Oh The Embarrassment!

I spent all night and part of the wee hours preparing the final exam for submission to the administration this morning. Felix could attest to that, having helped me cobble together one last question that I had taken two hours to think about. Fortunately I had been working on the outline for the final exam this weekend, so I didn't need to check how to split up the marks. But it is not enough to simply make the questions before submission; one must do the entire exam and write up full solutions to them. I gave up at around 4 am and went to bed...

... only to wake up as Jorgh was frantically pulling at my covers telling me it was 8:30 a.m. (And I normally arrive at school at 8. Because classes start at 8:30.)

After sheepishly calling the school to tell the secretary that I would arrive at 9, I bumbled about looking for work attire. The only thing my sleep deprived brain did tell me was to put on my suit jacket, but I only managed to find a summer tank to put on underneath.

Someone forgot to turn on the heat in my classroom again (as usual) so I spent the remaining time freezing with a tank top and jacket. At least it helped keep me awake while I was trying to make coherent sentences. I think there was at least one instance of uttering something like "thingy," when I explicitly told them never to do that themselves. (Their language skills are much better than mine, however, though their logic processes are completely baffling.)

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Speaking of logic...

Ms C the math teacher my butt LOL

Wait, I took my nap today. I can't say it's because I was tired... :(

A Chinese New Year Tale Told With My Ugly Calligraphy

Happy New Year! That is what I wanted to write to my mum.

I asked Felix last week to help me write the message, as I am nearly completely illiterate (in Chinese). Felix gladly obliged (I think), and sent me an image of the computerized version of the message:


My knowledge of the writing process consists of my parents telling me when I was in kindergarten, "Here's the order of the strokes you should write in. As for the actual characters, here are the million different characters you will need to memorize just to be able to read this paragraph." Of course, the million characters unanimously decided to elude my brain and thus I was stuck with only being able to write my name (at most) and the numbers from 1 to 10. ("100? What's that?" Yeah, I couldn't count to a hundred until grade 2.)

Fortunately, language acquisition and mastery is not limited to the early childhood/late childhood phases, as many, MANY (talented/dedicated/stubborn) people have proven throughout the ages. If my mum can bargain with people in local flea markets in 4 different languages down to 25c regardless of item, then it surely can't be that impossible, right?

I started asking Felix incessantly about the different strokes, such as if the vertical lines were meant to end straight down or had little upward turns at the end, etc. Being as patient as he is, he sent me this other MSPaint file to illustrate:


Oh, OK. So I practiced the writing twenty times before I had something readable, and I sent him back my draft:


The whole reason why I wanted to get it right was because I couldn't write in the New Year card I had made, printed from the Canon 3D website, until I was absolutely sure the writing was perfected. It was far from perfect (pretty ugly, in fact) but I had already been too late in sending the card for the New Year so I just sent it in the way it looks above. The card?


It took me 5 hours to recolour, cut out, and paste together into a functional fancy folding fandangle. And after I had gone over all the ornamentation in the background with an orange gel marker, I realized that I could not put a light pencil draft on top of the gel, which meant that if I were to write the message in ink I would have to get it right the first time.

I messed up the "ma ma" part before I got that far, so I started whining for Felix to help. Thank you Felix!

After sending the card and practicing the writing so often, I kept writing it all week and I am still practicing it. Then I started practicing it on Photoshop. Surely there was some brush setting that would give me that fancy calligraphic result?

The closest I got to a real brush stroke was with the settings of "Shape Dynamics" of "Size/Control: Pen Pressure", "Angle/ Control: Initial Pressure" and squishing the pen shape to an oval with a roundness around 28%. The actual act of making brush strokes is a bit trickier, as it necessitates a starting angle different from the direction of the line. The results are the small ticks at the beginning of the horizontal strokes, while the odd angle that the vertical strokes take was from my inability to keep my hand from making it completely straight.

Unfortunately, the sensitivity of the tablet is lacking. The banana I am referring to is at the end of every single damn stroke - when the real life brush is lifted off the page, it gradually creates a point (or blob) as needed, but this (Wacom Graphire2) tablet does not have enough levels of sensitivity to emulate this point; the abrupt "banana" (or "condom tip") result shows this all too painfully.

Thus ends my tale of Ugly Calligraphy.

P.S. My mum received the card and hadn't called because she "forgot."

Holy carp holy carp holy carper

Dawson College shooting:
I sit at home pretty much all day (except the 1 hour a day I get up and go, as per yesterday's post and I don't have much else to do except look for a job and read the news. Except I didn't read it until 3 pm, after I turned on the TV and there were images of cops running around Montreal downtown and people being loaded up on stretchers.

Donnah lives next to College Lasalle, which is right in the neighborhood. I called her a little while ago and she said she was fine. She was taking the 24 bus from Westmount to home, and first spotted a bunch of students running in the opposite direction. (She thought someone might have bombed one of the jewish temples or schools again.) Then the bus divered its route, but was stalled on the road. The police cordonned the whole area, and there was apparently a dead body on the road. @_@ ... Later, she got off the bus still far from home, but the police denied access to everyone for the whole block. So she got home by taking a (rather long) detour by way of orange line to Sherbrooke and back home by 24 bus in the opposite direction.

Then we chatted about finding jobs again. Life must go on, eh?

I'm freaking out because it happened downtown and everyone I know in Montreal has at some point needed to go downtown to do something, so any one of us could have been a bystander or witness. Also, I'm angry because, and I quote what I told Felix: "kids are still kids and they're stupid!" >:@ (By kids, I am referring to the shooters.)

Montreal residents, please report your status!

Norm and Davy!

I had a devious plan. It was to organize a (reverse) surprise party for everyone (especially Norm). In fact, it was so devious that I had others do my bidding without knowing what it was for! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Like the classical evil masterminds, I divulge my plans to you, dear readers. Here's what happened in chronological order.

Felix went to visit Davy in Seattle. Davy told Felix that he was quitting MS and coming back to Montreal. Felix told me, correctly surmising I would be ecstatic. I told Jorghnassen. Then Davy told Felix not to tell anyone. Of course, the buck stopped at Jorghnassen, since he was too busy to tell anyone else, but I was almost ready to publish a front page story in the National Post. :| In the end, we agreed not to tell anyone else since Davy wanted to surprise everyone.

The second step was to produce this surprise to everyone at the same time, otherwise it would have been impossible to keep it a secret from everyone. So I had to mastermind a party plan, which wasn't hard. The hard part was to get this plan going. I don't know how other people make parties in cities they don't currently live in, but I just had no bleeding clue.

Hence, the puppets! Now, Norm is usually the one who plans the gathering because he has the most contacts and the best ideas. On the other hand, it would be too much to ask him to do the arrangements, so I had sent out an email asking for suggestions. This was around 2 weeks ago, to ensure people would not make other plans for the event.

After a week of consultations, I was ready to get Jorghnassen to make reservations and I was about to send out a last email to confirm these things, but then Norm sent out an email to everyone, as he had gone out of his way to set up a reservation for us. He sent to people on and off the initial list (which I was expecting, since it would reach more people), thus started the confusions.

What works the best for surprises is to make sure that the planner is completely in control and the planees are not suspicious of anything off the mark. So I had to justify getting more seats than people had confirmed. (Of course, this led to more confusion after.)

In fact, it turned out no one had any idea who was coming because Norm had been waiting at the restaurant with place for exactly 8. I had counted 10, but I was also expecting more. The waiters didn't want to arrange for more if we weren't sure.

In the end, after Davy arrived (after running into Ivo and Donnah, of all things), we ended up being 14. That's the last time I'm going to organize these things! >:|

Anyway, it was enough to get (some sort of) reactions from everyone when Davy announced he quit MS. It was all worth it though to see Norm completely dumbfounded while he kept asking if we were all kidding him, and Davy showing him the newly signed lease to his new apartment downtown.

Yeah, all you suckaz who didn't make it, don't say I didn't tell you this stuff could never be repeated again. In verbatim:

It is also imperative that you attend (with whomever I haven't done
gone put on this mailing list), for the sake of an evening that will
never be reproducible again forever and ever. Even for the first two
hours or one hour. I'm serious!!! ... I mean, I'm serious.

I'm mostly sorry that I didn't write this in a 60 point font.

St Patrick's Day Blitz

Now that this mess is over again for this year, I can finally get to blogging about it. If some of you wonder if I went overboard with the irish coffee again this year, worry not because I didn't even get any this time. :( Not that I went overboard last year. To put it bluntly, I took exactly one of Scott's irish coffees last year and one sip was enough to make my head spin.

Anyway, there was a school show on the evening of the 16th that I was requested to play in, by one of the teachers organizing the event. Of course, I never let down an offer to perform for a new audience, so I agreed. (On the other hand, it does often take me a lot of sucking up to me to get me to do these things in the first place.)

I learned the piece about three weeks ago, but fiddle music is notorious to me as hard to play properly, simply because of its looser style. (In fact, if you can't play loosely at all then forget it. It sounds like a machine.) So I did try better by memorizing the piece, but it became a fight between remembering the jumbles of notes and the frantic fingering of the left hand. Whatever. I played it well enough.

Getting to the show by 7 when it started was impossible. I mistakingly believed that the cursed bus I boarded would bring me downtown with just as much time as the other line I usually would take. This bus' transmission broke down, about 10 minutes from the destination, and we spent half an hour waiting in the middle of Vanier for another. (Don't ask me why I couldn't get out and walk, because if you know Vanier then you'll understand.) Then I waited another 15 for the transfer at the destination. Thus, I arrived at 7:30. Fortunately, I was slated after the intermission, which meant I was not in trouble. *PHEW*

I was a bit disappointed by the number in attendance, considering the size of the school and its vast, vast wealth of talent in the student pool. Many of them were wonderful irish dancers, while during my high school time there numbered exactly 1 (Danny's niece). I was most appreciative of the teachers and their lending of time, talents, and dedication. From my experiences at all the high schools I worked at and attended, I now understand better the school spirit that lacked in my own rather bland and often painful high school experience. Above all, it reminded me how much high school will mean to the students, as it gives them such greater lasting memories than their future years of perhaps less-than-stellar jobs will provide.

I was quite tired yesterday morning, having slept very little and felt slighted by mum who didn't even remember me telling her that I was performing that night. She thought I was asleep the whole time so she went off to play mah jongg again that evening.

We were provided free breakfast at school so I took advantage of that by sleeping in an extra 30 minutes unintentionally, then spending the remaining 10 minutes of my time preparing to get to school. There are 350+ students at school, so getting in line was a big nuh-uh until later, so I spent even more time starving while watching them eat and go crazy with the green.

I asked if the teacher organizing the show from the previous evening if he needed me to play during the breakfast, as some of the performers would do. He seemed pleased that I would offer to do so, and he did make use of this offer at the very first opportunity. So I played again that day, in front of 400 people who barely even knew me a month ago, and now considered me either a pe(s)t teacher or "that funny asian woman on the violin."

Like I mentioned in the previous post, VRAK-TV was sending a crew to school to film them in the St Patrick's Day celebration that morning. Everyone was abuzz and incredibly anxious to get a glimpse of their favourite hosts. When they arrived, everyone screamed. And they didn't stop screaming.

They screamed through the teachers' choir peformance. They screamed through the irish dancer. They screamed throught the student band. They screamed throughout the bingo game. Then the cameras left and the bingo game ended and everyone ran away. I suppose you can only have enough school spirit to last 2 hours.

I don't think I could take any more noise for a while. Felix suggested last night for me to go out to celebrate, but I seriously don't think I could have done it even if Jorghnassen came over and asked (and I'm not into drinking like Felix is).

I am not alone!

I, among the millions of this country, am not immune to the April 30 deadline. The running joke is that there are 2 seasons here: hockey and tax. (There are probably wittier comedians out there who have already capitalized on that joke, like "we're still finishing off the 1998 playoffs," or "hurrrrrrr....")

Anyway, the point is that I am actually trying to do them earlier this year, thus keeping my brain from exploding from the frantic scribbling of hastily smudged random numbers on April 29th like all the other years. Why? ... Well, this is the first year that I actually worked (making peanuts, but whateva). Mind you, even peanuts get taxed into hell. Peanut butter hell. That gets taxed too.

The web-based program (of the same software you can buy in stores) by Intuit, Quick Tax Web, will allow you to prepare your taxes for free, provided you don't make enough money to qualify for the low income earners' discount. At least that was the case when I did my taxes through it last year. And the years before it. But now they want to charge me for making too much for the discount. :(

I talk to Felix about taxes, who has it even rougher (considering he has to do like a billion different forms more than me, living in California and all). I suggested he become a hermit in the mountains, but he shattered all my dreams when he said, "Hermits pay taxes." :(:(

A good strategy for tax time is to invest into RRSPs. Basically, you stick money away in a registered investment account (thus the money doesn't get taxed until you take it out), and never touch it again until you're close to death. (My concept of retirement is kinda screwy now.) My parents haven't always been the best of investors, but now my mum is urging me to get them to lower my tax burden (if any). So I went to the CRA's web site to figure out how much I am allowed to contribute. If you notice on that page, you can make an account to log into the site and they'll tell you how much you can use, rather than do it by hand... But in order to make an account, you need to find your income from last year's tax form. But if I had that info (which I don't because it's lost in the jungle of my room) then I wouldn't need to use the site to figure out how much I can use. GHAWFAFACXZCAAAAAARRGHHHH Oh, by the way the deadline is Wednesday which is why I'm doing my taxes this early. :(:(:(

If you are doing your own taxes, and you feel like pulling out your own teeth... don't worry, you're not alone.

Year-End Update

Dear all,

Amid turkey leftovers, guest-receiving, chocolate overdoses, a new washer arrival, and a terrible, terrible mess to clean up from the delivery, I'm having a wonderful holiday. It lasts for another week, or two, or whenever. As it so happens, my long vacation is a result of a good and/or bad thing - being a supply teacher.

Anyway, I would like to start to end this year's blogging by trying to remind myself what happened over 2005. Uh...

January

Continued to work at the school. Constant reminders of why teaching is a hit-and-miss game pop up everywhere. Also, January tends to be the most depressing month due to nothing happening.

February

Ivo comes to visit and cheers me up immensely. :):):) ... Winter is also starting to look less ugly due to my first trip to the tubing place. Stupid shit happens with the landlord.

March

Nagging thoughts over purpose of obtaining two degrees.

April

The Pope dies. Why is this such a big event to me, I'm not even sure anymore... Waves of strike days further disturb the regularity of the school year at the school, not to mention the teacher turnovers during the year.

May

More of my strike escapades. 3/4 of the school disappears to the wild for a character-building camping trip, while the leftovers like myself are stranded at school to fend for ourselves.

June

Exam corrections, and biking diversions pepper my month. The anniversary of my father's death still hurts.

July

Trip to Cowtown and environs. Weddings strengthen the family bonds. Got to see Wesley. :D Also, got to meet the psycho vampire dog Bobo. :|

August

Disappointed with myself not getting a job for the school year. :( Nonetheless, I made a vow to continue working in Quebec.

September

Amazing training to run 5 km! Well, not really that amazing. I turn 25. Does that mean I'm just an old baby?

October

Amazingly completed the run. @_@ Also, amazingly obtained a driver's licence. @______@ Also, the start of a long supply teaching run...

November

Continued the long supply teaching run. Happily, it means that I shouldn't be as worried as the summer to obtain a job, hopefully for the reasons I'm thinking of. The word "pancake" keeps popping up. Eddie's grandma passes away. :(

December

Birth of PJ the 3rd. :) Along the same lines, I learned the virtues of ordering things online. The possible start of crazy buying sprees... Felix and Rachel separately visit for the holiday break. :D:D:D

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Jorgh visits me every month or so. I also go to Montreal every so often to shower him with gifts and/or food. I mean "and."

I met many interesting people and had lots of memorable experiences. I keep reading more and more manga when I should actually try to read real books, but I find pictures and stories more attractive. Might this be the real start of a different path?

I'm so, sooo sorry that the picture came out so badly. :(
From left to right, front row: Stefan, Lisa, Donnah, Cheryl, me, Hana; middle row: Ivo, Derrick, PJ, Felix, Lil V; back row: Jesse, Stephen, Norm, Ivan. Josh was taking the picture. 

Wikitravel!

Anyone checked out Quebec City yet? Felix did. Then he sent me to the site. It was so craptastic that I had to start editing it. It seems that Evan liked that someone would work on it. Now Jorgh is also doing some edits too. ;)