herro, I'm a certified foreign language teacher

I didn't have a social life the past week of intense schooling but I have returned! Returned to be a NEET and back to the dreadful process of job hunting.

Yes, I've successfully completed my TEFL certification. It's quite amazing to think about just how much content was covered in the last week. It wasn't so much jargon (which there still was quite a few) but it was more about adjusting what we already know (as past students ourselves) and applying/adapting/changing it to a different role -- the teacher. I think our class finally got to know and warm up to each other just before it all ended. It was great how the teachers were all experienced in their field and brought in their stories from abroad which made it all the more relevant to us as aspiring ESL teachers. It felt like quite the bittersweet end.

I'm glad I took on the course though... or I'd be absolutely clueless as to what I was really getting myself into if I did get sent off overseas. The thought process and effort actually put into creating effective lesson plans and whatnot... you wouldn't really care as a student, but now that I've seen and done it from the teacher's perspective, it changes everything. Now that that door has opened, the option I've always been considering is there for me anytime.

Either way, I need to settle the present life stuff first... such as... OH, A JOB MAYBE. To pay off some, OH, BEELZ MAYBE.

Summer Lovin'

The weather looks like it has finally decided to stay and the heatwave has subsided. Yay for cool days~

While job hunting, I stumbled upon a TEFL scholarship provided by my school in conjunction with a language institution. I decided to give it a shot since I had nothing to lose, considering the job hunting scene was rather depressing anyway. I only just handed in my complete application last Sunday and got a response Monday, saying they received my application. Wednesday rolled around and surprisingly enough, I got it! I have no clue how many people actually try out for this since it's a monthly award but regardless, I was to start classes that upcoming Saturday. I then found out it's a 60 hour intensive course which spans across 9 days. I also had no idea that it was that intensive but again, nothing to lose, right?

My weekend was decided to the first two classes, 9 hours both days. It's a shockingly small class - 4 people, including myself. Another mind-blogging shock is that we have a particular classmate who already has experience in the teaching field overseas but is a /shit/ speller. How do people like him get in? Oh yeah, right... he's an excessive talker and persuader (and he's white! I'm not even being racist here; it's the truth... they got it easy). That's probably not the biggest shock, however. I already have to design and teach a lesson plan for tomorrow (which is being marked), after a mere two days of classes. I don't know wtf I'm doing.

What am I doing now? I needed to get away from all that unproductive thinking.

Onto other news, I also got picked from a random drawing (for mula!) of an official educational survey I took back in university. It's not much at all but it's godsend for a NEET... every penny counts! Yes, thank you, money goes towards bills here. BEELZ.

The fireworks are also starting this Wednesday. For some reason they're earlier by a week this year so I won't be able to make it to the first week due to my classes. Meh.

I can basically write-off the rest of this week as not existent. Alright, back to homework... see you in the future!

Graduation and NEETing

SO. I officially graduated last Thursday on a typical gloomy Vancouver weather afternoon. Only invited the parents due to the lack of ticket availability. The convocation was held at the Surrey campus so we had breakfast [for lunch] nearby before the ceremony. The ceremony for my department was the 2nd of the four across two days which explains why it was only a mere 1 1/2 long event. It was held in the gymnasium which was prettified and masked unrecognizable (and didn't smell like gym). We were only informed minutes before the start of the ceremony what we had to do and even then, it wasn't clear until we actually watched the other students walk across first. The speeches were long but the walk across the stage was fast. The nervousness didn't really even click in until it was near my turn to walk.

After convocation, everyone moved to the lounge area where pictures were taken... which was then followed by final group pictures before we dispersed. Graduation party? Nope. I think we hate each others guts too much to allow such a thing to happen... ever. It's quite sad actually. Anti-climactic? Indeed.

NEET mode had already been switched on post grad show. Sadly the 'responsible me' has been constantly reminding me that I can't keep this up for very long. Strange enough though, I haven't had too many "do absolutely nothing but stay at home in my PJs all day" days as I've had to do general family errands left and right and the occasional hanging out.

So, for now I'll use Anime Expo as an excuse to slack off until then. Speaking of which, it's a week and a half away. They gotta stop announcing more guests already. As if the tentative schedule up doesn't already look busy enough. FFfffffffuuuuu

The Final Act

The past week's been a blur. The first few days were meetings where very few people showed their faces. Wednesday night was a last minute pre-setup role call, but the cupcake team decided to work on cupcakes for the show instead. Had Insanity Hot Sauce for the first time. Painfully fun.

First up was Industry Night: Woke up early to get there to setup and unsurprisingly, it was unproductive. Left to do some errands and returned later that afternoon. The first hour of the night was dead but people started trickling in soon enough. Got treated a beer and got a little high on an empty stomach. Made conversations all the more interesting. Mo2 who came by might have thought otherwise.



After a long day, we went to GoGo Tea for some late night food. When we got there, it was hard to decide whether we wanted to eat or just sleep because of exhaustion and the time of day. Then there were dragonflies.

The next day: Speakers Night. Got spazzed at by spazz girl via phone while I was still only half asleep for not being there for the early shift. Didn't realize who it was until she got into full out spazz-mode. Spazz girl is spazzy.

Got there in the afternoon and cleaned/bleached the chairs we rented for the which came a lot dirtier than we expected. After it was a mad scramble to set up the rest of the floor as both the speakers (Paula & Karj) and the people started arriving. The talk started late thus it ended late as well.


(check out the quality)
The third and final day was the Degree Show. Got there on time with the intention to set up. No one was really there. It was decided not to set up the computers again so my table was really ronery without a portfolio. Learnt that Subway breakfast is disgusting. Sat around, talking with each other a lot and occasionally some family/friends would show up. Headed out for lunch to meet up with Patson and Kyle who both worked nearby. Shi2 and Tofu showed up later in the day.

Then finally, 6:30: take down! It was relatively quick and painless but we still didn't leave until 8. Considered ramen but the amount of people lining up for it on Friday night turned out to not be such a good idea after all. We ate at a Thai restaurant nearby and finished up the night with gelato. Cold as fuck but delicious, yes.

So after 4 years... IT'S OVER.

More on what comes after another time.

Ending School with a BAM!

On Thursday, the teacher organized a press check field trip to the printers to take a look at our catalog in progress and make adjustments if necessary. I got a ride from my classmates because I wasn't familiar with where the place was located. Getting there took us a good hour as it was fairly deep within Burnaby.

A mere block away from the print shop, we made a left turn from a small street into another small street and from the opposing lane came an incoming car, t-boning our vehicle in this lovely fashion:


Fortunately, nobody was sitting at the door where the opposing car hit us. It could've hit my friend sitting in the passenger seat or me, if I sat on that side that day. Both of us passengers saw the car coming but we helpless to do anything about it before the impact. The old lady claimed she was going at 55km/h (which automatically means she was speeding) and couldn't stop on time. Regardless, because there was a witness who saw it was "our fault", it might just split to a 50-50 fault claim.

There weren't any major injuries.. bruises from the seat belts, seat belt burn and a whole lot of stiffness and soreness. My neck, shoulders and the side of my hip where the seat belt buckle dug into hurts like a bitch now, but I guess it's kind of a nice reminder that we're still alive.


...and life goes on, with a side of pain.

Finishing Up...

The last few weeks went by like it was nothing. Returned from Sakuracon and went straight back to school. Even birthday celebrations were extremely low key this year. Came home late the night before from the drive and slept like there was no tomorrow. Then topped it off with some delicious Pizza Hut pizza and Clash of the Titans. Then the rest of the semester was dedicated to working on trying to finish up final projects/assignments for classes and juggling grad show preparations on the side.

I almost forgot what goodies working with a real client comes with. For my major project, I had the opportunity to present my work to the rest of the info tech department who were in charge of all the hard/soft technologies in the school at their monthly meeting. Apparently my announcement attracted other parties who were interested thus the attendance hit a new record. The presentation didn't even end there: on top of the totally unexpected 15 plus faculty members, the meeting was a video conference connecting other faculty at the other campus locations in the craziest projector room setup. No pressure, really.

Insane presentations don't like to end there... the final semester finisher was the full 8-hour day of presentations in the conference room where each student had 20mins each. It didn't feel as dreadful as last semester, but there was a bigger audience turnout... and my butt started getting sore after lunch. Speaking of lunch, we were provided with ugh!cafeteria pizza and butter cookies again this time. Luckily my presentation was before lunch this time around so my stomach didn't have to flip during my speech.

After that finally ended, it was still too early for celebrations but my classmates felt otherwise. Hay guyz, school's not over - there's still the grad show. More delays, more rushed work... can't say much now but it seems to be coming together for the time being.

So, now. I'm in Las Vegas - 'sup?

No, Bunnies dammit!

[insert April Fools joke]

I don't have much brain power left to really execute any sort of witty April Fools joke. Usually after the 1st means Easter weekend follows, which means the beginning of April, which means there's only 20 days left until the end of the semester, which means graduation is soon, which means there's not much time left. I've already been doing a lot of complaining about the running out of time thing, but that's the only thing on my mind.

The past week involved the ending of my mentorship. On the final two days, I was finally given some interesting productive work (research was fun too, but that's pre-production). A new intern came and took my seat as he had priority as a "full time intern" as opposed to this weak one-day-a-week setup our school has. Working on the other side wasn't actually bad, as it was quiet and I felt pretty productive working over there. The experience ended with a neat parting gift, the typical Friday beer, and watching Non-Format's awesome presentation off of youtube. My current inspirational design heroes perhaps?

Monday rolled around and fresh from the postman came my passport! The more I thought about Sakuracon over the weekend, the more I wanted to go. So OKAY! Let's go! Didn't prepare much though as the week was pretty busy with school things. Definitely didn't put in any effort into getting myself a proper wig as well. I won't be taking this convention as seriously as I usually do (no super shopping, no super panel visiting and no super guest signature getting), but using it more as a getaway and maybe solely for Noizi Ito. :b

I also got at ticket yesterday for parking at a parking lot where I would plan to get my round of bubble tea after I cross the street to steal some dessert from the a family dinner. His claim was I parked and left the parking lot. He was definitely right about that BUT my sole purpose was to buy bubble tea and my visit to the restaurant was no more than 10 mins. I WILL CONTEST AND EFFING WIN THIS BATTLE.

Anyway, it's getting late and I still have a list of things to do before we head down in the morning.
I WILL DEFEAT YOU, CATS.

So Close Yet...

Suddenly, there's only a month left of the semester. There seems to be so much left to do in so little time. Yep, definitely feeling the pressure.


The main culprit of stress is, of course, school.

Major project: When you consider starting from scratch vs. working from someone else's CSS/code, you'd -usually- choose the former because everyone knows that working from someone else's just means you're setting yourself up for hell... but after seeing how badly Moodle's originally coded, working for someone else's is actually the lesser evil. :|

Grad show: Okay, so now we have the overall theme established BUT we lack the finalized visual theme. The whole class is still unable to move forward without at least a graphic standards manual. Mere weeks away from the campaign launch... oh *insert headdesk*

Mentorship: Oh yeah, the interview was a success. Ended up being interviewed by the senior designers of both sides of the company (the digital and the print) and the art director (aka. the mentor). Scary as hell experience but it worked out at the end. The first day was the 4th (Thurs) and I've been going in Thursdays and Fridays, whenever possible. The first few days were pretty exciting and interesting, though the excitement started to die down when I noticed they began to ran out of things for me to do. Meetings, researching to compile a marketing matrix, scrapbook making (lol!gluing)... The non-disclosure agreement aside, the meetings they brought me into were very insightful and interesting. More than once was I invited to join in on their meetings with their client. TENSE.

A few days back, my mom suddenly called me in the middle of the day and told me about this awesome Las Vegas deal. The next thing I know, I'm going to Las Vegas in late April. Plane, hotel, shows are booked. I am going. Yep. No joke. Even though I haven't fully absorbed this fact yet either.

Fortunately I remembered that my passport is expiring in late April as well, so it's in the process of renewal. BUT. The days following, fellow classmate informs me of her spur of the moment plan to go to Sakuracon with her friends. No big deal for me at first since I supposedly boycotted Sakuracon since my last visit. Did some research afterwards to find that NOIZI ITO, DJ SHARPNEL, HandMC (side note: and Luffy's seiyuu, Tanaka Mayumi) ARE GOING TO BE THERE. Felt like I shot myself in the foot. It's tempting but there's still some variables... like my passport? money? transportation? MY BIRTHDAY WEEKEND? H8 U SCON. DX

allergies, go away.

Delegating

You are working with a group of quite a few people, say 20, to setup a party but there are a few missing bodies. So, how does the group decide who to choose to be take on the important role of organizing the giant party? Oh, of course! Duh, one of the missing bodies! Damn straight because they know absolutely nothing about the party itself, being missing from the gathering and all. There's no need to consider what kind of person they are or their opinion for that matter. In fact, hey, that missing body can decide not to participate or show up to the party because, really, what would the party mean to them if they didn't even show up for the gathering to begin with. Alright, that's what you call being responsible people! That's how big kids decide and do things around here! Now, where's that party...

The Olympic Break

The two week long reading/spring/oympic break is almost over. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it's close to gone.


First there was Chinese New Year... week. The first few days had me spewing CNY phrases to get my lucky envelopes from the adults. That might continue on during tonight's dinner with an uncle who finally decided to join us over on this side of the world after CNY had already passed.

School never misses the chance to get in my face during my break of course. My practicum had gone to sh|t at one point where every attempted placement negotiation had failed. I was extremely looking forward to working at Tribal DDB as the conversation was initially really positive, and they were probably the most fitting with my interests and goals. Karo, Switch, and Blast Radius was also considered. The level of desperateness reached a point where I was willing to give in to working with Cactus Club, but even that didn't work out. Strange enough, Switch came back and said OK. That is, OK -plus- come in for an interview plz. I now have an interview scheduled for tomorrow. I am ready for freak out mode.


The Olympic break wouldn't be complete without more Olympic action. Thursday was dedicated to Our Lady Peace live at the Ozone in Richmond. Before the concert, me and Sty had some good ol' fashion pho in the area. We then followed to park at Richmond Centre and walked our way to the venue which was surprisingly right at the library. We payed a bit of attention to the band that played before them (The Arkells?). The concert was awesome minus the stupid crowd... and by stupid I mean:

(15 mins left of the concert and a girl tries to push our way through us, when we're already super constrained with space)

Girl: I need to get by you guys. My friends are like just right up there.
Us: So? Do you really need to be with them right now? There's only 15 minutes left in the concert anyway.
Girl: If I gave you 15 minutes to live, wouldn't you want to spend it with your family?!
Us: What?! That's totally unrelated!
Girl: It's the same thing!

WHAT.

Stupid people aside, I felt sorry for the old Chinese lady behind me who got pushed around by the hyper jumping and cheering crowd beside her.


Saturday Tofu and I did some touristy things around downtown. Hot dog Bratwurst:


Met up with Sty afterwards for drinks and late night sushi. Must stop going for all you can eat. Fail samosa:


Wanted to watch a figure skating event but my dad isn't a hockey fan and doesn't do much parent-son bonding, so he went with my mom. Hot damn, Canada's Virtue and Moir were on fire though. As for the hockey game we were insanely lucky to land the Canada vs Germany match. Our seats were awesome and we were right beside the sportcaster guys' table.



Fill in the rest of my days with games (FFX-2 is so girly D:), anime (marathoned 5~6 series) and a pinch of school (two major things due next week!). Next few days will be dedicated more to school.. and soon the end of school forever countdown begins.

Hydraulics Fail

Just returned from the insanity that is downtown Vancouver and watched a fail of an opening ceremony to the Olympics. I met up with Moni, Braman, and [new challenger] Andrew downtown after helping out at Bonchaz. We munched at Yaletown Brewery during most of the beginning of the ceremony. We were unexpectedly visited by a professional magician while we waited for food - Yeeri was his name (found him!). None of us experienced a magician first hand before and it was more amazing how every trick he did was illogically mind bogging AND he had his sleeves up. There were your card tricks but he changed a pile of cards sandwiched right in my hands into a block of plastic (?!), folded a $20 bill into a $5 and back, rubber bands that passed through each other when normally they couldn't... it was an amazing 10 minutes.

After food we decided not to stay (though we should've) and wandered around outside, eventually finding dry and warm place to stand and watch the outdoor TVs that broadcasted the ceremony. The whole white attire was almost ghost/clone/robot-like. That aside, the first building of the crystal campfire sadly failed which I bet will be one of the hotter topics in the next little while. When the secondary campfire was finally lit, we went to give the real thing a visit. On our way we stopped by the Royal Canadian Mint museum and encountered the one million dollar coin.


Thiiis big.


Now that the Olympics are here, that means I have two weeks of no schooling. Sadly it won't all be just break as there's still a crap of school things to do during this time. Our grad show progress is still a disaster, there's a workshop to prepare for and then there's also my major project to worry about. I'll see how well I can pace myself between school work and play.

My previous weekend was devoured by the revampment of my portfolio. It's in a working order I can say I can be pleased with for the time being (before I probably get bored of it) and it seems like my prospective design firm for my practicum has also thumbs up'd it. It's up to the creative director and his schedule during that time. Crossing fingers and toes. While working on my port, I've also realized once again how difficult it is for me to merge my online identity with my offline. My type of people does not seem to translate well.

Monday we had a field trip to our future grad show location. Looks fancy but smaller than (I think) most of us expected. The view from above the residential building is nice. After our short field trip we went to the Granville Brewery and uh did some tasting rounds just for the fun of it.







Few days ago we had some more fundraising activities at school and a fellow classmate did henna. I wanted something different so when the idea of Sasuke's cursed seal came up I went oh what the hell and got it. She didn't have much experience doing something out of her norm but it was a pretty interesting interpretation. Because of its relative obscurity, I've been getting a lot of comments on how they thought my arm caught a bad burn. /narutarding it up. This geek thing is doing me no good.

Caaake.

Salty, Bitter & Sweet

What I had for breakfast yesterday. Usually the instructor brings in food for us when we have big presentation days. This time cheese was added to the plate which was different from the norm which consisted of usually just bread and fruit. I found that it was a pretty interesting combination: a bite of cheese, a bite of banana bread and then a sip of coffee to help it go down. Very nice~

[insert Olympic picture]
So, data recovery programs are pretty spiffy but still not advanced enough to retrieve all the photos I accidentally deleted off my phone memory card. It somehow managed to save my breakfast picture though... But anyway, imagine a photo of a mural made with stacked Coca-Cola cases. It was pretty cool. An obvious sign that OHSH-IT'S NEXT WEEK.


I offered to help out at Mike's upcoming bun shoppe, Bonchaz, by doing the menus. It's interesting how menu drawing turned into an interesting designing opportunity and amazingly enough, two blackboards took a whole day to do. But it was really refreshing to design something using a completely different medium. The official opening day ETA is next Monday. Look out for it!!

The day has mentally exhausted me. I had to help facilitate a focus group today at the Surrey campus. Driving to Surrey was a nerve-wracking experience. The focus session was an hour and a half long and, as usual, the conversation went on a tangent but we got some pretty interesting feedback out of it. But ugh, focus groups are so energy consuming...

I've been putting this off for as long as possible, but it's finally time for serious portfolio revision action. I've been having difficulty narrowing down a mentorship opportunity for my practicum class but I finally got a few leads. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the placements are of pretty high caliber so I have to [somehow] show a certain level of skill that's at least close to their standard. Unfortunately my half-assed port done just for the sake of completing the course req's from last year won't do.

While gathering my port stuff, I looked back at my old layouts and damn, I must've lost my creative skills somewhere. I think I'm jealous of my past self. Whatever happened to me after I entered post secondary?? It feels like I can't seem to design anything I'm happy with nowadays... These graphic design standards/expectations of "reality" really does bind you down.

Okay, must stop typing. I foresee a busy weekend. Portfolio first.

One Thing After Another

Parents rush-flew to and from China/HK the last week to see family and bring back my grandpa's remains for a brief ceremony here later this week. The next few days will be busy-rushed-hectic with the service preparations.

Last Sunday, my friend got his car broken into the night before that, getting all his electronics taken. It really sucks to hear about these things and be unable to do anything about it...

Strong winds also decided to blow down our backyard gate pretty badly the other day but we were able to fix it to some extent. Ugly but more livable than before at least.

To make the week even better, school has been heavily involved in establishing a theme for our grad show. My team from Team Robots in 2nd year worked decided to work together again for our concept. It began as a harmless bubble tea outing after class which evolved into a 4 hour discussion. We then had another amazing 6-hour bubble tea session another day to finish up our presentation preparations. However, due to personality/ideal clashes with the class, our thoroughly developed concept was shot down. There just seems to be this extremely sinister hate coming from at least a good half of the class for anything remotely Asian or 'cute'. SO back to the drawing board...


On the flip side, although not recent in the last month, one of my best friends went to Japan for the winter holidays. I've been using a magazine (ION Magazine to be precise, it's nice and square) as my mousepad since the wireless mouse doesn't like tablets (for obvious reasons) and it also collects dust way too easily off the table. I've had to work on my PC for hours at a time (doing ugh homework) ever since my laptop was out of commission so the wrist pain has finally set in. So I ended up requesting for a boob/oppai mousepad. No butts, no nipples, no porn.


She came back with a pink-haired, twin tail maid. :3

So! This girl's an original character drawn by Kuuchu Yousai, the character designer for Nanael from Queen's Blade and the Djibril series. And! She even has a bio to go with it: Hoshizaki Fuuka, 17 years old (!) high school 2nd year. She lost her family in an accident and now lives with the protagonist as his maid. Even though she has a dark past, she puts up a strong front but is a dojikko. Her signature moves are to spill tea and collide into walls. She's a classmate with the protagonist (which it notes is obviously a guy). Born on May 10th, blood type A. My mousepad has a background apparently.. I find that very amusing.

So guys, girls' boobs do not feel like this. Stop trying to trick yourself.

As for the FFXIII elixir, that was an awesome surprise. Sadly I will never open it so I will never know what trading figure it comes with. I'll just hope it's Lightning or Yung Fang and leave it at that. It'll be saved for an emergency when I'll need to break things like benches and cars with my head. Hm, much like how I never touch elixirs ever in game either.. waiting for the right emergency, but it never happens.

Alright, week 4 commences... 3 weeks till the Olympics.

Lack of Christmas Vegetation

Merry Christmas!
...and mere days before the end of the 2009 year.

School's been out for about a week and there's actually only a week left, which leaves me feeling sadfaced. I haven't had too many real "days off" yet where I do absolutely nothing but vegetate.. but I think that's what most of next week is going to be for.

The last few days of school were kind of ugh. Last Tuesday consisted of 8 straight hours of presentations in the conference hall for our major projects, 20 mins allocated for each student and a lot of teachers with on-the-spot critiquing. Didn't help that I was scheduled for after lunch and they fed us bad cafeteria pizza. It sure was a big sigh of relief when it was all over though. We had Cactus Club at the end of the day to celebrate. One more semester to go but I am so sick of my project.

Then the following day was my meeting with my actual major project clients. The second time ever. They seem stoked and it looks like it'll be more busier next semester with them wanting me to set up some focus groups. We got drenched walking to our lunch location (yay for Vancouver rain) since they dismissed my idea to drive there (lawl lazy student). It got worse when I ended up ordering a sandwich with fries plus a drink and they both only had a salad. I only minded because they ended up treating me! A lazyass AND a pig.

I've been hacking away at Dragon Age for the past while and been tempted to play Borderlands. I'll be good and finish what I started first. I don't understand why nekkid women in western RPGs are so buff and unattractive. Deja vu, Fable 2.

(Note: the game forced me naked... I am not a perv to my own characters! D:)

I've also been marathoning anime whenever. Higashi no Eden movie(s) nao prz.

* Watched Avatar in 3D the other day - very awesome.
* Ninja Assassin. What happened to Rain? I thought he was supposed to be hot.
* New Moon was earlier in November during our exploit-the-fan-girls cupcake fundraiser at Oakridge. Those fan girls were frightening.
* Sherlock Holmes tomorrow. Robert Downey Jr squee~

Speaking of fangirls...

/geek
My only irk with it is that the colour on glass is peeling off a bit. I've drank one and will save the other. Next they need more flavours and blood types.

I am also sad that I missed my package today. I was expecting the post office guy but he came an hour too early for me to wake up and hear him. Yep, slept right through it and now I have to wait until Tuesday to get it.

I finish with donuts.

A Breather

Hi! I'd like to believe I'm still alive.

Near semester end... stuff happened. A lot... and yet it wasn't a lot, really.

But I can say this much: I'M EXHAUSTED.
I'm running on 3 hours right now and my red bull effect has just wore off so I'm really feeling it. Energy draining @20hp/tick.

The past week consisted of writing up a RFP response, an interview report, a 20-pager essay--which all took about 3 or so days each--and finally the 3rd stage of my major project. Hermit week is over!

No school vs School (it's been cleaned up a bit already).

The RFP was just number frustration.


I had to interview my interview guy for a second time because our first meet wasn't long enough. I really didn't want to meet a second time because my laptop's out of commission (as I already mentioned) so I only had one fully charged battery left just in case I had to retrieve anything from there. BUT he was doing ME the favour so sucked it up. The information I got was valuable though, especially for myself, but it was nothing really applicable to the rest of the class so I had to fill it in most with what I already know. A case of good BS.

The essay was tragic. Let's not speak of it again.

When Tuesday rolled around, I didn't get a chance to present ANYTHING. That was upsetting; I was hoping to get the presentations out of the way but now they're all pushed to next week. HAET PRESENTATIONS.

I also seem to eat a lot when I'm under stress. Whenever I took a break, I went straight to the kitchen for something. Since my other break options (video gamesssaaaa, anime) were out of the question, eating(?) was my only choice. Cream cheese was my best friend.

Speaking of video games, I've been video game FREE for THIRTEEN DAYS NOW. I will go and experience again how awesome it is to get my ass kicked in Dragon Age right after this.

I have over 900 unread RSS posts and I consider myself a casual RSSer as I only follow a few websites. It will take a bit of time.

So I left my phone at school yesterday but I was swamped with completing the next stage of my major project so I left it where it was. The security guard (aka. The Transporter) was smart enough to know how to go through my phone and call my house to leave me a message on my answering machine. I also found out that I cannot live without my phone. My phone's alarm clock that is. I failed to wake up today because I did not have it with me.

Blahblah I have a conference room presentation for my major project in two weeks. UGH. WHY.

So I've been dreaming about Christmas and all the wonderful free time I'll have. And so here's some for the to-do list:
- finish reading my bro's Watchmen comic book so I can watch the movie already
- *watch* the Watchmen movie
- get a haircut
- read my manga backlog (both offline/online)
- ugh no one vacuums if I don't do it.
- Dragon Age raaaaaage
- preorder my LE PSP
- marathon another anime?
- something else I haven't thought of yet.

2 presentations, 2 more individual projects, one class project and tweaking major project+conf. presentation left to go. Two more weeks...!

To hell and back...

School inevitably means frequent visits to hell.
The weekend before was one of those bad visits... Saturday and Sunday was dedicated to my soon-to-be 20+ page major research report proposal which was fortunately only a few pages in comparison. However, our marketing instructor is a stickler for proper writing, reference (APA for some reason instead of MLA) and critique.

The dread continued into Monday (luckily it was a statue holiday) and Tuesday after class when I stayed at school until closing for my final major project research proposal. I had a few hours of sleep that night before I had to wake up to get my report printed and binded before class started at 8.

Lack of sleep hooo!
Well at least the visit to hell was nicely balanced by a visit from ToFu that following weekend... and apparently he's going to be a permanent resident! :>

So I drove through the Second Narrows for the first time - the tunnel is pretty cool. North Van isn't as bad as I thought, though that one lane traffic thing they're have during construction is not very smart. The weather was relatively shat so we decided to hang around locally. I also got to see MINI for the second time in my life and the three of us roamed Daiso, had Posh and e-spot arcaded. During, we met our destined bff - Ben Posh. Oh, Ben~

The next day was visit all the stores you think you used to know but apparently does not exist anymore. It was a rather depressing. My further research has revealed me to me that indeed the import games and figure stores are dying and everything has probably moved to the internet.

Hm it seems Sty was sick when I met her. I didn't touch her but... my throat hurts now. Hm, I worry. I thought I'm H1N1 immune already. :(

Here's something to finish this off, the 20min rushedly edited video for shits and giggles.. and for marks:

Feels like winter, where did autumn go?

Project milestones crunch time! This week: Video Monday, Research and presentation Tuesday, Logo redesign Thursday. Next week: Research proposal Tuesday, some group project marketing plan Tuesday, Research and presentation Wednesday.


Red bean blowfish.


Fish heads, fish heads - eat them up - yum!
As you can see, this one was really ugly though.


Cupcakes were baked. A whole crap load.

Our grad fundraising progress seems to moving along slowly. Though there's been a lot of planning and not enough doing. Cupcakes on the other hand have been doing well since it started last year but it'd be nice if our grad year was known for something else rather than good cupcakes. C'mon we're graphic designers, not bakers.

So last Saturday: "Your daughter should get her car waxed [by that acquaintance who's willing to do it for cheap]," said mom. Later that morning, dad's interpretation: "Your mom says you need to wax your car." I ask about the acquaintance guy who would do it, in which he responds: "Do you know how expensive it is? Are you going to pay for it? I know how to do it so why do I need to get someone else to do it?!" Dad forever wins.

Thanks to my mom (as always), my Saturday was dedicated to waxing my car. I am in the white collar field for a reason, Dad.


Awesome signage.

Triple Combo Critical Hit

On top of the insanely occupied weekend, I had three projects to hand in this week.

Tuesday's group project on our cupcakes bakery wasn't too bad. I took all the free time I had on the weekend inbetween stuff to get as much of it done as possible. Unfortunately I was busy all Monday so I was unable to help the rest of the group build the comps and put together the finishing touches. Apparently one particular person did not keep up with our pace and ended up having to make the rest of the group wait on her stuff. But fortunately, Tuesday morning's presentation turned out to be quite the success. We were the last to present and we ended it off by telling people to wake the eff up and start figuring out how to get our grad funds together. The cupcakes project of ours were a real business to make money for our grad show happening next year. A bit more on that in a bit.

Wednesday was our corporate identity project. I already had most of the stuff done from the previous weeks so it was pretty easy going. We also brought in our first order of cupcakes by the teacher. I got jack shit for comments on my presentation. My appointed commenter is a useless retard.

Thursday was a bit hellish. I went through the day on two hours of sleep. The final project of my portfolio revamp was pretty half-assed but passable. And it just means I'll have to work extra hard this next week to get it into better shape before I start going out and doing some job hunting. Again, I got shit for comments for this presentation too. This lack of feedback thing doesn't help my progress at all really.

After class, we had a class discussion on our grad show funding plans. It was mostly a useless conversation. It was all just talk and no do. Ideas, sure, but not particularly feasible (realistic standpoint). They probably thought differently though... so it was just probably me. K, make things, and then sell them. Okay... who would want them? Who's making them? What are we making exactly??

I didn't have much to say to help the conversation so I said nothing. I did think of making some money doing something online, but I couldn't think of what it is exactly we could do yet... hopefully I'll figure out something with that soon... It'll be pretty damn hard to get our class working together considering we seem to hate each other's guts in some way or another. I should be more positive though. Perhaps they'll prove me wrong. Well actually... I hope they do prove me wrong.

Here's to another year of school.

Time to deal with the work side of things... anyone need me for side designing jobs/tasks? Money now prz.

The Last Few Pushes....

The past week has been tiring. There was a project due Monday, so my weekend was pretty much dedicated to that.

The rest of the week had me and the whole family working on cleaning out my grandma's apartment for my grandpa to live in when he returns later tonight. The lady we originally wanted to hire to do the job said it was too late of a notice and couldn't do it, so it was up to us.

The place was insanely messy, as if someone went through and robbed the place kind of messy... hm, I never asked why it was in that state to begin with though the place should of been cleaned a long time ago (like half a year long ago) by my Aunt but she's apparently too lazy. The kitchen was probably the nastiest part. I found a bit of an insect/bug's nest hidden in one of the cupboards. The insects freaked out and exploded out of the cupboard, and in turn, I, too, freaked out and ran. Cleaning is not cool when it gets to that condition.

Speaking of cleaning, we'll need to be doing some of our own house cleaning soon. Relatives are coming from all over the world to go to her ceremony and they like to visit houses... hmm yes. There's three of her siblings from Toronto, her daughter (who came a few weeks ago), her youngest son aka. the useless uncle we all hate, my grandpa who we've been trying to get to move back here permanently, and probably others we'll get to see on the actual day.

The preparations have been taking up a lot of time. A week and a half left to go for school and there's still three more projects to do. I think I'm royally screwed. I'll have to keep my grandpa company this weekend too I bet. The awesomeness of Vesperia isn't helping much either.

There was also an orientation earlier today for us 3rd years about 4th year and what to expect. I'm still so confused. I guess I'll be leaving that until September... or at least until all this insanity boils over. A side note, apparently because of the olympics, we'll be getting 2 WEEKS of reading break instead of the normal 2 days *cough* so it will push everything later for us. Good/bad thing? Not sure yet.

Also because of the busyness this week, I completely forgot about looking for a job. Fffff... I hope it's not too late to get to that after school ends.

Marchtastic

Before I start typing away at my review on Skies of Arcadia Legends and while taking a break from posting up (aka. tagging) my old LJ entries, let's talk about this week and stuff in general.

I suddenly had this itch to clean yesterday night, at like, 1am SO I went and cleaned out the whole front room that used to be my computer room, which used to be the gaming room, which also used to be my brother's room before that. The room's now a giant closet slash the place where I put all my empty figurine packaging. The room was once piled messily with huge empty boxes (my computer parts, my mom's laptop box, my mom's massage machine box) and clothes but now they're neatly sorted and organized thanks to moi. I then followed to vacuum the place the next morning (earlier this morning). My room was recently cleaned too... Hm, I should seriously take a picture of it before it piles up again.

The server my domains are currently sitting on is officially mine. My friend (Mike) who was sharing it with me for the last 10? years has decided to give up on it for good. It'll be a bit of a toll on my wallet, being unemployed and all still but I will continue to keep it. I am considering hosting other people to balance off the bill but I don't know anyone who needs it. That just means I'll need to work harder to find a job... that is, if I'm aiming for both AX and PAX...

Speaking of which, AX days planned are July 1 - 7. Just waiting on more better hotel announcements and Shi2 to hurry up and find time off to buy plane tickets. Not to mention, they need more guest announcements. Effing smile.dk, Yamaguchi Kappei and Nozomu Sasaki's appearance at sakuracon d-doesn't faze me one bit...!!

PAX's "limited number of badges" is a bit concerning... But budget is not confirmed so I better not yet.Semester end approaches and I've got some serious revamping to do for most of the projects I've done thus far. Been quite unsatisfied with how most of them have turned out so I'll be (hopefully) dedicating this weekend to do just that.

While on the topic of projects, my upcoming portfolio revamp turns out to be the same colours I used in my current. I was having trouble figuring out what colours "suited" me, and my classmate kept urging me to use orange because I was an "orange person." She can imagine me wearing orange (I have no orange clothes) and said it was perhaps it was because my hair is orange?! Either way, I didn't accept such a crappy answer so I kept looking for a colour combo. I somehow ended up poking around the Pantone community and (re)encountered the colorology page to find that my colour was indeed orange. That wasn't the only thing... Back at school, while I was working on my portfolio, I began looking at my old portfolio site just to see what stuff I plan on keeping and in fact, I've forgotten that my page was actually already orange. So finally, hey, what the heck, sure orange it is. So it's official, I'm orange.