Category: life

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My First Mocha

Quite a personal post two days ago. I guess the sadness sometimes makes it hard to keep it to myself. Here comes another one:

I never made it the full 48 hours of computer hiatus, I checked my email at school and inevitably booted up my computer to show my brother and his wife a video because my Xbox refuses to play VCD’s, (I guess Microsoft is worried about copyright violations, even though the one in question is of me free-flying in Malaysia). But disconnecting (for the most part) from my computer did help. I cleaned up my house and completed a boatload of errands. I’ve even had time to start reading “Middlesex”, which is a facinating book and the respite has allowed me to hit it hard.

My jet lag is slowly but surely leaving. The nap I took on Monday started at 11am and lasted seven hours. Yesterday I laid my head down around 3:30pm and got up at 5:00pm; my naps are getting shorter and once again I’m sleeping through the night.

I went to Starbucks yesterday and ordered a Mocha Tall. It’s not the first one I’ve ever had, but it marked the first time that I’ve ever ordered coffee (or a half coffee half chocolate anyway) when no one else was around saying, “hey you wanna get some Starbucks?”. I’ve never had any reason to drink coffee. I’ve never particularly liked the taste of it either, though the smell has started to grow on me. I find it empowering to try something new and to really decide on my own if drinking the occasional coffee is something that I like.

You may be reading this and thinking to yourself, “What a complete weirdo, he’s acting as if drinking coffee is some kind of crime.” I should mention that for me consuming coffee has always appeared as a horrible mortal sin, the first step in a hand-basket down the road paved with good intentions. As one of my favorite bloggers explains:

“My parents raised me Mormon, and I grew up believing that the Mormon Church was true. In fact, I never had a cup of coffee until I was 23-years-old. I had pre-marital sex for the first time at age 22, but BY GOD I waited an extra year for the coffee. There had better be a special place in heaven for me.”

Outside the Starbucks a disheveled blonde man with a mullet approached me. His golden coloured hair was long and oily, he had what appeared to be the fresh swelling of a severe beating, gauze over his left eye, and half a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

“Do you have a light?”

“No, sorry — well actually I have the cigarette lighter from my car.”

“Thanks man, I just got out of jail.”

“What were you doing in jail?” I was pretty sure from the 20 fresh stitches on his hung-over face that he had not been there long.

He explained, “I fell asleep in the park and I woke up to somebody kicking me in the face.”

“Then how did you end up in jail?”

“I don’t know. They said I was drunk.” I guess that was all he needed to say.

I gave him his light and a couple bucks in change — so he could at least catch the bus. I figured if I could jeopardize my soul with a $3 mocha the least I could do was counter balance it with a little charity. If there is a heaven, I hope there’s a special place for me too.

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Malaysia – Day 31

The suspicious man from a few days ago approached me again today. This time he was alone, but again he asked me what time it was. I told him I thought it was weird that he kept asking me for the time and that he should stop asking, especially since he has a watch. I knew his watch worked, but it’s not polite to just accuse someone of outright lying, so I tried to catch a glimpse of what time he actually had.

He told me that he “forgot…” (was he implying he forgot how to read it? I’m not sure) which really isn’t the case because when I tried to look at his watch to see if he really had the wrong time he covered the watch’s face with his thumb and then finally he moved it enough for me to read his watch. He asked if it was quarter to nine. It was. I looked at him incredulously and then walked away.

The whole sequence of events struck me as very odd and so I thought about this guy and what he could possibly want. I ran the scenario through my head, “What time is it?” and then it struck me. 4:20. Answering 4:20 is code signifying that I want to buy weed.

That’s the only logical scenario I can come up with, but could it be? The penalty for selling drugs in Malaysia is death. Why would anyone put themselves at such risk?

I read about a girl from Australia the other day that got caught with four kilograms of pot in Indonesia (that’s 8.8 pounds). She was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She’s going to appeal but it doesn’t look promising. Why anyone would take that big of a risk is beyond me.

Sometimes things just don’t go the way you’d like them. This morning for breakfast I apparently failed at getting my order across. I wanted to get a plain roti with butter (just like a scone) some scrambled eggs, and a nice glass of cold water. Instead I got some half boiled eggs still in their brown shells and liquid inside, and some toast with some marmalade like jam. The toast was good anyway but there was no way I could possibly even crack the runny eggs. I thought it was funny that even the ice water that I ordered was hot and particularly sans ice. Apparently if you order water and they don’t hear the “ice” part, they think you want to use it to make tea.

This evening I finished reading my book, “Canadian History for Dummies“. Don’t worry I’m well aware of the irony in coming to Malaysia to learn about Canada. But wow, what a great look into Canada’s astounding past. Some of the things I remember hearing about in school, but most were new facts that I either wasn’t interested in, in school, or that the curriculum didn’t cover.

I found the roles Canada played in the first and second world wars very interesting, and particularly eye opening was the sequence of events involving the French and their huge part in Canadian history and their consequential feelings of being jilted by the rest of Canada. It made a lot more sense when you have the whole story and not just what I remember from the news during the Lyin’ Brian Mulroney years. The true story is a lot more complicated than this idea I got growing up in the west that “French Canadians are just hard to get along with” and “they refuse to be bilingual just on the principle of the matter.” I’d get into it more, but it’s a long story that involves broken promises, back stabbing, political maneuvering, and an attempt by the British to eliminate the French culture from Canada.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with a remote interest in the history of not only Canada but the whole continent of North America. There is a lot of shared history between Canada and the United States. It’s full of things that will make you laugh not to mention a lot of darker history that makes you want to cry. It’s all in there.

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Malaysia – Day 14

Today was so amazingly fun I might have to break into ALL CAPS TO DESCRIBE HOW AWESOME IT WAS! Jon picked me up and we had lunch at this Indian food place. The food is served on banana leaves and the idea is, you don’t use any eating utensils. YOU GET TO USE YOUR HANDS!

We had coconut milk with our meal which is a nice treat. It started to rain and ironically that was one of the most fun parts of the meal. We got out of the rain under some nearby canvas but some other tables were half covered and half exposed. The water started to pour down on the tables and the employees there were scrambling to help the people. One guy brought this huge umbrella up to the place where water was coming down and instead of stopping the stream he just spread it out over everyone. Everyone was in a pretty good mood though and we all just laughed about the gong-show that was happening around us.

We were going to visit Malacca but then the rain changed our minds. Instead we went to the Ganting Highlands. It was great.

We stopped at a Buddhist temple and climbed up the nine floors — representative of the nine levels of heaven. The clouds were coming in and although it made it hard to see very far, the mist brought with it a nice cool breeze.

There are many rides both indoor and out at the Ganting Highlands but rain kept us inside. They even have a water park there. The best part — at least in my mind — was an attraction they called “Free Flying”. They have a vertical wind tunnel that has a continuous stream of air zooming by at least 193 km/h. The force of the air is enough to lift you off the ground at which point you are literally flying. WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW AMAZING IT FEELS TO FLY! Controlling yourself is not to hard either, once you start to get the hang of it.

Moving your hands left and right and up and down can control your side-to-side motion; bending and straightening your legs will send you backwards and forwards respectively. The best part was having the instructor grab onto me and go into a wild spin up and down the wind tunnel. I was worried it wouldn’t be worth the money but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT! I had a VCD made of the entire flight and I’m hoping to find some software that will let me convert it to a *.mov and then I’ll post a clip from it here.

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Malaysia – Day 13

I was hoping to take in some scuba diving lessons today, but with the presentations due at work it just wasn’t possible. There is a chance I could do it during the week, but with my busy schedule I’m not holding my breath…

This evening I just read a little from my “Canadian History For Dummies” book and chatted with the other U of L students. Tomorrow I’m going to go with Jon to either Malacca or the Ganting Highlands.

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It Ain’t Over ’til it’s Over

But in this case it really is over.

Yesterday I took a long run (to put it mildly) around the Vancouver area. By a miracle, I finally met up with Anna. I had been trying to find the school where she was acting but had some poor directions. We decided to meet at Starbucks later that night.

Breaking up with Anna has been more strange than any of the other breakups I’ve ever been involved in. We still both seem to be very much in love but each have this understanding that it’s just not meant to be. There wasn’t any of the drama that someone might expect between two people that have been together for so long. We wandered around the mall for a bit and talked about what we’ve been up to lately and about how it was we arrived in our current situation. I would have gladly spent the whole evening with her, but I guess she had to prepare for her weekend in Victoria. Dragging it on probably would’ve only made things more difficult, especially for her. Though I am still sad, I’m actually pretty happy with the way things worked out.

In other news, U2 had another concert in Vancouver last night. I walked by GM Place on my way to the train, and just out of curiosity asked a scalper how much for 2 tickets. He said he only had 1 pair of tickets together and they were $400 each! For the most part it looked like the scalpers were having a hard time finding tickets to sell and because of that it wouldn’t surprise me if those $800 tickets sold easily.

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Greetings from Vancouver

Photo of The Uleth Group

This is a photo from Jason’s apartment in downtown Vancouver. I have been lucky enough to get a week long contract with a video game company here. It’s been a great experience.

I landed here on Friday and I fly out to Malaysia extremely early Sunday morning. Things couldn’t be working out more perfectly for me.

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My heart

In case you thought my heart was broken, you can listen for yourself.

For those of you asking why I put a sound file of my heartbeat on the Internet, I guess the answer lies somewhere between, “because I can” and “because I’ve never seen it done before”, and because it hurts.

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Blue and Gold Banquet

Every year the University of Lethbridge has an awards night for all the athletes on all of the sports teams. Last night was the awards night for the 2004/05 season – and a pretty crazy night. I have to say, the awards themselves were probably the most boring part of the evening.

We met at a pub for a pre-party swim team gathering where some of the girls gave out presents to the other swimmers. Brock and I got (in my opinion) the best presents. We each got a framed Speedo with our names engraved on the frame. It’s kind of hilarious because I would never wear such a small suit, but at the same time – technically it would fit me.

I guess a couple of the girls had a few shots of absinthe before they came and consequently they were very intoxicated. One of the girls was particularly drunk and as we left the pub she asked everyone in the room if she could get a “woo woo”. Then after high-fiving everyone in the bar twice we were finally able to leave.

Photo of Jeff at the Blue and Gold Banquet

We then headed to the University for a buffet and awards. I’d like to say the University splurged on the athletes and gave us a free meal, but then again I’d also like to say that the University isn’t anything more than a glorified money grabbing machine. (It is though, in case you never caught that).

After the ceremony was over we hung out at the Zoo (the University Pub) for a bit. That got old so I loaded up my Jeep with a bunch of party animals and headed to the Roadhouse – a bar on the Southside. I have to say, I normally don’t take that many people in the Jeep, but they were anxious to party and I was the only one able to drive.

On the way, while we were stopped at a traffic light we watched as an AMA tow-truck hit a pedestrian! We couldn’t believe our eyes. I wasn’t sure if he really had been hit or if he just fell over but when the tow-truck turned on its flashing lights and we pulled off the road to investigate, it turns out the guy really had been hit. He had a little bruising and some scraps but he was okay. I guess the saying that there are only two types of pedestrians may have some merit…. (ie. The quick and the dead). A ghost-car pulled up to the scene with lights flashing about two minutes later and seeing as everything was under control, we bolted. Besides, I didn’t want to get busted for not having enough seat belts.

Next we made a quick stop by my house so I could change into something less formal and to take a look for a gift certificate that I won a while ago. I never found the gift certificate but when I came back outside I did discover one very drunk girl running up the street sans shirt. Crazy. I’ve seen her a little drunk in the past but this was incredible.

All in all it was a fairly fun night. I guess I should probably get out more, but rarely going out makes nights like last night all the more memorable.

Photo of Speedo Swimsuit that is framed
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My iPod Photo

For Christmas this year, Anna-Maria bought me an iPod! It’s a 40 gig iPod Photo! Which is awesome for a number of reasons but mostly because it shows that she must really think I’m pretty great to be worthy of such a cool present.

So I’ve been learning all about iPods and here are a few of the things that I’ve learned:

iPod’s notes section is considerably lacking as it only allows short notes. There is a text to iPod note converter that takes long text and breaks them into smaller ones, meanwhile linking them altogether via hyperlinks.

Part of learning about iPod is also learning about iTunes. The auto-update feature asked if I wanted to upgrade to the newest version of iTunes. Luckily I did some research before I clicked. What I found out is that iTunes 4.7.1 scans the user’s music collection and any unlocked music it identifies as being purchased from iTunes, it puts a new fairplay DRM lock back on those tracks. I haven’t purchased any music from Apple (so far I’ve just been ripping my CD collection) but I’m planning on it and when I do, I don’t want to be restricted as to what I can do with music that I’ve legally purchased. I’m thinking twice about the new version — and maybe I’ll skip buying music online at all… for now.