Northern (southern) exposure

Carmen told me about a Campus Security alert, and I thought it was too funny to not post here... Apparently yesterday about 9 pm, a man appeared to be "exposing his genitals." Haha! Ok, you gotta be pretty messed up to be exposing yourself in the first place, but doing so in -36 Celsius windchill?!

Watched a Brian Keating talk tonight with Evelyn (who I happened to see my first Brian Keating talk with a couple yrs ago). A lot of the video was stuff we'd seen before, but he's such a good enthusiastic speaker it was still fun! One of the coolest things was seeing some Wechiau Hippos Sanctuary stuff... it was like "I stayed in that mud hut! I poured cold water on myself behind that little wall! (shower)" Anyways, seeing the presentation reminds me there's so many places in the world left to go. Would be nice to have a lifestyle that allows me to do that. But don't know if I'd actually take advantage of it if I did. Also nice to have someone to go places with.

Forgot to mention, on friday on the way to U of C with Carmen, got checked on the C-train for the first time ever! Now I can't say I've never been checked! :(

tap tap

Squash again this week with Carmen and HKSA people... though it actually wasn't many of the same people as last week, I think just Me, Carmen, and Kelvin (I had so much trouble remembering his name for some reason!). But I got to meet a few new people. Carmen didn't feel well for squash unfortunately :( Afterwards, went to Peking Garden for dinner. For some reason we ordered some dinner for 10, which means enough food to make 10 people completely over-stuffed, even though we only had 9 people. So there was lots left over, and it was kindof expensive. The quality was ok. At one point I mentioned something about I should have been tapping the table when receiving tea, but Carmen had never heard of it. Neither had Danny, or Lena or Stacy. Some actually thought it seemed rude! I couldn't believe it, I was under the impression that this was such a common thing, I've seen so many chinese people do it before, but here is a group of HKSA people and noone knows about it. Am I imagining things? But then I asked Kelvin, and he knew about it, so I guess I'm not crazy. Or maybe we're both crazy. Whatever. Later, met with a couple other people (Evelyn and Ray) and went to bubble tea, though Carmen, Kelvin and I didn't really want any. Though the other people had this super spicy snail thing, and for $5 Kelvin drank the super spicy sauce that remained! Crazy but funny.

Dance again

Sat night went to a dance, this time I was encouraged to go by Carmen. She's pretty new, but good and super enthusiastic. Unfortunately we have learned different things, and I've forgotten much of what I learned in years gone by anyways, but I was still able to bully her through a few things that I did remember and she picked them up pretty fast. It was great spending the evening with her. There were surprisingly not many people at all at the dance, around a dozen. I guess people in that club aren't as into ballroom as latin, and also there was something at UCBDC that maybe some people were at instead. Ran into Mike from dragonboat there though, just like last time I went to a dance thing.

Gargantua6

I've been meaning to do this post for a little while, and now have a great(er) excuse!

So I've heard of Skype for a long time, but didn't think about it much. But some weeks ago, I decided to try it out. So I installed it, and made a few initial test calls... by calling myself (more like my parents cause I let them pick up the phone). It worked fairly well, even though I was using a crappy old mic I found in the cupboard. When visiting Chris sometime, I mentioned it, and he had a spare headset earphone/mic that was pretty good quality that he didn't need, so he gave it to me. Since then, I've used skype a few times... calling Chris in Edmonton to arrange visiting again, calling Martin in Waterloo to chat and plan a game, calling Steph in Toronto for a long chat since it had been so long since last time. And it was all free, and all pretty good quality (not quite as nice as phone, but definitely good enough). So I'm pretty pleased with Skype. I think the free north america is just till the end of the year, not sure how it will be after that. Other disadvantages: Can't walk around like on a cordless or cell phone, cause you're attached to your computer (though I could haul my laptop around with me hee hee!) If the internet or your wireless bubbles, you'll be disconnected. Or if your computer crashes (I was so surprised, it'd never gone down that hard before!) then you got a problem.

Anyways, as for the title of this post... I set up skype on my mom's computer, and she used it to call Travis in Hamilton. Apparently at the lab there were a bunch of them, and on the phone, the call display said "Gargantua6" was calling! I can imagine how funny that would be, who the heck is Gargantua6?! Well, that's the name I happened to think of when setting up skype that time (actually I tried just gargantua but it suggested adding the 6). Ok the Gargantua6 call display isn't sounding as funny when I type it here, but it sure sounded funny to me at the time.

Time for a new update

Dropped off my application to JET today... I had kindof procrastinated and was doing everything last minute. It was due today, but at 2 pm I still found myself waiting for a reference letter! But it's dropped off. I feel it's lower quality than last year, even though it's essentially a copy. Maybe that's the problem, I haven't done anything to improve my chances since then. Oh well might as well try.

Received the job offer from UTEC (the houston based one). Have been asking for some clarifications. But I'll probably take it. But it's really hard for me to take such a big step, make such a big decision. Pretty pathetic.

I've noticed lately my blog entries are infrequent and more boring... just general status updates... not many random weird thoughts like I used to. I guess I just don't feel like blogging much these days.

I did start laughing suddenly today as Krusty Burger "Whatchamacarcass Sandwich" randomly popped into my head. But noone was around to think I'm crazy.

Played squash yesterday, haven't played for soo long. Went up with Carmen after work, joined some HKSA people. On the way in I ran into Ryan Fox who I think I was with the first time I ever used my campus rec membership! Between second and third year undergrad, worked at U of C with Ryan and grad student Rob Radovanovic... well work at Uni is pretty slack of course, so one day I joined Ryan for racquetball on an extra-long lunch. Maybe that's why I like racquetball more than squash, it was my first. Or maybe, as Jamie (who became my future racquetball partner) suggested at lunch today, maybe cause it's somehow less... mature... than squash.. and that's why I like it. Get to be more like a little kid. Anyways it was fun to play squash again. Also fun to hang out with chinatown... don't really get to do that much anymore. Don't really hang out with any group anymore really. Maybe I'll have to become an hksa member again and go to more events. but still feels kindof weird... maybe an age thing... like one of the girls there, I'm over 1.4x her age! Kindof feel the societal pressure that I'm supposed to be more grown up. Sure missed that bus (among others). Hmmm that's starting to sound sad so lets end with a happy thought... can't think of something so I'm just going to say "whatchamacarcass" again hee hee "non-diseased meat from diseased animals!"

For remembrance day

Moxy Fruvous (1994), Gulf War Song

Blackadder Goes Forth season finale: 'Goodbyeee' (1989)
(this is a full tv episode)
Part 1 is missing but here is a bit of it
Part 2
Part 3

Assorted

Haven't felt much like writing blog entries lately, even when I think of things to write. Anyways, lets see what's been up...

I had a major success at work earlier this week. On tuesday, I got a whole ten people to join me for a trek down to Sunny vietnamese for lunch! (what, did you expect something more 'technical' or 'business related'?!) It was lots of fun, and was extra great cause of the wonderful weather we had for that single day.

I finally got to do the Fugro Denmark interview. Two weeks after they said they'd do a phone interview, I contacted them and found their email system had died (it had die a couple weeks earlier too forcing me to resubmit my application... seems like this is a common occurrence) and they'd lost my contact info. So now they have it once more, they tried calling last thursday morning but I was at work so my dad told them to call a couple hours earlier. They said they would monday. Monday came, I was up extra-early, they didn't call. So tuesday I went to work as normal, and they called after I had left again. So they asked for me to call them. So wednesday I was up early again and called them, but the guy was not in his office yet. So thursday, I try again and so finally we get in touch. Overall been a pain in the butt. So we had our little interview, don't know how things will go from here. Though I did learn that if I do end up with that job they would want me in Esbjerg.

A couple weeks ago I interviewed with a company based in houston. It was more like the person telling me about the company than a real interview, and seemed like if I wanted a job I had one, and we'd figure out what it might be later. So I followed up and talked about offshore work. He said they'd send me details of an offer soon, but I haven't seen anything yet. I have started to have some more doubts about whether I'd like that job or not though. I would remain here, just travel back and forth for the shifts. But I realised an offshore field position is completely different than an onshore field position... I like the field idea of working for a few weeks then having a couple weeks off in solid chunks. But whereas onshore, even though you're not home, after work you could explore a bit in whatever place you happen to be. However offshore, there's nowhere to go really, you're stuck on a boat.

I discovered that my contract at intermap has been extended till the end of february. I say I discovered, cause noone really told me, it was from asking HR about what specific day this month it was gonna end that I found it had been extended and noone had told me. So I guess that's a good thing... although I dunno, if I wanted to take another job, maybe it would be bad to leave this project with only a few months left which wouldn't really be enough time for them to hire someone new, they'd just have to make do without me. But maybe other jobs wouldn't want to wait that long for me. And although I like the people at intermap, I'm not that fond of the work (though it's better than it hads been at times).

Another thing to consider is JET... do I want to try to do that again? I think I'll put in my application at least. But then it would be bad to take a new job and quit after 6 months (IF i got accepted to JET) unless it was certain types of jobs. Which is probably what I would look for if I decide to try for JET and stay at Intermap till the contract ends... maybe go shadow an electrician or something, or get one of those crazy oil field jobs where all your coworkers have addictions and a few ex wives and you go insane but make huge money (like some people will retire after just 10 years of work) (got info about this kind of job from Jamie, who couldn't stand it anymore after several months.)

Well it's bedtime again.