Month: February 2003

JOIN US

It was about a year ago that I heard Justin Trudeau had left his teaching position at a private school in Vancouver. After being thrust into the spotlight after his father’s passing, I was somewhat expecting this might be the signal that he was giving to the world of politics. Would he try to follow in his father’s daunting footsteps?

I heard nothing else about him until I was sitting in a waiting room at the health clinic last week. As I sat, I grabbed a Maclean’s from the table. There on the front of the December 2002 issue was a picture of Justin Trudeau himself. Inside was a lengthy cover story about him. As I read through it, I got to an interesting part… “decisions that may or may not be made once he finishes the engineering degree he’s pursuing at the Universite de Montreal“…

I stopped and read that again. What? The man already holds several degrees in English Lit and Education. I wondered why he would go back again. Later on in the story, he says he went back to “explore the scientific side“. Wow, I thought, that’s quite admirable.

The story didn’t go any further into his studies, but just today, there was another article about him on the Internet. In this one, he stated he wouldn’t be getting into politics for at least another four years since he wanted to finish his engineering degree.

When I read that, I got the feeling he was serious about this engineering thing. Because he mentioned the four years, I knew he was starting from scratch, from the first year. Here is the son of probably the greatest politician to have ever lived in Canada, sitting in classes with 18 year olds, at 31 years of age, working on his third undergraduate degree.

Then I began to wonder which discipline he would choose. I only know his public persona, but if I had to guess, I’d say he’d choose mechanical. I’m not sure why. If not mechanical, then I think he might choose electrical or civil. Again, I’m not sure why.

I worry though about the strain an engineering academic career can put on a person. Justin leads a very dynamic life and at times, you just have to be hermit to get through critical times in the academic year. I’m curious to see how he will handle that.

In the end, I hope he does accomplish his goal and finish his degree. We have nothing in common right now (other than the fact he studied at UBC once), but it’s weird to think four years from now, he and I might share the common bond of the ring.

Now, I must go study for my last, and toughest midterm.

BACK TO WORK

As a welcome back to school from the break, I wrote a midterm this morning. I didn’t ace it, but I’m pretty sure I passed it. In years past, I probably would have dwelled on this, but hey, there’s nothing I can do about it now.

I’m probably motivated to move on because I have two other midterms this week. The one I have on Friday is going to be a doozy. I hate discrete math and proofs.

In other news, I found out something very interesting a few days ago. Lhakdor, the resident translator for the His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, is staying at St. John’s College. He’s been here for almost a month. At first, I just noticed a man in the traditional robes of a Buddhist monk at the dining hall. We get a lot of international visitors so I thought he was just visiting the campus, and he just happened to be a monk. It was only a few days ago that someone told me not only was he a Buddhist monk, but that he is the only resident translator for the Dalai Lama.

Apparently, the only reason he’s away from His Holiness is because the Dalai Lama is in meditation and is not travelling. I’ve had only limited contact with Lhakdor, but people tell me he has a playful spirit. Everyone is quite interested in talking with him.

Marcia, another resident here at SJC, was trying to convince him to give a short talk at the College. He said Saturday was a good night, but then he checked his daytimer and realized he had to go to dinner at “Goldie’s”. Thinking it was a restaurant, Marcia said where is Goldie’s? Lhakdor replied it was not a restaurant, but in fact Goldie Hawn’s house here in Vancouver. He was going to have dinner with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Wow.

The talk instead went on last night, but unfortunately, I had to study. People told me it was an excellent presentation.

Well, I have to get back to the grind. Later.

BLEAH

I’m not feeling so well right now. Those hives still haven’t gone away. The last time I had a food allergy reaction, it lasted about a week as well. Except, it completely laid me out last time. I got the hives and was exhausted.

This time around, I’m tired and kinda lethargic, but I’m still able to do my daily activities. Hmmm… I think I’ll go follow-up with the doc tomorrow. Remind me never to eat eggplant ever again!

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve been using a new stat tracking tool on my site. For the first time, I’ve been able to see how people are getting to my site. For some of you, you’re just using your bookmarks or typing it in. In the data, that just shows up as people directly visiting the site. However, some people are getting to my site via search engines and that does show up in the data. Specifically, I can see which search engine they’re using and what they typed in. It’s really quite cool.

By far, I have the largest amount of referrals from google.com and its various incarnations. About 200 people a month stumble upon this site via their google searches. What are they looking for? Here’s a list of things they type in:

bootleg dvds – Suprisingly, my site is fourth on the list if you type that in

Markus Naslund pictures – I have two pictures total of him on my site, yet my site comes up as third on the list?!?!

E3 2002 booth babes – I almost crack the first page, but I’m relegated to the top of the second

why widescreen is better – not bad for a few pages I did on a really boring weekend

ewok song – wow, fourth on the list for something I’m kinda embarassed about now

So, what does this tell you? That my site is important wealth of info on the above subjects? Hell no! It should tell you that even though google is a really good search engine, you can still fool it.

Also, I’ve noticed that these random surfers very rarely poke around elsewhere on my site. They kinda look through what they were looking for, but usually they don’t go looking for other stuff. For example, a lot of people looking the E3 2002 pictures don’t realize I have E3 2001 pictures as well.

I’m going to do some other stuff now. I can’t believe reading week is almost over!

THAT’S AWFUL!

While I didn’t think my gum procedure was that bad to begin with, I certainly don’t think it’s anything at all anymore.

Click here and listen to Brendan Morrison describe the injuries he suffered to his mouth last night during the Canucks unbelievable comeback win in Detroit.

He lost a bridge, broke two teeth, got a nerve removed, lost a chunk of his gums, and had a tooth penetrate his cheek. And he still came back and set-up the Malik’s winner.

That’s one tough dude. I use the word “dude” way too much.

$900 FOR WHAT?

Today, or I guess yesterday technically, I went out to Burnaby in the early morning to see my gum specialist. This in itself is interesting because up until yesterday, I didn’t have a gum specialist.

That’s because on Monday, I woke up early to see my regular dentist. He said I have a problem with periodontal pockets, so he booked me with the specialist. It wasn’t exactly what I had planned for my break.

Anyways, my regular dentist also said something weird. He said, “Erwin, I think you should get some blood work done. There’s a really small chance it might be diabetes.”

Had he said anything else other than diabetes, I would have been really worried, but I wasn’t. That’s because I’m hypoglycemic, which is like the exact opposite of diabetes. I’m well aware of the symptoms of diabetes, and I know I don’t have any of those.

Then my dentist made an odd comment. “Oh, by the way, it’s not anything serious like leukemia if you were worried about that”.

Leukemia? I just came for a check-up. Who goes to their dentist thinking they might have leukemia? Geez.

So, I’m getting the blood work done anyways just to appease him. After I saw him, I went to the clinic to a get form for the lab. The doctor asked, “So, wait, tell me again what your dentist said?”.

I told him and then the doc gave me the standard diabetes questions. Pee lots? Tired more? Nope. Nope. He gave me the form afterwards, but I could see the skepticism in his face.

So anyways back to the gum specialist. He said I needed this procedure done on one of my teeth. It’s where they peel away the gum, clean up the root of the tooth, and re-suture the gum back together. Grand total for this hour of fun? $900. I checked my UBC dental plan and I’m covered for half of that. Wow, I might get two done then.

Dude said, “Have a nice meal beforehand, ’cause you’ll be on soft foods for a while”. Nice.

Tomorrow, I am going to wake up and not see any dentists or have anyone shove anything in my mouth and tell me I need to pay them lots of money.

And I will end with pictures of a Valentine’s Day Party.

BE BACK IN A MINUTE

This is supposed to be reading week, where I had planned on getting lots of sleep and studying done. This is not turning out to be the case.

I gotta bus my ass out to Burnaby tomorrow morning. Really early. I’ll fill ya in when I get back.

CRIME BLOTTER

Well, I hadn’t planned on posting right now, but the damn freaking cable service at UBC just went crazy about 25 minutes ago. One minute I’m flipping back and forth between the lovely Jennifer Garner on Saturday Night Live and some sex ed show, then I’m seeing and hearing static.

I’m sitting there in my underwear wondering what’s going on. I check all the cables and everything is as tight as a drum. I re-start the TV app and still static. I get dressed and head on up to the TV room. Some dude is flipping through static as well. He tells me it went out about the same time mine did.

Back down I go, and I get on Messenger to see if anyone is on that lives on campus. Jonathan is on and he lives over at Gage. He tells me he’s getting static too.

So, I could either do work, or something else. Here we are doing something else.

I’d like to share a new link with you. I’ve been reading the on-line press releases from the Los Angeles Police Department for about two years now. These releases detail all serious incidents that the LAPD are involved in on a monthly basis.

Reading through them is fascinating. I know LA is a big city with lots of crime, but the details of each incident just highlight how dangerous it can be to live there. In each month, enough people are murdered to equal maybe half a year’s worth of Vancouver’s homicides. It’s almost unbelievable how many times LAPD officers are involved in firefights in the average month. It’s no surprise they were one of the first departments on the continent to switch their regulation sidearms to semi-automatics.

The LAPD press releases can be found here. When you look through them, take note of the phrase Officer Involved Shooting, usually those are the most interesting. Click here for one of my favourite incidents in years past.

Got no one to give you Valentine’s candy today? Make your own.

TIRED

The pickets did come down before I was even awake. The strike, however, did not end. The pickets came down for bargaining talks, but that accomplished nothing. The talks went no where.

You’d think that would mean this strike is likely to last a long time, however, tonight, I received some info that does not bode well for the TAs. I’m not sure if it’s entirely true, so I won’t mention it.

The buses were running as normal as of 9:30am which meant I got my haircut without any problems. I did, however, make an unscheduled stop to the Student Health Service today. It all started last night when my ankles got really itchy before I went to bed. I scratched them to much relief, but then I broke out in hives. I think I ate something that my body didn’t like.

Anyways, when I woke up, everything was fine. Then on the way back from my haircut, knees got itchy. It took all my willpower not to take my pants off on the bus and just start scratching.

As soon as I got home, I scratched like there was no tomorrow. I swear, I have not derived so much physical pleasure from scratching an itch. Of course, the hives popped up all over my knees, at which point I decided I needed to go to the doctor.

When I got to the clinic, this super-hot blonde was ahead of me in line, and by the time it was my turn to see one of the doctors, my hives had gone away.

She said I had a really mild form of whatever it was and gave me an anti-histamine. One a day she said.

I had a long day. I’m going to bed now… well, not really… lol.

THE STRIKE BEGINS! FOR REAL!

Today, or I guess I should say yesterday, the last legal impediment to the TA strike was removed. At 6:30am on Thursday morning, the TAs will begin their strike. Why so damn early? Well, two other unions wanted the strike to start before their employees got to work so they wouldn’t have to pull them off the jobs. Good to know those people are getting the day off.

The TAs here at SJC are scheduled to meet at 6am, at which point they will make their way to strike headquarters, which is the Lutheran Center. That’s located by the old General Admin building. I’d love to show my support, but hey, I’m not a 6am type of guy.

Mediation is scheduled for 9:30am, so there will be at least 3 hours of strike time. I’m sleeping in tomorrow, so theoretically, this could be all over by the time I wake up, but I doubt it.

Lucky me, I have to run an errand off campus tomorrow, which necessitates me taking the bus. The buses though, will in all likelyhood, not be running all the way into the campus. That means I’m looking at a 30 min. hike just to get to the buses now!

I don’t expect it to be as crazy as APEC, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting tomorrow.

In completely other news, joining in the ranks of erwintang.com, ryannordman.com, and garrettknights.com, Ryan Allan (or RALLAN for those in the know) has registered… flyingboxstudios.com. Yeah, he broke away from the first name, last name.com convention, but hey, flyingbox is what he’s most famous for.

RALLAN assures us that great things are on the horizon for Flying Box Studios and that the corporate web site will be the definitive source for all things Flying Box, including the much heralded FBS press releases.

Good job Ryan!