Timmy Ho is back! Matt, Cary and I picked him up from the airport on mon. The events of that trip was catalogued nicely by Matt. I just want to say that I don't normally "forget" about people, it's just that sometimes I get distracted (by things like ribfest...sorry keith!) or whatever happens. And also, yes I was speeding quite a bit too. I think the movie "The Fast and the Furious" must have had some sort of effect on me. I think I thoroughly scared cary and matt when I took a curve a little fast and my tires started squealing, but most importantly, I didn't lose control (and I made it on time). And of course it was wonderful to see Tim again. He looked really tanned and skinnier. He said he had lost 10 pounds! But he also said he was really fit, probably some of that lean jungle muscle. I can't wait to hear about the rest of his trip. Sounds like a very interesting thing to do, something that I may even consider doing sometime in the future (resources and time willing). Anyway, overall it was a very typical guy outing, which means it was full of fun and adventure. Which reminds me, there was a really funny thing on the internet that reminded me very much of my own driving. Can you guess which driver I am?

In cell phone news, I read a very interesting article about how wireless technology is changing the way people interact (from good 'ol slashdot). Give it a read, and you'll see why I need a phone so badly. This is how I like to live my life. I especially like the last line....haha.

Heard something interesting on the radio too. A study has shown that if you have a positive outlook in life, then you live, on average, 7.5 years longer than people that have a negative outlook. 7.5 years!!! And in my opinion, not only do you live longer, but I'm betting that your quality of life is probably better too. What I really wonder, is whether people can change from one to another. For most people, their outlook on life is set at a fairly young age and usually it's set for life. But I think it may be possible to change if one really wills/wants themself to. That's another thing I also really believe in - being flexible and adaptable. IMO, there is no other way to survive.

Gotta believe in the power of the mind, cause it's an amazing and powerful thing.

-- Nelson

Another weekend has already passed by! Now there's only one more month to go! Anyway this weekend kicked off the mad August birthday rush. And because Matt's is at the end of July, I'm going to count that one too. Mine is next and I'm thinking of doing something for the 11th, but further details to follow.

Anyway this friday was spent driving around shopping for presents. So Rick shows up at 5:30 at my door, but I'm still at the office, which is fine, b/c I was on my way out from work anyway. My parents had gone to the Bruce Penisula for the day, so my sister and I cooked up some BBQ chicken and Rick ate with us. BTW feel free to show up at my door any time...I think that's why I'm out with rick and whang so much, they just show up and we
proceed to have conversations similar to the following one:

Guys: "Hey, what's up. Let's go do something."
Me: "sure, where to?"
Guys: "I don't know, let's figure it out in the car."
Me: "I'm up for that, let's go!"

From there we drive around until we end up someplace.

On this fri, Rick and I end up at futureshop, where I check out the cell phones (again) and I saw one that I liked... It's a Telus one, made by LG, a nice silver flip one, but it's $250. I'm not sure if i want to spend that much money on a phone yet, but it is very tempting...and I feel I need one pretty badly too. Everyday I encounter a situation where a phone would be so useful - both at work and at play.

Sat was workout day in the morning. I originally planned to go to Wonderland with my Electrical classmates, but Keith and Richard both bailed, so I eventually decided to bail too. I had a birthday party and present buying to do anyway. Anyway in the workout session we decided to try something new...doing a hundred reps on the bench!!! We started off with a very low weight, worked up to a max and then worked back down. Needless to say I was extremely sore the next day, but no time to worry about that, b/c the next day was Mountain Biking!

Sat night was Matt's Birthday Party, which was a lot of fun. Matt BBQed for us some tasty ribs & chicken. And as an added bonus, Matt found his social drink, which is the Corona. We ended off the night by watching The Fast and the Furious, which surprisingly, a lot of us had not seen yet. The story didn't make much sense, but at least the cars were really nice to look at!

Sun morning was mountain biking! I was really hyped up about it, b/c in we had a lot of fun up in Killbear mountain biking. We had to call it off b/c it was thunderstorming in the early morning, but surprisingly, it cleared up in the late morning. As usual, on the spur of the moment, we decided to go even though it was cutting it close with my afternoon softball game. It was all the way in Ajax/Pickering, but we stopped along the way to meet up
with Aaron (an elec buddy) and his friend. Once we reached there I found out how exhausted I was as soon as I started pedalling. The workout the previous day had really taken a lot out of me. The first set of trails we tackled were not very technical, but we went quite fast. I reached speeds of 40 km/h on dirt and stones, which is actually pretty dangerous now that I think about it. After a water/power bar break on a really hot and humid day, we decided to tackle a very technical course. It went a lot slower, but it was very challenging. Lot's of sharp up and downhills, narrow bike paths, large stones and roots etc, etc.

It was on this trail that I biked into a tree. There was a sharp downhill with a turn at the bottom, but unfortunately, I couldn't make the turn at the bottom of the decline, so I biked straight into a tree! I hit the tree with my front tire and flew into the tree. I ended up hugging the tree with my bike fallen over at my legs. I was ok and most importantly, so was my bike (you know, the body heals itself, but bikes do not). Anyway it was a lot of fun and I'm planning to go out again in the near future. Give me a shout if you want to come with!

I had to cut biking a little short and hurry back to my softball game, which I almost made on time. I don't think I've ever been on time for a softball game yet! It turned out to be a really good game, decided by only one run. We had a one run lead going into the opposing team's last at bat and we held them to no runs. This is actually quite a feat, considering how relatively easy it is to score runs in my league. Afterwards the team went out for dinner at the cheapest buffet we could find, which was Abacus. I used to really like buffets when I was younger, but now I really dislike them. Sure, there's a
lot of food, but the quality is usually very poor. IMO, money is much better spent ordering a quality meal at a nice sit-down restaurant.

The team had decided to rent a movie and watch it back at Iris' home, so a dozen of us show up at a local blockbuster. Everyone knows how it goes when that many people go to a video store and try to decide on a movie. The way I figure, is that with each additional person, the total time spent at the video store increases by 10 minutes. Well this time was very different. We all decided on the same movie within ten minutes! That must be some sort of world record! Amazingly we all decided to watch Shallow Hal, which was pretty good (for those of us that could stay awake for it all since we were so tired from the food and physical activity).

Anyway, another fun weekend down, only a precious few more to go! Man this blog is like a recital of my events, I think I should make it more interesting and fill it up with other stuff... Like how I had a very nice date on thurs in High Park, watching the Shakespeare play, A Midsummer's Night Dream .

Best wishes to Mike and his family. Till next time

-- Nels

PS Happy Birthday Matt!!!

Had the biggest scare of my life this morning. My dad woke me up to find my grandma gasping for air, then suddenly she went blue and all limp in her chair. Thank God my sister did the Heimlich as I called for an ambulance. My entire family spent a tense morning in the hospital. Grandma is back at home and recovering now. I feel numb.

-Mike

Work has been really busy lately, which I think is a good thing. Cisco has a bunch of SE (system engineers) running around setting up Cisco's Voice over IP solution. I get to run around with them, helping them out and learning a whole bunch of stuff from them. They are pretty cool guys too. First of all, they are all really smart and know a lot. All of their engineers have to go through constant training, so that they can move up on the Cisco Certification ladder. Their training is fairly intense too... they have to study tonnes of material and pass their exams with more than 85%... and they are doing this constantly! The result of all this is that they know what they are doing, which is better than a lot of people I've met over the course of my work experience. Plus it's a very difficult process to become one in the first place - you have to pass 6-12 interviews that test different skill sets. First of all, they have to know their technical stuff cold. They have to be intelligent and flexible. They have to have good people skills to be able to effectively relate to clients. They have to be able to make presentations that are good enough to sell people Cisco products. And if they don't perform, they get fired! Cisco fires the bottom 5% of their engineers every half year to maintain quality.

Despite how difficult it seems, It does sound like an interesting career path though. All of them love what they are doing. They get to travel a lot, their work is always different and varied from day to day, the material that they are doing is interesting and they get paid a whole lot. They all drive Beemers and such, have good stock options (actually, not that good anymore...) they have nice pads and then there's the gadgets! These people are definitely into gadgets. And they have the money to buy it too! I myself, as you probably already know, am into gadgets too, and I've had many conversations on all the cool gadgets they have. How's this for geeky? I've spent time at work trading palm applications, discussing how envious I was of one the guy's low ICQ# (in the hundreds of thousands, for those who were wondering), debating the merits of carrying certain pieces of equipment in our tool kits and talking about where to get cool cell phone rings. And I got props for my Clie, which is quite flattering in a geeky kind of way.

There are bad things about that sort of career though. Work takes up so much of your time that you might not get the chance to enjoy all the money you've made! The other major negative thing is the constant high stress levels (which has caused premature loss of hair colour in all of them). Anyway, something to consider as a career path. Which is also one of the best things about co-op -- the exposure you get to future careers and such.

Just can't say enough good things about co-op.

-- Nelson

So i was blogging on monday, and I was merrily typing away in my Internet Explorer window when suddenly it crashes for no good reason. I know it's my fault too, because I was dumb enough to type in IE instead of notepad, but still, that pissed me off plently. Anyway, here's my rewritten blog entry:

So my master plan of waking up on fri and feeling all better failed miserably. I wonder if any of you could see the flaw in my plan.... I was still feeling pretty miserable, but plan are plans. I must apologize to Matt and Richard for getting them sick and I hope Carol and Di don't get sick either. (it's impossible for Whanger to get sick, so I don't have to worry about him).

So being sick also meant no drinking for me on fri night. We had a quick dinner at East Side's before heading over to FED. We first went to SLC so that Dee could collect her Hip Hop dancers before heading over. It was kinda cool watching her direct about 20-30 people (moving in unison, too!). Her performance went well, and it was obvious how good a dancer Dee is herself!

On the whole, Summerfest on fri was actually kinda dry. There were very few people, the 70's funk band wasn't that good in a club setting, i stayed dry and Matt wasn't entertaining us by hitting on the women...haha j/k. But there was one cool thing that the organizers had setup that night - Labatt Blue had set up a glowing blue portable stage/bar. That was alright. Anyway, we left at around one (which should have been the peak time, but it was actually getting worse) and went for some bubble tea. Unfortunately, when we got there, it was already closing, so we couldn't stay long. Also,
gotta thank Dee for letting us sleep over and disrupting her weekend, Thanks!

The frosh leader conference the next day wasn't that great either. First of all, it started way too early in morning (at around 9:30). But they did have a good guest speaker that came in and talked about things like your inner recess spirit. The rest of the day was filled with activities and presentations, which actually weren't that exciting. I couldn't believe it, but Cynthia skipped out almost the whole day! She left practically after paying her fee for the day! Anyway, I was there till the end, hanging out with likes of Richard, Huy, John Huang and Barry Ip.

Afterwards, we caught up with Dee, Carol and Matt at Chapters for more chilling. I think that was what we did the whole weekend...chill and take random digital pictures. And somehow, Dee got around to petting my head, when she made the comment that it felt like, first, a thing, then an animal, then a camel and lastly a horse. And now I really don't know where I'm going with this story. I guess it just shows how laid back this weekend was.

Summerfest on sat was much more fun, although it was only Dan and Rick with me. We did convince Rick to let the girls do his hair, which actually looked pretty good! (BTW, like Dan always says after making that comment, which I agree with - "I'm not gay") (not that there's anything wrong with it, of course). Anway FED Hall was absolutely packed. Dan told me to forget about my sickness (you know, "mind over matter") and surprisingly I did forget about it and got around to knock back a few drinks. I knew a lot more people there and in general, it was much more fun than fri night. Jeff Wentworth was there too, and it was cool to talk to him about his 12 month coop placement in Japan! Yup, he's going to work for Epson in Japan for 12 months! Sounds like a really cool experience, working abroad, which is something I'm interested in doing too!

Anyway, thanks to Cynthia for letting us stay over at her super nice place. Her place has bay windows AND A/C!!! But it's kinda far, it took us 40 mins to walk back, with a quick break on a friendly bus bench.

I had to rush back to my softball game on sun afternoon and when I woke up that morning I realized that I was still kinda sick. And on a related note, I played a horrible game! It was against John Huang's (my former roomate) team and Rob and I really wanted to win. We did end up winning, but by only one run! It was a low point in my softball career though.... I actually struck out! I got two bad pitches and I fouled off the third pitch, which means I'm out! I couldn't believe it!!! I made a few fielding errors too... just wasn't a good day to play softball. I went home to get some much needed rest, but I couldn't fall asleep, so I ended up talking on the phone till really late.

One more thank you: to Matt for driving everyone home so I could make my game. I still have a nagging cough, which is really annoying and I really hope everyone else doesn't get too sick! sorry bout that guys!

- Nelson

I'm sitting back in my chair listening to the Barenaked Ladies' hit "Brian Wilson". I'm exhausted, but in a good sense. The kind of exhausted feeling you get when you've been productive and you know it. This morning, I catalogued all the journal articles I've collected while researching various topics, using a program called Endnote. I sent those files to my boss out in Vancouver. After a lunch, I worked on the renovations to the Executive Washroom. There's a whole bunch of little things that needed to be done to the washroom. I fixed the lock on the door to the work area, screwed down the sink countertop to the wall, measured out where the bathroom light is going to go, etc. I'm going to paint the washroom as well, so I did some priming work to get that ready. Poly filla'd all the cracks and holes in the walls and sanded it down. Tomorrow, I'm going to install the bathroom lights with Mauro's help and hopefully by Friday, I'll start painting. I'm also expecting the new camera lens to come in so I can install the camera as well. Things are shaping up and the washroom should be ready for experiments in a few weeks.

-Mike

Yesterday, my MCAT class was pretty funny. I haven't told you guys much about my classes or about my instructors. Well, the Physics instructor has got to be the coolest out of my three instructors. How do I describe him? Hmmm, put together a gangsta with a straight A student. Example, last night we were taking up problems, and one guy asks "How do you know that the car is half the mass of the truck?". The physics instructor responds "Cuz it says in the question. To approach these kind of problems RTFQ". HAhaha, funny cuz he said it so matter of fact. He uses funny examples to illustrate physics concepts too. When were going over buoyancy, he goes "now you know why it's hard to drown someone because they have a buoyant force pushing them up. Plus they are also struggling which makes it hard to hold them down". Once again, said in a matter of fact tone.

Well, all those going to Summerfest, have a BLAST! I'll be waiting expectantly to read those blogs!

Mike

Work was so busy today! I even had to miss lunch! :( Miss a few days and the work piles up, eh? And what a miserable day too, i thought i was getting much better, but when i woke up this morning I definitely was not.

This weekend is Summerfest (fri and sat night). It's Diana's next to last performance as part of the UW Hip Hop club on fri night. I'm also going to a Frosh leadership conference most of sat. Softball game on sun too. Going to be a busy weekend.....and i'm still sick. and I'm driving....

So the plan is I'm going to wake up tomorrow all better and have a fun weekend. We'll see how that goes.

Wish me luck...

Nelson

Hey kids,

I have been sick at home for the last few days, so i haven't felt like blogging (or doing anything at all for that matter) recently. I did say I was going to talk a bit about Minority Report, and I will, along with all the other happenings of my weekend. So here it is Matt style:

FRI:
Got home a little early from work on fri and decided to do some chores!!! I had really been neglecting some chores around the home recently so I decided to go wash the car. The accord was pretty dirty, especially after coming back from the camping trip, and me cleaning it was part of the deal that allowed me to take it up in the first place. So here comes some elbow grease. Actually, it was a really nice sunny day and I really enjoyed spending the time outside washing and then waxing the car. I never realized how much joy one can have doing a chore.

Cynthia was up from Waterloo for the weekend, so Rick, Whanger, Cynthia and I decided to go out and catch a movie. I really wanted to see Minority Report, and just this weekend, passes were allowed, so that was the movie we decided on. First, it was off to Jack Astor's, where I had a dinner consisting of exclusively nachos (my family was down visiting Queens that day, so there was no food at home :( ). Then it was onto the movie. I must say, I haven't been this entertained and satisfied with a movie for a long time. It got 93% on rotten tomatoes which is actually quite high. The only critique, is that the end sequence is a little long, because of the multiple climaxes. But on the positive side, the computer that Tom Cruise was using was really cool. Maybe I should look into inventing one like that in the future or something, but definitely something to shoot for in the future. Anyway, go see the movie, I don't want to hype it up anymore, or it'll ruin it. We ended the day with a run to Krispy Kreme. Wow, what healthy meal choices on fri, nachos and krispy kreme donuts!

SAT:
Did some more chores around the house, things like vacuuming and laundry. How boring... but i did watch this program on TV where they were trying out sky diving.... it actually looked pretty fun! Someone mentioned doing something like that next year...count me in! Anyway, hung out at my friend, Vincent's house for the rest of the day and helped him fix up his comp. He made a comment on how I don't know how to say no to people, but more on that later.

SUN:
Missed working out with Matt for the third week in a row....tsssssss.... hear that? That's the sound of my muscles deflating. I should really do some more exercise at home or go over to Matt's house more, cause I'm not joking about that deflating bit!

Anyway, once again hung out with Cynthia and Dan, but this time at the driving range. We gave a quick lesson to Cynthia, and her golf swing actually looks pretty good, for a newbie. Anyway, we finally (we had been trying many, many times) saw Gilmour there (at Centennial) and we got hooked up with free balls! We chatted for a while and it was really nice to see a friend from high school again. Anyway, I think I'm ready to head out to a real course soon, so hopefully I'll get a chance to get out on the greens in the near future. Anyway, after baking in the sun for a few hours we had the splendid idea of coming back to my place for some BBQ steak!!! This time we bought the right kind of steaks (Sirloin Grilling Steak), we seasoned it just right and i managed to undercook them a little... which equals Steak Perfection! It was a very, very good meal. And this time, we bought the seafood and pasta salads. Sorry Rick, no Bangkok salad, I know it's your favourite and all, but we're just not Bangkok salad type of people. Haha. Rick did show up a little later and scarfed down some salad a steak or two though.

After steak was my Softball team outing. Another fun fact: Keith Mo also knows my softball captain Iris (and of course Iris' older sister, Ruth, hehe). The outing consisted mostly of bowling and bubble tea. Throughout the evening we compared driver license photos, which provided plenty of laughs (thankfully my renewal is coming up really soon), found out about Iris' impossibily small hands, got some DDR in and had a massive game of spoons that never seemed to end. All in all, a very fun laughter-filled evening.

So that was my weekend. Vince mentioned how I don't know how to say no to going out and doing stuff. I think he may be right, because I think I became sick from chronic fatigue and lack of sleep. Plus when you haven't had a meal with your family for over a week (not including tues nights, which is always occupied with my distance education course, Nuclear Science) maybe it's a sign that I should take it a little easier...but on the other hand, it is my last summer in Toronto for at least two years..... decisions, decisions....

Nelson

Man, it's getting dangerous at work. One co-worker, Phil, knows jui jitsu and another co-worker, Mauro, is taking Karate and Kickboxing. Anyway, a couple days ago, they brought their practice nunchucks to work and taught me a few things. It was pretty cool and man am I glad those nunchucks were padded!

Been kinda funny these past few days cause everytime I come across Phil, he goes into a fighting stance. So I go into a fighting stance too and we throw a few punches and blocks here and there. However, yesterday, he got me in a hold and twisted my wrist back to pin me down and it hurt!.... And it still hurts!

Oh yeah, yesterday, I had a Teleconference Meeting. Dr. Fernie and I at Sunnybrook, Dr. Rochon at home in TO, Dr. Leonard at U of Ottawa and Dr. Mihailidis at Simon Fraser, all hooked up for a conference call. It started out kinda funny because the two female linguists (Rochon and Leonard) are buddies and haven't talked to each for a while since Leonard moved to Ottawa recently. So they were chatting away about kids, the new place, work etc. It struck me as surprisingly normal. Normal because this is what friends usually do, but surprising because I've never seen the personal sides of "professionals". I think I got this from reading Matt's "Blog", that people are just people, no matter how many letters they have behind their name. Anyway, they kept chatting until Dr. Fernie interrupted and said we should get this meeting underway.

And the Blue Jays winning streak is snapped, is anybody listening?

- Mike

Jo has left the country. Yes, Joanne has left for China for 6 weeks! She'll be learning mandarin while she's there, so maybe I'll be able to converse with her in mandarin! (I fear she'll come back and know more than me, which is not completely impossible...) So on thurs, we had a goodbye dinner at Le Biftheque... one of my favourite steak places, cause it's cheap and good. I brought a labtop so I could show my collection of digital pictures, but the most important reason was to show everyone a pictures Mike took of Jo. He took it from just underneath her chin, so that you can see up her nose.... all the way to her brain!!! haha. It's so funny, I'll put it up on the website as soon as I figure out how to... and I should figure out how to within the next six weeks, b/c in that time, at least Jo can't punch/kick me from all the way in China. Dinner was quite entertaining too, with talk of Jo & Derrick and Michelle asking me some very pointed questions. Oh, did I mention that that night was Dinner and Theatre? After walking out of the restaurant, Michelle decided to give everyone a little show. She started dancing and singing her little performance she and her friends had made up in China on her Mission. It was so entertaining, and it will continue to be entertaining because i caught almost all of it on the camera!!!

I plan to blog tomorrow too, b/c I saw Minority Report on fri and I want to mention how good it was. Till then, lates.

Nelson

Things that I heard on the radio driving to work/driving to school/driving home.

On 680 news lastnight: N'Sync singer, didn't take long to get over Britney Spears. He was seen at a party held by Missy E, in a passionate kiss with.... Janet Jackson. JANET JACKSON!?@#. Say it ain't so Janet, say it ain't so. I've always liked Janet. Her music has been around for decades, and like Madonna, always finds a way to adapt their music to changing times but still be different enough to be unique and have their own flair. But man, I only hope it was someone that looked like Janet in the arms of J Tim, or it was someone that looked like J Tim...ughh. I'm sure Nels is thinking, "Justin, you idiot! BRITNEY MAN!!!!" hahaha

This morning on the FAN590: Dolly Parton made a cover of Led Zep's Stairway to Heaven... How can this happen? Letting a classic rock song be remade by a country singer? I'd like to know what Ric is feeling about this.

Mike

I like getting money in the mail. Just yesterday I got a notice from the government saying that I qualified for the GST credit. That means I get an extra $300 from the government. Ching Ching. So for this year, I got back over $2500 from the government...I don't think it'll ever be this good in the future, so I may as well enjoy it while it lasts. So I'm really looking into getting a cell phone now... everyday i come across a situation where a phone would be useful. Gotta figure out what plan I'm going to get though, and how much I plan to use it. Anybody got any advice/deals about cell phones? I was walking around Sherway and looked up some plans....some of the phones are pretty nice, but I'm looking for a small one, which means it's more expensive. Also went airplane watching, but that's another story onto itself. On a completely unrelated note, Mike keeps on telling me that we have to increase our ratings and he keeps on looking straight at me for good material...

Free stuff is so good... Richard just dropped by my place and he says that 7-11 was giving away free slurpees... and I just got a free CBC shirt... and I got a free fix from HP for my gravity load printer. Free is Good.

Anyway now i really feel like going mountain biking.

Peace out.

Nels

whoops, goofed up that entry. Long story, basically, didn't know server went down, couldn't publish, tried finally succeeded...twice.... Sorry about that folks

Yesterday, I brought my borrowed guitar to work and during the lunch break, me and another co-worker were practicing a bit. We're both beginners so it wasn't anything nice to listen to hahaah. Hopefully we'll both get better before the summer is out. We plan to have these practice sessions every Wednesday during the lunch hour, but I'll probably do a little more on my own time. I'll let everyone know when I'm ready for those big fat cd label contracts! Ha!

Man, I think I'm really hooked on mountain biking. A friend told me that there's this place in Barrie where you can rent mountain bikes and go offroading on one of the trails. I'm really considering it. Maybe after my MCAT's, I'll drive a couple of buddies up there to chill, have a few spills and get a thrill! (To play along with nels thinking I'm a rhyming blogger).

I'm out.

Mike

Just got back from an awesome camping trip, as you can probably tell from Mike's entry. I won't go through the whole trip, because he did a pretty good job of covering it and for an even more thorough account, you can read Carol's monster blog entry of 2000 words. That's the size of a high school english essay!!! But her account is so entertaining, Mike and I can only dream of writing like her.

Onto the trip: The ride up was ok, but we had to be careful, because the bikes almost came off the rack! When I looked back, I saw that only one of the bikes was still on the rack and the only thing holding it from coming loose was the middle binding. We fixed that up, but I had to keep on checking on it for the rest of the trip. And of course Cary was asleep for most of it. I have a disproportionately large number of pictures of Cary sleeping in my car. Surprisingly, for one of them he is awake in my car, but in the very next picture he's sleeping again.

That first night we played some frisbee on the beach, which was a lot of fun... Mike and I almost pushed Richard into to the lake, but we were nice and just gave him a scare. Then we did a very guy thing with the girls... sit around talking in a circle and tossing a ball around. Of course all the guys sat with their legs crossed or closed to protect their crown jewels. No injuries that day, especially since the girls didn't really understand the true entertainment value of that game.

The second day's weather was not as nice. The weather man had predicted a sunny day, but it was overcast the whole day. It turns out that it was overcast from the forest fire smoke from Quebec. At least it was warm though.

That morning we (Mike, Richard and I) went mountain/off-road biking, which was the highlight of the trip. It was so much fun! We went biking on a huge slab of rock, where Rick messed up his bike pretty good. We had to go to the Ranger station and get it fixed up (by physically bashing his gear with a wrench...just like real engineers). Then we took our bikes on a hiking trail, which was awesome because it wasn't designed for bikes. We had to carry our bikes through sections of it. Other sections had sharp drops right beside the trail and near the end, Mike almost led us over a cliff! Richard fell once and Mike had to jump off his bike once, but other then that, no major injuries. And when you do this type of biking, it requires a certain amount of technique. You want to keep your pedals off the ground so that you can avoid the obstacles, but at the same time you have to keep on pedaling, or you won't be able to get over the obstacles. Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I hope Richard will have doubles for me (stupid me, I didn't bring a camera on the bike trail because I didn't want to break mine). So by the end, we had biked over 20 km, averaging 12 km/h with about 1.5 hours of actual biking time (yes, I have a computer on my bike and yes, I know how geeky I am). Lot's of fun though, can't wait till next time!

That afternoon we were playing some catch and since we didn't have enough gloves for the number of guys there, I came up with the idea to play running bases. Oh man, that is such a grade school game. I hadn't played in such a long time that I didn't even remember it's proper name. At first I called it "Running the Bases," which sounds so gay. But it was a lot of fun, because we played on the beach which makes sliding safer.

After being in the lake, I naturally wanted to take a shower to get rid of that lake smell. When I got to the shower, I discovered I had forgotten my soap at home, and my little bottle of shampoo was almost out. Oh well, I hadn't intended to take a shower that weekend anyway, so at least i got a nice rinse, which was better than nothing. Hopefully no one noticed, but if you did, sorry for the smell :) (plus, most asian people don't have much B.O., and I fall into that category, which makes life so much easier:) )

We (Matt, Carol and Mike) had a very entertaining ride home. Topics of conversation ranged from comparing girls in Carol's Instyle magazine, motorcycles, adoptions and babies, and the similarities between fat chicks and scooters (ask Matt Wong for the answer). For the whole trip I was hurrying home to try to make the second softball game of my doubleheader, which I made just in time. It was my first game of the season, and it was fun, but unfortunately we lost (to tsun-kit's team, my roommate from last term). I really hope to make the rest of the games in the season now, since I've already missed so many!

Anyway, just wanted to thank everyone who helped organize the camping trip, especially Ava, Steph and Cary for all the work they put into it. It was tonnes of fun!

Nelson

Hahaha, I'm a poet and I don't even know it... eh nels? hahaha

Well, back from camping and I brought with me about 30+ mosquito bites, the number keeps increasing as I find new bites. I really really really want to destory mosquitos! Ok, back to the camping trip. What can I say? My body is sore from an exciting weekend! It was by far my most physically active weekend. The first evening when we got there, we headed to the beach and played frisbee. I haven't played frisbee in years and it was just good playing it again. My team (me, nels, Ava and Carol) got off to a slow start and were down early. We hit rock bottom when our superstar player Carol succumbed to a foot injury (she stepped on a rock and it cut the bottom of her foot) and was forced to sit out. We rallied behind our fallen comrade and fought back to victory. Nels made some highlight reel plays that would have brought down the house if we had spectators. In one play, I tossed the frisbee the length of the field to a wide open nels. Nels kept running and caught the frisbee on one finger! The next monster play was also engineered by me. Cary was covering Nels one on one, so I figured I just toss it up and see what happens. Well, nels happened! The frisbee was floating in the air and it looked like Cary would intercept it. Cary jumped for the frisbee, but in vain. Nels leaped over Cary, reached over and plucked the frisbee out of the air before Cary could get his hands on it. Man, I wished I had a camcorder to get that on tape! But the best play of the day goes to Ric. The other team was driving hard to our end with Cary QBing. There was a lot of traffic as our team buckled down to play some tough D. Cary launched a blistering throw aimmed at Matt and boom! Ric popped out of nowhere, snagged the frisbee in one hand in midstride! It was beautiful! Props to everyone, especially the girls who played well (Carol, Ava, Steph). It was really fun!

The next day, Ric, Nels, and I went mountaing biking! It was quite an experience because I've never gone mountain biking before. I had borrowed my dad's bike because it had shocks but he's shorter than me and I forgot to raise the seat. So for the first half of the trip, as nels described it, it looked like I was riding a stunt bike. Well we rode up a big rock and everywhere we looked, it was rocky. I guess that's the Canadian shield for ya! Ric got too ambitious trying to get up a boulder and dented his gears. Anyway, to cut to the interesting part, we went to the adminstration building, borrowed some tools to fix our bikes, and then went to the Lookout Point Trail.

The Lookout Point Trail was the best part. After taking a few pictures, we were in a dilemma. The sign said "no biking". Actually it didn't SAY "no biking", but it had a picture of a biker in a circle that was slashed. We were like, uh, do we go? do we not go? In the end we decided to go... best decision we made! Come to think of it, the sign was probably for our own safety because it wasn't intended for biking. There were many rocky paths with sharp edges and dangerous drops.... but it was soo much FUN! We biked all the way to the bay, stopped for a few more pictures (btw ric, I want doubles please), went down the bay and threw a couple rocks into the water and climbed back up. On the way back, I almost lead the three of us over a cliff.... needless to say, I didn't lead the group at the end of the trail. AHhaha

After lunch, we headed to the beach for some more frisbee action! But this time, it was in the water! Gosh that was one good cardio workout. After playing frisbee and drying ourselves on the shore, we played an old school game... RUNNING BASES!!! For those who have forgotten this glorious game, I will give a quick tutorial. It involves catchers and base runners. There is aleast two bases with an equal number of catchers to field the bases. The runners try to run from base to base to accumulate their number of "bases" without getting tagged out by the catchers. If you get enough "bases" you can become a catcher. Fun times man!

Hahah, that night, the rest of the group went on a hike to look for stars, I was tired and afraid of getting more bites so I decided to hang around the fire with the citronella cans. So anyway, Ric, nels and I stayed behind. We experimented with burning stuff in the fire. Newspaper burns brightest when you lay out the paper in flat sheets. However, the risk is that the heat from the flames will blow the flaming paper out of the fire pit and start a forest fire. Cardboard burns very well too. It has very good staying power and burns almost as well and regular fire wood. The cool thing is that our cardboard had holes in it and you can see the flames coming out of the holes. Toliet paper wasn't as good as we thought it would be. Actually, toliet paper burned the worst out of the three.

On the way back home, I was in nels' car with Carol and Matt. It was a fun ride home. I bought some batteries for Nels' mp3 cdplayer and we had tunes to listen to on the way home. On highway 69 somewhere, we stopped to check our bikes to make sure they wouldn't fall off the bike rack, and decided to make stone statues. Matt and I climbed up the rocks and built this cool rock art. I say art cuz it's that good! Nels climbed the rocks just to take a leak (his poor left hand! hahahah) We took some pictures and continued on our merry way.

I can say I really enjoyed the vacation. I just hope next time we go to a place with no mosquitos, they like my protein rich blood!

Well later!
Mike

I'm blogging one night ahead because I'm going camping tomorrow!!!!

But today was softball practice, which was fun as always. This time 10 teammates showed up, which means we could have a real practice. Before the season started, Robert was telling me how our team was so stacked. Well at practice today, I realized that we are really not very good. We lost our last game 23-13... ouch. But of course I wasn't there, so you know.... haha j/k. I think we have potential though... if we practice at our D, then we'll be very very good.

After practice we went for some yummy ice cream. This is also where I found out about a connection back to my illustrious rhyming blogging buddy! (rhyming because of his line: "The barber is Raoul. He's Columbian and he's pretty cool" That could be some kind of weird limerick or something.) It turns out that my softball captain, Iris Lee, has known Mike since they were kids! Mike worked for their family at the CNE for a few years. That was pretty cool to find that out.

Anyway, the next entry will be about camping!

Nels

Well this morning, I went to check out the renovations with the "Executive Washroom". The "Executive Washroom" is a washroom that the Long Term Care gave to us to use in our clinical trials and studies. Anyway, we've added false walls, removed the double sinks and replaced it with a single one and made a work area for the researchers to conduct their experiments. I figure I will be in there one of these days doing a trial. I think we've pissed the females because the washroom was originally a female washroom. Now they have to walk farther to get to another washroom. We asked Plant Operations to convert the male washroom to a unisex one, but they haven't done anything yet.

Afterwards, I got a haircut. There is a barbershop in the Long Term Care so it was really convenient. The barber is Raoul. He's Columbian and he's pretty cool.

Well that's all for now.

Mike

Well, the Canada Day Long Weekend has come and gone and here's a run down on what happened... but from my (nelson's) POV.

I was on a Safeway bus tour the whole weekend, so all my stories will be about my trip. First of all, the trip was with my family and my parents had decided to go to Michigan, Casino hopping. I've never been to a casino where I was old enough to gamble, so I thought that his might be kinda fun, you know, new experience and all. But first, there was the bus ride up....
The first night we went up to Sault Ste. Marie, but more importantly, stopping off a big Outlet mall for shopping. I normally do most of my clothes shopping on vacations at large outlet malls (the kind where there's a bus to take you to different parts of the mall) with my sister, Grace, and this time was no different. Anyway, our target store was J.Crew, but it was all the way on the other side of the mall. So we eventually got there, stopping off at many stores along the way, so needless to say, we arrived there with not too much time left. We shopped there for a bit (btw, their winter stuff is much better than their summer stuff), but soon it was time to go... so as we were checking out, they had a discount - if you signed up for a credit card with them you can get 10% off your purchase. Well being chinese and all, I signed up right away just for the discount, but by this time, we were suppose to be back on the bus already! And the cashier was having trouble with my application b/c I'm Canadian so it was getting a little stressful... I know the bus isn't going to leave us behind or anything, but being the last people back on the bus is kind of embarrassing, so we tried running back. If you were outside this weekend you would understand how impossible that is. So we ran for a bit, gave up and walked all the way back…. late. Oh well… I can’t understand the snide comments from the passengers anyway since they are all in Cantonese. But the good thing is now I have a J.Crew credit card, which my sister says will be very helpful when you order off their website b/c they have a lot of sales that involve the credit card. Plus, when we got back, our dad had bought us lunch, which we hadn’t had yet, b/c my sister’s motto is “shop now, eat later.” (Actually, she wouldn’t use those exact words, but you get the point)
Anyway, I was glad to eat (as always) and my sister was happy too since she picked up $18 (US) CK jeans.

Onto the gambling: My cousin Robert went on the same trip last year and he has a gambling system. He won over $400 (US), so I figure I should give it a try. It works like this: bet the minimum after every time you win, but if you lose, double your bet until you win. Once you win, go back down to the minimum bet. As long as you don’t reach the table maximum on a long losing streak, you will continue winning money. So I sit down at the blackjack table with $100 and start playing. On the second deal I start a losing streak. I get up to my fourth straight loss, and that means I’m betting $24 on one hand. Fine, I have to stick with the system for it to work. BUT it was at this point my mom finds me and she thinks I’m crazy, b/c I’m betting so much. I proceed to lose that hand, which means I’m suppose to bet $48 (almost all I had left) on the next one, but since my mom is there, she objected, and so as to not make a scene, I bet the table minimum of $3. I lost two more and then start winning…. so I start off the night down almost $60. And good thing my mom showed up, otherwise I would have had to go to bed early. So for the rest of the night I bet small, and I made it back on the positive side by the end of the night.

The next night, I decide to keep the bets small again. This time I lost a bunch of money at the $5 blackjack table, but not a whole lot. I counted my longest losing streak, and it was 8!!! I think I lost about $55 during that streak, so good thing I didn’t use that system that night. BTW, did I mention you get some free money in chips every night? So overall, I came back from the casinos with $30 more bucks then I came in with. So technically, I did lose money at the casino, but in the bigger picture, I came out on top. Although, if I just cashed in my chips right away, I would have come out with more money, but that’s no fun.

Casinos are actually a kind of depressing place actually... I was watching this one lady bet $100 each round of blackjack... and I saw her lose about $1000 in about 20 min. And the people that inhabit casinos aren't exactly the greatest either... plus all that smoke. Oh well, fun for an occasional thing.

Overall it was a pretty fun trip, quite possibly one of my last family ones for a while at least. Plus when I got back, I got to play some Ultimate and hang out with the guys, which is always fun. Anyway, looking forward to the camping trip this weekend!

Nels

Well, the Canada Day Long Weekend has come and gone and here's a run down on what happened.

Saturday:
A pretty uneventful morning and afternoon of just studying and looking after my grandma. By the afternoon, things picked up. I originally thought I wasn't able to go to the bbq/get together at Ava's, so I told her so. However, I found that I had some free time and decided to join the gang. So I call Ava's place, her sister picks up and tells me that she and a group of friends left already to Michael Power's to play frisbee. "Excellent" I thought, "I'll race down and play some frisbee!"
I sped down the highway, reach Power's and no one is there. So I figured, maybe they got tired and went back to Ava's to chill. I drove to Ava's, rang the door bell, and her dad answered. Now, normally this wouldn't be worth noting, but I was dressed as Carol would say, a "thug". Anyway, to make a long story short, I kept looking for the gang, bothered the So's some more, got hold of Richard's Cell, joined them and chilled for the rest of the night. All in all, it was a good night.

Sunday:
Woke up and went to church. It was pretty cool because the MCI crew almost took up an entire pew! Cary, Carol, Jo, Ava, and I were there. The message was a very good one and I'm sure everyone took something home from Rev. Wong's sermon. It was about loving God with all your heart, all your sould, all your strength and all your mind. It looks deceivingly as a simple instruction, but it's a very difficult line to follow.

Monday:
CANADA DAY! I hung out with a group of friends from UWO at Paramounts Canada's Wonderland! Sam came up all the way from London too. Victor was supposed to be there, but he hurt himself from another basketball related injury. It was cool to chill with my ex roommate Derek. Haven't seen the guy all summer until yesterday. It was also nice to see Joanie, Grace and Jessica and it was cool to meet Kevin and his girlfriend Jessica2 ( I say Jessica2, so you won't think it's the first Jessica I mentioned). For dinner, we walked out of the park to a nearby Wendy's. I ordered 3 jr chesseburgers and a medium coke, but accidentally the server gave me a spicy chicken instead of a jr burger! JAM!
Oh and I won a stuffed duck shooting basketballs at the Vince Carter Mr. Big Booth. The duck is now named "Dudley". The fireworks at night were really spectacular. I came home tired from a thrilling day.

Well, that's my weekend. Next week is going to be sweet too. I'm going camping!

Mike