Rambling Asian

a few random thoughts as i sit bored at georgian college’s career center:

(1) the eee pc is awesome. other than the fact that the keyboard is insanely small (even for me). the fact that it is so small, so light and so portable, yet it has decent power and very, very, very good battery life makes it awesome.

(2) just because you drive a porsche suv, it doesn’t mean that you’re intelligent. case in point, yesterday, i was heading out of the mall in a dedicated exit to cummer, and this guy gives me the finger and the look of death in a porsche suv, and yet himself missed the entrance to the mall. wtf? really, come on, don’t give me the look of death because your brain is the size of a pea and can’t see the do not entry sign. sigh.

(3) if you don’t understand what a focus group is, don’t run a focus group. especially if you’re in social research and you don’t have a lot of cash.

i’ll have more stuff to say later… time to be bored out with a useless focus group.

outs.

it’s kinda weird when i get inspiration to write a blog post. this post comes while i’m waiting for the last focus group to start at georgian college in barrie, writing on a college computer, for all to see. weird.

but anyways, i put on my headphones and the first song to come up is from secondhand serenade entitled “like a knife”. some of the lyrics in the song that made me think are “cause if i watched you go, you’d see me wasting, you’ll see me wasting away… cause today, you walked out of my life…”

it’s been one year, and it still cuts like a knife. i don’t know if this day won’t ever cut like a knife.

it’s been one year, yet it feels like it was just yesterday that i lost a friend.

although he’s not the only one lost in the past year (two more friends/relatives of classmates) have died in the past year, the first is always the toughest.

ian buddy, i know you’re looking down on all of us right now in a better place, but it’s obvious that everyone still misses you.

you’re going to have to stop me from being a jackass today. i really don’t know how i’m going to get through three focus groups like this.

a few thoughts of today:

(1) usain bolt is the greatest sprinter of all time, period. yes, carl lewis won more golds, more often, and yes, michael johnson won both the 200 and the 400, but he is the first sprinter to ever win both the 100 and 200 and break both world records in the process. i say that if he can hold on for four years, and repeats the double in london in 2012, he will be the greatest track and field athelete of all time, if not the greatest olympian of all time - above michael phelps.

(2) the american women’s beach volleyball team is the greatest beach volleyball team of all time. period. defending their gold medals and having that unbelieveable winning streak. they proved it today in front of a partisan crowd. to put it into perspective, they did not lose a single set in both olympics.

(3) if you’re going to try to clean teeth, it’s probably wise not to stab gums instead of cleaning teeth. i have never spat out so much blood in my mouth. ever. i seriously thought that i was in trouble today while i was at the dentist. i don’t think that’s a good thing either. the dentist is amazing, but her dental hygienists seriously suck. that’s the third time that that’s happened.

oh and (4) i was offered a project manager position at a company in mississauga called acrobat research, and i’ve decided to accept it. so starting in september, i join the rat race.

late entry (5) i watched the women’s open water swim today. yes, she didn’t medal, but i would easily give the olympics highest medal honor other than gold (the sportsmanship award - which has been given out many, many times before, including the time when the canadian was on his way to winning gold at the 1988 olympics and gave it up to save two drowning sailors) to nathalie du toit, who swam the race even though she had lost her leg in an accident six years before. that’s all.

i just watched the finals of the women’s freestyle wrestling, and damn, was canada dominant. she took over the other wrestler like a bear full on honey.

finally, canadians have something to smile about.

that’s my conundrum. what happens if you’ve got technically perfect vision, yet you don’t actually have perfect vision?

i went in for an eye test a couple of weeks ago, to find out that fact. according to my eye doctor, i have 20/20 vision, yet my eyes have a problem that screw around at night, much like those that have their eyes corrected through laser surgery. i have a tendency to squint at small text, causing my eyes to repeatedly adjust, which isn’t a problem in the early years, but later on could be a big issue. at night though, my eyes are almost always blinded by the light of passing cars.

anyways, so i got a prescription for a pair of glasses, and went to an eyewear store to get it done. the funny thing about it is that since my head’s big, there aren’t many types of glasses that fit my head. so out goes any brands that are remotely really trendy, as they all make frames that don’t wrap around my big head. but i ended up going for a pair of hugo boss frames that look pretty stylish (although the only time i’ll ever wear the glasses anyways are in the car at night and/or in front of the computer screen).

i was looking for those chairman mao glasses that make you look old fashioned chinese (my grandparents still have those glasses), but ironically, they don’t fit my head. ha.

so i get my glasses on tuesday. that’s the day of reckoning.

there’s a good blog post on the cbc website by sherraine schalm. she lost her first fencing match and she had an “outburst”. afterwards, during an interview with the cbc, she lost her temper again and said what everyone that is intelligent knows already: that canada just doesn’t treat their amateur athletes well (unless you’re in hockey).

now, for the first time in the olympics, finally a canadian that didn’t win has shown some emotion. yes, she blew her gasket, but isn’t that what failure should bring? shouldn’t you be upset if you didn’t compete up to your best? so far, that hasn’t really been the case. all we see on cbc is a bunch of canadians being told that they broke “canadian records”. but look at the canadian records. many are three to four seconds off world records. does that make them “records”? does having best times of three to four seconds slower than the competitors make them “competitors”?

we need to step up and give amateur athletes what they need to become successful. after all, australia did something relatively simple, with not too much infusion, and look, they are competitive in almost every event, if not on the podium.

it’s time to give the young men and women in canada some hope. but i don’t think that’ll ever happen.

just some thoughts.

i’ll admit, i’m as much of an conspiracy nut as anyone else, with conspiracies over everything from tap water to bending spoons with your mind.

but sometimes, good intentioned conspiracy theories can be railroaded by horrible choice of anchors. like for instance, a thread on fark tonight talking about how some celebrities are pushing for a new investigation into 9/11, using conspiracy theories as their backdrop.

i’ll admit that i’m not the most neutral person on this issue. in fact, a high school classmate’s father, ken basnicki died that day at the world trade center. now, i know his family has been pushing for an investigation, and i think an actual independent one should be done, but using people like arrested development and a former dallas cowboys offensive linemen as heads of the push, to me feels like this is going to go nowhere.

that’s it for now. peace out.

I haven’t touched this blog in a while, but now I think it’s time that I start blogging again, and thus, I will be starting over. I guess posts are going to come in fast and furious until I start working, which should be pretty quick (hopefully by September).