New blog!

Road to PhD: www.road-to-phd.blogspot.com

Sexual Harassment

Yesterday I called U. of Ottawa's sexual harassment hotline.

And an answering machine picked up to ask if I wanted to leave a message. Well... NO, I don't wanna leave a fucking message for it to be recorded and be the center of amusement for those retards.

Seriously... If a hotline like that is set up, it is because they want to help people. Already the victims feel harmed, and now they call for help and get an answering machine? How low are they gonna feel now?

Anyways.. back to me.. yeah my door's lock ran out of battery and hence I couldn't get in with the card I usually swipe with. AND THEN A HUGE FAT SWEATY PEDOPHILE WITH PIMPLES CAME FROM BEHIND AND RAPED ME!

But no, not really. I had groceries and I was really pissed at the stupid door failing on me. So I had to call housing services or something. I looked at on the card, and there were a few numbers to dial: Foot patrol, peer support, protection services, UOttawa main line, and sexual harassment. I knew I had to call protection services because that's the one everybody calls for housing problems and stuff. So I tried calling, and the number doesn't even EXIST. Nice... and I called the other numbers one by one and they all failed. Until... Sexual Harassment... STILL nobody answered, but at least they gave me the right number to call Protection Services.

True Story.

$48.02

Math, tennis and swing

A little promotion to start off the post!

Last weekend, Xiao, a friend from Montreal at UW, informed me, quite out of the blue, about a Canadian wide mathematics conference happenning here in Ottawa. Indeed, what a coincidence! It was happenning at University of Carleton from the 8th of July until the 11th. Having responsibilities to keep at Industry Canada (keeping my seat warm), I couldn't go Wednesday and Thursday. So I went on Friday night and Saturday.

The CUMC is a annual event for undergraduate math students, mostly with the goal to broaden up their views about different fields of math. It also offers chances to network with people with similar interests (there was a boat banquet on Friday night, so it gives time to mingle. Not just lectures).

Long and behold, next year's CUMC 2010 will be held at no other than University of Waterloo! So for you who will be close-by, like I was for Carleton, should definitely come. Or maybe even give a short talk!

Here's the website for CUMC 2009: http://cumc.math.ca/2009/home.html

After years of idleness, I played tennis once again yesterday. I remember playing on the court next to my house, when I was.. maybe 12 or so. I was taught by a school friend who played competitively, and got to the point where I could challenge older people on the courts and sometimes beat them. Those were the productive years I guess. Then I stopped playing regularly.

Yesterday, Jeevan pulled me out of my sedentary lifestyle, borrowed me his newly bought racquet (the guy's fucking rich), and whipped his fatass shots at me. It felt great to play again, and to feel sore everywhere the day after (today). I just have to pick up my serves, and I'll be a competitive opponent in no time.

At last, today I decided to go swingdance at some "Saturday Night" swing dance club. Alone. Yeah. I just realized so much time is wasting in front of the computer. People saying they've got no time is mostly just an illusion. Anyways, I went to their introductory class at 8 to refresh my memory after more than a year, and danced away until 11 or so. Although I was part of some swing dance club back in Montreal, I never really picked up the "social" part of swing, which is randomly asking someone to dance, and improvise from there. I only learned the choreographies. But today, I forced myself and now I can manage some simple stuff out of thin air. I'll be going back.

A little show before the intro class. These two were amazing. She's pretty damn hot too.

Peace.

$47.01

David Ma

My name is so common. What will happen when I come up with my own theorem? Ma's theorem? meh...

David Ma - Real Estate Agent

http://www.davidma.ca/contact.php

David Ma - Assistant Prof. at U of Guelph, Health Science

http://www.uoguelph.ca/hhns/people/faculty/ma.shtml

David Ma - Corporate Lawyer (This guy's pretty hot)

http://www.mccarthy.ca/lawyer_detail.aspx?id=1437

David Ma - Musician (Bass)

http://www.myspace.com/dmbasshk

David Ma - On the Great Wall (this one is very random)

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1166141229052771776YQFpwn

Apparently, there are 32 David Ma's in California

http://names.whitepages.com/David/Ma

I have yet to get my version of David Ma online... other than the COMC 2008 results... (brag)

Fun things to do with your mom

What

Fall09

I've heard about your horror stories on Fall09 schedules, 7-8 hours of class on MWF and... TTh free...

That's really fucked up.

Here's mine. Not so fucked up.

Notes:

Tutorials don't really need to be included in... one doesn't go to them at least half the time.

AFM101 should be/may be BUS227 or something. Either MW or TTh. Right now, I'm enrolled in the A2 section. But it conflicts with Math249/239...

Math249 will probably be Math239. 6 classes, of which 2 advanced, and a CS241? I don't think so... I'm not godlike enough.

I'll keep this post less verbose. It's been a while since I first started posting, and my entries are getting longer.

PAYCE

$46.40

WTFMJ

Micheal Jackson left us today. He has given a lot to us.

I first learned about this 6-7 hours ago, on Tracy's Facebook status... that's really not paying respect to MJ learning this over Facebook...

Anyways, I'll have to tell my future kids that before they were born, there were a place called Neverland, a place where nobody grew old.

I finally decided to write something on this blog again. Not having this event would be an insult to MJ.

Back to my life now...

Since two weeks or so, my job became much more interesting. Here's how it happenned.

As a Junior Economist at Industry Canada, you don't typically do much. You make some charts out of data, and... hmm... I don't even have a second task to make a list. It gets so boring that I started to take daily naps around 10:30 am. I also spend a lot of time solving www.hacker.org challenges. More on that maybe another time. On Thursdays, I do my DE course homework.

I'm glad to be a mathie. I believe it was Friday the 12th this month.

I was walking to my cubicle, a few minutes late of 9:00am, as usual. It's not like I have anything urgent to be completed. In the governement, not many things are urgent. At least not as I have seen. Except maybe for making PowerPoints for incredibly high ranked people (The PCO Clerk, yeah I made charts for Kevin G. Lynch). I sat down and typed my password under the username MAD. The everyday morning ritual started, and I opened Outlook, checked for e-mails, opened Google Chrome, ebuddy, and that time I was swifting through the Wikipedia page of Himmler, a German SS during WW2. I was looking through his childhood to see how he was a loser and how that affected his becoming.

Then suddenly, my boss' boss, the "Director", knocked on the metallic edge of my cubicle where a door usually would stand in an office. I don't think he has ever talked or noticed my presence beforehand, in contrast to me sitting right next to his office door, and hearing everything he says with other people. He asked me: "You're a math student right?" I had a freaking page of Himmler on my screen. "Ya" I said, slightly scrolling down to a part with no pictures. Changing the page would have been too obvious. Not doing anything would be weird. "I have a problem, are you interested? [...] A fresh pair of eyes may help." Wow... this is one heck of an opportunity he gave me.

He explains to me the situation on "Productivity Gains Decompostions" and shows me a paper by Griliches & Regev. The problem he had was with a doubtful equality. At first sight, it really seemed more like a sloppy economist approximation written with an equal sign instead of the wiggly equal. In fact, even I was supporting his doubts on the paper at first, saying the paper was wrong. (He showed other papers too, which actually contained errors and sloppiness. Internally published papers are not comparable to peer-reviewed stuff.) I took the paper back to my desk, and after ten-fifteen minutes, I had luckily realized the funky algebra trick G&R employed to get this equality. I quickly told Marc. Impressed, he had apparently spent over an hour the day before, trying. He then gives me some papers for me to read around, and play with in the meantime.

By the end of the day, with two introductory economics class knowledge in my bag, stating that my understanding of those papers was fuzzy would be an overstatement of my accomplishments. I then made a choice, walked into his office to discuss more on this topic of Productivity Gains Decomposition. As he taught me stuff, I like to believe now that I also brought insights to him as well with the exchanges, I understood more about the subject myself, and came up with the "path-dependency" of that decomposition. I think that's the part I contributed. Pleased, he wanted me to write up the still unripe fruit of the discussion. He had just offered me the possibility to publish a paper. I now know that confidence in yourself, and contradicting your superiors when you feel so (even if you might be wrong) is a productive activity. At that time, it was almost six o'clock. We usually leave before five. But during that small interval of time, I learned more than the whole time I was at Industry Canada.

The next week, I had coffee with Marc, he lectured me a bit more and gave me green light to start.

So these past few days, I have been working, writing, learning, discovering stuff would be a long-shot, and hitting my computer (quickly picking up LaTeX). Still napping a little, but much less.

I hope I can post the paper I will have collaborated on in the near (a few months) future.

Keep reading.

$45.58

Nice cleavage

This Friday, my boss bought me beer. I don't know about Montreal, or Waterloo, Toronto, or wherever one might be, but Friday was a sunny but not a soleil de plomb, blue-sky, and hair-in-a-slight-soothing-breeze day. A few of my coworkers (I shouldn't say coworker because they are all permanent and higher ranked workers...) decided to go out to have a nice cold beer at a nearby pub. My boss asked if I wanted to join them. At first I was somewhat hesitant at the thought of having to mingle with "older folks", and sieving my words as I had to talk to them in a professional manner. But then again, the best opportunities in life usually only come unexpectedly with "networking".

I don't like the word "networking", because it usually doesn't really work that way. Yes you get contact information from various people at "networking" events. But how often do you follow up? And actually how well do you know those people to think they will give you an opportunity before they give it to their real friends? I went to some of these networking events. They usually consist of people awkwardly exchanging e-mails on little pieces of paper that would serve better as emergency toilet paper.

Real "networking" takes time and effort. And it sucks if you don't actually like the person. So, I don't try to cast a huge net. It's a "WOMBAT". I just befriend people just because they seem chill or fun to be with. Trying to use them as future potential stepping stones is a futile attempt. They won't care about you anyways if you don't care about them.

So I accepted. In went the beer, and out went a bit of office gossip. It was a nice experience, especially when your boss pays your beer.

Also, earlier that day, my boss had a Second Cup banana nut muffin, and gave me half. It was THE best muffin of my life. Crisp but not quite crunchy exterior, soft and warm but not mushy interior, a generous amount of roasted walnuts, sweet scent of a banana, it was quite the muffin. It's definitely going to be my breakfast sometimes. I guess you have to buy it fresh in the morning as well.

National Art Gallery in less than 9 hours.

$43.86

Keep clicking

Philosophy of cooking

Cooking is like math. You first cook with premade dishes, premade seasonings, premade whatever. Then, you axiomatize the theory you learned and blindly accepted. You try to recreate the premade theorems from raw and unprocessed ingredients. This is how you improve on the premade stuff. You question it ruthlessly, change the assumptions, and experiment.

I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working on it. It's also a bit more time consuming.

These were the main ingredients for a tuna mushroom cream pasta sauce:

Chunked tuna, Campbell's mushroom cream, green onion, mushrooms (cuz the soup is weaksauce), and garlic.

The proportions are approximate, let intuition build up from experience.

Fry garlic and green onion in oil, throw in mushrooms and let it get a slight burnt texture, throw in the rest. Adjust consistency with milk; adjust taste with salt and black pepper, but don't overdo it. I hate it how people don't even taste their plate and instantly put half the salt and pepper container. We live in the 21st century. The food is not rotten.

I don't have a end picture. It's not very interesting; it's a sauce...

The second well-made dish was steamed ginger beef. It's a secret recipe from mommy. That's all I'll say on it. I actually made it at a random girl's place, whom I met when the fire drill went off and was wrapped in a blanket. She liked it, and washed the dishes. End of story. No pictures obviously.

Another simple dish I made, shrimp and celery stir fry. Stir fries are really easy, just stir, and fry.

Shrimps, celery, oyster sauce, white pepper, garlic clove, ginger slice, maybe salt if you have a lot of celery.

Mix shrimps, oyster sauce, pepper, and set aside. Fry the garlic clove and ginger slice in oil to get some flavour out. Throw in the celery (cuz it cooks slower than shrimps) and salt if you need some. Let the celery soften up a little. Throw in the shrimps, do not overcook. Really, don't. Or else the shrimps get dry, and that is weak.

Ignore the pasta, it's lame, just for a random side. Those are mesquite spiced pork chops. This is one of those big-ass premade theorems I used without understanding it.

Pork chops (select the ones with a good amount of marbled fat IN the meat, not around it. I think it makes it much more tender.)

Onions

Mesquite spice (the heavy artillery)

That's it.. Dribble the chops with olive oil (to make the spice stick well) and cover with Mesquite spice, and let it sit for a while before frying. Fry the onions in oil, then fry the pork chops, sometimes turning it. Again do not overcook. Dry and hard pork chops are cafeteria signatures.

Will I ever discover the secret of the Mesquite spice mixture? Tune in..

Soon, I'll try to make pasta sauce from scratch, aka the tomatoes. I'll let someone else grow them. I'm not that hardcore.

PAYCE (peace, but gangsta like)

$42.98

----------------------------

Random stuff:
I have Nazi food.

OMG is that the MC????? lol.. It's the MC of UofO

Fennel pork chops

I have been cooking these past few days. I must say it does bring a lot of personal satisfaction when you can concoct a great tasting dish from scratch.

Up to date, I have made 4 non-premade non-trivial dishes. Trivial stuff I made includes:

-Tuna salad [I have yet to make a REALLY good one, unlike whatever you can find pre-made on the market]

-Omelette

-Spaghetti [I mostly make my own sauce from tomato paste because it's like 5 times cheaper, and I can say it's my own sauce]

-Sandwiches [I have made pretty good sandwiches, relying on good ingredients]

-Oven-ready stuff

-Boiled vegetables

-Toast

-Instant noodles [Up to date, my instant noodle count is merely 2 cups in 17 days. I intend to keep this ratio, or make it even lower].

Ok..

May 10th, Fennel Pork Chops

The story of this dish goes back to when I first visited Xiaotian's place. He was paying 50$ more every month, but compared to my appartment, his is way cleaner, and have much better roommates. Anyways, I was looking around his kitchen, and I found an ample amount of interesting spices that the past resident left. As a firm believer in spices, and how they do not rot or go bad, I wanted to use some of it to make my first nice meal. I chose the fennel seeds. They smelled pretty good, but I had no idea they tasted kinda like licorice.

I looked up some recipe online, and I found one that seemed easy: fennel pork chops. It also required garlic salt and white wine. Among the other spices, garlic salt was already there. I was lucky.

I don't drink wine as of yet. Hence, I had to go purchase some at a local LCBO or Loblaws. I ended up going to Loblaws because it was the cheapest. No way I was going to pour half a bottle of $40 wine in a frying pan. I got a bottle for $7.50.

6 O'clock comes. It was time to start cooking. I realize I do not have a corkscrew. No biggy, XT and I go google/youtube "how to open a wine bottle without corkscrew". A method we found consisted of hitting the bottom of the bottle against a tree. So we tried it for a while (not on a tree though), without success. Too bad I don't have a video of this.. it would have made a fine addition to my blog. So we google more, and found that this trick did not work with synthetic corks (as our cheap wine obviously has a synthetic cork). We weren't that much of failures.

Other methods used a screwdriver, a screw, and something to pull the whole thing out like a hammer or pincers, but we did not have that kind of material.

Desperate and lost, we resolve to chipping off the cork, bit by bit. After a while, we realize it was going to take forever. Especially when you get to the deeper part of the cork, the knife won't have room to cut anything.

Randomly, XT just stabs the knife in the cork deep enough.. and I was able to do something like this:

So we finally started cooking.

The last picture wasn't very clear because of the lighting, and my phone camera sucks. It looked pretty good. The taste turned out to be pretty mediocre, something you would find in the V1 cafs. However, the texture was so good, it even surprised me. The tenderness was beyond what most restaurants would offer. Maybe it was the way I chose the pork chops.

Verdict:

Screw recipes. You need to learn the fundamentals of where each ingredient fits in the cooking process in order to recreate the dish. Or else, lots of small mistakes will compound together and your dish will turn out not as great as it should be. The next 3 dishes I made without following any recipes, and they were, in fact, awesome. You have to start with the basics, and be able to improvise on them, because that reflects true understanding. And then, you can experiment slowly to understand how each product interacts with another. Blindly following a recipe calls for a bad dish. It is like applying formulas and algorithms without knowing the underlying concept. Or learning a piece of music from the sheets, playing the notes without understanding them.

I give it a 6/10. Even though everything else was good, the taste was not satisfying. I have high standards.

Next post: The 3 well made dishes

$42.22

What I do with my weekends

I have to work tomorrow, but I don't feel like sleeping.

Last weekend was my first weekend as a employee. It's the time of the week that everybody around my little cubicle looks forward to. Talking about around my cubicle, there is this woman, S., who from the first sight of her, I knew she wasn't like the rest of our group at Industry Canada. Picture a fake-tanned middle aged blonde (real or not? dunno) woman, neck to shoulder length hair, with slight weight due to age, but not exactly fat. The first time I was introduced to her, I felt some kind of negative "energy" (shit I sound like a freaking joke). Anyways, she was in the cubicle right next to mine. During the first week, I never really talked to S., just a slight smile when eye contact was made. I also avoided her when it was easy to do so. Days went by, and I obviously hear things from her cubicle. I first gather that S. was some kind of secretary for some bigger boss/economist, since he was always calling up on S. for administrative stuff. Little by little, I hear her sometimes complain to herself "shit" "fuck" "gimme a break gosh" "are you kidding me", sometimes calling up her friends to do some chit chat. And obviously, in front of M., she was always very politically correct and ideal, but I always felt some annoyance in her speech. I'm pretty sure she hates her job.

This is to show some iconic office life of the 20th century. People longing for Friday, hating Mondays, cursing their bosses in the back, complaining about the bureaucratic system, etc... Obviously This is not an ideal workplace. I am sure this has improved in the 21st century, with more innovative business structures and management principles, but the government always lags behind.

So onto the topic I originally wanted to talk about...

Last Saturday was rainy, so Xiaotian and I went to the Museum of Civilization, apparently one of the greatest museums of Canada. And like everyone, we walked around, not too impressed, and took photos of interesting stuff, with our cellphones...

This was apparently some thing to wack fishes with. But XT and I thought it was more some kind of prehistoric dildo.

Jen, this is totally your sweater with bears on it, but this one belonged to Amerindians.

No comments

Guess where did you see this before? and YES you DID see it before.

Glen Gould's Steinway. Too bad I never met him in person. Died so young at 50, in '82. One of the few extraordinary Canadian pianists.

And Sunday, I made fennel pork chops.

Long story... I will update this post later cuz I really need to sleep now. Check it out later, cuz there's a video of me. and videos of me are awesome

Jr. Economist at Industry Canada

Drinking Chinese sweat makes you good at basketball. Fact.

(add "like a bauss" after each line)

1. My first Friday

2. A bit more than half a grand

3. Pay for my ridiculously expensive Donald Pliner dress shoes (though quality is quality when it comes to 300 bucks)

4. Meet two other Waterloo noob coop students

5. Study some microeconomics and statistics on the job, with my boss encouraging me

6. Pack my lunch myself

7. Learn how to use STATA

8. Teach my supervisor how to use STATA

9. Discover the beauty of pita breads over normal bread slices

10. Look down from the 10th floor and get sweaty palms

11. Proofread an economics paper

12. Go on eBuddy

13. Tell my boss that her paper sucks (indirectly)

14. Retrieve and optimize data by reallocating variable memory

15. Make a paperclip chain

16. Talk about Real Analysis with my other boss

17. Make the bauss sound when I walk with my $300 shoes

18. Go on Facebook

19. Go on the elevator with other people and feel good about myself when I push the 10th floor cuz it's the highest one (except for 11, but never saw anybody going for the 11th... maybe there are top secret documents)

20. Do a correlation analysis

21. Tell my boss I want a higher pay

22. Discover my other boss is from Montreal and commutes every weekend, so I ask to share gas cost with him

23. Run out of ideas

K remember my 30+ years old roommate who is married?

Well, apparently she's PREGNANT

WTFFFF????????????

I was holding my phone very VERY tightly... I think I'm scared of heights...

$39.96

Ottawa

So it's been three days here at Ottawa. Time for a post. Read it.

April 30th around 11:00am, I arrive to Ottawa. The sky is sunny, temperature is mellow, perfect day to be moving in.

I had arranged accommodation with a nice Korean girl (never met in person, but seemed pretty chill), graduating this summer, subletting me her UofO residence for a good price. I have the bigger room among my 3 other roommates as well. Apparently, one of my roommates was to be a chinese girl, nice.

After I arrived, I went to the housing office to pick up my keys. Having gone up the stairs, into the office, I see a whole bunch of people waiting in the room, and thought, damn it's gonna be a while. Weirdly enough, I was served immediatly, speaking English to a Quebec accented secretary/receptionist of some sort, and I realized that we were not to move in until May 1st. Only after some time I noticed that ALL those people waiting there we're in the same situation as me. We got struck by bureaucracy. ggnoobsglhf-ed by bureaucrazy.

Thankfully, there was a solution to this. I could contact my subletter and ask her to send them an e-mail saying she allows me to take over the room a day sooner. And I did. But bam, noon arrives, lunchtime. Only at 2pm I was able to get my keys.

Finally moving in, I opened my temporary 4-month home door, and I saw the foretold expected chinese girl. But, unexpectedly, she's extremely fob (not in the asianess kinda way, but literally fresh off the boat way), is at least 30 years old (graduate studies in UofO after working in China), and has a HUSBAND (not in rez though), not to mention not very good looking. gg...

5pm. I walk to the bus terminal to pick up Sylvia, a friend visiting Ottawa on the way back to Waterloo. (This is where the first picture of the dangling shoes was taken) So we took a quick tour of Ottawa.

This is me posing. I realized afterwards that I took this pose unknowingly from Usain Bolt.

I was gonna climb the statue, but my parents called while I was standing on the ledge.

No interesting comment on this one.

I also went to my workplace.

I didn't go in yet because there's a security guy guarding the elevator. I'm working on the 10th floor. If I get an office with a window, G_G.

May 1st. Another day to go chill out. The Tulip Festival is supposed to start today but...

Looks like everybody's a procrastinator.

Look at the squirrel with a bagel!

Oh wait! It saw me...

So it climbed on a tree with the bagel. I didn't pay attention to how it did that with a bagel in hands, but now that I think about it, wtf pro?

Anyways, this day we walked on Sparks, nothing too special, except the stamp shop/museum. And went to the currency museum.

Talk about inflation...

For the fobs out there who have never seen the 2$ Canadian bill.

And that was pretty much the day, with lunch at some modern business school offspring neo-fast-food called Toss It Up (it's not a chain. it's the only one). http://www.tossitup.ca/

May 2nd. I take Sylvia back to the terminal, and

On my way back, I run into Jeevan. o.O What ze fuck. He went to the same CEGEP as me, and I had absolutely no idea he was here at UofO. He's a big douche,

but he's chill. Gave me good Indian food, and showed me around town.

So this is pretty much it until now, 3:18pm May 3rd.

Xiaotian just arrived, gotta go crash his place.

Peace.

$39.78

Return of the ggnoobsglhf

Aight, I finally settled down to write another post after these past few turbulent weeks of studying.

I know, you've been craving for another post and did not find your need satisfied.

Two weeks ago...

Find the odd one out...

Is it Isaac Newton because he's one of the greatest minds in history? NO

Is it Buzz Killington because he's the only cartoon? NO

Is it Elton John because of his sexual differences that I, by the way, totally respect? NO

Is it Sean Connery because he's so freaking awesome and hot? NO, Newton is freaking awesome as well, and hot in this picture.

The odd one out is Minwoo, because he's NOT a Knight of England.

It all started when Arush called Madison, Sir Blake. Why? Well, obviously, he's a visible minority being white at Waterloo. And whites are obviously English. And Englishmen are obviously Knights (No idea for the Blake part). Then myself, having a white name, have been called a Sir as well.

Sinful like any other human being, Minwoo was taken over by envy. That title appealed to him so strongly, such class, being part of the nobility, what else can one want more?

...And something happened but I forgot because it was two weeks ago...

Arush and Minwoo ended up betting on if the Queen would ever knight somone called Minwoo, with a World Cup ticket on the line.

Obviously, research was done, and some conclusions were made. The most important one: A Knight's title can be passed on.

The solution he came up with was simple. Minwoo would to be adopted by a Sir, threaten him to change his will into passing on the title to to-be-Sir Minwoo, and finally assassinate the poor man.

Another solution was found, much more elegant, kinda like a nice math proof. It goes as follows. Adopt a knight, name him Minwoo. Q.E.D.

***

Now remember the slapbet I made with Fred?

Here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqT7oyOwwdM

Gotta love how he looked so confident before the slap.

***

Anyways, I'm heading off to Ottawa on the 30th, starting as a Jr. Economist. Sounds pretty cool. David Ma, Economist. Architect you say? No, that's not as cool as economist.

I'll keep you updated. The next 4 months of posts will be grouped under the name of "Adventures in Ottawa with David Ma", rhyme like a mime, chill like a dill.

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$39.25

X-am P-riod

Myeah, I haven't posted in a while...

It's exam period, and nothing interesting really happens. A typical day consists of:

-Waking up at noon

-Eat lunch

-Read a bit on the financials

-Listen to talks on www.ted.com

-Load/open study material on computer

-Do some more useless stuff

-Start studying, except that it's not "One hour study, ten minutes break, repeat"... it's the other way around

-Eat supper

-Continue the studying pattern

-Eat the 3rd meal of the day, the after-supper

-Chat with girls (cuz I'm cool)

-(NSFW)

-Go to sleep at 2-3 am

I'm sure many of you somewhat identify yourselves in this schedule. Some of you may have even a crazier schedule.

I invite you to post a sample daily schedule in the comments.

The ad revenue has been pretty cold these days. People forget to click them.

$36.85

Swing it

Back when Montreal was called home, I joined a small casual swing dance group at my Cegep during my last year there. Like most people, before I joined, I had absolutely no idea what Swing was. To me, by the sound of it, it was some kind of country dance, or some variant of square dancing. But during some club day, they showed some videos of performances, and it seemed pretty nice to me. After learning that some of my friends were already in the club, I decided to give it a shot, even though dancing to me was like math to some people.

During that year, needless to say, I had a lot of fun. Biweekly sessions, small performances at various school events (even a talent show o.O), and new people, these great memories wouldn't have existed without an open mind.

Now, these past few days, I've been a bit nostalgic.

The following videos are a good example of how I see Lindy Hop (I guess the most popular subgenre):

Alain Wong was our teacher for free. Cool guy, though sometimes late for class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl9lC9Dt3RE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reO-4LQh0Rg

Very nice performance. Kevin and Carla, a duo I enjoyed best so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uBwm3FjdP0

Another video which really pushes Lindy Hop to acrobatics. I like it less because it's not as... swingy... unless what you swing is your partner. Nonetheless very impressive. (I kinda think it is being a bit fast forwarded... it looks way too fast, even for a fast dance.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJj0mNNe1Y

Anybody wants to try it out Fall 09 style?

$35.94

Grass-Mud Horse

Ok today is April Fool's day, but the following is not a joke.

My roommate Yang told me about this, and wanted credits so here it is.

It seems that this has been going around Chinese forums for a while now. This unknown animal reached fame within a few weeks: The Grass-Mud Horse

This weird animal probably reached millions of Chinese Internet users because of its catchy name, pronounced in Mandarin. Cao Ne Ma

I'll let it speak for itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKx1aenJK08

But let's look beyond this funny name.

The alpaca became a symbol for the revolution against information censorship. It is interesting how they chose to name the animal (it didn't need to be the alpaca.. it could have been almost anything, as long as it wasn't common, and it looked like a horse of some sort...). Every single word is extremely benign. Grass. Mud. Horse. Thus making filtering difficult for the authorities.

Anyways, who am I to talk about serious stuff.

Check out the alpaca page on wikipedia:

"""

Hygiene

To help alpacas control their internal parasites they have a communal dung pile, where they do not graze. Generally, males have much tidier, and fewer dung piles than females who tend to stand in a line and all go at once. One female approaches the dung pile and begins to urinate and/or defecate, and the rest of the herd often follows.

Because of their preference for using a dung pile, some alpacas have been successfully house-trained.

"""

Well.. it seems like girls going to the bathroom in groups, especially in restaurants, is an instinctive animal behavior.

Interesting.

$34.14

The Godfather

Out of respect, I have no other choice but to entitle this post The Godfather, even though it's a pretty plain name.

Some of you might have heard about the legend of The Godfather in Waterloo. For those of you who have not, The Godfather is a... how would I put it... a burger made out of.... wait for it.... BURGERS.

This hexaburger is comprised of, well, six big burger patties (not those small V1 burger patties), three hugeass buns (and when I say hugeass, it's huger than your ass), melted cheese, many slices of bacon (cuz I didn't bother to count), and, last but not least, some healthy tomatoes. The patties were so oily and bloodclotting that the bacon on the burger looked pretty healthy. The tomatoes kinda added a touch of irony to this. Apparently, 3 pounds. But by the look of it, I'd give it 5. 2 of which is pure fat. The height of this megaburger measured more than the palm of my hand. Total to 20$, served with fries (or a salad if I remember correctly).

Located at Mel's Dinner, somewhere in the plaza, next to the HMV, The Godfather has triumphed over many macho guys. In fact, only 40 people have been able to finish The Godfather.

I was interested.

Diran, some of you might know, is quite an avid eater. So when he said he was hungry today, I proposed the Godfather challenge to him. Neither of us had seen this famous hexaburger earlier this day. So we, Diran, Yang (my roomie <3), Qiao (still single, ladies?), and I walked to the plaza.

As we got there, sat down, ordered it, the waitress seemed quite amused. When that 3 pounds of meat (I think the meat itself was 3 pounds) appeared on the counter, people looked at it in awe. The senior couple sitting next to us wished Diran luck.

And the adventure started:

and as the sun set...

Diran finished a third of the burger. If you think you can do better... go. try.

I don't think it was the sheer amount of food. I tasted it afterwards, and noticed how incredibly fat the patties were. I squeezed the meat, and abominable amounts of trans fat poured out.

Though Diran did not make the Hall of Fame of The Godfather, he has made the Hall of Fame inside every one of us, remembered for the rest of our lives, with a story to be told to our grand-children as an example of what not to do.

God bless Diran.

$31.65

Ricky! I need THE video. I can't post a new post without THE video.

To D or not to D

On my mind for quite a while,

ideas stack up and pile.

So I decided to reach out (pronounce oot)

for your opinions about (pronounce aboot)

dropping double degree

and being much more free,

or staying five years

with my peers.

If I think about it,

Operations, HR, Marketing,

to me, that's pretty shit

I'd rather be speculating,

and modelling our world,

wtf rhymes with world... hurled...

I'm looking towards economics

and financial mathematics

Anyways, I'm giving it a bit more time,

staying in DD for one more semester.

This was inserted to make things rhyme

Time will probably tell faster,

than trying to figure it out myself.

Look at what Jennifer the... elf

drew for us during Econ.

I'm not too sure what she was on.

ECON

MS Paint, Laptop touchpad

By Jennifer Huynh, fellow DD.

$22.02

Untitled

Yeah I bet you we're curious to see what this post is about..

First, I would like to thank everybody who has been reading my blog and clicking an ad from time to time. Think of it as... well.. making money for yourself.. since I'm giving it out back anyways.

Thanks to your clicks, (and at the beginning me pushing you to click them), we've reached $19.38!! I might even reach $100 before the end of the term. And then I can invite you for a pomaberrybooster at William's. Or alcohol if you're a drunken bastard. I'm 19.

Pomaberry Booster review at William's:

I forgot how much it costs.. but probably less than 5$.

Anyways, I think for that price, it's pretty good. Compared to the usual Bubble Tea, the flavour is much more lasting. This is probably because bubble teas are just artificial flavour powder, in which they add some black balls that look like frog eggs. No offense, but its kinda true. It's still good from time to time. The Pomaberry Booster, however, is made from real.. Pomaberries. It still has the seeds and stuff in the juice. You might think that a juice like that might be pretty thick, kinda like those protein shakes. But it's NOT.

Pretty impressive I'd say..

I'll give it a 8.5/10, cuz it's good but nothing extremely special. (credits to Lisa, for showing this drink to me)

We math students are proud to be. Virgin. (and wtf CS?)

[This image was provided by Qiao, single, hot guy. Girls, feel free to contact me.]

Ok. Last but not least, apparently, I enticed someone to make a blog themselves :)

So I'll promote her blog, because I'm so nice.

http://asaingurl06.blogspot.com/

Nice.. 4 things completely unrelated in the same post.

$19.38

Rejected.

Yesterday was Friday.

Friday is usually a good day because the two next days are Saturday and Sunday.

But not this Friday.

I'll tell you the story of how I wanted to extend my friendship to a newly met person, and got slapped back to reality which is this cruel cruel world of self-isolation.

I first met this person in my floormate Arush's room, early in the semester of Fall 08. Nothing really, just quick introductions, the kind of introduction you make when you know you'll never see that person again. And I never really did.. I think.

But then, five or six months later, I was making my way into MC, waiting to get screwed over by Prabhakar Ragde's sadist CS exam, the one that made me start the blog (refer to 1st post). As I was walking around and looking at the other students, I faintly recognized that person. Usually, I wouldn't do anything, but sometimes, one feels unexplicably different from their usual self. So, I put my ego on the side for a moment and talked to this quasi-stranger. After 10-15 minutes, it was time to get mentally raped by PR.

After the exam, we obviously exchanged a few words about how crazy that exam was, the usual hate-spiel. And that was it.

(Entr'acte: Oh yeah.. after adjustments, I got 94 in that exam. Adjusted avg was 62-63. It's weird how I sometimes totally underestimate my mark and sometimes I totally overestimate. eg. First semester BU111W midterm, I expected high 80s low 90s, got 66. ye.)

This time, not too long after, I re-encountered this person while rushing to my Econ class. I recalled the person's name this time, but it wasn't reciprocated. Oh well, shit happens.

So this brings me to yesterday, Friday. Once again, I was at Arush's with Hao, just chillin'. At one point, they came to an argument of how Yao Ming, if pronounced differently, can yield a weird meaning in Chinese, so they resolved in asking another Mandarin speaker. As they called that person, I asked Arush to say hi for me. He then passed me the phone. As I was keen on building upon a new friendship, or so I thought, I asked, d'une manière relativement boiteuse, "Would you like to go have lunch sometimes?"

And the person said, "Noo..."

$7.89

Communism

lol no, my article is not really about communism...

So, on Wednesday, I put up a mini-ad from Google on the right toolbar. I made it pretty small so it wouldn't be intrusive. Because my blog is an exclusive high-quality good.

Apparently, each time you click on it, I can make some money. However, with my acute sense of observation, it seems that some ads pay more than others. Some pay so few, that it still 0.00$ gained when ppl click on that ad. How cheap is that?

Anyways, I asked a few people to click the ads and it seemed to give a good return sometimes if I'm lucky...

Now, since I believe in sharing, I will invite all my readers for a drink when I reach 100$ (the threshold of payment). And each time, I reach 100$, I will somehow share it with you (COMMUNISM!).

So get cracking and click an ad every time you come read my blog. I will post the accumulated amount at the end of each subsequent article.

PS: fuck newventure. damn capitalists.

PPS: It's interesting how they put academic related ads on my blog. I wonder if I get communism related stuff after this article... That would be pretty awesome.

$5.35