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I’m tired, so I’ll keep this short. Tonight will be my first night here at T-Bird. Most of my stuff is everywhere, still packed away. I have three pieces of Ikea furniture to put together. Earlier in the day, I went saw a doctor about my illness. She said it was almost certainly food poisoning. I’ve had food poisoning before, but by the spice mines of Kessel, I’ve never felt anything like this before. It’s turned my whole purpose in life into cramping and pooping.

She gave me the okay to take Imodium. Now you might be wondering why I didn’t take that from day one. Well, that’s because a few years ago, I saw this medical detective show on TV. It featured the story of a young boy who came down with food poisoning by eating improperly cooked ground beef. He got sick and his parents at first gave him anti-poop medicine. It turns out that made it even worse. He was eventually hospitalized and just when it seemed things were getting better, he developed a hole in his intestinal tract. This led to an infection that nearly killed him. While he survived, his immune system now operates at a much reduced capacity. A simple piece of hamburger will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Well, with that in the back of my mind, I waited for the doc to give me the green light. I started taking the Imodium in the late afternoon. It certainly has helped, but it hasn’t eliminated the problem yet. Now, instead of knowing I’ll definitely have to go every five minutes, it’s now only a possibility I’ll have to go every five minutes. I’m not out of the woods yet.

Alright, I gotta get some rest. If you see me on-campus and I walk right by you, pray that I make it to the can on-time.

For more than a month, I’d be looking forward to this day as it is my move-in date for new T-Bird apartment. I will not, however, be spending the night on-campus. My head was pounding all night and I got very little rest. When it was time to get up for school, I just leaned against the bathroom counter for five minutes. I caught myself breathing heavily as if I had just sprinted. I felt awful.

I am pretty sure I have the stomach flu. I feel this virus wants to knock me on my ass and then some. If the constant head throbbing and muscle aches weren’t enough, I can’t seem to retain any food. It goes through me like a greased pig on a Slip ‘N Slide. I have to be near a bathroom at all times now.

Somehow, I mustered the strength to get to school. In hindsight, I probably should have stayed home. I made it through three hours of class, where somehow, I closed off my “leaky valve”. After class, I did pick up my keys nonetheless. I have seen my new place. I’m not sure if it’s fair to comment on it now, since all I can concentrate on is not pooping every five minutes. I’ll take some digital photos when I have the time and energy.

I so thankful that my father came to pick me up from school. That reminds of me of line from Conan ‘O Brien, “which one of these buttons calls your parents to pick you up?” My dad also loaded up the car with some stuff, so we moved a few things in. I was winded just after a few boxes. We then drove home.

I am going to spend the night here at my parents and I’m not even sure if I’ll be moving in for real tomorrow. I’m going to take this day by day.

Tomorrow I take possession of my apartment on-campus. It will signal the end of a difficult three week period when I spent on average 12-15 hours a week using transit. It seems however, fate is not without a sense of the dramatic.

Do you remember the end of Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan? Kirk had finally outwitted Khan. As Khan’s crippled ship drifted and Khan himself was dying, he ignored Enterprise’s demands to surrender. Instead, he armed the Genesis device which threatened to blow himself and the Enterprise with him. Kirk realizes this and immediately turns the Enterprise around to get away, but without warp capability they won’t make it. In a classic scene, Khan mutters the line, “No… You can’t get away… From hell’s heart I stab at thee…”

Fate is Khan and I am the Enterprise. After three weeks of commuting, I avoided nearly everything that could go wrong. I wasn’t late for class a single time. I didn’t get diarrhea on the bus. None of my buses were late nor did they break down. I missed a stabbing incident at the Lougheed Skytrain station by less than 30 minutes. I managed to avoid catching an illness from all those unwashed commuters…. oh wait , what’s this?

Sometime this afternoon, I felt every muscle in my body ache and sing out that they were sore. Granted I did play hockey for the first time in three weeks yesterday, but these were the aches and pains that you feel when you’re about to be knocked on your ass by something. I don’t know what this is going to be, a cold, a flu? Who the hell knows. I do know that I just want to drink warm fluids and lie down. However, in between reading for my classes, an assignment, and packing the remainder of my stuff, I won’t be able to rest. I hope I’ll be in a half-decent condition to move tomorrow.

Incidently, the last line before Khan dies is, “For hate’s sake… I spit my last breath at thee!” The only question that remains is, do I have a Spock who will save the day?

I was at the Lougheed Town Centre Wal-Mart this evening to get some things for my apartment. As I entered the store, I spotted giant walls of Halloween candy that been already put into place. I usually don’t buy Halloween candy, but the neat rows and clear delineation between brands appealed to the order-seeking part of my brain.

I’m a big fan of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups so I looked for those. There were bags of them packaged in a single-serving size. In each bag, there was 510 g of peanut butter and chocolate goodness for $3.92. Curious, I wanted to see what the standard three-pack cost. I sauntered over to the check-out lines and found the candy display. There, I saw the normal package, weighing in at 51 g cost $0.72. Keep in mind that everything at Wal-Mart is usually cheaper than anywhere else. It’s probably at least $1 at Safeway.

I did the math, which was easy, even for me. If I had to buy 510 g of PB cups in the three-pack size, it’d cost me $7.20. Compare that to the $3.92 for the large bag. Incredible. Buying candy and chocolate in small quantities is an incredible rip-off. If you buy confectionaries at even irregular intervals, you’re better off buying the Halloween-sized bags.

And I learned something today…

In completely different news, the 2004 Disney Channel Kids Awards Show was held in London just a few days ago. Disney, known for its family entertainment, put on quite a display. I believe this year’s theme was, “And Now, Something for Dad”.

As you all know, everytime I run into Greg Williams, I write about it on my blog. I saw Greg and his lady friend Erin at Futureshop several weeks ago. He had some fascinating story about returning a digital camera, but I could not muster the effort to get all the fascinating details.

So, if Greg wants to tell the story here, he can. Erin, if you’re reading this, you can tell the story as well, just leave it in the comments. Otherwise, I’ll just make up something.

My 12+ hour day of school is over. I did it. I have one more day of commuting left and I’ll be done. Tomorrow will be an easy day. I get to sit in on one class, then have dinner with an old friend. I then can go home. Or, I could go drinking at Koerner’s with the rest of SJC. Regardless, it will be a shorter day than today.

I actually had two positive developments today. One, I saw some of my former students in the CEME building. I hadn’t seen them since last December when I gave them their last tutorial. I asked them what disciplines they finally got into. It appears everyone got their first choice. Good. They all seemed happy to see me. In particular, the last thing one student said to me in December was, “you should teach”. The last thing she said to me today was, “you should teach”. I appreciated the comment, maybe I should get her to talk to my department.

On TA front, still no news on what is happening. I’ll try to get ahold of the union tomorrow.

The other positive development has to do with my night class. This is the first night class I’ve ever taken in my life. We didn’t have a class last week and this week was an introductory lecture that had nothing to do with any of the course material. The instructor seems really laid back. He told us that even though UBC has scheduled the class for three hours each week, he would be done in two hours usually. Sweet. He also admitted that his class was pretty easy, but that you’d still learn a lot. Sweet. Another thing, I can almost see my new apartment from the classroom.

Alright, time to set out my clothes for tomorrow.

I got home from school at 10pm today. I have to leave for school again at 9am tomorrow morning. This commuting bullshit ain’t getting any better. I’ve been to school only two days this week and I’ve already spent six damn hours on the bus.

Here’s a picture of what I found in a bag of Cheetos this weekend. Every additional minute I spend in transit, I hate commuting even more.

Those of you with eagle eyes might have noticed a new search box to the right. You may now search the contents of this blog. Unfortunately, the search is very shallow since I am using Feedster to power it. Feedster only started tracking my blog about three months ago, so that’s as far back as the search will go. Google itself has crawled my blog archives, but I have found their results to be incomplete.

So, try it out! Type in your name. Type in other people’s names. Try using swear words. Unlimited fun awaits!

I can’t remember the last time I sat through 4.5 hours straight of lectures, but I just did it today. I’m sitting in one of the labs in Civil/Mechanical building typing this out. I actually thought it would be way worse, though I wouldn’t want to do it again.

The bad thing, unfortunately, is that I still don’t have a clue which of these three classes I want to take. I will need to go home and think about it.

Hey, free food in the grad lounge!

So, we approach the start of another week, the last and most difficult week of commuting for me. Did you know I spent 12 hours on the bus last week? That’s just for four days of school. For every day of school, I spend an eighth of it on the bus. Nice.

Anyways, com sci grad classes kick in this week and because I’m not sure which ones I want to take, I’ll be attending several of them to get a taste. And oh, the fun starts on Monday, where I’ll be sitting in on three straight classes. Starting at 11am, I’ll be going until 3:30pm, with at most, a ten minute break in between.

I’m tempted to say screw it and just pick a class from the course description. That way, I just need to go for an hour and a half and get the hell out of there. That would be the easy way, but not the “mature” thing to do. I hate being responsible.

Tuesday and Thursday won’t be too bad, so if I can just get through my night class on Wednesday, I’ll be in the clear! No more of me bitching about commuting. You and me both will be glad about that.

Alright, time to bite the freaking bullet and get this damn week over with.