Hey Baby

So on the 24th of October, 2006, my auntie Iris gave birth to my newest baby cousin, a beautiful baby girl of a hefty 7.5 lbs. Iris is wife to my most favourite uncle, Keith (or Fu tao, which means "Bitter Head" in Chinese), and this baby is their first. Just looking at the first few photos, I instantly felt something inside of me melt a little bit. I don't want to come off as overly sentimental or emotional or touchy-feely--I assure you that I'm still 100% the XY chromosome I was before--but this baby is the cutest little bundle of rosy cheeks and little fingers and toes that I've ever laid eyes on. You've got to understand that Fu Tao was like an older brother to me, since he did play a huge part in rearing me in my critical years. He treated me so special, unlike all my other cousins who were his nephews and neices just the same. My uncle cared for me like I was his own, and now he has his own for real. I'm so happy for him and his wife and I pray that they'll have the most blessed of days to come as a family.
Oddly enough, I was given the task of naming this beautiful little bundle of joy (click title to see a small collage/pic) and I feel honoured. It's a big deal, a name for a child. I better not screw this up--though the final call is up to my dear uncle and auntie. But wow, such an awesome little thing... I don't understand how atheists live with themselves.

On a completely detached note, I kinda wanna have a kid...

Perseverance of the Saint

I heard you say you would love for a lifetime.
Now you complain a lifetime just doesn’t feel right for you.
Another casualty of casual love,
Another soul out of place, a heart that gave up.

Why do we break the promises we make?
Are we living for ourselves?

Don’t give up on love and throw it all away!
Don’t give up on love and let it fall away!
When did it become so easy to run from your pain?
Don’t give up on love and throw it all away!

I heard you say you can’t change a stubborn heart.
I can relate ‘cause that’s how I feel when I talk with you.

Why should it take losing everything,
To realize it might be time to change?

Your restless heart won’t win ‘cause you take but you don’t give,
And you’ll keep moving on until you learn what love is.
-Sanctus Real, Don't Give Up
It's almost as if this song was written for me. I borrowed this CD from Kristen the other day and I heart it. Sanctus Real, definitely worth money. When I get a job...

info @ the P.Pole 10.23.06

Hello, my lovely reader. How are you faring today? Well, I hope. Today was an interesting day, from the returned Bio quiz and test to the returned quiz and TIPS evaluation of Math to building molecules in Chem to demand and supply [elasticiaty] theories in Econ. Lunch brought chilled breath and icy fingers, and a soaked foot/sock for me (I went over the fence to get the frisbee and stepped into a patch of tall grass/ditch). My day was surprisingly lovely, regardless of my foot (which was actually already cut open from the week end), the freezing winds, and that which I call a hair cut. I don't know what it was about today. Perhaps it was the weather, the temporary change from cloudy to bright and beautiful for several delightful hours (only to return to its previous state, but with hail!). Good day. Danke Sehr.

I saw her yesterday
And I never felt the feeling
Like the one I felt today.
And now,
It's taking over me.
I've never met anyone like you
'Cause I never could find the words to write you.

She's been on my mind.
She's working overtime.
She's got perfect reason;
Says she loves to talk to Jesus.
I think I believe her when she says,
"Life can be so simple if we all just learned to pray."

She's got every little thing I wanted
And it still feels just like the day it started.
I'll say good-bye to the broken hearted,
And I could never express the way
I felt before tonight.

She sits there all alone.
She's reading from the chapter
That she sometimes calls her own.
And now,
She's taking over me.
This girl I once rejected
Has now become the girl of my dreams.

She's not an ordinary girl,
I can see it in her eyes.
Just an ordinary boy,
God must have heard my prayers last night.
- Hawk Nelson, Every Little Thing
I realize that I posted this song at the start of school already, but click the title for an acoustic version by Hawk Nelson.

EDIT: Sometimes it's fun to switch subjects without warning, just to see who's paying attention. It gets pretty confusing though, when even I don't know whom I'm talking about anymore.

Friday Night Shows

I had an awesome friday. Really, in spite of the failed math assignment, pop french quiz, and retarded english class (taught by a woman who once said in a stroke of genius, "One day we'll invent safe bombs."). My day was nevertheless great, as I met up with Al.
If none of you people know Al (I'm sure SOME of you do, since he did work at Jaffray for quite awhile), he's a seminary student/pastoral intern who formerly worked at TJCAC (until 2 months ago, when his schooling program's requirements took him to a presby church). Al and I had been meaning to get together and "hang out" (which usually means him buying me food and watching me down it), but had been unable to do so since he left. Well, I'd been pretty much buried in school and didn't make much time for getting out and having fun up until then. It was going to be fun.
So for our first stop, we went to Fairview, and we walked around talking about whatever was on our minds. I got to get some interesting insight from a wiser, older brother about stuff like how to confront people of different beliefs than yours in a Christ-like manner. It was a good hour and some of talking and laughing, while sipping drinks (he had a coffee and I had tomato juice).
Denise, Al's "female friend" (you know what I mean) decided to not meet up with us, and so we left Fairview after a short luggage hunt for Al's mother (he's a momma's boy I think). Allen decided to hit up a pool hall called "Le Spot" on Brimley and Sheppard (same plaza as Boston Steak House). Over a crap load games of pool (Al won most of 'em), we talked a bit more and just enjoyed the company. It was really great to finally go out and have some fun again, after a couple months of nothing really special like that.
For dinner, we hit up the Harvey's on Morningside and I had a triple burger. Like I'd mentioned earlier, here's the part where Al pays for food to watch me down it. And down it I did. I felt good after that. It's like, I'd killed and eaten three relatively small cows in one day. I felt useful, like I'd achieved something wonderful. Anyway, dinner took a whole seven minutes (you try eating a triple burger in seven minutes).
We hit up Savio for Hosanna right after and it was cool to have everyone go "Hey Al!" again. I think he liked coming back and visiting everyone. I liked it for sure. And here we are at the end of this post. It was a fun afternoon and night. It felt great to go and just do stuff, fun stuff, and chill with Allen again! >_O

info @ the P.Pole 10.18.06

5 things that bug me:

• when Roman Catholics are lumped in with Catholics
• the fact that the TDSB Vistrual School site is uselessly cluttered up with complications that make for poor compatibility and a crap load/ton/crap-ton of work for tech support guys
• tech support guys that settle with mediocre site builds and blame me for using Firefox/using security settings to protect myself from the Internets
• when half-truths are taught as whole truths
• my tendency to make mountains out of molehills freaking mountains
  

EDIT: i hate Java. Java, you suck. hard.

Prance! Dance! Trance!

So I've taken a slight digression away from my usual blend of emo rock, punk rock, indie rock, hard rock, igneous rock, and into the world of Trance. Some people call this stuff by a lot of different names, but I call it Trance. I realize that it's a lot of repetition and whatnot, but really, there's some good stuff in here. I find myself working to this stuff quite nicely. With the beats banging and my fingers... fanging (shut up shut up) I tend to waste a large number of hours, slaving away at work that's really quite monotonous IMO. Anyway, click the title for a pretty little track to get the party started.

Prettiness

So I've been playing with my Windows UI for a long time now, and I've accumulated/gone through a good number of applications/tweaks to make my Windows look pretty (in this case, somewhat like a Mac). I've been running WindowBlinds for a long time, along with Winamp. "OS X Tiger" was my skin back when I made another post like this, but I switched to "OS X Panther" because, well, because it came out, alright?! I was running a classic skin for Winamp awhile back, but I switched over to iChange recently because of the simplicity and fun extra functions of a modern skin--my favourite has got to be the option for background for the song info and whatnot to stay in it (I can change it to any image I want, either pre-made or custom made). I switched from RK Launcher to ObjectDock because, well ObjectDock is a lot better. It's clean and without the annoying glitch of RK where it would reset my settings to a default everytime it was restarted. What else is there not shown in the screenshot... Oh yes, I learned about Launchy from Herm's blog (check "The.Buds" section) and I'm using that to run stuff. I also switched from MS Office to OpenOffice because I needed OO's equation editor (simply named "OpenOffice Math") for Physics and decided, what the hell, I might as well just use all of OO for consistency. If you'll look in the screenshot, you'll see that I'm still running FireFox. I'm a huge FF fanboy (FFF!) and I really think everyone needs to get it and use it. It just rocks. And beside it in the taskbar is Adobe CS2, a recent acquisition, and a definite upgrade from (the slightly n00bish in retrospect) Adobe Elements 3.0 that I was using for image editing. All in all, I like the way my desktop looks right now, and probably won't be changing too much for another little while.

info @ the P.Pole 10.12.06

okay so i've been super busy lately without much spare time. for this session, i've assembled a small list of the stupidest quotes from my current english teacher --you know, the anal kindergartener. have fun (she really did say these, i'm not lying/joking/paraphrasing and no, she was not joking/quoting when she said these).

9 laudable quotes from Ms. Olsheski:

• "On the continent of India..."
• "...it'll just take a milliliter of a second..."
• "Use your imaginication."
• "The more facilitate you have..."
• "facilate"
• "austeer"
• "compartdementalize"
• "A metaphor (click to see the definition according to Dictionary.com) links something real with something that isn't, like this: 'The Sun is like a fireball.'"
• "That's one of the cliteria."

this a case where my personal interest for a subject is dashed to pieces because of, well, you read it for yourself. enough said. more on Osheski (or as Yun calls her, "Old Chestky") later, most likely.

IB Grace

So Ms. Yeganegi handed our most recent math tests back today. Supposedly the class as a whole did very poorly. She made a special effort to let me know that I did terribly when I had casually asked about whether I had "exploded on the test."

"So you think you did well on this test?!"
"Well, I don't really know, so that's why I'm asking you."
"Should I tell you what you got? I don't think you want to know."**
"Wow, that bad huh. Okay, killing my self-esteem can wait until tomorrow I suppose. But seriously, was it that bad?"
"You didn't get the radicals question. I expected better."
"Wait, so that was it?! Just that one? Phew..."
"No, and you had silly mistakes all over the place too."
"Oh. Thanks miss."

Yes, so a little more info on this Ms. Yeganegi. She's a woman, Iraqi I believe, two kids, fashionable I suppose, and what I would call a no-BS kinda teacher. I mean, she's not super strict or stern or whatever, but she will start writing the lesson on the board without warning. She also breezes through concepts and lessons at a blistering pace. I've had her as my math teacher since grade nine, and I'm actually glad. I'm a pretty bad student when it comes to staying quiet or still for too long, but she's never had a big problem with my random antics. I appreciate the fact that she is genuinely interested in what she teaches and that she thoroughly understands what she teaches. These two are by far the two most important things for a teacher to have, interest and competence. It's hard to learn from someone that doesn't have a passion for the subject or doesn't have a good understanding of the same.
Anyway, about the tests we got back. I was preparing myself for a not so great mark when I received my test, and it actually turned out better than I'd thought by itself. I'd got a kidna decent mark and I would've been happy with it as it was. While looking through it though, I noticed a couple spots where I didn't understand what she meant when she marked some questions wrong. I mean, I knew the answers were wrong, but I didn't understand what she meant/what I did wrong. So I asked her to explain to me because I didn't get what I did myself. Today must be my lucky day because upon revision, she told me that she was the one that got it wrong and decided to give me some marks because she knew I got the concepts by looking at my rough work. I ended up with a somewhat significantly higher mark (according to IB kids' standards) out of nowhere and I was just kinda amazed, not at the mark, but at the fact that she would adapt the way she evaluated based on what she knew of me and how I do things. I think she's a good teacher, not because she gives easy marks -- she doesn't, not usually -- but because she's understanding and reasonable.
So all this was just to go and prove my point, which is that being gracious and assuming the best about others, giving them the benefit of the doubt and so forth is a good way of living life. I was on the receiving end of such kindness today, and it felt quite nice. The difference between my original mark and the second mark isn't big enough to justify how glad I was, so I guess it must've been because we're programmed to respond in this way when we're shown mercy and compassion. Irresistable grace, anyone?

**This kind of indirect and somewhat ambiguous answer is pretty typical of females if you ask me. I kid. >_O

info @ the P.Pole 10.02.06

5 things i'm doing that i should've done a long time ago:

• borrowing Yam's Dakona CD
• requesting my TEL account for Virtual School (that officially starts tomorrow thursday)
• using notebooks for school
• bringing my SP along for trips to and from school
• putting some Rub A535 on my abdominal area

yes, i went and hit up my local gym (as in the one in my building) to exercise a bit on the weekend. it seems i had gotten a bit underworked in my midsection, and it didn't like me doing a ton of sit-ups very quickly, all at once. on top of that, it especially hated the fact that i did not stretch before or after working it so hard. and so, for the past two days, i've been struggling to stand up straight or move around too much. acid collected in the muscles and now it hurts like a... well, y'know. nevertheless, i'm planning on hitting up the gym again in a few moments, just as soon as i post this great song by Dakona.

Yesterday was the longest day I have seen,
But tomorrow will be longer, maybe.
Indecision's rising up like steam
From an early morning highway.

If things were different everything might work itself out fine.
I’d like to see right through the windows in Your mind.
I know that everyone’s got something up their sleeve,
So what have You got for me?

I'm gonna give it up! I think I’ve had enough:
I’m praying for a revelation.
Could You set me free? ‘Cause this is killing me;
I'm begging for a revelation,
And I know that You know the way.

Twenty-one and the lifeboat is starting to sink;
Yeah, the water’s rushing over my faith.
Growing tired of living life on my knees;
Yeah, I’m begging for some mercy.

If things were different everything might work itself out fine.
I’d like to see right through the windows in Your mind.
I know that everyone’s got something up their sleeve,
So what have You got for me and my baby?
- Dakona, Revelation

as usual, click the title, enjoy the track, you know the drill.