Monday, May 29, 2006

Midterms...Oh,God...Midterms...

So much crap to go through.

That's the problem with taking three intensive summer courses. It's been pretty much two weeks and I'm already swamped with material to cover for the exams. I have to skip a lot of fun things that my roommates are doing, so this sucks twofold. Oh well, it's either suffer through this and get good grades to gain the recruiters' attention, or have fun now and get ignored by companies, as always. Hmmmm...I'll pick the former.

Wise choice? No, I decided on the flip of a coin.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

I'm Hooked Up! (Call Me.) (^o^)_d

Fido sucks.

It's a pay-as-you go kind of cellphone plan, and it requires you to put money into your account, with prepaid phone cards, once a month. Otherwise, they will take away all the money that you have in your cellphone account. That's right, Fido packs a nasty bite. I, like all humans, forgot to put in money one month, and Fido took away the $50 I had in my account! I held and still hold a grudge with them for that.

If your customer, like all people, forget to fill up their cellphone account once in a while, do you punish them by stealing all their money? Hell, no! At least not if you want to keep your customers. At most you'd freeze their account until they remember to enter money, and then you reinstate the funds in their account. To make things worse, the usage rate is a whopping 30ยข a minute! One of my classmates called me with a question, and that used up all $20 of the money in my account!

That was the last straw.

So today, I had one of my neighbors who worked at an electronics store hook me up with a new cellphone, which includes a Bluetooth headset for free. The headset is perfect for when I drive. My new phone is a neat little number that is real thin and called the RAZR, because the silly Mortorola people can't spell "razor". With unlimited evening and weekend hours, I can field as many questions from my classmates as I want them to know shit. But I'm not dumb enough to put my number on here.

I have enough people pestering me for cheap Viagra, software, penile extensions, and a "good time" from Debbie.

Victory In The Sheathed Sword

I have taken up iaido to complement my kendo experience.

Unlike kendo, which is the Japanese analog to fencing, iaido focuses on drawing a sheathed sword, rather than beating each other up with bamboo ones. Of course, if we sparred each other with real swords, the club membership will deplete fast. Even though we go through our techniques with an imaginary opponent, we don't use real "live" blades. Instead, we use iaito, practice swords with blades made of a rust-proof alloy rather than steel. They do not have sharp edges and are not suitable for cutting, even though the tip of the blade can still be dangerous. Although still cheaper than real swords, they can still be pretty expensive, so I haven't invested in one yet.

But why focus just on drawing the sword rather than fighting with it? Historically, a sword duel can be as fast as a Western gunfight. As with guns, that first moment when the sword is drawn is perhaps the most crucial - first blood could also mean last blood. This is especially true for surprise attacks, when the enemy is close to you.

So in my first class, the sensei taught us, right off the bat, of the expression saya no uchi no kachi, which means "victory in the sheath" in Japanese. It is a philosophy of iaido and can be achieved through practicing iaido. Basically, this means to defeat your opponent withougt having to draw your sword. This is kind of like Sun Tzu's The Art of War, which describes supreme victory as when you make your enemy submit without a battle, without shedding a single drop of blood. So why are we still learning how to draw a sword for a quick kill? Kind of a paradox, isn't it?

I rationalize that if it is necessary or inevitable that the sword must be drawn, then it is better that the opponent be dead and me alive. Or, because he (or she, as we're in the 21st century!) is no longer worthy, unable to wield a sword because of a sudden limb shortage. Or better yet, no longer having any limbs at all, yet still showing an amusing Monty Pythonesque tenacity to continue the fight by attempting to bite off my kneecaps. Anyway, if you live long enough as a samurai, then you could earn a notorious reputation (spawned by the help of all those armless people you just made) that would discourage anyone from fighting you. If that's not victory in the sheath, then I don't know what is.

So background aside, yesterday was the second day of an annual weekend iaido seminar, which includes skill-ranking examinations. The keynote figure was a high-ranking master of iaido from Japan, probably second only to the headmaster of the entire martial art. He has attained 10th dan ranking which is the highest skill level attained under the Japanese ranking system (which doesn't just apply to Japanese martial arts, but other skills like Japanese calligraphy). This makes him pretty old, but he seems to be in good shape to teach us. Being the vice-president of Japan's iaido federation is another item he has in his impressive resume.

After the seminar, there was a social event at The Old Spaghetti Factory, a nice and spacious Italian restaurant in the Gastown district. We had people coming from Victoria to as far as Boston for this seminar, so this was a good chance to mingle, even though each class sat at their respective tables. Dinner was from a set menu, so everyone pays the same price and so no one will have to bicker about the check, or suspect the restaurant of padding the bill (This has actually happened to me before in a Japanese pub. Even though my colleague was good buddies with the owner.).

Unfortunately, the set menu didn't include their delicious sauteed mushrooms. So I had to keep complicating things by begging the waiter to add sauteed mushrooms and put it on my check. The waiter was kind of hesitant, because their usual policy of not allowing additions to the set menu. It was a bit of a hassle, but I assured the people at my table that the sauteed mushrooms were worth the pain. They were skeptical, and some were even drunk enough to show their annoyance at the lengths I would go to get my bowl of sauteed mushrooms. What can I say? The Old Spaghetti Factory's sauteed mushrooms are fucking good.

My co-diners finally got sick of my persistence, to the extent that the guy sitting across from me made up an excuse to the waiter that I came here all the way from North Vancouver just to eat their sauteed mushrooms. Fortunately, the waiter was a nice German guy, and so he at last made an exception for me. When the sauteed mushrooms finally came, everyone could smell the wine, herbs, and spices that the mushrooms were sauteed in. I let them all have a try, and the moment the mushrooms went into their mouths, they agreed that it was worth all the trouble.

Thus, I basically got an entire table of people skilled in the way of the sword hooked on The Old Spaghetti Factory's sauteed mushrooms. And I won them over without drawing my own blade.

Victory in the sheath.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Echo Bitch

I'm starting to wonder if there isn't one in every class.

Every time my prof in law class today asked a question and I answer it, this chick behind me repeats me, only desperately louder and faster to tune me out. I guess she wanted participation marks so badly that she's trying to snatch it from me. Well, she's certainly doing a good job of annoying me. It's like having an amplified echo hit you from behind. No wait, she sits behind me to my left and up a tier, so it sounds like a fucking chatty parrot sitting on my shoulder that cuts me off with its cacophonic mimicry.

You might think I'm a fusspot, but this professor assigns a good portion of our final grade to class participation, and this mirror-speaking moo-cow behind me was attempting to inequitably capitalize on this through vocal repetition - but only of my answers. So I beg your pardon if I'm taking this a bit personally. Actually, no I don't. Screw you, you have no right to judge me.

Next class, when the teacher asks a question, I should mumble, "Your mother's a turd-bucket, tea-bagging crackwhore!" and see if she echoes that out reflexively.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Shrouded Tendered Nuisances

I'm getting used to having classes here.

One sure sign is that even the smallest things are starting to annoy me. Every time I hand in an assignment, I put it on the pile with the other students' assignments. And that's when I see them and wince.

Cover pages.

Why do people overzealously use cover pages on mere homework? If it was a report or a paper, it would quite appropriate, but a few questions from the textbook?!? If every student in UBC used a cover page, that would be about 43,000 sheets of paper gone to waste, or two 1,000 year-old trees. And that's just for one assignment. One single assignment.

Why do some students feel so compelled to put an extra sheet of paper in the way between the prof and the homework he is grading, when the upper margin of the paper would more than suffice for identifying the student and his class? Any professor with the right mind should deduct points for redundant cover pages on the grounds of wanton interference with the student work evaluation process.

And any students using those report cover folders on their homework should additionally get their asses kicked by treehugging hippies.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

The Red Room

It was Latin Nite last night.

Me and my roomies were going to The Red Room to enjoy that Latin American fever. So, as promised, I called up my new Yugoslavian friend that I met earlier this week and told her what was going on, and if she would like to join us. Understandably, she was nervous because she thought that my roommates were all guys. I explained to her that there are at least as many girls as there are guys in our group, and she wouldn't feel out of place because we were from many different nationalities - German to Iranian to Dutch to Chinese.

At this point, if you're a girl and you still don't feel comfortable about coming, you'd just politely say no and I'd politely back off after a little bit of desperate coaxing. But not her. She starts insulting me by throwing this really lame excuse:

"I have to go all the way to Burnaby to get my satellite dish fixed, and I don't know what time I'll be back."

I knew this was bullshit, because if this was really an issue, she would've brought it to my attention right up front before expressing her anxiety of walking into a sausage fest. She tried out the sausage fest excuse first, and when that didn't work, she decided to throw in the Burnaby satellite dish excuse because she deemed it would be more effective than the sausage fest. And so it turned out that she is one of those people that is just a total waste of my time to know.

And so I delete her number from my phone, and we shall speak of her no more.



Later at night, we made our way downtown to The Red Room sans Yugo bitch. My Venezuelan roommate signed us up on the Guest List and printed out some VIP tickets online, so we got in without waiting. After paying our cover and checking in our coats, it was time to hit the dance floor. The DJ didn't disappoint, and we were treated to some really nice Latin music, with the occasional track that was perfectly suitable for me to work my crash-course meringue, which my friends taught me in ten minutes in Miami.

But it was only going to be good for an hour.

For the rest of the night, the music degenerated to regular hip-hop (not that it's bad, but we were expecting LATIN music for Christsakes), and any Latin song the DJ played, it was repeated from not too long before. And so the DJ ended up playing Shakira's Hips Don't Lie four times during the night, which really pissed, I mean PISSED off my Venezuelan roommate, who walked up to the stage and made her grievances clear to the DJ. Just as we were leaving the club, the real Latin music starts coming on again.

Go figure.

Outside the club, my Venezuelan roommate explained that this DJ is usually very good, but it was those whores dancing on stage that flirted the DJ into playing hip-hop music so they can shake their saggy tits and flabby ass in front of everyone. She was pretty worked up and said many things that not even I would dare recount on this blog, and it would've also been a total disappointment to me had it not been for that glory hour. My Chinese roommate, who is her best friend, managed to calm her down somewhat.

In all my time in Miami, I may not have been able to learn Spanish, but if there ever was one useful lesson in life I brought back from that beautiful and culturally enriching city, it was this: Never piss off Latino chicks. They will eat you alive and pick their teeth with your rib bone.

She had enough time to cool down as we waited for the late late night bus, sitting under a large display window, overshadowed by plastic limbless people clad in the latest fashions, a mute and desperate consumerist plea fallen on the deaf ears of a city in quiet slumber. That is, a silence peppered with the occasional odd creature that dwells the shadows.

One such creature stumbled down the gently inclined sidewalk towards us, bearing a flower surely torn from a municipal flower bed. He was wearing the tartan of a flannel jacket, jeans, and a baseball cap. Nevertheless, he appeared to be a well-shaven young man, and not too creepy at all. Or perhaps it was just too dark. He swaggered up to my Chinese roommate sitting beside me, and spoke in a foreign accent (or was that just a drunken slur?).

"I give this to you and only to you. It is the rose of my heart."

"Uh....but....this is a tulip..."

Then, the piss-drunk casanova broke the long awkward silence with delusional insistence that it was indeed a rose and that it was, indeed, of his heart. Satisfied that his job was done and that he has saved the day for some damsel's heart, he zigzagged across the street - and nearly into a moving bus. My Chinese roommate thought he was sweet, albeit a bit lacking in the sobriety department.

And so, that tulip became an addition to our flower vase in the living room. Despite the disappointing music, I guess we could say that we still had a good time because we faced that disappointment together. Of course, it would've been more fun if we had more people (i.e. the more, the merrier). So any of you out there are welcome to join us.

Just don't fucking tell me that you're getting your satellite dish fixed in Burnaby.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Making Connections

Textbooks - another way universities milk the student cash cow.

Buying at the UBC bookstore is the last thing I want to do. The markup pricing there is ridiculous, all based on a faulty belief that the bookstore is a monopoly, which is untrue because there are other alternatives to get a cheaper textbook. However, textbook publishers are just as guilty, changing around the page numbers, adding a few extra words (such as "the" and "a"), and calling the textbook a whole new edition and justification to charge another ludicrous premium.

So if I'm sure I exactly what textbook I need to get, I go to Amazon.com and look it up. But I don't buy directly from Amazon itself; I go to that little link that tells you how cheap you can get the same textbook, from an independent dealer listed on Amazon Marketplace with a pretty good user rating. You can usually get a brand new copy of your textbooks for cheaper. And if that's not cheap enough, you can get the "European Edition" for even less, where the only tradeoff is that they're usually softcover, and there is no color. Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, my Boston Consulting Group Strategic Business Unit Positioning Matrix only comes in black and white.

If I'm still not so sure exactly what textbook to get, or if I don't want to wait for it to be shipped, I go to the "used" textbook store in The Village plaza at the edge of campus. They sell used & new textbooks for much less than the UBC Bookstore. In fact, I have no idea why so many people are dumb enough to still shop there. I can tell by their textbooks that they're not clueless first years, and most of those textbooks are also sold in the "used" textbook store. Rich kids.

So today, I did just that, going to the The Village to get my financial accounting textbook. As expected, what could've been a $110 textbook sold for $100 brand new, but I one-upped and found a used one for $70.

After making my purchase and leaving the checkout line, this (bleached) blonde Yugoslavian girl, who was waiting in line in front of me, suddenly turns around and tells me that she has a copy of the same textbook, and offered it to me for $50. I was very surprised, not only because of my luck, but also because girls usually turn around to mace me. So I found myself waiting at the front door of her building, which was right next to the "used" texbook store.

A few minutes later, she comes down with the book, and we make the exchange. Before I know it, we were chatting, and I told her that me, my roommates, and our neighbors were going to this club called The Red Room on Friday for their Latin Night, and asked if she'd like to join us. She said that she'd be glad to, and we exchanged phone numbers and parted ways.

Now comes the task of returning the other copy to the "used" textbook store - not even fifteen minutes after I bought it.

At the store, the lady at the checkout asked me why I was returning it. Even the UBC Bookstore asks this question, and I guess they're trying to keep statistics for quality control purposes. For some reason, I felt a twinge of misplaced compassion, and didn't have the heart to tell her that I found another copy for way cheaper, believing for reasons beyond my understanding that it would hurt her feelings. Thus, the following awkward conversation ensued:

"What is the reason for this return?"

"Um, it wasn't the right textbook for my section."

(Interfaces with her computer a bit.) "But there is only one section for this course."

"Uhhhhhh...would you believe it if I told you that I leafed through the textbook and didn't think that this course is for me, so I'm planning to withdraw?"

At this point, she either gave up, or got sick of seeing my pathetic grin (probably both), so she just shrugged, processed the return, and let me on my merry way.

After finally getting every texbook need out of the way for the term, it was pretty much time for me to go to my first cost accounting class. Yesterday, I had my first commercial law class, taught by this lady who seemed to be quite experienced as a lawyer, and my first financial accounting class, taught by the token crazy east Indian guy, which every university apparently is required to have. Nevertheless, they are pretty good profs, and I was pretty happy with the way classes went.

So after the cost accounting class, I realized I could very well be the only person in the class to have a thick copy of the prof's notes, which he wanted us to print out and bring to class. Suddenly, everyone wanted me to go to make copies for them at the Staples store in The Village. So I took some names down, collected the cash, and even phone numbers.

While the copies of the 150+ page notes were being run through the copiers, we all had a pretty good "copy room" chat. So that was it. I now know more than half the class right off the bat.

Give me a couple of more months, and I will run this campus.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Meet The Roomies

My other two roommates finally arrived this afternoon.

One is a German guy, and the other one is a Chinese girl. I have never met a German who is an asshole, and he is no exception. I wonder if every German is this easy to get along with. The Chinese girl is as outspoken as the Venezuelan, but she's pretty nice, too. They welcomed me warmly to the quad, and I felt that it would be indeed a pleasure to live with these people.

This isn't right.

I can't possibly have the luck to end up living with nice roommates. How could this be happening? It's just too good to be true. Then, I find out that they're only going to be here for a couple more months. There. That's my answer. Two months is what it's going to take for the space-time continuum to correct itself and stick me with an asshole sausage-fest.

Oh well, I have to make the most of my limited time with these pleasant folk. Now that the quad's together, they introduced me to other people they know in the residence. One is the Dutch girl next door, and another is this tall Iranian-American guy and a local girl living in the townhouse quads. They are also pretty cool.

Now I have a crew to go out to town with.

Empty Cage

This is it, I'm moving into UBC.

I'll be calling a quad (a suite for four with private bedrooms, and common kitchen and bathroom) in St. Andrew's Hall my new home. It's not the first time I've lived in this residence; I've spent most of my undergrad years here. So I know a few things about living in a dorm.

For example, if you know when one of your roommates is moving out, be sure to take all the stuff that you own, including pots and pans, and lock them into your room because you know he'll be helping himself to a few "unconsented parting gifts" on his way out.

Which brings the issue to my roommates. I don't know who the hell they are. Along with my assigned room, dorm administrations tend to surprise you on these kind of things. But with my luck, I know I'll probably be set up with assholes. And if I'm lucky enough to have girls living with me, bitches.

I finally managed to drive all my crap to the place in one trip, with a little help from my folks in a separate vehicle. Since this is the weekend, I had to get my keys from the community coordinator living in one of the townhouse buildings. Armed with the key, I was shown to my quad, which is on the second floor and facing another building. I was hoping for a higher floor (so my room's less accessible to mosquitoes and burglars), and facing the view. But then again, that side will have a lot of construction going on, so this is just fine.

Unlocking the door, I took a deep breath and readied myself to meet my new roommates. I faintly hoped for a "Welcome Vincent!", but expected more of a "Fuck, you're the new roommate." So which is it going to be? I slowly nudged the door open, those few seconds unbearably stretched to eons so that the tension of the moment is excruciating...

..and not a soul in the place.

Why does God withold answers from me so? Oh well, I'm sure they're just out for the day. So I unlock the door to my room. Not bad. In pretty good condition and quite liveable. Most of all, it doesn't smell. And surprisingly, there are no vomit/blood/unknown fluid stains on any side of the mattress. Well, none that is visible anyways.

It took me a couple of hours to unpack and set up my TV and computer. After dinner with my parents, I was left to settle into my new home for the rest of the year. Not bad. I think I'll like it. Especially now that I have access to a vehicle if the bus cannot accomodate my transportation needs. But with gas prices these days, it would be to my financial interest to use the bus as much as possible.

Midnight. And yet, not a single person has shown up. I felt like a rat placed in an unfamiliar environment, surrounded by scientists beyond my sensory range diligently studying my response to exotic stimuli. Then, I heard a key sliding into a lock and the quad door open. The experiment has ended, and I anxiously braced for the figure emerging from the blandly colored portal.

A very pretty Venezuelan girl made her way in and introduced herself. She seemed quite nice. She told me that she just came back from the airport from a trip. The rest of my roommates are out in the Okanagan, and they will return tomorrow. I wanted to say, "Well, technically today," but with first impressions being important, I don't want to spend the rest of the year living with a roommate who thinks I'm a pedantic asshole. I'll leave it to later for her to figure out that I am one.

Well, beyond all expectations, this is a pretty good start.

View outside my window in UBC

Moody view outside my window.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Last Mushroom Day

Well, this two-month stint really flew by.

And to contribute to the fast pace, I'll be moving to my new rez in UBC tomorrow (or technically, later today), where class will start on Monday. As a farewell dinner, the girls in my office took me to Milestone's. We ate, drank, and reminisced about the good times...and expensed it on the company.

It is unfortunate that the construction of the office still hasn't been completed by now. From what I saw in the blueprints, it would've been real cool. Not to mention that we'll have an espresso machine set up. No matter. I promised to visit them again when all construction has been finished, not only to sample the espresso, but also to pick up my paycheck.

I'll be keeping an eye out at the mushroom section next time I go grocery shopping.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Test Drive

The automatic floor scrubber at work wasn't scrubbing very well today.

So not only did the vendor send someone to look at it, it was apparently the owner himself who came in person - in his Mercedes-Benz SL600 convertible. An old fat guy in a grey pin-striped suit emerged from it, with an Italian accent and a slightly unsavory, sleazy demeanor.

He was met by one of the girls at my workplace, who was in charge of operations in the mushroom farm. As they looked at the scrubber, the vendor owner inquired about her sister, who also works in the office with me.

"How is your sister? If she like, she sit with me in my Benz, and I take for test drive, yes?"

"The car or my sister?"

Monday, May 01, 2006

Warehouse Antics

One of the boys working the warehouse cooler is at it again.

They found it quite funny that one of the guys posted a sign at the cooler entrance door that read:

BEWARE OF WIFE
(THE DOG'S OK)

As a (albeit temporary) member of the management, I felt obligated to step in and tell him that signs like that do not belong there.

It should be posted at the front entrance.