Wow it’s summer… It’s 30+ degrees until Wednesday… 85ish for you Fahreinheit people out there.. The Humidex is 37C (just below 100F). Our aircon still isn’t on though. My parents say it’s still pretty cool outside.. Which actually it is. Oh how I love living by the Lake. I think I’ve mentioned this on this blog before, but when I’m driving home with my windows down (or taking the bus home with the windows open), even from just a few blocks away, you can really tell right away that you are heading towards water. The air noticably gets cooler, so yeah, that’s cool. I first noticed this 4 years ago when I was assigned to West Hill FITS. I didn’t have my license yet then so I bused every where. And yeah. West Hill is at Morningside and Lawrence. Which, according to Google Earth, is about 4 kilometers away. Anyway, once you get probably within 200-400 meters away from my house, that’s when you really start feeling the air cool down. So yeah. Horay for living by a body of water. LOL.

Anyway, good thing for my dad, that I hardly had anything to do last night, so I went through the Toronto Star website, reading the news. LOL. I found out that they were anticipating a TTC strike today. So now he’s working from home, while a bunch of people downtown are screwed over… I don’t really know how I feel about this strike. Actually it’s very poorly planned. The TTC employees are just going to alienate people because of this. On the other hand, I do support their cause.. just not their actions. If the Union Leadership had though this through at all, the job action that they had planned before would have been mroe effective, and would not have alienated any people… except their bosses of course. Which, is the whole point…

So here’s the deal. There’s been dispute between the Union and the TTC management for some time now. The main thing is the safety of their employees, because some report came out that said that almost 70% of TTC Bus drivers have been asaulted in some way on the job… So yeah. What they did first… on like Thursday or something, was announce job action. That is – they’re not going to enforce fares if it looked like a confrontation was going to happen. Well that kind of fell apart because, well to me, that sounded ambiguous. Me and my friends thought that you could take the ttc for free (and some people were), but for the most part, people were still paying… Ok, so pretty much that was a stupid way to make a statement. People were saying that oh, yeah, but that’s the Spirit of Torontonians. Law abiding citizens no matter what. But what the heck, that’s not the point! The point is to make a statement so that TTC management will take notice… What they should have done was instructed TTC drivers to let everyone entering their buses know that they aren’t enforcing fares right now, and that it is the person’s decision to pay or not… While of course making it kind of clear that they don’t want them to pay… I wouldn’t have paid if I took the TTC, to support the drivers of course, not to get a free bus ride…

But no. They’ve gone and went on strike illegaly, and now, they’ve pissed off a few hundred thousand people. And guess who’s the bad guys now?

–

I forgot what I was doing on Friday. Most likely, nothing… Actually. Yeah, nothing. Except for about an hour or two when I went with David to buy stuff to clean my van. Me and him detailed my van on Saturday… Spent almost 5 hours on it. My dad paid him 80 bucks to do it. I’m still wondering what I’m gonna get paid for it. LOL. But anyway, that’s how I spent my Saturday morning-afternoon. In the evening, I got picked up, and a bunch of us went to watch x-men 3. It was pretty sweet. If you haven’t seen the movie, you probably should stop reading right now. Cause I CAN’T BELIEVE PATRICK STEWART DIES! Hehe. If you don’t know the character that Patrick Stewart does.. though if you actually follow the X-Men movies, I don’t know how you can’t know who… Don’t find out. Watch the movie first.
So, yeah, after the movie no one really wanted to hang out. Oh yeah, the reason for hanging out is, Dave bought the expansion for Settlers of Catan and Cities and Knights… I’ll take a picture of the board some time. I’m too lazy right now to do it. So yeah. no one wanted to hang out so we just split.

Sunday was a regular Sunday for me. Except actually, I went to the 11AM service, which I’m thankful I did. This guy, Kent, gave his testimony, he was being baptized. Anyway, it was such an amazing story of God’s grace. He used to go to Morningstar (when it was still Churchill) when he was a youth, but he ran away when he was 17. That’s when his life pretty much went out of control… He lived as a homosexual for something like 20 years, and contracted AIDS when he was 23. But he was very successful in his career, so he lived a pretty good life. Until some stuff happened and his health began to deteriorate and stuff, and he turned to drugs, got fired from work, etc… That’s when he began to consider Jesus again. It’s an amazing story… kind of like Jacob, and wrestling with God (Around Genesis 30)… Anyway, after the service, I had to drive James and some of the youth at his church to a BBQ, then I ran back to church for Orchestra rehearsal. Things are really coming together there.. I really need to practice certain spots. But I think it’ll be great next Sunday… After that, I picked up James and the youth, and dropped them off at a party, then I went home to rest for a bit before Trec… But it didn’t matter much cause no kids showed up for Trec that night… In fact, it seemed like there was hardly any people there. Aperantly cause they forgot to announce that trec was resuming that night. So me, Jerlene and Judy just sat around talking. It was pretty cool. After that, I really didn’t feel like going to the party so I just went home.

Ahh… My jaw doesn’t hurt anymore (meaning I can eat properly again), my room is clean, and I got paid today. What a wonderful combination. LOL. I’m feeling great! I’m not even dreading Eman coming over and wanting to go biking.. Hehe. I could use some exercise.

Uhm. Yesterday was a lazy day for me. I did nothing all day, except for Orchestra rehearsal yesterday evening. The songs are starting to sound really good. I’m still getting caught up on some parts… though that tends to happen when I’m playing in G-flat (6 flats). All three songs have a point somewhere that I’m playing in that key. Ghar. Crazy. But I really like it. Saved, is great… and so is the version of Days of Elijah that we’re playing. Makes me want to dance… except for the tremolos at the beginning… hehe. Then of course, there’s Mountain Get Out of My Way… The crazy one. Although actually, I only say that cause it sounds crazy, it’s actually really easy for me.. the only thing I really need to concentrate on is staying in the right bar. Now the strings… yeah I feel sorry for them.

Phew. Today’s shaping up to be another lazy day… except for Eman and biking… we’ll see what happens with that… here’s a picture…

Uhmm. Yeah I don’t know what happened to it. I think I was chewing too much… LOL Come to think of it, that *is* when it started hurting, during the party yesterday at Noreen’s… Chips, then pizza… But I dunno, it was really bad. Like. I could barely open it. I tried eating a bannana yesterday, and I could barely open my mouth enough to bite a piece of. Then, I couldn’t chew it, it hurt so much, so I kind of just, mushed the bannanas against the roof of my mouth, and swallowed. LOL. It still hurt when I woke up this morning, but not as much, and finally, now, it’s starting to feel better, that is, it only hurts when I try to open my mouth really wide.

Bleh. Yesterday, as already mentioned, I was at a party at Noreen’s… It was Victoria Day. I almost didn’t go, I was so lazy. I woke up… uh, actually I woke up at like 10AM. But I didn’t get out of bed until I ate brunch at like 11:30, and even then I went straight back to bed, and stayed there until we left for the party at like 5:30. It was fun. We had some fireworks. Some pretty good food.. etc etc. The evening was alright too (that is, when I came home..) I forget what I was doing but I get this feeling I had fun doing it. LOL. Most likely, watching tv.. But yeah, it was fun despite the painful jaw.

This morning, the college guys went to the beach again. It was really relaxing. We didn’t really explore or anything. Then we went back to Eman’s, after buying some food, then we played some Catan. I was there till about 6, when I had to go home, to meet the aircondition guy… Yeah, we needed ours fixed before it gets stupid hot. I watched some more tv… Horay Edmonton… Oh yeah, ghar. Stupid Season Finales. I hate it especially when it’s a Cliffhanger, like today’s House episode. It’s so annoying. Now I have to wait 4 months to watch what happens. Thne there was The Unit… But that wasn’t season finale yet. Oh yeah, and I mentioned in my last post that Big Love was a season finale too… but it’s not. there’s one more in the first week of June. Sweet.. Actually that’s good, cause the last episode didn’t really make sense (as a season finale that is… nothing really resolved… and there was no cliff hanger or anything like that).

Uhh what else. I haven’t practiced piano in a while. I got tired of that quick. LOL. Amazing how the first like 4 times I did it, I was able to practice for like an hour without getting bored of it. Now I can’t even bring myself to go down to the basement. Bleh. Tommorow for sure. I need to get these scales down if I want to teach piano next year…

I’ve had some weird pictures of myself taken over the years… And somehow one of these weird pictures made it to my cousin’s computer, and now he is threatening to put it on a slide show that will be shown in a wedding… Actually I sent him the picture as a joke, and now he’s insisting on putting it up. Anyway, the only way I can think of averting the embarassment is to post the pictures up myself… so here it goes. I don’t know why I’m so embarassed, the pictures are already up anyway.. they’re in my photo albums, but they are quite burried. But yeah, here they are…

LOL! Oh, this picture’s so weird. Anyway, this was uhh… sometime in 2004. I think in April or something. But yeah, it was 50’s night during my first year at Capernwray. My cabin came dressed as “greasers”. That is, we wore plain white t-shirts with the sleeves rolled up and black pants… The extra stuff, I don’t know who they’re from, but yeah, I guess I decided to put it on and snap snap, here we are. That night was great though, we had, I guess the closest you can get to a dance at Capernwray… swing dancing that is. And some party games to. It was pretty sweet…

Next embarassing picture…

I actually didn’t send this picture to my cousin, but it’s such a funny picture I had to put it up. Yeeeha, Cowboy Chris. This was in Vancouver, in October 2005… we were having a nice haloween party with some old friends from my first year at Capernwray (this was during my 2nd year in BC). It’s even funnier to know what I originally came as… the only “costume” I could think of, some gangster outfit. LOL. I had my workday bandana (not the one in the picture, this one’s black) and my “basketball” hat with the straight brim… you know what I mean… With the bandanna underneat the hat and all. Hehe.

So yeah, those are my embarrasing pictures. I’ve only recently ressurected them from my external hard drive, and I’m still looking through them, so most likely there’ll be some more pictures coming soon. It’s also barbeque and picnic season, so some pics of that’ll be coming…

Anyway, what’s happened since Thursday… Well, on friday, we went to see The Da Vinci Code… Uhm. Yeah, didn’t like it. Cause, well yeah, I typically don’t like changes made to the book, to make it fit into the movie. I mean, yeah, I understand the necessity. But meh. 20 minutes into the movie, I leaned over to Eman, and I was like: “that last 20 minutes was a day’s worth of reading for me…” LOL. Uhm. After the movie, I think we split… oh yeah, cause some of them still had some church stuff to do… That means then that I most likely just went home and napped or something. Hehe.

Saturday, we had tGif here at my house. That was cool. People started coming at around 1:30 or so… and we didn’t stop ’till about 10. Just like old times.. hehe. We played some basketball, then we threw a football around… then we just stayed outside a while… I got pushed to the ground.. err, pavement… which left a bruise on my lower back *grr, josh and isaac*, but I was able to pay it back…

I slept late last night still, even though I had to wake up early this morning, which I did. It was really cool, the service today, cause a group called the “Liberated Wailing Wall” was there, which is a group of messianic Jews who do like praise and worship, and skits and stuff. They basically took over the service. It was really cool, apperantly they came a year ago, but I missed it. So I really enjoyed it… for more information about them their website is: http://www.jewsforjesus.org/. Oh yeah, that’s their main organiztion, Jews for Jesus.

Uhmm. After the service, I went to pick up my parents and bro from their church and we had lunch at McDonalds… Then I took a nap until Josh came by. Then we hung out here for a bit, when we went to Eman’s. Then we hung out for a while until I finally came home. I watched the Season Finale of Big Love… *sigh* all the shows are ending. What am I gonna watch at night now? Hmph.

Ok, that brings us to now. At least there’s still something to bring me joy: the Edmonton Oilers. They’re not the Maple Leafs, or the Senators, but hey, they’re a Canadian team… I watched them win their 2nd game against the Mighty Ducks tonight… Ok I’m gonna sleep now.

I think Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) said it… that being sick during the summer sucks. Cause there’s no school to miss! In my case, no school *or* work. Argh, I feel like crap, my head aches, and it’s hard to sleep because my nose is so clogged… Ghar.

Add to that, the fact that I pretty much don’t know what to do with my life. LOL. It’s like, I feel like I’ve been everywhere on the internet, and so nothing is interesting me anymore. So I spend my time playing the same Cataan game over and over… hehe. Oh I actually did something new today though… I was playing Time Crisis on PS2. Yeah that’s kinda cool…

So why am I not going out and stuff, you may ask? Well… “out” as in, going to the movies or the malls or whatever… is cause I don’t have very much money right now, because I quit working for Old Navy, so I only have my City pay to keep me going… Until I start working full time again that is. And then there’s the “out” as in… just, enjoying the weather… Well, there’s no weather to enjoy. That is, the weather isn’t enjoyable. Cause it’s raining. And it’s not even like, a “storm” rain, where there’s thunder and lighting all over (there was a little yesterday, but not alot), and where there’s really really hard rain (I enjoy listening to the rain beating against my windows, and the occasional thunder, and seeing lightning…). It’s like… a little bit of rain (just enough to make it uncomfortable outside)… so yeah. It really sucks outside right now.

Meh. Back to my Cataan…

“The vociferous booing started from the opening notes of singer Annmarie Martin’s rendition of ‘O Canada.’ While other fans attempted to drown it out by singing along, the boos were audible until the final notes.” (Fox Sports)… (San Jose Sharks v. Edmonton Oilers… 5th game)

Uhm. OK. It’s just stupid. I first learned of something like this happening a couple of years back… I think it was either the Raptors playing, or the Maple Leafs playing (most likely it’s the Maple Leafs, cause I can’t remember the last time the Raptors were in the playoffs). But yeah… American fans booing Canadian anthem. It’s despicable. Yet, I loved the way Canadian fans responded… on the next game back (which is why I know it’s a playoff game, cause they play in series), Canadian fans cheered the American anthem. I tell you, there are very few things that really make me proud about being Canadian, and that is one of them.

But not even that, the stupidest thing is: “The Sharks had 10 Canadians in uniform Sunday night.” Honestly, if I were one of those Canadians, I would have refused to play. Heck, they should all have refused to play. Figure it out, Americans, half of the players in the NHL are Canadians. You can’t pull this kind of crap in hockey. It’s just sad.

I don’t ever really have anything to blog about.. but there’s just about nothing to do. LOL. We had college guys hang out today, as usual, every tuesdays… I was woken up around 10AM quite rudely by getting piled on… But it wasn’t even till like 11 or 12 when we left to go to Emman’s. We played some Cataan, of course. Then talked for a bit… Played some Poker… Talked for a bit… then we tried a game of Euchre but that didn’t work out. Then I left for work, but that didn’t work out either. I was alone there… plus the school had an event… plus, apperantly some crap was going on, and the school wants to kick out the drop in program, so I basically had to do some quick damage control. I told the participants that the best thing for them right now is to leave, so our permit doesn’t get cancelled. So yeah…

Anyway, that means I was out early. So I went back to Emman’s. Stupid me, we stayed late, so I missed the last two episodes of The Unit. Ghar… And now I’m missing Boston Legal too… Cause I’m watching House. And I watched the end of it already anyway, so I don’t feel like watching it anymore (on the time-shifting channels). So yeah I guess I’m going t obed early. Man. I’m so bummed about missing The Unit. That, and Prison Break are the only two shows I really REALLY look forward to watching every week… Hopefully they’ll rerun these episodes…

This is a picture of my ghetto Rubik’s cube and my amazing back scratcher… LOL that rubik’s cube isn’t even that old… it’s just cheap and well used. The best cubes are the ones you order straight from rubik.com or something like that, where you have the assemble the cube and everything. Cause when you buy it from Toys R Us or Mind Games (as we did) or something, then it sucks…

So anyway, hehe, the green stickers kept coming off and we kept putting it back on. But finally, too many were lost and it was hard to tell which ones were the green ones and which ones were the white ones. So I just took the rest of the stickers off and kinda colored it in a little bit with my sharpie… Stupid thing is, the sharpie still comes off. LOL. I think I’m gonna order some stickers online, or heck I might as well just buy a new cube… but eh. don’t gots too much money right now.

On to my Back Scratcher. Ok. I just don’t understand why more people don’t own one. I still remember last year at Capernwray, I was DYING cause I forgot to bring my back scratcher. The year before, I forgot too, but I got a package from my church with a bunch of dollar-store items in it, and one of it was a back scratcher.. That was cool until someone used it to scratch his… private area… well I burned it… then it was almost the end of the year anyway, so I didn’t bother trying to replace it. Needless to say, the backscratcher is THE BEST invention ever! This one I have is particularly nice. It’s from the Philippines, and I think it’s made from like …. bamboo or something. It’s really flexible. And it’s light weight, not like some of the crap you get from the dollar stores.

Another thing:

My grades for this semester… Notice that *ahem* A- in PoliSci.. WHOPPEEE. When I saw it, I freaked, cause I wasn’t feeling so great about that class after my exam (see a few posts ago). And I know what I got in Phenomenon of Religion too… 71!! It’s a B-, but uhh… Considering what I was expecting before, it’s AMAZING! Oh man, I actually finished with a 2.725 GPA this year. Far from the 2.3 I was expecting earlier (the part you don’t see on that list of grades is my first semester marks, which were a disaster!). But Yeah. HORAY!

LOL. Uhmm. Ok so Last Friday… Uh I don’t think I did anything. Just sat around… which is great, cause normally I’d be working. Hehe. Most likely I was reading a book or something. Oh wait, I think that’s when I started the new design (kind of ) of this site. So that’s probably what I was doing. Wait, actually now I’m sure it was what I was doing. I was up late that night doing it… Till like 3AM or something. Then on Saturday was Mei’s 18th Birthday party at the most amazing chinese buffet in Toronto… Imperial Buffet. Hehe. I LOVE their breaded shrimp… Way better than Mandarin’s. And though I didn’t know, most likely it was really cheap there too (so I can actually afford it). After the eating, the party migrated to my house, but I didn’t come, I went to tGif instead… they were meeting at Eman’s. We watched.. 2 movies. LOL. Well I watched a bit of Collateral with them (I saw it already), then when I realized the time (6PM… stores were closing), I remembered that I needed to get a Mother’s day gift… So I ran out and went around a few places… Christian Bookstores that is. But yeah, they were closed already, so I ended up at Walmart, where I got my mom an outdoor and an indoor plant… and a card too of course.

I went back to Eman’s where we watched Lords of Dogtown. Then I went back home at around 10PM or so I think, and the party was still going on. Well I didn’t feel like Kareokeing, so I went and worked on my blog a bit… by this time I had the design down already. So I was just typing up some old journals and assignments from Capernwray. I think I slept around 2AM again…

Sunday, I went to my parent’s church cause it was Mother’s day. Then all the Filipinos went to my house cause the kids were cooking for the Moms. I say the kids cause I wasn’t really part of it. Except cutting up a few cucumbers and helping them make the garlic bread (cause I love to roast garlic!)… oh and of course cleaning up today. We were watching filipino movies too, LOL. That’s always so much fun with everyone around, cause we’re always watching some drama-chick-flick, and all the guys are always making crying noises.. Hehe. I like Judy Ann Santos. If she was just a few years younger… and well… not so famous… oh and of course if she was Christian… I would totally go for her. LOL.

Uh. What else. Oh yeah, I finished typing up all of my journals and assignments (the ones I wanted to type up that is). That was a bit of a tough time for me, reflecting back on this past year. I saw how much I failed what I had learned at Capernwray. But it was encouraging too, cause I see how God really is continually faithful in calling me back to Him… I saw what I had written in my Prayer Journal – “This is how God seeks for us to respond to His invitation. That we would in turn seek fellowship and relationship with Him.” to which I responded – “That’s what prayer is! Excuse me while I go work on this relationship that I so often neglect…” (This is all in my “Testimony” page.

Well I think that’s all I’m going to write today. Oh yeah, today, I did mostly nothing, but sleep and fix up my site a bit again… and of course help clean up the after effects of the party last night. Right now I’m about to head to Morninstar to watch Yula’s recital…

Well, I’ve been doing a stupid amount of typing already today… I’ve been “digitizing” my Journal book – assignment book, from my LTS year at Capernwray (oh my gosh, I can’t believe how many times I had to write that…). I basically typed up, like 7 short essays that I wrote while I was at Capernwray. So yeah, I’ll talk about the last couple of days tommorow, or on Tuesday or soemthing…

So I guess it’s quite obvious already. I updated my site, finally. I don’t think it’s final yet, even, cause I might still do a complete overhaul. We’ll see what happens, and see how creative I got. Basically, I took out some parts, or well, I moved things around at least. I’ve taken out my “ichthus project” page, having decided to work on that when I actually get into that whole thing. I fixed up my “testimony” page. It is no longer in “blog” style. All the typing I’ve been doing is for that page. I’ve also separated my “biography” from my testimony page… That’s not complete yet, though, I’ll work on that soon. Right now, I’m gonna go to bed and give my tired fingers a rest…

Stupid me, I left my new folding chair outside, and it got rained on… I knew it was gonna rain too, last night, and I made a mental note to do it, but yeah, I lost the note…

Tuesday.. lol, I skipped work. I knew James would want some money, so I got him to cover my shift. Apperantly, Brandon got someone to cover his shift too, except, two people showed up instead. Hehe. Anyway, the tGif college guys hung out most of the day. We went to the beach in the morning… they (Emman, James, Josh and Dave) went exploring, hehe, while I sat on my beautiful chair staring at lake Ontario.. it was fun. We were there for a coupla hours, till about noon, then we split up for a bit. I took a nap for a while after eating lunch, then we met up again at Emman’s around 4. We were throwing a football around for a while, until Emman finally finished his gaming thing… Then we got into a loong game of Cataan… That was fun, we stuck around till around 9 or so, then I went home.

Yesterday, I napped on and off hehe. Then, me, Josh, James, and Tim played Cataan. Everyone else were busy until later that night. Tim didn’t even catch them.. we had sundaes at MacDonalds around 10 or so, and I took Tim home at 11. When I got home everyone else was there… We watched Ottawa loose :S then played some Euchre. Then we watched a bit of Edmonton and San Jose, then I finally went to bed.

Phew… LOL. Today, I picked up my last paycheque from Old Navy. Then, I bought a mini-cube, which we broke… and now I can’t put it back together properly. I bought a shelf, too, from Walmart… Just a cheap one… I finally realized that I have waay too much clothes. It’s actually pretty ridiculous. Next week, I’m gonna go through all my clothes and take out the ones I don’t need and give it to Salvation Army or something… Then I’m gonna actually clean up my whole room properly, meaning, cleaning up all my school stuff… I think I’m gonna need more shelves.

Meh. I’m so glad I’m taking this vacation. The past few months have been intense. I really needed this…