temple of all things good is broken

the fridge broke today. we didn't notice until mum started sweeping the kitchen and found a puddle forming in front of the fridge. in the freezer, all the ice melted, all the ice cream was soupy, and other stuff were thawing out. luckily we have another freezer and a cold storage area in the basement, so we were able to stick everything in there.

i got into work today and it's FREEZING. it's about 15 degrees in here, so i'm sitting at the computer with my coat and mitts on. never typed with mitts on before; easier than i thought it would be..

happy boxing day!

a belated merry christmas to you! quite the weekend for me this year. well, not so much.

friday night / saturday i was pretty sick. not sure what it was because i was fine by saturday evening. maybe a 24 hour thing?

saturday my aunt (dad's youngest sister) and family came down for the weekend. that night i tried making polenta squares with mushroom ragu. that turned out pretty disgusting. for some reason i didn't expect to taste the wine so much, but i did. i'm not a fan of wine, probably the only kind of alchohol i am REALLY disgusted by. blah, such an awful taste.

sunday morning my dad, brother, and i bought stuff from futureshop online, one being my christmas present, heh. my dad bought me a 250gb external drive. later, my cousin hemita and i made cake batter but didn't have time to bake it because we would have missed our movie! the parents wanted to see an indian movie, so my brother, hemita, and i went to see king kong! such an awesome movie; it ALMOST made me cry (i felt really sorry for the ape *tear*). afterwards, out came the turkey and the tofu. dad, my brother, my uncle, and hemita had the turkey. mum, my aunt, and i had the tofu. i've come to the conclusion that i really don't like tofu, no matter how it's cooked. the only time i've ever found it edible is in thai food. that's about it..

sunday night i didn't get much sleep. i shared my bed with hemita during their visit. every time i've been in the same bed as hemita i get whacked, ever since she was little. in the past she has kicked me, rolled over on top of me, even slapped me in the face once! this time she elbowed me twice in the face. i swear the next time, i'm wearing a helmet to bed.

today we wanted to join in on the boxing day festivities, so we headed to the mall. i ended up buying three shirts and a pair of pants. half the stores had really disappointing sales, like a rack or two of sales out of the entire store! ah well, i wasn't planning on spending much anyway so i suppose that helped!

mattel weekly

i went into work yesterday to get some extra hours in because money is always good. anyway, the three of us were just sitting there bored out of our minds. it got to the point where we were discussing barbie's love life. apparently a few years ago she split up with ken? had no idea! also, she's been called a slut for many reasons. seriously, i didn't think a doll could have a far more exciting life than me.

the mall is such an evil place

my parents and i did a walk-about of the mall today. we were on a mission: find christmas gifts for my cousins. in the end, we settled on the not-so-creative gift cards. my mum wanted to get two of my cousins a gift card to la senza cause she says they shop there a lot. i protested; i told her that's like giving someone underwear for christmas! ah well, we got them at decent places where we know they shop and at least it's done now. *sigh* my feet hurt.

swingers clubs are perfectly legal

the supreme court has ruled that swingers clubs are perfectly legal because these clubs are not collecting money for any sex acts. if they were, then it would be charged in regards to prostitution. [link]

anyway, the ctv.ca site always has a poll. today's poll asked: do you agree with the supreme court of canada decision that says swingers clubs are perfectly legal? as of 11:30pm, 63% (8358 of 13279) voted no. i'm REALLY surprised by that. how can people be bothered by this? if all parties are consenting adults AND no one is being hurt then who really cares what they are doing behind closed doors. now, bring kids in the picture or rape then yes, whatever they're doing would be illegal. but like they said in the article, all acts were done behind closed doors so you'd have to be allowed into the club to even be exposed to it. i'm shocked by the level of conservatism shown. to those who voted no, i say, "who the fuck cares if they're swinging or having orgies. are you just jealous you weren't included?"

call me sparkles

last night i stayed up until 12am making a part gift for my boss. i took five matts (ones you use to frame pictures within the frame) and glued foam letters on each one spelling the names of each of her 4.5 grandchildren, and decorated them with coloured jewels, sparkles, and/or foam stars. two of them turned out REALLY good. the other three turned out *okay*. anyway, by the end of the night, i was covered in sparkles - all over my hands, on my face, in my hair.. everywhere! my boss liked them, thought they were quite cute.

i came home from work today with a box full of goodies. there were gifts from my boss and coworkers, a godiva giftbasket from the head office in toronto (SO impressed!), and stuff we split from giftbaskets sent by purchasers. my mum brought home a giftbasket from work as well. i don't the house has had this much coffee and chocolate EVER.

and now..

i'm done! this term at least. my last two finals were yesterday - market research and multinational business policy. they went alright. on my market research exam, the first two questions stumped me.. i talked to a few people afterwards and they did the same thing as me - start at the end and work their way backwards. my multinational business policy exam.. oh dear. i really didn't know what to study for this, so i just skimmed through my notes. we were given 10 questions and had to answer 6. for each answer i wrote between 1 page, 1-1/2 pages so i only needed one booklet. i think about 10 people used a second booklet, which makes me think how is the prof going to mark all that? he was marking our tracking reports (which we handed in four weeks ago) during the exam, we handed in our research reports at the exam, and there's the actual final to mark. the prof is either a procrastinator or takes on too much, haven't figured that out yet. anyway, that's why i didn't go on, and on, and on.. cause i knew he wouldn't be able to mark it all in three weeks. so it has me a little antsy.

on my way home, a girl just started randomly talking to me on the bus. it was kind of weird. meh. found out she was a psychology student at queens and she finds the school lacks cultural diversity, which surprised me. i figured since queens has quite the reputation, you'd think it would attract a varied amount of people. odd.

have fun with snow :)

make your own snowflake

build a snowman

giant snow penis!

snow 1, reena 0

last night and this morning it snowed. quite a bit.. i'm not sure how much fell up to this morning because i was knocked out cold by the tylenol cold pills i took last night, so i missed out on the snow shovelling festivities. apparently it took an hour for mum and my brother to get to the second bus station, which would normally take 10-15 minutes to get to. so my brother decided he'd take the bus and mum can head straight to work; they figured this would be the fastest for them both. wrong for my brother at least. somewhere on the transitway buses got stuck, so they all had to walk. my brother works right downtown, so i'm not sure how long it took him to get to work :S

anyway, mum's office closed early due to the weather. no point keeping the office open when everyone is miserable about the weather.. i had to shovel the driveway because the snow plow came by and there was no way mum would get the car into the garage. i decided i'd just conquer mum's half of the driveway with my trusty shovel and dad or my brother could use the snowblower to do the other half when they got home.

the problem with fridays is it's garbage day. the garbage sits on mum's side of the driveway. i can't dump snow on the garbage or else the garbage man won't take it, so i had to put in extra effort to avoid it. i don't mind shovelling normal driveway snow - it's very mind numbing work. but snow plow snow requires thinking! figuring out how to tear it apart and where to stick it gets the hamster running.

after this winter i expect to get rid of some of the jell-o on my arms. considering i hate the gym and am disgusted by the word "exercise", shovelling snow should be the next best alternative, right?

garbage corner:


mum got home before i finished, so she started shovelling the other side:

wholesome tv entertainment

so i watched the leaders' debate tonight. i think the body language alone was enough entertainment. it was interesting to watch them pan out on all four leaders while one was speaking - you could see daggers and laser beams shooting out of their eyes at each other because of what someone said. at one point, i swear paul martin was going to do a *wavy snap* at stephen harper after giving a counter argument. my family was pretty amused because each one had a running theme throughout the debate:

gilles duceppe, bloc québecois:
it's the liberals' fault. they broke the country. it's time to separate!
stephen harper, conservatives:
la, la, la *avoiding the question..*
jack layton, ndp:
*hypnotizing eyes* elect ndp, elect ndp, elect ndp
paul martin, liberals:
*hand dance* uh.. uh.. um.. *stutter*

3 down, 2 to go + 1 report

i had my compensation management final yesterday. originally it was supposed to be 30 multiple choice questions worth 30% of the final mark, but one person complained so he bumped it up to 60. he had another person come in to help proctor, which i don't think was really necessary. i figured he just wanted someone to talk to during the exam because that's what he kept doing! whatever, i don't work well in complete silence anyway. i was the first one to be done, like in the midterm, 30 minutes! if i didn't answer a single question on the exam, i would still come out with a 62% as a final grade. man, i love this class. i've been telling EVERYONE to take it because it's an easy b+ at least: 45% is given to you if your group completes every 1 page case study and the final project. in total, i put maybe a total of 15 hours of work into this class for the entire term. hopefully i'll end up with an a- *cross fingers*

i forgot to mention from my leisure studies exam (last time i'll be talking about this class, i swear!) the prof left in the middle of the exam. she just walked out.. and it's not like there was another person in there proctoring. lucky for her there are a number of arse-kissers that would tell her if people started to talk during the time she left. also, she made a point to shake every person's hand when they gave in their final. ugh. i wasn't looking forward to that. i tried to leave while she was helping someone, but she caught me as i walked out the door. she had clammy hands too, like i suspected. one guy i know came out not long after me and he wiped his hand on me. ewww.. even more professor clamminess was on me.

nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea

i had my leisure studies final today. it went well - probably because i met with three guys from my class and we went over everything making sure each one of us understood the material.

anyway, there was one girl who was sitting in the exam with a bottle of pepto bismal. yes, that's right. the pink stuff. why? who knows. i can't believe a leisure studies exam, of all classes, would cause nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea..

oh yeah, we changed your phone plan two years ago

my parents strapped me with a ball and chain (cell phone) back in 2002. my plan was 75 weekday minutes plus 25 weekday minutes for paying by credit card. i got my latest bill yesterday and they say i went over by 8:13 weekday minutes.. what?! as if. i don't use my phone that much, so there is no way i'd go over. apparently i'm back down to 75 minutes, how can that be? i called rogers and apparently the additional 25 minutes was only a one year promotion and that i had to renew the promotion after the year was up (when they were still offering it). uh.. come again? when i got my plan, the rogers agent didn't tell us that it was only a one year deal (and things like that i make sure i remember, let alone my dad because he's a cheap indian). so the customer service rep took the additional charges off my bill, but told me that they wouldn't be able to get me back to 100 minutes because the promotion is no longer offered. at this point i was getting angry, so i passed the phone to my dad. he told her that once my plan was up that we'll be moving my account elsewhere because this is completely ridiculous. oh wait.. guess what. we have a new and improved plan just for you! the exact same plan except now i get 200 weekday minutes and free call display at the same price of $25 per month (which is really $40 per month after all the charges). well then.. why didn't you tell me that in the first place?

draw a house, be analyzed

apparently, the way you draw a house can say a lot about your personality. so i did - my procrastination from studying. here's my beautiful house. so what does my wonderful drawing say about me?

"You are sensitive and indecisive at times."

i suppose that's true..

"You are a freedom lover and a strong person."

how about freedom seeker? you know it's difficult being an east indian girl living at home :P

"You love your house and family."

really? *eye roll*

"You are a gifted artist as well."

damn right! just look at my beautiful house.

"Once you have a problem, you need a friend with you."

are they calling me needy?

"Your life is always full of changes."

i change my underwear every day, does that count?

"You are very tidy person."

i think my mum would object..

"There's nothing wrong with that because you're pretty popular among friends."

so there's something wrong with people who are tidy?

"Your life is always full of changes."

is there an echo?

"You will avoid being alone and seek the company of others whenever possible."

yeah, i'll give them that.

"You love excitement and create it wherever you go."

i'd like to think so..

"You see the world as it is, not as you believe it should be."

not so much.

"You added a flower into your drawing."

i added MANY flowers into my drawing..

"The flower signifies that you long for love."

make me feel even more lonely why don't you? :P

"It also safe to say that others don't see you as a flirt."

hahahahahahahahahahaha :)

You don't think much about yourself.

apparently not..

draw your house and add yourself to fun house way!

man i hate studying.. stupid leisure studies.

apology for beer comment is .. plain stupid.

scott reid, the prime minister's director of communications, criticized the conservatives' plan to give families $1,200 for each child under 6 years old to offset child care costs. basically his comment was, "don't give people $25 a day to blow on beer and popcorn."

there are people who found this pretty offensive because they say the liberals have no faith in the parents' ability to handle money given to them. i personally think scott reid's comment was justified.

i'm not saying that all parents will blow the money, but there are deadbeat parents out there who will spend it on themselves rather than their child. my mum worked with a lady who would complain that she never had enough money to buy her son cough medicine whenever he had a cold, yet the woman would always have smokes handy for her regular smoke breaks. and she was decently paid, so my mum couldn't stand her complaints.

now putting money into daycares may seem like the government would be omitting stay-at-home parents, but they actually aren't. sending kids to daycares/nurseries are becoming more and more popular because of the educational benefits they provide. maybe having easier access to educational nurseries, it could raise the education level of the country? hrmm.. maybe a little far-fetched.

'twas a good night

sarah and i went to surface tonight and had THE best time! quentin was playing in the quarter finals of the dj competition - he had a MUCH better set than his competitor, like ten times better. quentin said he had three times the number of votes than the other guy, so it looked promising.

sarah and i met a new guy named dan. he looks like he's in his late 30s, wears baggy pants (cuffs were a fair size but not huge), and seemed gay (at least that was mine and sarah's first impression of him). he was really nice and talkative! the conversation only occured because i was afraid his friend, who was dancing on a riser, was going to step on my phone. at one point he said that sarah was obviously the single friend and that i wasn't. uh..? dan said that i may not be in a relationship, but it looked like i was interested in someone. hrmm. that's news to me! oh, and he thought my phone was pretty geeky and that i couldn't be a geek because geeks have no life! well hello! i am a geek and i have no life!

yeah, so that was a very entertaining night indeed :) there was one really bad part about the evening.. i forgot my freakin' camera in my car!! so i couldn't take pictures documenting the night.. *sigh* c'est la vie.

wow.. wow.. wow!

i'm biased, but wow!! i loved the movie! i dragged my brother out tonight to see the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, and i'm very glad i did. we caught the 10:45pm show, which was nice because there was only about 30 people in the theatre.

there was one bit that i couldn't remember if it was correct or not from the book. i thought the kids were orphaned because of the war, so they were sent to the professor's. in the movie, it was their mother that sent them to the professor's. oh yeah, there was one other thing. i thought the witch treated edmund better in the book than she did in the movie.

the girl who played lucy was PERFECT. she suited the part to a tee. her curiosity and general glee was very believable. liam neeson could have sounded a bit more commanding.

considering they had to make it a two hour movie (since it's a kids' film, disney) i thought they did a pretty good job in telling the story as effectively as possible.

once i'm done exams i'm going to read it then take my parents out to see the movie. i'm sure they'd really enjoy it on the big screen. plus, i think my mum may remember the series by the bbc i used to watch when i was younger, so she might remember the story line. anyway, i need to read the book one more time before i go see the movie again.

exploding dog

i don't know if i've ever talked about this before, but i love the exploding dog! some of the pictures are a little disturbing, but other ones are pretty cute or funny :)
some of my favourites:
and then it came to me
could you draw a picture of britney spears picking her nose
everyone else is really boring
i am the master evil genius
i fail to see the humour in it
i just wanted to hear you say "i love you"
i like this music
if only i could reach them
it's okay because i don't really mean it
science did not fail me
we were not sure
your job is soooo hard

i'd love to wallpaper one of my walls full of them. it probably wouldn't be *too* difficult..

wikisaurus

i wanted to find a synonym for crucial and thought i'd try wikipedia's thesaurus: wikisaurus. the amount of information available on wikipedia, i assumed i'd find synonyms at wikisaurus. much to my dismay, the number of words available is very, very minimal. browsing through the words, it's very obvious that there are a LOT of sex related words available. out of 105 words, 25 are sex related - 24%.. wow.

now it gets me thinking. who has the dirtier mind? internet geeks or construction workers? being at my current job, i've learned that construction workers have REALLY dirty minds which makes for some amusing conversations..

reena: so what are you going to be doing at the new site?
mr. a: fucking a dog.
reena: *slaps forehead*

one time in the site office, someone was walking around with a sign on their back that said, "free breast exams available here". never a dull moment when dealing with construction..

the countdown has already begun

i'm SO FREAKIN' excited - chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe is coming out on friday!!! sadly the only people i know who would go with me to this movie without question, my parents, are in england and won't be back until monday.. so that's why i'm dragging my brother out to see it. i've read the whole series about a gazillion times and i used to watch the bbc series on ytv (from what i remember were really well done!), so my love for the series is indubitably (i love this word) strong. so exciting!!

ain't no pussy galore

the home builder i work for has several sales offices (one of them i work in) and a site office. i don't go in the site office often, but almost everyone in there knows me.

the regular receptionist was away today, so the new co-op student at the site office was answering phones. i've never met her before, well i didn't know she existed! anyway, someone at the site office called me to tell me about a conversation she had with the co-op student today.

student: the weirdest thing just happened..
ms. j: what?
student: a guy just called asking for someone named reena.
ms. j: yeah, and?
student: you know a reena?
ms. j: yeah, she works at the sales office.
student: reena mystery?
ms. j: no, reena mistry. m-i-s-t-r-y.
student: oh, well this guy was really creepy and talked like he was trying to be sultry and seductive. he kept asking for reena mystery, and stretching out the word "mystery". i thought it was a stupid prank call. the way he was saying reena mystery sounded like he was referring to a porn star. so i told him he had the wrong number and hung up.

hehehe, i'm amused :)

oh happy day!

coldplay is coming to ottawa in march, so tickets went on sale half an hour ago. hopefully sarah was able to get some *cross fingers* i missed the first time they came to ottawa; apparently the concert was AMAZING. not sure how this one will fare since their latest album isn't as good as their first two. we shall see..

UPDATE: we got tickets!!

on another happy-ish sort of note. a girl just sat down beside me who smells like cadbury mini eggs.

damn munchies

on saturday i went out and bought my brother a mini birthday cake because his birthday is tomorrow. everyone flew out last tuesday and my only brother comes back today, so the only person i had to worry about accidentally eating the cake was me. there's a HUGE difference between ice cream and cheesecake in terms of cravings, you know, because one is readily available in the freezer at any time of the year and the other is usually a treat few times a year. my will power was the strongest it has ever been this weekend, because just seeing and smelling that cake every time i open the fridge door weakened me slightly.

ho ho ho

santa has a blog! so cute :)

bad music and annoying djs

tonight sarah and i went to helsinki because i've never been, and they were playing electrohouse unlike surface who was playing trance.

the music started out good, but that was when sarah and i were sitting talking. throughout the night, the music was getting worse and worse because the dj seemed to play really similar beats and kept putting in slow points in the music without switching to a completely different yet complementary beat.

we were dancing by a speaker with a fan above. but at one point the fan started to leak water! we figured it was a dehumidifier rather than a fan, but it should have the proper piping to keep it from leaking. so the area we were dancing in became pretty slippery. made for some interesting dance moves.

also, there was a guy who kept slowly moving closer and closer into my space. then he moved away, like two hours later!

some guy came up to me and asked if i was from xvi because i was taking pictures. i told him no, just taking pictures for myself. he told me he'd buy me a drink if i'd take a picture of him and his friend and agreed to email it to him. told him it was unnecessary to buy a drink but thanked him for his offer. i get an email address at a club for the first time, but it's for all the WRONG reasons!

here are the other few pictures from the night.

i skipped class for this?

so last night was the christmas party. it was .. interesting. they held it at a piano bar. sounds pretty swanky, right? not so much. they had a lounge singer serenading us, which was really loud for the size of the place. when we left, we saw the singer's sign that says "un cadeau pour les femmes" which means a gift for the women. HA! yeah right. the guy had on a cheap suit and big hair, not so attractive. my vegetarian platter was big chunks of bell peppers in teriyaki sauce,zucchini sticks, and a baked potato. it would have been okay if my food wasn't not-quite-warm. AND, the place doubles as a kareoke bar. oh, that's right. some people went up to sing christmas carols, pretty badly - so amusing :) the screens to read the lyrics had a video of a japanese car show playing in the background with scantilly clad women adorning the cars. SO FUNNY!! all in all, i don't think i want to ever go back to that place ever again.

OH! and the most entertaining part of the night: one of the people i sort of work with came up to me and she kissed me (on the cheek)! someone else saw and just stared at me with her mouth open and a "what the fuck" look in her eyes.

temporary freak outs are fun

yesterday was designated as freak out day.

we got our consumer behaviour report back yesterday - we received 77%. he put a whole lot of comments throughout our report; i think he used up a single red pen on our report alone. anyway, i scanned through his comments (whatever i could make out) and thought they were ridiculous. two other people from my group were slightly annoyed and said that we should speak to the prof right away. fortunately, i figured we should wait, i'll read over (decifer) his comments properly, then send an email. so on the bus home i read through them making my own comments against his and figured he was giving good feedback.

last night i found out that octranspo was raising their fares today by up to 10% and that we now have the highest fares for public transportation in canada. i realised i should have bought like 10 sheets of bus tickets at the old price. then i went onto the website and found out that i will only be spending $0.25 more per week at the new price..

at least i have the ability to become kind of rational after a bit of thinking..