Friday the 13th!

It's Friday 13th, my favorite day :D I almost didn't realize it either. I'm not really sure why I like Friday 13th so much... maybe it's because everyone else doesn't? Weeeee! Walk under ladders, break mirrors look for Black Cats... heh.

Today was nice as I got to spend time with my cousin Audj. We spent the better part of 1/2hr playing Tetris with an Elliptical and a Nissan Quest =p. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures so you'll just have to use your imagination.

On another note. I was FINALLY able to get my haircut! OMG. My afro is officially gone heh. Perhaps I should have told him to stop when he got to this point? =p I could have had that Wesley Snipes - Demolition Man look :D.



We also got a chance to try a new Taiwanese restaurant near my house No.1 Beef Noodle House, Bubble Tea. This location actually used to be Orchid Delight Malaysian restaurant... which mysteriously vanished. It's located on Moscrop and Willingdon where the old 7-11 used to be but the funny thing is, if you drive by and look into the plaza there's a good chance you won't even notice it. It's shoved into the corner almost behind the convenience store. My parents have been there a few times and recommended that I try it out so since the Japanese restaurant that we wanted to go to was closed we decided to try this place out.

Appertizer Anyone? How 'bout some Hush Browns
Apart from the Engrish the atmosphere was nice, the music wasn't too loud so we weren't having to scream at each other to be heard. We were surprised at the food portions and intrigued at the fact that there was meat in EVERYTHING that we ordered... even the salad had meat sprinkled on it, nice =p

Anyway, I'll be posting a review on it in the Eats section :) will update.

Rewards... n stuff...

Woo :D IBM paraphernalia! So I'm slowly burning out sitting in my cube and it finally occurs to me that if I work the rest of my scheduled shifts this week I'll be pulling a 53 hr work week... wth. Ya I don't think the account team will be too happy w/ that =p Now I have tomorrow off :D moving on.

Caller: "So what's the temperature like in Canada?"
Tech: "It's about 50 degrees now (10 c). Yeah, it sucks. My igloo is starting to melt."
Caller: "Wow! Seriously!"

No people we do not live in igloos, well I don't anyways =p had an interesting conversation with a co-worker of mine. We revisited the fact that we're all pretty ignorant of our neighbors... well actaully, places we've never been to in general.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many people in the United States believe that Canadians live in igloos. Ok. Think about it for a sec. Alaska is a State, correct? Are there not cities in Alaska? And not cities of Igloos I might add, real cities, made out of wood and concrete and all that neat city building stuff. Last I heard they even have a port up there, or was someone lying to me? And apart from that, if you look on a world map, you'll notice that (besides the Territories) Canada's Provinces are on a parallel farther south than Alaska. Hmm... that would lead most people to deduce that we (Canada) live in a warmer climate than Alaska? and if they can have a city, then maybe, just maybe we can too. Or two, or three.

Then we started thinking of the stereotypes that we hold for the Southern States. =p hehe, we realized that we aren't any better :$ Bayou, some corn-pone-country-inbred sitting on a porch in a rocking chair with a shotgun in his lap, a banjo and a jug of the South's Finest Moonshine... nice. Of course, we know that it's not really like that. That's just what the government has subliminally planted into our simple Canadian brains by spiking our maple syrup with peyote (haha, doesn't make sense but meh) and providing us with the world's finest in MaryJ. Welcome to British Columbia ;)

Wow, it's getting late and I realize that I'm not making much sense... Until next time!

PS: Added 2 more pieces to the Art section. Go NOW!

Click... click... click...

This new rotation is going to burn me out by the end of the week... I can feel it now. It's nice that I can go to bed a little later (11pm-12am) as opposed to 7:30pm. I don't feel like an infant anymore =p. The new role is going to take its toll on me as well. Sitting infront of the computer processing accounts is brutal, they never stop coming in! It's a welcome change as I can stay off the phones and jump in whenever I'm needed... but wow, my brain feels like mush :/

I guess part of it is, on my old shift I would come in at 4:30am (just before everyone else arrived) and leave at 3:30pm just after most of the floor leaves. With my new shift I come in at 8:00am when everyone's already fully into the swing of things. Then after it hits 2:00 - 3:00pm everyone slowly begins to trickle away... then I'm left here with one other person.. then he goes for lunch and I'm on the phones alone. So depressing.

On top of all that, I'll be moving accounts AGAIN. Haiz. Jun ho ma faan aa. That means that I'll be back in training again, and I severly doubt that I'm going to get the amount of training that I would like to get :( So once again I'm going to feel lost urg, don't like that feeling... endure, must endure. ASoo, you just wait... I'll be giving you your run for your money =p

Oh... then there's my twitchy left-ring-finger. Not sure what's up with that. Well, maybe it's the fact that I spend every waking moment sitting in front of a computer. I guess it's bad enough that I work 10 hrs in front of the computer only to come home and jump right back on again... meh =p

bah... enough ranting for today. Sorry for the boring post... next time.

Oh BTW, it's day 22 of rain :@

DDR Footage! :D

Ya... I finally got some of the DDR footage from our Boxing Day Family Gathering, unfortunately I'm not going to post it until I can recompress it. The two that I want to post are both 15-20 Megs :( Hopefully I'll be able to do that soon.

21 days later...

Well folks, we're rapidly approaching our record for consecutive days of rainfall. According to one source Vancouver had 29 days of consecutive rainfall in 1953. Victoria (BC's Capital city) has a record of a whopping 33 days of continuous rain!

Now I don't know about you, but I'm tired of seeing rain, day-in and day-out. What's even worse is that sometimes I'll look out the window and it's just over-cast not raining. But as soon as I put one foot out the door... down it comes.. WTH! That really pisses me off. Especially since I've been wanting to go downtown for walks during my days off :( argh.

It's no wonder so many people get depressed during this time of the year.

What are you doing here today?...

So I wake up at 3:30 this morning and go into work at 4:30. I'm sitting around getting accustomed to my new role (ID Admin) when someone comes over...

"What are you doing here today?"
"What do you mean? I work today."
"You sure? Check the schedule."
"Okay."

I check the schedule and lo-and-behold... I'm not scheduled for today... WTF. Ya, I'm getting tired of the schedule changes, but this time it's my fault =p I shouldn't have assumed that I was going to be on the same timeslot/days, even though this wasn't a scheduled schedule change. <-- lol does that even make sense? Needless to say, I ended up working the day, even though I wasn't supposed to be there and even if I was I would have been 3.5 hours early because 3 people called in sick. Meh, it all worked out in the end.

To top my day off I managed to pull in some OT from home. All said and done I did a nice 13 hrs today. Yee haw. BTW I do 4x10hr days... so it was only 3 hrs OT not 5 ;)

Vancouver Paramount... A 'Hostel' environment...

Tonight yielded an outing to Vancouver's newest Theatre venue, Famous Players Paramount.
Location:
Paramount Vancouver
900 Burrard Street
Vancouver
604-630-1407
(SE corner of Burrard and Smithe)

The building looks all fancy shmancy cuz of all the funky blue lights but the architecture is pretty simple. It's like a box. One thing I noticed as we were walking by was that it's actually a housing unit as well. I'm afraid to find out how much each unit costs. With cost of housing skyrocketting as a result of 2010 olympics coupled with the fact that it's in the heart of DownTown AND has a theatre attached to it... well, ya, I'm sure you get the picture.

The actual theatre portion is in the northwest corner of the building. There wasn't any obvious parking that we found, mind you we didn't look very hard =p. Inside the structure there are 3 floors, the second and third both have concession stands and house the actual theatres themselves (8 I believe). As you can see, they offer only the best in healthy eating :D. It wasn't a hard choice for me: BK Whopper Jr. meal w/ cheese, Poutine instead of fries and an Iced tea... mmm.

The second floor also has an arcade and a nifty little fountain. AK was wondering why... "Is it to force you to go pee BEFORE you watch the movie? Great, I have to go pee now." Sorry, no piccy of AK peeing the fountain... personally, I didn't find it that impressive. Well, that about sums up the place. Ah.. right, the reason that we went was to watch HOSTEL :D If you haven't seen it yet, go see it NOW!

Read about it here

Outta the box...

I've been cooped up for the last couple of days not feeling well and it felt as though I was coming down with cabin fever that coupled with the shitty weather we've been having for the last 3 weeks was driving me batty. Fortunately for me DC came online and asked if I wanted to do something... I jumped at the chance =p

Funny thing is, by the time she arrived at my house, neither of us had decided where we were going to go (I was just excited to be able to leave my room). We sat in her car for a good 10 minutes before deciding to go to Coquitlam Centre.

Each time I go to Coquitlam Centre I find something new has happened to it. This time I noticed that they have pretty much full livingroom setups in the middle of the corridors... wth.

Seriously, is that absolutely necessary? I guess it's for all the husbands/boyfriends who get suckered into going to the mall with their significant others.. hehe.

There is also a T&T that opened up there not too long ago. So far I've ended up at T&T every visit to this mall =D just to get my fill of Asian junk food. Today we stopped by and were greeted by their CNY decor... it had slipped my mind, but now that I've had it thrown in my face I'm sure it's here to stay. This time I didn't find what I was hankering for... just a bag of 'Cuttlefish Flavored Snack' =p.


Festive, No?
There wasn't really much to see/do in the mall, but it was a nice change of scenery :) My cabin fever is gone, for now. After the mall we hit up some random (new) Japanese restaurant Li & Jun (Korean owned). Read about it here

Back in town...

:D My best friennd is back in town (from T.O.) and we managed to go have a couple of drinks at Earls (his workplace), it was nice to see him again as we don't get to spend much time together. Wow... I forget how much alcohol he is able to handle tho... tonight his grand total was 14 beer, 2 shots versus my meager 3 pint, 1 shot :p. Haha... and we both have to work tomorrow. Well... I know I'll be having a nice sleep tonight ;)
Regardless, it was a nice way to welcome the New Year with him :) Cheers.

Ambigrams...

Someone recently reminded me of ambigrams so I decided to take a shot at one (in case you didn't notice =p)

If you don't know what an ambigram is here's an example taken from Dan Brown's site (author of: Angels and Demons):

Hmm... I'm still having trouble with the 'Monochromatix' ambigram... the 'OC' and 'ROM' portions are giving me the most difficulty... obviously :( I'm not happy with the style of the 'M' and the 'TIX' either but I'm too lazy to change them at this point... hope u like :)

Midnight...

Great, it's 12:21am and I can't sleep because there's a dull aching in my mouth... the best part of this all is that I have to get up at 3:30am to get ready for work! With my luck, I'm going to end up tossing and turning all night, then I'll end up passing out at 3:25am, fek. I've taken some advil, hopefully that will get rid of the pain... hopefully! What I'm thinking is that I'll need something stronger...*sigh*

I'm suddenly reminded of a pickup line I once heard:
"Excuse me, can u smell this cloth for me and tell me if it's chloroform?"

Everybody's favorite place...

Today I got to take a trip to EVERYONE'S FAVORITE place... the DENTIST!!! *crowd cheers!*

As you can imagine I wasn't exactly jumping for joy, waiting in anticipation for the time to come -_-. More like I was hoping I would be struck down by a bolt of lightning... or more likely 'something would come up' that would prevent me from making my trek. No such luck... don't get me wrong, I like my dentist :) he's a family friend and all-round great guy... but, you know what I mean...argh.

Last time I was there we had a nice chat about the usual stuff, then he got into the nitty gritty of what was going on in my mouth. By the end of it he decided that I would need to redo some of my fillings (as they begin to leak over time), add 1 or 2 new fillings (yes, cavities :$), then finish off with some scaling. *shudders at thought*

All the previously mentioned activities require me getting a shot, or multiple shits *oops typo* shots (though shits is what I feel like doing when I see the size of the frickin needle). *sorry, this was the only pic I could find online, next time will take a snap of the ACTUAL syringe*

Anyway I make it to the appointment about 3 minutes late (no biggie) and then sit down in my chair. My heart is racing a little cuz... well, I don't like shots. We catch up a little, then he explains what he's going to do... "Today we're just going to do the upper left molars... we're just going to get all the small stuff outta the way and make another longer appointment to finish up". Yay! I have to go back O_O.

Weeeee! He begins the sessions with the first needle... to my surprise, I didn't even know when he inserted it, wow! Then the second... then the third. "This next one might hurt a bit more than the first few." ... WTH. Ya, he was right :'( Next came the 'dental dam', great invention :D now I don't get little bits of stuff flying down my throat. Then the funky Terminator goggles :D.

Well, before I knew it, I was done and walking out of there with my crooked smile. hehe.

Looked normal when I didn't do anything, or just smiled (across). But when I pursed my lips...

Oh yeah... through part of the ordeal we talked about my new camera :) he's done research on it and is also contemplating purchasing one :D Sony CyberShot Hybrid! -Even Dentists like them- :p

GAWD!.. I can't wait till this novocaine wears off... argh! 4 hours, WTH! :@

Nothing Sacred in the Office...

Well there nothing like taking a Holiday week off work, knowing that I'll have to go back to the same ol' mundane drab... only to come back into the office to discover that your private space has been violated and a work of art destroyed... wth. Seriously, is nothing sacred in the office? You'd expect more from a 'corporate' environment... but noooo.

So what am I bitching about, u ask? Remember this post?

Ya... so not only did the tree get destroyed, but someone took a bottle too. Are you happy? Poor little Timmy isn't going to get his bottle of Gatorade anymore! They didn't even bother to fudge it with one of the other two bottles sitting on the desk beside it... just used their ninja skills to acquire their prize and leave a heap of destruction in their wake...

Behold the results of trusting your fellow co-workers not to invade your space!


Count the bottles... 5, that's right, one's missing. *note* stale cigarettes are not good enough for ninjas... they hvae been left behind for Timmy to smoke :
Honestly, I was expecting something like this to happen, but not the theft bit. Take one, leave a note, that's fine with me... don't just take one and expect me to be okay with it tho. I've had other things go missing from my desk as well... Keyboards, mice, pens... time to start locking shit up again. Too many ninja's in my office. O.o

Anyone else have the same problems at their workplace? I'm curious... leave me some comments.

Happy New Year! ...

Wow... was expecting a nice quite New Year's celebration but ended up ushering in the New Year with a whole bunch of people. Many of which I'd never met before, some who look very familiar... most whose names I don't remember today =p

I arrived at EK's house at around 10:40pm and figured I was a little late. I was just expecting EK and Ange, WC and maybe a couple of other people. When I got there that's who was there, they were watching Dumb and Dumber.

Within the span of the next 10 minutes about 8 more people showed up... that's when the drinking began =p

After intros everyone slowly settled in, watched Dumb and Dumber and began playing games. A bunch of us did a round of shots then before we knew it... countdown time!

I'm embarassed to say that I wasn't ready for a 'Happy New Year!' shot... but I did manage to get this afterwards..


I'd have to say that the highlight of the night were the drinking games, of course. Unfortunately, I hadn't eaten since lunch so I decided to lay off the drinking lest I get shitfaced :\ Anyways, enough about me.

Game: Operation.

Description: Everyone knows Operation! Pick a card, attempt to remove the organ specified by the card...

Punishment: DRINK if his nose lights up.

Game: Passout

Description: Boardgame whose layout is akin to Monopoly except 7 out of 10 spaces instruct you to take a drink. Travel 'round the board and attempt to recite tongue twisters...

Punishment: Everytime you mess up a tongue twister take a drink then try again until you get it right.

Game: 10-20 (sup-yee-sup)

Description: Chinese drinking game. Take turns calling out numbers (0-close, 5, 10, 15, 20-open) while opening and closing hands. Try to guess what number will be represented by the hands that are out. If you guess right, call again. Two-in-a-row and your opponent drinks.

Click here for footage *note: will re-encode later

Punishment: Drink

There were a couple of card games as well, but I'll just write about one (I can't remember all of the rules for the other one).

Game: Kings.

Description: Cards Used (10, J, Q, K, A).
10=Take a drink,
J=right person drinks,
Q=left person drinks,
K=fill communal cup,
4th K=Drink communal cup.
A=Free

Ok, 4 rows (5 cards across) are dealt out. Each person takes a turn to flip a card. If you flip a 10 you're forced to take a drink. If you flip a J then the person to your right takes a drink. Flip a Q and the person to your left takes a drink. Flip a K and you get to choose what, and how much you want to put in the communal cup(s). Flip an A and you get off scott-free for that turn.

Now, I'm sure some of you would have noticed that I said 'what' you can choose to put into the cup. Most of the time people will just dump booze into it... most of the time :


wow, look, there's even a toothpick in there to help pick out the smoked mussel.

Be careful though, there's this thing called Karma... it likes to bite people in the ass when they're not being nice.

Yea... that big chunk in the middle there is cheese... then there's the 2 mussels and the spicy sauce from the plate... not to mention the beer and whatever else they dropped in there.

Oh.. guess who dropped the cheese in there.. AF. Hey, look who lost that round! AF :p That's right folks, Karma... it's real ;) (although I ended up being some innocent bystander and had to take some of that crap for her... and believe me, it tasted as good as it looked : like shite.)

Here are a couple of not-so-good sceneraios that you may encounter in a game of Kings:


2 cards left and you're next. 3 Kings off the start.

Games weren't limited to just the young'uns either ;) Uncle James decided to join us part way through the night :D

Guess who lost this game? :D
3 o'clock rolls around and select people were burning out, things were winding down and it was starting to look more like a slumber party. The table was filling up with empty bottles... and there were bodies piling up around the room :p wow... by around 4 o'clock most of the party decided it was time to call it a night (I hear the guys had to clock in next morning). Just when I think the party's coming to a halt... the After Party Bunch shows up! Now, we can all be sure that they'd had their fill from earlier, but of course, they have to catch up at EK's house! :D Their choice of games? Cut Throat...



The following are just pictures that I picked out


More to come...