LOL Kids

Not the first "???" fan pic that I have come across while teaching, but I thought I would show this to you for the hell of it. I just found it on the back of one of the quizzes I am marking, and yes I am giving it back to the student with the comment.

Some of them still don't know my name, despite it being displayed continuously on the blackboard.

---

I updated Norm's link so now it goes to teh awesomest webpage evar! And both Jorghnassen and I are looking forward to possibly seeing him in Waterloo next week. Raintree Cafe!

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."

What I Did For The Rav4. Also, Happy Valentine's Day!

This morning, I spent an hour and three quarters in one of the saddest malls I have ever entered. It consisted of one corridor not longer than a football field, with the two main attractions being "Dollarama" and "valu-mart." (Two, I was lucky.) The patrons of the mall consisted of little old ladies and men, middle-aged types who were zipping in and out of Dollarama for the poor man's version of Adolescent Disfigured Samurai Tortoises and Akay scrubbing powder, and ethnic minorities of mysterious origins and even more mysterious purpose of "shopping" at a "mall" during work hours. And I was stranded there for another few hours.

What, dear readers may ask me, were you doing in such a godforsaken corner of Kitchener? Weren't you supposed to be at school, teaching the young 'uns their differential operators and vector-valued functions? Alas, comes this particular tale of Redneckia, a.k.a. Frederick St. Mall. Which shouldn't really be called a mall but whatever makes one feel important, no?

---

It all started with a snow storm. No, wait; scratch that. It all started when I decided to become a teacher.

Actually it started somewhere in-between.

Having been in need of a car to go to work here in Waterloo, Jorghnassen's father generously donated his car, the 1997 Toyota Rav4 to his son, and thus the Rav 4 became part of my way of life around here. But our new province of residence has many hoops set up for any would-be border crossers like ourselves to make sure that any vehicle we bring with us would make more bureaucratic paperwork for ourselves, and more money for the province's numerous and vital auto mechanics, and its not-so-idle bureaucrats.

Jorgh's already hopped over a few of the hurdles, having gained his Ontario Driver's Licence, Ontario-based Auto Insurance, and other Ontario Brand (R) Pieces of Paper. It was now a matter of obtaining the Ontario Licence Plates, but this required more investment than just driving around town looking for building X, pi, and Dingbat.

According to province-jumping laws, one must send the evil foreign car to an auto mechanic who will then charge a set amount of money to check if this car is not spewing out too much poopoo into the Ontario Brand (R) atmosphere, also known as the Emissions Test, and the mechanic will also have to check if the car is safe for the Ontario Brand (R) Roads, a.k.a. Safety Certificate. Only then will the car be qualified to have Ontario Licence Plates.

I wanted to make sure that we had a mechanic who would be honest and worked well, but what can one do when one is in an entirely new environment, new province a.k.a Car Country (tm), with not many people to look to for contacts?

Fortunately, my boss serendipitiously had problems with his char, which he chatted about briefly to me. It was then discovered that he had a cousin who owns a garage in Kitchener, not too distant from the mall previously named, and that this cousin would be able to do all that auto work necessary.

Thus Jorgh and I were led to this garage yesterday afternoon. It was immaculate and definitely radiated efficiency. I knew that since my boss was related to the man, what was said was what is necessary. We left the car with him for about an hour and a half, wandering aimlessly around the neighbourhood.

Neighborhood might not be exactly what you'd imagine to describe an area that looks like the highway crossed with heavy commerce, peppered with roadside fast food. But if you are ever in the neighbourhood to buy army surplus equipment and a burger, this area would definitely be your best bet.

To summarize, we essentially had nowhere to go for an hour and a half, so we wandered the snowy streets from business to business, looking like hobos (in the Montreal sense, but looking nowhere like residents of this area, who look like hobos to begin with). When we returned, the mechanic said that the car passed the Emissions Test (yay!) but needed a buttload of work done to pass the Safety test (boo); i.e. a moolah-full of work. All necessary.

I scheduled to take it to the garage again today after work, near 1 pm, but the hitch on the plan was the unexpected cancelling of classes today, due to the snow storm. Actually, it was not much of a storm, as it actually passed under K-W and into Hamilton. What it did leave with us was 3 inches of snow on the ground. And the car.

The Rav4 has yet to fail to start in the morning, even after the deepest freeze of the year (refer to Jorgh's blog about the weather, I refrain from commentary). Nonetheless, when 3 inches of snow get dumped on the car, it still needs to be carved out of the white pile. I managed to break the new snow brush + ice scraper into snow brush and ice scraper. It took twice the amount of time to get to school, as several cars in front of me were cautiously inching along the stretch of road cutting through farmland, ironically clear of snow and even blowing snow. Along the way, just before arriving in fact, the secretary called and asked if I had 4 wheel drive. "I... think so?" Good, because I was going to need it. "O...kay?"

I arrived at school and discovered that classes was cancelled, due to a circumstantial massive snow pile sitting in front of the gate of the parking lot that with my integrated traction (or "sort-of" 4-wheel drive) I managed to drive straight through. The secretary also informed me that not only was there a snow pile preventing safe transit of students to the school, but that the other two teachers could not get their cars out of their respective driveways. When I told her about the garage, she suggested that I call ahead and take it earlier, and ask if they would shuttle me somewhere to wait for the projected three hours of work to be done.

Her suggestions worked, and I brought the car to the garage at 9:30. My boss was coincidentally at the garage as well, just having something briefly done for his car. His cousin, the mechanic, then asked if my boss would shuttle me to "the mall" while I waited. "That would save me a trip," the mechanic said. Surely there would be no problems, as boss lives in the area, right?

... "Where's the mall?" the boss asked, as he started the car.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as we arrived at this mall, very near to the garage, the boss proclaimed, "This isn't much of a mall..." But who am I to take advantage of a lift to somewhere not in highway/furniture store/Burger King wonderland? I got out of the car, and made my way inside to experience all the glory of Dollarama, Home Hardware, and valu-mart.

To add some description of the excitement radiating from this mall, there was exactly one coffee shop, a women's only fitness center, some dinky (old person) boutiques, and the German consulate.

This, dear reader, is how I ended up staring at dyed-big-hair-tapered-jeans ladies and homely old people mulling in front of the lotto stand for almost two hours, until I couldn't take it any more and scuttled out into the unplowed sidewalks. (I would have run but earlier this week I had inadvertently cracked my big toe nail kicking the dirty snow behind the Rav4 tires, that turned out to be dirty ice.)

Finally, I ended up back at the garage, sitting and slowly falling asleep on their couch, until the repairs were completed at 12:15. There were no other events of note, so I drove home. Then I wrote a bit, then I slept for about 5 hours and now I'm writing some more.

Moral of the story: although everyone is nice and polite wherever I go, if the main attraction of a mall is the dollar store........... run away!

Islands in the Junos, That is What We Are

Stephen pointed out that Islands is nominated for a Juno, for Alternative Album of the Year (2006, I presume, tho the album came out 2005). Of course, as I pointed out before, bro didn't actually record with them, which makes it kind of a pity. Nevertheless, it is a nice recognition, and should they win I will still be very happy for him. (Tho for some reason their website is down... @_@ )

While looking for info on the Juno nod, Jorgh found an interview my bro did for some website. I'll let you decide who was being more facetious and who was being more of an ass.

---

So finally I have a bit of time to write about some other dull things about Waterloo than food and... food. For instance, the smell. (Yay for a nose that picks up everything. And yay for a topic that will ensure that absolutely no one will come visit us here.)

It smells like something different every day when I walk out into the hallway and to the rear-facing apartment stairwell in the morning to get to the car in the parking lot. Sometimes it smells like someone's cooking. Sometimes it smells like someone's butt. Once in a while it smells like absolutely nothing. That is the day when they clean the carpets.

But for some insane reason, it smells like dog pee more than anything else. And cigarette smoke. And then a mix of both. And other things I fear to mention.

You'd probably say, "Why not just avoid this stairway to stinky hell?" Well, I am a creature of habit and thus after learning of this particular exit leading to the parking lot is the easiest way to the car, lugging two heavy textbooks all the way around a 50+ apartment sized building every morning doesn't strike me as an acceptable tradeoff.

Anyway, if you do come visit (which by now you might say "OMGNOWAI"), with a method of personal transit be it automobile, moped, or bigfoot, you can avoid the corridor of perpetual stink and you are welcome to park on the street.

Ms C's Random Food Review: Grapefruit

What: Grape-fruit. The pink one.

Comments: It doesn't even look like a grape. Besides being spherical.

The recent weather mishaps (in a multi-million-dollar-devastation sense) over citrus counties in the states have guaranteed that our fresher supplies of vitamin C will cost more than it usually should, although supplies are still regular from other continents like in South America. I forgot where we got these pamplemousses from but I assume they are actually from Califlowernia.

Review: Jorgh and I don't see eye to eye with citrus fruits. Basically, he hates oranges and anything that has to do with orange, even artificially flavoured orange crystals (or so I presume) and orange shirts. Though I see that he will gladly devour a tablespoon of lemon juice when he gets the hiccups because, "It works!" Then he gets mad when I get hiccups and refuse to gracefully sip away at citric acid on a spoon.

On the other hand, we both agreed on buying some grapefruits to vary our fruit intake. Tangy and sweet at the same time, the pink grapefruit is a summery citrus that has no need of supplement nor garnish, unlike other kinds of grapefruits, the "Ruby Red" variety is sweeter. It is a fruit thoroughly appreciated when freshly squeezed into juice or scooped out clumsily with a teaspoon. Then the pulp and juice have to be slurped out to avoid waste. One can argue that a grapefruit spoon will help avoid all that mess but I would rather keep my 5 dollars, thank you very much.

Jorgh dumped a teaspoon of sugar on top of his half. Then I had to eat it.

Rating: 4/5 for fruits, but 2/5 for style. >:(

Ms C's Random Food Review: Barley

What: It is called barley.

Comments: One puts it in soups, like Davy showed me that one time he made us mushroom (and more) soup. I remember the giant Ivo pot in which we made enough soup to feed us for weeks afterward, and the peppercorns that had been left in the bottom for one poor sap who had the last bowl of extra peppery flavoured soup-ness. (Lil V should have had that one, knowing how tolerant I am of spices.) But the soup was good, and much of it was because of the addition of barley. I would not have thought of adding it otherwise, nor thought of putting it in nearly all the soups I can possibly add it in.

Review: A small amount in water puffs out into a lot of barley. I learned this the hard way. (When have I not learned anything the hard way...!? #@_@) I have yet to correctly proportion the dry barley:broth volumes, as every time I put a bit less it still sops up most of the broth and expands like a marshmallow in a microwave.

Personally, I don't mind having such a bloated soup full of barley, as I can't get enough of the partly crunchy texture and the way it complements vegetables. It absorbs the beefy taste in beef broth, which adds even more depth to the soup. But alas, Jorgh doesn't think soup should look like wet foodstuff + some water so I have to experiment further.

Rating: A gajillion stars!!!/5 potatoes

Baldur's Gate

Another BG portrait, on a whim. I made yet another bard who somehow rolled 95, thus merited her own portrait for the game. Stupendous stick!