Welcome cold weather

Gypsy skirts, go away!

OK those flossy cotton, layered skirts must go. Who started this trend? Is it all of the sudden cool to be a gypsy? It's like fashion gone wrong. I'll admit, when something new comes out, it seems cool at first. But then some stores take a hold of it and morph it into this marketing knock-off and boom it's everywhere. For instance, trucker hats. Then there's Ugg boots. Rubber wrist bands. It's called the "Titanic Effect". Can you remember hearing Celine Dion belting her vocal cords out..."yooooou're heeeeeeeere, there's noooooothiiing I feeeeear"...and week after week after week of hype around the movie and hearing Celine...oh Celine. For at least a month I was afraid to turn on my radio for fear of being reminded of Titanic. Mind you, Titanic was a good movie. In retrospect, I probably even shed a tiny tear. But am I ever glad that the weather is starting to get cooler (even though I get cold easily and I hate cold weather) because you can't wear skirts. In theory. So let's raise a glass and say goodbye to the gypsy. Please.

Homeless Life

I went to pick up my brand new cell phone and iPod Shuffle at the StudentPhones headquarters today but I had to wait for a while so I decided to get some tea at Tim Horton's (which I found out from Erik today that despite it being emblazoned into our Canadian identity, it is an American company). I got my tea and donut and sat by the window so I could people-watch. Outside of Tim Horton's sat this young guy holding a sign that said "HUNGRY". He sat there, politely smiling at the many students that passed by. Over the next half an hour I saw people give him some McDonald's food, an orange, an apple, a banana, a gift certificate to Timmy's, 2 bottles of Boost, a huge bag of M&Ms and change as well. He discreetly tucked his goodies away into his sweatshirt and continued to ask for food. And as he continued he seemed to get a bit more vocal about getting donations. An older man sitting beside me inside Tim Horton's signalled to him a few times and gave his nod of approval whenever he received something. I figured that they were together because the older man got some change from the younger guy and bought a drink. I'd say about 1 in 15 people stopped to donate some food or change. If that guy had been sitting there all day, I'd imagine he would collect enough food to feed himself for a few days. He probably eats more food than I do in a given meal! Having seen how much stuff he was getting, I wasn't feeling so bad for him. Does that seem like an odd thing? I often wish to know the stories behind homeless people. Why are they homeless? What do they do with the money they get? What do they think about the people that walk past them every day?

Anyhow I wished I could stay to observe him longer but I had to go collect my cell phone. How vain do I seem now? By the way I didn't get my phone because they were so busy. They should be called International StudentPhones because of the 5 people I talked to, they all had accents: British, Hispanic, Scottish, Japanese. I think it's a pre-requisite to be hired by the company. Maybe when I go back tomorrow I'll see the same homeless guy again and be in a more giving mood.

Just another little Asian Girl

So I decided last week that against the will of my parents I would check out the badminton team here at UT. Thinking back to this time last year, I was trying out for 2 varsity teams and it quickly became the bane of my existence for at least the next 2 months. I had practices every day and tournaments to go to almost every weekend. Naturally, I'm going through a bit of withdrawal here so I felt the itch to see what the team was like. I went to a pre-tryout practice session where I learned more about the team. Practices are scheduled for Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 7-9pm. You are expected to be there for 3 of the 4 practices. So I played around a little and I quickly found out how rusty and out-of-shape I was. Having not played much this summer, I don't think I was mentally prepared either. When I entered the gym, I felt really awkward to be a "Varsity Blue" and I immediately noticed something else...I actually really blended in, appearance-wise. The gym was crawling with other small Asian girls and there were even a couple of girls that were shorter than I am! I guess that constantly hearing how small I was really made me think that I was unique, but not that day. Despite the encouragement of a couple of people there, I decided not to try-out. The try-outs spanned a week, consisting of 3 separate tournaments (singles, doubles and mixed) as well as fitness testing. The Black Knight freebees as a part of the team were pretty tempting but after using some of their shuttles, that became a minor factor in deciding to play for the team. Then at the end of the practice, we all had to get-together in a circle and scream "Blues" on a 1,2,3 count...weeeeird. By the time I got home from the practice, it was almost 9:45pm! I don't think I can handle being home that late 3-4 times a week. The coach said that practicing on Fridays shouldn't be a problem because Friday is practically the weekend and nobody should be studying on a Friday. If they do, they "need to get a life", but hey, I'm in med school now, we should be studying on Friday nights. So instead I joined intramural volleyball, ultimate frisbee and flag football. I hope that's enough to fill the void. Afterall, there are plenty other little Asian girls to take my place on the team. GO STANGS!

Last days

My last Wednesday at the lab was fun. Alfred and I raced elevators to the 5th floor and I happened to choose the faster one. We made bets on the number of newborn mice and again I won! I was on a huge roll. Then we threw snowballs in the lab (because we were defrosting the freezer). Thursday we downloaded SuperMario Bros. and Tetris (which sucks!)onto the computer at work. The computer which was fast to begin with, seeing as the computer was less than a month old, then started to work much slower haha. Ok, I must admit that finishing a work term was incentive to go all wild and crazy at the lab because it was virtually consequence free. In addition to that, everybody was away! It was just Alfred, Caroline and me. Really no authority to worry about haha. However on Friday, my sup and manager came back to officially send me off to the next phase in my life. That really brought finality to what I was doing (working and undergrad) and welcomed me to start anew.

I went out for some "coffee" with Sue and Mez, my high school best buds. I miss my old friends already. We reminisced about the old days as we usually do. Life seems so much more complex compared to those times. We talked about Jamaica and it was such a good time to bring up the stories, especially the ones that I could hardly remember the details about....Alzheimer's. Haha, this one is really funny and I'd like to commit it to Blog memory: We went out of our hotel room (we were apparently hermits) probably to get some food at the midnight snack bar...lots of pastries and goodies to hold us over for the night. Mez managed to get back to the room before Sue and I and thought it would be funny to lock us out with the chain link. Mez thought that this was so hilarious and she had to rub it in by taunting us through the crack of the door. Normally this would have been a foolproof plan but alas, our room was on the 2nd floor and the balcony was accessible. Sue and I had this great plan where Sue distracted Mez, making her think that she was desperately trying to get in and she did a stellar job at it. Hahaha, half her body jammed through the door crack, making pleas to get in. She truly is a drama queen. This made Mez more smug and she was laughing her ass off on the bed. Meanwhile I ran around to the opposite side of the hotel which faced the middle grounds where the pool, eating area and entertainment stage were. I climbed up to our balcony and we happened to have the glass sliding door open, a bad habit if we didn't want our stuff to get stolen, but it was so perfect....while Sue was occupying Mez, I creeped in and wound up....for the biggest ass smack I've ever given. In the split second before I let my arm swing, I caught Sue's eye and Mez still had no clue. WHACK, I caught Mez in mid-laughter and she literally was so startled that she convulsed into the air and fell off the bed! I probably had never laughed so hard in my life. Then we forgot to let Sue in. Oh man, soooo funny. Wahh....I want to go back.

Anyhow, onto more relevant topics. Orientation was cool. I still haven't met a majority of the over 200 students in my class. It's strange group of people, us first years. Take the most over-achieving, neurotic and charismatic people (excluding me) and put them into one room. It makes for a nice sociological study I think. But seriously, everybody is in fact very different. The age range is large 19-38 and people come from all walks of life. We mostly share in common that we are all geeks in one form or another. Toronto is a whole different world, it's hustle and bustle, lots of things are open late. I had a lot of fun at Wonderland and will post a funny picture later on. There are many homeless people and I wondered how much change I needed to carry with me to walk back and forth to school. I didn't make it 2 days before I found myself helping out another person with money. Strangely enough, I gave a toonie to a lady who was supposed to meet some of her friends at a bar and they never showed up. She lived pretty far from where she was supposed to meet her friends and started walking home in her tall heels because she had no money for the subway. I sympathized with her mainly because she was ditched by her friends, but also because she was wearing heels and as a fellow female, I know the pain. All week I relied on others to take pictures for me because I didn't want to carry my camera everywhere. Unfortunately using other people's pictures is just not as sentimental. So I decided to bring my camera to one of the last events of the week, the Boat Cruise around Toronto Island. I waited to take a cab with my classmate and for fear that we would miss the boat, I was very anxious to get there on time. Boon and I waited for about half an hour for him to arrive and we were barely going to make it for 6pm. When we finally caught a cab, I could only think about what I was going to do when we saw the boat leaving. I was also pretty nervous because the cab driver had no idea where he was going. In the end, we made it there on time, but I left the camera on the back seat of the cab. Boon got out of the cab on the other side and didn't see the camera sitting there. The whole ride, I didn't look to see what the cab number was or the driver's name. I could only remember that the cab was red with a yellow top. So I realized it about 3 minutes after I left. Feeling that we were in a pretty secluded area, I didn't think I'd be able to flag another cab down to figure out what the name of the cab was. I also didn't want to miss the cruise. In retrospect though, I would have forfeited the $30 it cost to get my ticket to chase down that cab to get my $700 camera back. If only someone had suggested it to me because my brain was so congested at the time. Damn....I didn't even use the camera yet in Toronto. On the up side, I did win a $100 textbook that I intended to buy for my anatomy course. So I've had a few ups and downs since being here but it will hopefully make me stronger, or just an angry little asian girl like my sis.