i smell like incents

seriously, i do! i used a bit of a cream called "scents of india" and now i smell like incents. at least it doesn't smell like curry :S

energy shots

the other day my mum brought home this wee little bottle of something. it's called upshot, an energy shot made with herbal supplements. the unfortunate part is i can't really drink it. well i can, but i'll probably end up falling asleep because it's full of caffeine. they should make an energy drink with iron in it! i'm sure it would sell well since anemia also affects chemotherapy patients. there's got to be a lot of caffeine in it since it's only 75ml and you can't really knock back 75ml in one shot..
anyway, i'd love to see a big, burly man drinking from this tiny bottle :)

flame + alchohol = ..?

i don't understand the bailey's campfire commercial. can you really put out a flaming marshmallow by dunking it in a glass of bailey's? or is the alchohol content in the bailey's not enough to create a glass of fire? or are the people sitting around the campfire a bunch of woosies because they're actually drinking chocolate milk?

survey desperation

my group's marketing research project is slowly going down the drain. we need 50 people to fill it out and we only have 15.. so i now turn to you, my dear friends, to possibly help me out?

visit http://www.careersinconstruction.ca, browse the website, then fill out the survey (click on the link "tell us what you think" at the bottom right hand corner of the main page).

if you have 25 minutes to spare or looking to procrastinate, i'd appreciate the help! last survey i swear! *cross fingers behind back*

i *heart* professor evaluations

performance review! i got to give my two cents today regarding my leisure studies prof. usually i never say horrible things about a professor on these reviews, i try to give constructive criticism and/or tips on minor improvements. sometimes i praise the prof to such a degree that it would be impossible for their ego not to grow. anyway, this one was lengthy; i don't think i've written so much on an evaluation before. even after i handed it in, i forgot some points i wanted to make. i think i should have made jot notes last night with what i wanted to say, cause there was a LOT.

1. she purposely ignored my group during in class group discussions. she'd go around to every other group and see how they're doing, what their opinions on the subject matter was, etc. but she always, ALWAYS purposely skipped our group. in the review, i said, "for a professor teaching a class on community, you fail to put into practice the theories you seem to keep in high regard."

2. the proposal, i can't get over this one. 3.28 out of 5?! who gives a mark like that? on a proposal of all things. i reminded her that "a proposal should be a pass or fail because it's ensuring the group or individual chose a topic that is acceptable and can be related to class material. it should not be an assignment where you nitpick every minute detail you can possibly think of. this method is not realistic nor is it practical for the real world." i think i used the word moronic at one point.

3. her slides are horrible. she'd post up her slides in advance, and purposely omit definitions so that we would attend class and write them down. but while people are frantically trying to write down the definition, she gives really good examples that are useful. then, she has the balls to ask what those specific examples are on the midterm. i'm not supergirl, i cannot write 300 words per minute. not possible. so i said, "your method of relaying the subject matter is ineffective. you expect the class to write down definitions off the powerpoint with the superhuman ability to remember the examples given at the same time. the reason for posting definitions is so that through the lecture students can get a better understanding of the terms presented."

the things i forgot where minor details like a suggestion to number her slides. i'm very glad they do performance evaluations, very glad!

cause i'm a mother'effing p-i-m-p

my dad told us the reason why he's going to china: nortel wants him to go. interesting reason indeed, since he no longer works for nortel because they SOLD him to flextronics! anyway, nortel is paying flextronics for my dad's services.. meaning my dad is the equivalent to a call girl! my dad told his boss that i called him (the boss) a pimp; apparently he thinks it's hilarious :)

anyway, my dad flew off this morning to vancouver, later from vancouver to shanghai, then shanghai to wherever it is he's going to. on the flight to vancouver he has to pay for his own meal! i can't believe that! i had no idea air canada cut meals on their domestic flights. it's a little ridiculous. personally, i don't think i'd like to sit in a plane for over five hours and smell a weird mixture of food during the entire flight. *shakey fist* at air canada.

on a happy note, i found out i passed both my correspondence courses!! hooray! graduation 2006 here i come :)

driving mr. mistry

this morning i had to wake up early to go with my dad to the chinese embassy so that he could get a visa. embassies are downtown, and often my dad is too cheap to pay 75 cents per 15 minutes for parking, so sometimes it's a game of drop off, drive around, and pick up. (can you imagine what it was like before cellphones? it's like you're stalking the embassy.) the place is intimidating from the outside. it looks like a gigantic compound with a stone wall and gates surrounding it.

after my dad dropped off his application i had to drive him to work while he was on a conference call giving a presentation over the phone. most boring drive EVER! no music and listening to someone talk about drip plates, product weight, and some other stuff i didn't understand would normally make me fall asleep. the most amusing part of the presentation: "it has humps, lumps." that was the closest thing i would get to music during my stint as ms. chauffeur.

we got to his work and ended up sitting in the car for 20 minutes while he's still giving the presentation. bah. i spent the time napping in the back seat of the car. after his call was over, we went up to the office because in less than an hour we had to go back to pick up his visa and i haven't seen the company's new digs yet. it felt like it was take your kid to work day all over again.. minus the free lunch. my dad doesn't have a corner office, he has a corner cubicle with windows! i guess that's something, right?

i suck at this game..

dad: guess where i'm going?
me: where?
dad: where you went when you were a little girl.
me: edmonton..?
dad: no. further west. i mean east.
me: saskatchewan?
dad: china.
me: oh.

either i really suck at this game or my dad gives horrible hints.

are you sure you work here?

on friday my parents and i headed out to the mall to buy a few things for them to take to england for all my grandparents. we popped into the sony store because i like to wander. the only girl working there just came up to me and started a conversation out of the blue. and not a "can i help you?" or "is there something specific you're looking for?" she actually came up to me and said, "you have to see this, it's very cool!" and in a tone like she's known me for years and years. it was very weird because i've never had that happen to me before! i wasn't annoyed by her, she was pretty amusing :)

my dad pointed out the location free tv that i had seen before on a show (sony cut the price down by half!). i was just reading up on the specs for it when the girl comes up to me and asks, "hey, what is that?" she wasn't pointing to anything on me, she was pointing to the location free tv. that's right, she was asking ME about a product in a store she works in. i kind of stuttered for a few seconds because i didn't expect that question from someone who works at the store! so i pretty much gave her a general overview of what it is.

i'm still wondering if they hired her because she was just a pretty face.. hopefully there was more to her employment than just that!

kitty cat dance

this video is so silly i couldn't stop laughing :)

old ladies shouldn't be allowed to drive

last night on my way to class there was crazy traffic on the highway just because of a little bit of snow. it wasn't even cold enough out for the snow to even stay on the ground. it took me twice as long for me to get to school even though there were no accidents OR slippery conditions!

then on the way home, an old woman stops in the middle of a major intersection because the light went red; she ended up blocking two of the three lanes heading south. the car in the lane she wasn't blocking even waited a good minute to let her through, even honking at her, but nope didn't budge. and it's not like she wasn't aware of where she was, because who wouldn't notice headlights coming at her from the side?!

do you think these are funny?

why or why not? just wondering..

my jaw hurts

i feel like i've been talking non-stop today:
met with my compensation group
*talktalktalk*
then after the meeting a russ, jen, and i were just wasting time
*talktalktalk*
those two left and shaun walked in
*talktalktalk*
headed off to class
*talktalktalk*
after class, jon, wei, and i were heading in the same direction
*talktalktalk*
grabbed takeout and headed to the next class, ran into wei and jackie
*talktalktalk*
got to class
*talktalktalk*
left class and caught the bus with liz
*talktalktalk*
liz gave me a ride home from the bus station
*talktalktalk*
my parents are wondering why i've been so quiet since i got home..

not quite the cracker jack prize

in today's bag of crispy minis comes an odd surprise: "the mini guide to major happiness". has quacker discovered that crispy minis is the most popular snack food for the segment of the population that's constantly depressed? or has it knocked ice cream off its pedestal for the number one food of choice for moody women during that time of the month? apparently not.

turns out, it's not so much a guide as it is a fortune cookie:

"if at first you don't succeed, try and try again. after that, feel free to move on."

how inspirational!!

cheaters must love the internet..

for my multinational business policy class we have to do a tracking report on a publicly traded, multinational company. so the company we're researching is british airways. i have to do up half the swot analysis to build part of the report off of and i figured if i googled for "airline swot" i could get a few ideas.. all i got were essaygirl.com, papers4you.com, academictermpapers.com, etc. i haven't had so many cheater finds before..

geek-o-meter

today i think i met the geekiest person to work at chapters! while he was scanning all my books in we were talking about my treo, palm pilots, sony, other phones.. it wasn't one of those superficial conversations either like, "that phone's so cool.. heh." he was actually telling me about the phones' different operating systems, problems with certain phones, etc. it kind of makes me want to start a geek rating system evaluating the geeky people i meet.

suspenders = lack of fashion sense
pocket protector = enjoys in depth conversations about anything computer related
calculator = carries more than two electronic toys

hrmm.. i'm sure there's more i can add to this.

parent me, child you

my mum and i went to chapters today because i needed to find a gift. it was my mum who drove there and back.. and now i know how my parents feel when i drive. i don't know if it's the car or if it's me, but tonight i really felt like my mum wasn't stopping fast enough. she knows how to drive; she's only had one accident which wasn't her fault. i'm thinking it's probably the car. it's so weird though, my mum used to hold onto the car door while i was learning how to drive and tonight i was doing the exact same thing!

it's snowing!!! finally..

I made myself a snowball
As perfect as can be.
I thought I'd keep it as a pet,
And let it sleep with me.
I made it some pajamas
And a pillow for it's head.
Then last night it ran away,
But first - It wet the bed.
[Shel Silverstein]

internet explorer doesn't like me, i'm sure.

oh woe is me. i'm trying to do up the layout of the website for the charity event my parents are organizing for a second year (amar aasha). so far it looks alright on opera and mozilla, but on internet explorer it's a little wonky. i'm trying to figure out from the old site layout how i got it to work, but nothing seems to work. so frustrating! why can't the whole world use opera or mozilla? or at least everyone in ottawa..

email time capsule

so forbes has made an email time capsule which will allow you to send yourself an email in 1, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years. i would like to think that my life will have significantly changed at all five points in time, so i'd love to send myself something for all five periods. the problem is i can't think of what to send myself. maybe one of those silly surveys that everyone keeps forwarding to every single person on their email list? i'm having issues finding a fun one to fill out though. some more googling and hopefully i'll find something.

mommy, where do babies come from?

now there's a german book that answers the question! i myself would not open this while at work.. stupidly, i opened this while in the computer lab at school. luckily the two people on either side of me are too involved in their own work to notice what was on my screen.

no milk today

i've been scrolling through my mp3 folders looking for music to burn. there's one song i found that i have no idea why i still have it on my computer. royal gigolos - no milk today (benni benassi mix).. weirdest freakin' song ever. i searched for the lyrics and found that it was an old 60's song by herman's hermits:

No milk today, my love has gone away
The bottle stands forlorn, a symbol of the dawn
No milk today, it seems a common sight
But people passing by don't know the reason why

How could they know just what this message means
The end of my hopes, the end of all my dreams
How could they know a palace there had been
Behind the door where my love reigned as queen

No milk today, it wasn't always so
The company was gay, we turned night into day

But all that's left is a place dark and lonely
A terraced house in a mean street back of town
Becomes a shrine when I think of you only
Just two up two down

No milk today, it wasn't always so
The company was gay, we turned night into day
As music played, the faster did we dance
We felt it both at once, the start of our romance

take an abba style of singing and add a benassi beat to it - brings the song's oddity level sky high.

squirrels make my dad go crazy

my parents bought some tulip bulbs a week or two ago and planted them in the front yard. there's a crazy squirrel who keeps digging them up, so almost daily you can see a tulip bulb or two lying somewhere in the yard. it's driving my dad totally nuts! he even went as far as claiming it's a female squirrel because of its annoying behaviour :P i should find that squirrel and thank it for much amusement.

in the long run we're all dead

(john keynes, economist)

i read this wee little article in this month's wired about new ways to dispose corpses. interesting stuff. one process is called freeze-drying by promessa, a swedish company. basically they freeze-dry you in liquid nitrogen, vibrate you into an organic powder, evaporate the water out of you, separate you from any metals (ie. mercury), then bury you under a bush or tree in a cornstarch coffin to become compost. the other way is tree bonding by biopresence, a british company. they take the sequence of a plant's dna, encode your dna into the plant gene, then introduce the new gene into the organism. interesting stuff indeed!

now you can, according to the article, "be the tree, feed the tree" :)

wanted: fun driving music

i want to make a cd (or two) of good music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. any suggestions would be appreciated! so far on my list i have:
van morrison - brown eyed girl
stealer's wheel - stuck in the middle with you
kingsmen - louie louie
the doors - light my fire
steppenwolf - magic carpet ride
war - low rider
ramones - i want to be sedated
styx - mr. roboto

happy new year!

no i'm not crazy, nor am i two months early.. in terms of the hindu calendar it's the new year. actually, there's a slight difference between that wikipedia article and the vikram samvat calendar. i believe the biggest difference is when the year begins. most businesses use the vikram samvat calendar because "new year's eve" falls on a day when you pray to lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.. so it's pretty obvious why today is the first day in terms of the financial year. and no, we didn't put on our party hats and get our noise makers ready to usher in 2062 at midnight :P

my parents took the day off today. one of my cousins in england, who's a teacher, got yesterday and today off - apparently the school districts give a certain number of holidays to be used specifically for religious days so that you don't need to cut into your alotted vacation time. how politically correct..

scoop poop

a purchaser had come in to ask a few questions. as he was leaving he said, "thanks for the poop!" .. he's a 40-something year old accountant. by now i figured one of his two teenage girls would have informed him about how socially disfavourable, in a mainstream pop culture sort of way, it is to use the term "poop".

i *heart* my academic advisor

i met with an academic advisor today just to make sure i can graduate next term. so glad i did because i'm no longer freaking out about winter term. before i was supposed to take 6 courses next term in order to graduate, so the other academic advisor i met with last year recommended that i enroll into a program called connections - work 5 hours voluntary at an organization for 13 weeks and you get a 4th year business credit. so that means 5 courses plus connections. not *too* bad.

well today, the other academic advisor made it so i don't need to do 5 courses next term! i was telling her how i need to find a social science credit because an arts credit was showing on the registration navigator as a social science class for the longest time; now it shows as an arts credit. she said she'd take my word for it and make it count as a social science credit!! i was a little shocked.. she told me because i got a good grade in the class (B), it's a 3rd year course, and i wanted to graduate next term, that it's not a problem. also, she increased the class size of the last compulsory class i need to take in order to enroll me in it.

so now things are going fairly smoothly.. all i need to do is find a place that will want free labour and i'm set!