A place I dream of...

It's been exactly 104 days since I arrived here since my christmas break. It will be roughly 1 year from now that I expect to return for a break. I plan to stay there for the duration of one semester, roughly three and a half months. What I will do with my time here will include learning how to cook properly, hang out with friends, catch up with people that I didn't have time to say hi to , and celebrate my 20th birthday with the best of my friends.

But now, for this one year, I am stuck in college studying, working at a sandwich joint for minimum wage, staying at home and surfing Youtube, and instant messaging my friends back home at 2 in the morning because they're asleep when I'm awake. Yes, I'm wasting away. Not really, but you get the idea. I don't mesh well with the people here, somehow. Most of their activities consist of hanging out at the mall (female), going to the bar to watch the hockey game (male), going to a club (both), and overall not stuff I would do. There's absolutely nothing to do in Canadian malls. They're desolate, I tell you.

So, relating to the title. When I say, "lets go for a drink," I mean, "lets go to a mamak store and grab a few teh tarik." When I say it here, the implication is "Lets go to the bar and grab a few beers." It's a subtle cultural thing. I can't say that bars and beers are bad. But, I do miss having a few friends talking for hours on end, sitting around a crappy, dirty, sticky table, drinking teh tarik, which is dirt cheap, laughing at the one wuss who would order a limau ais because it was 'too hot to have a warm drink'. I miss it all too much. I can see it all now: the noisy environment; the warm air; the laughter; the girls, who would order more than they can eat, give the stuff to the guys; the guys, who were too cheap to buy their own food and leech off their friend's plates; the mamaks who were running about, shouting to each other the orders; a freshly cooked roti telur bawang ghee, a joint creation between a friend and I. There is little I wouldn't give for all that now.

To you whom are not of the LotES, let me clarify a few terms here, mainly the ones you see in italics.

-a mamak is a Muslim South Indian person. Their cuisine is a fusion of Indian roti and malay sambals.

-a teh tarik (lit. pulled tea) is the national drink of the LotES. It consists of breakfast tea and copious amounts of sweetened condensed milk. Since no cold milk is used to cool it down, the tea is rather hot. However, before serving, the tea is 'pulled' by pouring from one glass, raised high, into another, usually about hip level. This not only cools the drink, but introduces air and creates foam.

-a limau ais (lit. iced lime) is a drink where lime juice is mixed with sugar water, and ice is added to cool it down. It is probably the ultimate thirst quencher/cooler.

-roti (lit. bread) is an Indian dish where dough is grilled on a solid, usually cast iron, skillet. It is crunchy and oily. It is usually served with lentil curry (dhal), chicken, fish or mutton curry. In mamak stores, it is also served with sambal, which is a thick paste made from different chilli peppers and other condiments. Telur means egg, and bawang means onion. Ghee is clarified butter, used often in Indian cuisine. Hence, a roti telur bawang ghee is a piece of roti stuffed with eggs, onions and fried in clarified butter.

Man cannot live on roti alone...

-Gabe

Under the blue sky...

Okay, so I'm climbing, nay, clawing my way out of the pit, an unfilled hole in my heart. I'm not, by any means, out of the dark just yet. But I'm getting there. I think I owe all my readers (all 5 of you...) an explaination.

So, I left the Land of the Eternal Summer in June 2008, 2 weeks after I had been released from National Service. Suffice to say that I had left my fair share of loose ends when I left. Didn't have much time to say goodbye to friends, to catch up, anything of that kind. I left a coward, a liar and a traitor.

When I was given 3 weeks to be home in December, I resolved to tie up those loose ends. I went home, called up friends, talked to people, did stuff, payed for a couple of meals, said my goodbyes. It was good. Then I left, thinking that I had finished my duty. I was at peace. For a time.

Now,  I have friends who are very much interested in the fields of Music, Acting and Game Design. However, due to the rampant piracy that is almost legal in my home country, these industries suffer due to lack of revenue. Whilst here, I realised that both these industries boom. I'm only here for an education, while those back home are either going starve doing what they love, or stuck in a dead end job they hate. Either way, I figured that I was a wasting an oppotunity that was better spent on someone else. So, descent.

Add onto that the fact that I have a friend whom I have not seen or spoken to in person for over a year, whom I tried to buy dinner for, but is so damned disorganised that whenever we agree on a day to do something, some unforseen event leaves my plans in ruins, or even forgetting it altogether. That idiot is so disorganised it makes me look like a long-term planner in comparison. I shouldn't be prying, seeing as everyone must live their own lives, but the idiot is leaving all of us worried. 

In the end, I looked up one day and the haze of emotion gave way to an understanding. We're all here, under the same blue sky. It is nothing, and everything, that makes the closest ones feel the furthest, and the furthest ones feel the closest.

The gift of weeping is perhaps the greatest of God's mercies. Happy they who know not the pain of tearless sorrow.

-Gabe

I'm a damned sap

Okay, ever heard a song, a story or something that somehow affects you in ways you in ways that can only be described as emotional? The level of empathy I'm talking is somewhere between living it and being a close relative of a person in a tragedy, who, incidentally, is a created character. I cannot begin to explain how utterly pathetic that is. It frustrates me to have to try and combat all these emotions with reason. Suffice to say that a battle easily, and often, lost. 

 By the time you've gotten to this line, you'd fancy me a wannabe stone-cold bastard. I'm not, really! On one hand, I am, by no stretch of the imagination, a hopeless romantic. However, I haven't a heart of stone, either. I can, and do, empathise with people, fictional or not. It's the degree of this particular bout of empathy that I'm not comfortable with. To lose focus and functionality in other things because of preoccupation with a story is unacceptable to my own standards.

 The worst part about all this is that it forces some things that are best left buried to the surface. You, my dear reader, have, hopefully, no idea what I'm talking about. To those who think they do, shut the hell up. It probably isn’t what you think. Something that I thought I had left buried deep found its way back to the surface. As for why, I blame the aforementioned article. It left me unable to solve simple math equations, and that just ticks the hell out of me.

 Furthermore, I'm left with no one to vent about this to, try as I may. I’m not a person to make friends carelessly, and I keep those I have closer. I live as a walking testament to the people around me who have shaped me. See what your hand have wrought, friends! Inspect your handiwork.

Okay, even after this post, I feel no better than I did when I started. The guy who told me venting online helps is a liar. I have to rethink the whole point of a blog, whether it's to relate my experiences and accompanying thoughts, or it is simply an outlet where I can find respite from the world.

Pain and suffering are the side effects of growth

-Gabe

Okay, so I've been away...

And I offer an appology. I've been busy. Busy with things that are quite far outside my comfort zone(hate to be there, by the way), and time management is quite the bitch, frankly. However, a blog this is, and because I'm here at my college (because I'm quite settled in with no intention of returning home so early) without anything better to do, I'll tell you about the last 2 months.

You see, I've been working at a place called Quizno's Subs for 8 CAD an hour, roughly 15 hours a week. Do the math. After 2 months of work, I can barely pay my tuition. I know, it's kinda sad, working 3 5-hour shifts a week for 2 months and only scrapping together enough to pay for my school fees. Not exactly what I had imagined myself at. When I got the job, 3 things came to my mind. Killer computer, PS3 and Rock Band 2. Having done some math, the total came to about 3 grand. Calculated to have that by the end of summer. Okay. So I went to work, albeit without grandiose expectation about working conditions. Everyday at work I reminded myself of the hardware that I would eventually own. That kept me going. Then..., my school bill arrived. Whee. So, instead of indulging myself, I had to burn my own head-earned money on college.

Okay, now about college itself. What I took this semester are PHYS 107, pre-calculus physics, MATH 120, calculus I, CHEM 110, chemistry I (structure of matter), and ENGL 103, studies into fiction. Here's the breakdown: my physics teacher is a bore, which forces me and a few others to band together to get a study group going; we basically skip all the classes and are still at the top 10% of the class. That's sad. Math is fun, never knew you could do so much with derivatives. Chem started kinda slow, then sped up. Did not like all that abstract stuff with electron orbitals, though. The rest was quite enjoyable. English, was probably (yet again) the most challenging course I took this semester. Reading into books isn't as easy as reading a book. Similar as they may be, interpretations tend to be quite biased.

Now, I could bore you endlessly with what I did over the course of the winter. I can break it down into 4 categories. Things I did in college, things I did at home, things I did in between, and miscellaneous activities. Seriously, the 4th category is devoid of anything of interest, save perhaps the weekly attendance of the Mass. The 3rd is comprised of mostly cursing in cold weather that I was 2 minutes late for the bus, and trying to stay warm for another half hour. Cold is much worse than heat, let me assure you. I sometimes miss the Land of the Eternal Summer, especially during the winter, and anything less than 3 layers will cause frostbite. Now, the weather is finally warming up, and I look forward to summer, when I can ride a bicycle around and leave the house with a T-shirt and shorts on.

Wall o' text, indeed. I hope my update is not unread. Truly, don't hold it against me. I was swamped in other things to have anything to say on my blog.

I can't, for the life of me, understand how others around me have the propencity to find specific events in their daily life to share, which are, in retrospect, either entertaining, insightful or thought-provoking. Perhaps, that is a talent that escapes me completely, but I am not remorseful, as many would gladly trade that for something they might see in me. It is, I suspect, not self-awareness that spurs this realisation of talents they see in me, but perhaps, excessive pride. I am no master of my heart; no man is. But, perhaps, through self-realisation of vices, I can attempt to overcome the hypocrisy that plagues our world as much today as it has all through the annals of history. However, I doubt my ability to. Vanity of vanities, indeed.

On a final note, I should really post more often, seeing as my classes are almost over and I'm taking a break from work.

i regret this now
however, i cannot stop
i must be this; me

-Gabe

The new one!

     Refer to my earlier post about my quickly shifting interests.

     Okay, so now I have no chance to go and tag people with paint, with it being winter and all. So, I started looking to my next interest. Within weeks, I found it.

     Rubik's Cubes.

     Okay, once you've settled down from breaking out in pearls of laughter, there's something I have to say. Rubik's cubes are quite simple to solve, once you have the technique down. Now, there are probably some of you who are saying to yourselves, "Hah, so you say. Let's see you do it." To you I say, "Okay."

    So, I can solve a 3x3x3 cube. That's nice and all, but something I saw on Youtube just made me wanna go and get more. A 4x4x4 cube. Now, some may argue that the method of solving a 4x4x4 is not much different than solving a 3x3x3, and they'd be right, key word being 'much'. Only getting the middle and sides, then solving as a 3x3x3, right? Wrong. Then, there's parity. What parity is, is that when 2 blocks have their positions switched, and there's no similar way to switch them that is also used in 3x3x3 solving. So, there is a loooooong move pattern to memorise for different cases. Suffice to say that it isn't the same.

    Anyway, things go the way they go, but my hunt must continue. Wish me luck!

Stay frosty!

-Gabe

I'm Back..... (a.k.a the MoaP)

     Okay, I think I have some explaining to do for my absence. Since my exams began on the 6th of December and ended on the 10th, i had been studying. After that, I had to go shopping before my return to the Bolehland. Upon arrival, I was internet connection deprived, and then after my connection had returned, I was too busy going around with my parents (I was only there for 3 weeks. Quite seriously, I was stranded too (Had no phone, precious little cash to use). After my departure, the next two weeks were something of a transitional period, where I had to get reaccustomed to life as a student, and even some more newer adjustments in the realm of public transport.

Okay, so I have covered everything that's happened at the macroscopic level. But, that's not quite what a blog is for, am I right? It's for the details of the events that the writer is experiencing. So, now for the mother of all posts.

Let us begin where it left off. The exams. Since then I have had the joy of recieving my final grades, but with results a tad lower than I had anticipated. Since then I have enrolled and started past the first month classes. My only hope is to keep my grades as high as they were last semester.

After my exams had concluded, I had to buy everything that everyone back home in the Land of the Eternal Summer (which hence shall be refered as LotES) had requested. The list goes something like this...  Ice Hockey vizor(specific model), mouthguard case, tracksuit, skull cap, Wii games, maple syrup, pine nuts, walnuts and granola bars. And I had 3 days to get it all. You can imagine the rush. Fun.

So I got home and gave everyone what they wanted, but then my parents weren't home, so I had to stay with my sister and her family for about a week. Suffice to say that I wasn't very mobile during that time, due to my keyless condition which limited my mobility. I had no phone, no internet and no car. You can imagine.

When my parents do get back, and I'm staying with them, I took the oppotunity to go out as much as possible. However, due to the vast majority of my friends either working, studying, living in a dorm in college on weekdays or some combination of the above, I had not the chance to meet with some of them. This is probably the greatest regret I have about the trip home to LotES. That I wasn't able to meet up with quite a few friends of mine.

With the few that I did, however, I had a ball. Telling them stories about stuff that happened in NS and Canada. Some of the things I said made utterly no sense to them, however, and this can be attributed to the fact that I had, unbeknownst to myself, picked up some Canadian slang that I assumed everyone understood. [Canadian] Eh? [/Canadian]

So, I get back to Canada, and, I bullshit you none, I get picked up at the airport, and get dropped off at my college for my 2nd class (it so happened that I had missed my first class by about 3 hours). And, wouldn't you know it, jet lag set in, and before I knew it, I was face-forward on my desk, drooling on my book. Yay for jetlag. 

In any case, sorry it took so long for me to put up another post. Will do more. Look out for it!

Over and out!

-Gabe

Why...?

To be given too much time to do something, to procrastinate by doing this totally unrelated to the given task, then kicking it into superhigh gear to only barely finish the assignment and recieve a lower than desired mark. Yes, that is my destiny.

I have a qwerk. I have a tendency to see something, to be immensely passionate about it for roughly.... two weeks. Then, my interest evaporates like ethanol on an Egyptian sidewalk. This is known to be a trait of Geminis (to all you Geminis out there saying "hey, that's not true...", I'm not stating this to be Gospel truth. My Horoscope has been wrong more than it's been right). It is also a trait of the people born in the Lunar Year of the Horse. Unluckily, I happen to be both. That's a double threat, kinda like spraying NH3 onto a stale piss soaked rag, and then letting it air-dry. Indoors. With no fans.

A good example of the qwerks I get is the time when a few of my friends and I decided to make a whole deck of playing cards from thin cardboard, art bloc, masking tape and clear tape. Suffice to say that as soon as the tedious treating of the individual cards began, we quickly dropped the project. How did we do it? It's quite simple, really. Just draw the card's face on the artblock, get some school glue, glue those together, put masking tape on the other side of the cardboard, and put clear tape on both sides to protect it. Refer to the below diagram.

The next obsession I had was writing a novel. I actually got to the 50th page before running dry on ideas. The actual contents still play in my mind once in awhile, and I intend to finish that, more for myself than for others. That being said, in this small period of self-awareness, doubt that I will ever get myself to sit down and write. It is with some deliberation that I bring your attention to my newest passion.

Paintball.

Yes, paintball. It hurts no more than a rat tail and is loads more fun. I have scoured the Internet and have spent hours researching everything there is to know about paintball. Positions, terminology, styles of competitive play, equipment, rules in competition. The list goes on. My idea to build a bolt action paintball marker to increase effective range, speed and accuracy was, as I believed, new. However, even on Youtube, I've found no less than 4 bolt action paintball markers, just for the cool factor. The engineering aspects of the changes to the usual marker that I had planned were physically sound. The main problem was that all guns have to be capped at below 300 feet per second. What this meant was that despite my want to create a paintball sniper, and ability to, I would not be able to use it, because of regulation of maximum speed. Now, some of you may be going: "Why?" Well, because of the extreme nature of paintballing, everyone has to wear goggles which protect their eyes and face. The goggles are only rated for 285 feet per second, so any faster than that, and the paintball could shatter the goggle and hit you in the eye. Thus, even adding a 64 cubic inch tank, rifling, a bolt action reload mechanism and a scope will not make it any more accurate than it already is because of the speed limit (except maybe the rifling).

So, with my dreams dashed, all I have left is the know-how to play basic paintball. I could still potentially go and play it.

Keep your feet on the ground!

-Gabe