Stiff students part 2 David took a moment to stand in front of Con Hall, allowing the wave of memories to wash over him before he entered the building. He had long since exorcised his demons and had no qualms about being in Con Hall again; however, he needed to figure out what to ask the professor, and what phrasing of questions would extract the best answers. He took a deep breath and opened the door. As he did, another memory wave hit him, catching him unawares
Sir?
Yes
Are you David Pincet?
Yes. What's the problem, Officer?
You are charged with first degree murder of Katherine Holson, daughter of Jeremiah Holson.
What? You think I killed the dean's daughter? What the hell?
But it was too late. And in hindsight, it was probably for the best. Running after bail and going on a hunt for the real killer had been his first bounty hunt, in a sense. Many people thought that David didn't return to University because of hurt or anger, or perhaps a combination of the two. Those who knew him well knew, however, that he had found his true calling; a calling that had now brought him back to where it all began.
David shook his head and strode onto the stage. He turned and looked at the students as they, slowly, realized that the replacement professor was not the stuffy individual they expected. He slowly reached for the mike and put it on
"Good morning, students," he boomed, shocking the rest of the oblivious students "I'm your replacement professor"
And for one of you, he thought, class is now over.  ¶ 6:02 PM 0 Comments

  The day after the day after the big day My father taught me well to shun the gates of Hell
But against him I rebelled as I sailed
He shoved a bible in my hand but I left it in the sand
As I pulled away from land as I sailed

Well, I wrote the last of my midterms on Wednesday, a bioethics test which was easier than it could have been. Although my ideas of what he was going to ask were slightly off, I still had enough ammunition to fill a few pages and make coherent arguments in the time given. And now I don't have to worry about exams until...february. Damn you, U of T. Damn you to hell.
Following the test, I spent about two hours socializing in Gerstein. (If you're not sure you're a nerd or not, here's a great litmus test; if you have a likely chance of meeting quite a few friends at the library, then you're a nerd. I have learnt this the hard way :P ) Soon, a group of us headed off to Medsci to meet up with others for our planned Festivus dinner.
The dinner was quite a success, even more so than I had hoped. There were some last-minute cancellations, but no no-shows, and I was surprisingly able to break the Biome committing jinx I seem to have had last year. I hope that's for good. The food itself was quite good. turkey+pasta+chocolate+pina colada=too much to eat.
After dinner, I headed over to the pubnight, walking the length of distance from Union station to Spadina. Unfortunately, I was unable to stay too long, as I entered the pub at 9:45 after telling my parents I'd be home at 9. I met a few people, then proceeded to leave with the two auntijis; you know who you two are :P
Overall, quite a good day. These must be done more often. Of course, with two doctors it would have been more entertaining, Stephen! :P

Number of :P in this blog: 3, plus the one in this sentence, thus 4.  ¶ 3:08 PM 2 Comments

  Stiff students part 1 This is actually a story I began a while back, but discarded when i realized it was not really going anywhere. Now, with a few tweaks, I think it is good enough to be completed. As to whether or nto it will actually be completed...well, time will tell. It may not be an epic with boy wizards and orcs, but it's more my type of tale; gritty psychological study of human character. Kind of. I'll shut up now; enjoy the tale

P.S: Apologies for spelling errors and crappy title.
---

Lights will guiiiiiide you home
and igniiiiiite your bones
and I will try to fix you

Click. David turned his system off and swivelled his chair just as his old friend stepped in through the open doorway. He brushed off his cap and grinned at David
"Coldplay? You're getting soft, man. What's next, chick flicks?"
"Actually, I caught an early screening of Brokeback Mountain already. Does that constitute as a chick flick?"
"If I want to go see it, it is not a chick flick"
"If you wish it was your life story, it is most definitely a chick flick"
"What? What's wrong with wanting to be married to Anne Hathaway?"
"Oooh, extramarital affair thoughts. Don't they fire you for those kinds of things?"
Jonathan rolled his eyes "I wanted to be a priest. Emphasis on wanted. past tense. Besides, what would she have with me? I am not the one who has saved her from dangerous stalkers"
"You're dean of one of the most prestigious unviersities in the world. Some very attractive women find that kind of intellect quite stimulating"
"I'm sure. I'm also sure those same women would be repulsed at my total befuddlement should I find myself in the streets of Cairo looking for a father who has made away with his daughter"
"That's what I'm around for. Speaking of which, " David waved at one of the two chairs facing him and leaned forward, "Explain what made you remember me after so many months"
Jonathan--he was stringent about being addressed as Jonathan, abhorring the common shortening to Johnny that people tended to do--took off his coat and took a chair slightly to David's right.
"Actually," Jonathan began, "I was wondering if you were willing to offer your services to the University"
"You got my attention. I'm hoping this is about the murder case making its rounds in the papers, cause otherwise you're in deeper excretion than it looks on the surface"
Jonathan grinned at David's deft sidestep of swearing "No worries, that's the only non-academic issue I'm facing. But I could use some help"
"Aren't the police on it?"
Jonathan spread his hands in an exasperated gesture "Have you ever worked with the police? Most of them view the University of Toronto as either a hulking monolith akin to Clarke's vision in Space Odyssey, or a group of pretentious dirtbags to be despised. Either way, they're no help"
Now it was David's turn to grin "Well well. The University now comes to me for help. This is something I never saw coming. Everyone else agree to this?"
"What they don't know won't hurt them" Jonathan said with a sly smile.
David leaned forward "Alright. Tell me about this murder then"  ¶ 4:40 PM 2 Comments

  Speed of Sound Creep on in
Creep on in
And once it has begun
Won't stop until it's done
Sneaking in

ll, it' finally happeninfMy trusty wireles keyord inwhichIhavenot had to changebatteriessince i started usignit nearly a year ago,isfinally beginningto showa need for mo juice. 's rty go, onsidring hat or hte accompaning irelss mouse, I've ha to chang baties nerl6or 7 tiems alady.

The above paragraph reads like this
"Well, it's finally happening. My trusty wireless keyboard, in which I have not had to change batteries since I started using it nearly a year ago, is finally beginning to show a need for more juice. that's pretty good, considering taht for the accompanying wireless mouse, I've had to change batteries nearly 6 or 7 times already." The top was typed off the aforementioned wireless keyboard, the latter off the regular keyboard, which I haven't used often in recent months. The old workhorse gave me some good mileage, I must admit. I am impressed.

In other events, it's good to be able to go back to the library. I was on a 3-month hiatus from the Toronto Public library, on account of beign cheap. Let me explain; I borrowed books from the Public library for my eng237 class. The books, however, were due back at the library nearly 3 months before they were due to be read in class. So, I deactivated all my holds and hid myself in my house, not going anywhere near the Public library. I ended up paying about $30 in fines, which is still cheaper than any of the books bought individually. Hey, what can I say, I'm brown. :P
Anyways, upon re-activating my holds, they began coming in, to the point that I now have a choice from Coldplay, Ray Charles and Norah Jones to listen to, a choice between Lord of the Rings, The Notebook and Hotel Rwanda to watch from and a choice between Clive Cussler, Stepehn King and John Grisham to read from. I must say, the Public library is one of the rare government operations that is not completely mucked up. In fact, they have significantly improved in the last two years, and with the discovery of a location on campus, it has become rather easy for me to access the library resources. Huzzah! (And that shall be my last use of the word Huzzah, as I'm not completely sure what that even means)
I also saw, for the first time, the case of the Saugeen stripper in UWO. Now, frankly, if I were the UWO administration , I would not be too worried about this, as it's well in keeping with their reputation. It jsut shows how out-of-touch the old men runnign the institution are with today's youth that they consider this an issue. At the very most, a big farce shall be made, some uproar from the parents shall be heard, perhaps the girl in question and a few guys shall be expelled, and everyone shall go home happy that the demonic forces lurking in the UWO dorm have been exorcised, Hallelujah, Amen. The problem, however, will not go away. I was reminded of hearing earlier this year of the then incoming dean of U of T, David Naylor, sitting in on a PHY110 class. I thought, nay hoped that the prof would have the guts to fire a conceptual question at the dean, see if he could handle it. The basic problem, of course, is that the adminsitrations suffer from the delusion that they understand the students, which couldn't be further from the truth. Because nobody in their right minds would schedule the labs of a major class at 8:30 in the morning, as is the case with chm247. But they are not in their right minds. There will always be a lag in the system; when the current admin were studetns in the 70s, the Universities were run by guidelines fit for the 50s. Now the Universities are run by guidelines fit for the 70s. Why? Becuae the admin aren't looking at the present or even the future; they're looking at the past, or their remembrance of it. And that simply doesn't work. Proof of that is this Saugeen stripper. It comes as no real shock to any undergraduate student in U of T; why is it a shock to the administration of UWO?
So how do they fix this problem? Either communicate with the students, or insert moles amongst them. But do something, this stopped being funny a long tie eago and now it's just alarming.

And that is all for tonight. I'm surprised at the length of this entry. If brevity is the soul of wit, I certainly have earned no accolades for brainpower this night. But no worries. Chicks dig non-witty guys. :P  ¶ 12:54 PM 3 Comments

  You want your $30 back? I want my damn Kidney back! And this is it now,
everybody get down
This is all I can take
This is how a heart breaks
  ¶ 7:47 PM 3 Comments

  Looking backwards into the future It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
And who would've thought, it figures
  ¶ 11:02 AM 2 Comments

  A Burning Ring of Fire You speak of signs and wonders
I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table
  ¶ 3:52 PM 1 Comments

  Caught the Snitch

Went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire yesterday, in IMAX. After the inital shock of not having the 3D glasses that I was supplied at my last IMAX experience (I got over it once I realized they did not rip us off, it was a different machine) I hunkered down and enjoyed the movie. It was not done too shabbily, and Daniel Radcliffe was better then I expected. Although major points in the story were cut from the movie, as an independant entity it stood well. Miranda Richardson was particularly good as Rita Skeeter, giving the impression of really relishing the role. And Ralph Fiennes, well, Ralph delivered the goods. It wqs quite surprising to see Daniel holding his own against him, and it leads me to think that perhaps Radcliffe may be able to break out of the Potter role successfully once he needs to, unlike Mark Hamill or Christopher Reeve. Emma Watson, as the previews indicated, looked good, expecially in 3D, but her character was too diluted, spending most of the time running around doe-eyed and girly instead of self-confident and inquisitive like Hermione in the novels. That was, however, more of an editing fault than any fault on the part of Emma. Perhaps more of Rita Skeeter would have been beneficial, both for the character development of Hermione and more screen-time for Miranda Richardson. Michael Gambon as Dumbledore showed all of the wise wizard with none of the father figure. As it played out, though, it wasn't half-bad, and some parts were amazing, like the first Triwizard task. And Katie Leung looked much better on screen than her publicity photos. Cho, I can imagine being the girl of Harry's dreams. Katie, not so much. Ah, the wonders of makeup.
The next movie should garner at least an Oscar nomination for Alan Rickman. Though he barely had any screen time in this movie, the one scene Harry had with Snape was excellent. We shall see.    ¶ 4:15 PM 6 Comments

  Saturday night (blogging) fever I was asked by another person today why I choose to befriend them. Don't get me wrong, I don't resent that; it's a reasonable quetion, and I would be a little suspicious if this was not inquired of me. It just reflects on the sad state of humanity as a whole that a question like this is the norm. Of course, this may not be a flaw in the human race; I am learning of strictly enforced lineage hierarchies in primates as well. And we all know evolution is a relative concept. After all, if the handgun could be invented 70 years before the toilet flush, one wonders in which direction we truly are travelling. Where exactly is it that we are running? And are we getting anywhere good? It would be nice to imagine that the whole world, all 6 billion plus of it, would just stop, take a deep breath, and take a look around them, adjust and fix anything askew (like the direction) and then continue.
This is something I shoud've comented on earlier; On Thursday, when I went to drop my friend off at the anthro 100 class, there were two people outside collecting donations for the victims of Pakistani earthquake. I knew one of them as well, in fact have known her since Grade 7, though I lost touch with her over the years. I still don't trust, however, these grassroots donation movements. I saw too many scams after the Bhuj earthquake (if you want to know about this, follow the BBC news link to the right, then type in Bhuj in the upper right hand corner search box; they covered it pretty well) money that was donated but never reached the survivors. And it happens all the time; people benefit from disasters in this way. You can bet anything there were 5 scams for every honest donation agency in the aftermath of Katrina in USA. Why not? It's lucrative, easy tax-free money that you will never be held accountable for. People who genuinely want to help make the trip down to the actual location and physically help, in intangible ways you don't need a tax receipt for. Very rarely do they stand in a doorway and collect donations. Even if location help is not quite possible, they are somewhere in the line of helpers. Real charities never ask for money; they ask for supplies. That's one way to wed out the scams; scammers can do nothing with quilts and sweaters. Or they cannot do as much as they could with cold, hard cash.
Speaking of Katrina, whatever happened to the relief efforts of Hurrican Juan? If there's anythign Canadian media sucks at, it's reporting on Canadian news. Except for politics and hockey. Then they're all over it, over-analyzing and nitpicking. Which would be great, if
a) not 80% of hockey teams would be American
b) not all canadian politicians were the same
But I guess I may ask for world peace while I'm at it, because that would be an easier deliverable than requesting a change of those two up there.
Speaking of hockey...I got nothing. Isn't there a Leafs game on now? Meh; I used to be a hockey fan, but I find it difficult to watch a sport which encourages blind violence. Soccer (Football for everyone who speaks proper english) Cricket and Basketball for the win. Especially the concept of superstar protection in soccer. In hockey, you blindside Mario Lemieux (yes, I'm looking at you, Scott Stevens) you don't suffer any penalty. In soccer, you tackle Zinedine Zidane, you pay. Moving on, I want to expand on the topic of the music of 2005 that I briefly touched upon in my last blog (Okay, that was definitely the influence of too many lectures) We did see albums and/or tours from almost every big name. U2 toured, Rolling Stones released an Album, Madonna released an album, Maroon 5 toured, Sheryl Crow released an album, 50 cent released an album, Eminem will soon release an album, Kanye West released an album, Green Day toured, Coldplay released an album, Faith Hil released an album, Sarah McLachlan toured, Oasis released an album, John Mayer released an album, Bruce Springsteen released an album, K-Os toured, Alicia Keys released an album...heck, even Will Smith and Shakira released albums. What am I saying, the Backstreet Boys released an album. Norah Jones is, I think, the only big name we didn't hear from in 2005. Her and Evanescence, but they seem to have disappeared into thin air. So what does that leave for us in 2006? I guess only time will tell.
Martina Hingis is returning to tennis. This is very good news, as her playing style is a throwback to an era of finesse in women's tennis, an era that the Williams brothers effectively demolished. It would be fun to see, though, how she adapts against the next generation of players, players who can hit hard and gracefully, Maria Sharapova and Justine Henin-Hardenne being the two biggest examples. They take out Venus and Serena quite easily, and Hingis always struggled against them, but you never know. I mean, if Navratilova can win championships at 50+, Hingis is only 25, less than half that age. (For people who want to know more about women's tennis, try www.wtatour.com )
I do believe that's all I have to say. I commend you if you've stuck with me thus far, and do feel free to leave comments. I don't bite, that job is retained exclusively for my umbrella.  ¶ 5:28 PM 1 Comments

  Words will go from Poetry to Prose I found out today that Abhishek Bachchan shall be playing the lead role in Mira Nair's movie adaptation of 'The Namesake'. Needless to say, the decision has left me rather dissapointed. The movie had some solid potential, the book being the cult hit that it is, but this lead selection squanders that away. Keeping Bachchan's acting skills aside for a moment, one cannot honestly expect him to understand and emulate the first-generation/immigrant experience, since he's never lived that himself. There's a different mindset to the whole thing; their thought patterns are shaped differently, their music tastes vary, their outlook on life is different; it's the difference between white wine and red wine.
Moving along, the federal election is in full sway, and Jack Layton is already infuriarating me with his claims that the majority of Canadians don't want tax cuts. Wtf? I'd like to keep the money I earn, thank you very much.
I found out yesterday, as we near the theatrical release of Spielberg's 'Munich' that it may be a safe bet to say that the general population isn't aware that the 1976 Olympics are particularly significant. And why should they? I mean, 1976 is not used as an emotional bludgeon, it's just kind of swept under the rug. I wonder even how many new-generation Israelis know about it.

Other thoughts

• Saw the White Stripes on Jon Stewart's show. Still can't like them, and I'm pretty sure there's some form of incest going on there.
• Paris Hilton is in the news again. And again, I'm forced to ask "Who cares?"
• I wonder what kind of music 2006 will bring. Most major stars had albums and/or tours to keep them busy. Exceptions include John Mayer and Norah Jones. Perhaps we shall hear from them soon.
  

Still here? Then your procrastination may have reached frantic levels. Just a friendly warning.  ¶ 9:03 PM 1 Comments

  The unexpected blog

"In the dark
On the phone
You tell me the names of your brothers
And your favorite colours
I'm learning you"

There's no particular reason for the quote above; I just have the song stuck in my head. FYI, it's St. Patrick's Day by John Mayer.
Day was not too bad. Finally handed in my englsih World-building assignment, so that's done. By next week this time, english will be done altogether. Then bioethics will be all that'll be left.

Need to find more time to write these. Too sleepy now to put anymore in. Tomorrow shall bring a longer post.

  ¶ 7:53 PM 0 Comments