Ok. I know that it’s not going to seem as good a prediction now that most people are saying so already… but the fact though is that I’d already predicted long ago that Obama would beat Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. I’ve been saying it since even before the primaries began, but yeah, have only now posted about it.

Before I tell why, let me reiterate. I’m Canadian. And Canadians by definition aren’t bigots. More than that, I’m a visual minority… So anything I say here… that may seem… I dunno racist, or sexist or whatever, should not be seen as that. But as the simplest way I could explain why I think… based on the history of the United States, basically, I believe a black man will become president before a woman.

Let me start off by saying that it’s obvious that both candidates are highly qualified for the job. Barack Obama is one of the most inspirational presidents since JFK. And Hillary Clinton is just… experienced. 35 years? By the way I share a birthday with her… October 26.

Honestly, based on their qualifications, it would be… it should be… difficult to choose between the two. This is why I turned to this form of analyisis, basically looking at the way history has unfolded… and clearly, in history, the race equality movement began before the gender equality movement… In 1870, the 15th Ammendment (to the US Constitution) guaranteed blacks and other minority *men* were guaranteed suffrage (the right to vote) while it was’nt until the 19th Ammendment ub 1920 when women were given the same suffrage. That’s a 50-year difference – so it’s just fitting that a black man would become president before a woman…

Let me explain why I believe this too… Basically, I believe that the plight of minorities become a concern to the public based on how they were treated. Blacks were obviously severely mistreated in the United States because of slavery. And so their situation came to public view much sooner… in fact a war was fought on the subject of slavery… On the other hand, women, while disrespected were not as severely mistreated like blacks.

This is seen further in when the civil rights movement occured vs. when the women’s liberation movement occured… Again a decade or two between the two…

Bah I gotta run. I’m gonna continue this some other time…

Ok I just don’t understand why people were freaking out over Dwight Howard’s “Superman” dunk… Cause compared to the great of the greats… Michael Jordan… It was crap. Ok, so it was an alley hoop… but.. well.. He didn’t dunk! He didn’t touch the frigging rim… in fact he was about a foot an a half away from the rim, from what I can see in the video… *AND* he jumped about a foot closer to the rim than Michael Jordan did too… *eye roll*. Anyway, judge it for yourselves…

Phew… What a way to start off my reading week. My main plan was to clean my room, which is ridiculously disgusting. But then something was going on with my laptop, and I kinda lost track of it as I was trying to figure out how to fix it… So I didn’t really get started on cleaning my room until today, which means I probably won’t be completely finished it right until the end of the week… Haha, yeah I know…

Haha. Yeah pretty nasty still huh, after the entire day of cleaning? But yeah, notice the huge garbage bag by my door – which is the fruits of today’s labours. The main thing is to sort through the tons and tons of loose paper and to figure out which gets thrown out, shredded, and which I had to keep. Now that that’s done, the mess on the floor will what I shall tackle next.. I promised my mom it’d be ready for vacuuming soon. Hahahaha.

Oh yeah, notice the suitcase in the second picture too? Yeah I started putting stuff away for the Philippines. Yeah I’m a few weeks away still, but eh… rather put it in a suit case than put it away.

What’s up next? Organize my desk.. More paper sorting (this time so I know where to file the ones I didn’t throw out/shred). Probablyt reorganize my bookshelf, which is pretty messy (though I did move things around… made space for the rest of my text books… and for my DVDs).

Hmph. Why it did take me so long is because I was working on fixing my laptop. Here’s what happened… Sometime Friday night, Vista downloaded some updates. Saturday, before I left for work, I finally rebooted it to let it install/configure, but when I got home Saturday night, I realized something was going on and there was a problem.. Basically, it would get to “Step 3″ of the configuration/install process but then it would reboot the computer… Problem is, it hasn’t booted up the OS completely yet. Basically, I was stuck in an endless loop… Everytime I rebooted the laptop, it would go to that screen and reboot itself…

Bah! I didn’t notice it before cause I had various security things going on that prevented a reboot from happening without a password being put in. So on Sunday morning before I left for church, I took off the password and let it do its thing, hoping that that would fix the problem.

Well I get home Sunday night (yeah I spent the whole day… about 7:30AM to 8:30PM at church) and it was still rebooting over and over… Well I couldn’t do anyhting about it then cause the Allstar Game was on and people were over my house. But yeah, after that, I finally did do some searching online, but really didn’t find any help – no one else had the same problem as me. So I fired off an email for support from Microsoft.

Monday morning, I got this crap response from the tech person… did not help at all. Cause he didn’t even bother trying to figure out my issue. And obviously, I couldn’t log the laptop on (I was using my dad’s laptop at this point) the internet for them to do their diagnostic thing… Plus it probably woulda cost me money anyway… Which I find ridiculously annoying.. Anyway, instead of going through that crap, I decided I’d just take this opportunity to reformat my hard drive. Which meant going and getting a hard drive enclosure for my laptop Hard Drive.. Problem was, Canada Computers was closed (because of “Family Day”) and I couldn’t get one. While I was thinking about the problem throughout Monday (I was trying random things to try to fix it, but nothing worked), I decided since I was reformating and whatnot anyway, I might as well upgrade my hard drive.

So, today, I got a hard drive enclosure (for my old drive – turns it into a nice protable drive), and a new 120gb hard drive for my laptop. Nice! I can finally fit *all* of my pictures, music, videos, *and* even some games onto the laptop. And on my new portable? Well of course all of the DVDs I had been ripping for the past few months! Sweetness! Instead of carrying my 6 Seasons of Scrubs, 3 Seasons of Corner Gas, 2 Seasons of The Unit.. I can fit them all into this nice portable drive… Perfect for my coming flights to the Philippines and back…

Anyway, sweet. Things turned out well, though, yeah I would have prefered not spend that $100. Especially since I’m only about a year away from buying a new computer.

By the way, I had a revelation today… Laptops… are all about Macs now. Who’s gonna play games on laptops anymore? Well.. yeah I’m sure there’s still people who would like souped up laptops like this one (By the way, this laptop is 12.1″ screen.. with 2.5gb of RAM, 120gb HD, 1.66ghz Centrino Duo.. which means I can run Call of Duty 4 pretty nicely still.. and probably even Cryssis). But yeah, once I get my new computer, this laptop is pretty much obsolete.. In fact I think it’s gonna go to my mom. It’s still got maybe 2 years left in it…

But yeah, if, after I bought my PC, I decided I needed a laptop, I think I would definately go for a Mac… Maybe a Mac Air…

Haha. Yeah, I know… make up my mind huh? Kind of like.. those people who vote NDP in the Municipal Elections, Liberals in the Provincial, and Conservatives in the Federal… Eh… Ok this post has suddenly taken a form much similar to things I would do in school.. so I’m gonna stop there now, since I’m on reading week and I’m not supposed to be thinking about school.. Or am I? hahaha. Whatever.

OMG when will it stop!? Actually we do know… it’s supposed to keep snowing (as in, there’s going to be like a snow storm every 3 days) until the end of February. Ahhhh! Good thing next week is reading week. *AND* I don’t have to work. Hahahaha.

Anyway, because I’m still so into my new camera. I took some more pictures…

But before I get into those pictures, I just want to show my new toy, a mouse. hehe.

I wasn’t actually going to make a big deal about it. Afterall, it’s just a mouse right? But then I was really surprised when I opened it. First the USB receiver.. Well I already knew it was that small… since it was the “nano”. But I was surprised by the pouch that came with it. Hahaha, it’s so sweet. And the mouse just generally looks sexy. My old one has been with my for two years, and I decided it’s finally time to replace it.

Alright… On to my snow pictures…

The first pictures are my back yard and my car. Poor car… So pretty. But so dirty.. I’ll probably take it in for a carwash next Wednesday, if it doesn’t snow. The next two pictures are my snow-clearing best friends. My snow boots… Then my electric shovel. Haha. Makes it so much easier to clear the snow… As in… 10 minutes vs. 30 minutes. Finally the day after (on Valentines Day). The first is the road beside Sidney Smith Building where I had a class at 9AM… except I was late cause it took me an hour and a half to get to school! Not because of the snow tho – it’s because some nab truck driver fell asleep on the wheel, crashed, and shut down the 401 West for the morning rush hour… Bah, idiot. The second picture is outside of Carr Hall, which is where I had my last class of the day…

These pictures are from inside Carr Hall. I took em cause it reminded me of schools in the Philippines… The first picture is the hall way just outside my classroom (Couldn’t get in yet because there was class in there). The next picture is the chair that reminds me of school in the Philippines.. the wooden writing-desk chair thing. Haha. Anyway, yeah this building reminds me alot of the schools in the Philippines, maybe because it’s owned by the Catholic College of UofT. Anyway, it sucked before though, because up until before Christmas, they didn’t even have wireless in the building… But now they do though, and I noticed why.. The third picture is the wireless extender that they set up during the break. Now I get interenet when I have class in this building! Haha. Nice…

Ok well that’s all for now. Bahh.. Snow.

I don’t really get the traffic on the internet.. I thought I was doing pretty well.. About 2 weeks ago, hits on my videos topped 1,000 for about a week and a half.. I thought it was a trend (which was good cause that was my goal for the *end* 2008). Then all of a sudden, yesterday my hits were at an all time low – about 300. It hasn’t been that low since before I started putting up piano lesson videos.

Contrast that though with my websites where I’ve been averaging close to 75 per day – more than double from two weeks ago when I was averaging 30-35.

Anyway, yeah. I don’t get it. But whatever.. I’ve been getting some really encouraging comments on my videos lately, so.. eh.

Hmph. Today I finally finished that paper on Martin Luther I had been working on for the past 3 weeks. Gah! I can’t believe how lacking my focus is in school right now. That’s really scary cause I have 4 more papers to go – 2 of them due before I leave for the Philippines in March… and the other two due immediately after I get back home. That basically means I’ll be researching all four papers simultaneously, so I can finish what I need to before my trip.

I think it’s so serious that I’ve scheduled some serious studying time with Herzon.. During reading week. Gah! That means I’ll actually be studying… Scary.. Oh yeah add to that a quiz the day before I leave. Ahh.

What else? Oh yeah there yet another snow storm today… dumped another 20cm… or will have dumped another 20cm by tomorrow morning. This means that February isn’t even halfway done yet and it’s already snowed 70cm in Toronto.

Man, was it a good thing I bought that electric snow shovel… I forget when now… but yeah.. that was good.

Ok I’m done for now. Dunno if I wanna go to school tomorrow. What with the snow, and since one of my classes will just be showing a movie. But yeah, I’ll definately just be chilling until them crazy study sessions next week…

January and February have been horrible months at work in terms of getting shifts. We hardly have any shows, and some things I’ve been involved in has caused me to ask for alot of days of…

What does this mean? Well my last pay cheque was only for about $150.. And this one coming up promises to be just as small. By comparison, an average paycheque in September to December would be for about $400… And that doesn’t include tips… (Paycheques by the way come by-weekly…) So basically, I’m making less than half the money I normally make.

Argh. Not a good time too cause I’ll be going to the Philippines twice in the next 3 months… That means I’ll be putting alot on credit, and hopefully trying to pay it off with my summer job, which should land me a large chunk of cash.

But anyway. I’ve also got a new plan, which should put these money woes behind me…

I’ve decided to go part time in school next year while working full time. I’m only going to do 1 credit (maybe 1.5 or 2 if I feel up to taking more than 1 course)… Basically what I’m doing here is switching it up… Cause right now I’m working part time and in school full time.

I figured.. Hey. I’m short 2 credits anyway, and I’m going to have to stay at least an extra semester… So what the heck, stay the whole extra year.

Anyway, my plan is to find a somewhat full time job… 40 hours a week would be great, but less isn’t bad either as I plan to stay with Roy Thompson Hall. Then of course, don’t forget about my piano lessons… Let’s call it… 55-60 hours of work. I think I can handle that. My goal is to wipe out all of my debt entirely (which includes upcoming debt from the Philippines) *and* spend a little cash too. If I come out of this year completely debt free, but without a savings, I’ll be quite happy.

The main thing I plan to buy is a new desktop. I’m going to go all out with this too… mainly with the monitor (Forget James’ 24 inches of goodness.. I’m going for 30… While that’s gonna take some serious getting used to, it seems to be the trend nowadays. I’ll also be using it as a tv in my room (forget LCD TV… I’ll kill 2 birds with one stone this way).

Next monetary goal… send some serious cash down to the Philippines. Whether this means sending my tithes to the Philippines instead of my church… Or giving beyond, we’ll see…

I’d also probably like to buy a car. We’ll see though cause we’ve already got 2 cars, and all I’ll proably need to do is activate the insurance on the other one. But I’ll have to do some serious cost-benefit analysis on this cause I don’t want gas and insurance eating up my salary.

Anyway… forget graduating in 2009. 2010 is where it’s at then for me… Whatever… everyone’s doing it. I know so many people who completed their degrees in 4.5 or 5 years… And most of these people aren’t even doing an Honours like I am.

What I *am* excited about is that depending on when I am able to get a full time job, I could have a new computer by the end of the year. Yeahyah…

Or… whatever it’s called. I forget the actual name that Morningstar calls it… but yes, we had our annual meeting yesterday, where we pass budgets and such.

It was pretty.. mundane. Regular stuff, I guess you could say, except it’s the first without Pastor John (and thus an annual general meeting without a senior pastor). So what really came out is kind of buckling down.. in anticipation for whatever direction that a new senior pastor (which they kept saying was imminent) would bring to the congregation.

It made sense to me…

Anyway. There were some.. frustrating moments. Namely the questions that came up regarding the Future Hope Fund. I dunno… it just seemed to me that people somehow has this idea that the Future Hope Fund is for the sole purpose of aquiring new property. And so they were upset that parts of the fund was being used to pay for needed projects on the current property.

I dunno… I thought the elders quite eloquently explained the situation.. Namely that this “Future Hope” we are investing in is the lives of people that God will save through Morningstar, and not necessarily just for a new building. But some just didn’t get it and seemed to be more interested in ensuring that there’s money for purchasing a new lot… even though it is not even clear that this is the direction the church is headed towards….

Bah forget it, I’m not going to say any more.. I might just offend someone.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the evening. We have this tradition of sitting at the very back.. haha. It’s different from where we sit during services, which is usually right up front.

Ok… that is all… yeahh… funn… back to studying now…

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while… but… eh I dunno, I’ve just been lazy I guess. I took a few pictures with my cellphone camera, but they were pretty bad… But anyway, I also don’t know if this is even allowed or not.. But meh, I’ve seen supervisors with cameras before so…

I like this picture… But it’s really blurry. I wish I can retake it and make it look better…

Here’s the bar all set up… Well, actually, it’s not really all set up cause I took these pictures during intermission and I hadn’t reset the bar yet (didn’t put glasses out yet). The first picture is the “back bar”… Basically alcohol that’s not part of the big-5 (Rum, Rye, Gin, Scotch, and Vodka). The first four are our fortified wines: Cinzano Red, Dubonnet, Harvey’s Bristol Cream (Sherry), and Taylor’s Port. Next is Courvasier Cognac, Woodford Reserve Bourbon, Jameson Irish Whiskey, and Drambuie. Finally, Khalua, Cointreau, Baileys, and Peach Schnapps. Phew… We hardly use these, actually…

The next picture shows the cash register with the bar rail beside it… Next the “bar rail” which is where you’re supposed to keep the big-5 liquors… now bar rails are actually supposed to be on rails just behind the bar.. hence the name bar rail… But yeah, and bars would normally only have 5 bottles in the bar rail… but not at Roy Thompson Hall of course… We have: (hidden behind the wine bottles) Crown Royal (that’s the Rye), Bacardi White and Dark (Rum), Johnnie Walker Black and Red (Scotch – blended), Smirnoff Vodka, Tangueray Gin, and finally Talisker (Scotch – single malt).

Gotta get another picture of myself in uniform of course… And then finally, what we work for, of course… The tip jar. This of course is how much we got from the pre-show opening… which is typically 25-40% of how much we end up with during the night. I won’t say how much I made this time.. but yeah, it was a really good night.

Alrighty. That’s all for now…

Me, Dave and Herzon went out to dinner at Mr. Greek… Poor Herzon he had been working since the morning, and all I’ve been doing is watching TV… hahaha.

There’s my meal… 2 pork souvlaki sticks with rice and potatoes. Mmmm.. Nice.

Afterward we headed off to Starbucks cause Herzon was working. But first we were just sitting around, talking, chilling.

When Herzon started work (around 8PM), Dave and I walked around Chapters for a bit. He bought a journal… I didn’t buy anything cause I left my wallet in the car, and James had it all day.

But anyway, we saw some pretty funny stuff… Like this picture below. It’s a guide to Facebook.. Hahaha. I thought that was really stupid. Man if you need a guide to figure out how to use Facebook? You seriously should throw out your computer and go back to like…

So after walking around for a bit, I just decided to grab my laptop and edit the videos I took this morning. I added 2 more videos to my “Learn to” series… By the way I’ve been going crazy on this video thing. I think I said I would do 24 this year? I’ve already done 25 videos just in January and February. It’s really helped out with my hits. I’ve topped 50 hits per day on my websites, and 1,000 on my YouTube videos.

Anyway, having Herzon working while we were chilling is really good. Haha.. Here are the reasons why…

Haha. That first picture is a mint-hot chocolate. That second is a really nice tuna sandwich… And that doesn’t even include the espresso shot, and the cheesecake as well.. Hahaha.

Anyway. It’s almost closing now. We’re gonna head out soon… So I’ll end off there…

My mom booked our tickets for Manila – Round 2… In May/June.

TO:

EVANGELISTA/CHRIS MREVANGELISTA/JAMES MR

19 MAY 08 - MONDAY  AIR CANADA  LV: TORONTO - 1:20PM  AR: TOKYO/NARITA - 3:05PM

20 MAY 08 - TUESDAY  JAPAN AIRLINES  LV: TOKYO/NARITA 6:25PM  AR: MANILA/INT 9:55PM

23 JUN 08 - MONDAY  JAPAN AIRLINES  LV: MANILA/INT 9:00AM  AR: TOKYO/NARITA 2:25PM

23 JUN 08 - MONDAY  AIR CANADA  LV: TOKYO/NARITA 5:00PM  AR: TORONTO 3:45PM

Yaay!! Looking forward to it.