ME, MYSELF, AND I

I admit it was weird having everyone leave the College, but I'm enjoying the quiet time. Miriam was in a mad rush to pack today because she's leaving tomorrow. We had lunch and a nice conversation. She was the only person that I saw until around 5pm.

I also bought some Christmas lights from the on-campus dollar store. There were five bucks for a string of 50 lights. They can stay on steady or blink. Quite a nice deal. I put them on blinking and hung them in my window. You can see it below.



I was planning on going home on Monday, but I think Tuesday is more likely option. I'm enjoying just having the time to myself to clean, organize, and get some things done. I think people get stressed out about the holidays because they're too rushed to get too many things in: buying presents, seeing friends, seeing family, and various other commitments. A holiday should be restful and that involves having time for yourself.

Well, it's the Best of Will Ferrell, Vol. 2 on SNL tonight, and I need to go find a tape for that. I'll see you guys later.

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THAT'S GOTTA HURT

SJC had a pinata thing here a few days ago, but it didn't turn out like this.

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HOLIDAY SHOPPING

Around 4:30pm or so, I headed downtown to do some holiday shopping. First though, I stopped off in Chinatown for a bowl of pho tai at Pho Van on Main. Some of you know my addiction to good pho, and again I suckled at its sweet teat once more. I tell you, it's the broth that does me in everytime. So rich... so sweet... so aromatic.

Satiated with my pho, I proceeded downtown to get my Mom her gift and to scout out my Dad's gift. I braved myself for the crowds, but to be honest, it wasn't bad at all. It didn't seem any busier than a regular Friday night. That allowed to me look in a lot of different places.

I managed to buy a pair of shoes for myself, which is big, since I usually buy shoes every 9 months or so. I tried on three different pairs of shoes, with two different sizes per pair. I felt awful since I know I'd hate to wait on someone like that. I did manage to find a pair I liked and it did fit, so the dude got his commission.

I also picked out my Mom's gift. It cost substantially less compared to gifts of previous years, since I'm dirt poor now. I hope she likes it. I checked out my Dad's gift, but I have to confer with my sister before purchasing it.

I took the bus home and realized two more people were leaving the College for the holidays. Dana is flying out on Saturday and Miriam is going on Sunday. I said my goodbye to Dana and he gave me his extra set of Christmas lights. That was very nice of him. I'll be putting those up tomorrow. I also stopped in to see Miriam, she gave me a jar of pickles and her leftover dinner. I like it when people give me food.

On my way back to my room, I ran into Chris who wanted to go McDonald's for some ice cream. I agreed to go with him and he drove us to the on-campus McDonald's. That place is convenient, but after dark it gets a bit weird. I can't tell you how many times I've gone there and something is broken. It's usually two things: either the ice cream machine or the debit machine, but never both at the same time. I swear there must be some common part that goes into both machines and they only have one of them, so they alternate between having no ice cream or no debit machine.

Well, tonight, it was time for no ice cream, so Chris was out of luck. He had a craving for ice cream, so he got the next best thing... a cafe americano from Starbucks.

Alright, I have to go watch some TV now.

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WEIRD

It feels like there is no one at College right now. The last two people I've seen here were Chris and Kate. They've both from Richmond. It appears that if you're still here, either you live really close by or really far away.

Tomorrow, the final meal at SJC for the year will be served. It's this crazy five hour Christmas buffet brunch thing. It starts at 7am. Special fancy breakfast items will be served at first. Then, as time goes by, more and different food will be brought out. At around 10am, I'm guessing brunch items will start appearing. Around 11am, the lunch stuff should be out. I don't think anyone stays from 7am to 12pm, but you could. Last year, I got there really late, but I managed to have shrimp dumplings, smoked salmon, and maui ribs, all on the same plate.

I'm going to try my best to get there by 10:30am. If I were an early riser, I'd go in at 8am or so for breakfast and come back every hour on the hour to try the new stuff.

Tonight, I went out to dinner with Justine, an old friend of mine from undergrad. I haven't seen her in years. She suggested the Alibi Room. It's a neat venue, but I thought the salmon there was so-so. It's probably a better place for drinks than food.

Justine is one crazy bird, she had a lot to say during dinner. I got caught up with her life, which took a while. After our meal, she wanted a coffee, so we drove to Main St. in her ecletic Valiant. It's got no seat belts and my window was piece of plastic tarp. In a way, it was very fitting. It was good to see her again.

Justine mentioned she saw Return of the King the night before. Am I the only person that hasn't seen that yet? It's not even the weekend, and it seems everyone I know has found a 3.5 hour chunk of time to view it.

I'm not sure when I'll see it. I'm tempted to see it in any old crappy theatre just to get it over with, but that would violate a few personal rules I have about viewing movies. I think in the end, it would be wrong to see it at any place other than a Silvercity. This means I'll have to go out to Burnaby or Coquitlam.

Ok, so enough rambling for tonight.

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THAT SUCKS

I cleaned my room and bathroom today. It felt good. I did hit a snag though. I desperately wanted to vacuum my floor, but both communal vacuum cleaners were taken. We keep them in the second floor laundry room and you're supposed to sign them out. Both of them were not signed out.

I sent out a carefully worded e-mail to the SJC mailing list, inquiring about the whereabouts of the vacuums. I made a small reference to them not being signed out, but it was veiled in a way that didn't accuse. Between you and me though, what those people did was poor form. Sign the form out if you're gonna take the damn vacuum for that long. They had it a long time too.

I also didn't get to my shower stall. That thing needs a serious cleaning. Why the hell did I just write that? Who wants to know that?

It's gotten quite quiet here at the College. I had guests over for dinner tonight, which made it an enjoyable meal for me. Tim and Kirsten came by to sample the teriyaki salmon. I met both of them when I lived in Vanier. I gave them a tour of the College and showed them my room. They were impressed with the quality of my room. Having lived in Vanier, my room is a far cry from the closets we lived in.

Alright, Chris is talking to me right now, I'll end this here.

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EXODUS

By some unheard or unseen signal, a majority of SJC residents I hang around with flew out of town today. I've never experienced such a mass exodus on one day before. Nearly, everyone I had dinner with last night is gone now.

A few of my friends remain at least for a next couple of days. Miriram is going to teach me how to play the violin before leaving. Dana and I will probably go to Dairy Queen once more before he heads off.

As for myself, I'm in no hurry to head off to my parents' place in Port Moody. They live in a cramped townhouse, and there's really nothing to do in old PoMo. I guess there's always Lougheed Mall and IHOP, but most of my friends live in Kits and downtown, so I'll be chillin' here at UBC for a while. I still have to do some shopping. I also have to meet up with some friends that I haven't seen in a long time. All this is much more convenient to do from UBC than Port Moody.

I also have to do a room cleaning of epic proportions. This place is a mess. Not only is it not clean, everything is out of place, so there's some re-organizing to do as well. I wanted to put up some Christmas lights, but for the life of me, I can't find a set that I like. I want to get the ones that are a light blue or lavender. Where the hell do people get those?

Well, I have to start my cleaning. I'll see you guys later.

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SIX WAYS TO SUNDAY

I wanted to write this post on Sunday night, but with the keyboard incident, I've had to wait until now. I am now typing this on a brand new Fujitsu 8729 keyboard. It's that bright beige computer colour and stain-free (from food people, let's keep it classy).

On Sunday, I was scheduled to meet some people by the SJC clock tower for dim sum. Having thought I had set my alarm, I went to bed the night before. I awoke the next morning at 11:01am. Holy crap! What had happened? It turns out I didn't hit 'OK' on my alarm and it just sat there waiting for me. I was out of my room in a record eleven minutes. That includes hair combing, teeth brushing, clothes changing, and even a little sip of water.

Luckily, everyone had waited for me and off we went to Floata restaurant in Chinatown. It me, Bryan, Sarah, Adrian, Ian, Kaz, Kenji, Ivette, and Mark. Since I was the only Chinese person in the group, I did most of the ordering. I was looking forward to the steamed chicken feet. I love that stuff. When that cart came around, I made sure I got myself a helping of it. No one would touch the stuff. Sarah seemed especially displeased with it. Finally, Ian stepped up and had some. Ian's a good, decent, dependable guy.

Overall, it was alright as far as dim sum goes. I have had better and I have had worse. It's different when you're the dim sum veteran and you're doing all the ordering. You're always wondering if everyone is enjoying the stuff, or if you've ordered enough, or if you've ordered too much.

Here are some photos from dim sum. Notice I took a picture of the chicken feet that no one would eat.





For dinner, I attended my friend Dan's 30th surprise birthday party. It was thrown by his lovely wife Tracy, who made all the arrangements. She picked The Irish Heather in Gastown as the venue. We had the entire coach house in the back to ourselves. What an excellent place for a party.

The coach house is a small two story brick house in the back of the pub. To get to it, you have to go out through to the end of the pub and then out into this small cobblestone alleyway. It's like you've been transported out of Vancouver and to Ireland. The coach house is on the other side of the alleyway. I was very pleased with the selection of food that Tracy picked out. Items included smoked salmon, spring rolls, and skewers of chicken. Their drink menu contains many choices of whisk(e)y, enough for any drink enthusiast.

It was a great evening and I even wound up with a large portion of the birthday cake!

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BAD KEYBOARD!

I wanted to post last night, but I spilled water onto my keyboard, and that was it for the night. Have you ever tried surfing or using your computer in general without a keyboard? It's a challenge, let me tell you. In the morning, the thing was kinda working but I think it's finally given up the ghost. I have to go get a new one this afternoon. I'll be back later.

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HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA

Today was the third time we've been out to play hockey. We've kind of settled down into a routine. We don't have a goalie, hell we don't even have goalie equipment, so we run offense vs. defense drills. One team is O and the other is D. When a goal is scored, the teams which positions. The teams also switch when D is able to clear the ball past a certain line.

When we get tired of running around, which is pretty damn quick, we switch to a skills competition. With an empty net, we try to hit the net from sucessively greater distances, marked off by the lines of the parking stalls. The farthest line is on the other side of a concrete wall. This wall has a hole in it with a diameter of about 3 feet. First guy to hit the net from there wins. I won that competition, hitting my last three shots in a row without missing.

The next competition is to hit either the posts, the crossbar, or a small target we have set up in the net. This is considerable harder. This one took a while to get a winner, but in the end, Phil took the challenge.

Thanks goes out to Adam, Phil, Jamil, and Aseem for coming out.

Here are some blurry photos of the event.

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