citizen of the planet

New York is so alive at night. I was out for a walk at 7 pm and the streets were so crowded with stylish looking young adults. Then again, I was walking around the area of NYU.

My aunt and I went to see Meet the Fockers last night. The movie was so hilarious! I thought I was going to piss myself laughing at various points. The baby was so cute when he started saying asshole. I swear, the guy I was sitting next must have been having seizures or something. He was laughing so loud and hard. He had to leave the theatre at one point because he was getting ridiculous. I highly recommend the movie. :laugh:

I’m heading off to New Jersey today to visit some other relatives. I’m travelling back to Toronto on Sunday, and starting work on Monday. Thinking about it makes me tired. :O

New York has this hectic aura to it. It’s unbelievably fast-paced. I spent a great deal of time today walking around with my aunts. I felt like I had to keep up with the pace of the crowd, but I had to slow down repeatedly to keep with my family.

We first went to the Olive Garden at Broadway and 47th St. It was pretty well structured with three floors. You gave your name in on the first floor, waited on the second floor, and ate on the third floor. The thing is, the food wasn’t really all that good. I had the chicken scampi which was served on a bed of angel hair pasta. It really wasn’t all that special. To be honest, I much prefer East Side Marios out by the university. The portions at ESM are a bit more generous (which isn’t saying much), and the wedding soup is awesome. Whatever. We had a window seat overlooking Broadway which was pretty cool. On the street we could see the pick up spot for the double-decker red sightseeing buses. The lineup didn’t seem to die down at any point.

Funny I mention that. All day my aunts were complaining about the amount of tourists in town, and how it was making it harder to get around. It’s true. You can pinpoint the tourists because they’re the ones constantly looking up and staring out at the tall buildings. Also, they tend to crowd around the big tourist sites–like Macy’s.

I can say though that I’m just as guilty of visiting tourist stops. After eating, the three of us went to Rockefeller Center. That’s the place with the skating rink and the humungous Christmas tree. Upon seeing it, I was again reminded of the movie Elf. Man, that place was crowded! It was packed with families and couples trying to take pictures around the awesome scenery.

From Rockefeller, we went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I took a picture of that place before, however, I didn’t go inside last time. This time we went in. It’s a great looking church. All around the sides are various shrines and devotion places. One of them had a relic from one of the saints. Aside from being a bit spooky, it’s really interesting. I wanted to ask what the relic was of…but how do you ask such a question? You wouldn’t ask, “so, what body part is in there?” That’s just rude. I imagine it’s just a bone fragment or something of that sort.

In the center of the cathedral is a mausoleum containing the remains of all cardinals which tended to New York City. I remember thinking just a few days ago about how creepy the idea of mausoleums are…and there i was at the entrance to one. Heh.

From there we went to Saks on 5th Avenue. That’s a pretty famous store in Manhattan. It’s damn expensive there! Upon entering the place, I consciously felt like I was lowering the average total worth of all the people there. I wanted to visit the Men’s department, but we didn’t stay long enough to go there. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, I suppose. One piece would probably have killed my bank account.

Our last stop from Saks was Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. I originally thought that the place would be pretty silly to be at, but as soon as I saw statues of Samuel L. Jackosn and Brad Pitt, I was in awe. It wasn’t long before I was hamming it up for the camera. I posed with wax replicas of people like Oprah, Madonna (I was feeling her up), Lenny Kravitz, the Pope, Einstein, the Rock, and Beyonce. If I get these pics from my aunt’s camera, I’ll post them.

Ah, so that’s today. I feel like I accomplished a lot today. I’m looking forward to getting some good rest.

Hrm…my aunts have dial-up. Works for me

I picked up the Greyhound at 8 last night. I was fourth in line waiting for the bus, so I had my choice of seats. I ended up taking a window seat at the fourth row. I was pretty pleased with myself, but I didn’t realize until it was too late that the seat I took was between windows, meaning that I couldn’t rest my arm anywhere on the side. To be honest, that really contributed to an uncomfortable ride over.

The trip was full of some interesting characters. I was fully intending on keeping to myself and blocking the world out. I was trying to send that message by putting on my iPod and putting my hood up. Traffic was a bit heavy getting to the border, but that was only because of dumb ass drivers getting into accidents on the QEW causing lanes to be closed.

When we got to the border, we all had to get off to go through customs and to get inspected. We had to take all our baggage off the bus with us into the building. Damn, those customs agents are really “no nonsense”. My agents were all right though. They just asked me where I was from, what I do for a living, and when I’ll be heading back to Canada. Heh. It’s an odd welcome, eh? They welcome you but want to know when you’re going to get the hell out of there. Some other people weren’t so lucky. There was this one South Asian guy who was being interrogated by this fierce female agent.

“Why are you travelling?”
“Why isn’t your wife with you?”
“Where are your children?”
“So…your wife is sick, and you decided to go on a trip???”
“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU”

I realize she’s only doing her job. Whatever. Baggage inspection wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t carrying anything sharp. It was over quickly.

When we got on the bus, there were a few people that decided to change seats. An old woman decided to move one seat back to the fourth row. The couple that was there was really irate about it. They ended up moving one row back as well. The woman in the couple was being so damn vocal about her displeasure. When the old woman reclined her seat, the other woman pushed her seat forward saying, “do you mind not putting your seat right in my face?” The old woman just responded with silence and re-relclined her seat. That made the other woman even louder. Damn that woman, she was complaining non-stop for hours. She reasoned, “it’s because she doesn’t speak English that she won’t listen.” Heh. Whenever someone reasons like that, the true meaning is “I think people of her nationality are rude, and I’m a whole lot better than her.” I happen to know that the old woman speaks enough English to get by. She was in conversation with this Chinese guy in line who didn’t seem to have full-command over the language either. The fact that they had a conversation amuses me greatly.

After getting settled into my seat, I decided to start conversation with the guy next to me. I started off by saying “man, those customs guys are thorough.” That was enough to break the silence. The guy’s name was Charles. He was from Ohio and going to several conferences–one in Toronto, and one in Washington DC. To get to Washington, he had to take a bus to New York where he’d get a connecting bus. As it turns out, he was a grad student in communications engineering. I told him that I had just taken a course on the subject. It was pretty cool. We were able to share our experiences with engineering. He was saying how he was worried about getting a job because he had no experience at the time. It was a reminder of how lucky I was to be in my co-op program.

It was snowing as we were going down the interstates. I’m impressed with how will the driver managed to go down the dark roads with so many trucks and snow plows in the way. I couldn’t sleep all that well. If I reclined my seat, my tail bone would start hurting like hell. If I was upright, it just wasn’t conducive to sleeping. The heat was turned up pretty high. I had to remove my leather jacket at one point during the ride.

We stopped at Port Byron at around 2am for a meal break. The only thing open at the rest stop was a McDonalds manned by only two workers. As such, they were excruciatingly slow. I know they were doing their best though. Even before the trip, I was planning for my rest stop meal. I was looking forward to having a McDonalds cheese burger. Even as I type this, I can imagine the taste of the meat, cheese, ketchup, and pickles in my mouth. After a long wait, I got my two burgers and headed back for the bus. As I glommed the burgers down, I found them to be horribly unsatisfying.

What can you do?

The irate woman bought a salad and took it back to the bus. When she got back to her seat she was bitching about how she can’t eat all that well with the “woman who can’t speak English” reclined the way she was. A little bit later, I peered over to the woman, and she was eating well enough with the salad on her lap–over closer to her knees, no less. She was still bitching. Well, damn it, woman. It’s unfortunate that you lost your seat, but it’s notlike you were forced to sit all the way at the back by the toilet. You’re one row behind. The whole seating arrangement thing wasn’t enforced. Woman, you’re just out of luck. With regards to the reclining, get over it! These seats recline! It’s what they do! Damn!

I tried hard to sleep, but it was no good. I think I got an hour or two. That’s all. At about 6, I ended up just watching the road signs to get an idea of how close I was. When I started seeing signs for the Lincoln Tunnel, I knew we were getting close. Heh. The Lincoln Tunnel reminds me of the movie Elf.

I ended up arriving at 7:15am. All things considered, that’s not too bad. Overall, Manhattan doesn’t feel all too magical. It does have a very urban feel though. The cab driver we god was just zooming right through traffic. No signalling, no waiting, he was just weaving all over the place. It’s different from Toronto. As soon as I got back, I had breakfast, and went to sleep. Ah, and now here I am.

This week is going to be busy, I can feel it. I’m excited though.

It came, and it went. Christmas is over for another year.

Like last year, we really didn’t do anything totally “festive”. However, we did do a lot of karaoke. My aunt and I sang Bohemian Rhapsody. We sang like a bunch of loud drunken fools, but it was a great time.

Today, I’m heading off to New York City by myself. I’m taking an overnight Greyhound at 8pm, which will arrive at 6:15am. I chose an overnight option because I felt like I really didn’t want to deal with the boredom of staring out the window wondering how much time had passed since the last time I checked. I don’t need that. I did that when I took a train to New York City, and that was painfully long.

I’m semi-packed. I’ve got to get a bit more organized before I declare myself ready.

Holy shit, marks are all up already.

I passed the term.

Marks leave much room for improvement…but, whatever. I’m in the clear. WOOHOO!
I’m actually getting around my cumulative average for all the terms I’ve been in school. So…hey, I’m not doing much worse. There has been a noticeable steady decline though. :laugh:

Now I just need to decide what fourth year courses I want to take.

I have to choose three from this list:
ECE 309 Introduction to Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer
ECE 411 Digital Communications
ECE 413 Digital Signal Processing
ECE 418 Communication Networks
ECE 431 Radio Frequency Microelectronics
ECE 438 Digital Integrated Circuits
ECE 454 Distributed and Network Computing
ECE 457 Applied Artificial Intelligence
ECE 488 Multivariable Control Systems

HELP!!!

As I slept last night I could hear the patter of snow hitting my window. The blind were down so I couldn’t see much of what was going on. I woke up to my mom asking me to clear the driveway. She had just come home from the night shift and the driveway was buried in several inches of snow. She said she had much difficulty getting in, and that she smelled burned rubber as a result of her attempts to get into the garage. Well, my father had purchased a snow blower before my return home. He was urging me to assemble the thing, but I had never really gotten around to doing it. I kind of regret it.

I put on my boots and my Old Navy hoodie, turned on my iPod, and finally grabbed the shovel. I really didn’t know where to begin. I started though at the end closest to the garage. It’s a good thing too. A bunch of snow plows came by a few minutes in and plowed a bigger mound at the foot of the driveway. As it happened, I heard someone a few houses down cursing at the plow because it buried stuff he already shoveled.

I looked around and about 10 people were out shovelling as well. Free from sarcasm, I can still say that I love Canada. Such weather brings people together. As I was shovelling, one of my neighbours started clearing part of the sidewalk in front of my house. I thanked him. We have a double garage so I have to shovel a bit more than most people in the neighbourhood. Him clearing the walkway saved me from a bit more agony. I finished in about an hour and a bit. Not bad, I guess. It helped that I had some music to listen to. Right now though, I’m achy, and my hands are black and bruised. They need some time to recover. Other than that, I don’t mind shovelling. It’s damn good exercise.

This week has been good to me. I’ve just received an e-card from Raien. I went out with Yuki yesterday for some food and some good conversation. Last Saturday I went to Mongolian with Fred and Laurie. I have a good story to tell about that meal, but I’ll save it for later. I kind of wish I had more time to see people I haven’t seen in a while. It’d also give me more time to clean up and get things all clean for Christmas. Ugh. I also have very little time before I’m leaving for New York.

So much to do, so little time to do it.

I’m pretty unhappy about the way web standards are treated. There are some fundamental spacing differences between Firefox and IE that make things a headache to try to get aligned. For example, in IE, if you specify the width of something to be say…800px, and specify padding to be 10px on all sides, the width remains at 800px. With Firefox, the width of the element expands to 820px (800 + 10 + 10). Frankly, I think the IE implementation makes more sense.

I remember there were issues with IE and Netscape way back in the day when the competition was between IE 4.0 and NS 4.73 (or was it 4.72). When working with frames, IE took the specified height and width and made things exact. Netscape, on the other hand, tended to change every single time that you refreshed the window. It was ridiculous. Frames were never lined up properly. This is probably why tables became the tool of choice when doing webpage layout.

Anyway, I’ve now fixed my pages that were misbehaving in Firefox. I had to find some sort of comprimise where they wouldn’t look broken in either browser, and still look somewhat decent. I think I’ve reached that point…either that or I’m just tired of working on the damn things.

Blah.

Adjusting to living back home is going to be a tad difficult, it seems. I think I’m going to miss the convenience of having a 24-hour grocery store just a 5-minute walk away. The fact that the walk there is pretty safe is a bonus. I’ll miss having to forage for my own food. I’ve only been home for three days, and my mind is still having trouble wrapping itself around the fact that I don’t have to worry about cooking. Bwah.

I’ve been sitting around playing video games to pass the time. In between, I’ve been taking long naps. I can already feel that this sudden sedentary shift will likely have adverse effects if I don’t counteract it. I just don’t know what to do. I might want to start something this week, however, I’ll be leaving for New York City this weekend. Woohoo.

In order for me not to meet my relatives there empty handed, I ventured out to the mall this morning to buy some gifts. I sped through and made it out with many bags of stuff in what seemed like record time. Even though it’s this close to Christmas, the mall was relatively normal looking. It wasn’t as packed as I thought it would be, which is a good thing. I was expecting to be surrounded by the frustrated and the weary, making my experience just as miserable. However, everyone seemed to be in good spirits. I think I might benefit from heading out again tomorrow. I really have no idea what I want to buy…but I feel like spending.