Just a bit of closure.
That company that interviewed me finally called back. They told me that I basically didn’t have enough experience.
Well YAH! I’m a fresh grad. You knew that.
Anyway, that’s finally done. Time to move on.
Monthly Archive: June 2006
Lait de chèvre
I was walking through No Frills earlier today when I spotted this.
I’ve never seen that before. When did goat milk become readily available like this? I’m mildly curious as to what it tastes like, but I don’t I’m going to purchase it any time soon.
Grace and luck
So I’ve been poking around and talking to people in vain attempts to stave off ennui from permanently setting in, which is tough, especially when you really have nothing much to do.
God, I am so freakin’ bored.
Anyway, Cindy has been reporting that she recently put a down payment for an apartment in Boise. It’s been making her feel all low and sentimental, (or as she puts it: schmaltzy) for the past little while. She’ll be leaving everything behind in Toronto soon enough and starting a new life. As of now, I’m feeling eer so slightly jealous of her situation. She’s got a job, a place of her own; she’s basically going to live an adult life. As for me, eh….I’m not quite there yet. It will be tough to leave almost everything behind. I think, on the surface, part of me is thinking: how bad could it be? At the same time, I haven’t been faced at all with the actual idea of “moving out.” It’s easy to think about it because I haven’t been placed in a situation where I have to truly prep my mind for such a huge change. So, I’m truly not in any position to offer advice of any kind, you know?
I long to move on and enter “the next stage.” I’ve only been out of school for about a month and a half, and I’m already feeling weighed down, or like my wings have been clipped. I haven’t yet gotten off the ground. It’s just, I guess I haven’t done enough to allow me to make such progress.
For the longest time, I’ve gotten by in school with almost minimal effort. I mean, no matter what the case, there was always a way to get by and be “good enough” just to move on. I’m a brilliant person; my marks don’t necessarily reflect that. Well, that was then, this is now. I don’t think I’ve broken free of that state of mind. I know it mentally, but perhaps in some other part of myself, I just haven’t fully accepted the idea that I’m going to have to put some hardcore effort down to get results. Part of me is hoping that grace and luck will come my way, and that I’ll know enough to grab it. Whether its come or not…I’m not sure. In the end, I just feel empty.
Big bucks, big bucks, big bucks!
Just saw CNTM yesterday. Excuse this uncharacteristic moment…but…Tricia Helfer is HOTTT.
A few hours ago, Gameshow Marathon was on. Today’s show was Press Your Luck. Man, I don’t think I was old enough to really remember when the original show first aired, but I remember catching reruns and what not. I loved that gameshow. The flashing board and the sound it made was just mesmerizing. There was always high tension among the contestants. And who could forget the whammies? To tell you the truth, when I was young, those suckers scared the crap out of me.
Anyway, tonight’s remake was pretty cool. I think the actor were really getting into it. It’s really the type of game where you just can’t help but feel a rush when things are going your way. The board was obviously not the same as the old board, but it’s obvious that some effort was made to recreate the look. I got stupidly giddy when the infamous “flokati rug” made a reappearance as a prize. The joke from the old show was that no one really knew just what a flokati rug was. I was also amused by the reappearance of “$470″ as a prize which was also on the old board. It sticks out among the nice, rounder numbers like “$500″ and “$1000″ and such. The dollar amounts in this new board were higher than the old numbers. “$10000 + ONE SPIN” seemed ridiculously high, but it makes sense nowadays with inflation and all, you know? The font used on the images was different from the old font. I dunno. I thought it wasn’t as nice to look at. As well, the dollar amounts didn’t seem to have a consistent font size. Some of the numbers were bigger than others, making me think that the designers got a bit lazy. The light bounce timing seemed slower than the original game. However, since this show has celebs playing for charity, it’s understandable. Last quibble I can think of is that I missed the old projector system of the old board. The screens kind of faded in whenever the numbers changed. These new screens were obviously computerized and had hard cuts between screen changes. It would have looked more genuine if it had that touch.
As for the actors, they didn’t seem to know much of what was going on, but they went along with it all anyway. I wish the director told them to yell out “STOP!” like the contestants of the old show used to do. Whenever these actors stopped the board without yelling it, things felt kind of empty. At first, I was wondering what the heck was missing. Was it a chime of some sort? A buzz? When I realized the answer, I thought “Aww…that sucks.” They also didn’t seem to know that the big mantra usually yelled out was “Big bucks!” When they were yelling “Big Money!” it just wasn’t quite right.
You know, I would love to see that show revived. I don’t mean revived like they tried to do with “Whammy! The New Press Your Luck.” I tried to get into that show, but it just wasn’t the same. There’s just something about the old board the sounds, and the classic rules that is just so awesome. Maybe one day soon, you know?
Sushi o tabeta
The best way to meet with someone that you haven’t seen in a long time is over food. There’s something so basically uniting and entirely human about sharing a meal with someone. It could be an issue though in the case that you’re meeting with different groups of people, which probably means that you’re going to find your frequency of eating out to suddenly spike. It becomes even more interesting if those groups want to eat in the same type of restaurant.
Oh, not that I mind.
I met Laurence on Sunday for dinner, and Yuki and Raien on Monday for lunch. In both cases, it was suggested that we eat in a sushi restaurant. How could I refuse (especially when I hadn’t seen either group in a long while)? The picture above is from my outing with the girls. The two of them love surf clam. I’m not as fanatical about it, but I’m able to eat it. I just thought that the sushi guy arranged it so beautifully that I had to take a picture. Anyway, the two of them are doing great.
Yuki is progressing through so many stages of life so quickly. She’s getting married and getting a house. To be honest, I’m feeling like I’m falling behind. I just graduated, and I’m sitting on my ass while pondering my future, and there she is, eyes forward, running towards the future full-speed ahead. I’m not getting any younger, you know. In any case, I know that Yuki will reach a point where she’ll be fully content, and I’m truly happy for her.
Raien has been through so many ups and downs over the past few months. However, she is a strong woman. I admire her no-nonsense attitude and I respect her points of view. At the same time, I feel like there’s a bit of vulnerability there. I think I’m able to recognize it because I sense the same vulnerability in myself. That being said, if you were to ask me what it is, I’d have no clue how to explain it.
Laurence and his med-school pursuits seem to be going well. His semester just ended meaning that he’s now got the summer months off. He was telling me tales about his experience, and I was greatly fascinated by them. Even stories of him performing probes and palpatating prostates of the living-impaired didn’t phase me. Man, med-school seems to be ridiculously tough. A very long time ago, I had dreams of becoming a pediatrician. Somewhere along the way that dream faded. At this point, I don’t think I would have had the patience to put up with so much education. That just means then, that I’m glad that there are more dedicated and focused people like Laurie that are taking care of the difficult medical roles that are so important in our society. I can’t imagine a shmuck like me doing such things.
Undergrad, Fall 2003
**Fall 2003**
I returned to the old company because my boss wanted me to return. In truth, no one else knew how to do the things I was doing. So, I really had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, you know? The boss was absolutely clueless, so I felt valuable to an extent. That’s why I had no problem wth returning.
The group of us co-ops was reduced from 4 people to 3 people. Harlan and I stuck around from the last time. The new addition was Alex, whom I still talk to. I would venture to say that we became kind of close. Thing is, it’s not too hard to be friends with the guy. He’s a very gregarious type of person; it’s almost hard not to dislike him. Anyway, since the four jobs were being reduced to three, tasks were reshuffled. I still had the task of creating scripts to help people, but I was also saddled with more traditional technical writing tasks. This is the term where I got ridiculously familiar with Microsoft Word. It’s not a bad thing, but…ick. The tasks were really unbalanced on the three of us. That’s entirely because our boss did not do a very good job managing the jobs. The other two were absolutely weighed down with too many jobs. They became horribly bitter. The boss didn’t do any of the jobs himself. He concerned himself with emails and implementing ridiculous levels of bureaucracy that no one enjoyed. Other departments really did not like dealing with him. It was so weird. We did our jobs and worked hard so that he couldn’t complain to us. Thing is, we resented him wholly for how hard we were worked. We took long lunches often. We’d often head out to the sushi buffets or korean barbecue just because we didn’t want to be in our cubicles. Of course, when we returned, we were so full that we became stupid and mentally useless for a little while.
We knew what we were capable of, and we knew what we wouldn’t stand for. It got to the point where if there was any excessive stupidness on the part of my boss, we told him flat out what we were thinking. The boss was powerless. It was absolutely messed up. The three of us were solid as a team: we needed to be in order to perform.
Socially, I think this is the term when I started gaining the strenth to “not take it” anymore. I was going through a bit of mental depression because of my social life. It wasn’t pretty. I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but many tears were shed about how screwed up it all was. It was from this work term that I started to realize that I was fully capable of making social contact outside of the so-called safe ones. As I stated many times, a fire was lit. The revolution was started. Strength was building. I still had a long way to go though; there was much I had to do in terms of realizing how I was valuable despite what anyone else thought.
Ooh…what else…
AH! This was the time when I found out about FOC. I was considering applying to be on the organizing committee for Engineering frosh week. However, I didn’t really follow through with the application because I didn’t think I had a chance. The deadline came and went, and I thought that that was the end of it all. Through a bit of coincidence, I ran into James, one of the organizers for the previous frosh week, on the bus. We got to talking and eventually he told me that even though the deadline had passed, they were still looking for more candidates. He encouraged me to drop an app in. So, on a whim I put one in. A few days later, they gave me a phone interview, which I conducted from the warmth of my bed. A day or two later, they announced the results: I was chosen to be part of EngFOC! Well, holy crap. When I read the results, I got all light headed and it honestly felt like a whole bunch of weight suddenly got dropped on top of my shoulders. This term was the start of a long journey that became a heavy part of my life in the 2003-2004 period.
Stand + Tree + Axe = New
End of the week, and no response. They didn’t have the decency to contact me one way or another. I’m not holding my breath, although, I must say that I’m mildly annoyed.
Whatever.
The other day, I picked up a book called 250 Essential Kanji For Everyday Use Volume 1. It’s good to have a hard book around that allows me to pick learn these characters. I mean, the online resources are great and all, but I don’t want to be anchored to the screen whenever I want to learn. The thing that’s interesting about the book is that the order of the characters they teach is different from the order taught in Japan elementary schools. That being said, I think the order in this book is more useful. The fact that I can read 申込書 (moushikomisho: application form) may be more useful then recognizing 山川, know what I mean?
Learning complicated kanji can be interesting. The character 新 (shin) means “new”. The components are “stand”, “tree” and “axe”. The way I remember the character then is to think of a lumberjack cutting down a tree for new lumber. It’s weird, but it works, you know? I guess, a goal for me, a long time from now, is to be able to read a Japanese newspaper. That would be quite the accomplishment.
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