By Your Side

I don't really feel like it, but I'm being guilted into going out against my own will again tonight. I don't know why I let myself be guilted into shit like this after I've worked for 10.5 hours today. Perhaps it's because I don't have much tolerance for those who back out on my plans. Little ol' me just has to keep with principle, I guess. I'm going to some pub downtown. Apparently a ton of people are going so I'm hoping I can cower in some corner and take a little nap. Heeheeee.

I also don't feel like going out because I have so much shit to do, mostly my taxes. I can't think of a time I can spare this weekend to work on it and it's due Monday. SSSHIIIIITTTT.

I've been doing some thinking, some thoughts of which I can't really formulate on here because of time (gotta get out the door in less than an hour!) and lack of ability to put my feelings into words lately. I've only been able to actualize my feelings through listening to music. Anyone do that? I'm sure you do. Hm.

I'll end this evening's blog with an excerpt from 'Letter from the Editor' from this month's issue of Vogue (which I've yet to even start reading because of lack of time and energy):

'I do not want all women to look and dress exactly alike. I want them to be as different in their dress as they are in their personalities'. I love this pronouncement of Paul Poiret, the magical Parisian couturier who, early in the last century, famously liberated women from the corset. I've always believed that fashion is about freeing us to express ourselves in a way that does justice to our individuality...

- Anna Wintour, May 2007 Vogue

Brava, Wintour. Brava.

Ballin' and Bawlin'

Hm, don't you hate it when your body aches so much it hurts to even step off a sidewalk? Yeah, that sucks and that's what I got going on right now. It hurts to walk, it hurts to laugh, it hurts to sit. Ohhhh, I'm either really under-active or I'm being punished for all those years I've avoided (but didn't totally write off) playing sports. Perhaps this is a sign that I should finally sit down to do my taxes. I think the last time I played a sport (besides, snowboarding which is more of an activity for me since I do it so rarely) was when I was chasing boys in highschool.

With my newfound free time (not really, TAXES DUE IN LESS THAN A WEEK, Y'ALL!) I decided that the weekend was the best time to start my 'get toned' summer resolution. Step One: get good outdoor weather. And that we did this weekend. 20+ degrees balmy temperatures beckoned me to go to the beach which I did for a few hours for rollerblading (something else I haven't done since highschool). Step Two: once you start, don't stop. Honestly, when I get something going, I don't want to/can't stop. Dance, work, exercise, reading, sex, anything. Well, I kinda had to stop on Saturday night. Later that night, after wasting a day's worth of exercise with Harvey's (but I got a salad, too), we went to the movies (Fracture starring That Guy from The Notebook) and then Failte's Irish Bar to pop Kathy's Bar-cherry. Funnily enough, she suggested going to a bar this weekend and then she promptly left her ID in Waterloo. Luckily I got charm and game, and I managed to talk the bouncer into letting her in sans ID. I know, I know: I rock.

^Alex is a perv. STOP TOUCHING YOURSELF

^What an excellent place to put a WALL

So the next day, someone came up with the brilliant idea to play basketball, baseball, football and volleyball in one day. I had a big bitchfest with Cuong, got tackled by his 190lb-brother (and still played the next down), I got a big cut on my arm and I got sand in places where sand should not be. I don't know how I stayed fully conscious and functional for all four but I managed to make it to Tremendous and not fall asleep in my plate of snails. MmmmmZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The next morning, it wasn't too bad. I was a little sore but not aching. By the end of the day, I wanted to scream bloody murder. I needed a massage badly, even if I had to go to Blue Lagoon down the street for a massage ...and then some. This morning, I believe it got worse. It hurt to get up, it hurt to do everything. Luckily my boss told me last night that I could come in a bit late today because I don't know how I would've made it in otherwise. I had to sit through a meeting, run office errands, do my usual office stuff in my stature. It basically sucked. I now remember why I don't play that many sports. Back to my sitting workout.

The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

It's been over 24 hours since I had my very last exam of college ever. Oddly enough, it doesn't feel weird. It'll probably hit me on Monday (because I don't usually have classes on Friday). Or perhaps it'll hit me at convocation in June. Or September, when I have nowhere else to go but work.

Look out, World! Comin' atcha! I think many most of us were scratching our heads when we left the last exam (OMG Employment Law, you raped me for the last time!). "What now?" I suppose that is the question on most fresh grads. There's no one telling you to apply for school, no more people guiding you to the next step. No one telling you to get on the school bus.

As for some of us, our temporary answer to "What now?" was "Fox and the Fiddle", which is a bar down the street from our school. About half the class (yes, half. That's about 30 of us) met up, got drunk and had ALOT of laughs, mostly from the memories and impersonations of past memorable professors and those characters from our class. My good ol' camera captured all of those in video. I'm still debilitating over whether I should post the videos because I guess I could see how some all can pose an ethical issue as to the people who are being impersonated and the people who are doing them. And, of course, they wouldn't be amusing to everyone because they won't get the jokes. Maybe I'll just upload them to YouTube and set it for 'private' and send to a selected few, with the risk of it leaking to everyone. Hmm, I need one of those video editing programs to maybe edit out names? Someone tell me what to do!!!

Oh, the videos are sooooo much better!

Models are Super

OOOohhhh wee weeeeee!

Vogue's supermodel extravaganza is back! Supermodels on the front page, as it should be!! It's heeerrreeee!

Today, I walked by the Gap and they've released the limited editions designer versions of the classic white shirt some of the girls wear including ones by Doo Ri (oooh la la!) and Rodarte. Hmm, can I justify $188.00 CAD for a shirt to support some design competition? I'll probably splurge that much on myself for a graduation gift, but I think I'll settle for some bling instead.

Whatever. Can't wait to get my copy of this month's Vogue, though. Still mourning my September 2004 issue, though. :(

A True Judge is a Rare Character

"Campus Carnage". "Monday Massacre". Journalism is powerful, eh? I don't know who hasn't heard of the school shooting in Virginia, but if you haven't, CNN for one, is your friend.

I must admit, I wasn't all too shocked when I first heard of the shootings. C'mon, it's like an annual occurrence now. Somewhere, someone out there is pissed off and has a loaded weapon. And somewhere out there, there will be an unfortunate group of people who will be caught in the crossfire. I don't mean to downplay yesterday's situation, because it is bad, but everyone needs to calm the fuck down. What with little information to go on, everywhere I turn, someone has some sort of opinion over the situation even though it had happened less than 24 hours ago.

"The shooter was Asian." (I admit, that is new. New to North America, at least)

"It was a domestic dispute."

"Why didn't the administration shut down the school?"

"Parents call for firing of Virginia Tech president for mishandling situation." (Already?!)

My sister told me last night that apparently people even went on to Xanga (I didn't know this still existed) to look for any guy that fit the profile of the shooter. Asian, of course, and one who went to Virginia Tech. What a profile (it's just as useless when they try to describe a criminal on the news as "white, 6'0, brown hair"). What else could they go on? Apparently they found some guy and left him a lot of death threats. It turned out that he wasn't the guy because the guy responded to the messages. Death threats to a guy who committed suicide? If this isn't a blatant example of people over-reacting, then I don't know what is.

And I'm not saying all this now because the shooter is Asian and I have some sort of sympathy for him. I don't have sympathy for him because he's Asian. I sympathize for him because 9 out of 10 these kind of killers have had problems, problems that perhaps weren't entirely his fault. Maybe they were partly his fault. Before I read the latest news today, I had already assumed that this guy was probably a loner and had taken extreme measures to perhaps render his relationship status (the domestic dispute at the dormitory). It's his fault that he didn't know how to handle the situation. It is perhaps society's fault that he probably had real low self-esteem and had all that anger (after all, he had to be mad at someone/something). This is what happens when people lack compassion. They are too self-absorbed to realize what is going on around them and by the time it's too late, they are still too self-absorbed to pick out the sentiments of the situation to even begin to rationalize. Of course, you cannot force people to be compassionate, even in the slightest. This brings about 'lifeboat ethics' and in turn, stuff like random shootings, are just a fact of life (oh, I can just see people now, marching to my door with torches to put my head on a stick).

Of course, I am not speaking specifically of this Virginia Tech shooter particularly (allegedly he was a South Korean student, although that is entirely irrelevant). If you look back on previous school shootings, and even terrorist attacks, most of the them shared the same M.O.: loners, mad, depressed, ignorant, vengeful, hurt, etc., etc. It's so easy to get mad at the Korean guy, the Columbine guys and yes, even those disgruntled postal workers, but we still have to remember that they were humans just like any one of us. I am in no way condoning their actions from a result of their emotional instability, but they were brothers, sons, sisters and daughters, just like anyone of us. They had families and they also had some sort of livelihood. These people are/were still your fellow human beings and it would be ethically questionable to judge them for their actions but not even try to understand what must have been going through their heads. After all, what good does it do to exert your anger towards that person on their Xanga, Facebook, family, religion, nationality or sex? Nothing. Those victims won't come back, problems are not solved, wars are still going on.

I guess that's all I have to say on this subject. Oh, but I will note that I am in awe of how survival instincts work in times of crisis. I must applaud those four survivors because not everyone would have done what they did. That, I find, awe-inspiring and truly worth acknowledging because most people would not act rationally in those situations.

I just reread what I've written and judging from this, I think I am too liberal. Oh well. Everyone has a fault, I guess. It's probably easy for me to justify my thoughts on this because I've never lost a friend/family member to something like this. But does that make my point meritless, or am I perhaps being hypocritical in saying all this without having experienced such a loss?

This is also a message to everyone that no one should send me invitations to Facebook groups or chain letters regarding 'condolences to the victims' or 'hatred to the shooter or his family' or to otherwise acknowledge this situation as extraordinary. All you'll get back from me is pity because this is anything but out of the ordinary.

1984

Ahh, 1984. What a great year. I wish my parents had kept a paper from the day I was born so I could tell you what was so great about it (besides the fact that it was the year Jamie Kennedy lost his virginity), although I can tell you this: I was born.

I don't know why I'm so easily amused with these Stu Stone and Jamie Kennedy music videos. The rapping is mediocre, but the videos are so damn creative. Bob Saget, Lego...now this weird Sims-like computer graphic video.

I spy Maria Menuenos in spandex and legwarmers, Vivica A. Fox, "Webster", that weird Korean Guy from MADtv, that guy from CHiPS and the "Thriller" dance.

Air Sex = Masturbation

I'm fascinated with Japan. Such a tiny island with so many people and yet a multitude of cultures. It's often hard to believe that someone can be lonely in Japan...until I heard about 'Japanese Air Sex'.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw this, but I sure know what I'm getting into now before I bed an Asian man...

LOL @ "F1 Cunnilingus".

Question: How does one exactly 'win' an Air Sex competition??

The Truth about Cats and Dogs

I realized I inadvertently conducted an experiment on Facebook. That experiment being, "Who has a better memory, men or women?".

I wrote a Note to 20 random friends listing 20 memories I had of them. The object of the 'game' was for each person to identify which memory corresponded to them. Easy, right? No. I didn't mean to, but it so happens that I sent the Note to 10 male friends and 10 female friends as I had randomly selected people off my MSN list.

Within 24 hours of posting the Note, all the females got theirs right and all but one male friend (although Jeff's was pretty easy) figured out theirs. It was amazing. Now, I can understand if some of those guys didn't care for my Note and didn't feel like responding, but judging from Alex's desperate cluelessness and complete inability to even remotely identify himself, even with more than half the options gone, this might be a common happening with most guys.

There is a notion that males have a hard time remembering things. Not just any things, though. They don't remember things like special dates (wedding, birthdays, anniversaries), or special moments (first kiss, first dates). However, they can remember such obsolete things like specific car models (e.g. BMW GH4o38435498459348XL) or anything Jack Bauer-related. My little social experiment on Facebook proves just so.

Is there some kind of chemical imbalance that males have that completely voids them of anything that has to do with another human? Or are their priorities and sentiments misguided?

Now, that is not to say that I can remember specific things like the date of every time I had a 'first'. Hell, I couldn't even tell you the months or even years. To me, dates are irrelevant and unimportant. Anniversaries don't really mean anything to me (but guys, that doesn't mean it doesn't matter to other chicks so you're not off the hook). Instead, I tend to keep 'mementos' of moments I want to remember. This is my way of 'celebrating' an anniversary date or a first. I keep all this stuff in a box. When you first look at it, it looks like a box of crap. It is. But it's my crap.

Most of it won't make sense to anyone (HAHA but I'm sure about half of it will to some). Obviously, the ticket stubs remind me of dates of firsts (those of which I won't go into) and everything else just represent monumentous days of my life. Yeah, it's junk but I really doubt I'll regret keeping any of this. In fact, I don't suppose I'll regret having all the stuff I've kept to reserve memory. Notes, photos, everything. Perhaps one of these days I should just empty the vault and show you guys what I have because you'll be astonished. In fact, I'm feeling a little ashamed that perhaps I'm a little bit of a pack rat. What the hell am I going to do with hundreds of letters written to me from elementary school to high school? Or the mounds of Hanson posters and paraphernalia?

I wonder if guys do these types of things. No, not keep stuff. I don't expect them to keep anything in their possession for more than it needs to be because they're more of the 'live and forget'-type. But even in their heads, do they cherish all these memories as girls do? Perhaps I was wrong in saying that they have bad memory. Maybe they have really sharp memories that can remember significant details of events they want to remember. Or maybe even they have a secret box stashed somewhere in their rooms with the same junk I cherish. An inside joke here and there is nothing really, but perhaps they remember significant points in their lives. Maybe I underestimate them in thinking that they simply don't care enough to remember the things we remember. Or maybe I've been right all along. Hmmmmmmmmmm...

So there's my little Show 'n Tell. How vulnerable do I feel? I pretty much just revealed my being with this box. But perhaps this is part of growing up. I'll close this box and open up another for the next 'saga'. One of these days, perhaps I'll go through all my junk and show you guys some interesting tidbits from my little ol' past. No skeletons in this closet besides shoes, clothes and too many bags... or is there?

A little blast from the past for the Ladies...

All good things start with an end

I am feverishly trying to finish a paper. I really really really want to finish this paper by the end of tonight so I can move on to the next but it seems unlikely and it makes me sad. For this paper, I have to first read a paper by some French guy named Pierre Bourdieu on 'A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste'. Unfortunately, I think he originally wrote this paper in French ('La Distinction, critique sociale du jugement')and some yahtz translated it quite awfully. Some Most of these sentences, aren't even proper. Goddamn Frenglish.

On my desk, I also currently have all my notes I have gathered from all my classes this semester for studying. In another pile I have a bunch of stuff I need to file for taxes due at the end of April and in a third pile I have stuff I need to file away in at least 3 different places. These piles make me grimace because every time I sit down to my computer, I am reminded of all the looming things that need to be pushed out of the way, at least by month's end.

However, if I turn to my slight left, there is my calendar with a list of things I have to look forward to, literally the minute I am finished my last exam: bar-hopping with the classmates, keggers, parties, bonfires, camping, road trips... and all this within the first month! How 'bout that? Of course, these all come with a price. The price of passing this final semester.

So off I go.

Just another beeeeeeeeee-day

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new record. The record of having the most people stay in a hotel room over the maximum occupancy limit. We broke that record this weekend at the Le Grand Residences at the Sutton Place Hotel. Ten people to a 2-person suite. Fantastic.

I must admit, though, the sleeping place was precociously limited. That air mattress of mine should be a requirement the next time we do something like that.

We all gathered in suite 1912 for our celebration of Devlin's birthday. I wish I had more time to take advantage of the amenities but alas, I chose to study. Nam and Alex apparently had a ball with the sauna and swimming pool. I mistakenly told them there would be a whirlpool but I was looking at the wrong 'Le Grand' hotel on the web. I owe you guys a homemade whirlpool in my bathtub. Bubbles, swirls and all. After we had some of that delicious cake, we left Nam and Alex at the hotel to their own devices (and the seven or so bottles of booze I brought) and went to Distrikt nightclub. Same ol', same ol' Asian night at Distrikt on a Friday night. Same crowd, same music, same fights, blah blah blah.

^Nam thought he was the only one who could rock a tie in an inappropriate place, until Jon came along

^Triangle!

^Hmm, people often ask but it still doesn't feel weird to go clubbing with my little sister

^"It's fun to stay at the Y..M..C.."

Just going through the pictures, I realized that Jon is such a dog. No, not 'dawg'...dog. He can never seem to keep his tongue in his mouth. Like a dog. The guys had some weird thing going about pinching each other's nipples, which is why in some of the pictures they're dancing with their hands on their chests (and not some new dance they made up). This continued on to the hotel as well. Guys have some weird tastes in humour. After the party, it's the hotel party...We got back to the hotel, where Nam and Alex were nice and drunk. It was only suiting that the rest of us caught up. I remember I passed out face first on to the couch (ew) but that lasted only about 40 minutes when the pizza showed up and we each took shots with the birthday man (welcome to my age bracket, bud).

^Playing Mario Party on the oldest game system that ever lived: N64

^Another famous inappropriate-place-to-wear-a-tie moment brought to you by Nam

First rule of Drunk Club? Don't be the first one to pass out because you will get owned. And owned Alex did. Second rule? You upload those pictures on the web for the whole wide world to take a gander (and just for the record, I asked for his permission. I'm not a bitch... really. Although I did take all of the pictures).

^Nam couldn't contain the laughter while eating cake, so it came out from his nose

We finally settled at about 5 am. This morning I had one mean hangover (still do). Ugh, what a day to leave my Tylenol at home. I woke up at 8 and I just had to take a shower. I give props to Whitney and Alex, whom I was sleeping between for putting up with my post-clubbing stench. Thanks for not pushing me to the floor, guys.

^There's a person under there

^Nam probably telling me something incoherent and me incoherently listening

^It's a tough job, but someone's gotta finish the leftover juice

It was a really good (but exhausting) night. We went to Ginger for lunch before we split and I attempted to do some work at the library (shot to shit). A great beginning to my 2-week self-imposed ban from going out until exams are over. Time to get down to the nitty-gritty of the exams of my final year. Quelle horreur!