I don’t normally write a blog about my profile picture, but I couldn’t help it, I like these two pictures so much. The first one is me. Can anyone guess where I am? Yep, I am behind the piano. That’s the music stand in front of me, and hanging from it is my lamp. I think it really captures my… Musical-ness.. LOL. Behind the piano, and serious. But if you look at my face I’m a pretty laid back, silly guy as well. Hehe. I likes.

This second one is from way back… But not so far back, cause I don’t have hair anymore on this one. For those who can’t see very well what I’m holding, it’s a Bible. Which would lead me to believe that I am preaching at the time when this picture was taken. Anyway, it’s from a TGIF+H2O Barbeque and I was probably leading the bible study at that time.

Cool… This final picture is my default profile pic that I turn to when I get tired of the other ones I put up. I dunno, I just really really like this picture… Thanks, Josh, for capturing such a pretty image of me. Haha.

Something that not alot of people may know about me is that I am totally obsessed with “Appalachian Spring”, an orchestra piece written by Aaron Copland. I even wrote a paper on it in one of my classes at UofT called “The Essence of Appalachian Spring”.

Anyway, the reason I bring that up is because of orchestra camp this week, where I was teaching the guitar… and also, relearning how to play the trumpet. Another thing that most people don’t relaly know about me is I played trumpet – pretty good too – in Elementary School, and Junior High. I know most people only know me for my piano playing…

But unfortunately, when I was deciding to go to high school, the main thing I took into account was the fact, at the time, that I wanted to become a computer programer. And so, because of that, I decided to go to satec @ W.A. Porter, a very technological high school in Scarborough. Well of course at satec, it was mostly computers that we studied, though we did have a music class, which I took, but even then, we studied music in the context of computers (learning midi, etc etc).

So what does this have to do with questining life choices… At the end of orchestra week, we wanted to show the kids what it was like to bring together all of the sections of the orchestra that they learned about (Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, Strings, etc.) and how they come together to play as an orchestra. And for that, Rob showed us a video of Blast!, a broadway performance of an orchestra, that’s not your typical orchestra.

Well what do you know… What video did Rob show us (Ok, well, because I requested it), Blast! performing Appalachian Spring. It was a mostly brass arrangement. Which is what was on my mind really when I started thinking back to you know.. my decision about which high school to do to, and basically discontinue my studie in music/the trumpet.

Here’s a video of the performance… I’m sure you can see why it’s got me questioning some of my life choices so far…

So I mentioned before that I got the entire Scrubs Series (so far) on DVD… I don’t even want to say how much I spent on it. Except that it was ridiculously cheaper than if i bought them individually from BestBuy or even Walmart.

Then I went on a little bit of an organization shopping spree today. And I got myself some stuff to organize my closet and my CD collection… I don’t have a picture of my CDs cause it’s not set up yet (I’m taking a break from my pre-pre-school cleaning of my room – it’s pre-pre-school because I’m gonna clean it again sometime in early September before school starts).

Ok so maybe it can still use a little bit more cleaning. But man it’s alot more organized and clean that before… Finally. I also got a buletin board cause I took down my old cork stuff that was looking really ugly and old…

Phew. Well I’m done with spending money for a long time I think. Or well… We’ll see what happens with these job possibilities that are popping up…

So. I have just come home from quite an eventful afternoon. Namely. Picking up the car from the shop, and doing an interview at Moxie’s Grill at Scarborough Town Centre… Looking pretty hot, I might add, in my “interview clothes”.

I feel really good about it, mainly because well… I didn’t even apply or send my resume in. LOL. I just randomly got a call this morning from the manager, Matt, and he told me that he got my resume from the internet (from BarServe, where I was applying for other jobs). I was really confused when I looked at the jobs I was applying for because Moxie’s wasn’t one of them. In fact, Moxie’s wasn’t even advertising a job opening.

Anyway, the interview went good, I think. I froze a little on some questions. I think it really showed my inexperience when it comes to bartending. But when I did answer a question promptly, I think I did pretty well. Yeah I do notice that I said I think 3 times within one paragraph… but that’s just it, I just never know. He did say he was going to be calling my references, which really indicates to me that I might be getting the job. Why would he bother calling around if he didn’t like my interview? So basically, I think as long as my references don’t kill me, I’ll be good. There’s that phrase again, “I think”.

Even if I don’t get the job, I’m good. I’m actually concerned cause I’ve already committed to the rest of the session (2 more weeks) with TEC. So we’ll see how that works. All this when I’m supposed to be getting a proper night’s sleep. But, well this job is really nothing like my job at Cruise Toronto…

• It’s at Scarborough Town Centre. That’s like.. 5 minutes by car, and 15 minutes by bus. Ok maybe 10 minutes by car and 30 minutes by bus. Still a heck of a lot better than an hour and a half to get to the boat.
• FREE PARKING. Ayihee.. That’s seriously a load off… Man getting to the boat can sometimes cost me up to $15 between parking and gas… That when sometimes i’ll only make like $54 a day. How the frig did I last on the boat for so long??
• I’LL ACTUALLY BE BEHIND THE BAR. So I was hired at Cruise Toronto as a bartender. And that aparently means to them that like for every 6 shifts, I was only on the bar twice or so…. Bah.

Well. Ok so those are the only ones I have. But they’re pretty important. I just realized I didn’t even ask how much the wage was. Honestly, I won’t mind minimum wage if it means I’ll actually be behind the bar. Ahhh… can’t wait to hear from them.

Well I’ve made a few changes on my time table. The main changes is dropping the course, History of Modern Japan (HIS281) and picking up the two European History Courses, HIS241 and HIS242. And the reason for this is that I was reading through the course calendar again, trying to figure out a way to fix up my time table, when I came across one of the courses I eventually want to take in the future, HIS488 – The Secret War (about the intelligence war in World War 2). It’s a good thing I read through the course description, because one of the prerequesities is HIS241. Well I had no plans to take HIS241 at all… but I do now!

I guess it does make sense, though, seeing as my focus is in international politics, and well… Europe is pretty much as international as it gets. I learned in one of my IR Classes (can’t remember if it was POL108 or POL208), that the greatest density of Globalization activity is in Europe. Duh. The EU… etc. So here we are.

Anyway, after dropping HIS281, I realized that I can fix up my calendar to ensure that I have 4-day weekends the entire year. That involved dropping Canadian Politics, which I’ll just take in my final year (I don’t plan to take any of the advanced Canadian Politics Courses anyway), and picking up POL215, which is Politics in Asia…

• FSL102H1 S – Introd French
• HIS241H1 F – 19th Century Europe
• HIS242H1 S – Contemporary Europe
• HIS343Y1 Y – Modern Espionage
• POL200Y1 Y – Political Theory
• POL215Y1 Y – Pol & Transf of Asia-Pacific
• POL345H1 F – Becoming Israel

The problem with this is that I’m only taking 1.5 Credits in 3rd year, which really sucks. I had this ambition of not having to take any 200-level courses this year at all. But whatever. Also another problem, all the frigging half-credits that I’m taking. I hate them! I find it ridiculous to take half-credits, and double my work load (2 Half credits mean 2 mid-term exams, and 2 final exams, when 1 Full credit means just 1 mid-term and 1 final for the same number of credits… that’s not to mention all of the assignments too). Oh and the final problem, are my Wednesdays. They’re ridiculous… why? Because I have 5 hours in between the two classes for that day. Hopefully I can fill some of that time up with Tutorials, but eh. You never know.

I got a bunch of new DVDs recently. I got Corner Gas Season 3 a few days ago, cause it was pretty cheap. Plus I got a 15 dollar coupon for something I shall talk about later… Anyway. Very recently, as in like 10 minutes ago, I also bought the entire Scrubs series on DVD (well.. what’s out on DVD right now at least). OMG, what was I thinking? That’s about $250 worth of DVDs this week… But well, yeah, some good deals there too, of course (I got the Scrubs DVDs off ebay).

Oh but wait, I also bought some CDs… The first ones I’ve purchased in.. man, at least like 3 months. I bought Chris Rice’s new CD, What the Heart Beats For, and Robin Mark’s new CD (for my mom), East of the River. Both are very nice, and I enjoy them… But then, that’s another $40 of expenses… all when my hours of work per week have been severely cut down…

As for that $15 coupon from the Corner Gas DVD, it was for a Corner Gas hockey jersey. Well of course I couldn’t resist huh? I now own my first ever hockey jersey (it came so fast in the mail! I only bought it on like Monday.. Hopefully the DVDs come that quick too).

Finally hmph. I’ve finally buckled down and got some reading done for my quest to learn XHTML and CSS. I’m liking what I’ve read so far, and I think by the end of the week I can start doing some serious work. I’m going to start with the Torchbearers Philippines website. Then I’ll do a little work on my own website. Then finally, with all that experience under my belt, I’m going to get working on my new website, ichthus.ca. Hopefully I can finish all of these before the end of July. But meh, my real deadline isn’t until school starts anyway. But yeah, I think I’ll take it easy for a little while, especially cause I didn’t get as many responses to my posting calling for writers as I hoped. I was only able to sign on 4 writers… So it looks like I’m going to have to personally recruit some people for this. But that means I shall have to wait until I have something more solid to tell people.

But yeah, as I said, meh… Hmm this gives me an idea.. Here is my to-do list for the next few weeks. My deadline for these things is August 23rd, which is when I fly out to Capernwray…

• Compelete the Torchbearers Philippines Website
• Redesign “Excel Still More”
• Recruit writers for The Ichthus Project
• Complete The Ichthus Project website
• Finish Levels 1 and 2 of “Learn French CDs”

Hmph. Looks quite do-able I should say. Although that last part – the Learn French thing actually is kind of scaring me. But yeah. That’s probably the most important in that entire list anyway.

When I come home from Capenrwray (August 30th), I really want to be able to switch into serious school mode, which means purchasing all of my books, and getting through a few of those chapters. I’m going to really shoot for the moon this year… My goal: 4.0 Sessional GPA. LOL. Oh my I think I’ll be eating those words come May next year. But whatever. I’m done with setting low goals so that I don’t disappoint myself. Instead, I shall be setting high goals so that I motivate myself instead… Here we go…

Well I have officially registered for school. Before I talk about it, here’s the summary of what I was able to get.

FSL102H1 S – Introdutory French
HIS281Y1 Y – History of Modern Japan
HIS343Y1 Y – Modern Espionage
POL200Y1 Y – Political Theory
POL214Y1 Y – Canadian Politics
POL345H1 F – Becoming Israel

Hmm. I think it’s better to organize my thoughts in a list…

• I find it amusing that I have classes for 3 different year levels.
• I am a little pissed that I didn’t get any of my Political Science courses choices. But it’s not really such a big deal… I’ll just take the 200-level courses that I should have taken last year. Political Theory and Canadian Politics are both required to graduate… In fact I do beleive those are the last of my prerequisite courses, which means next year, I don’t have to worry about fulfilling any requirements at all.
• Despite how I feel about the Political Science course I got, I am incredibly happy that I got *the* History Course that I’ve always wanted. In fact this is the course that made me want to take History in the first place… Modern Espionage. YAHHHHH. Oh man, I’m so psyched for that class. But man if I didn’t get it, I would have been so annoyed – especially with the situation about my PoliSci courses.
• I’m finally doing it. It’s in there… I can drop the courses but it’ll really be stupid of me to do it. Come January, I will be learning french once and for all… This is a requirement for me for pretty much… well.. yeah.. life.. my career.. my potential future education.. etc. etc. I just needed to do it, and I’m doing it now. Better late than never. I’m still going to try to learn french using that “Learn French In Your Car” deal that I got. I spent 50 bucks on it after all. I hope it gives me an edge when I finally start taking classes.

Phew. There it is. School registration done. Now just the financial stuff to take care of. The buy the books. etc. etc. Ahhhh… Man I’m excited for school now, all because of Modern Espionage. Yeahhhh…

Oh yeah, I forgot… 4-day weekends for September – December, baby!!!

All the kids and leaders…

My band, “No Name”

Those faithful readers of my blog would know that a few weeks ago, I lost my cell phone. I say those faitfhul readers because even I had trouble finding the post I mentioned it in, and when I did find the post (see link above), I only passingly mentioned that I lost it (“Oh yeah. And sometime through all of that, I managed to loose my cell phone”). Oh but I did mention that I wanted to buy a new cell phone in my list of things I want to buy. But whatever.

The point is, I finally bought a new one, horay. I had to wait a little while because I was waiting for a hardware upgrade so I could get it for cheaper. So what did I get? I’ve decied, despite being a Motorola guy, that it’s time for a little switch. I bought a Nokia – the 5300 Xpress Music Phone.

As you can see, it is a slider phone. Which is kind of cool. Just cause it’s something a little different. Plus, as implied by the “Xpress Music” part of its name, it is an Mp3 Phone. Which is also really cool – especially since I already had a nice 2gb MicroSD card from my DS. I do get a card from Rogers, but I’m still waiting on that… they’re taking a little long to run my new purchase through the system.

Anyway, I’m going to have a fuller review of the phone when I have a chance to use it more (especially the music player). For now, yeah… I got a new phone…

Just to end it off, I just wanted to do a little update on my “things to buy list”…

• Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 – Purchased a pay cheques ago…
• Grey’s Anatomy Season 3 – $59
• The Unit Season 2 – $59
• New Digital Camera – $300 – Purchased with Airmiles…
• New Cell Phone – $100 – Purchased July 11
• Mario Party 8 – $59 – Purchased July 11
• Command and Conquer 3 – $59

That reminds me, I also finally bought Mario Party 8, which was on sale at the Rogers store where I bought the cellphone. So that was pretty sweet. I’m doing really good on my list. Oh yah. I think I’ll have to wait for a paycheque or two to get C&C3. And of course: The Unit Season 2, and Grey’s Anatomy Season 3 both won’t be out until September, I believe. So I still have some time to wait for that…

Oh my. This is going to be one crazy week for me. It started this morning at band camp… Which was fun. But tomorrow, the craziness begins. Let’s break it down. Band camp at church, which I’m volunteering at as the Piano Instructor. 9AM-3PM Monday – Friday. 30 Hours. Work on the boat… 6 cruises – 1 each on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday… and 2 on Sunday. Averaging 6 hours of work per cruise, that 36 hours. Bringing us to 66 so far.

Keeping up the picture tradition. I just wanted to show the new systems at church… This is the Aviom System, which is what allows us to use in-ear monitors. What’s really cool about this is that it’s basically a little mixer, so we can mix what we hear in our monitors ourselves without having to rely on the sound technician. This means that I can finally hear myself! See the buttons there, those are the various channels that run through. Right now there are only 6 that are going through the system… 1 is guitar, 2 piano, 3 bass, 4 sax, 5 keyboard, 6 handheld microphone. As you can see right now, the bass is selected (number 3) and it’s set to about halfway through. It’s a really cool little system. You can pan it left and right as well, and adjust the treble and bass. And I beleive there’s an option to go solo, or to mute some things altogether as well. Hopefully I get a chance to play around with it a little more.

Next picture is the new earphones I was talking about, the Shure E2C’s that cost me $130. I’m really enjoying it… It’s making me think about switching back to Mp3 Players (those loyal visitors would know that I gave my Mp3 Player to my mom when I bought the R4DS which allows me to listen to Mp3s on my Nintendo DS). I think it’s time for a hard drive player again… but we’ll see. If I do switch back, it probably won’t be until like the end of the year or something. Anyway. I’ve had the chance to test it out. And on the subway, these Shure E2Cs are definately killer. As for sound quality. Listening to my Laptop (and not the crappy media player on the R4DS), it’s pretty amazing too. I don’t really know much about what to look for. But when I was listening to Appalachian Springs, I could actually hear the page turning of the orchestra at some points during the song. That I believe is some good sounds…

Uhmm.. Big Love is coming back on tonight! Yeah. LOL. My favourite show to watch that I really shouldn’t be watching LOL. For those who don’t know, Big Love is about a fundamentalist Mormon family which practices Polygamy. Bill Paxton stars as the main dude, and he has three wives… Haha. Oh look. It’s on in like 3 minutes. Gotta run.