Birthday Splurging

I don't know who still remembers but my birthday is this Saturday! Yup. Time to spend some $$$ on myself. So after I got off school today I bought this:

http://www.bcliquorstores.com/en/products/131623

I told myself I'll wait til Saturday but I couldn't resist. That damn bull on the bottle just kept taunting me to uncork the bottle ;). It sells for $14.99 and it's a great tasting wine; much better than the $8.99 cabernet sauvignon my mom bought a while back. That stuff burned like Listerine--though I still drank it. It has a lot of flavour and a lasting after taste. I want to try some Australian shiraz next. It will probably be a Lindemans; there are lots of good reviews of it on the Internet and it's only $12.99.

Awww I just realized that I will lose an hour right after my birthday. Sucks.

Hat trick for Burrows!

Wow awesome energy by the kid to get his first career hat trick! Freakish break-down around the half-way mark of the second period that got me all worried but the Canucks managed to pull through. Bertuzzi seems to be doing stuff again with a point streak and fed a nice puck to Burrows. And again, second line is friggin' awesome!

Weekly update

So I guess nothing big happened during this week because I didn't bother to make any new entries.

I got the highest mark in econ for MT2. This is my second time getting the highest mark in an exam in SFU. I probably would've been more happy if it wasn't econ. What a joke of a course. The whole course is about finding intersection of lines and simple optimization. But I'll take what I can get; econ is my only for sure A+ course this semester--I guess it is still possible for me to rape stat MT3 and pull a second A+.

I wonder if I will ever get a "perfect" exam. Hmmm...

I saw Wei today on my way to econ and he told me he got elected! His party raped the Orange Revolution and EVERYONE of them got elected as well! Haha that's awesome. Remember, I got you 3 votes!

Okay I am definitely getting a wave of envy from my peers now for my upcoming position at PBC. People were asking me for interview advice and to remember their names when I become a manager LOL. You guys are expecting too much! I'm also getting stories about all these seniors students who can't find jobs as well. Lucky me :).

Plans for the weekend: read stats, read acma, fix acma assignment, pray Canucks will sweep the Oilers on Saturday, and hopefully squeeze in something else that is fun.

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

I finally figured out why sometimes it takes like 7 seconds to open up a damn jpeg in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer!

Ok I didn't figure it out myself but Googling yielded a post from a forum that contained a solution. Whenever there is a broken shortcut, ie. to a file/folder that's no longer there, a network drive that is currently offline, etc., Windows Picture and Fax Viewer will choke for a few seconds. What it is doing is that it's trying to test if the broken link is a picture to see if it needs to add it to the slideshow. Brilliant programming by Microsoft yet again!

ASNA Meeting

The good:
Food. Very tasty chicken burritos provided by Mercer. Though I wish there were more variety in beverages :).

The bad:
ASNA wasn't exactly what I expected. The meeting was chaotic because the teleconferencing technology wasn't very reliable. People would get kick off; some would complain they can't hear someone else; some don't even have a video feed, only the audio. Overall it was pretty dry as people just kept bickering on and on for 3 hours. Being completely new to the organization, I barely knew what the heck was being discussed. Anyways, I desperately need to recruit some people to support SFU's involvement in ASNA else the future seems grim.

IBT and SFU

Reading The Peak on the bus today got me all intrigued by the IBT issue. IBT, a for profit, publicly traded Australian company wishes to establish the Fraser International College on the SFU campus. The college is to funnel 30% of its tuition back to SFU and in turn, SFU is to provide FIC with space, equipment, and a cirriculum. FIC students will not be granted the same status as a SFU student.

Upon further reading, I am too opposed to the change. But firstly, the SFU International Student Association: they need to shut up. The IBT issue has nothing to do with them; they are just using the opportunity to stir up controversy. I'm not saying their points about the harsh life of a international student are not valid, but the whole IBT partnership is NOT about resolving "issues" about international students at all. It's about getting another boat-load of international students up on campus and milking them for their $$$--in partnership with IBT. Look guys, it's not the university's fault that you decided to come all the way to Canada to study. Suck it up. I find that most international students don't care about ISA's issues. It's partly due to their complacent attitude--the CCP made sure of that, but it's also because they care more about their grades than having a common room after paying a crazy tuition. The thing is, if SFU is really that dependent on international student's tuition, then you guys should have a lot of power. Rise up! But apparently, no one cares. So shut up ISA!

Returning to the IBT issue, SFU's reputation is going to go down the tubes after this agreement. And it's already pretty low in my opinion. Poor faculty, poor TAs, poor quality students with an inflated high school grade of 80%. And now we will get poor students from all over the world too!

IBT Education is an industry leader in providing pre-university and university pathway programs for domestic and overseas students, as well as Year 10-12, ELICOS and English preparatory courses, Foundation, Degree, Pre-Masters and Masters programs in a wide range of disciplines.

With a network of colleges situated around Australia, and internationally in England, Africa and affiliates in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, IBT gives you a huge choice of locations at which to study as well as a diverse choice of study programmes that offer a fast, affordable pathway into second year University, in association with leading English and Australian Universities.

Haha can you say "bull shit"?!? First paragraph actually says, "Even if your grades sucks, we'll help you find an university!" And the second says, "Our partner schools all suck and they are all desperate for students!" Don't believe me? Go to their website and check out their list of "institutes". Being affiliated with this organization absolutely disgusts me. Sure you are getting more students to milk, but at what cost? There is already a huge problem with SFU's image, even within Canada. Can we afford to cheapen it anymore with by sleeping with some shady business named IBT?

霍元甲 / Fearless - 4.5/5

Awesome movie. I can't believe I was crying in a Jet Li movie!

Jet Li plays 霍元甲, who transits from an arrogant pompous ass to an enlightened kung fu master. The screenplay is smart and poignant; the delusional bum on the street of Tianjin is a perfect example. It amplifies that 霍 is a fool in the beginning and that only fools care for titles such as "Tianjin's #1 fighter". It is definitely not a perfect movie though. Jet Li compensates his inabilty to act by overacting to force out the transformation to the viewer, and this is basically the biggest fault of the film: the transitions between the stages of 霍's life. More screen time should have been devoted to the blind girl to vivify the change. I heard there actually is more, but it was cut in the theatrical release. I also think there should have been something more pivotal than a newspaper headline to cause the newly enlightened 霍 to fight for Chinese pride.

Toward the end of the film, there is a scene between 霍 and the Japanese fighter which tells the viewer blankly the theme of the film. I actually didn't mind it because originally, I misinterpreted and thought the film was going to nose-dive into some sort of "Chinese aren't weaklings and we can kick ass too" drivel. That scene set the tone of the final fight and got my eyes teary at the end. The message also calmed me a little after today's Acma midterm. Okay I don't think I was complete raped by it, but I don't think I did well. There were two writtens I couldn't finish, with 2 MC I am not too sure about--one with no matching answer and one guessed because I didn't have enough time to complete it after realizing what I had to do.

Oh and I hate the tag line. Change courage to humility please.

Ah shucks.

Don't you hate it when you thought you did the question right but it turns out that you didn't?

At least I finally learned how to figure out the bounds after a transformation now. Gah, so simple too. Yet I totally missed it.

Acma on Friday; hope I can hit 80. Actually, I hope SFU remains closed on Friday haha.

LOL, this is why I don't play MMORPGs:
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1771.html

Oddly Depressed

I don't know what is wrong with me this week. I'm heading into my second stat midterm tomorrow but I feel very gloomy and lonely. I'm not worried about the midterm; I think I have done all I can do to study for it and doing anymore would just be a waste of my time.

It probably has something to do with how well this semester has been to me. Got my first co-op job after just ONE interview--not to mention that it is at PBC. Got the Alumni Scholarship despite my ACMA310 mark. Still on track to decent grades after the first round of midterms. I guess I really want to share my accomplishments with someone, but there really isn't anyone around. My friends from high school are all over the place now and there is a barrier between me and all the Chinese international students in ACMA. I sort of fit in with them and I sort of don't. Gawd I wish there are some white/CBC-ish people in ACMA and we can talk hockey or what-not. Gah I need to go out and some fun... with people. It's funny; this is my 5th semester at SFU and I've NEVER done anything non-school related with any of the new people I've met. Well... okay I guess not. I did play Magic with the CS guys. Okay, I get it: ACMA people don't have the time to have fun :(. Gah I'm going crazy from the lack of social interaction.

In addition to all of the above, I think I'm beginning to feel a little crazy about Her. Why am I waiting til the end of the semester to ask her out? Cuz she's always goddamn studying! Damn ACMA.


Reviews:
April Snow - Korean
Crap, crap, crap. What a load of crap. What a waste of a beautiful actress. I felt NOTHING from this film. The first half of the film was just a bunch of fragmented scenes and the blank face of Bae Yong Joon. Throughout the film, the dialogue was minimal, mostly short cliche fragments like "Thank you" or "Have you had dinner yet?". This compounded the complete failure of the screenplay to create characterization. Did those two actually loved their mates before the accident? Doesn't seem like it. Was Bae Yong Joon just using her for sex or did he actually care about her? Beats me because of his forever blank face. Why the hell was she always strutting around in a bra? Not that I mind seeing it. Even at the end of the film, I still felt absolutely no attachment between the myself and the characters. And it's supposed to be character drama with only TWO characters in the whole film! Abysmal. 1/5


談情說愛 ~ 安又琪
Wow. Absolutely amazing. I only grabbed this my accident because I thought it said 謝安琪. Her voice has great energy and so did the tunes. I recommend tracks 1, 3, and 6.