trying to keep track of my life
usually whining posts when i run out of energy
I feel like I’m starting to feel very tired from the stress. thank goodness I have:
a supportive husband
an amazingly patient and helpful girlfirend
ridiculously easy going friends who forgive my disappearances
smarter than I coworkers
and a good manager
but I still want to start leaving work at 5, not 6-7:30 which is what goes so far.
random:
black seal rum is delicious
want to try rye whiskey and single malt
got a tetanus shot – ouch!
today, june 6th 2009, is the 13th year of our time in canada. that feels very strange. i remember landing, and seeing the airport, and missing the palms. i remember our friends driving me first to our house (their car couldn’t fit me, them, our suitcases, and my parents, so i went first with the suitcases), and pointing out the mosque near 400 & 401. i remember being in their house with 2 dogs – they told me not to come out from the bedroom, and didn’t put my lego set with me, so i ended up falling asleep.
the next day, at 3 am, i woke up and was very disoriented, and confused. those first days are overlayed by the strange memory of the first days in israel. so different, and yet so the same – both moves are in a strange, jet lagged, foreign haze.
how weird is it that i’m here, married to an american, and have changed so much of my personality that was affected by these moves. i was shy, not outspoken, and i took shit from people. in the past few years that changed so much. 13 years!
in other news. today i finished my masters in project management program. our group came in 1st (we split the spot, our final evaluation was same to the decimal!), met so many fantastic people who are fun, smart, kind, and i can’t wait to hang out with in general. and now i can put some alphabet soup after my name! but i won’t.
the course was fun, but i am happy that i have no longer the pressure of homework or 8am saturday classes.
realization of the day: i am very happy when i have fresh flowers that i can cut and arrange. i had my G test this morning (passed, from the first time! wooo!), and then worked until 7, so i was pretty stressed out and tired. upon coming home to a clean apartment i decided that instead of vegetating in front of the computer/the tv/the book i should do something that would take my stress away.
turns out pruning flowers is one of the many things that work very well to make me feel calmer, happier and relieve my stress. after spending around an hour cutting and trying to arrange all the various flowers that my mom gave me (it was her birthday, and she basically gave me some she didn’t really care for, plus some pretty ones – like the sunflowers) into the vases that i had on hand. after that i decided to take photographs, and turns out that i took like 38 photographs that i liked. so, there you go! diny, enjoy the chairs.
here are my favourite ones, you can see all of them here. (i culled the vignettes into this set)
now about my g test.
well, let me tell you, i was worried. most people (as in 20 except for 2) that i asked didn’t pass it from the first time. i don’t take failure well, despite knowing that its stupid to stress out about a test that DOESNT EVEN AFFECT YOUR GPA OMG. (and you can retake endlessly for just some small amounts of money). and yet, there was, sitting in the parking lot and trying really hard to calm down. i borrowed the russian translation of dale carnegie’s book (compilation of all 3 of his most famous ones) from my parents, so i tried to read it.
the guy who was testing me (i think his name is randy – thank you, randy!) was a friendly looking young guy, unlike the person who did my g2 test. he asked me how i am, and i honestly replied “nervous as usual”. i think this confused him, as he asked “this IS the first time you’re taking this test, right?” (it already said this on my form). i replied in the affirmative.
the test itself went nicely, with some awesome happenings. i pulled out of the parking lot with no problems (went really slow as there was a young kid who i saw running around before, so i informed the guy that the reason i’m going this slowly is because there’s a kid behind us, and i’m worried about him). fast forward to driving on the highway, and no problems. (i did apparently make some errors on the way there, but all minor things). so we’re going on the highway, and he says “please change lanes left and then right whenever its safe to do so”. i check stuff, see that its safe, and change lanes. obviously i’m going 100km/hr on the dot, so is the person in front of me. and then i see in my rear view mirror a pick up truck with a flat bed trailer (like the small one) speeding toward me. my first though – “ok, change lanes to the right so that you get out of his way”. except, the crazy pick up truck swerves to the lane to the right of me, without dropping speed. at this point i’m thinking “shit, he’s gonna pass me on the right and i’m very screwed, especially if he honks or breaks badly”. what he did was worse (or better? since i passed?). he passed on me on the right alright, but he did it without dropping speed, signaling lane change, and with his flat bed trailer SWINGING WILDLY, missing my car by maybe a meter. i actually said “holy shit” outloud, because that was some horrible driving there. randy didn’t say anything, so we continued on our merry way, while i’m kinda going “oh shit did i just fail?” inside.
what was remarkable is that he didn’t ask me to do any kind of parking. at least now i’m a pro at this parallel stuff, thanks to our wonderful street. anyway, we park and right away he goes “congratulations, you’ve passed!” (let me remark, this is BAJILLIONS YEARS OF LIGHT BETTER than my g2 test, where the guy just sat there for like a minute silent and writing stuff on his paper, until i couldn’t stand the pressure and asked with a shaking voice “so did i fail?” and he was like “oh no”. turns out i had 2 mistakes out of 15. but that was g2). i’m not sure how many “points” i lost on this test – i still have the paper, but it doesn’t say which errors are more crucial.
anyway, randy, wherever he is, i’m hoping he’s having a good one, because turns out that exams/tests still make me crazy. great! :P
this feels so strange. why are people expecting me to be so happy about being done? why are most people so happy about being done? maybe this is disappointing; but university was the best time of my life. while i’m sure there are many – endless – fantastic times ahead, this night is the end of something beautiful, and something unique.
i guess this is no different than any other night. each day, or night, or hell, each moment that we pass, passes without return. each moment is unique as we’ll never live it again. gosh, i remember realizing this when i was like 6, but i guess this is slightly more mature?
i wrote my last exam, ever, likely, outside of me taking post grad courses/degrees/whatever. it won’t be the same, though. i got to travel, i got to party, i got to slack off like never in my life. i have so many wonderful memories – all the travel, all the people i have met. i still have the note left on my door by a friend of mine in maastricht, on my last night – “just knock” – so that i say goodbye before leaving (at 4 am). i remember australia and missing tim. i remember starting university and feeling so overwhelmed by the size of the university. i remember classes of 300 people, and i remember classes of 5, and all that was in between. i remember assignments handed in the last minute, and assignments done weeks in advance – oh who am i kidding, there were no assignments done weeks in advance. they were all, or most done last night, last day, last hour, last minute, hell, i remember last second assignments. standing in front of the dropbox, completing a neat copy of a proof (as all copies had to be neat! but of course!).
5 years – did they really fly past so fast?
first year – calculus. all that i remember is calculus. okay, well, fine, i remember other courses – i remember taking 150 with k. reid, and feeling so happy that WOW there’s a female professor in an advanced CS class! things must not be that bad! haha. i remember archeology, my social science course (i don’t even know if i needed that course, but at least i’m sure i got my distribution requirements filled), with the midterm when the entire class showed up saying that “we didn’t get the book!” and the prof taught the midterm to us, and gave it to us the week after. a unique experience – no other course in u of t was nearly as gentle (no exam!). i remember suffering through introduction to cognitive science, disappointed that the prof that i wanted wasn’t teaching it. linguistics – made good friends there. and that’s all.
first summer – blackout; missed exam due to it; didn’t have to write it – got a good mark. thought i’m smart. hah…
second year – changes. changes in personal life; changes in marks. barely remember courses – but i remember getting back (paying for!) an exam, to check if they were right – how could have i have gotten such a “low” mark! apparently, i could. doubt i’ll do that again. remember crying on my first (and my last) exam, after being fooled by the prof on what i should’ve studied (i went to office hours the entire year, and she lead me down the garden path. i only knew one experiment that was asked, despite studying for many, many hours of review). i remember finding the exchange office.
third year – maastricht. got my credits. but more importantly, got my self confidence. met wonderful people, moved out on my own, partied like there was no tomorrow. realized that the shitty marks in u of t are not because i’m not trying – but because u of t is hard. without trying, getting As in most classes… what a boost… only to return to –
third year, second half – my only D, the class where i met tim. the class I should’ve dropped after getting 25% on the midterm, but didn’t. it was worth it – the class doesn’t matter at this point. i remember falling in-love, as i was falling into my australia plans.
summer, tim leaving.
fourth year, first half. finding my favouritest prof ever (maha can attest). suffering through a CS course, and getting 78, 80, and 81 in the other 3 courses. feeling good. (wow, i got more than 80 in two courses? in one semester? holy crap, i’m smart.)
second half. australia. not much to say here, except thanks for 336 and 384, UNSW (and oleg, who beat out these credits from CS department in U of T).
fifth year, the strange feeling that its all ending. first semester, blah. no great marks. sick during exams. no excuses. desperate for last nights of out; but everyone are focused on studying now. savouring the rare einstein and new ho outings. poker nights, redecoration, 2nd x-mas with tim’s parents, feeling it all just about slipping through my fingers!
and here we are
end of second half of fifth year.
last exam went perfect. pick 4 out of 6, pick 2 out of 3, and i knew all 9 questions offered. i’m happy. i yelled in the parking lot. and then i looked at the university college building and felt such strong nostalgia.
the time passed by faster than it took me to type this entry. i already miss it all. i’ll be ready for the wonderful, awesome future – but right now, i miss it preemptively, i miss it whole heartedly. it was the best time of my life, and i doubt i could have gotten a better experience in any way possible – cognitively, socially, or personally.
she-crab soup made from this recipe (its awesome)
today was definitely a good day. first off, last night after making triply sure that the assignment works (thank you, dad!), it was handed in with no problems, and i went out to have some drinks – for the first time evah! (the drinking out that is). that was fantabulous fun, and i came home and crashed to sleep.
the morning of thursday was excellent. first off, dad confirmed everything is fine. thus this huge, terrible weight of that unbearable assignment fell off my shoulders. the linguistics assignment was almost done, so i spent my morning cleaning it up. (i also made scrambled eggs. yum!)
the constant question of where to print if you’re not really in possession of a printer can drive a student to do odd things, especially if they have to hand in the assignment by 2pm and its 1:50. i tried printing at the library (which smelled like smoke, and later i found out that it was evacuated!), but ended up crashing their computers. so, on kinda vagueish instructions from LA and Kevin i found the place where all the american students get their sponsored labs – its a gleaming, white, clean room, with lots of big macs with flat screens and pretty mice and fast computers and fast printers. i printed and was outta there under 1 minute. yay!
next problem was finding the drop off box. i got confused between two buildings, both of which intials begin with MB, so i ended up being at the hand in place at 2:10 or so. but they still took it on time!
i also spoke the prof, and wished him a good holiday. yay!
random memories on the walk home, when the world suddenly became bright and assignment free:
a bearded, white, curly haired professor at his desk going “hmmm” in a serious tone to a young naive first year student cowering in front of him.
“but i did everything i could!” “well my grandad was in the navy you know!” (as part of one conversation, very loud argument)
a guy eating a watermelon (like 1/4 of it) on the run.
the feeling joy surrounding the campus despite the rain as this was the last day of classes before the break (actually i felt the joy but didn’t know that second bit).
upon arrival home i found out i have no classes tomorrow, and that elin will be going to the gym 2 hours later, so i snacked, chatted, relaxed, and then went to the gym for a hard core workout!
this was my 4th time. i biked for 20 mins @ lv 5, elliptical for 20 mins @ lv 5, and for the first time, ran all 20 mins at 7kph (before i was 14 mins run and 6 walk, and then 16 mins run and 4 walk). then elin showed me some weights training, so i did about 40 sit ups on the big ball, some leg excersizes with the ball, some back excersizes with the ball, weight training for back and arms and legs, and stretched. it was good!
came home, made the she crab soup, and that’s where the day ended, basically.
i wont count the evening because i washed all of the dishes in the kitchen again for the 2nd time (not a single. clean. cup. 2nd. time. in. the. day. i washed almost all of them before the gym.) (so before sleep i went in and did a major clean up – washed majority of dishes that were “anonymos” – like not from LA’s baking – and finally cleaned off counters. yay!), and watched wolf creek which was scary. but that’s okay. it doesn’t count.
i want to be a food photographer! so much fun!
i recently finished 2 books: one is “woman in the dunes”, by kobo abe, and second is “my sister’s keeper”, by jodi picoult.
moral of the story, in both, as coincidental as it was, is that people care about having their personal freedom of choice. while their actions might be the same at the end (staying or leaving, donating a kidney or not), the moral, the intent behind the action is far more important to them – but rarely to those who surround them.
its almost like art. it is the intent that makes a piece meaningful to the artist – even if the public never cares.
i’d highly recommend both books, even though they are completely different in style, they make an excellent match in story. woman in the dunes is rough, gritty, pressing on you from every angle, and drives its point hard:
“I have a one way ticket to the blues, woo woo”. If you’d like to sing – please, go ahead. In reality, the last thing that a man who has been given a one way ticket will do, is sing like that. The shoe lining of the people, who have a one way ticket, is really thing, and they scream if have stepped on the smallest pebble, and won’t move further. They would like to sing of a ticket to the blues that goes both ways. Only a man, holding a return ticket, can hum to himself a sort of sad song about a one way ticket. It is because he is afraid – afraid that he will lose it, or it will be stolen…
(rough translation to english from russian which was translated from japanese. some ommissions.)
i can’t think of an equally poignant quote from my sisters keeper, it felt far more gentle, if still very painful, just on a different level – here, everyone suffers, and most realize their suffering, but like abe’s characters they keep on digging themselves out.
i guess this comparison makes no sense if you haven’t read one, or even both of these books, but i really hope that one of you will pick it up. here is the russian version of woman in the dunes.
i’m going to go sleep, so that tomorrow i can dig sand of assignments again.
upon departing haast, we sleepily stumbled into the car and left towards the next exciting thing – the glaciers. the trip towards the glaciers was punctuated with naps (for me), a few stops at pretty roadside locations (waterfalls and rainforests), and the realization that i forgot a whole bag of stuff in haast about 2 hours into the 4 hour drive. we decided that i’d call them and ask them to send it forward to glaciers with someone else who’s staying there, as haast is mostly and essentially a stopover for people going to the glaciers from wanaka.
the excitement of the day was delivered in a form of a root into which we “crashed” (i.e. a road kinda jammed into). the car was fine, and after a car servicing station deflated the wheel and took out the wood, oleg (the driver) was fine too. :)
the evening was magnificently peaceful, with a lovely sunset over surrounding mountains, and a game of chess. i played some random guy, one out of many chess players who seem to gather there daily. i lost, 1-2 (we played 3 games). in the first game i had a very elegant mate, but in the last one he completely annihilated me.
the next day we all had big adventures awaiting us, so we went to sleep fairly early.
posting stuff i had written earlier.Â
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valentine’s day has surrounded us from the start, with appropriate “life” shows on the television. then off to the e-card office to get our student ids, and off to the orientation we went.
since you didn’t have to be at the orientation, i’ll save you the 95% boredom, and let you know of the 5% fun:
a lot of canadians went as exchange students to this university. some statistics about who i’ve met today:
the day after the orientation bbq was spent running errands, failing at setting up internet (for a few reasons that i figured out later in the evening with oleg), buying some sushi rolls for dinner out of self spoilage, and then a very pleasant evening of blogging, and watching olympics on the tv.
among other pieces of knowledge gathered today, was that our illusionary roomates (i.e. the ones who are not to be seen yet) are in new zealand until the 18th (day before tim arrives), and they are party animals, and the flat is essentially a big hangout house for most of the time.
after having some wine, sleep is scheduled to happen in 10 minutes, at 1am. tomorrow’s orientation starts at 9:30am.
continuation of part 1, story of my arrival.
i was woken up by oleg saying that we’re arriving. i was totally out of it (think 6 hours of uncomfortable sleep in an airplane chair after of like 20 hours of awakeness), so i was like “already?” turns out that it was breakfast time – 6:20 am. after a fairly small sandwich, 2 cups of green tea, a cup of coffee and some yogurt, we still had to circle over sydney for 40 minutes due to bad weather. apparently for them bad weather means warm and humid with some light drizzle.
customs was easy – got my australia stamp, w00t!
australians are extremely scared about people importing anything “natural” – food, or any food derivatives. we had propaganda with crocodile hunter playing on tvs for about 30 minutes, and all the way to the customs there are bins where you should throw out stuff that you don’t want checked (i threw out my small bag of nuts that i snacked on. thankfully i finished almost all of it by that point). after picking up your luggage, you go through 2 more people that check your forms (i.e. that they say that you’re not importing anything) and then you and all your luggage go through an xray machine. oleg’s stuff went through juts fine, but i got stopped.
of course i mildly freaked out, even though the lady was nice and polite, they put the pressure on you (did you pack this? did you fill out this form? is your name so and so? “no, its olya”). after opening the huge-ass-70lbs-suitcase turns out they wanted to check the big climbing rope that oleg brought with him but was put in my bag cause didn’t have enough space. turns out they just couldn’t figure out what it was on the xray and wanted to check, and thankfully oleg jumped right there when she pulled it out and said that its brand new and wasn’t ever used, so i kinda relaxed that i’m not at fault. they didn’t fine me or anything – its not one of their restricted products – they just weren’t sure. still a bit unnerving.
upon exiting the gates easily at that point oleg tried to find the people that were supposed to meet us, as they are his family’s friends, while i hung out outside at the SUPER WARM AND HUMID AMAZING WEATHER WITH PALMS AROUND ME. JOY. after so much time in air i was like “i dont care if we have to cab it to a hotel, i’m here, its warm, life’s great”. i had enough time to change into flip flops that i pulled out of my bag, so life was peachy.
after about 30 minutes of waiting, oleg found them (or rather they saw him on the way to the phones to call them). we stuffed the insane amount of stuff we had into their tiny hatchback corolla, and we headed to their apartment. this was around 12:30pm, sydney time, or 9pm toronto time. definitely felt weird.
upon arriving to their place, these nice people provided us with a phone to call our families, food to feast on (breakfast), and a place to house all our stuff. the long wait to evening began.
the day was spent peacefully – after getting internet we set it up so that i can connect to it through an ethernet cable to the couple’s dsl modem, and oleg connected to it through the wireless service on my laptop. i did some browsing of your people’s blogs, wrote emails. we ate again around 5pm, after i finished talking to tim, and i noticed a SCARF (that was your another mention) in my bag. after the dinner they provided us with instructions on how to get to the beach, and off we left to explore sydney.
this was definitely the highlight of the day (haha, says me after freaking FLYING TO SYDNEY AUSTRALIA WHICH IS ANOTHER CONTINENT DID YOU KNOW?). the walk was nice and easy:
me: so how far is it to the ocean?
owner of house: hmmmm… slow walking its like… hmm…
*me thinking: shit, its like 2 hours away*
him: 20 minutes?
me: *bursts out in laughter*
him: what?
me: that’s so close
him: (i think thinking that i am sarcastic) its not that far really
me: in toronto you have to walk a few months to the nearest ocean
in case you didn’t know, in australia and new zealand all the roads are backwards. i.e. driver’s seat is on the right hand side, and the traffic moves forward on the left side of the road, not right. it feels pretty surreal on turns especially – they are completely opposite in terms of sticking to the curb or pulling away from it. walking to the beach thus was an excersize in futility – each road we crossed i was spinning my head around like the exorsist, trying to ensure that we won’t die (this fast). it worked, no one hit us.
the beach was awesome. sunset, waves, huge ocean waves. they built a small bay like enclosure that lets people swim in the ocean water without being afraid of getting carried away by the waves. all along the beach there are huge huge rocks. we hung a bit at the ocean side, and watched the waves, listened to the birds, and just marvelled at being near the ocean. aftewards we went back up to the beach walk and walked further down the beach, where the rocks weren’t as huge, but more flat, and allowed us to actually walk around the small pools of water that gathered from the ocean’s movements. this turned out to be very cool – in the last picture i linked the black dots are lots and lots of shells, which all have snails (i suppose) inside of them. after some wandering around that area (its fun walking among the rocks, and the salty smell of the water, the warmness and humidness – its relaxing), i noticed amazing sunset started. unfortunately my camera’s batterys died, but i managed to snap 2 photographs before it died.
as it got darker around 8pm we headed off back home, walking under the super pink skies as it quickly got dark.
upon arriving home, i blogged about the day before that, and then i got tired and so i went to sleep.
fortunately for you its only 8:20pm here, so i’ll blog about today too.
upon waking up i noticed that my hair has formed a most magnificent mohawk, just through its shortness and awesomeness. i seriously wish i could keep it this short and not grow it out that much more over the next few months. of course i took a photograph :P
next was a snapshot of the outside. the reason why oleg and i ended up waking up at 10am is because there are PARROTS here. i don’t have any photos, but i promise one as soon as we returned from auckland. today just wasn’t a photogenic day – it was raining and grey the ENTIRE day. the parrots are bright green, blue heads, red and orange chests – i mean, people, they are REAL PARROTS. just like flying around. not like those budgees that flew into maha’s balcony either! no, these are freaking parrots. and there are also blackbirds, pigeons and some other small bright yellow black and white medium sized birds. and they all squawk. a lot.
other than parrots, and more eating, we planned out the new zealand trip (the extra 5 days will be used throughout the time beforehand as needed), which took a decent 4-5 hours. i spoke to tim on the phone for about an hour, which was heaven embodied. also i spoke to my parents, which was nice but i’m kinda used to living away from them at this point :P sorry mom and dad! i still love you, though! i think the distance makes my love for you grow even stronger. right. yes.
moving on.
we also watched australian tv:
and this brings me to this moment, so i’ll stop typing and:
and then go sleep. flight to auckland is at 4pm tomorrow. our place to stay in auckland is reserved (a twin room, meaning 2 single beds in one room, sharing with no one. w00t.), we got all the addresses for car rental figured out (500 meters from the sleeping place), and as you can see we got our plans laid out.
i definitely won’t write as detailed from NZ, since as far as i know i won’t have internet from laptop for the entire 3 weeks. i will write on my laptop however, so you’ll get a report eventually. and, duh, pictures.
and i can’t promise 1.8k word essays each day :P its just the initial excitement. my goal is for about this much per week once i get settled in.
i want time to move by far faster than it is right now.
p.s. note the statistics section that has appeared on the right hand side
, but more like palm sized small. one we’ve seen was big enough to be served in a restaurant. of course it also could protect itself well with its nice big claws. </p>
<p>watching the crabs was fun until one of them suddenly moved in my side vision as a big dark spiderish spot. at that point they stopped being fun and started being freaky. on that note, no spiders seen so far. only one cockroach, but it was running away from my direction on the street, so its not that bad. and this appartment is perfectly clean. (or at least was unti oleg and i dumped our bags around the living room). </p>
<p>we started going, and then the <a href=){kind=link}
