Mr. ASDF
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Mr. ASDF" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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07:21 pm
[Link] | I just learned about the climate gate business via this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sZx90EH8N8
Je me demande si le gars savait que le reporteur ne parlait pas anglais? Peut-être il a juste vu le logo de Radio Canada et il a courru vers les caméras!
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10:27 pm
[Link] | I feel so let down.
You know that feeling when you're sure that you're going to win at something and you lose? Kind of like that. I failed at the scavenger hunt for change, or the game of being a poor person.
I needed exactly 17 cents to get together the 37 dollars required to buy next month's pass. Try as I might, I couldn't find any change hiding out in my coat pockets or in my backpack. Actually, that's not true; I found one cent. OK. Now I needed 16 more cents.
I decided to walk to the bank to get some money to pay for my pass. But I'm kind of short on cash seeing as I have to pay next month's rent and the hydro bill. So I didn't want to break a 20 just for a metropass. I decided to scan the ground vigilantly for change. I was hoping to find a quarter. But as I finally made it to the bank, which is about five blocks away, I found nothing. I tried hard: I double-checked the spots that people normally accidentally drop coins, like around payphones and the parking ticket machines. Nothing. I found an almost untouched cigarette and thought about selling that for 25 cents, but I'm not much of an entrepreneur.
At the bank, I pulled out 20 bucks and decided to try my luck on the other side of the street. Parked across the street were about three fire trucks with red lights flashing. I couldn't see any fire, though. In the middle of the street, I finally found something. A dime. I picked it up and caressed it. Only 10 cents left to find.
Exulted, I started walking back towards the metro station, vigilantly scanning the ground for more change. But still I found nothing. On the other side of the street from the station, I dumped all the change that I had in my wallet and counted it. I calculated that I was missing only one cent, and I figured I'd explain to him that I didn't have any more money. Or maybe he wouldn't accept my penny. I had one ticket booth operator who did that once. He refused my pennies because he said he was allergic to copper. Whatever.
But before crossing the street, I found my penny. In a puddle. Resolutely (I had come this far!) I plunged my hand into the cold water and pulled out the coin. Yum. I ran across the street to buy my pass.
Hélas! As the ticket booth operator spread out my change, I suddenly realized that I was missing five cents. Damn. He recounted it and explained that the computer wouldn't accept 5 fewer cents. Discouraged, I told him I didn't have any more money. He told me to come back tomorrow since there was a grace period. He handed back my cash.
At that point a guy comes behind me to buy his pass. I give up on my game and finally ask this guy if he has five cents. He pulls out a loonie and says "just give him that". Now I'm all flustered. I push all the money in my hands back at the booth operator, who promptly gives me a receipt for my new pass and all my change back. I give the 95 cents to the new dude and thank him three times. I think he was busy saying "whatever" to himself.
I turned around and rode the escalator back up to go home. As I reached the top of the escalator, I looked behind and down one last time. There, on the floor between the escalator and the wall, was another dime. That was the only thing I needed to complete my exercise alone, and I missed it! I picked it up anyway and went home with $20.10 in my wallet.
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10:28 am
[Link] | I went for a massage yesterday and I thought it was going to hurt more than it actually did. Maybe I should've asked for a rougher one. Basically my back is all tense, probably from playing guitar.
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11:03 pm
[Link] | This evening at 6pm i kept switching between news on TVA, Global and CBC because the commercials seem to come way too often. I kept going past this infomercial that must've lasted for half an hour on channel 10. It featured a father and son team wearing very tight white T-shirts and looking very homosexual, and a tall babe in a exercise tank top. Oh yeah, they were all Asian, and they were promoting some kind of Asian herbal diet that makes you shit. They kept showing a large intestine.
Honestly, I didn't watch it that much.
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02:32 pm
[Link] | After getting a bad case of tonsillitis that turned out to be caused by mono, I've learned that the general public has a lot of misconceptions about common illnesses and symptoms. All because, unlike doctors, we don't see them very often.
I'm guilty of this myself. I've never had tonsillitis before this, and I tend to be a hypochondriac. Thus when I noticed a spot at the back of my throat two weeks ago on Thursday night, I started worrying. Abscess? Throat cancer? I phoned my dad. He told me to stop freaking out and that I wouldn't die, and to go see a doc.
On Saturday I found some photos of what I had on google. It reassured me but I was wondering what caused it. Either a virus or strep. My g/f/ told me that it probably wasn't mono because people with mono are extremely tired for weeks on end. I actually didn't feel sick. Just my throat hurt on one side. My roommate told me to go see a dentist. I told him that they only deal with teeth and gums. I showed my inflamed tonsil to another guy at work. He said it looked black when it really wasn't. It was red and covered with white stuff.
Sunday morning I went to one of the few walk-in clinics that was open. I showed up at 8:15 even though it opened at 9. Turns out I was the first one to go. There were about 7 of us lined up to go see the doc. At about 10 to nine a woman came in with a kid. She wanted to make him wear a mask because she thought he had the flu, but he pushed her away. Now the kid's mom started worrying because he wouldn't wear a mask, and a couple ladies just behind me wanted to let the kid go before them because he probably had swine flu. This didn't go over very well with a man at the back of the line. "She should wait her turn like everyone else. It's only fair," he said. I was first up and I honestly didn't think the kid looked that sick. Besides, I was sick myself and I didn't think the kid looked more sick than anyone else.
The doctor was nice. The strep test came back negative, and she told me that it was a virus and that I had to wait it out. She gave me a form for a mono test but I didn't go. I took it semi-easy that week.
By Thursday my throat was really sore. My tonsil was huge and totally white and it hurt to swallow. I went to see another doctor at the Decelles clinic. Their waiting room had windows and you could see the airport and the river. That was nice. The doc gave me antibiotics, a special swish and sent me to a private lab for a mono test. Those places are expensive, man. Cost me 75 bucks. They're fast, though.
When I went again Saturday to get the results I said, "fuck". But apparently it's not the end of the world. Another girl said it was super contagious. It's not, really. Unless she wanted to kiss me or something? I think the flu is more contagious. Also, the doc said that 90% of people get it before the age of 50.
Basically, everything that people who weren't doctors told me was false or pretty close to being false. Google is still more reliable, but you can stumble across a plethora of things that are more serious than what you have.
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02:18 pm
[Link] |
BIG NEWS
I actually tried reading a Harry Potter novel. Honest. Vanessa was taking a shower so I grabbed one of the five books that was on her headboard and started reading. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. and the book didn't look to thick, either.
It starts out all right. Harry Potter is back from the Wizard school and misses his friends and has to live with a shitty adopted family. I'm not much into science fiction, but this seemed to have a human side to it, so I kept reading. But in the next chapter there's some kind of green elf that pops out and can't even hold a decent conversation without wailing, weeping and/or groveling. And that just pisses me off. I get distracted easily with books that don't make sense. Anyway, I ain't going to be reading any more Harry Potter stuff.
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10:17 pm
[Link] |
just some thoughts
yesterday was the last day at the outdoor pool and now it's cold out. it was cold yesterday too but the cold is less noticeable when you sit out in the sun and turn red. i took some pictures and made some silly silent movies. my rechargeable batteries only lasted for about 15 minutes before conking out. luckily i had four of them. these pictures aren't going to win any photo contests. they're pretty much for my own personal enjoyment. it's great to reminisce in the middle of winter about summer long since passed by.
i visited the library on my day off. there are lots of people doing the old initiation deal. let's dress up as sailors, line up and make lots of noise. i was in the library when i decided to ask this Korean girl sitting in front of me what language she spoke. she gave me the time.
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10:46 pm
[Link] | I think I'm getting old, but in certain ways. I still feel young when I bike for a long time and sweat like a m/f/ker. The real deal here is that parties just aren't special anymore. I've been to my share of parties. I've stood around and looked at groups that I'm sure I wouldn't be able to fit in. Guys with crew cuts who talk about boring stuff. You know the deal. Or 18 year old girls who are just starting to go to parties and feign interest in everyone who's there and wouldn't dream of leaving with some weird, quiet guy like me to go talk somewhere else.
So what's a guy like me do. I already found a girl who seemed to be my age, a girl named Alex who was doing her masters. I saw her with another girl earlier on, and I started talking to her when her friend went to the bathroom. Two girls alone make me nervous.
Now here I was with a group of 18 year old girls who were standing right beside the fucking speakers. I wasn't really engaged in the conversation so I waited until Alex seemed not to be engaged in Conversation and walked over to her. She was sitting across from her girl friend and a black dude who came later and who seemed to know them very well. I asked her if she wanted to go outside for a bit and she said yes. So far so good. Once we got outside, though, I realised that her friends had come with her. I wondered how this was going to work. It turns out they were all older than I was (Alex was 2 yrs older) and they were all cool and interesting and everything that the other crowd inside happened not to be.
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09:07 pm
[Link] | I finally got a 2GB memory card for my digital camera. A huge step up from the 16MB card shipped with it. Bye-bye worrying about "card full" errors. I only wish I had bought it before leaving for Vancouver.
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12:05 am
[Link] | j'ai realisÉ que tous les caractéristiques que je voyais dans d'autres gens que moi je trouvais vraiment cool ou que lorsque je les voyais je me disais, moi j'aimerais bien être plus comme ça.. et bien c'est des qualités que je voulais pour moi-même. mettons se teindre les cheveux mauve ou s'asseoir dans l'autobus avec un ami avec une caisse de bière entre les jambes, se disant rien sauf que quand le chauffeur freine super raide et tu sens ta bière glisser entre tes jambes et sous les bancs.. on s'en va faire la fÊtE yahouuu..
ou bien avoir une vie sociale bien remplie, passer toute la journée à l'extérieure et ne venir chez soi que lorsqu'on a besoin de dormir.
j'ai besoin de dormir :(
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12:24 am
[Link] | When I got to Victoria the only thing that I could think about was, "what am I doing here.. I want to go home". I had just gotten off the bus and checked into the Ocean Island hostel. That was the first time that I'd been to a hostel. I put my bag upstairs and chose the top bunk since the lower three bunks were occupied. No guard rails! I wondered if I'd fall out of bed.
Then I decided to go walking around and maybe find a restaurant. I went first to the post office to mail a postcard. Then I went around downtown near the harbour. I noticed the large number of young families and felt kind of lonely. I remember going on trips as a kid and I'd be with my parents..it was so oragnized. We'd sleep in a hotel. Tonight I'd be sleeping in a hostel with three other people that I had never met before. How would that go? I was also in a new city and I didn't know anyone there. I knew Thierry in Tofino; that's why I went there. Why did I come to Victoria again?
Then I found a Korean internet cafe. Ah. The Internet lets us get in touch with our old world when we're travelling. I finally remembered what I was doing there. I'd see the west coast and then head home.
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12:59 am
[Link] | sleeping in hostels usually involves someone waking you up at 7:30 AM because they didn't pack the night before. they'll spend about a half hour rustling their shit and zipping up their bags to make sure that they've woken you up. if you're lucky some dude will walk in your room and speak at full volume as he's telling your former roommate to hurry up.
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09:48 pm
[Link] | the thing about this Vancouver Island rainforest is that there seems to be
no
fucking
breeze
at all.
Seriously, the bus driver on the way over said that every 5 years there'd be gale force winds. but i guess that's only in the wintertime. because right now, it's rained for about two and a half days and i'm used to it raining and then the breeze afterwards that comes to clear the clouds out of the way.
but nope! just the sameoldsameold. but the trees are really cool. the vegetation, the food! the chicks that smile at you as they bike by. i still think that i like the atlantic better, though.
tomorrow i'll be a-heading to Victoria. but i can't seem to shake the feeling that i'd rather be at home.
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02:33 pm
[Link] | c'est aujourd'hui que je pars
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08:17 pm
[Link] | I tried barganing a few days ago.
I guess I got what I wanted. we were looking for chairs and i ended up buying two of them. so now we have four chairs instead of two. but actually i don't count the folding chair because i don't trust it.
But ! I tried to get Mat to do the bargaining because I told him that I wasn't very good. I ended up getting two chairs for 5 bucks when one of them was for 7. There was one orange chair proudly displaying a price tag of $7. I told the lady that I only had five bucks in all and not seven. she reluctantly said that 5 bucks was OK for the chair even though it was super solid! and unbreakable! and yada.
I should mention that this was at a CHURCH garage sail and that what happened next will probably send me to the poop deck, i.e. hell.
so as i was digging around in my pocket i started pulling out my five bucks in change. i accidentally let a twenty dollar bill slide out of that same pocket. the lady saw it at the same time that i did and exclaimed :
« Mais vous avez 20$ ! Il n'a pas question que je vous vends ça en bas de 7$!»
But despite her protest she ended up selling me that chair for five bucks. I also decided to buy more shit seeing as I, stupidly, didn't put my flashy green $20 bill in a different fucking pocket.
That's how I got two chairs instead of one. Oh, and a general electric toaster. Man! that thing burns bread pretty easily.
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10:21 am
[Link] | i'm moving this morning.
actually, i started moving stuff yesterday. clothes! i was going to move more stuff yesterday afternoon but then it started pouring. so i went and brought the green-bin-full of beer bottles back to the grocery store to get the deposit $. man, those things were dusty.
also, it's june 1 and i practically froze my ass off last night? global warming is a crock of shit.
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12:41 pm
[Link] | owing to my SERIOUS lack of travelling over the past uh, four years or so (and probably more), i'm taking the bus across the country in less than 2 weeks, on the 12th
i sketched out my itinerary and i'm really not looking forward to spending three days or something like that in a bus? especially since 6 hours feels like forever. i'm telling myself that it's one of those things that you have to experience ONCE and then you can say that you did it.
my final destination is Tofino BC but i'm definitely going to spend some time in Vancouver. i'm also going to see if i can hitchhike to Victoria from Tofino. that remains to bee SEEN
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05:11 pm
[Link] | The last time that I was at the brasserie cherrier, the whole bar was illuminated by the overhead fluorescent lights and there was hardly anyone there. I also got way too drunk.
When I went there last Friday there were far more people. The bar was darker, the music was much louder and it was filled with younger people. Young people! I seem to always go to places where the average age is 40 or older. Usually older. Where do all the people my age hang out? oh yea, in crowded places where the music is too loud :(
But we managed to find a seat. Actually we cleared a table with an empty pitcher and several sticky glasses. Bad service. Then less than a minute later a girl came up and reclaimed her bag; it was right behind me and I was almost sitting on it.
Bad service! Me and J-F went to get a pitcher and the old dude behind the counter took our order, then spent another 5 minutes serving the 3 girls who were behind us in line. I was supposed to get a drink for Catherine as well but J-F told her to go herself seeing as she'd be served faster than us. Actually he served her only marginally faster than us. Go figs.
And then I saw Marc sitting at the next table over from us! We exchanged gangsta handshakes. I told him that I was still working at our old workplace. Then when his buddy came back he left. I swear he was only there for five minutes. Either that or uh, tunnel vision?
And I still haven't been to the very green decorated Restaurant Lafleur, even though we went for poutine afterwards.
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09:02 am
[Link] | As I ponder the twin stacks of the Incinérateur #3 I'm thinking that this is my last summer in Montreal, before my last school year. I'll be leaving Montreal's east end at the end of the month and I'll be moving to Snowdon. I used to always get angsty whenever I was in the west end, but I think those are leftover feelings from when I was first in Montreal and the west side was totally unfamiliar compared to the east side.
I never noticed those twin stacks until I moved to the Plateau last year, on Laurier near Papineau. I used to pass by them all the time, even though I was only in that apartment for a month. Then I moved to near Christophe-Colomb and Bellechasse, which is still pretty damn close to it; I'd see the Incinérateur every day. While looking at that structure last summer, I'd run through the crazy times that I had in my old apartment in Côte-des-Neiges and wonder why I left all that to become a hermit. Hermit on evenings, that is. I'd go to work during the day and go for long bike trips on the weekend.
But mostly it's because I wasn't happy with the apartment that I'm about to leave. It's different when you're living with 2 or more people your own age that you get along with and that you can call friends. Now I was with an older dude who was just a roommate. I used to define different criteria for what makes a friend a friend. You can call them up whenever or go see them at any time and ask them if they want to hang out. You can't do that with someone who's not your friend.
Or maybe I felt that I wasn't really at home with where I was living. That's an odd feeling. Last year, in June, I had about a week left in one apartment before I was set to leave, and the new renters (two girls) moved in early to get the place set up. What a transformation! Gone was the old couch and kitchen table. All the walls re-painted. The bathroom was totally different (more gentrified, maybe?). That was an odd feeling, staying there in someone else's apartment. If one feels that the common areas are off-limits, one certainly won't be happy staying there.
This should all change now, with this new apartment. Even though moving sucks, I'm really excited about this one. Less than a week left.
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01:48 pm
[Link] | I'm also sick and went to the doctor yesterday. He gave me ANTIBIOTICSZ. I was supposed to go back to Montreal yesterday but I'll go back Thursday instead. All my exams are next week.
Actually I'm better now but I've been sick often lately. Sick two weeks ago; sick mid February.
sick around chrixstmastime? i think.
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