citizen of the planet

It seems that every time pay day comes around I get this sudden urge to spend on frivolous things. Today being Halloween, I wanted to waste some time wandering around downtown. I didn’t want to drive home and have to make an effort to dodge groups of kiddies. Anyway, I dropped by HMV and spotted Futurama Volumes 3 and 4 for $25 each. Seeing as how they’re usually $35-45, I picked them up. Also, since today was the sale date for Final Fantasy XII, I went hunting for it. Best Buy didn’t have it out, but EB Games did. I waited in line for 20-30 minutes to buy my copy. Craziness! While in line, I sort of joined in a conversation about the Final Fantasy series. In the back of my mind, I was thinking “you are such a geek!” In another part of my mind I was thinking, “Man…I’m with my people!”

So, I’m sitting here at home with a whole lot of media to go through. That ought to keep me busy for a long while. Though, I really don’t want to start FFXII until I finish Dragon Quest VIII…and I figure that’s another 15 hours.

I’m such a geek.

Well, my parents wanted to put a pumpkin outside for tomorrow, which can only mean that the one who had to carve the thing was me.

Eh, well, I suppose I don’t mind; I think it looks good.

Oh man, we just had a code launch today at work, for which I stayed after hours for at least a little while. Since this was different from my usual routine, I think my food intake was thrown off as well. Since a whole bunch of us were staying behind, we ordered in. We got a whole load of fried chicken and gorged ourselves. Prior to that, beverage wise, I had two cups of tea, a double shot of espresso in the form of a caramel latte (damn that coffee club), a sugar-free Fresca, a Five Alive, and a black cherry and vanilla coke. I’m normally alright with just the tea, but I got really thirsty between the span of 6 and 8 p.m. For lunch I went around the corner to the local deli and got a teriyaki chicken combo. I had a bagel for breakfast.

Overall, as I’m sitting here typing this entry, I’m feeling really shitty and bloated. I think it’ll take a while before I’m feeling balanced again. I think I’ll need to use this weekend to really make up some lost ground.

Raluca and I had dinner at Springrolls downtown the other night. While eating, I had a minor (MINOR!) celebrity sighting. It was [ex co-host] from [well known singing competition--Canadian version]. He’s still unshaven, looking ragged, and ever-so-slightly pissed off.

Whatever.

Been a while since I’ve seen Raluca. She was in town for a little work with one of her company’s clients, so she suggested we meet for dinner. Anyway, dinner went well, but she had to leave pretty quickly in an attempt to get back to Waterloo for a Tae Kwon Do class. I was about to take the subway back to my car, but she insisted on driving me back instead. After some hesitation, I accepted. She ended up taking the DVP up north, which didn’t bode well for her making it back in time. At 7:30, we were still hitting the tail end of rush hour traffic, and things were moving slow as people were making their way out of the city.

So, it got me thinking…are we as Torontonians willing to put up with traffic congestion that’s only getting worse as time passes? I mean, I suppose that as a car-driven city it’s now a fact of life. Commutes that take more than an hour (one way) are the norm for many people. I’ve stated before that for myself the commute is 1.5 hours. So, it’s almost as if my work day is extended almost 1.5 times my normal 9-5 work day–and I live within the same city. It must be even tougher for those having to come in from outside the suburbs.

Really though, is there a solution that’s practical? You can’t exactly do anything that will restrict car usage–especially with everyone so madly in love with the vehicle. If you did, there would be bloody hell to pay. It’s tough expanding transit. It seems to be continually underfunded, meaning that expansion is impractical when so much of the existing system is in need of maintenance. That’s just too bad. Consider Scarborough: the subway ends before delving deep into that part of the city; the SRT trains are about to end their service life at some point very soon. Soon, all that will remain is bus service, which is already crowded and slow. You can forget about subways ever coming further out into the east end.

There’s just no winning, you know? I guess it’s not that we’re willing to put up with it: all we can do it bear with it because there simply is no alternative.

The other day I was adjusting my laptop screen when all of a sudden everything started turning white. It’s like the white seemed to bleed from where I was grasping the LCD to the rest of the screen. It took just a few second before the whole screen showed a solid wash of nothingness. I sort of panicked and started turning the thing on and off in an attempt to see if it was a temporary thing. Unfortunately for me, the problem didn’t go away.

I took out my RGB monitor cable and connected my monitor to the thing, just to see if it was either the laptop or the video card. Luckily, the monitor was displaying Windows just fine, which means it’s just the laptop.

Sigh! I guess that just means I have to bring it in the get fixed. Luckily I caved in and got that extended warranty deal when I got the thing. Who would have known?

Last night, I spent a long while listening to stories of days gone by from people from my past while tending to a pit of smoking meat. Last time I was in the same situation was…last December. All that reminiscing triggered a great deal of self-analysis on my part, but perhaps not over what you might expect. I didn’t feel horribly inadequate, or like my life was leading my nowhere. Far from it. I was more concerned over the difference between how I’ve been viewing my past in comparison to how others do the same thing.

Now let’s see. I’d say that my past hasn’t been entirely filled with greatness. Growing up, I was always awkward and had trouble socializing for various reasons. My intellect seemed to put a barrier between myself and the rest of my peers. No, I’m not bragging–it was very truly tough. You know how rotten kids can be back then. High school wasn’t a walk in the park either. I was only starting to figure myself out, and realized fairly quickly that for better or worse my personality would be a tough sell. I’m fortunate in that at some point when University rolled around, I finally grabbed onto strengths and weaknesses with two hands and swung them around to my advantage like a sharpened sword. And here I am, feeling somewhat empowered, albeit a little bit bruised.

I’ve always maintained that my experiences have led me to where I am today. I may look back once in a while, but if I’m to set my eyes on something to focus most of my attention on, it would surely be on today, and perhaps a bit towards the future (though, as you all know, my vision gets blurry when I focus too far ahead of myself).

Fair enough, you know? Not everyone is like that. Last night, I was listening to some people whose feet almost seemed firmly entrenched in the past. They spoke of those days as if they were the legendary glory days of yore. Hey, like I said, I look back once in a while as well. However, there was something different about they voices that I was listening to. The speech was tinged with an echo of sadness over times that will never return. Good for them, I guess. I suppose I can admit to being a little jealous that they had such a great time in comparison to my struggling. However, seeing as how we’re still young, it seems like a waste in my mind to pine for those old days as if life can never get better than that. Whether or not that’s true is far from the point. I mean, does the future hold so little excitement? Not in my eyes. Anything can happen. I’ve learned as well, that obsessing over the past can’t really bring you any progress. At best, I can say that focusing on my past can help me learn things that can only be found in post-analysis, which *might* be then helpful to the future. However, digging up old corpses along with buried treasures can cause unnecessary pain.

Heh. Saying all this almost makes me feel hypocritical. I mean, after all, I’ve been writing about my experiences in University, right? Maybe the difference is, then, that I’m not necessarily longing to go back.

So wait a minute…if my past was actually a bit more pleasant, would I be so any more hesitant to travel back in my mind? I’ll never know. If that was true, I’d surely be a different person that who I am today. That being said, the fact that little to no progress can come of obsessing on the past would hold.

Yesterday, I drove over the Warden station to park in the North lot. As I turn in to the gate, there’s this minivan pausing a few metres before the gate. As I pulled up behind it, it rushed forward towards the gate arm and stood there running. I pulled up to the automatic card swiper/token collector and waited. Oh hell no. I wasn’t going to swipe my card and let that guy in. So, I waited for about a minute. The minivan must have realized that he wasn’t getting in for free, so he backed up. I stood my ground. I wasn’t going to move. There was a perfectly good way around the booth for him to turn his van around and leave. We waited another while before realizing I wasn’t going to back up. By this time, there was a line of cars forming behind me. He finally gave up and turned the van around and left. That’s when I swiped my Metropass and went in.

So, I’m wondering what the guy was thinking I mean, what if the guy behind him was actually going to pay by cash? If he went in, that would be like stealing $2, right? Even though the Metropass gives me free parking there, in principle, I don’t have to let anyone else into the lot. I paid for the right to park there; I’m not about to let someone get a freebie.

There’s a coffee club at work. People who are part of this club have access to an espresso machine, complete with beans and different flavoured syrups to make some great lattes. The cost is about….$10 or so every month or so. If you think about it, that’s an awesome deal. I mean, a decent sized latte at the local coffee joint can cost up to $5.

Every afternoon, at 3 p.m., the other Jason and I have been venturing to the kitchen to fix ourselves a double shot. It helps us get over the mid-afternoon slump. It’s almost ritual by now, which is fun, but I’m starting to worry about the effects. I think I may have developed a mild dependency on strong coffee. I get irritable when I don’t get my drink. I need the “kick to the face”. I don’t want to try to quit drinking the coffee though, because if I’m going to pay money to be part of the club, I’m going to damn well make sure I get use of my membership.