Christmas Catching Up

First of all, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! :-D

Okay, I realize I haven't done this in... quite a while. The exams were... overwhelming, to say the very least. You've all see that cartoon where a character suddenly gets buried under a mountain of snow? That was me, at exam time - blinking madly, looking dazed, and listening to the chirping of imaginary songbirds as they circled my head. Yes, the exams weren't great - and it didn't exactly help that i had 3 exams in 3 days, which shot my concentration to hell for my last, and WORST, exam. On top of that, I managed to catch a cold! muchos argh!!!

Anyway, that's all over and done with, thankfully. I greeted my meagre 2-week holiday with the sort of joy usually reserved for wedding days and other such momentous occasions: "Oh, Joy, Rapture and Bliss! The freedom to watch television again at last, to catch up on my manga and anime reading!" I said as much to Steph, on our post-exam shopping trip! And then I realized - there are no new tv show episodes for the last 2 weeks of January, the Kakashi Gaiden on Naruto ain't all that great, and Bleach manga and anime episodes come few and far between. So yeah, I've spent a whole week doing absolutely nothing, and y'know what, it's been fun. :-D

The family and I went for midnight mass last night - un-fortunately, we thought it started at 11:30, and so got there nice and early at 10:45 - except it started at midnight. Me sitting with nothing to do for more than an hour? Baaad things happen. I mean, one can only critique the clothes of your fellow congregation members for so long, right? And before you start telling me I should be less critical of people's dress choice, remember - there is NO excuse for wearing a tan suit with a blue shirt and a red tie - none whatsoever. To make matters worse, the suit wasn't even well tailored! Anyway, one can only mentally pick apart outfits for so long; as time wore on, I began to contemplate hurling various pieces of jewellery at random people: "Wouldn't it be fun to nail that random guy with this chunky ring?" But then I remembered - my aim sucks! Attempts at recruiting family members into my zany throw-stuff-at-people scheme failed, so the good people of my parish remain uninjured and unharassed for now. :-D

Theoretical Question: How exactly do you go about breaking off a friendship? Or maybe an acquaintance? I mean, suppose you find that you and person X are completely incompatible - but this is someone whom you see almost every day, so you can't just go out of your way to avoid her/him - what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to say, "My God, you're really f***ing annoying, and my life would be so much happier if I didn't have to put up with your idiotic bullshit!!" How do you say all that, except polite, like? All this is strictly theoretical, mind - this could be a useful piece of information to have, right? ;-)

Shameless Plug Time! Go read h3lios' blog, the link is on the right. h3lios is a friend of my esteemed brother, who spends way too much time annoying me on msn (juuust kidding! :-P) Now he's got a webpage, who knows what'll happen?

Off for now. Next update whenever. Or whenever i'm sufficiently bugged about updating. :-D

Take care all! Bye!

PS - Best wishes for a happy new year!

Mid-Semester Crisis

Now Playing: To The Roof - by John Powell - from The Bourne Supremacy OST

I *HATE* this part of the semester - mostly because this is when I run out of steam, start phoning it in, skipping class - all of which results in me mucking up my exams. Try as I might, I'm too apathetic/lethargic to care. argh.

And we're fresh out of the sugar-high-inducing, heart-attack-causing chocolate cheesecake, so now what have I got to look forward to? :D

Yesterday was the Biome Pubnight thing - didn't stay very long, but it was nice to see all those people in the flesh! In attendance were Aravind, Chris, Derek, Nina, ZMP, Yonny, Shankar, Ali, Olly and Steff (among others). We had way too much fun simply taking silly pictures - which (hopefully) will never see the light of day. *crossed fingers*

Who else watches Lost? I'm one of that rare breed of U of T students who actually watches television. The rest of the lot are too busy studying. Such dedication on me part, wot? Anywho, I really like Lost now - and not just cause of the hot guys - the ideas are pretty good too. I think all JJ Abrams shows have those two factors going for them - hot guys and good scriptwriting. Recall the second season of Alias - best season EVER, episodewise, and there were THREE hot guys as regular cast members (be still, my beating heart!) - and then Will had to go leave. feh.

Gah - friday afternoon scatterbrain syndrome is the worst. I wonder if there are actually people in the world who get work done on Friday? I mean, I can't. Not if I've come through a five day work-week. I can get cracking on the Saturday morning, but friday, i'm as useless as can be. Which is why I'm here doing this, after all, instead of so-called "productive work".

PJ TIME!

(not jammies, PJ = poor joke - my specialty, don't ye know?)

___________________________________________

The owner of the Wilson Nails factory calls up his ad agency and tells them to make a commercial showing off his nails. The ad exec says "no problem," and that the commercial will air that night at 8 p.m. So Mr. Wilson turns on his TV at 8 p.m. and his commercial starts.

It looks like this: Two Romans come out carrying spears and walk up to a cross with Jesus hanging on it. The camera focus on his hands and the >head of the nail, which clearly has "Wilson" written on it. Mr. Wilson goes completely crazy, calls up his ad exec and tells him to get rid of that commercial before the Catholic Church sues him.

The ad exec says okay, and that he will make another commercial the following night at 8 p.m. At 8 p.m. the next day, Mr. Wilson turns on the tube and his commercial starts. This time, two Romans come out carrying spears and approach the cross, but Jesus is not on it -- we can see him running away in the background. One Roman guard says to the other, "I told you we should have used Wilson Nails."

___________________________________________
(implausible - but still funny, right? right? hello?)

Finally - thanks to all who wished me on my birthday (you know who you are!) - you made my day! So a big e-hug to all of you! :D

Birthday!

Ah, been ages. Midterm Hell is finally over, and so I can post once more!!! :D

So, we went out to celebrate my birthday last Friday! Well, mine AND Linda's, actually - Linda's birthday was last, last Sunday, and mine is this Saturday, so we thought we'd go out to celebrate both at the same time! So Steph, Linda, Mimi and I went shopping at Eaton's. I finally got to go to H&M!!! I love their coats, by the way! I was gushing over every single one in the store! Anyway, I ended up buying a brown suede skirt, with these ruffles :D - it's kinda cute. Linda was eyeing this yellow jacket, but then didn't buy it. :( We then wandered around Eaton's for a bit more, looking at the stores, and then we went to Spring Rolls for Thai food!

Katie joined us for dinner - she'd have been there earlier, but she had the Physiology miderm this Monday, so she stayed in to study. Anyway, dinner was wonderful - the food was good (and swanky!), the company was great, and the conversation interesting. We did manage to prove that I can't tell a joke without breaking into a giggle-fit - great day for science, wot? AND Mimi got me the second Inuyasha movie! The animation is sooo crisp; i'm never going to be able to watch an episode of the regular TV show normally.

Had to present a paper for my Developmental Biology class - despite my TOTAL fear of public speaking, managed to get through it without embarrassing myself more than usual! Woohoo!

What else? Re- the US election - i'm not even going to bother commenting. really. i've already ranted IRL more than is good for me.

Bleh. And now, I have two weeks of relatively free time! POWER TO THE SLACKERS!

random music note before I leave - get the Samurai Champloo OSTs. All four of them. they are THAT good.

ciao!

Indian? Canadian? Thai?

No, we're not talking food, it's just one more random quiz...

You're Thailand!

Calmer and more staunchly independent than almost all those around you,
you have a long history of rising above adversity. Recent adversity has led to questions
about your sexual promiscuity and the threat of disease, but you still manage to attract a
number of tourists and admirers. And despite any setbacks, you can really cook a good
meal whenever it's called for. Good enough to make people cry.
Take the Country
Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Sexual Promiscuity? Cooking skills? threat of DISEASE? they've got it wrong, i tells you!

more substantial posts later. genetics is evil.

BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP!!!

or not. tee-hee!

Sharon was a Sneaky Greek God in a past life. http://quizme.stvlive.com/pastlife/quiz.php

Sharon spins tunes as DJ Crazy God http://quizme.stvlive.com/djname/quiz.php

Sneaky, crazy and divine? Sounds like me alright! :D And now, back to the grindstone. *sob*

c'est fini, le MCAT!!!

The title says it ALL, amigos. The MCAT is done with, and my score was better than I could have ever expected, so I have that small happiness to keep me warm as the days grow inexorably colder.

I am totally saddened though, by the blog's sudden drop in readership. It went from, like, 5 people, to 1 ( Hem!) Of course, this was probably materially affected by the fact that I only post around once a month. *sheepish grin* In any case, I'm not sure that I'm doing this blog for the feedback - though comments are always appreciated - it's more a venting space for me. Of course, by that logic, if you look at the long gaps between posts - i must be a horribly repressed person (and I am, actually!) I've been told by people that my blog should have more of the "what-i-did-today" stuff - but, you know, I can't do that. The details of my life are petty and mundane - and I've always felt that day-to-day routines are almost interchangeable, while it is one's thoughts, rants, weird mental processes that make one unique. So that's what I try (emphasis on try) to bring out in my blog. Me, as I tend to sound in my own head, weird dialogue and all. I'm not for disclosing everything that goes on in my head, though - joys, addictions, dislikes, fears, insecurities - (though there are plenty of those to go around) - I don't tell anyone about those - but I will give you too much of my insane opinions.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE BOOK SALE! (How's that for an abrupt change of topic? :D)

Had to wait 10 minutes to get in, but was cheered by the fact that, earlier, the wait time was around 30 minutes (eep!). I was totally spoilt for choice - I mean, two HALLS full of books!!! c'mon!!! total kid-in-a-candy-store syndrome. anyway, here's a list of books i bought - for only $20, too! :D

• To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee - book you HAVE to own. If you haven't read it, go buy/ obtain a copy NOW.
• Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - book that should make you look intellectual just sitting on your bookshelf (teehee!)
• Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - Repressed English People. Fuuun. :D
• The Hippopotamus - Stephen Fry - I (heart) Stephen Fry. The man was Jeeves, for crying out loud!!! :D I've read ALL of his books, and the man is a joy to read. Just funny, and... did i mention funny? I'd recommend "Moab is my washpot" to start with, it's his autobiography.
• The Fourth Man - a book about the Philby, Burgess, Blunt and Maclean scandal - they were Soviet spies - and i think they were the inspiration for John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which was made into an awesome BBC miniseries in the '80's with Alec Guiness as George Smiley.
• The Seven Pillars of Wisdom - TE Lawrence - yup. THE T.E. Lawrence - as in Lawrence of Arabia. All I know of the guy is what I learnt from the movie (Peter O'Toole was gorgeous when he was younger!) and from a National Geographic profile. Hopefully it should be an interesting read.
• The Titus Novels - Mervyn Peake - you may know these novels better as the Gormenghast novels - they're supposed to be landmarks of fantasy literature, and I watched a A&E adaptation of the first two that was pretty entertaining (and yet, weirdly disquieting) - so for $1 (i kid you not!) it seemed a steal.
• Daily Life in Ancient Rome - Florence Dupont - course-related reading, but entertaining all the same. Apparently Pompey (he whose head was presented to Caesar by Ptolemy) was quite the romantic. Whodathunkit?

I plan to go back on Tuesday - last year, they slashed the prices by half on the last day *evil grin* I plan to pick up some poetry - maybe a collected Edna St Vincent Millay, if I can find one.

After I left the booksale, I ran into Purva and Sabina, and prattled on without remembering it was P's birthday. *sad face* Of course, now I'm going to have bad birthday karma. Weird to think in less than a month I will be twenty - that feels so OLD! I mean, TWENTY!!! GAH!

"We interrupt your regular programming to bring you a spazzfit by the author. (Insert unintelligible noices here) We now return you to the marginally more coherent ramblings of the author when not gibbering insanely."

blahhhh... :D

what else, what else? I'm learning to play Russian Poker! As with all card games though, my luck is abysmal - though it may have less to do with luck and more to do with me being stuuupid. If my life was a seventies hindi movie, this would be the part where my police officer father berated me for wasting my life playing cards - lucky for me, my Dad's an accountant, eh? :D

think that's it for now. I leave you now with one of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite episodes of one of my favourite anime - it's a clip from Session 5 - "Ballad of Fallen Angels" and the anime is (for those of you philistines who don't yet know :P) Cowboy Bebop. Enjoy!

Lefties and Left-wingers

Mon pauvre abandoned blog! Fear not, I have not forsaken thee! *huggles*

What have I been doing (or not doing, in some cases) in these last 20-something days? Here's a sampler -

• went out for Japanese food, ate it with chopsticks without having a serious accident/injuring the other diners (for me, this is progress, so don't laugh!)
• bought a BUNCH of posters from the latest Imaginus sale - go gawk at them below.
• bravely resisted the urge to go on mad shopping urges - again, this is progress for me.

With all this talk about progress, I must seriously be on the road to nirvana or something, wot? :D

What I need in my life at the moment - is passion! No, get your mind out of the gutters (and stop reading period bodice-rippers) - what I mean, is that i need to find something I really care about. I'm at the point in my life where I need to seriously figure out what it is I want to do - and nothing at all interests me. To make matters worse, the professors I see every day of the week clearly love what they do. When my classics professors says he'd give a limb to sit in on a conversation between Caesar and Cicero, I believe him. The problem is - there's nothing I care about enough to break a nail over - let alone a limb. So how does the queen of "meh"-"who cares" find something she cares about enough to spend the rest of her life doing it?

Feedback on this issue would be much appreciated - serious stuff though. What can y'all see me doing?

Apparently they had a lecture/speech thing at St Mike's this past week (read about it at thevarsity.ca) , where the speaker (Stephanie Gray) argued that abortion was an act of genocide against the unborn - and I had had had to rant about it - so where better to do it than here?

Is the woman insane? Abortion is not some giant conspiracy by women against the massive ranks of the unborn! Granted - casual abortion isn't something i'd endorse, but that doesn't mean you should deny a woman's right to choose! The speaker in question didn't even think abortion was permissible in cases of rape! Fine, not everyone thinks abortion is right - I totally understand that. But even worse, she thinks birth control devices are acts of killing!In my opinion, her views on abortion aren't the subversive ones - it's her views on birth control. I mean, this is denying women the right to take steps to prevent a pregnancy which may be unwanted/inopportune! *grinds teeth*

Here endeth the rant - and here are the posters I'd bought at the sale. Let me know what you think!

Alright, the Star Wars one is really Geeky, but then I am an uber-geek, so it's to be expected - right?

Walking Wounded.

I'd forgotten what a five-day work week felt like! It's only Wednesday, and I'm already a zombie, so if you see a member of the living dead on campus, hold off on the exorcisms (or whatever rituals dispel zombies) - it's only me.

I'm planning to overcome my inertia and finally use the U of T athletic centre tomorrow; hopefully, this'll become a permanent routine.

Am I the only person who smiles when they're reading a funny book? I mean, the looks I get on the subway are not to be believed; "Young lady, are you perhaps mentally unstable? " I defy ANYONE to read Pratchett and keep a straight face.

hrm... what else? My courses seem pretty okay; ZOO328 is a highlight. It's a relatively small class (only 60 people), which, in and of itself, is a bit surreal: every now and then during class, I look around and think, "where are the other 1000 people???" Damn you, U of T, for making me expect gargantuan class sizes! Where was I? Ah, yes, Z00328. The course (Developmental Biology) is interesting, the prof has a cool accent (German) and the labs are interesting, and more importantly, aren't graded. Frog Embryo dissection, anyone?

ANT349 (Globalization & Underdevelopment) is interesting, albeit a bit on the theoretical side. I think the focus with the upper year humanities is not so much on the facts, but rather on the interpretation. With a history course, forexample, the emphasis tends to be on histereography (spelling?) and discourse (if you can explain that concept to me, i'll owe you forever!). Still, the material, as I've said, is interesting, and I do need to hone my research/critical writing skills.

CLA233 (Intro to Roman Culture) is great so far (don't want to jinx it!); the prof is funny and engaging, and the subject matter is engrossing. The prof (M Dewar) has a brit accent, but I think he's Scottish, cause he tends to roll some of his r's in (what I assume is) a Scottish way. Am I an actual accent expert? Heck no. I just watched My Fair Lady far too many times during my formative years, and that opening scene where Prof (again with the professor!) Henry Higgins deduces the origins of members of the crowds from their accents has always impressed me. hmm. but the course? does require a bit of reading (Catullus, anyone?) and a lot of latin/roman terminology; something tells me i'll have confused my fair share of consuls/praetors/aediles/quaestors before the term is done.

MGY377 and HMB321 haven't impressed me that favourably yet, probably cause the material is a bit harder (bateriology and genetics respectively); hopefully, given a bit of time, I'll warm to the subject matter.

Think that's it for now; oooh, before I forget, does anyone want a Gmail invite? It appears I have six (count 'em, six!) available. Leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

Another thing - do I really sound like I'm five years old? Cause I do on my voicemail, and it's very disheartening. :( The dissonance between what I look like (giantess) and what I sound like (squeaky) is really kinda odd, dontcha think? That's what happens when you get the shallow end of the family gene pool. :D

More rants on the unfairness of my genetic allotment to come. Don't change the channel!

Sharon's Personal Planet

School's back! I really do feel cheated out of my hols, considering that I had class 4 days a week for the evil effin' mcat for most of the four months. However, there's nothing to do now, but buckle down and get back to the grind. As usual, it's my elective course (Intro to Roman Culture) that seems the most interesting - we opened with an anecdote wherein Seneca the younger extols the braveness of a German captive who, rather than face his death in the amphitheatre, killed himself by choking on a sponge used in public lavatories to wipe one's rear. Our professor noted that ancient sources often take a lot of stuff for granted, thereby leaving important questions unanswered, such as - "Was the sponge clean or not?"

Everyone's had blog entries commemorating the end of summer, and so I feel I ought to follow suite - but I did ABSOLUTELY nothing this summer, so sorry, y'all get NOTHING. I became more geeky, read voraciously, slept muchly, and ate even more. Thus ends the story of the summer of '04.

I should REALLY learn not to get into a manga before it's concluded. The latest one is Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys, which has a bit of an X-files/conspiracy theory vibe that I loved. However, don't rush off to MangaScreener to download it just yet, since the series isn't completed in Japan, and volume 17 won't even be released there till October 30th! *argh* So here I am, reading and REreading volumes 1-16 to the point of memorization. The premise of the series is intriguing - in the 70's a group of friends devised a plan whereby they would defeat bad guys; twenty years later, they notice that someone IS trying to take over the world using the plan they thought the bad guys would use in their childhood. No one is what they seem, no one stays dead for long, and nothing can be taken for granted; sound interesting yet?

Oh, and on Inuyasha - Kagura died. It was very sniffle-inducing, while that whole arc lasted. :(

I tried my hand in the kitchen tonight, and managed to make a presentable Dal!!! And I managed to fry fish (shush, Hem!) Unfortunately, my family is less appreciative of my culinary endeavours than they might be:

Me: Don't feel shy about congratulating me on my latest culinary success!!!

Family: The rice is crunchy.

Me: There's something wrong with that?

Family: O.O

Me: huh?

Family: Maybe we dropped her on the head once too often when she was a kid.

Me: sorry, I didn't catch that?

Family: so, who wants take-out?

I was re-reading Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road. Technically, she's not really the author, rather a coauthor and editor. It's a collection of the correspondence between her and a a London bookstore, Marks and Co., which was at 84 Charing Cross Road, London. It's a fascinating read, really - the letters start in 1949 and continue until 1969, when Frank Doel, her chief correspondent at the store passed away. Hanff was a screenwriter, an New Yorker, and an anglophile (a trait i seem to share) and she liked old english books, preferably used. It's interesting to see the tone of the letters change from businesslike to friendly, and the world they describe is oddly remote, for all that it was only half a century ago. The writing is wonderful too; I'd like nothing better than to be able to express myself with that sort of charm and wit. Letter-writing is a lost art though; we are incapable of expressing ourselves without scads of smileys and acronyms.

think i've said all i wanted to say this time; apologies for the delay - writer's block is not limited to authors who actually possess writing talent. :D ta!

Happy Onam!

It's been a while!

Since the MCAT (Malevolent Cruel Annoying Test), I've gone into total seclusion and become a hermit. It's gotten to the point where my parents are trying (to no avail) to get me out of the house.

Mum: It's such a nice day out, why don't you take a walk?
Me: *Chewbacca yell*
Mum: *stare*
Me: *more Chewbacca yelling*
Mum: You were DEFINITELY switched at the hospital.
Me: *grunt* *snort*
Mum: This is all your father's fault for letting you watch those movies.
Me: Star Wars is a CLASSIC!
Mum: pfft.

... and so on and so forth. :D

The epic battle between Haloscan and Blogger-Commenting was won, with very little actual blood shed, by Blogger. My Haloscan account has been consigned to the larger wastes of cyberspace, so people will have to make do with the Blogger comments.

And now for the meat and potatoes of today's post - Happy Onam!!! Onam is the main cultural festival of Kerala, the state in India where I'm from. The story goes that once upon a time, there was a noble King who was banished (I forget the story of how exactly, but banished he was) and was granted the boon that every year he could come back and visit his subjects and see how they were doing. So every year, Malayalees (that means people from Kerala, or people who speak Malayalam) dress up and cook their best food so that the King sees that they are doing well.

The main Onam meal is called the Onam Sadya, and it is a feast! There are around 10 curries, and you're supposed to finish as much food as you can, because to waste food on Onam is inauspicious. It's an entirely vegetarian affair, and though I'm not all that fond of Malayalee vegetarian food, my Mum's an awesome enough cook for it not to matter. So yeah, right now I'm absolutely full, moving from where I currently sit is not a viable option, so I thought I may as well share the occasion with everyone else. We didn't get dressed up this year though; there is a special outfit for women for Onam - it's a two piece Sari called a Set Munde, but I haven't worn one in years.

On a side note, Kerala is being marketed to tourists as "God's Own Country"! Don't get me wrong, it's a BEAUTIFUL place, lush and green and wunderbar and all that, but it's just a bit odd to think that I come from God's Own Country by way of Bombay. :D

I saw Hero, this chinese movie directed by Zhang Yimou, starring Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi; totally cool, but I think I prefer the physicality of films like Kill Bill (ie - you stab people, they actually bleed) to the ethereal-ness of this one. This is more of an intellectual film than an action one, IMO, and I'm about as intellectual as Homer Simpson, so all the Rashomon-esque flashbacks are wasted on me.

And now, I'm off!

Ciao!

Of Cute Guys and Commenting.

To Haloscan or Not To Haloscan, that is indeed the question. What is Haloscan, you ask? Well, if you visit Hem's Blog (the link for Ennui on the right) and comment on any of her posts, you'll notice that the comments show up in a nifty pop-up window that allows the use of smileys. So why don't you get a Haloscan account, you ask? Well, if I do shift to a Haloscan account, I lose all my existing comments, and while there aren't that many of them (hint, hint!), I'd still be sorry to lose 'em.

So the MCAT was this Saturday; after it was done, I stumbled towards Queen's Park station, mulling over the absurdity of some of the questions they seemed to think could gauge a person's aptitude to practice Medicine. With MCAT-induced toxicity swirling through my veins, I got on the subway and was confronted with that most annoying of modern-day specimens - the insouciant teenager. This particular female had decided that in light of the rush hour madness (it was just past five at the time) the best course of action would be for her to put her feet up and occupy THREE seats. Too tired to let myself get annoyed, I walked away to the other side of the compartment, and before I knew it, I was at St George.

At St George, I had to change trains, but with my wunderbar luck, I missed the train, and so had to wait another ten minutes on the platform, where I was faced with a wide cross-section of the diversity that makes the TTC suuuch a pleasure to ride. There was Herr NosePicker, who was engrossed in conducting an excavation into the depths of his nasal cavity; Monsieur CrazyMan, who put his hands over his ears everytime a train passed by on the other line (it's loud, but nowhere near that loud!); and finally Mrs WailingBaby, who obviously thought the addition of her darling infant's caterwauling to the cacophony that is a TTC platform at around half past five made the whole thing bearable. Why didn't I move? Cause that's where I usually wait for easy access to escalators at my destination. Am I normally this cranky? No, this was stress-induced (I hope!).

I was so close, Mesdames et Messieurs, to becoming That-Crazy-Lady-On-The-Subway-Who-Screams-At-Random-People, but THEN - salvation arrived, and he wore a suit. An expensively tailored suit of the sort you usually see only in advertisements for Italian Suit Commercials, and a haircut that cost more that some people make in a week, and a face that started En Vogue's "Whatta Man" playing in my head. You know, the song that goes, "whatta man, whatta man, what a mighty good man... yes he is!" As music doth soothe the savage beast, the sight of the Cute Guy did soothe the Cranky Sharon. And so Sharon did alight on the Subway that would take her towards her home, without verbally abusing her fellow TTC'ers, as much as they did deserve it. And she saw the Cute Guy nevermore.

Tragic, innit? :grin:

Think that's about it for today; I shall leave y'all with a Videogame quiz this time. Whoa - Anime, Harry Potter, and Video Games? Do I run the gamut of geekiness or what? :D

theOtaku.com: What Metal Gear Solid Character Are You?

The Sorting Hat says...

be sorted @ nimbo.net

With my abysmal luck though, in the real thing, I'd probably be a Hufflepuff. *shudder*

Not really in the mood to sit down and write... maybe later?

Azumanga and I

theOtaku.com: What Azumanga Daioh Character Are You

... well, they're right about the sleeping part - and the hyper part - but hopefully not the grades part.

Go See!

Post MCAT Depression

The MCAT is over. enough said.

Thought I'd update the blog atleast, though my mind's too blank to really construct and process prose at the moment.

Anyway, shoutout to Arvind , my friend from Oz - cricket maniac, arsenal supporter, "suave fella" (in his own words) and all around good guy. Dude's Too Cool for a blog, so for now I shall have to relay his words of wisdom to an unenlightened world, starting with:

" You drink Iced Tea, I'll drink Bourbon!"

Words to live by, wot?

:P

-bye!

Tired now.

We've been painting the kitchen (a very light shade of blue) and that took up my entire weekend; well, that and the mock MCAT on Saturday. AAMC Practice Test 6R had a ridiculously difficult orgo section - cue me making insane guesses that happily paid off. Now my luck just has to hold for another week, and then I'll be done!

With painting, it's not the actual painting that's time-consuming or exhausting, it's the prep work - removing the furniture, taping down the edges, and all that rot. I don't think we plan on doing any more interior decorating work till next summer now - that should give us enough time to recuperate! :D

Ralph Fiennes is Voldemort! You know, the casting of the Harry Potter movies is this giant Hostage Situation - all these respected British Actors (note the capitalization) taking trivial parts because their children/grandchildren/miscellaneous minor relatives want them to do it. "Sweetheart, Mommy/Daddy is a respected Thespian, to play the role of So-and-so would be beneath my dignity! No, sweetheart, stop yelling! Fine, I'll do it already!" I mean, Dame Maggie Smith had approximately 10 lines in Prisoner of Azkaban, Rickman was criminally underused, and Gambon was hardly there. IMO, Alfonso Cuaron sacrificed too much plot for the sake of brevity. Granted, the first two movies were a bit draggy, but that doesn't mean you should do away with necessary exposition!!!

To clarify, though, I am a Potter fan - i read Book 5 in this mad rush the day of a summer school final exam. Me: "Must go study... cannot put book down... dilemma! dilemma! may as well read Potter in the meantime!" Mind you, Book 5 could have done with some serious trimming; JK Rowling should definitely find an editor capable of saying, "This has to go, that can stay, this has to be redone." But then, not many people can stand up to multimillionaire authoresses, i suppose.

And now to make some introductions: Hemlyn, aka Ennui, (see the link on the right?) has a blog that is much more interesting, as well as better established than mine, so go read it! That's an order! :D Hem and I have know each other for.. *counts on fingers*... over seven years now! That long??? I feel so old now. The last member of our fuliguline trinity has not put up a blog yet (*nudge* *hint*, Sangee!) so for now, you'll have to stick to the two of us.

And now, I will blatantly copy Hem's idea of putting song lyrics in her blog, and get away with it by calling it an homage! Don't worry, it's a one-time thing.

Here is "Spinning" by Zero 7 (yes, them again!) - enjoy!

Was it loneliness that brought you here
Broken and weak
Was it tiredness that made you sleep
Have you lost your will to speak
Was the earth spinning round
Were you falling through the ground
As the world came tumbling down
You prayed to God what have we done

Free me from these chains
I need to change my way
Heal these broken wings
I need to fly far away, far away, far away

Was it emptiness that made you weep
No more secrets to keep
Was it bitterness that gave you time
To forgive your sins
Was the earth spinning round
Were you falling through the ground
As the world came tumbling down
You prayed to God what have we done

Free me from these chains
I need to change my way
Heal these broken wings
I need to fly far away

Free me from these thoughts
long forgotten down below
Take these angel's words
give them life to carry on, carry on, carry on
Free me from these chains...

I have no idea what it means; symbolism/metaphor/allegory is totally wasted on me, but the song is absolutely lovely. Downbeat is so my new favourite genre! Zero 7, Tosca, Air - watch me name-drop with ease! :eyeroll:

My musical tastes are rather bipolar though -I alternate Franz Ferdinand (garage-ey rock) with Zero 7 (downbeat lounge) with Do As Infinity (J-pop, don't ask!). Atleast it's a broad spectrum, right?

Later.

Not Shigure? No way!

You're Ayame!


Which Fruits Basket Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Fruits Basket is one of my favourite anime, so I had to take this quiz. I'm surprised I'm not Shigure though, cause people have actually commented on the resemblance - i procrastinate, chatter inanely, laugh randomly, and generally loaf around the house doing nothing. Me and my brother do have an Ayame-Yuki dynamic though; I'm insane, he's grounded, and all that.

Hm... i foresee a Quizilla mania in my near future. Go take the quiz in the meantime!

It was bound to happen - the TTC rant!

Lookee! The blog has links now! That only took me an hour to get formatted correctly! As you can imagine, I know nothing about http, so this was entirely trial-and-error. I think the whole page looks a bit neater and more accessible now.

And now for the meat of today's blog - THE TTC RANT! For those of you unfamiliar with the paragon of Urban Sprawl that is Toronto, TTC stands for Toronto Transit Corporation. This is the body responsible for running/maintaining the vast network of streetcars, subway cars and buses that moves commuters across the city. As any of those benighted commuters will tell you, however, the system hardly runs smoothly; late buses, surly drivers, not to mention your fellow passengers all make sure your ride is not pleasant.

• It's bad enough the buses on my street run every twenty minutes - and even worse that the buses are often late. The situation is bearable in the summer, but in wintertime? Waiting for upwards of 20 minutes in subzero weather at Station X for my bus to come along is practically a regular feature of my winter commute! And people wonder why my attendance record is so spotty.



• So you've got to take two buses to get to your destination, and the second one only runs every twenty minutes. As you get off the first bus, you notice that the second bus you need to take is waiting at the bus-stop on the other side of the street. You wave madly to the driver, hoping against hope that he'll see you and hold the bus, cause God knows you've been late for school too many times this month. The driver sees you. You're quite a sight - after all, the only people who generally wave the way you're waving right now are shipwreck survivors who've been wrecked on an uninhabited island for months and who've sighted a ship on the far horizon. The driver sees you, gesticulating mess that you are. The two of you make eye contact. You assume this means he understands the situation, and empathizes. You assume wrong. As you dash madly across the street, dodging errant cyclists and left-turning traffic, the driver calmly, dispassionately drives away, leaving you red-faced with both embarrassment and anger.



• My Fellow Commuters: You may be under the impression that it is companiable of you to keep people company on the subway. It may be your opinion that sitting immediately next to someone, when there are plenty of other spaces on the bus, makes that someone feel special. Well, you thought wrong! I can go without the immeasurable joy of elbows digging into my side, and I prefer my personal space uninvaded, thanks a lot. Next time you get into a TTC vehicle, and you see a tall, frazzled looking girl with an empty seat next to her - look around, and see if you can't find someplace emptier to sit. Your life, and karma, will be the better for it, i swear.

Wow, i really needed to get that out of my system, huh?

On to other, less stressful topics. Watched Gayab over the weekend, and have reached the conclusion that Tushar Kapoor lacks any of the following - good looks, acting ability, charisma. All the muscles in the world (and the guy appears to be pretty built!) can't help him now.

Masala! Mehndi! Masti! is going on at the Harbourfront Centre from August 4th to the 8th. Last year, I only went on the last day and missed some of the good stuff, so this year, I'm planning on going twice! If anyone wants to go this Friday, let me know, and we'll meet up. C'mon, you'll get delicious Indian food!

and now I'm off. ranting really takes it out of you! Good thing we have Chapman's Peach Frozen Yoghurt sitting in the fridge, na?

What Color is Your Brain?
brought to you by Quizilla

In Praise of Solitude

Now Playing: "Let Go" by Frou Frou.

I've just discovered the music of Zero 7, and I love it. It's slow, jazzy, and wonderfully mellow; a lower-key version of some of Yoko Kanno's music from Cowboy Bebop. Music to chill too, y'know? Sublime, melt-into-the-mood music.

I'd planned to go see the Caribana parade yesterday, but the weather in the morning was forboding enough that I didn't feel like standing there in the rain, and so I didn't go, in the end. Went shopping at Scarborough Town Centre instead! Much endorphins (and clothes) for me!

Started reading the Kenshin manga the other day, and i really think Kenshin as Battousai looks a lot more menacing in the manga. They leave his eyes unshaded, which gives him this flat, intimidating, you're-already-dead-and-i'm-not-going-to-blink-while-i-kill-you look. I never really got into the anime - too much rurouni, too little hitokiri. (On an unrelated topic - why, oh why, is Kenshin voiced by a girl?) The manga looks to be the same way, but I'm gonna stick with it for a bit, see if I like it better. When I left off yesterday, Sano had just joined the group, which is where I stopped watching the anime. To hear some of you talk, Kenshin is the greatest thing since grilled cheese sandwiches, but I'm not convinced yet. :D

In praise of solitude - I don't realize why everyone my age is so insistent on finding someone. IMO, it's soothing just to be alone, but then, maybe I'm an aberration. I mean, the very concept of marriage is scary to me. Can you imagine spending the rest of your life with one single person? Waking up to the same face, day after day after neverending day? *brrr* There's no point in my complaining about not finding a guy, cause even if I did, I probably couldn't commit. Which is not to say I'd mind having a guy pamper me, mind you. Mocha lattes are always welcome! :D

and now i'm off. noticed the frequent updates? also notice the lack of comments. no comments get me depressed; blogging sans comments is like talking to a wall. I talk, you talk, that's what's termed a conversation in most circles, yeah?

ciao!

The Many Faces Of Bartleby

• disillusioned angel from Kevin Smith's "Dogma."
• friendly rat creature from Jeff Smith's graphic novel "Bone," which I'd recommend to anyone: Lord of the Rings with the Funny left in.
• title character from Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener."
• www.bartleby.com

Which one did you hear of first? Till a week ago, the only Bartleby I'd heard of was the Ben Affleck version. Dogma is one of my absolute favourite movies, and Kevin Smith one of my favourite directors. Personally, I think he's a better screenwriter than a director, having a deft gift for dialogue and comedic timings. He's brought us Jay&SilentBob (and their alter egos Bluntman and Chronic), Buddy!Christ, Hooper X, and frankly, in my opinion, the entire View Askewniverse rocks. So a big fat round of applause for Kevin Smith. Woo!

Might go check out Caribana tomorrow, and maybe see The Village as well. Thank God for the lack of mock MCAT's tomorrow!

- bye!

A Touch of Pink

went to see The Notebook yesterday, but we were late, so we decided to watch A Touch of Pink instead. It's about this South Asian Muslim guy, brought up in Canada, living in London with his English boyfriend. Alim, our mopey hero, played by Jimi Mistry (of East is East and The Guru fame) has a rather peculiar Guardian Angel - the spirit of Cary Grant, played wonderfully by Kyle McLachlan, who has Grant's speech patterns down pat, even as he says lines like, "there you are, my little samosa!" All is well until Alim's mother, Nuru, comes to visit, and Alim rushes back into the Closet and introdules the boyfriend as the roomie. Hilarity ensues.

My favourite line of the movie - Nuru makes eggs for her son, and the boyfriend, Giles, thinks the eggs are for everyone and digs in. Nuru says, "You people think everything belongs to you - eggs, India, Africa..." and the audience explodes. figuratively.

All in all, a fun movie - if a bit racy in parts. S Asian people might get more of the humour than others, but you won't know till you try, right?

Go read the poetry of Edna St Vincent Millay - who wrote, among other things, Renascence and First Fig. Here's the opening verse from The Philosopher:

"And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?"

With such a fondness for Angst (note the capitalization!), it's no wonder I'm a Buffy/Angel fan. :D

-later, then!

Cricket!

Asia Cup 2004 - India beats Sri Lanka by a whopping 4 runs (count, em, FOUR!) to make it to the finals. I know I shouldn't complain, but 4? If Jayasuriya hadn't gone and gotten himself caught off a Sehwag delivery, Sri Lanka'd have won easy as pie.

http://cricinfo.com has the score and uber-detailed commentary - every delivery detailed! Go check it out.

Might go watch weepie "The Notebook" tonight, so am wearing my extra-snarky armour along with the lance of sarcasm. extreme situations call for extreme measures, wot? :D

It's true what they say about the internet changing the way we speak - someone said something stupid to me, and this is what I nearly said out loud, "Oh, eyeroll!" Next thing you know, I'll be saying "smileyface" instead of, you know, actually smiling!

And now to end with my STUPID JOKE OF THE DAY!

A Buddhist goes up to a hotdog vendor and says, "Make me one with everything!"

(no? was I the only person to find this funny? )

-Cheerio!

MCAT Madness and other assorted Monsters

I really must learn to post more than once a year...

The MCAT, up close, is not as evil as I had thought it to be. In fact, it may very well be doable! (Waiting for the bubble to burst... and there we go!)

Who am I kidding? It's evil! Especially that horrible, rigidly structured, writing sample, that I will struggle to write, and that some MCAT examiner will cursorily glance over for 2 minutes and dismiss with a 2/6!

Why do we bother? honestly. I could have been having fun this summer, instead of dragging myself to class at 9 fricking in the ante meridian 4 days a week at the wunderbar U of T Scarborough campus, where the construction has taken out traffic lights! twice!

(end rant)

On more pleasant matters, I'd recommend reading the manga "Monster" by Naoki Urasawa. There is an anime, unlicenced and fansubbed, but i prefer the manga, though the anime has some lovely music. It's kinda the fugitive meets Eve (that episode from the x-files with the creepy children who were the product of a secret Government breeding experiment) - except Dr Kimble is Japanese, the children are Czeck, and the whole thing is set in Germany. Sounds fun, no?

must now attempt to restore some semblance of order to my room... bye!