, but any bit of staring results in either a slap to the face, a eye full of pepper spray, a combination of both, or in the extremely rare case, a Hadouken. Now, for some women, that's not too bad, for some others, looking one way means you look regardless, especially in ... closer quarters. Not that close, but it's quite hard to concentrate with the fairly revealing top and the short skirt/shorts, especially if she is sitting in front of you. But as I said, close, but not that close. But close enough.


Here's a start for the summer season. I wouldn't say I've made anything of myself yet (or ever), but I've done something for myself. I cleaned my room. This is because I have a spiffy, new 19" monitor. I cleaned my desk to make room for it, which led to cleaning most of the rest of my room. I emphasize clean beacause, first, it is not infact entirely clean. I do not refer to the location and presense of the unavoidable villain, dust, but rather because I simply ... haven't finished cleaning my room. It was going to be my Mother's Day gift, but it's still a work in progress, and only 6-year-olds use this for a Mother's Day gift. Don't ask what I got for my mother, because I didn't. Wait, did I just say that out loud? Crap.

Secondly, my room is not clean in another sense, because I follow the Law of Conservation of Mess. Yes, I'm taking a shot at you, physics. An eye for an eye. Though it's not as equal as it should be. The law of conservation of mass states no matter can be created or destroyed. So, the same applies for messes, or if you really want to make this a real scientific law, use the word "disorganizationalification", because it sounds more sciencey. I may clean my room, but as I do, someone's room is getting more "disorganizationalificated". So, if you see/have a half-clean room (or half-dirty), it might be because of me. You can't defy physics, but I just made it work in my favour.

Waking up early is good

It's a terrible afflication, I enjoy waking up early, unlike most people at my age. I hope it's not contagious like the flu. Or snoring. But I never did mind waking up early, it's just that until recently I never did because of staying up until 3 AM every night, which meant I crawled out of bed around 10 or 11 AM. So I told (or promised for you optimistic weirdos) to go to bed early so I could get up earlier. Again. It worked, and it wasn't a New Years Resolution, because those always end up being broken, and that's also why I never make any.

On the subject of dreams, I get really weird ones, but the strangest I get are dreams involving me and mere acquaintances getting along all chum-chummy like, which is weird, because that contradicts the whole point of being 'meh' friends/acquaintences. I wish there was surgery for this, I'm sure I'd pay good money to get rid of it.

I'm still stuck on the fence if I should have breakfast before or after brushing my teeth. I like the freshness in my mouth before I eat something, but then again, I'm getting my mouth all full of food after waking up and washing it. And also, toothpaste, especially with that weird minty flavour, makes some of my food taste weird, especially my morning Frutopia, makes it all sour because of - I don't remember the science behind it but it means I have to wait (which means I get more hungrier) so my food doesn't taste like it came out of the rear end of a sub-saharan African animal. Pick any one, I really don't care.

Okay, Spiderman 3, I'm sure everyone's watched it by now, and - I really don't care what everyone (most other people) thought, I thought it was pretty good, but with a villain like Venom, they didn't really satisfy the really hardcore Spidey fans - I watched the old Marvel cartoons back in the day - so I didn't really like their interpretation of Venom, so comic book fans may be more ticked off but I thought it was a good movie regardless. There are worse movies out there.

Oh, and until you've watched the movie, just because the Symbiote is black and Peter's hair is down "emo" style, he is far from emo; womanizing is far from an emo characteristic. Neither is this:



On the subject of superheroes, who has watched NBC's Heroes? Unlike most other people, I didn't jump on the bandwagon onto a very successful show halfway in, I was in from the start - heck, before the start, I watched the leaked pilot in July or August (first episode). I remember seeing a promo or two in June/July, googled it, thought to myself, "Sci-fi is finally going to make it in prime time", considering there were some the year before that didn't do so well.

If you haven't watched Heroes though, you better find some way to catch up for the second season in September with the finale next Monday. Do it or you might find yourself waking up missing some vital organs or extremities. (Disclaimer: I really didn't mean that, in case you're deciding to call 911 or not but pretend I didn't say this.) One other show I'm planning on watching is Gilmour Girls, since the series is over (as in no more, that's it - kaput) I don't have to worry about catching up before September when it would've aired again. But 7 seasons is alot to go through.

Oh, and I have a Wii. More on that later.

Free and Dumb

Free, dumb? Freedom? Get it? I thought you wouldn't, and there's two reasons why. Either I'm too smart for everyone, or everyone's just too dumb.

Free - I am now free (give or take a week) before I go back to classes, or more accurately, summer school. Luckily, I don't feel as bad because most of the people I bumped into or know are actually taking summer courses (albeit not mine, everyone planned ahead to avoid me). It's only 2 days a week, but for 6 hours, which is twice the amount of classes per week of lectures in a regular year. Oh, and ther regular year is twice as long as the summer "year". So twice the work in half the time, I'm going at 4 times the speed, baby! So much for free. Unless I stick to old habits, I guess I am... for 5 of 7 days of the week.

Dumb - What I do is empty out my brain from whatever I remembered after a test or exam, and just forget about it. No point in worrying about what you wrote on a test because you're not getting it back until it's marked. Unless you called your TA a(n) [expletive of choice], or any "offenses" to your TA (my History TA said she'd personally lower your marks for calling the Middle Ages the Dark Ages, but only because that's her specialty). So, right now, I'm done exams and I'm letting my grey matter liquify (in fact, my Psych test had a question on grey matter, I don't think I got that question right). In fact, if I didn't know any better, my brain failed halfway through the exam.

Funny story with today's exam, apparently the "place of higher learning", calling itself the University of Toronto, couldn't crunch a bunch of simple numbers - when everyone arrived for the exam and entered the exam room, well, it just so happened there weren't enough seats. But I'm not talking about 4 or 5 people, more like 30 or so. Give or take 30 people didn't have a seat at the original intended exam room, so I and alot of other people, including a few people I met during labs, had to march halfway across campus to another room to write the exam. Wasn't that great either, it was dimmed lecture hall, and when I say lecture hall, it also means uncomfortable chairs and crappy makeshift tables. Writing an exam for three hours - those are horrible conditions. At least the original exam room had actual tables and chairs, even though the room seemed to be some kind of church hall, so lighting was just as bad.

Okay, I'm getting hungry, which means I need to make dinner, because my sister, who was tasked with making dinner, like everyone else she is tasked with, seems to forget to do it because she's a moron. So it looks like I'm up to bat. Because I'd rather not starve even when I'm free, poetic as it sounds.

Talking to air

Holy crap he's back so soon! Holy crap!

Okay, don't panic.


Talking to air, my specialty, but not me this time. Well, from the beginning, I rushed out the door around 12:30 with my hastily typed up 26 page long and annotated timeline worth 1000 years or so of European history. Exam, of course. Anyways, I hop on the bus to the subway station, and sometime between Main Street and Bloor stations, this girl sits down beside me. No problem, the guy took the seat, so she's forced to sit beside me. I assumed she wasn't in highschool because she has a metropass. Ok, so like I cared past that, I was trying to go through the Reformation again in my notes.

She pops out a drink from the corner of my eye. Looks like chocolate milk or something. Whatever. She downs it a few times, then all of a sudden, she goes "Oh, so smooth and creamy.". But there's noone else there. I was about to believe she was on the phone (oh Bluetooth, how many people you've made to look insane), but obviously what rest I heard wouldn't amount to telephone banter even for two Japanese immigrants trying to speak English through the phone the first day in learning English. So, back to figuring out what the hell Martin Luther did again, then again, she starts going on some jibber jabber, just trying to say some nonsense into air. Obviously, there's noone she came with, she's just talking straight at her. A real basketcase.

Too bad though, my stop was coming up, and I was busy studying, so I couldn't possibly try to outcrazy her. Wasn't ready, didn't have anything lined up, so I just got up and waited for my stop. I'm pretty sure she was high on something, but just enough not to accidentally walk onto the rails before the train pulled into whatever station she got on, because I would've probably been late for my exam. Plus that's an unfair advantage, I have to channel out my sane, rational, lucid thoughts to be crazy while she just has to sniff or pop whatever and does it. It's like using steroids in the Olympics, it's an unfair advantage.

Two down, two to go

The only thing about exam season I don't like is that I don't really get much studying done. Let's look at some examples, or actually, what I did for the first two exams I wrote already:

Psych 100 on Wednesday - read all my notes, did some questions in the study guide the day before the exam. I was hoping the study guide would do me some good, and it did, considering I found I could answer more than "Name" on the scantron sheet without having to guess. But multiple choice is a doozy for such a course that apparently used to be a full year and got "promoted" to being a half course with the same content - i.e. learning twice as fast, which is something I haven't or don't hope to master.

Poli Sci 103 on Friday - reread the entire text, went over my notes - which didn't amount to much, just in-class slide notes for 80% of the time - and went over them again. This was the night before - I will define "The night before" as from 4PM the day before to 2AM the day of, with multiple breaks inbetween lasting 15 to 30 minutes. Come exam day, it was a 3 hour exam full of writing - the most B.S.'ing I've had to do in a long time; writing essays in an hour isn't exactly one of my fortes so I pretty much skipped anything conventional about essays. I did that last test and I didn't get penalized for it. I love getting away with things. I'll admit, it all made sense after I finished studying, because I didn't pay attention in class for the most part. Content is interesting indeed, but I'm no longer interested in politics.


Upcoming matches:

Me vs History 109, or remember 1000 years of European History (the course says something like 1300-1945, but we all know history doesn't happen in a bubble, so it rounds up and down to around 1000CE - Sept 10, 2001). Tuesday! TUESDAY! TUESDAY! 2-5PM, more exam writing, but I like history, so this won't feel much of a chore ... as long as I start studying, considering I already skipped Friday afternoon (yeah right) and all of Saturday (because it's Saturday regardless).

Me vs. Organic Chem/Chem 138: Thursday Morning. This sounds like fun because I already did another chem exam for the first half (CHM139), but numbers aside, this is pretty much all concepts. My cousin argues this is harder and number crunching is easier, but he loaths physics because it is both conceptual and number crunching at once. Good thing I pulled out of Grade 12 physics when I had (the first week). Chem though, it's not too tough - even though I didn't do exceptionally well on the previous tests, I don't really want to worry since it's the same process I've done before for quite a while. I won't worry. At least not yet.

Maybe I really should start studying.

Easily Distracted

First off, I'd like to offer my deepest condolences to everyone in the Blacksburg, Virginia area and all the students of Virginia Tech, from one student to another.

I say this out of sincerity, not to fit into the norm or sound repetitive or to make a point, something witty or sardonic. It was a tragedy, and it would be less than human to do otherwise, but some people have found these tragedies make perfect situations to forward their political agendas.

I'll say it now, F--- politics. Nothing good comes out of it without something bad along with it.



Okay, so now that that's settled, let's proceed on a lighter tone, or, the usual around here.

Obviously, I didn't expect any comments from my last post because noone ever actually comments, it's exam season for universities, and frankly, that was a pretty crappy title.

On the subject of exam season, from reading various MSN names, it seems everyone who doesn't go to U of T seems to be almost rid of the curse they call exams. So, I expect comments (not really) considering everyone else will be done. Myself? They start on the week of the 23rd (next week), 2 that week, 2 the week after. But then, what am I doing here, I may ask? While you're at it, ask why you're here. Hit that "Next Blog" button if I'm really giving off some strange vibe (it's not my B.O., I just had a shower).

Easily distracted, I am. First exam is on Wednesday next week, then the next on Friday, Tuesday and Thursday, and what do I have to show for it? Well, I'm writing this? Maybe practice? Other than that, I've been doing anything other than studying, even when I'm bored in and out of my skull, I really want to find something other than start the studying process. I'll never be free considering I'll be in perpetual learning this summer. Summer courses sound fun until you find out you're doing twice the amount of work in half the amount of time. Yippie?

Honestly, I have no idea what I'm more afraid of this time of year, learning (or in some cases, re-learning) all that information, containing it in my brain to write down into something coherent in 3 hours, or having to do that with regular washroom breaks due to coffee and Frutopia.

Let's just hope I don't get distracted again ... oh, a pink kite ... wait, at 3:30 in the morning? The insomnia must be wearing off. Let's hope I don't get distracted to write another one of these. For all our sakes.

Untitled

So, another Tuesday afternoon, and that would mean another wasted day due to evening classes. Fortunately, this is the last week of classes, and even more fortunate for me that I have nothing good to do, so I thought I’d scribble down this week’s ramblings and schizophrenic thoughts down for the whole wide (web) world to ignore. I actually couldn’t think of a title, maybe because I have no work left to do, so I’m letting my mind relax too hard and my organizational skills have been taken out to the woods and shot, Old Yeller style. So, in my nerdom, I do what Windows does, call it untitled until you give it a name. But I’ll leave it as such.

I’m also on campus, so I’m typing this on Word, because, although I don’t give 3/8ths a damn what anyone thinks of me, I don’t want to look pretentious, and have people walk by only to say “What a(n) [expletive].”, because I know you know, I don’t need to hear it from you; so it’s only a matter of a quick copy and paste, and I look as if I’m busy. Not that you needed to know.

Here’s a funny thing I do when I write this, I essentially devote all attention to the task at hand, and that’s probably the only time I actually do it. So well, in fact, I may forget what I was going to write if I don’t stop and slap myself across the face. (Truth: I do in fact, do this) I don’t write this down because I can do this all from memory. At least I think I can. But the fact is, if it’s worth remembering, I’ll remember it. At least when I look back when I’m 246 (yes, I’ll last that long, and that is if I haven’t stopped writing for no one, the fun of it all), I’ll remember what I need to remember, just maybe reinforced in words than in fuzzy memory.

Okay, let’s move on.

First off, Hockey is over in Toronto. Hockey-mecca has hockey end prematurely, for the second year in a row now, because we didn’t make the playoffs. If you’re a Senators’ fan (you know who you are), don’t you dare rub it in. You’re just lucky we’re not there to completely annihilate you when we get to you guys anyways. Consider your team lucky. Very lucky. Lucky indeed. And I hope Pittsburgh kicks your butt. That being said, “Go Canucks” … at least until they get eliminated.

Summer school is going to be interesting, because I need to think of what to do for summer school. No, don’t get started on “Kelvin, you need a job you stupid hippie”, I know that for a fact, and I’ll get … right … on it. (That means I won’t) I won’t even try to rationalize why I don’t have a job yet, because anything I say is purely irrational. Anyways, back to summer school: Four more months stuck on campus, but less time spent in classes, because no sane person (and me) would do anything close to a full course load. Not under that hot summer sun. In those hot, humid sweaty conditions. So damn hot, and distracting, and that’s just the heat.

New tangent – summer, and why I don’t really like it. Sure, holidays and all that, but first, I’ll be stuck in summer school (for my own ‘benefit’, I suppose), and not only is the heat and humidity distracting (I’m not a summer person, you may have guessed). I’m more a winter person; I like the cold, or just the cool, as long as it’s dry as well (and dry heat is slightly more tolerable). And the ladies? I like them all year around (I’d better), but I prefer them in the winter than in the summer. In the summer, they wear next to nothing, and as much as I like that, I like it when they wear more. Layers, bulk, hoods, fur boots, that kind of stuff. Maybe I really am mentally ill, can you name any other male on this planet that would admit the same, picking puffy winter coats and sweaters over low cut spaghetti straps, short skirts and thongs sticking out of jeans? I didn’t think so.

Quick sidenote though, women do crazy things. I won’t list them all; this’ll be short, just some things I’ve remembered. I’ve actually walked downwind of someone who had perfume that smelled like cookie dough, or playdoh (or something similar). Now that’s strange considering it’s usually some fruit scent or weird, yet pleasant aroma. Second, I’ve seen someone, … how do I describe this … applying mascara on the subway. I don’t know what leads some women to do this but I won’t even put something with an even more blunt of a point near my eyes in any moving vehicle. And I wear glasses too.

Anyways, I’ve taken quite a shine (that really doesn’t sound right, so I’ll use it) to playing SimCity again. I’ve never played the first one, but I’ve spent (or wasted) a few good years playing SimCity 2000 and 3000, and now I’m moving onto 4. Funny enough, SimCity 4 is, well, 4 years old, but still has a pretty large online community that seems pretty friendly. Guess it pays when you don’t play with violent games; everyone seems so helpful all of a sudden. I’ve seen people put together some amazing looking cities, and I’m having fun losing a good amount of my time (before crunch time) playing. Who knows, maybe I’ll eventually do something successful one day, even if it’s just in a video game. I don’t have any desire to start going into urban planning, but who knows? I sure don’t, but it’d be pretty funny to see me help start planning the layout of the city. It’d be a total disaster.

And then we reach crunch week. I don’t have anything fun to say or anything to use against me here, but if you’re reading this (again, probably not, but I’d like to entertain that thought – that may have rhymed without my knowledge), you’re either not busy enough, or you’re done, and with that, I curse your schedule for being much better than mine. And if you’re not taking summer school, you’d better be earning good money, because it’s likely I won’t be.

See you after the dust settles.