Author: Erwin

HEART ON A SLEEVE

Dear Lord am I tired! I should stop posting before I go to bed. Anyways, here goes… as some of you know, I read a blog written by this girl Devon. In her latest post, she wishes that she “could just post the contents of [her] heart onto [her] blog without knowing that people would judge [her]”.

That’s quite an admirable wish, but also something that will never come true. A blog is a wonderful thing. Just about anyone in the world now can write up any little thought they have and put it on the Internet. It can be read by ten people or ten thousand people. I can wonder if anyone else finds the host of While You Were Out hot. Instead of asking one person at a time that question, I can post it on my blog once and have it read many times over.

Writing to a blog can be a very cathartic experience. Much like talking about something will make you feel better, writing about it can do the same thing.

The one thing that bloggers must realize though, is that a blog is not a diary. You may treat it as such, but that’s like making every thought and feeling you put in your diary available to anyone with Internet access.

I can understand how some people would want to write so-and-so did this and it made me feel bad, or I am so in love with so-and-so, but there’s a time and a place for that. I’m not so sure a blog is a good place for that though. At least not for Devon. The problem I see is that her blog is very popular and is read by lots of people. I believe beyond a certain number of people, a blog reaches a critical mass. You just can’t be posting every personal detail of your life after that.

I remember when I first started, no one and I mean no one gave a rat’s ass about my blog. I could have written anything and only my good friend Joanna would have had the chance to read it. Now though, I have people regularly reading this and I have no clue who the hell they are, where they’re from, and how they found me in the first place.

I don’t put every little thought or worry I have in my blog. First, it’d be boring and second, some things just aren’t made for going into a blog. A blog is not a diary.

In many ways, I treat my blog like a sit-com. What are the most entertaining moments or thoughts in my life? That’s what goes into my blog. I may stray here or there once in a while, but for the most part, I’m writing to entertain. I keep some semblance of privacy, but I still get to post a few of my thoughts.

If Devon wants to post about all of her feelings and thoughts, she certainly can, but there’s no way that’s going to happen without repercussions. It’s akin to letting anyone on the Internet read your mind!

I must admit though, I like the candid nature of her posts. If I got pierced “down there”, would I have the cojones to tell the world? I wonder…

Will Devon continue to be as candid? I guess we’ll have to keep on reading.

SHUFFLEBOARD

Shuffleboard. When you read that, what do you think of? Old people. Cruise ships. A slow game for people with a slower pace of life. Yeah, that’s what I used to think that too.

Well, about two weeks ago, I was at Koerner’s Pub with Nic, Arash, and Bryan. I’ve been going this pub for over eight months now. A few times I’ve noticed this really long table over in one corner of the pub. I had no idea what it was for, but I didn’t make any effort to find out.

That night, Nic went over to the table and said, “Let’s play”. I asked him what exactly. “Shuffleboard,” he replied. I was at first a bit skeptical. Shuffleboard? The game for seniors?

What the hell I thought. As I went over to the table, I noticed that it was covered in this Parmesan cheese-like substance. I think Arash dared me to eat some of it. Weird. Nic came back from the bar with a bucket of these metal discs. They looked like small curling rocks.

I think Nic had played before so he kinda explained how to play. We didn’t have any hard and fast rules, so we just went at it. The teams were divided as such: Arash and Erwin vs. Nic and Bryan. Little did we know that this would a critical set of pairings.

Anyways, the game is pretty simple: you try to slide the discs into these scoring zones without overshooting the end of the table. You can see one of the table here. Like curling, you can knock out other discs and go for elaborate take outs. After the shots are all done, you count up how many points have been scored.

It was non-standard, but we played to 21 points. The first two games were pretty uneventful. Arash and I sucked. We had a lot of trouble finding our range. Either our shots sailed off the end or they barely made it over the mid-line. Arash also had this annoying habit of going for take-outs and then knocking out every one of our discs in sight. Maddening! Arash and I weren’t offering each other encouragement and there was barely any talking between teams.

After the second game, we changed the rules a bit. We implemented a hammer (last shot) rule and refined the scoring a bit. This is where it got wild (well, relatively wild).

I’m not sure what it was, but Arash and I got rolling in the third game. We smoked Nic and Bryan 21-10 or something. Arash and I started high-fiving, yelling, and jumping up and down. The trash talking started too. After the third game ended, it was on.

Whereas the first two games were played in relaxed conditions, the fourth game had the tensions of a seventh game in the Cup finals. Every shot was agonized over. Each teammate offered encouragement. Strategies were developed. Things were shouted. Despite our stunning victory in game three, Arash and I found ourselves down 15-2 or something. It was looking grim.

Maybe it was because we started drinking water, but whatever it was, Arash and I found some deep shuffleboard reserve from which to draw upon. We started to make some awesome shots. Most ends finish with one team scoring one point, we started to score 3-plus points after each end. After stunning back-to-back 4 point ends, we found ourselves tied.

There would be no looking back. In the final end, we convincingly scored multiple points to take the whole game. After it was over, Arash ran over to hug me.

On the walk back to SJC, Arash and I congratulated each other on our great shots. Nic and Bryan muttered something about us getting a room. Tee-hee.

Shuffleboard. A fun game. No really!

If you want to learn more about shuffleboard, take a look at this great site. You can see what the tables look like and what the rules are. You’ll even see what type of people play shuffleboard.

We’ve played several times now, and it’s been more fun each time. Arash and I even talked about getting a set of our own discs and wax shaker cans!

RANDOM PICS

I was in Arash’s room last night and he showed me some of the pics he just got developed. I got bored and scanned some of them in.

This was taken on the SJC Sports Day. I didn’t play in the croquet tournament, but they let me take a picture with the players. Notice the crossed mallets.

I’m not too fond of this picture. This was taken during Spring Dinner. I looked kinda stunned or lost. I’m sitting next to Stephanie. That’s Arash and Evelyn behind us.

This picture made me laugh. Arash is more than pleased to having his picture taken with two women. The women, however, seem to only be tolerating his presence. Go Arash go!

MAIL IS TEMPORARILY DOWN

UPDATE : Aaaaaaaaaand my mail is again down. Not sure when it’ll be back up.

Once again my mail server has a full hard drive. So from approximately 4pm on Thursday, I probably won’t get any incoming mail. If you sent me anything after that time, please re-send that message to erwin@interchange.ubc.ca until further notice. Thanks.

WEIRD E-MAIL

I have a throw-away Hotmail account I use whenever I need to sign up for anything. I check it every couple of days to clear it out and to see if anything relevant has come in. I don’t conduct any personal correspondence with it, nor do I give out the address to people.

A few days ago, I received a non-spam message. The text of that message is as follows:



Hi Erwin,

I’m not sure if I’ll go water running this afternoon but maybe in the next couple days during public or university swim hours, John said that they have short periods in between the races.

Lets go for some underwaterrunning or a bike ride in the next days. I’ll write you an e-mail or you can give me a call, 604-222-xxxx.

Take care, Andreas

For starters, I don’t know any Andreas’… well at least I don’t think I do. Also, I don’t know anyone named John. Now as random as e-mail can be, look at the phone number that was left, the area code is 604 and the prefix is 222. That’s a Vancouver number and more specifically, a prefix for in and around UBC. Adding to the puzzle is that when I traced the IP back, I got the address of an AMS computer, which meant it probably got sent at one of the public terminals in the SUB.

Was it by totally random chance that someone sent me an e-mail by accident, and we both just happen to be in the same city and we both are involved with the same university? Or is there a thread of commonality between us?

I’m kinda tempted to call that number, but I bet it would get uncomfortable. Andreas, if you are reading this by some odd chance, please contact me!

AND THE WINNING WAYS CONTINUE…

I’m tired, but I’ll make this one last post before I go to bed. As some of you know, the last SJC sports team I played on was not so hot in terms of it’s winning ways. Our men’s ball hockey team went oh-for eight or something like that. We were outscored approximately 160-10.

Summer has led us to the Graduate Students Society summer sports league. After thoroughly enjoying several sessions of catch with some of my fellow SJC residents, I decided to form a softball team for the GSS league.

My team is a bit lean on players, but that just means that our batting line-up isn’t huge and everyone gets to play when we’re out in the field. Also, the people on this team for the most part weren’t on the ball hockey team. Last but not least, there are girls on this team. All signs pointed towards a half decent team.

Well, today we had our first game. We lost 19-6. We actually were winning for the first two innings, but we just let it get away from us. We weren’t as sharp in the outfield and our bats fell silent.

To make things worse, two of our players nearly broke their hand on separate plays. I was one of those players. In the first incident, Francois was charging hard for a fly ball and it was coming in hard. It came in at difficult angle and he took the ball (it felt like a hard ball) directly off his hand. He had to leave for about an inning or so, but he sucked it up and played on.

On my play, I basically did the same thing. I came in hard to get a ball in front of me except it was off to the side a bit. Unfortunately, it was coming in off my non-glove side and I instinctively tried to barehand it. Dumb idea. It slammed into my thumb and index finger on my left hand. I managed to toss it to my cut-off man but my thumb and finger stung like crazy for the whole game afterwards. I seriously thought it was broken for a minute, but I gathered I would be in a lot more pain.

I think I just bruised it, but the whole area is still a bit sore. Francois is alright too and we should be ready for next week’s game.

I know we had fun today and all, but I hope this isn’t the start of another oh-for season.

DADDY STILL NEEDS A JOB

Last week I interviewed for a job on campus that I dearly wanted. There’s a computer lab on campus that needs an assistant for the summer. I thought I was perfect for the job. They needed some work on a web site, plus I had to help people of all ages (kids and seniors) with running applications. I like helping people and I know a thing or two about computers. Sure, I don’t have the best design skills in the world, but hey, you can read this can’t you?

I thought I gave a great interview and brought across all the points I wanted to make. They interviewed only a handful of people and I was sure I was a strong candidate for the job. They let were going to let me know at the beginning of this week.

On Monday, I was hoping dearly that they would call. People use the phone to tell people they got the job. Rejections are saved for e-mail and the mail. Around noon, I got an e-mail. They had picked a candidate other than myself. I admit I was crushed for about an hour. This was going to be the perfect summer job. A five-minute commute, good hours, and doing something I could enjoy. I’m still not sure what I could have done better. Maybe my design skills were lacking. Maybe I didn’t say the right thing here or there. I will never know.

Anyways, about an hour later, I realized I had to get right back into the saddle and continue looking for a job. Taking time to lament wasn’t going to get my any closer to employment.

I know that perhaps five to ten people read this blog (ha!), and maybe you could help me out. Do you know of any summer jobs? I’m willing to do pretty much anything. I came up with this line to illustrate my desperation… “I’ll wash butt-holes…”

How’s that for classy?!?!?!?!?!

IT’S NOT QUITE BREAKFAST AND NOT QUITE LUNCH…

I’ve decided that I like having brunch on Sundays. If you know me, that might be surprising since you’re probably thinking I like to spend most of my Sunday mornings asleep.

Hell, that’s how I like to spend all my mornings, let alone Sunday mornings. Suffice to say, it’s a struggle for me to wake up that early to get off campus for a morning meal. Before this school year, I don’t think I’ve ever had brunch before.

The first time was in December, and we were off-campus by 10:30am or so. The whole time I was thinking about how many people back at SJC were asleep. After a long wait, we wound up at Sophie’s Cosmic Cafe. Brunch was alright, and I think I made some comment about the eggs being better at Denny’s. Afterwards, I felt like someone had just kicked my ass and I took a nearly three hour nap. I woke up just before dinner.

The second time I went to brunch was a few weeks ago. The weather was much better and it was easier to get up. We all went to Cafe Zen near Kits Beach. I had a wicked scrambled eggs dish. I thought their menu was much better than Sophie’s.

Today, I went out to brunch again but this time at this Italian cafe across from Zen. It was another great little place. The food, company, and conversation were top notch. I found out everyone’s middle names and what they would name their kids. I said that if I had a girl, I’d name her Oceania and that if it was a boy, it’d be Rudiger. We also talked about if we got married, would we want the bride to keep her own name. For the record, I’d like my wife to choose herself what she wants to do. Though, I’d lean towards her keeping her name.

So yeah, brunch was good today. It seems to get better each time. Afterwards, I only took a 20 minute nap too!

Does anyone else go for brunch on the weekends? If so, where do you go?