The London Maze

This will be the last of the catch-up posts, as I didn't do much the rest of the week. Although, I did get my bike out for the first time since last summer on Thursday, and I wasn't as out of shape as I thought. I remember last summer I was ready to collapse the first couple of days of biking.

Last Monday, July 26, Kelly and I went on a random adventure to London because we were bored and wanted to surprise Mark and the other guys. Our attempt to find Mark's new house failed because we had very little information other than the fact that it was around the corner from his old house. It was fine though because he was at work anyways, which is where we headed for next.

Having very little idea how to actually get to downtown, we got lost for a bit until Kelly pointed out the giant buildings, where we were supposed to be. It was bad. We kept getting stuck at more or less every single red light. We had to wait for a train to pass. Then we finally got to downtown but got more lost there due to London's insane rules. Apparently on many streets you can't turn left or right at certain times of the day, but it's not even one single block of time. There were two separate periods during the day that you can turn, except by the time we even figure it out, the light turns green. So, we only turned whenever we see someone else turn. Then somehow we reached a no exit.

Eventually, Mark called us and directed us. We STILL got lost. I passed his parking garage because there were two there, and I thought he was at one while Kelly thought he was at the other. Then we had to turn all the way around and such due to one-ways. We made it there in the end though and hung out in his office while he told us about how he's similar to Jack the Ripper. I kind of worry about that kid sometimes.

PS. We pointed out every fake tree we saw in downtown London, or I did after Kelly stopped. They're the multi-colour plastic-y looking ones...not the realistic fakes. There were a lot.

74. See the skeleton of a dinosaur

Tuesday, July 27th was our trip to the Royal Ontario Museum (yes, I'm lagging behind in posts). I had been wanting to go for quite some time since it's been many years since I was there, and I don't even remember what grade it was (4, 5, or 6?). What I do remember from that trip back then was the batcave, the area around the batcave, and listening to a guide tell us about the exhibit on one of the upper floors (I want to say Greek...). So, it was great reminiscing in the batcave areas.

Well, I got to cross off number 74 on the bucket list. The fossil of the ichthyosaur, Eurhinosaurus longirostris would be technically be the one I saw first, and it was 100% real. When I thought skeleton of a dinosaur though, I pictured the typical giant standing skeleton, so I'm going to say it was the Barosaurus that allowed me to cross this item off the list. That's it in the picture above, but I took it from the ROM website because I don't have any of the pictures taken that day.

35. Camp out in the middle of a forest

This past weekend, July 23-25, was Soc Sci Rep Camping. It was also my first time camping ever, and I get to cross it off my bucket list (#35). It's not exactly what I pictured in my mind when I wrote down "in the middle of a forest", but the campsite had trees circling the perimeter, and the paths lead into foresty area. It's close enough that it counts, and this rule will be applied whenever necessary.

So, I packed things that I needed on Friday, went out to Wal-Mart to buy snacks and then went to the Beer Store, which incidentally was also my first time doing so. My journey to Brant Park was easy, but then I couldn't find the campsite. The girl who worked at the front gate gave me directions and showed me on a map. It was helpful in the sense that I made it there, but she had me taking this extremely narrow path through the forest, whereas everyone else took a much closer route on a dirt road. It was an interesting drive through the forest as my car got scratched up a little.

My Friday night consisted of playing drinking games, including this one with dice called Three-Man. Essentially, you don't want to be "Three-Man" because every time a three is rolled, you have to drink. Unfortunately, I got ultra-anti-social like I usually do with alcohol at one point during the night, and I ended up sitting by myself for a bit. It passed though, so it wasn't too bad. Somehow I ended up with my own single-person tent because Alex wanted to sleep in my car for some reason. He explained it to me, and it had something to do with the fact that he had oral surgery, but I still don't really know why.

All of Saturday, Rohan tried to get me to funnel. I refused each time. Besides that, the day consisted of rep bonding activities, including cheering and this awesome game called Laser Eyes (sp?). What happens is everyone gets a partner and sits in a circle with one person in front of the other. There's one person that doesn't have a partner in the group, and that person will call out someone's name. The person who gets called has to try and get to the caller and give him/her a high-five, while the person sitting behind the person has to try and stop that from happening by any means (except for grabbing the neck and stuff, cause...safety).

I got my hands on a water gun at one point, and you can imagine what I did with it. Random attacks on people is fun. I didn't have a anti-social period this night either, but instead I couldn't stay in one spot for some reason. I kept moving from place to place.

So, all in all, camping was fun. I met some cool people, and I'm sure I'll meet more later on. I also learned how to split apples in half from Jen. The entire weekend felt like a blur even though I remember everything. I'm glad I decided to go.

Apparently, my rep name is going to be "Squirt" because of the water gun thing.

Sickness and Shopping at Square One

Square One was the location of our outing today (me, Jimmy, Tammy, Tony...all our names end in "y"!) It was my first time there, but I wasn't really blown away by how big it was at all. I think I would have been if I hadn't been to Vaughn Mills on the day of our Wonderland trip almost two months ago now, or maybe everything was just distorted and not proportionate in my mind due to my lack of sleep and mixture of allergy drugs. Last night was pretty rough, and I ended up sleeping for maybe two hours or none at all. I can't even remember; it was just a big blur of wheezing and the severely decreased ability to breathe.

Anyways, we went from store to store, and I bought two shirts from Old Navy. I almost purchased the GaoGaiGar DVDs too but decided against it. I was interested in it because the series is part of the same anthology as another one of my childhood favorites, Legendary Brave Da Garn. The anthology is called the Brave Saga, and it's similar to how Gundam is set up with all their different series. The total of the two boxsets would have been around $80, but I still have other things that I have yet to pay for (curse McMaster's parking fees...). Good thing too because the comic/toy store we saw afterward had the final volume of 52, which I have been looking for since I finished reading the third volume like two years ago. Basically, this series ran for 52 weeks, and each week covers a week in the DC Universe after the Infinite Crisis, which I believe involved all the multiple universes clashing and a bunch of things happened (Superboy dying is all I remember right now...). This last one was the only volume the store had too! Life likes to choose when to be kind to me apparently. It made me sick but gave me 52. So, does that mean I have to break an arm or something in order to get a job?

52: Volume 4, from dccomics.com

Realistic Pokemon

Kotaku posted a bunch of drawings of realistic Pokemon a couple of days ago from Leashe's Gallery at http://leashe.deviantart.com/gallery/#Pokemon, and I thought I'd go look for more. The one above was my favorite that I found, and it's certainly not as scary as some of the other ones out there. I think the most popular one though is the one of Cubone, which has been around the Internet for as long as I can remember. I love seeing people's take on how animated characters would look in real life.

I also found this nightmare-inducing picture from VGCats.....*shudders*

Yahoo!

Today, I went to Hamilton once again; this time for an MSSS meeting. I went earlier to read in Mills, but they didn't open until 1:00pm. Seriously, why even bother opening on a Sunday if it's only going to be for four hours? I ended up reading on the second floor of the student centre, and then when I finished that I went to Lime Ridge, where I ended up buying two shirts from Stockhomme because they were on sale (I have to stop this money spending business...). I also saw a "Help Wanted" sign at Mind Games, so I applied there. Then it was time for the MSSS meeting and the Frontline meeting with some of the writers. And then I went to dinner at Kelsey's, Silver Bridge, and The Piston Broke with Nathan, Tony, and Kelly.

I could elaborate on my day more, but I figured writing about something else would be more interesting. Yahoo Games! This was brought up at one point during the night. When I was younger, Yahoo was probably the search engine that I used most often, and I had a Yahoo account, which I used to join Yahoo Clubs, play Yahoo Games, and build websites on Geocities (or maybe it was just Yahoo and they merged later...but still). My account name was "chartlesaur_22"or something like that, and I remember Mark had an account called "synthesis89". Oh yeah, we had Yahoo Messenger as well, in addition to ICQ. At that time, we used to play these online Pokemon and Digimon RPG games using those chat services, and we even made our own websites for those games. Angelfire was the one that we used most often though for building websites. Back in the day, I made a lot of online friends, but I lost contact with all of them relatively quickly.

My favorites game on Yahoo was probably Graffiti, but they were all good time killers. I guess I liked Graffiti more because it was just like Pictionary, which I only really played a few times over at Andrew's house. Towers was pretty good, and of course Bingo. Online bingo is probably the most pointless game ever and yet the most addicting way to procrastinate. On Yahoo, it even had a female voice calling out the numbers, but sometimes it would get distorted on my computer.

Yeah, I used to spend a lot of time on Yahoo. I guess now it's Facebook instead.

Flooding in the Streets

I began this morning lazily for an hour or two before going outside to cut the grass. This is something that I don't like doing because of my allergies. In fact, I'm still sick from the last time that I cut grass. Somehow my allergies mutated into a two-week long cold. So, I took Claritin and used this allergy nasal spray before heading out, and it was fine.

After that, I headed for Hamilton to meet Rohan so he could teach me about updating the MSSS website, which I'm juggling with reading anthropology and writing this entry right now. It seemed simple enough as everything was straightforward. Obviously Rohan will be doing all the complicated parts of the website because I don't know anything. It was a relatively short meeting, and I proceeded in going home after that.

This is when the day got a bit more interesting. It was bright and sunny before I left for Hamilton, and it was starting to rain when I got to Rohan's. When I left, it still wasn't raining very much. Halfway home though...that was when the downpour came. Thunder rumbled now and then with lightning flashing once in a while. Eventually, everyone on the road started to slow down with the hope that the rain would stop. It didn't. Things got so bad that I couldn't even see the road, and I figured it would be best to follow the trend of stopping on the side of the road for a few minutes.

So, I get back to Brantford, and I stopped at the mall to mail something. Where I parked was already starting to flood a bit. I ended up staying inside for a bit, hoping that it would stop soon. It didn't. In fact, it got so bad that Sears was flooding inside. When I got back to my car, the water level was up to just a bit above the bottom of the doors. I swear the cars in the parking lot would just start floating around if it kept raining like that. I ended driving through another flood on the way home too.

It was a very wet trip to the mall.

Inception

Screen shot from io9.com

After seeing Inception last night, I think Christopher Nolan might have just become my favorite director. The movie was mind-blowing to say the least, and I definitely need to see it again just so I can sort out the details of the film. Everything was done really well, especially the special effects. I particularly liked the parts where Ellen Page's character was manipulating the dream world and messing with the physics. It's a good thing that they didn't take this too far though, like a totally alien world. They also made excellent choices in casting as everyone was in top form. I'm glad I decided to go out and see it rather than staying in.

One thing that I will carry on from my livejournal is posting any interesting dreams that I have. The one I had last night wasn't anything too crazy though, although Inception definitely influenced it with their closed-loop maze concept and changing physics. There was some sort of event going on at a version of McMaster that switched from being outside to inside, and somehow I lost my shoes during it. Then I found myself scrambling to get to my genetics exam that was taking place in a giant maze-like library full of those study carrels. I ended up in the wrong sections several times before finally finding a seat. I woke up after that.

Augusta's Winking Judge

Last night we all went out to The Winking Judge, a pub on Augusta St. in Hamilton. It was a small place, but it was nice and cozy inside. It's also apparently haunted by several spirits, including an elderly man who might be named Gord. Perhaps this ghost is the "Winking Judge"? Either way, the lights never flickered so he wasn't doing anything last night. According to this one article, the place used to be the home of the grandparents of Randy Hines, who as a child stayed over all the time and thought the place was haunted even back then, which means whoever is haunting the place may have died prior to when the Hines lived there, unless he's possessing a cursed object that was brought in later. There doesn't seem to be a lot of strange deaths happening, but we'd have to search up old records to be sure there isn't a pattern of some sort.


(Maybe I watch Supernatural too much?)

The Bucket List Edition

After training today (which I felt better about than yesterday), I went to Mills as usual with the plan to sit on a computer all day and read my textbook for Anthro. Instead of doing that, I left the campus after eating lunch. The prospect of being there for 5+ hours again bothered me too much today, so I ended up driving out to Oakville. I know; random, right? The purpose of the trip became to visit the mall Oakville Place, which I've always wanted to stop at but never did until today. In fact, I remember seeing as a kid and always wondering what it was like inside. Needless to say, it wasn't anything too special. It's got all the typical stores that you would expect to see in any other mall, but there were a few stores that I've never seen before, and the food court also had interesting selections (off the top of my head, a Japanese place called Edo, or Teriyaki's rival I guess). The whole place seemed like a compressed Lime Ridge with more interesting decorations, like the giant clock with the gears and gadgets.

Leaving Oakville Place, I felt a little disappointed that after all these years of wanting to go in, the place wasn't better. Not that I wasn't surprised though. So, I missed the exit for back to Hamilton as I left, and I ended up going on an adventure drive through Oakville for a bit. It seemed like a nice city, and I located Sheridan College too. Eventually, I ended back at Oakville Place and then I headed home. Oh yeah, I decided to skip my night class. (she posts all the slides, and she reads off them in class, so it's justified)

I had a lot of time to think on the drive back because of traffic. It took me a very long time to decide to go into Oakville Place. I realize it's a just another mall, but still it was something I wanted to do but took forever to do it. One thought lead to another, and I arrived at The Buried Life, that show with the four guys who made a list of things they wanted to do before they died, and they go around doing them while helping other people do something they wanted to do. Anyways, I didn't think much of it beyond "that's cool" when I first heard about them. Today though, I thought I ought to make my own bucket list. In about one and a half months, I'll be starting my fourth year of undergrad, and I definitely haven't accomplished much at all. So, I'm going to follow the trend and produce my list on the spot right now, in no particular order:


1. Write a book
2. Learn to play the piano
3. Appear in a movie beyond being an extra/cameo
4. Attend the Academy Awards show
5. Climb a big mountain
6. Walk on the Great Wall of China
7. Go to Japan
8. Stay at a castle in Scotland
9. Take a tour through the Walt Disney Animation Studios
10. Be the voice of an animated character
11. Make a real difference in someone's life
12. Get a anthropology-related career
13. See the Giza Pyramids
14. Road trip across Canada
15. Fall in love and get married
16. Buy a house
17. Learn to ride a horse
18. Go on a boat cruise
19. Participate in a flash mob
20. Fold a thousand cranes
21. Climb the CN Tower
22. Take someone out to an expensive restaurant
23. Eat at a Rainforest Cafe
24. Own a sword
25. Repay parents for university costs
26. Cook an entire dinner for someone
27. Have a pet husky
28. Go fishing
29. Learn another language
30. See a broadway musical
31. Climb the Eiffel Tower
32. Marathon all six Star Wars
33. Go roof hopping
34. Volunteer abroad for at least a month
35. Camp out in the middle of a forest
36. Travel down a river on a canoe/kayak
37. Win a major Tim Hortons Roll-Up-the-Rim prize
38. Learn to be fluent in Mandarin
39. Learn to play tennis properly
40. Bike from Brantford to Toronto
41. Finish every main series Final Fantasy game (except the online ones)
42. Go ice skating outside
43. See Big Ben
44. Destroy everything in a room
45. Draw a giant picture on the ground using chalk
46. Go to Comic Con
47. Complete a 3D puzzle of a castle
48. Attend a concert (orchestra)
49. See the taping of a sitcom
50. Carve my name into a tree
51. Make a large donation to a charity
52. Draw/write a comic book
53. Hide an item for geo-caching
54. Ride the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World
55. Participate on a float in a parade
56. Sink a hole in one
57. Learn some form of martial arts
58. Stay in Taiwan again for at least a year
59. Make a pizza from scratch
60. Bake a cake from scratch
61. Operate a light house
62. Own every volume of the manga Yaiba
63. Own a set of encyclopedia
64. Own every Disney Animated Feature
65. See a white tiger
66. See Cirque du Soleil
67. Go paintballing
68. Be a guest lecturer/teacher
69. Explore a cave
70. Bury someone in the sand at the beach
71. Hide a time capsule
72. See the ball drop in New York
73. Have an article published in a major publication
74. See the skeleton of a dinosaur
75. Plant a tree
76. Own a telescope
77. Participate in a marathon
78. Climb a tall tree
79. Throw ninja stars
80. Go on a blind date
81. Get a picture taken with a tiger
82. Explore a haunted house
83. Go to a formal/dance
84. Jump out of a moving car
85. Get a celebrity's autograph
86. Ride in a horse-drawn carriage
87. Go to Universal Studios Florida
88. Taste haggis
89. Be mentioned somewhere in a newspaper
90. Wear samurai armour
91. Learn archery
92. Learn a complicated magic trick
93. Visit Stonehenge
94. Help a complete stranger with something
95. Own an Etch A Sketch
96. Dye my hair
97. Learn to play the ocarina
98. Catch every single Pokemon
99. Solve a mystery
100. Be truly happy

That took FOREVER. But yeah, I'll be happy if I complete even ten things on that list, especially since most of the stuff on there is either super expensive or near impossible to accomplish. Funny how a simple trip to a mall resulted in me creating this list.

From Front Desk to Frontline

Welcome to the first "regular" post!

As I alluded in the last entry, I attempted to use my old blogspot account and spent an hour writing a long update covering what I did in late April and May. I would say 3/4 of it was lost because apparently you get logged out of blogspot if you switch accounts on Google Calendar. And so I abandoned it and created this. The name "Azure Legends" definitely came out of sheer impatience as I didn't want to spend an hour thinking of something better. Plus it was convenient that it was available for use. If meaning must be assigned...then azure = blue = Social Sciences Society colour = new path in life.

So, I think instead of rewriting everything that was lost, I'll just bring them up later. It's very likely that I'll do nothing worth writing about one day (or more...), so I'll have stuff to turn to for more topic/theme-like entries.

Today was my my first day of training for the Front Desk at MUSC Admin. I am officially scared. I thought it wouldn't be too bad since I kind of knew some of the policies through just hearing about them and having to know some of them anyways because of Setup or MSSS, but there's quite a bit to know. I spent the past two hours or so reading through the manual and policies, and I still don't feel like I know any of it. Also, maybe I should stop trying to put myself into situations that contradicts my personality (ie. customer service). Is it really possible for me to change? I'm going camping next weekend too, for being a Soc Sci Rep; another thing that I didn't think I would be doing a few months ago. Tomorrow is day two of training, so hopefully I'll feel less like myself because that's really the goal here. OR maybe my true self is being masked right now and these attempts represent who I'm supposed to be...

Funny enough the theme of identity came up in my Frontline meeting after work today. This little paper sure is going through lots of changes, but most of them are necessary. Our theme before was "Fresh Starts" but apparently it was overly broad and the writers took it to mean write about first-year experience, which we specifically said not to write about. So, now it's going to be "Identity" which is still broad but hopefully less cliche articles will come out of it. I shouldn't have troubles writing an article under this theme since I more or less just wrote the beginning of it in the last paragraph. But I don't like writing about myself and then having it read by others...I was thinking about incorporating the question of why people need to take on other identities in life (online, video games, etc) but more interesting.

Blue

Once upon a time, at 9:00am on the 17th day of the 5th month in the year 2003, a boy of 14 years wrote his first online journal entry. His entries in the beginning were short and simple, and sometimes they even consisted of nothing more than personality quizzes. It was a different time back then. This live journal survived through his last few weeks of elementary school and then his four years of high school. In many instances, it was used as a tool for procrastination, while other times it was a dumping ground for overflowing thoughts. There was never a consistent schedule for the updates, but that was alright at the time. The first year of university also made it onto this journal at some capacity, though there were missing months.

It went through all the good times and all the dark times until finally he decided that it was time to move on into a different world. And so, in the month prior to year two of university, a blog was born. The transfer wasn't complete though as both journal and blog continued to coexist. A few months later, the blog was seemingly abandoned permanently.

Then, year three began and the journal was kept alive for a while. Something happened during this year, and the boy who started writing seven years ago decided that he didn't need the journal anymore. Only three entries surfaced in 2010; two in January and the final one on April 18th at 12:15am. In the months after, life became a bit more involved and interesting for him. He knew he had to start recording the details again, but the last flame had burned out for animeblaze. He thought perhaps he could go back to the unknown crossroads; however, doing so only made it more clear that this wasn't the right move either. One incomplete final entry made it onto the blog.

The story continues on in the Azure Legends...