As Graduation Looms Precariously Over the Horizon...

It's a heck of a time to discover things like how to cook.

My parents' lives have always revolved around the culinary world. Joy and sorrow stemmed from this. My father's last fond memory of Las Vegas before he died was the "giant snow crab legs" at the buffet tables... which I suspect he wasn't supposed to eat much of, but what the hey...

Food is central to most, if not all, celebrations and ceremonies. The one thing vital to your living besides that which is abundant and involuntary to consume (air) is the eating factor.

I'm pretty certain that you'd die without food. Really.

Anyway, just to say that I made chicken broth yesterday and vegetable soup today, for the first time by myself (pretty much, while Lil V and Jorgh stared at me.)

So very good... Brings tears to my eyes... all for very complex and simple reasons...

The (HOPEFULLY) Last Time Ever...

I wrote my final final exam today at 2 p.m. in Rutherford 115 (the same bastard classroom as the one classes were held in).

I can't believe how f@$#ing unfair the stupid exam was.

I never make this claim for any exam if I have no reason to think I couldn't have studied more / better / more better. But there was no way in hell anyone in the examination room could have studied and got any more than an 80% on that final. (Face it, we may not be the "grunt" physicists, as a certain MSPS ex-prez seems to claim, but we're not keener honours students either.)

I worked as thoroughly as I could this semester on each assignment, from I to X, and each stupid question from 1 to 48 (or 47?). I made my solutions as understandable as possible, to myself and the marker, and I handed them in dutifully at the due date (but not the due hour, I admit).

The professor failed to make our assignment solutions (from IV to X) available a month before the exam on his web site, and then he uploaded IV to VII ... but didn't upload the rest from VIII-X until Monday or so, and didn't even put them up properly. He overwrote IX with VIII, and only corrected it this afternoon, about 1.5 hours before the exam.

But then all that didn't matter because the exam didn't have any of the topics we did our assignments on.

Topics
1) magnetic moment of a proton in hydrogen
2) same as #2 in the mock midterm (which I didn't know how to do, but I couldn't find out because the professor was unwilling to put up the solutions to this midterm anyway)
3) something about energy again
4) I have no f#@%ing clue... it had to do with a CN molecule spinning about and doing funny things in space
5) some long rambling question about Van der Waal's interaction between noble elements

Anyway, you get the picture. All the studying that everyone did all semester long... the hours and hours of assignment problems... aching and killing ourselves over formulae after formulae to be deciphered and imprinted into our brains for eternity...

NONE OF THAT FREAKING MATTERED BECAUSE NO ONE KNEW WHAT THE CRAP WAS HAPPENING IN THE EXAM.

I was so piss-mad that I was literally screaming in Jorgh's office after the exam. Ivo and Donnah who were both next door even came by to see what was happening (or also coming by to congratulate me on finishing).

My classmates were literally whimpering during the exam. We all looked at the marker who was our invigilator for most of the exam with great longing and pain. Why wasn't he around when we needed him to be conducting tutorials?

Judith, the notoriously rebellious classmate also from Champlain St-Lawrence, campaigned to get the chair to intervene in our predicament - a professor with the teaching skills of a broken record player. Apparently he will look into the results of the final and adjust the marks accordingly. So I will see in the near future if there is a necessity to write the supplemental. Otherwise, consider myself in precarious ground for not graduation... uh... again.

Think about it this way... I need about 40% on the final to get a bare minimum pass.

Oh My GOD...

I totally forgot to write about the Anti-Wine and Cheese... well, I did take boring photos... I'll try to get those up soon. Anyway, long story short, they had no bread *AGAIN* due to a sketchy allergy risk, and they put all the cheeses on paper napkins. Especially the runny, goopy ones. Good job, good job.

And of course, very few professors came. There were more "outgoing and incoming execs" at the party than there were guests.

At least they had one block of blue cheese. I'll also never forget that moment when Eugene went into the kitchen and helped himself to the St-André, and proclaimed that everything sucked but he was hungry so he was allowed to rummage at will. :p Heather was livid of course.

Mamma's still in TO. Sheesh.

I Thought A Primo Was a Pasta

I started working on the Board of Revisions for Montreal today (ok, yesterday, as of a few minutes ago). The whole process is a big messy piece of s@#t, since I still don't understand the freaking procedures or what the hell is going on.

In fact, I got there this morning and I still had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. All I knew is that my role was a "PRIMO" and that I was supposed to be able to check that people were on the voter list.

Anyway, for the next week or so, I am stationed in the Hampstead station... somewhere in the middle of Hampstead.... Wherever that is. It took me about 20 minutes to get to work by bus, and 30 minutes to walk home. Freaking bus. Might as well strapped on my rollerblades and just zipped my way there even faster.

The borough is about 5000 people large, and completely residential (especially with the houses and the older people). Thus, there was very little need to cram about 10 people at this station (a 12m * 12 m room) in the middle of a park, with about five or six revisions a day. Heck, there were two primos and two secretaries. Most of the time we were sulking in the room waiting for the next person to come by, especially after the chair told us not to go on the internet or play games on the computers.

The primo waits for people to come by, and they check if prospective voters are on the list. The secretaries do the initial changes in addresses, striking people off the list, or other things. There are three people who sit on the "board" who check through the paperwork of revisions that are then verified in person by the two other revising officers. And then there's the primo again... who sits and waits for people to come by.

Basically, I spent the day sitting or standing waiting for people to come by. The other primo, Mike, knew a lot more about what was going on, since he was there on Tuesday.

The secretaries, Clare and Nora, and one of the board members, Christine, were probably the closest in age to me. The others, Amos (the chair), Beverly (vice chair), the drivers, Dave and Daniel, and the coordinator, Tema, were all older. It was still a relatively lively working environment due to the craziness of many of the people working there.

I'll post more when I'm not as zombied as I am right now. I slept for 3 hours last night working on my last freaking assignment in physics ever.

The Davy Experience :)

I didn't get to write too much about Davy's trip to Montreal these last two weeks because I was too busy doing a number of things at the same time. But it was all lots of fun and I still have remnants of his visit here :D (not that he's left yet... in fact he's leaving on Sunday).

Anyway I'll just list everything under this heading because there were so many different but interrelated things that happened.

The Birthday Party

Davy invited everyone to his mother's place up in Cote-des-Neiges (Cote-St-Catherine metro station) to his birthday party on Saturday the 3rd. We were treated to tons and tons of food... *drool*... ranging from the russian salads (including the "Olivier salad"), the caviar, the meat, and the desserts. The guys spent hours upon hours playing chess, of all things to do at a party (Davy's party, of course...) while PJ and I conversed with Ian and Lisa. By the end of the evening we were too pooped to do much else and went home to slumber.

So my mother called me on Tuesday...

"Wanna go to Toronto tomorrow?" she asked more or less nonchalantly.

"What? Tomorrow?"

"Yeah. I'm going tomorrow because I'm kind of bored here."

Well, the conversation didn't really sound like that, but it has the gist. I was puzzled at first because I wanted to go to Quebec to visit her over the long Easter weekend, but since she said she was planning to go until the 18th (*sigh*) I thus had the option to go after class on Wednesday morning, or not at all. :p

I decided not to go, since I had a few tasks to do that necessitated me being in Montreal for at least a few more days... Namely, that Davy had yet to visit me like he said he would, and I had to (start and) complete the invitations for SUMS's End of Year party before the break.

But this means that I have nowhere to go this holiday weekend.... :(

Davy Hath Been Invited

A few weeks before Davy was slotted to come to Montreal, I had invited him over ICQ to come by and make his most tempting mushroom and barley soup. We hadn't set a date, so the matter remained until I got fed up of waiting, and just wrote it down in a card form. I presented it to him for his birthday, so that he wouldn't forget to come over.

He finally came by on Wednesday this week. Davy insisted on obtaining the freshest and as nice ingredients as possible, to make the soup as good as it should be. I suggested we go to Atwater market, since it was probably the best place to pick up all sorts of tasty things. We walked from McGill, passing by the Faubourg, and then reaching Atwater. After a most refreshing market experience, we got home and prepared the soup.

Davy's Mushroom and Barley Soup
Ingredients:
Pearl barley (from Rocky Montana)
Portabello mushrooms (from Faubourg)
Dried (Wild) mushroom mix (from Atwater)
4 Potatoes
Dill
~7 Bayleaves
Salt
~7 Peppercorns
Chili pepper flakes
Sour cream



Stick everything in a big pot with water. Boil for about 40 minutes. When foam develops, remove scum from pot. Serve with a spoon of sour cream in the bowl. Be sure not to eat the bayleaves or the peppercorns.

Now, there's a fundamental problem with this soup... I don't like spicy stuff. But Davy assured me that experimentation would not be too harmful. So he took a good teaspoon (!!!) or so and dumped it in the pot.

Ivo was immediately called to come over, but then he had a problem with his appartment being flooded (!) due to a weird neighbour in the upper levels, so he left for a while and came back anyway. Lil V joined us to eat, and all five of us sat down to a hearty meal...

I'm very intolerant to spicyness, so one pepper flake was enough to start flames on my tongue. Fortunately for me the rice and salad was enough to soothe my flaming mouth, but afterwards I fell asleep with everyone hanging around playing cards. ^_^

We were left with a good amount of soup that still sits on the stove at the moment. It's a good soup... just a tad spicy, eh?

---

Now, I diluted the soup with an extra litre, and have been boiling the thing for a few days already. Jorgh and I just had our second meal of this soup... and it's even hotter than before!

I think the moral of the story is to not put anything spicy like that in a soup again.

The SUMS (!#@$ING) Party

One of my traditions in SUMS was to create the invitations for the end of year party. Except that one year when no one asked me to make the damn thing and they ended up with this fugly looking thing (sorry, whoever made it). So I was naturaly ranting to the exec to let me do the invitations since I couldn't stand them messing up another thing. Of course they agreed, and I had a week before the 13th of April, the day of the event, to make the template (ie. the 6th).

Now, if you are a past SUMS cronie, and you treasure the sweet, sweet (yet disgusting) memories and traditions of the past, you must be informed about the one thing that happened this year that will make you cringe and scream in complete despair, and vowing revenge upon all those heathens responsible for a terrible, despicable injustice upon your legacy.

Ready?

The Annual SUMS Wine and Cheese this year has no wine.

Now, I won't name names since I don't know what happened exactly, but the exec this year has screwed up big time... in fact, this is the biggest ever. The elections were a sham, the exec was a mess, and the one thing they were supposed to uphold to redeem themselves in the eyes of the entire mathematics student body was this one freaking party.

I learned this on the Friday (2nd). Apparently, the person in charge of getting the liquor license for the party did not do so in time, which is 15 days before the event is supposed to occur, and thus they cannot hold a party with liquor being served.

"Why, aren't people lax with the time frame usually?" I asked.

"This year they got a lot stricter..." And then I recalled the fiasco with SSMU's insurance policy expiring at the beginning of December, and the entire student body being left without insurance for their events for about a week. Ahhhhh... crap

"So can't you push the date further to give yourselves more time? (by 2 days)"

"And have it in the exam period?"

No, that wouldn't do.

"So what is going to happen to the Wine and Cheese?"

"We're calling it the 'Fruit and Cheese'..."

Holy mother #@$!ing crap!

The first thought in my mind was just that. Who would go to a freaking "Fruit and Cheese"??? The professors hardly agreed to go to a wine and cheese in the first place, just because our wine was the kinda gross box wine. The only redeeming factor was that the wine was free. But... a fruit???

"Well," I started, "you could call it a Semi-Formal, since we used to have both Wine and Cheese and a Semi-Formal... or a SUMS End of Year party..."

"Those would be interesting," Heather mused. "We'll be having a meeting on Monday to figure out what's going on. In the meantime you don't have to work on the invitations..."

I was pretty ticked off the entire weekend. The invitations were already planned out to have the words "WINE & CHEESE" really, really large on the front of the card. I thought of just giving up, but the most irritating thought in the back of my mind was that I knew I couldn't.

Sometimes I hate my integrity.

---

Finally, on the day that Davy came over to make the soup, after the nap, I spent most of the evening remaking the invitation. While everyone played the big deuce, I slaved away on the ridiculous fruit-covered invitation without any mention of wine on it. Maybe I should have kept the final copy...

I finished at 2:30 a.m. on Thursday.

After giving the thing to the exec later that afternoon, Jordi told me there was a mistake - that it was being held at 5:30 p.m. and not 4.

"But that's what you told me."

"I know."

"When'd you change it?" (frown.)

"..."

"Why'd you change it?" (deeper furrowed frown.)

"To give us more time."

I think if I frowned more it would have fell through the concrete foundation of the lounge.

Davy and the Weird Russian Guy

Later that afternoon, while Jorgh ran off to the statistics seminar, Davy came by again to try pulling together a skating party. Unfortunately, since I didn't want to go without more people going, and it didn't seem that anyone was willing to go in the end, he cancelled the party. Instead, we sat around getting hungrier and hungrier. Ian suggested we go to Café l'étranger, since it was close by and there was the possibility of a banana split that Davy was longing for.

Now, this guy named Vladmir, whom I have never met before, was hanging around kind of aloof. Davy was trying to teach him to play the big deuce, since he played so much the previous night at my place. Vlad didn't seem to be getting the game quickly enough to understand what was going on. One of Ian's friends (Patricia) came by and she recognized Vlad from a kickboxing class a year ago. They started talking, mostly about how scary he was to her since he kicked her ass and laughed like a maniac afterwards, or something like that.

Later, we got fed up of waiting for Jorgh to get out of his seminar ... okay, I got fed up of waiting for Jorgh to get out of his seminar ... and we took off to the cafe. Vlad explained he was trying to practice his french as much as he could because he had an exam in two weeks. So he struggled through french for the rest of the evening.

Ian was driven mad by this guy since he even forced the waitress to speak in french (who was an obvious anglophone, and he was an obvious non francophone who spoke more english). Vlad kept insisting on finding something that was just purement chicken. The poor waitress didn't know exactly what could be suitable for him, so I pointed out the chicken wings. "Est-ce que c'est purement le poulet?" he asked....

Ian then switched places so he didn't have to face him, or even look at him.

["Dave, where did you find this guy?"
"I TA'ed his class in computer science one time..."]

We all agreed later on that he was rather odd indeed.

Rache's Super Duper Love Love Happy Birthday Party Weekend Extravaganza!!!

Rachel turned ... uh ... 18 this weekend, so Billy and Kathy both organized two different chinatown meal-like events for the weekend. Billy booked the Saturday evening at Mon Nan (DUCKY!!! :D:D:D ) and Kathy set up dim sum at Furama (shrimp... ahhhh...) for Sunday noon.

Sarah wanted to come to Montreal for the weekend to have fun at the parties, but Rachel didn't have her space available for that weekend. So I took her in with permission from both my roomies, and she slept on the couch.

The problem with my gift was that I needed more time than it would take on Sunday morning to bake, and it was already offered by Mr. Billy to Rachel on the Saturday night. So Sarah helped me bake it on Saturday afternoon, and it was sitting there smelling up the place like tasty... ^_^ Ooh so tempting... I vowed to make myself another the next week. ^_^

Our supper-evening started out with the five of us - Sarah, Jorgh and myself, and ms. Roomie and Stevie - trekking from the lonesome heights of our domicile (yeah right) to the depths of downtown! We were treated with a tasty gazillion course meal full of ducky and more gooey and tasty dishes, with our friends and the birthday girl.

Ms Roomie and Stevie bought a card that had a cut-out button inside that says "It's my birthday... WANNA SPANK ME?" Thus began the spanking episodes. Best viewed on Billy's website.

Afterwards, we headed off to KARAOKE BAR!!! on de la Montagne to sing ourselves hoarse. Billy forgot the cake at his home, so in between this trip he went to get it. *chooooocoooolaaaate* *droooool*

After partaking the cake, and singing until the cows went moo... we stumbled home and went to blissful but eardrum-ringing sleep.

The next day I couldn't speak properly from misuse of my vocal cords, thus began the slight sore throat episode.

Sarah and I went to dim sum... but as we left the house I realized I had no idea where it was. (Bad me.) It started raining a bit, then snowing a bit, then hailing a bit, then raining again...

We called Rachel, who would obviously know where the event was being held, and she told us it was in Furama, but she would arrive slightly late. (Figures. They went out for coffee after the karaoke the previous night...)

At Furama, we spoiled ourselves upon the dim sum feast and made presentations of our presents. Kathy had been to California and back, so she got presents for everyone (she's so nice :D ), including a bottle of californian red wine for me. (It was great!)

I presented the lovely lemon pound cake that took decades of perfecting the recipe and weeks in preparation and slaving away in the kitchen with the freshest and most tanti- ah whatever. It took a few hours with Sarah to make the cake the previous afternoon, and I had just recently found the recipe on the net, having bastardized it for my own convenience.

After dim sum, we went to consume the always delightful bubble tea a few blocks down from Furama. I had a blueberry cream bubble tea, which at first tasted very faintly of blueberries, but then later degraded in taste to "sugar, cream, tea, and some blobs of stuff." We were unfortunately assaulted by a dvd of a concert by the likes of a chinese singer who supposedly bought his way into fame ... I forget his name, but he was terrible at dancing and singing, and he was a total poser...

We spent some hours at this place, until we found ourselves totally bushed. It was a stumble home and then a supper of I forget what... (this is what happens when you write two weeks after the fact.)

Sarah stayed another evening so that she could get a ride from her professor who was picking her up at the Roddick Gates. I brought her to school and to the bookstore where she could hang out and see Johanne and Brenda a bit where they worked.

After my class, we took the tour of the campus, although I regret having showed her not much of anything interesting. I was more grateful for my postering job, since I could now point out various places and say what was housed in those buildings... (EXCEPT I had no idea where the freaking English department was, since I never went by the place.) The tour led from the science and engineering buildings, to Jorgh's office in Burnside (the phallus of campus), to the creaky and warped steps of the Arts building, Leacock's ugly breadbox structure, and finally to the expansive and decidedly non-walking friendly Redpath/McLennan libraries. We were then pooped out in the Shatner building to relax before she was to be picked up.

She admitted that she hadn't really felt like doing much anyway, so I was more or less relieved. I was also pooped from partying and felt totally useless, but I wanted the last few hours in Montreal to be at least fruitful. At least there wasn't a huge rally going on in town...

Overall, it was a great weekend since I got to hang out with my friends at last, and to forget being a total loser without a regular job or a normal schedule.

The Super-Embarrassing Poll Clerk

I forgot to blog last week about the last two days of poll clerk...ing... so I'll just compress the stupid stories below.

• Our McConnell Engineering poll station was invaded by the folks of CAFS, the group responsible for the boycotting action against our current sucky giant conglomerate food provider Chartwells. Basically, they wanted to give out free food from Tuesday to Thursday, and right next to our poll station.
  
  
  The only problem is that we have a referendum question about SSMU actions against the university administration's choice of opening bidding only for all school cafeterias at the same time. (Thus, Chartwells, being the only candidate who can afford the milllions to bid for all the cafs, would most likely make the only bid.)
  
  
  So we had to tell command center that CAFS was right next to our table, and an elections coordinator came by to shoo them off around the corner. For some reason, barely any of those who went to get free food came by to vote afterwards. They must have voted elsewhere or wasn't going to vote anyway. So command center told us to try to get those masses to vote.
  
  
  By then, I had made a few signs to let people see that it was, indeed, the day to vote. ie. "VOTE TODAY" taped to my hat, and to my back. So I walked around like a crazy person to let people know it was indeed, the day to vote, indeed. I garnered a lot of attention and smiles, and some embarrassed stares. Arabind didn't say much.
  



• Thursday, command center needed to change some of the clerks and stations around to make sure we stayed fresh. So for the very last shift, they sent me to the Law building. CC told me to call them to confirm this, but I had some problems calling the front desk to have them transfer me to "COMMAND CENTER," and not the "Debating Club," the "Switchboard," or the "Dial Tone."
  
  
  I'm sure if there were people in the law building on Wednesdays, they would have voted just out of pity for my signs taped on my head, front and back, saying "VOTE TODAY," "LAST DAY." Then Jin came by, of all days and of all places and of all times, and caught me in the getup. Fortunate for me she didn't bring a camera. :p
  
  
  In addition, the Elections McGill servers decided to screw themselves up for the one-time-only-where-everything-explodes-at-the-most-critical moment, at the very last few hours of voting, and ceased functioning properly or at all for a good while. Then we had a crappy time setting up the station again for voters, so the ones who did want to vote ran off. We had a good turnout of, oh, about 5 in those three hours.
  

I await the big cheque for those 22.25 long hours. And I screwed up my modern physics assignment that week for this job.