Over the 49th parallel

So as previously mentioned, I've been busy, but it was a good busy, spending time with famille. Over the weekend, me and some famille visited some other famille over in Washington because one member of the famille (from Kangarooland) hadn't seen the other famille in ages.

Some stuff done in pictures:

We got to stop at a Krispy Kreme.

And visited Pike Place Market (Pah-blek Mah-ket, hehehe)

Read the sign to the left.



I saw a rainbow by the Space Needle.

Didn't go up it though.



We saw the Pacific North West's "Mt. Fuji."

No, it's Mount Rainier. Pretty. Grouse looks like...um...how they say in the olden days.... a dunghill in comparison with this mountain.

And possibly one of the most beautiful parts of the trip - visiting the Walmart Supercenter in Marysville. Wow, I get goosebumps thinking about it, a SUPERCENTER! It was huge! Pringles for $1! A dozen eggs for 78¢! A "wind-resistant" superstrong umbrella that folds into a reasonable small size and feels like a small club for $9.97 (can't wait to try it out)!!!

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain;

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood,

From sea to shining sea.

[wiping happy tears off face, with a gigantic smile]....the Supercenter....wow........[sniffle sniff, grinning] 8^D

Post-reading break, not a real post

Reading break was the past Monday and Tuesday (Feb 20-21) and I guess I should have done more reading. Heeheeeheeeee...I've been busy the past couple days, I'll post junk up in the future.

Meanwhile, here's something cool I camera-ed with on my watch today. See the picture to the left? This only happens once a year, every February the Twenty-Second, at 10:22pm. Well, at least I think it's cool. 8^p pbbbbbbbbbbbbb!

What's on my mind? Tim Hortons commercial

(go to this page to Watch the Commercial HERE) <-- EDIT August 19, 2008: this link is broken, but you can view it here on YouTube

The Tim Hortons commercial has been on my mind- the one that’s been playing on the CBC during the Olympics stuff. Here’s the basic summary/description of it, taken from here:

Lou, a Chinese immigrant, raises his son, Jimmy, to study and work hard. When Lou finds young Jimmy playing street hockey, he expresses his disapproval. Many years later, an elderly Lou enters a hockey arena with a tray of Tim Hortons coffee. He heads into the stands, and hands a coffee to Jimmy – who is an adult now. Jimmy seems surprised to see his father there. Lou explains that he has come to see his grandson Tommy (Jimmy’s son) play hockey. It is soon revealed that Lou used to secretly watch his son play at the same arena years ago, and that he always enjoyed a Tim Hortons coffee while he watched. Lou and Jimmy share a moment, as they each enjoy a delicious Tim Hortons coffee and proudly watch Tommy play.

First impressions: Wow Chinese-Canadians in a commercial! Wow, Chinese-Canadians in a national commercial! Wow, Chinese-Canadians in a commercial where they aren’t completely stereotyped!
Also, hey wait. The commercial's kinda cute and it’s going to give some people a nice warm happy feeling inside of them that makes them go, “Awww…”

But not me. At least not anymore. Gaaaah…it just bugs me (a little...maybe...) every time I see this because the old man’s dialogue is so forced as he speaks chopped up, broken English, when it’s very clear that he’s fluent!!! After living in Canada for so long, it’s obvious he would have gained a larger vocabulary (since his adult son speaks to him in English, not Chinese) and even the “old” him in the flashback has him speaking a semi-decent grammatical English sentence!!! But yet, as he talks to his son as he watches his grandson play, he says things like, “I come watch” and “You right-wing.”

[Tim bangs forehead on table] Am I the only one who sees this?
Yeah yeah, I know. It’s just a commercial. No biggie, there’s more important stuff in the world happening now. If there’s one thing positive to say about the commercial though, it’s nice to see they capture the grumpy-old-man aspect as he says without a smile, at the end, “Gimme my picture back.”

I did a search on Blogger’s blog search thingymajigbob-eroonee (sort it by date, and the earliest post that talks about this should be around February 10, 2006), just out of curiosity to see what other people are saying. Mostly females are writing about how they feel about this commercial and how it brings tears to their eyes and etc etc diddly-squat (I should have known).
Congratulations to the marketing department who thought of this commercial. No congratulations to the script writers for the cheesy old man’s lines and the old man for speaking bad English on purpose.

And for the sake of pointing my finger and criticizing (just because I can): This person thought (but used to think) its a a commercial about an "Asian-American" family, and this person thinks the people are Japanese. Ha.

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While walking home yesterday, I saw something dart to the right of me onto someone’s driveway, and I thought it was cat. And so I looked, and there was a raccoon, sitting, staring back at me. We stared at each other (haven't seen one in years), and I started to talk to it and it stared at me some more, as if it didn’t know what I was saying. And then it started to walk away, and when I pretended to follow it for a few steps, it just looked at me and kept walking away, not scared at all. Cute little thing. I wished I had my camera.

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Cheapest gas I saw today was 88.7¢/litre.

Random Thoughts-FunRunSiteTrendPeopleWatch

Bad grammar throughout this whole entry. Sorry for headache caused by my bad reading, disconnected thoughts all over.

Wow middle of week 6 in semester already. Don’t feel like it though. Olympics been very calming for the nerves to watch whenever I flick on TV. Anyone notice the TV-crazed athletes in the “mosh-pit” of the Opening Ceremonies? Waving and jumping around whenever the camera pointed near them? While the important Olympic officials/presidents/whatever tried to say elegant speech stuff? Funny stuff. Men’s hockey at 4am. Groan. Time Zones.

Know what’s fun? Running from Skytrain to the Seabus, hoping you catch it before it leaves otherwise stuck waiting for 30 minutes for the next Seabus. I call it the FunRun. Panicky and motivating to see big red digital countdown clock tick down (see picture), under a minute while racing up and down the escalators to hopefully catch sailing and not get stuck. Phew. Unless you’ve done it before, you won’t understand very well. It’s very gratifying and semi-humbling experience when you able to make it, or not.

Some website trends on Lands of Terribleness. Students at Canadian universities (eg. U of Manitoba/ Waterloo/ Western Ontario/ Nipissing/ York/ Laurentian/ Dalhousie tend to google and find my site via searches relating to this post. Whereas students at USA’n universities (eg. Michigan State/ Stanford/ CAL U of Pennsylvania/ Ohio Northern/ Minnesota) tend to google and find my site via searches relating to this. Funny to see, the interests of students divided by 49th parallel.

On more serious note, its strange how you can notice people and know they exist, but they have no clue you exist. While on bus I saw a young guy again, who I've noticed before a few times. Pale, lanky, crew cut, looks like 15 years old, always dressed in very dirty construction looking yard clothes, always wears a hat that’s too big, and head looks to be too small for the body. Doesn’t make loud noises/talk/draw attention to self, just sits quietly like a good bus passenger. Very strange to me. I wonder how come he’s riding the bus, not in school, why dressed like that, what will he do next. Can’t help but wonder. Some people look out of place, not look like the rest of the “normal” society, and just happen to notice them. People watching. You do it too, admit it. Big place world is. Many people. Wandering around. Yep.

WorldnewsAdVanpicOlympiccount

Read this article first. It’s from today’s 24 Hours free daily paper (and they got it from Reuters).

Now assuming you’ve read it, wow hmm? That’s pretty harsh stuff. And sad as well. All that misdirected anger. I saw a part of the evening news tonight and it showed some clips of the Danish Prime Minister apologizing(?) and appealing for peace around the world, as well as Christians(?) and Muslims in Denmark having some sort of peace march together to show that there’s reconciliation. It doesn’t look very good for the peaceful Muslims around the world, as other fundamentalist radical Muslims are gaining bad “publicity” (for lack of a better word) with all the violent protesting and burning down of embassies and such. It’s probably only a very minuscule percentage of Muslims that are doing all the super-uber-extremist stuff too, but their badness is reflected onto the others. I sense ignorance and hostile problems to come forth. Sigh. I don’t completely know all the facts about this situation, but this is something I’m definitely going to follow for awhile in the news as this is BIG.
(‘?’ means I’m unsure of the info I’ve posted)
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I think this is one of the best Superbowl ads for this year, just because the character punts a small animal at the end. Hohohooo! (Did Federal Express officially change its name to FedEx? Looks like it.)

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Some lousy sour tasting eye candy (par Moi) of the Vancouver City skyline. Didn’t turn out as I wanted. The nightshot part is extremely fuzzy. But it’s pleasant to look at from afar for a few moments. Copyrighted to me.

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Note to self (and others of interest): the XX Olympic Winter Games of 2006 is 3 days away (I believe the Opening Ceremony is at 10am this Friday. Poop. I’ll be in class). Apparently 1/3 of the world’s population will be watching. Narf! Four years has been so long…

Hair memory

I think it was yesterday while I waiting for the bus when I thought of this (yup, my memory is that bad sometimes), and I’m not really sure why it popped into my head, but it’s a funny memory so I thought I’d share it since nothing else exciting is happening with me currently.

I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Disneyworld in Florida, and I remember while in line for the Snow White and 7 Dwarves ride (it’s a stuuupid ride, don’t waste your time if you go) a black family behind us started to pet me. I think one of the parents stroked my head, and then one by one, a few of the other family members started to stroke my head as well. I think they were fascinated by my smooth straight hair, because they all had curly hair. I was about 7, still extremely shy, clingy to my parents, and when they started to pet me, I semi-freaked out and tried to press myself into my parents to get away from the black people’s hands.

Why are these people trying to touch me?! [whimper whimper] It’s not too vivid in my mind what happened after, but I think my parents were laughing at me and then my Mom started to talk about hair with the other family or something like that.

It’s funny to me today (it was scary then!), because if this were to happen nowadays in a similar crowded, public place, the reaction I’m guessing would probably be more negative and more defensive. I’m pretty sure that touching other people’s kids wouldn’t be as “accepting”. Interesting to see how times have changed.
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Check out this intelligence test (from Mensa?) if you feel like wasting time. I got 15 (see pic to left) before I gave up. That means I’m “intelligent.” I’m content with that. Answers are here.

And, I added a new banner/header/title thingy. Looks good if I do say so myself.
And I'm no longer ranked number one on Google for "stupidnes." Bummer.

Boring Post about Gas Prices

Gas was 89.9¢/litre today, while it was around 93 a few days ago. I also saw 87.4 (or something like that) too, but that was because it was a small gas station, and it subtracted 3.5¢ already from its face price, instead of having that dumb gimmick (that all the big large chain gas stations) with a sign saying it will subtract 3.5¢ when you get to the pump. That was really bad english.

How exciting my life is, that I talk about the price of gasoline all the time. Whoopee.

If you need a laugh, read these (have I posted about this before? I can’t remember…). They’re the funniest ratings/comments given on ratemyprofessors.com. They are veddy veddy funny. Funnier than squirting ketchup into your parent’s mouths when they sleep (I never did those things, I’m a good boy.)