Midterms are over!

I have a bad feeling about the midterms I just wrote. So did most of the rest of the class, but still, I probably should have done better. Enough about work.

Kitty and I went out to a fancy restaurant, Ali Babba's, to celebrate the end of midterms. A really nice place that requires reservations...which i didn't know about! Too stressed out about midterms to do much planning, but it turned out ok, because they had extra seating....whew! Anyway, they have specials where they make food in front of you. One of these was a Caesar's Salad. Did you know they put Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce in there? I didn't...

Sat was super softball day!!! You may think that's it's too cold to play softball at this time of the year, but you sorely mistaken. Edmond is absolutely obsessed about softball, so he was organizing this thing throughout midterms. He worked really hard at it and managed to get 18 people out to play some pickup softball!!! 18 !!! do you realize what an accomplishment that is? Luckily the weather held up and it was relatively warm... at least for this time of the year. We played 8 innings of really fun softball. The level of play was pretty good too, even though the final score was 25-26. The losing team scored 13 runs in the last inning to come back from behind and win! (unfortunately i was on the losing team :( ) I think Edmond, the superstar was having an off day... And myself? I was way too greedy on the basepaths. Got caught in a few unnecessary rundowns, but it was fun running the basepaths once again.

And the very next day I went out to play some again, just to hit the ball around. I hit a hard grounder and it hit Edmond's fingers and damaged them pretty good. They were dripping blood... And myself? I'm plenty sore today. Especially considering i worked out after softball too. Although it does feel good to be exercising again after a week of being locked up in the library.

Today was a small car mishap. On our way to dinner, Edmond backed into a low wall at a fairly high speed for going backwards.. Our heads were all thrown into the seat from the impact, but it wasn't anything major. The most surprising thing is that there is no damage to the car! Amazing, considering how hard the impact was. I do have a small headache now though...

Another strange thing happened too...while Edmond and I were dropping by the post office, a big burly scruffy guy with his hands in his pockets approached us in the parking lot. Pretty scary looking guy too. He asked for money from us so he could get a bus to Cambridge. He didn't look very friendly and after a short exchange of words we sorta walked away from him. Hmm, I wonder what you're suppose to do in this situation.... back off quickly? Give him money? Any advice out there?

Anyway gonna try to sleep early tonight to cause i spent ten hours at school today. Labs have started up once again. It never does end....

lates,

--Nelson

The Library

I've been spending some insane hours at the library recently...to do some hardcore studying of course.

I get a little more work done at the library than at home. At the library, I only get distracted by stuff on my Clie instead of the computer/internet. And sleep. I seem to get a lot of the sleep at the library too. But really it's more productive than studying at home. It's more conducive to cramming whole courses into a day or two. :)

Some things I've noticed at the library. It's almost always completely packed. I go the DC (Davis Center) library, i suppose it's the "popular" one to go to on campus, and lot's of people go there, and as a result it's really quite full. Maybe it's because it's midterm time, but i've been there earlier in the year and it was also pretty full. Some things I've noticed about the population makeup there. There's a lot of girls there. I'd say it's 60/40 guys/girls at worst. So drastically different from my class ratio of 90/10 guys/girls. Maybe it's because it's the fall term that there are more girls on campus. And the library is full of Asian people too, but i guess I shouldn't be surprised, because it is Waterloo after all.

While I was there, Edmond pointed out someone that looked almost exactly like Ross from Friends. I looked over and agreed immediately. He was even wearing Ross type clothing and had Ross type posture. The only difference was that he was a brown guy. Just goes to show, like the wise Matt Wong theorized, that somewhere out there, there exists your brown twin. Haha, just like Brown Gilmour (Pete) from the Rafting trip, jokes. Adrienne and Will (Edmond's friend's) also agreed and Will started calling him Bross. So everytime we see him now we chuckle and call him Bross. Ah yes, fun can be had at the library too!

Anyway, back to studying....today's exam was ok, but I'm really worried about tomorrow's Electronic Devices exam. Stupid PN junctions.

lates,

--Nelson

I can't sleep...

It's 3AM on a fri night and I'm fully awake, when I should be sound asleep. On thurs night, i went to sleep at a record early time, around 1 AM and got up out of bed at 10 AM. That's 9 solid hours of sleep. After coming back from school I took a short nap, so I guess I've overslept today. Strange how that can happen, especially when I have midterms hanging over my head. Maybe I'm in denial or something. But the reality is I have 4 midterms in five days next week, and i just started some of my courses this week! aiyah!!!

Anyway, Richard and I met up and went to the library for a tiny bit today. We didn't get that much work done, because we spent almost the whole time laughing at ourselves (at how pathetic we are) and discussing how screwed we are. A typical conversation that Richard and I seem to have quite often:

"Yo guy, I'm screwed."
"No, you don't understand, I'm more screwed than you are."
"What are you talking about? I'm more screwed! Where are you in [insert any course here]?"
"I'm on page 1, you know the one that starts off, Welcome to the wonderful world of....."
"Oh yeah? I'm on page 0....I haven't even opened the textbook yet!!!"
Both: "And the midterm is tomorrow, we're screwed!!!!"

And then we start the same conversation again. Not very productive, but in a strange way it's comforting. I guess you can say that richard is my procrastination buddy. And trust me, you're in trouble when you have something like a procrastination buddy. So anyway, on a totally unrelated topic, Richard and I both decided to go meet Diana for lunch on fri.

A whole bunch of us met at the Sushi place beside Mel's. Diana, Chris, Ada, Cynthia, Cary, Rich and I enjoyed a relatively cheap sushi lunch. That place is good for sushi at a reasonable price (for sushi at least...). Lunch was enjoyable...did you know that Diana puts hot sauce on her sushi??? Man, that practically ruins it!!! Too much sauce can totally take over the natural flavour and therefore defeat the purpose. Might as well eat the sauce by itself. All you saucy people overdo it sometimes....

Anyway, I should be studying and not blogging...and unfortunately, I'm still not feeling tired yet.

--Nelson

Hey everyone.....haven't posted in a very long time.....

And I can't even remember the last time Mike posted something. I bet he has some interesting things to say....he should make a wee bit of time and share!

Thanksgiving weekend was fun...filled with ice cream, friends and duck. Yes, Duck.

Went to pick up my sister on the fri, and went for some Peking Duck. You know, it's so much more enjoyable when you get more than one pancake to yourself...With only four people sharing it, meant i got like 5 to myself! Yum!

So instead of having a thanksgiving turkey, our family decided to have a thanksgiving duck instead. Quite tasty actually...much more so than turkey or chicken, but i just wish the duck was a little larger, i have to satisfy my appetite. My appetite has seem to grow larger and larger...I'm constantly hungry at University and always looking for more food. Every lunch hour, I feel like buying two lunches, but of course that is too expensive to do, so i go hungry. I can't explain it either....my working out has really dropped off so I can't figure out why I'm so hungry all the time. Maybe by the end of the term I"ll be fat. We'll see....

Sat was 2 months for Kitty and I! We checked out a Hallowe'en Fair thing that was in the her area. She lives so far away north that there are farms nearby! Anyway, bought some pumpkins to get ready for Halloween. Went for a bit of shopping and ice cream. We were going to go catch a movie, but there wasn't enough time. Funny thing, we've never gone to seen a movie togther...which is a very typical date activity, but yeah, still haven't done it yet.

Sat night was dinner at Milestones. They present the food quite nicely there. I had a Club Salad, which was very tasty and very meaty. Just the way I like salads....full of meat :) And after was chilling at my place. Topics of conversation were having kids and marriage. Strange how those topics keep on popping up. Anyway, we went out to get some more ice cream, which I now have leftover at my house. So next time YOU come over, ask for some!

Anyway, I have tonnes of work. I just started the work in some of the courses this weekend and only now do i realize how behind I am. I'm so screwed...so I might not be blogging for a while. So I hope Mike can pick up some of the slack....

Lates,

--Nelson

Keith's Birthday!

Yes, that time of the year has rolled around again. It's Keith's Birthday, which he doesn't want celebrated. So of course we dragged him out to East Side Mario's on sun for dinner and embarassment.

Here's a background story on Keith and Beer. For Barry Ip's birthday, they were at East Sides, and they were trying to get Keith to drink a beer. And they were enticing him w/ money a free dinner and free calculus answers. All Keith had to do was finish a beer and he would have been the happy(/drunk) recipient of close to $65 in cash, a paid dinner and calculus answers. What did he do? He turned it down.

So for his birthday we of course buy him a beer (an Alexander Keith's no less). And I'm happy to report that he finished it and is looking forward to drinking another beer on his next birthday. (ok, i made that last part up....The truth is, he's looking forward to drinking more beer next weekend!!! haha, ok, I"m still making stuff up....). Anyway, we got him a cake, (which unfortunately did not have enough cream to warrant a pie in the face, although it hasn't stop us before....haha ChrisE) and got him to stand up on a chair for the entertainment of all (except for keith of course, who appeared to be quite embarassed....or maybe it was the beer that was making him so red, i couldn't tell). Anyway, Happy Birthday Keith! Hope you like playing War3 on Battlenet.

One other kinda funny thing today. When Edmond, my ECE231 skipping partner who happens to be from the east side of town, and I were skipping class and eating breakfast at SLC, he recognized someone. So he goes to me, "see that girl behind me?" From my POV, there were two girls, one white girl closer to us and a chinese girl a little further away. Edmond continues, "She was the #1 student at my school". So I go, "the white girl?" And he says the next bit with clear disdain, "No, of course not, it's the chinese girl!" I don't know why I found that funny, but i probably laughed a little bit too loudly.

Anyway, back to my ECE261 Power Systems Quiz, which I'm doing right now instead of going to EngSoc (engineering society) bowling.

--Nelson

I'm a happy sports fan:

Remember how I said they would have tickets at the pep rally? Well I went, I bought and I saw.

But right before that on sat, rick, huy and myself checked out east side's marios for lunch where it was Alexander's Keith's 207th birthday. They were giving away free mugs if you bought a pint of Keiths. So being chinese and all, i naturally went for the free mug. Ha, for that day, the first thing that entered my mouth was beer, and the last thing that entered my mouth the night before was also beer. Anyway...the mug is actually a really quality mug, and I'm happy I have one now.

Onto the Raptors. First of all the PAC was packed. I don't think I've ever seen it this full...and probably never will. They estimated about 3000 people were in there. They charged people $5 a ticket, and they were selling snacks and drinks, so the Athletics department must have made quite a bit. The Raptors Charity Foundation also gave $10 000 to the Athletics department. Lucky department. Our engineering department Endowment fund is still a rounding error when compared to UofT's. :(

So now onto the actual basketball itself. Some of you who don't care about ball might want to skip this part... The actual game itself was really close and very exciting. Basketball games are always fun if it's close at the end, and this one definitely was. Chris Jeffries hit the game winning three pointer with five seconds left.

I'm going to talk about each player's performance. Most of you probably want to skip the next part.

Mo Pete. If the Raps are going to do well, it depends on him and vince to pull the team through. First of all, Mo Pete looks thicker and bigger than last year. He played quite well actually, getting on fire and hitting 4 or 5 three's in a row. So perhaps his shot has improved too, but we'll see when the season starts. He didn't drive much, which I always thought was his weakness, and I guess it still is...

Vince Carter. Looks healthier and jumping quite well. He made a few pretty crowd pleasing dunks of course. He also took a whole bunch of jump shots and fadeaways...hopefully he won't be doing too much of that in the season. But overall, he looked healthy and ready to go. The raptor's future depends on this guy.

Michael Bradley. This guy sucks. He had a bunch of decent plays, but he was on the court for almost the entire game and you wouldn't even be able to tell. I think it was a bad pick and they'll get nothing from him.

Nate Huffman. Rookie 7-1 centre from Central Michigan. Tall White Guy. Enuf said.

Lindsey Hunter. Veteran guard, formerly of the Bucks and Lakers. Played a lot of point and was ok, nothing special. Broke Jermaine Jackson's ankles on one play, but i guess that nothing special. Had a nice layup over AD and was alright at shooting. He'll be a backup guard and that's about it.

Chris Jeffries. The Rookie from Fresno State. Had a very quiet game, but hit the game winning 3 pointer. This guy looks to be an average player, and might crack the rotation, but I'm not expecting a lot from him. He's young though, so there's room for improvement.

Jalani McCoy. A 6-10 C. This guy was actually pretty good. Had a few nice blocks and monster dunks, and basically showed he can play. I think he might make the roster and perhaps get some playing time at the C position, especially since we have no one else...

Lamond Murray. I was quite impressed with this guy. This guy is large and very thick and has a scorer's mentality. I think he'll help shoulder the scoring load for Vince, b/c he quite effective at scoring, inside and from the outside. A very good addition to team, considering we got rid of Michael "Yogi" Stewart for him.

Mamadou N'diaye. This guy is huge. This guy looked much bigger than any other guy out there. He did ok...got to the line a few times, which shows some aggresiveness, but he also picked up 5 fouls. I don't know how, but this guy fouls a lot, so I don't think he'll be too effective during the regular season. Too bad though, cause he definitely has size.

Jerod Ward. 6-8 Rookie from Michigan. This is another guy that impressed me. I hope he makes the team. He had nice dunks and a good touch from outside. The most important thing is that he has hops and athleticism, which is more than the most players out there. There may be a little potential in this guy.

Alvin Williams. Was very quiet, like the whole of last season. I hope he can step it up, but i don't think he has it in him. But he's a tough guy and will start for the Raptors, but hopefully they can get a better point in the future.

Overall, I think the raps will be a bottom seed in the east. It is totally dependent on how well Vince plays. I hope he has a good year, and hopefully they'll surprise.

Anyway, they're coming back next year to Waterloo, so all you Raptor Fans better plan a trip up around this time next year!!!

--Nelson

Ah, the end of another week, which of course means I'm behind in my work for yet another week!

I plan to start one of my courses this weekend though...i have no idea what's going on, i don't even attend the lectures....so i think it's about time i started to figure out what that course is about...

So wed, i went to the Dimensions dance, which is yes, a fob dance. But it was actually quite fun. Hung out with Kitty's friends, but i also saw a few of my friends there too. Did some slow dancing, which I hadn't done in a very, very long time. And of course I had a partner :) I actually recognized a few of the chinese songs, like the KISS video one and the one from Sassy Girl. And somehow they were able to keep FED hall open to 3, so we stayed to the end (we got there close to 12). So yeah, my 8:30 lab the next morning was done half asleep...good thing i have a partner...but he didn't even read the lab beforehand!!! Oh well it was easy and we did it really quick and finished before all the other groups. I guess I was more awake than I thought.

Thurs night was .... Friends!!! No, actually I don't have TV at home, which totally sucks, since I miss all the shows. Last term when i was living w/ my cousin Rob, watching friends was a house activity we all did together. But this term, no one wanted to pay for cable, so the only thing we use the TV for is MarioKart64. And trust me, we play that game a lot. Well at least i'm not addicted to it... if it were a computer game i'd be in trouble. Anyway what I actually did on thurs was go to Social Dance Class. And it turns out that it was a lot more fun than I expected! At first, it was dan&cynthia who suggested going to some sort of dance thing, but of course they decided not to in the end. So now we go with two of Kitty's friends. Her friend drives, so that's very convenient and nice of her....hmmmm, having a car for myself would be very nice...but what an impossibility. So anyway, that's what I'll be doing thurs nights.

And tonight (fri), was a night of moderate drinking after finishing up my lab test. First I went out with Andy's friend's to a local bar for dinner and drinks. Andy's girlfriend, Lisa, from Western (3rd year health sci) was up for the weekend. I hung out with a bunch of Andy's friends, which was cool... I actually spent quite some time discussing basketball with a fellow fan. Ah, such a guy thing, talking about sports, but what a common thing that so many guys can relate to. Anyway after dinner & drinks, headed over to Chard's place and polished off my whiskey (not by myself obviously...). Tried some of Tim's Costa Rican beer too. And of course, at Cary/Chard's/Chris/Keith/Barry's place, there's a ping pong table. And we had the bright idea of playing ping pong after we were pretty tipsy....ahhhh, what jokes. Surprisingly, the ECE team (richard and myself) played better than before the drinks, or maybe the SysE (pronounced Sissy) team (chris & cary (who just had a bit to drink)) just play worse when inebriated. Crap it, just realized i left my shot glasses over there, crap.

Time for sleep now, gotta wake up and go see some Raptors tomorrow.

PS did anyone notice how little work i got done? hmmm.....this could cause problems...

--Nelson

I'm not a happy sports fan:

The Toronto Raptors are coming to Waterloo for training camp. So the tickets went on sale at 9 AM on mon. I had an important 8-9:30 class that i couldn't miss, so right when it ended i headed over to the PAC (our gym, the Physical Activities Complex) to purchase my ticket(s). I actually had another class at 9:30, but i skipped it, since the prof, Sasanov can't really teach at all. So i walk over and when i get there, there's no line....but what is there is a sign saying tickets were sold out!!!! Argh. Apparantly there was a lineup of 200 people 1 hour b4 the tickets went on sale! Looks like I should have skipped my earlier class. Now i've been reduced to asking everyone i know if they know anyone w/ tickets....no luck so far...but trust me, i'm still trying.

But on a brighter note, as i was signing Kitty and myself up for social dance, the receptionist mentioned that they still have 700 tickets which are going to be given away at the pep rally just b4 the game. I think this will be my only chance. I bet you can all guess where i'll be spending my sat.... For the 5 mins i was talking to the receptionist, she got 4-5 calls inquiring about the raptor game. It was pretty funny, cause she had a standard spiel she was giving everyone. I got the feeling she was pretty tired of getting so many phone calls about the exact same thing. Anyway, i hope to see the raptors playing the PAC, that would be so cool.

I'll blog about 72 oz steak when i have nothing else to blog about...

PS Does anyone think i would see raptors out and about town, like at a restaurant or club? maybe i should start staking out those places in hopes of meeting a raptor....haha j/k

--Nelson