Ben Mulroney stole my song

Ok, first, I guess it's not quite my song, it's our song. But I kindof pushed the idea and did most of the lyrics.

During the explore program in vancouver, each class put on a performance at some point. Our class decided to do "Idol d'Explore". We had some judges, a host, and a few groups to sing songs and a few others to do a commercial (we actually had Jared play Jared on the subway commercial!). Anyways, got our group to be Les Gens Backstreet and sing "Je le veux ainsi" (Backstreet Boys, I want it that way).

Anyways, was thinking about it today, and look what I discovered?!:
http://ben-mulroney.idolblogs.ca/default.asp?item=177075
Yeah, Canadian Idol host Ben Mulroney also happened to decide to take that song and translate it (even having the exact same title as we chose!). It looks like he may have sung it on the show sometime? (not like I've ever watched) A lot of the lyrics are creepily similar, though some are not, considering I think he's fluent, while we were just stumbling around.

Still, feels like he stole our song!

(also both being "idol" related is spooky)

Day Siete

Diet's done. So much for that. Maybe I feel a little different, maybe not. Maybe it's related to detox diets, maybe it's due to just feeling different. At the end of the day I remain a skeptic.

I look forward to having a bowl of cereal tomorrow.

Day Seis

I'm down another 5 pounds. That means the detox diet may be even more effective than the nointerestinlife diet. This puts me at my post-africa weight, or perhaps slightly under, meaning the lightest I've been in likely over a decade. I suppose if I was someone who focussed on 'weight', I'd be excited. Instead, I'm kindof concerned. I don't know where this weight came from. Looking back, I should have been measuring my belly size over time or something.

As far as 'feeling' goes, still no difference. Will be glad to finish the diet tomorrow. Hopefully overall I'll continue to eat healthier than before.

In the news

First, they were talking about deaths on the deerfoot, and talked about someone who lost her unborn child, and showed a picture of a little kid. That makes no sense! Was that kid supposed to be the unborn child that died?

Apparently you can download porn to your Telus phone now. I say, all the more reason to ban cell phones while driving.

Liquor prices are increasing, due to increased costs in transportation etc. People are upset, and one guy thinks we should be getting rewarded for bearing through the shortages at christmastime. Hello, any concept of economics?!

Day Cinco

Nothing special to report today. Blah. Helped prepare food at the temple but then not eat it. I seemed to be tired, but I think it was more of a mental than physical state. 15/21 meals completed.

Commercials

Do advertisers get to choose during what shows their advetisments are seen? Or just choose the general time and channel? For example, lots of meds4home and scooters america and such get aired during The Price Is Right. The reason I'm wondering is cause I was just watching BBC Planet Earth, a beautiful nature documentary, and there seemed to be a strangely high number of McDonalds commercials. Somehow I didn't think nature documentary watchers were McDonalds target demographic... I'd expect to see more along the lines of yogurt commercials.

Super Trio

Went to the HKSA super trio party friday night. It was a tough decision between that and seeing a movie with Evelyn & people, so in the end it came down to a coin toss. I knew some people there, but the environment and other people were very welcoming. I joined with Richerd and some others, and named ourselves 2by4! Yeah, the two whiteys in the whole room happened to be on the same team, along with 4 chinese. I made sure to point out that 2by4 could also be the gender ratio of our team. Anyways, before we even started any events, the teams had changed, but our awesome name stuck. By the end of the night, after lots of fun games (charades type stuff, watching then acting out movie/tv/game scenes, memory games from scenes, guessing distorted songs, etc fun stuff), 2by4 was the winner! Yay!

Hmmm my description doesn't make it seem as fun as it actually was. I had a really good time though! Carmen was the main organizer and host of the event, and she did a great job.

Lets see, other fun stuff... Ralph showed up and tried to poison Richerd. He sure made it seem like an accident, an innocent offering of some candy, which happened to contain coconut which Richerd is quite allergic to! I think people had been telling Ralph how similar to Richerd he was, and he decided there could be only one.

Saturday night was pleasant too, went to Geoff and Evelyn's, along with Chirlene, played mah jongg... None of us is really that good or experienced, and it took our combined knowledge to figure out a set of rules which we believe is correct :) Teamwork! After Chirlene left, played Wallace and Gromit, a cute fun X-Box game.

Day Cuatro

A weekend day. More relaxing being at home. Physically, feeling pretty much the same. This is a boring log. Glad to be over halfway done. Finishing just for the sake of finishing, if this had been a longer-term detox plan, I may have just said 'screw it' by now.

Day Tres

Still don't feel any different. Continuing to miss group eating opportunities. Yeah that's about it.

Day Dos

Still not feeling anything special, other than frustration, and some hunger. Keep seeing stuff I want to eat but "can't". At lunch, got a free snack while walking around, but too bad. When I got home, was really hungry and felt like some 'comfort foods' type stuff and relaxing, too bad, instead had to eat other stuff that I can't seem to make taste good. Tomorrow Intermap has an end-of-month lunch, too bad. Saturday Evelyn is hosting some dinner, too bad.

So yah, hungry and annoyed. At least if I felt physically crappy, I could say "yeah it's doing something!"

Day Uno

I know it's probably not very interesting, and I don't have much to say even, but I'll try to write something each day for this 'detox' thing.

I really didn't sleep well last night. In fact, it seemed like I spent the whole night checking on the clock and finding it still wasn't morning. But the detox stuff hadn't started yet!

Started this morning. Felt a little 'off' during the morning, but nothing too bad. Had a slight conflict with my other drug, and I wanted to quit already. (I'm being figurative of course!) Not much else to say. Didn't feel any more bored/tired than usual during the day. Feel tired this evening, but that's probable from last night's lack of sleep. Hmm I wonder if the herbal pill things have some kind of appetite supressor, I was less hungry than I expected to be throughout the day. Oh I also noticed I have lots of temptation at home (makes sense that I would have things I like at home!)

Herbal cleanse

So, as with the mohawk, it's time to move a potentially odd idea from thought into action. It's "detox" time! So, I decided to get a herbal cleanse thing. I guess there are some plans that are just diet changes, but I decided to test this. As with the mohawk, I'm planning on 7 days. This is because I don't think I have the willpower to do a longer one, and I think many other people are like this too. Depending on how much of a pain in the butt this is, and how it feels after, maybe I'll do another sometime. This one's supposedly pretty gentle, meaning less deep-cleaning, meaning less feeling-crappy during it, though less benefit overall. Still supposed to feel kindof lethargic and stuff, and maybe needing the bathroom a bunch, for the first few days, and then after that you start feeling much better than before. It'll be hard to tell, cause I already feel the lethargy (esp weekdays... and the 'feeling better' is going to coincide with the weekend... I should have started on a monday maybe, oh well, don't want to postpone it any longer, since I want to exercise again and probably won't feel much like exercise while doing this). I think my mental/emotional state may not be in the best condition for a cleanse, but whatever. I'm somewhat of a skeptic anyways, it's all just an experiment. Albeit an experiment with my health. Though I don't think anything too negative should happen. I highly doubt the conclusion will be anything other than 'inconclusive'.

So, day 0. Overall feeling, a bit nervous. Kindof don't want to start. Am I actually going to gain anything from it? (duh that's the whole point of trying) I'm probably going to feel hungry for the next several days. And hopefully noone invites me for chinese buffet cause I'd have to turn it down. Will have to avoid a lot of other stuff that I really like, will I even be able to do it? Yeah I should. And really, it shouldn't be too bad, this is only for a week. Though lately, a week can feel like a really long time.

New blog post

Discovered I lost 10 lbs since I weighed myself last, sometime before christmas. Which is kindof scary. Because since christmas, I've done zero exercise, barely left the house other than for work, eating regular amounts of food but pretty low quality food. Mental state links with body state... Makes me think of scrubs.

Speaking of scrubs, last week's episode was awesome. It was a musical. I love musicals.

Ok, not quite no physical activity. Carol invited me to try rock climbing (thanks Carol!) and I finally went. I wasn't actually expecting to enjoy it, just try it out, but it was pretty fun. Not incredibly fun though. And a little expensive, although that also depends on you... I got tired too quickly. Perhaps the best part was going to dinner after. Good to hang out with those dragonboat people again.

My car looks all diseased again, because it's a bit slushy outside. Not just the general dirtiness up the side. There's a pothold in the road in front of our house for most of the winter, so whenever it gets slushy, cars drive by and send up big muddly splashes. The kindof scary thing is that the splashes are all the way up the side and across the roof to the passenger side... how fast are people going down our residential road to make a splash like that?!

Went down to southcentre. Took a while to find the store I was looking for. Could have checked out the directory, but it was some creepy interactive thing. I didn't want to go near it. The trip wasn't a total waste, I remembered to get floss.

Making friends

Why is it so hard to make friends? I've always put people first, ahead of things like school or sleep. I joined many things alone: undergrad, internship and work, grad studies, VSA, HKSA, JCC, TaiChi/Temple, Dragonboat, Ballroom Dance, Explore, SoF, hiking group at work, continuing ed classes... and after every one of them I was still alone, no new friends to exist outside that specific activity, with the one exception of ballroom where i actually gained a couple of my closest friends (though one of them since moved on.)

So is it a losing strategy? Or should I expect a very low success rate, and be happy with that rare success? Maybe just continue trying things, and hopefully get lucky again sometime.

What about these people who meet new people and pretty soon those new people are calling them up and want to do stuff with them... how does that happen? How do I get to be like that? Am I just like really really rediculously boring? Or do I look too unapproachable (though once someone meets me I can't imagine them thinking that anymore) (someone a friend knew once said I look 'threatening' haha!)

Creativity, that's probably the key. That would make a much less useless employee, and should help make people want to associate with me. They'll say, "Scott, he's pretty fun/interesting, I think I'll give him a call." So, how to foster creativity. I don't know. Need creativity to have ideas for creativity? Maybe I'll get a "Dr. Ho!" massage therapy and stick it to my head and see what happens.

New years 2001

Somehow it's been on my mind. I guess because I've been thinking of that depressing new years song, and had just learned it around that new years. Wow, 6 years have passed since then. Some things change, some things don't. At least I had a party to attend that year, at Brad's house. Though there were a bunch of people I didn't really know, and many people had been drinking a lot. Mark was kindof drunk and had been hitting on Jan, and it pissed me off. She was flirty in return. Think some other stuff was going on too, don't remember too well. I went into the basement and found Dawn laying down there. She too was "escaping the hormones". So then I lay down there too, and we chatted for a long time. I remember Jared coming to check up on Dawn sometimes, and I think Michael joined us down there for a while. Eventually went to sleep. By morning, most people were gone.

I wonder if any of them remember that. It kindof sucked at the time, but I can look back now and say "hey, at least I was spending some personal time with a good friend (at the time)."

Hand hurts

I actually hit the wall pretty hard. I've never done that before. Am I changing? After so many years of just collapsing into tears, or occasionally thumping my own head, am I finally learning to be outwardly violent? Probably not a good thing. Then again, it seems more 'normal'. And isn't anything to be more 'normal' a good thing?

Further normalisation goals:
Swear in casual conversation
Shout when excited or angry
Wear cooler clothes, Get contact lenses
Drink alcohol
Watch Battlestar Galactica

Will that make me more likable? Will I suddenly start having friends (other than Martin, Chris, and Evelyn)? People will want to hang out with me other than just because I'm a 'member' on some email list? Yeah right.

Haircut

It'd been about 3.5 months since I had a haircut, so it was about time. It wasn't really that long, the main problem was that it was all that long, every single hair. Normally hair is kindof layered, or shorter at the sides etc. Actually, it wasn't really uncomfortable or annoying. So I guess the haircut was just for looks. Which raises the question, why bother? What do I have to try to look good for? I didn't come up with a good answer. Habit I suppose? General societal expectations? Anyway, the haircutter seemed to think it was good, she was telling me off for passing so long between haircuts.

Travis stranded

He was supposed to come back from Kelowna tonight, but all flights outta there are cancelled. That kindof sucks. Probably won't even have a good place to sleep since the hundreds of other stranded people will use up all the rooms. Oh well. Hope he does something interesting, like play "airport explorer". Did I blog about this before? When I had a couple hours to wait in calgary once, I decided to wander into areas unknown. Some hidden hallway on main floor had people who looked like they didn't want me going there. But the sparsely populated upper floor had an even sparselyer (my invented word of the day) populated hallway, but it just ended in an elevator. So I got in, took it downwards. It wouldn't go to the bottom floor though. But people in neon vests got on and waved a keycard, then it went all the way down, and they didn't seem to notice/care that I stayed on and got off where they got off. Not sure where I was, but there were long wide concrete hallways, and some looked like they'd probably lead onto the tarmac. That was cool. But I wasn't adventurous enough so I didn't explore down those. Eventually got nervous, and with the excuse of making sure I was early for my flight, found some non-alarmed stairs and escaped to a road outside the airport.

Evil shall always triumph, because good is dumb.

I returned something I bought before christmas for $60. They refunded me $140. I told them, and they corrected the mistake. I'm not sure if that makes me good, or stupid. Oh well I guess it's a good way to start the new year, and slightly make up for the countless bad things I do.

To Edmonton and beyond

Dec 28 I had planned on visiting Chris, but didn't really feel like getting out of bed until mom made me after noon. Thought about it a while, and eventually decided I would go visit him. Packed up, confirmed it was ok, and headed up.

The roads were ok on the way up, but you could tell sometime recently they hadn't been: I saw about 6 cars in the centre meridian between Calgary and Edmonton, and I'm sure a bunch had been cleaned up already. Definitely says something about the importance of the divided highway, all of them would have entered oncoming traffic otherwise.

Thurs evening after getting to edmonton we had dinner, and Chris's dad and his friend and everyone had just started up a movie. Of all the movies to choose, it had to be the one I couldn't watch. Chris found me hiding upstairs and kept me company until it was done. We watched a little bit of stuff after, but I guess everyone was tired, so instead of staying up most of the night watching movies and playing games as normal, we went to bed pretty early.

Fri morning, Chris got a call from work requiring him to go do some preliminary enviro assessment east of Saskatoon. He encouraged me to go along with him. I debated whether to go with him, since spending most of a couple days in a truck isn't that much fun, and I wanted to be back for Sandi's party saturday evening, but I ended up going anyways. Figured we'd be back in Edmonton early enough saturday that I could make it to Calgary for the party. So, got in the work truck and headed on our way. The first really exciting thing was that we saw a car flip. Actually, I saw a car flip, Chris just saw the wheel flying through the air :) It was on the opposite side of the divided highway (going the other direction)... Seemed to just start to turn sideways (towards the outside ditch of the road) then went across the shoulder off the road (now facing sideways) and I saw it start to roll, then there was a big puff of snow and I saw a wheel fly up into the air... It was pretty scary actually. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. Saw the big smokey Husky Lloydminster Upgrader. Hung out in Saskatoon for a couple hours, drove around town, wandered round the U of S campus a little though it was pretty cold. I think campuses are generally pretty cool. I've been to Saskatoon a few times before, though I don't remember the city very well. The spill site, Theodore, was much farther than I thought, so we arrived pretty late in the evening. Searched the side of the highway for the exact spill location, then headed to the hotel for the night. A little bit of He-man on the laptop, and off to bed.

Sat morning, got up, had breakfast and Chris checked the phone book and some local people for info on where a back hoe might be found, and who might own the property. Then off to the spill site... the landowners weren't around so we just went ahead. Mainly just chris hacking the ground with a pick axe and smelling the soil to find the perimeter, then marking it with nails. Then collect a few soil samples, and that was it. The farmer showed up, gave all the info we needed, and then we were on our way. It was about this time that I realised we wouldn't be back in time for me to go to Calgary for the party. On the way back in Saskatoon we stopped at "Ding Dong" restaurant. Part of our tradition of stopping in silly-named asian restaurants. We also stopped for photos with the "Kandahar" road sign, and in Vegreville to see the giant Pysanka (egg). Back in Edmonton, I could have headed to Calgary, but it wasn't worth it, so I stayed another night. Fell asleep instead of watching any movie or games.

Sun morning played a bit, then headed back to calgary. It was cool, about 70 km outside of Calgary, my cousin passed me on the highway! They were on their way back from Jasper or something. Too much traffic and I wasn't feeling competitive so I didn't try to keep up.