This has been an interesting reading week. I've gotten to catch up on sleep, surprisnlgy. But that's probably because of the fact that I haven't been getting much work done. :P Overall, reading days were kind of disappointing; I got to see and hang out with some people, but not for enough time and some people I hardly got to see at all. Anyways, since I kind of have writer's block at the moment, but still feel like blogging something, I guess I'll resort to doing one of these random surveys, even though I haven't (technically) been tagged...
Four jobs (volunteer positions) I've had:
1. Assistant to Mr. William Pak (Jeff's dad) -this wasn't a real job, I just learned stuff about various software and got paid for it
2. Calculus Tutor -I tutored a bunch of people from church over the summer
3. Summer Day Camp Counsellor's Aide -Moo Chee! Boo Chee!
4. Office Assistant for Pastor Sharon -this was back in summer of 2004, and it was only for a coule of weeks...
Four movies I can watch (and have the potential to watch) over and over:
1. Memento
2. Black Hawk Down
3. Mulholland Drive -must figure out what it's about!
4. Matrix/Star Wars/LOTR -I think I've watched most movies from those series at least twice :P
Four places I've lived (if vacations don't count):
1. Mississauga
2. Mississauga
3. Mississauga
4. Waterloo -haha...this would've been funny had it been 4x Mississauga
Four TV Shows I love(d):
1. CSI - all 3 I guess
2. Gilmore Girls
3. Various TLC shows
4. X-Files
Four places I've vacationed:
1. Michigan
2. Florida
3. Buffalo
4. Newfoundland -I've never been outside of North America
Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Pasta
2. Chili
3. Salmon, raw or cooked
4. mild Curry with anything
Four sites I visit daily:
1. this blog
2. magicthegathering.com
3. uwangel.uwaterloo.ca -Waterloo's course website server
4. various friends' blogs -mcbc-online is still down...otherwise it would be here
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. On a vacation with friends
2. a place with a time machine
3. at a retreat
4. Ravnica -okay, just kidding
Four bloggers I'm tagging (let's see...who hardly updates? nahhh):
1. DB -well, might as well kill two birds with one stone
2. Mason
3. Brose
4. Wenage Zhanger
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Confound
Reading week is fun...unless you're stuck at school that is. Good news is that I finally going home today!
Well, I guess being able to hang out with Wen and Duy and play some more of X-Men Legends 2 was fun. Besides that, I've mainly been pretty lazy/tired these past few days. I dunno why, but I've been super sleepy lately, falling asleep at like 8-10 pm and then getting up at 9 am the next day, yet still not really feeling refreshed. Thus, my efforts to study, or else get other useful stuff done have been mostly hindered. I figured I wouldn't have too much work to do this Reading week, with only a quiz on Monday and an assignment on Tues to worry about, but then my STAT 330 prof goes and dumps another assignment on us yesterday. Dang it. Last year, we got 2 weeks to do each assignment. This term, the prof made his assignments about 75% as hard, but then gave us only 50% of the time to do it. Sigh, if only I had passed it the first time.
This term's prof also can't really teach that well. His English is okay, but apparently he thinks this course is "easy", something which the majority of the class and other students I know disagree with. He also doesn't have any enthusiasm at all when he lectures. Granted, the material is pretty dry, but even Cyntha Struthers (my prof for last term) managed to make a joke here and there and keep the class entertained. I even looked forward to going to her class sometimes last term. On the other hand, I usually dread having to visit this class every Tues and Thurs. My current prof seems really diassociated from his students...he's always surprised when we don't find his assignments "easy", and when he asks us "simple" questions in class that no one answers, he says stuff like "Oh my God, how can you have forgotten this?!" and gets confused about "how we passed calculus." That makes him pretty annoying. He doesn't realize that the main reason why people don't have any motivation to answer stuff in his class is 'cause the way he teaches it makes everyone soooo bored and dead. Looking down on the class doesn't really help either.
Anyways, after my like 4 hour nap yesterday night, I ended staying up talking to a bunch of ppl over msn. So I'm reading this word document that's a transcription of another msn convo...and all of a sudden, this alert window pops up in my face and says:
There are too many spelling or grammatical errors in this file to continue displaying them. To check the spelling and grammar of this docuemnt, choose Spelling and Grammar from the Tools menu.
Then I clicked OK, and then Word totally lagged up for like 2 minutes. It's like, "What the?!" Go Microsoft! :P
Well, I guess being able to hang out with Wen and Duy and play some more of X-Men Legends 2 was fun. Besides that, I've mainly been pretty lazy/tired these past few days. I dunno why, but I've been super sleepy lately, falling asleep at like 8-10 pm and then getting up at 9 am the next day, yet still not really feeling refreshed. Thus, my efforts to study, or else get other useful stuff done have been mostly hindered. I figured I wouldn't have too much work to do this Reading week, with only a quiz on Monday and an assignment on Tues to worry about, but then my STAT 330 prof goes and dumps another assignment on us yesterday. Dang it. Last year, we got 2 weeks to do each assignment. This term, the prof made his assignments about 75% as hard, but then gave us only 50% of the time to do it. Sigh, if only I had passed it the first time.
This term's prof also can't really teach that well. His English is okay, but apparently he thinks this course is "easy", something which the majority of the class and other students I know disagree with. He also doesn't have any enthusiasm at all when he lectures. Granted, the material is pretty dry, but even Cyntha Struthers (my prof for last term) managed to make a joke here and there and keep the class entertained. I even looked forward to going to her class sometimes last term. On the other hand, I usually dread having to visit this class every Tues and Thurs. My current prof seems really diassociated from his students...he's always surprised when we don't find his assignments "easy", and when he asks us "simple" questions in class that no one answers, he says stuff like "Oh my God, how can you have forgotten this?!" and gets confused about "how we passed calculus." That makes him pretty annoying. He doesn't realize that the main reason why people don't have any motivation to answer stuff in his class is 'cause the way he teaches it makes everyone soooo bored and dead. Looking down on the class doesn't really help either.
Anyways, after my like 4 hour nap yesterday night, I ended staying up talking to a bunch of ppl over msn. So I'm reading this word document that's a transcription of another msn convo...and all of a sudden, this alert window pops up in my face and says:
There are too many spelling or grammatical errors in this file to continue displaying them. To check the spelling and grammar of this docuemnt, choose Spelling and Grammar from the Tools menu.
Then I clicked OK, and then Word totally lagged up for like 2 minutes. It's like, "What the?!" Go Microsoft! :P
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Winter's Grasp
Sooo cooollld outside today! Actually, it has been like that everyday starting from the snowday on Thursday, I think. This has been a very interesting weekend: I know that I'm kinda late on writing the first entry of my new blog, but well, better late than never right? :P
So, I had many ideas on how I wanted to start off writing in this blog. I was going to define the purpose of this current incarnation and what I wanted to do with it, but I think I'll have to save that for later, when I remember it more haha. This entry will also be used to respond to Bao's lastest comment in the previous (blogger)entry.
Things I've done this week, that I've never done before:
-talked with Mormons with Alex Lam and Betty Chan
-visited "Westcourt", the unofficial CCF house of UW (and watched Finding Neverland)
-played a 10-player game of Magic with about 6 ppl I've never met
-played a Magic multiplayer "Hunt" variant
-played Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
-stayed at school the weekend before Reading Week
-been the main leader in a Bible Study (okay, I've done this once before)
Okay, so some those things weren't really that special, but they were at least all pretty new to me. I mean, I've learned about Mormon's before, I'd heard of Splinter Cell, and of course I've played Magic, but it's always cool to try new ways of doing things, especially when they help broaden your knowledge and also develop more as a person. Keeping an open mind is a good thing.
It's kinda funny how in my 3.5 years of going to CCF, I've never once been to Westcourt. I almost wasn't going to go, 'cause I found out at the last minute that there was Smash Brothers going on at some other guys' house, and a bunch of other people were going there instead. I was thinking of calling Duy and inviting him over, but I figured that he probably was in the middle of a raid or something, so I didn't.
Finally, Splinter Cell is a very...unforgiving and ninjalicious game. I guess maybe it doesn't help that I've never really played any other games like it before. It was pretty easy for me to get spotted by the enemies, and then I always felt that I had to shoot them so many times in order to kill them. I also didn't like the fact that the game just throws you into the first mission with no story background at all basically. There is a tutorial mode that you can try first, but it's pretty plain and not well-laid out in some areas. It's pretty unimaginative and doesn't really prepare you that well for the real game. The game also has annoying long save/load times, and seemingly redundant status messages. (For example, after saving your game, a message pops up and says "Your game has been saved." and then you have to confirm again.)
In the second mission of the game, you have to find and get information out of this terrorist dude named Jong. And so me and Duy figured that we'd have to just locate him and knock him out. So at the start, we see two terrorist guys talking, and one of them is on the roof, of a short, one-story building, and the other is on the same level as us. So we kill both of them, and then we find out that the guy on the roof was actually the guy we were supposed to interrogate! Whoops...they could've at least given us some way to identify him. :P We retry the level a few times, and try many other methods of capturing the target, such as knocking him out from behind, or using a flash bang on him. Every time, we got the message, "Oh my God, what were you thinking, you killed Jong!?" and we had to restart. How a flash bang kills someone, I don't know, but I thought that was pretty dumb. Anyways, we were stuck until we finally looked in the manual and found out that there was a way to interrogate bad guys in the game. :P (Perhaps something they should've also showed us in the tutorial.)
There were also many times where we'd be walking carefully against the wall, when all of a sudden we'd come under from some unknown location and die within a seconds. So "from where!?" like. Made the game pretty frustrating. So, in conclusion, although I wouldn't mind trying it more, Splinter Cell probably isn't a game we'll be playing much of. :P It's a good thing that you didn't spend that much money on it, Bao.
So, I had many ideas on how I wanted to start off writing in this blog. I was going to define the purpose of this current incarnation and what I wanted to do with it, but I think I'll have to save that for later, when I remember it more haha. This entry will also be used to respond to Bao's lastest comment in the previous (blogger)entry.
Things I've done this week, that I've never done before:
-talked with Mormons with Alex Lam and Betty Chan
-visited "Westcourt", the unofficial CCF house of UW (and watched Finding Neverland)
-played a 10-player game of Magic with about 6 ppl I've never met
-played a Magic multiplayer "Hunt" variant
-played Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
-stayed at school the weekend before Reading Week
-been the main leader in a Bible Study (okay, I've done this once before)
Okay, so some those things weren't really that special, but they were at least all pretty new to me. I mean, I've learned about Mormon's before, I'd heard of Splinter Cell, and of course I've played Magic, but it's always cool to try new ways of doing things, especially when they help broaden your knowledge and also develop more as a person. Keeping an open mind is a good thing.
It's kinda funny how in my 3.5 years of going to CCF, I've never once been to Westcourt. I almost wasn't going to go, 'cause I found out at the last minute that there was Smash Brothers going on at some other guys' house, and a bunch of other people were going there instead. I was thinking of calling Duy and inviting him over, but I figured that he probably was in the middle of a raid or something, so I didn't.
Finally, Splinter Cell is a very...unforgiving and ninjalicious game. I guess maybe it doesn't help that I've never really played any other games like it before. It was pretty easy for me to get spotted by the enemies, and then I always felt that I had to shoot them so many times in order to kill them. I also didn't like the fact that the game just throws you into the first mission with no story background at all basically. There is a tutorial mode that you can try first, but it's pretty plain and not well-laid out in some areas. It's pretty unimaginative and doesn't really prepare you that well for the real game. The game also has annoying long save/load times, and seemingly redundant status messages. (For example, after saving your game, a message pops up and says "Your game has been saved." and then you have to confirm again.)
In the second mission of the game, you have to find and get information out of this terrorist dude named Jong. And so me and Duy figured that we'd have to just locate him and knock him out. So at the start, we see two terrorist guys talking, and one of them is on the roof, of a short, one-story building, and the other is on the same level as us. So we kill both of them, and then we find out that the guy on the roof was actually the guy we were supposed to interrogate! Whoops...they could've at least given us some way to identify him. :P We retry the level a few times, and try many other methods of capturing the target, such as knocking him out from behind, or using a flash bang on him. Every time, we got the message, "Oh my God, what were you thinking, you killed Jong!?" and we had to restart. How a flash bang kills someone, I don't know, but I thought that was pretty dumb. Anyways, we were stuck until we finally looked in the manual and found out that there was a way to interrogate bad guys in the game. :P (Perhaps something they should've also showed us in the tutorial.)
There were also many times where we'd be walking carefully against the wall, when all of a sudden we'd come under from some unknown location and die within a seconds. So "from where!?" like. Made the game pretty frustrating. So, in conclusion, although I wouldn't mind trying it more, Splinter Cell probably isn't a game we'll be playing much of. :P It's a good thing that you didn't spend that much money on it, Bao.
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