Tuesday, April 6, 2010

One with the Crowd.

In a recent resurgence of blogging, I too feel the urge to follow the crowd. (Yeah, I'm a sheeple. Bite me.) Thus, I present "Things I worry about..."

...when I think about going away for Uni
  • Bad Showers
  • Lack of uber smokin' I-think-you-set-my-eyes-on-fire-hot guys.
  • Missing my violin
  • Not having enough Asian food.
  • Hating the weather
Things most people worry about for University
  • Tonnes of work
  • Not failing
  • Getting jobs
  • Practical stuff.
Discrepancy? I think so. It's possible that in fact, I don't really care about the school part of school. Why? Because I'm pretty sure school is the same everywhere. Sure, the professors might be better here than over there, or there's a ratio of 1:2.667 teachers per student or whatever it is that people judge quality of schooling by. But in the end, I'm 99% sure that it doesn't matter what school I went to because they all teach the same thing.

Now, this would be different if I wasn't going into engineering. But I am, so let's not get all hypothetical here. I applied to the exact same program which is going to get me the exact same degree at 5 different schools. The only thing different about the schools is their surroundings (and the innards of the buildings). While some schools lure you in with promises of school spirit and parties, others beckon with promises of warm weather and good food. But really, it's the downsides (or lack of) that make the decisions.

I'm not overtly worried about sharing rooms, I mean, if it gets too bad, I could always just request a new room(mate?). But the little things bother me.

For example, showers: People always say that you should wear flip flops into the shower. Footwear just doesn't make for a good shower though! Rubber flip flops always get that icky slimy feeling when wet, and wearing any other material just feels stupid. Who the hell wears leather flip flops to shower in? Nobody, that's who.
It sounds crazy now, but a good shower is key to staying sane. Living in a house with enough water pressure to clean your pores out, I'm setting a pretty high standard. As long as there is sufficient water coming out of the showerhead to rinse shampoo off my head, I think I'll be able to cope.

Also: My stuff. I have tonnes and tonnes of stuff. Where does it go? I'm not living at home, so there's not reason for my parents to hold onto my stuff. but I certainly can't take it with me, there simply isn't room. Perhaps this is the perfect time to nip my hoarding tendencies in the bud before I star on my own documentary on A&E. "Hoarders: The woman who hoards SPAM"

The answer to my problems?
Making a perfectly rational Pros and Cons list for each university. How perfectly logical of me.
...Until you realize stuff like "BIG" and "Jizz in Pants Chem Labs" have made it on to the lists. (But those are sort of valid points...)

No?
Oh well.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

For the Love of Newts


I’ve always looked upon my friends with mammalian pets with a little jealousy. My nonhuman best friend is a newt. While my friends give their puppies hugs and run their kitten’s bellies, I chip blocks of frozen bloodworms with dull knives. When my friends whisper secrets to their rabbits or guinea pigs, I scrub algae off a rock. When a child gets their first hamster, it’s cooed ever and poked and prodded. When someone gets their first newt, it’s met by screams of “get it away from me!” Not to mention that newts carry salmonella and excrete neurotoxins. But you should be fine if you wash your hands and stuff.

But sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of scratches left by a cat who did not want to be bathed, or the hair left by an overeager dog, I smile to myself and silently praise the docile amphibian. My newt may not do cool tricks, but he's not going to eat my favourite earphones or pee on my rug. He might not come running to the door when I come home, but he's not going to bite or scratch me either. Best of all, he's not going to cause any allergies, which is more than I can say for cats.

But I still feel absurd when I whisper secrets to him. You just can't tell your secrets to an amphibian.

(So I should have been writing university applications, but, I got sidetracked into this.)

Friday, February 12, 2010

I'm so 2008

Hey, remember this?



Oh yes. Olympic protesters!
What was that? Free Tibet you say? That's funny, because I don't think it had anything to do with the Olympic games that were actually being held. *

*abbreviated because I can rant on about this forever.

But you know what does have to do with the Olympic games being held right now?
Vancouver's homeless.

It's no secret that Vancouver has a huge homeless population, between the high real estate prices, housing shortages, and huge rates of heroin abuse, there's a booming bum population. Interestingly enough between the time Vancouver won the bid for the Olympics and now, the homeless population has doubled (predicted much earlier), and not just because the number of addicts has skyrocketed due to the advertising of "Team Canada Heroin". Housing booms have forced ordinary people out into the streets. But that's what the government's for, right?

No! Since the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) went 5 billion dollars over their 550 million dollar budget and had to be bailed out by the government, anything that isn't feeding/housing/massaging/or killing athletes has been brushed aside. So what did they do about the homeless people? Well, after passing a bill that gave Police free rein to do whatever they damn well like to the homeless (bumfights anyone?) they also forcibly removed them from the area. Funny, apparently there isn't any room in the 5 billion dollar budget to squeeze in a little sommin for the homeless, eh?

"Oh but every city does this" is no excuse for doing it again and again. Every time the Olympics roll around to a city, it brings social havoc. The poor get poorer (and sometimes evicted) while the rich get richer (and score a prime seat at the games). Vancouver really could have used all the money it spent on the Olympics to help out their own city instead of putting in a shining mask for the world. They're not fooling anyone anyway.

Speaking of not fooling anyone, what is up with all the aboriginals? Yes, I think it is important to celebrate the native heritage of this country (that is otherwise squashed and relegated to a reserve with contaminated water). But Canada is not 99% aboriginal, which is what some might believe after watching the opening ceremonies. If we really wanted to show what Canada was all about, then there would be a multicultural display of everyone together; different, yet the same. I guess it all boils down to the guilt. Aboriginals are 15 times more likely to become homeless (see above rant.), they're stuck on reserves where it's overcrowded, underdeveloped, and impoverished. To move off the reserve means using money they don't have, because they're on the reserve. And within the reserve, there are all the problems that poverty causes: glue sniffing, alcoholism, suicides. But hey, at least they get some air time to do some throat singing, right?

I'm pretty sure the money that went to sending truckfuls of snow down a mountain would have been much better spent on the city itself, but hey, the Olympic spirit lives on in Canada!

Oh wait, no it doesn't. Sure the records are getting faster, stronger and higher, but it's also getting a lot more hostile. Instead of the fair play that is expected of people who want to excel at their sport and display their talents, it's been reduced to doping and exploiting the grey areas in the rule book. Canada has been particularly naughty these years. Researching top secret technologies for the athletes seems a little underhanded. While using technology to improve the sport isn't unfair, it is decidedly unfair to make sure that no one else is able to use the same technology. It's become less about the sport, and more about who has the lowest coefficient of friction.

So, which one was worth boycotting?

***Anti Free-Tibet rant coming soon to a blog near you!

Homework/references/articles I've read
The Walrus

The Homeless Issue

Someone that holds the opposite point of view

Monday, January 25, 2010

In Soviet Russia, Newspaper reads you!

Let me share with you my favourite way to waste a day:
The ironically titled Pravda news website.

Why so Ironic? Gather around children, it's really simple explanation time.
Pravda is Russian for "truth". And yet, the front page of that site reports its top story as

"Thank You Massachusetts For Killing Me"
Oh, so it's like the Onion? You ask.
No, unfortunately, this site takes itself VERY SERIOUSLY.
History buffs who avidly study the Russian communist revolution will recall that the leading newspaper of the Soviet Union had the same name. Indeed, it did, but it died in 1991 when the Soviet Union died. This site is unaffiliated with the historical newspaper, but it is run by former Pravda employees. Which begs the question, what were they reporting when it was an official newspaper if it's being run by the same people?

Some of my favourite articles?
"Aggressive Blonde Creatures Are Very Bad at Getting Jokes" in the Society Section..
"3D Films Can Make You Paranoid " In Science..
"Poland is Cruising for a Bruising; US Eating Its Own Vomit" In Opinion...

Not to mention the entire series done on an alien supposedly found in an attic. (Generally believed by the rest of the world to be a mummified fetus)

And thus concludes another blog post done when I should have been doing something else.