|
2004
-
jan
-
feb
-
mar
-
apr
-
|
|
Mar 31.05 Did another psychology experiment for cash. This one had me in front of a computer with the research assistant reading words out loud and trying to remember them for later. The words appeared in sentences and I had to read them in sentences, which was difficult as they were unrelated and I had to make sure the sentence contained the words in order and as nouns. Later I had to do a keyboard-push thing to reject or recall word pairs as they flashed on screen, which I think I failed miserably, worrying to much about the "do it as fast as possible" element. I think the experiment would have done better with some sort of discouraging response to the fast-but-inaccurate approach. In another experiment when you got caught, the computer made a 'punishment' tone. So after the experiment I told the research assistant that I needed to be punished more. Went to Wonderland in the evening to do the general certification, where everyone sits around and watches demonstrations and videos and gets basic not-on-the-job training. This year we took a short tour of the park (cold) and then went into the gangrene room (hot) for the rest of the night. Once again, the top manager at rides was present and overseeing much of the presentations, giving his well-practiced and carefully crafted performance. I want to like him because he's fat and gay and I think that a lot of people don't hate him for that reason, but he just has one of those snivelling brown-nosing (no pun intended) attitudes that I lean towards wanting to punch him. Later on, the presentation room's power blacked out so we did the breakout groups in various areas of the building, where I got a chance to socialize with the sparkling new hires and other unfortunate rehires from the previous year. Most of them had moved up the corporate ladder so I felt empowered by association. When the night was over I was feeling the pressure of getting a new job from desparation; I don't want to get trapped at Wonderland for another five months. --------------- Mar 30.05 Exercised that dusty old comedian in my brain and came up with some jokes to write on my genetics quiz in the spaces where the correct answers should be. They are as follows: "How many proteins does it take to screw in a light bulb?" "A hundred and one. One protein to screw in the light bulb, a hundred to regulate the event." "Two fruit flies are walking down the steet. Another fruit fly, one with XY chromosomes and sxl "off", passes them by. One fruit fly says, "Whoa, look at that mutant." The other goes, "That's no mutant -- that's my wife!" (note the queer-friendliness) Returned a pair of shoes I'd bought the other day, and then realized I'd gotten away with keeping the reward points. I kind of wish I hadn't gone during the sale so I could have got more points. But that will get filed away in my list of ripoffable systems. Had this weird moment where I was approaching an escalator which appeared to be moving fine. Then as I came closer I realized that it wasn't moving; people were walking up. So my brain went into marching mode when I stepped on the first step and found that, in fact, the escalator was running fine and I had apparently lost my grip on reality for a moment. --------------- Mar 29.05 Woke up bright and early in the morning and headed off on foot to St. Michael's Hospital for my heavent-sent clinical appointment to check out a nuclear medicine department in action. When I found my way, I was introduced to my saviour, Jeanette, who interestingly enough was a white-washed Chinese Canadian like myself. After the introduction we jumped right into the tour. I brought my notebook and pencil though I ended up not using it (as warned). Without going into every little thing we did, I have to say I was really impressed, in a good way. The job looked really interesting. I wasn't aware there was so much work with the chemicals and with the radioactivity (no, physics and chem!), or that the daily grind involved so much patient care. My experience last year at Wonderland showed me that I was pretty good at handling the stresses of serving others, but I wonder if I'll have the nerve to give injections. That's really all there is too it. Just the injections. Being a nuclear medicine technologist looks like it incorporates just enough different kinds of stimulation while being just boring enough, so who knows? It could be my calling. I asked Jeanette questions about Michener, and she made clear that she was one of us: those kids who thought that going into science was about being a doctor and then realized it was too much work and they were too stupid. Her attitude was cynical and resigned in an optimistic, amused way. I can relate. After that was done, I just felt uppity. I couldn't get wipe the smile off my face even if I wanted to, and it was one of those sunny side of the street days. Shorts and t-shirts weather? Maybe it feels like spring after all. --------------- Mar 28.05 We don't get "Easter Monday" off, I guess because it's not an official holiday. Which ruins the whole thing, because Easter is special for it's two-week span. Four days on, four days off, and then four days on. Nevermind all that crap about the death of Christ, or the bunny rabbit giving out eggs and chocolate. Easter is about getting a two week-holiday. Just look how many special days there are: Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Palm Sunday. I'm sure there are religious names for Saturday and the Monday too. So someone please make it official. Then we can move for a Righteous Tuesday and Exalted Wednesday for extra protection. Had to go all the way to Wonderland in the morning just to pick up a training manual that I wasn't going to read anyway in preparation for 'general certification' this week. Which means non-specific rules and regulations and conduct for employees. The only good thing is that I get paid for my time. Transportation costs would theoretically cut a good chunk out of it but, as always, I'll do anything for cash. Other things to note for today: checking my mark for a pharmacology test and seeing a blank spot next to my student number (slightly disturbing, but with patience and good nature, later resolved); getting lost and wandering around the sweltering basement of the medical science building (must be where they get their shipment of anatomy-bound corpses); having a trombone sectional and not achieving anything; and luckily scoring a clinical appointment for tomorrow morning bright and early at 9am. Maybe the fates do want me to go to Michener after all. --------------- Mar 27.05 (palm sunday) Everyone's gone back to school and nothing's open, so most of my day was spent eating more turkey, practising for jazz and planning my hectic schedule for the upcoming week. I don't even have any school work due but almost every hour of the day is accounted for. How's that for busy? I almost wish that I had one extra week of classes just so that I would have a little more time, but it's too late now. And I'm still overloaded with reminders and post-it notes for things that I have to do but don't have scheduled yet. Heavy cloud, dirty slate. --------------- Mar 26.05 Didn't do much aside from digging into the digital darkroom and photoshopping the files from the previous day's shoot. There is a really high good-to-crap ratio and most look awesome so far (not to blow my own horn or anything). It remains to be seen whether this will translate into print. My current life's purpose is to make bring the most out of these photos. Like teasing the sexual organs from a fruit fly. Apparently, I have five days (!!!) to hand in my proof of clinical visit form to Michener or have my offer of admission rescinded. Which means I have to book my appointment as soon as humanly possible and get it done. And since it's Easter weekend, the soonest I might be able to contact a clinical site may be Tuesday. Leaving me two days to do the visit and hand the form in, assuming I can make a last-minute appointment like that. I curse Canada Post for getting a March 14 letter to me by March 23. Unless it was just infrequent checking of the mail. But damn it all! To get this far and then lose the chance! Plus, the information on the letter is so badly presented. It says the proof-of-visit is due within two weeks of conducting the actual visit. So you think you've got time to do it. Then it doesn't give you the due date for getting the form handed in. It just lists this "critical timeline" website that you have to go check yourself. Assuming you even get the letter when it's postmarked, there are only two weeks and three days before the form is due. So if normally the visit follows after a few day's pre-booking, the due date will be in two weeks anyway. So why even put that bit about having two weeks to hand it in after doing the visit? Okay, that's my rant. Wish me luck. --------------- Mar 25.05 (good friday) Our Easter weekend commences today. We went to Pacific Mall where all the Chinese stores were open and did some shopping. I got to try on glasses, which made me feel like such a fake, but I did look smashing in them. If I could only scrape up some massive cash in the near future I might consider buying a pair. Interestingly enough, I could instead get a tattoo and a piercing and still have surplus for clothes. Using the same friends as uncompensated models, conducted a photoshoot which I think turned out really well. It was a bit weird when we got caught by respectable adults modelling knives in various psychotic-sexual modes. But don't laugh: a knife is a really good model's prop. They seem to elicit a lot of facial, postural and thematic elements in a model/photo. I told my friends that they were my best models and they said that it was because they did anything I told them. It's probably true. If I told someone who I wasn't close with to, I don't know, tongue tease the tip of a knife, or crawl headfirst down a flight of stairs, the feel would be different indeed. Later, did the family dinner at my grandparents' house complete with chocolates and turkey. Except we didn't do the egg hunt, unfortunately. And I think of the most wicked places -- sometimes I can't even remember where I've put them until they fall out of nowhere months later, that's how damn good I am. --------------- Mar 24.05 Kurt Elling is in town and apparently doing a series of master classes at various Canadian unversities. I attended his class this morning and it was ultra-jazzy-cool. He talked about the music industry and a lot about life and passion and other scary over-arching subjects. He was humorous and laid-back and also very technical and practical. I even heard someone say "everything is everything" in reference to Kurt's teaching/preaching. Scary. He sang a few songs and helped out another singer, and there is nothing like seeing him do his thing live. Kurt Elling is a god among men. During today's biology class, one of the deans came in and made a public apology for something that happened to students back in December during exams. They had to wait around forty-five minutes in the cold rain before they could get in, which I'm sure must have sucked for various psychological reasons. The dean offered the explanation and the next steps for improvement and all that publicity jazz. It was noted that after students clapped, he said he hadn't come for applause. Well in that case, what was with the five-second pause? He left the stage and some lady (a his PR agent, I imagine) was waiting for him at the exit. They talked jovially and she probably told him where they were headed for their next appearance. Getting them all done on one day I bet. Call me a cynic but life is just one big publicity stunt, in the same way that nothing is worth doing if no one's around to see it. What's that? You heard a tree falling in a forest somewhere? You're mistaken, nothing happened. In bio lab, I was camera-happy and avoided doing work by being the official documentor. I couldn't tell if my TA was miffed or curious whenever she came around and saw me taking photos instead of doing important science-type things, but she did visit often. On a philosophical note, part of the procedure involved identifying female fruit flies and removing their ovaries by pulling their lower midsections apart from the rest of their bodies. And that doesn't sit well with me. This is the guy who felt guilty about having to kill our colonies of bacteria in grade 11 biology. I wanted to set them free and let them run wild as bacteria should. My two lab partners were having some trouble with the ovarectomy, so I had to step in, and I was shockingly good at it. I needed to squint and cringe and scream "forgive me" as I successfully removed the first ovaries. It later became easier and almost disturbingly fun. There's something awful and misogynistic that comes over you and makes you say repulsive things like "I'm gonna get you, bitch" (reminds me of a story I heard about chicken). My sincere and heartfelt shame and apologies to everything for this. Imagine if we were a population of carefully bred lab specimens whose every life function was known? And 'they' said that for this next experiment they would take your dead body and remove your sexual organs? And that sometimes they screwed up and mangled your body and you didn't even contribute to the 'greater good'? Science is evil. You can see it in my scientific photos: they are dark and sinister and clinical and sterile. --------------- Mar 23.05 Enter Dr. Jones, our new physio prof who believes in forty-minute lectures and walking around con hall during 'application' questions. So far, I'm liking her fashion sense and Sigourney Weaver voice. So long and goodbye for ever, Bob Cheung, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. Had a friend's birthday dinner party at the ol' Spring Rolls on Yonge and Bloor. Being the shameless bastard that I am, I didn't get her anything. Earlier, I'd bought tickets for my cousin's fashion show (go Ryerson) and passed by a wall of greeting cards while shopping with her for materials. I also bought myself a CD, and to top it all off, I hawked some other CD's and so came out with a small profit. Shameful, really, that's what this is. I am disgusting. Please love me. At the restaurant, all twenty-five of us crowded and waiting for our table (even though we'd reserved), I was noticing a lack of male specimens. Aside from the typical braindead cardboard personality tagalong boyfriends. What single guys were there were so ambiguous they had to have major issues. I picked out the gayest one and commented on this: "Is it just me or does Lisa not have any single, straight male friends?" "I'm a single straight male friend." Oops. Coulda fooled me. Plus his handshake was not limp, but almost fragile feeling. Major turnoff. So I decided to quit while I was ahead and call that my socializing for the night. Apparently some people actually made pickups? I guess in the sort of environment where two people feel comfortable tongue-wrestling while in the close proximity of others, before, after, and during dinner, then it's inevitable. There was another birthday table to the side of us. Someone had a wicked Nikon DSLR system and was ceiling-bouncing a flash gun all over the place. I almost wanted to join their table but then I realized they were all lesbians. So settled for grabbing the camera and making a run for it. Big news: I got a letter from Michener (which was mysteriously unsealed). I got in! (!!!) And I was totally not expecting this. There was a while of disbelieving and rereading, since it was so unfathomable. So inconceivable. They had base d their offer of admission on my three first semester marks of 60, 63, and 77. A stellar GPA of 2.43. They must have taken first my year marks into account (a more respectable 3.13) because the minimum cGPA needed is 2.7 and I was told the average is around 3.0. Strange. The offer is conditional based on my keeping above 2.7, which I think I can do, a clinical visit to an actual practicing nuclear medicine department, and a personal interview. I now suddenly have shit to figure out. Darn it. --------------- Mar 22.05 I waved at the guy who sits in front of me in physiology as he got off his bus stop. It's pretty rare that we see each other on the YRT so I figured, "Can't two gay Chinese guys in the same program in the same school who take the same bus and go to the same club (okay, once) and both watch America's Next Top Model acknowledge each other's presence?" In enrichment band, during one of those awkward 'how's life' moments, Mr. Horner offered up a wise suggestion: "You need to figure out what you want to do with your life." Thankfully at the time we were both preoccuppied punching in data for next year's class lists, so there was no eye-contact or hard thought involved. Still, I struggled to come up with something to say. I came up with: "That's ... good advice." He noted that was slightly patronizing and so qualified his statement with a "seriously". This was all so uninvolved to the point of being actually laughable. But I like things that way. I think I'll work that into my book. The one that's going to save me. My book is going to be one of those depressing self-referential (on the verge of being autobiographical) stories where nothing happens and the characters are all empty but philosophical. Go figure huh? --------------- Mar 21.05 (first day of spring) Woke up with the usual "what have I done" post-haircut realization, and this one is going to need some extra work. Hello, Spring. It's warm and sunny, and the whole campus smells like shit from manure runoff on the King's College field. My pants are more wet than they've been all winter and it's not because of excessive skin being flashed around in the sun. Yet, anyway. --------------- Mar 20.05 Once again, this was a no-work no-play weekend. There's only so much free time in the world and I'm squandering it with such wanton irresponsibility. Winter will be officially over after today. Sort of like a Maple Leafs season of past years, it was a good try. Pat on the back. In the spirit of winter ending, it's also time to shed some fur, so I've chopped some off my head to shift toward short. Can you feel the wind in your hair yet? --------------- Mar 19.05 A last minute change of mind had the family ditch the last opportunity to go skiing this year. Instead, we went to Sam's Club and stocked up on wholesale goodness. I don't know if this has been in effect for a while, but now all the samples are in one tightly grouped area. So you can't walk around and constantly be eating. Also, it's more noticeable if you lurk and eat too much stuff. Talk about removing the only positive of shopping in a bulk warehouse. Watched Wicker Park, which was actually not bad. Too bad it suffered from one of those horrible trailers that makes the movie look like a nonsensical Vanilla Sky-type errrotic thriller. There was much head-wrapping-around-of but I enjoyed it. I think I could give the psychotic character a run for the money in manipulating people left right and centre. That was probably the most disturbing part of the movie. --------------- Mar 18.05 Found out that Bob Cheung, Ph.D, is allergic to formaldehyde. I'm seriously contemplating doing something malicious to the damn smurf. He's got a fucking piss-poor attitude. Whilst shopping on Queen St., I thought I saw my cousin (who lives on the East side, in the Beaches), but it was just a lookalike. Thought to myself that it would only be a matter of time before I ran into her in this area, and wouldn'tcha know, not one hour later (after impulse-snatching a second-hand Royal City CD), I bumped into her on the way to the subway. Gotta see the signs. Later, went to a hotpot party, which isn't really my bag but was fun all the same. And I found my way all by myself, having been to the house only once, three years previously. I mean I had a general refresher of directions but it was so all me. --------------- Mar 17.05 (st. patrick's day) Got all dressed up for St. Paddy's (just don't say that dreaded word, "ecclectic"), and wore a new lime green shirt. But then I realized my binder has a big green clover on it anyway. I later ran into a someone still stuck in high school, who seemed impressed with the way I looked. Got me thinking about how my parents used to say "it's not a fashion show" whenever we got uppity about wearing something nice out, and then told us not to look like slobs all the time. Of course, these days, it's always a fashion show. It's never not a fashion show. Got kind of disappointed passing by St. Patrick's station as it was boring green as always. No midday revellers or decorations or anything. I guess it's all happening at the pubs on College. I got some inspiration from a cheeky leprechaun type but that was the extent of my Irish day. --------------- Mar 16.05 Once again proving that I am a desparate whore, I acted the guinea pig for a linguistic study on gay and lesbian speech. This required me to take the elevators in Robarts into the limbo/astral plane/other world that is the upper floors. Specifically, I did the experiment on the 14th floor (cue theme from The Twilight Zone). My researcher was friendly and I was self-conscious, but mostly wondering how best to say "when do I get my cash? I get cash, right?". She explained everything in the soundproof, 60's style cold-war science booth, and, yes, there was monetary renumeration involved. I'd participated in two psychology experiments last year for credit. The first involved me locked in a pitch black room with a dark computer screen hitting the space bar in response to flashing shapes and letters (it was actually really fun but low stimulation). The other had me sitting at a table with a bunch of other people, reading stories to ourselves and filling out surveys (quite thrilling). As I read the experimental description and waiver, I clipped a small microphone to my collar which made me feel self-important and upped the excitement level. Apparently my voice would be digitized and analyzed and heard by other subjects. Hot. The frst part of the experiment had me read word lists. I was consciously listening to my intonation and it sounded silly. I also felt weird when I mispronouced words like "pull" or when I over-enunciated words like "sixths". But it was over soon enough. My next task was to read a scientific passage about the formation of rainbows, which should have struck me as ironic but I was too intensely focused to notice. The catch was that words in each sentence were underlined so that the emphasis was directed. This was difficult to do in a natural sounding way, and I often had blooper-type moments where I'd try to say a sentence over and over and screw it up for different reasons. I was relieved when that was over, and realized that I had just recited the whole passage in a newscaster voice. There was another emphasis passage to read after, but of a fictional story type, which made it slightly easier. I felt like some sentences definitely had gay potential (the dinner party setting was asking for it) but the concentration on reading them right killed most of the natural spin I would put on them. I secretly gave myself points for correctly pronouncing words I'd never seen before, like "chabris". Whatever that is. Now I know how those sad semi-illiterate kids from Walter Scott and Bayview feel when they have to read out loud in class. No sympathy, just understanding. The next part was fun -- I watched a silent video and provided running commentary, trying to eliminate dead air. It was a weird French animated flick, slow moving and pointless and outlandish as only the French can be. It opened with watching petals fall in a forest. And then some lady walking through the forest. Then cut-flash-cut-flash type scenes of her marriage (possibly a sociological perspective?). Then her at home doing housework and interacting with her kids, who flash-materialize out of nowhere. And then the fridge and the stove translocate to where her torso used to be, and she continues about her business until they somehow fall off. Then she goes back to the forest where she sits on a rock and stares at us. Unsettling French shit. The next task was to tell a story for three minutes. I'd been thinking about what to talk about for a bit so I wouldn't be unprepared, and came up with the time when my cat pooped on me in car on the drive home from the cottage one day. Background history provided filler. I felt most natural, although I wasn't sure if I was supposed to look at the researcher while doing it, since she seemed to be trying to avoid interacting with even facial expressions. I should note that she was having a bit of a hard time trying to restrain her laughter about cats and poop though. It'd probably sound unprofessional on the recording. Finally, I got my vocal range put on the record, from creaky bass to scratchy falsetto, and I read one more sentence, requiring me to say something about me having apples while Judy has oranges. First, in a monotonous voice (easy, I just channelled my physio professor), and then, in a Broadway musical peppy voice, which I took to with aplomb. Got paid my ten dollars, which was icing on the cake for a good time. And skipped off to class wondering how the results would be used and hoping I'd contributed to rock hard scientific data to be published and seen by the world. And wondering what how I should spend the cash. --------------- Mar 15.05 In today's Metro there was a blurb about anorexia and depression, and I must have had like 80% of the signs. Like low appetite, unwillingness to eat in front of others, constantly weighing yourself, being too body-conscious, feeling lethargic, feeling depressed, feeling uncertain about the future, needing to be in control of life, trying to please others, etc. Some of it made sense, but a lot of it didn't say much of anything. Learning about mental states in neuroscience has shined some disturbing light on the chemical basis for just about everything. I guess it's all in my head. It being dopamine, serotonin, hypocretin and friends. My toilet handle has broken. I now need to dip my fingers into the water tank and yank the chain. Resfreshing. --------------- Mar 14.05 Spent a little time making myself nice in the morning before going to school and was rewarded handsomely. If only everything was that easy. Sent out my very first mass e-mail and it felt like selling my soul. There's nothing like chaining to a million people at one time to devalue a moral message. Since my grandfather apparently left the faucet running in the basement sink and caused a minor flood, I got to sleep on the comfy couches in the living room at night. The only drawback would be the lack of privacy the next morning -- a rude awakening indeed. --------------- Mar 13.05 Got home from the cottage. In the tradition of the rush-rush Japanese buffet lunch that followed, I'll get right to the news. The gay and lesbian wedding show was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre today, which I missed, but I guess you sort of need someone to go with or risk being a hoser. And the company has to be carefully selected, when you think about it too. The pope is apparently going to be OK. I watched a newsclip of him addressing the crowd from a hospital window. His voice was cracky and disgusting, which was to be expected, but brought home the fact that he's just a man. Made of the same stuff as you and me. A victim of the same human tragedy that awaits us all. Just look at parallel with Michael Jackson with his ultra-feminine voice hanging his baby out of that hotel balcony. Don't you see it? Now I finally understand the morbid fascination with dead celebrities. Snicker. I stubbed my toe something awful on the corner of a stair. I won't describe the details in full bloody detail, but remember what happened to Elizabeth French in grade 3 when she wore sandals one day and changed her foot into a doorstop? --------------- Mar 12.05 Had the usual lazy cottage days, involving sleeping and reading and eating a lot. In one of those rare occasions where members in our family actually look at each other intently in the face, I noticed that my youngest sister shares my 'lazy eyelid' in her left eye. (I'd only discovered that one of my eyelid folds is kind of impaired this year when someone pointed it out to me. All the photos suddenly made sense.) To make things even more exciting, I traced the genetic defect back to my father. All of our physical flaws stem from him, really. Maybe genetics is useful after all. But maybe only if you think staring at eyelids at the cottage sounds like ripsnortin' research. My dad pointed out that it shows we're all related, on the positive side. Later in the night, I went outside to check out the night sky, which I admittedly haven't done since I cased the property (and that wasn't at night). Instead of waiting for the flashlight, I wandered off in the almost-darkness, which was slightly thrilling. Being alone in the woods in the dark now ranks up there on my list of otherworldly experiences (although nothing will ever surpass seeing Shawn Ashmore live in person on Yonge St.) Forget the fact that I was essentially right next to the house and there wasn't much of a 'woods'. We went out on the frozen river for a buena vista of the starry night, and lay there in the snow. I attempted to take some pictures with my digicam and the SLR. Not sure how the latter will turn out but it was damn sexy hearing the metallic clunk of the shutter in bulb mode. I think I froze my fingers but at least I can say I did make use of the cottage on a clear winter's night (and a new moon to boot) to get my astrofix. My telescope is still sadly inside awaiting use. I guess I should try using my old toys before buying new ones. Astrophotography = double sexy. --------------- Mar 11.05 Bob Cheung is back and bad as ever as our physiology lecturer. Incidentally, there was a fifteen minute delay for AV difficulties. An omen, if I ever saw one. After school, went off to the cottage with the family. The snow is still piled up high, and I learned the true extent of semi-Northern Ontario winters. Last time I was there, the snow had melted but there there was still crumbly ice. This time, the snow was in the shin-to-knee area, and we had to shovel and forge our own paths through our property. The river was covered in the same layer of snow, making it devilishly hard to tell how thick the ice was. We took our chances anyway, going as far as shovelling the snow away in piles to make a skating path. In a bout of self-motivation, I started shovelling a big mound of (frustratingly non-packing) snow out a ways on the river and then collapsed, thinking about the physical/chemical crystalline-ness of solid H2O. The mound looked like a big nipple from far away. Other achievements of the day included marching through the snow to my name in beautiful cursive font, and climbing up the raised dock by hauling myself up the ladder. Finally, proof that it is fucking hard to pull yourself up and over a ledge when hanging from your hands. And even then I had things to grab on to and support myself once I had lifted myself about four feet. I did it twice to reassure my own physical fitness and, by association, self-worth. --------------- Mar 10.05 The biology lab primary report was the last thing on my list of big deadlines for the year, so it's all clean slate after today. Before then, I had about five hours to do almost the entire thing without having much of a clue what it was all about. I had two papers from friendly sources to help me out, which was fine and dandy, but as the clock ticked I needed more. Lucky for me, someone had left their assignment on the temporary hard disk space. So I ripped their paper off (which was nicely done) as well. Plagiarism takes on a whole new meaning. When I decided I could do no more, I encountered a printer problem, which would have made my heart sink under normal circumstances, but since I was feeling very groovy about being done with 'all my work' for the term, I waited patiently and happily for the staff to solve the problem. The actual lab was a dreadful bore. I think I slipped into a coma and actually died for a few seconds and then came back to life, but it's hard to know for sure. --------------- Mar 09.05 Today was Prof. Perumalla's last day as our physio prof. We'll miss his jokes and his adorable Indian accent and most of all, his straight-forward, well-paced lectures. In my genetics tutorial quiz, I had a few fill-in-the-blank questions that I knew I wasn't going to get, so where it asked for the mutation where a pyrimidine is substituted for a pyrimidine in the DNA base pairs, I wrote "poo-poo mutation". And where it asked for the name of a pyrimidine to purine substitution, I wrote "pee-poo mutation". Hopefully the TA will laugh and give me pity marks, but probably not. I wasn't carrying a camera with me because I had too much stuff in my bag today, so when I saw a reprise of the farmer's protest outside of Queen's Park, I cursed my bad back. Later on, there was police yellow tape all over the fork where Queen's Park turns into University Ave., so we thought there'd been a car crash. Turns out someone had set himself on fire -- unrelated to the protest, I think. But imagine if I'd been there with a camera. --------------- Mar 08.05 not done yet. --------------- Mar 07.05 not done yet. --------------- Mar 06.05 not done yet. --------------- Mar 05.05 not done yet. --------------- Mar 04.05 Ran into an old pal on the bus to school in the morning and it was a pleasant encounter (which I note probably because there is always some unexplained subcortical tension/conflict/power struggle between us). We talked briefly about life, about friends, and of course about trivial matters of the homosexuals. Now I'm wondering why all gay-gay interactions can't be like this. I was feeling so upbeat that I didn't stop to think about putting a used napkin back into my bag with all of the other nose-wiping napkins. Not that it was out of the ordinary, since I always reuse old nose-wiping tissues and napkins. But with today's case, I'd used it to wipe dog slobber off of my hand from a friendly beast on the bus. After classes ended, I met up with a friend from another school who needed to use my Tcard to borrow books at Robarts. She told me to hurry because she had just seen another classmate who needed the same books earlier. Apparently they'd locked eyes on the escalator and it was on. She'd brought a friend too, so this was going to be like "The Amazing Race". Two teams, with clues, trying to find books in a gigantic library. We had a booklist, written in Chinese, with the call numbers on it. But the catalogue wasn't proving much help. Were we even in the right library? We decided to ask an employee for help, and got the suggestion to try the East Asian library, which is on the 7th floor of Robarts, requiring the use of the non-sensical elevators. At that moment, I got a call from my parents, which was out of the ordinary, forcing me to cancel later plans go out, setting a tense tone between my friend and me (cue the dramatic theme). We hurried to the East Asian library and wandered through the stacks, looking for lost aisles and long call numbers. Eventually we asked for help and were given a map and directions to a section of the library where we could find our books, which turned out to be periodicals of some sort. But when we finally got there, we found one of the selections missing. Curses! The other team had got here first. Things weren't looking so good until I discovered one of our titles (a feat for me, considering everything was in Chinese). Maybe there was hope after all. We found two more, bringing our total to 3 out of 4. And when we were leaving the 7th floor, we saw the other team at the desk asking for a hold. They might have got one, but we got three. So in my books, we won. Victory is sweet. I then found out that family plans were cancelled, so we celebrated by walking aimlessly around and then shopping up Kensington St., where I'd never been before. There was lots of vintage clothes and meat shops of various sorts. Definitely needed a second look another time. Dinner was on Baldwin St., in that lovely little restaurant section in the middle of the Chinese accupuncture offices and community centres and old folks homes. We checked out menus for a long while to work up that anticipation, and then settled on the Konnichi-wa, a cozy little Japanese restaurant. Dessert was wandering around for free with the rest of the cheapos at the ROM. A day of adventure and intellectual debate makes a good end to the week. --------------- Mar 03.05 Donated blood today. There's apparently this new additional procedure in the beginning requiring an extra little bit of blood to be taken before filling the tubes and unit bag. But it must involve a filter or something because the nurse kept telling me to squeeze harder and give more pressure, and then commented that everyone seems to be encountering the same situation. Not much else interesting happened, aside from the nurse who reads the personal questions recognizing me. And this grumpy looking man asking whether abstaining from strenuous physical activity included sex. As if. Read The Informers by Brett Easton Ellis, all in one go today. It was a short book but at the same time, way too long if you know what I mean. I had trouble with the confusing narrative (who's talking now? Man? Woman? Kid? Adult?), the jumpy settings, and the general pointlessness of the whole thing. I know it's supposed to be 'satire', but does that mean it has to be so dull? There was the shocking/disturbing, which I'd been expecting, but I couldn't see the point of it all. Maybe pointlessness was the point? When you have a seemingly innocent character being forced to stab and murder a boy who is tied up in a bathtub just because a ransom plot never went through, the reader sort of wants to know the point. The ambiguous sexualities were kind of interesting (somehow I always read gay), I guess to emphasize the (lack of) 'moral' character, but mostly it just made things more confusing. And finally, why do so many contemporary writers think it is interesting to illustrate people's constant drug regimens? I'm not saying it's not realistic or thematically important, but eventually you just tune out when you read stuff like "and then I took two valiums. And some prozac. And three other pills I didn't know the names of. But I was out of demerol. So I went out and got some but that stressed me out so I needed to take another valium with it. Then I went to sleep and woke up two days later in the middle of the night and I took some more valium ..." --------------- Mar 02.05 Stumbled on to what seemed like a pretty good photojournalist's opportunity today at Queen's Park. There was a farmer's protest and a procession of tracters, and I had my (cousin's) Pentax A3000 SLR with me. As I was setting up my first shot, I accidentally fired the shutter. Which would have been fine if it hadn't been my last exposure. D'oh. And me without any more film. Double d'oh. Later I struggled with the film rewind. I managed to tear off all the spool uptake edges again, contaminating myself and my immediate vicinity with silver halides, but at the very least I think I unloaded the film without re-exposing it. Finished Doug Coupland's Microserfs, which was actually pretty good (and not comparing to his other books). It was thematically rich and had real, fleshy characters, and maintained the quirky Coupland feel throughout it's setting. Plot was, as usual, secondary, but in this case it didn't feel like such a big deal, as you're really waiting to see when and how each character will blossom into a unique and beautiful butterfly. --------------- Mar 01.05 And now for a special BBC World News bulletin: Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are getting married. My knee-jerk reaction was "Gasp! Scandalous! In the name of Diana, scandalous I say!" But really, what they do in their personal lives is none of our business anyway. And there's going to be a lot of pressure on them. I mean, just look at Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. Except that maybe people are less endeared towards Chuck and the homewreckin' Palace Balls Worker. --------------- |