ANOTHER SATURDAY, ANOTHER LOSS

We played our third ball hockey game today. It was against a frat team. I made sure to tell a few of our newer players that it was a frat. You gotta be prepared for anything against frat boys.

Our entire team showed up for the game. There were lots of spare bodies. We even had a ringer for the game. Arash's brother came to play goal for us. He was awesome. I played one shift during the first half because there were so many lines to cycle through. It did not help that guys were taking marathon shifts. One of our best players also had only one shift.

At the end of the first half, we were behind 5-1 or so. Suprisingly, there wasn't as much body contact as I had expected. Aseem got our first goal. He pinched in from the point on an awesome play and was left alone in front of the goal.

The second half was where it got chippy. I was going for the ball, and this guy behind me stuck out his stick and I stepped on it. I went sliding on top of the ball. Dude behind me then grabbed his stick and started cross-checking me on the ground. I grabbed his stick to remove it from my back, and when I got up, the ref gave me a penalty! Two minutes for holding the stick! What the hell? What about the cross-check? I swear the ref had some funny dealings with the frat team, because they didn't get a single penalty for their stick work.

I sat for two and luckily they didn't score. Everyone started getting into it at this point. The frat boys were fond of shoving you into corners if you were the first one in. Nic was having this great battle out front with this guy. Of course, the frat guy slashed him but the ref didn't notice.

Steve said he was gonna fight a guy, but we had so many guys he didn't get back on for another shift.

The game ended like 10-2 or something. Aseem notched our second goal on another beauty of a play.

So, we're not the best team in the league, but guess what? We maybe not the worst either! Check out the standings. In Pool A, the Law team has a huge negative goal differential just like us!

In the grand scheme of things, it's still fun to go out and get some exercise. It's also a chance to do some bonding with the boys at SJC. So, even we go winless for the season (and we probably will), I have no second thoughts about playing.

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NOW AND THEN

Geez, this school thing sure does get in the way of writing for this web site. Anyways, the important thing is that I'm here now.

So, do you ever wonder about what some of your former classmates are doing now? Do you ever think about the guy that used to eat paste in your 2nd grade class? What about the girl that had all the New Kids On The Block pictures in her locker?

I had a few of those questions answered at my ten year high school reunion. However, some things, you just find out by blind luck. This, is one such story.

I have this friend and former classmate, let's call him R for now. Well, R was at a strip joint one day in downtown Vancouver. This was about two years ago. To his utter surprise, who did he see on stage? A former junior high classmate. Her name was M. M went to my elementary school and junior high. She was blonde and very pretty. By the time we reached junior high, some people noticed she might have been worried about material wealth more than she should have. However, on the occasions when I did talk to her, she seemed nice enough.

My friend R, came home that night and was bursting at the seams to tell me and another friend about his find. He was so excited. One of our classmates had become a stripper and he got to see M naked. Two birds with one stone in a way.

When he told me, I too was excited, but perhaps not as much as he was. I briefly entertained the notion of seeing her myself, but shortly after it just didn't seem interesting enough.

My buddy R saw her once more and they actually had a brief conversation after her act. That must have been surreal.

So why am I writing about this now? Well, it's because I've been looking for the last piece of the puzzle. Sure, I have old year book photos of her, but what could I offer in the present tense? How the hell could I show you what she does now? Where do you get pictures of strippers? Real ones? In your own city? Only then could I make a worthy post.

My friends, that piece of the puzzle fell into place two evenings ago. It's not important how I got the piece or who sent it to me, but that I got it.

Below and to the left is the year book entry for her grade ten year, circa 1989. To the right is a picture of M in "work form". The picture is cropped for your pleasure, but if you click on it, you'll get to see the real deal. WARNING: clicking on the pic will lead to some tasteful nudity, so if you're surfing from a place that would frown upon that, wait until you get home.

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NEW MOTTO IN LIFE

I have a new, albeit cryptic, motto in life now...

"What would Johnny Patterson do?"

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CHINESE NEW YEAR'S DINNER

I have just come back from SJC's annual Chinese New Year's dinner. It started off with a lovely reception that featured wine and finger foods.

Before the actual dinner there was even a lion dance. Dinner was great. I had lots of food.

I took many photos, which hopefully I'll post in a few days. Look for them then!

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FILLED WITH RAGE

Perhaps I am not exactly filled with rage, but I am certainly pissed. I just got back a quiz and I got 82%. Yeah, sure that's an A-... yada yada yada... but he marked liked a sonuvabitch and took off 18% for really, really small mistakes. I went from almost getting perfect to 82%.

It may look like I'm overreacting, but every mark counts and this little indiscretion could cost me down the road.

Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhh!!!!

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A HUNCH

We're months away from final exams, but I already have a hunch on how one of them is going wind up.

I've spent the last three hours working on a discrete math assignment. I finished one question and tried two others. I couldn't even setup the other two.

The course is about mathematical proofs. I hate proofs. It's the academic equivalent of my Achilles' heel. When it comes to proving things, I am very, very bad at it. If someone told me to prove poop comes out of my ass, I'd have a hard time even figuring out where to start.

So, why the hell I am taking this course? Well, it's a pre-req for an artificial intelligence course. Geez, if AI is all about crazy proofs, maybe that's one area I shouldn't be looking in to then.

By now, I know the academic side of me quite well. I can recognize slight stumbles and know that I'll be alright. I can also spot when I've come upon concepts that confound my brain, and will always be a struggle for me to understand. Discrete math is one such subject.

While April is still a long time away, I know that I will have to battle this course every step of the way.

And on that note, let's end with a picture from a Super Bowl party.

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the erwintang.com interviews

This new addition to erwintang.com has been in development for weeks. Well, actually it wasn't weeks of development... more like a few days of development and the rest lethargy. Anyways, I digress.

So, I've decided to interview people via e-mail for my site. My readership was grown considerably in the last few months and I wanted to gain an insight on those who visit. By publishing the interview, the rest of you can see who else reads this site. I think it'll be fun.

I conducted my first interview with fellow SJC resident Marcia George. She was kind enough to agree to it and answer all my questions.

If you want to participate, please send me an e-mail and I'll see if we can work something out.

Well, without further ado, click here for the very first erwintang.com interview!

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WEEKEND UPDATE

So, the much anticipated weekend is almost over. My, how time flies when you're doing homework.

Well, I actually did a few things other than work over the weekend. On Saturday, I woke up at 11am and per my usual routine, one of the first things I do is to dial-up CNN to see if Iraq and North Korea still exist. I think I may still have been half-asleep because for about a second, I was wondering why the main photo featured seven astronauts. Shuttle landings are never top stories any more I thought.

As I read some more, I became dismayed that another shuttle was gone. I was eleven when Challenger was lost and space accidents aren't really something you see very often. I think that is part of the reason why people take space travel for granted now.

I have no doubt that the engineers at NASA will find out what happened, correct what needs attention, and move forward in space exploration.

I had planned on doing work on Saturday afternoon, but I was glued to CNN for a while. Before I knew it, I had to go prepare for my second ball hockey game.

This time we had another addition to our team, Matt Farish. He's tall so that something we were looking for on our team. We were going to play a Dentistry team called the Drillers.

When we arrived for warm-up, we noticed they only had four players and a goalie. That meant that had no line changes. It was a bad break for them, but possibly a good for us.

Well, to make a long story short, we got ventilated for nine goals I think, while we managed to tally one. They only started playing tired with around three minutes left, when the outcome was hardly in danger.

On a personal note, I had my first shot on net! For reasons to complicated to get into, I was playing defense during the game. They dumped it in on a change, and I needed to get off to, so I sailed one in from my end all the way to their goalie. Of course he stopped it, but hey, a shot on net is a shot on net when you're down eight.

Speaking of hockey, what a hell of an All-Star game today! I think it was the best one I've seen in a long time. For once the goalies were awesome. The only reason it went into overtime was the play of Patrick Lalime. He was a wall for the final five minutes in regulation. When it did go into OT, I was so hoping it was going to end in a shootout. It was nice to see Naslund and Kariya get their goals.

Well, I have to get back to work. Stay tuned later tonight for a new addition to erwintang.com!

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