seakrait

#113 - I'm still alive.

2007-10-02T14:18:00.001-07:00

No, really.

In brief
A lot of has happened since the Canucks were in the playoffs. They didn't win, that's obvious. I'm gainfully employed with the city. I took a leave of absence from Safeway till the summer of 2008. Canadian University Ultimate Championships are coming up next weekend. Tiffany is doing well. Sleeping as I type this, as usual. Facebook has come to replace blogging as much as I tried to stay away from it. But as usual, it was inevitable that I give in to the trend no matter how much I wanted to not be trendy. More Threadless shirts have been ordered and are on their way. DHL brokerage fees are going to kill me. I bought a new camera and have been taking photos and have been playing around with them in Photoshop. Learning as I go with that.

That's about it. We'll see how long it takes for me to make another post.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#112 - Holy bandwagon Batman!

2007-04-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

Canucks HAVE to make things exciting.

Always.

Vancouver Canucks vs. Dallas Stars
Really a war of goalies with the Canucks' Roberto Luongo versus the Stars' Marty Turco. Turco seemed to be the one making the flashier saves but Luongo came out on top at the end with the Canucks blowing a 3-1 series lead only to claim the series in Game 7 over the Stars 3-1.

And Robson St. erupted with joyous honks and screams when the game was over. And all that noise lasted for over two hours before the VPD came in to clear the streets.

For more pictures, CLICK HERE.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#111 - One down, three to go.

2007-04-17T01:07:00.000-07:00

One Ultimate tournament that is.

Huckin' For Hearts (2007)
The tourney was a success raising over $2400 for the Heart & Stroke Foundation. It was almost rained out with the weather being uncooperative in the days prior to Saturday but on the day-of, the weather was good.

Waking up at 5:45am in the morning to drive down to Richmond to set up the fields and Disc Central wasn't quite as fun but once the games got started, it was clear sailing all the way. Our discs were sold in mass quantities and prizes we raised were given away.

All in all a good day of Ultimate.

I was just a little bit envious that these kids got to play Ultimate in high school. I mean, when I was in high school, the most Ultimate we got was extra-curricular and was just a basic knowledge and tossing affair. Now these kids have teams and play on school teams and get coached by Furious and Prime. WTF, eh?

Anyway, onto the pics. Photos were taken by Ramir and Andreas, photographers off Revscene. More pictures to follow soon.

Click here for Ramir's (partial) slideshow.

Coming up next, organizationally speaking...

Flowerbowl 2007 on June 9-10th, 2007, Canadian University Ultimate Championships (CUUC) October 2007, and World Ultimate and Guts Championships (WUGC) August 2008.

Fun times, fun times.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#110 - The Empire's Worst Engineer.

2007-04-05T01:34:00.000-07:00

Hilarious stuff for you Star Wars geeks (ie: me).

Nardo Pace, the Empire's Worst Engineer
What you're about to read is from Something Awful and is the Email Inbox of Nardo Pace, Engineer for the Empire.

"Subject: Trash Compactor
From: Death Star Detention Level Janitor
Date: A Long Time Ago 7:46 PM
To: Nardo Pace

Hey, kid. That trash compactor you designed is up and running and I've got to say it looks great. Lots of grime, a magnetically sealed hatch that can't be opened from the inside, a tentacled garbage creature that practically serves no purpose at all. It's got everything a salty old janitor could ever want.

One thing, though. It takes an awful long time to flatten garbage. I'm talking a minute or more, depending on how many flimsy poles I toss in there. If our capital ships can boogie at faster than light speeds, why can't we make a few walls slide toward one another at a speed that outpaces a Hutt's leisurely stroll?

-------

Subject: breathing device too fuckin LOUD
From: Lord Vader
Date: A Long Time Ago 12:20 AM
To: Nardo Pace

yo hey i still dont understand whats going on with this thing

can u put a knob on my breather apperatis so i can turn down the volume when im in the library or sneakin up on maintenence droids? why did u put a speaker on this thing in the first place lol

-------

Subject: E-11 Blaster Rifle Calibration Still Off
From: Stormtrooper Commander 09731 <09731@empiremail.com>
Date: A Long Time Ago 3:51 PM
To: Nardo Pace

As you know, the E-11 has come a long way since its initial prototype. Thanks to your hard work over the past three years the rifle no longer fires completely sideways, and with your latest revision, the number of casualties resulting from blaster fire being directed completely backwards has been drastically reduced.

That said, the E-11 still has some accuracy issues. We recently bolted one of the rifles to a testing mechanism so that it couldn't move even a millimeter, then set up a human-sized target six feet in front of the blaster's barrel. Shooting in two second intervals, we let the E-11 fire at the target continuously for three days.

The result? Not one shot hit the target. I realize you're busy, but perhaps we can go over the design one more time and iron this out.

-------

Subject: Death Star :(
From: Foreman Galhi
Date: A Long Time Ago 8:13 PM
To: Nardo Pace

Keep your chin up, ok? Don't let the whole "Death Star getting blown up" thing get you down.

It's really my fault just as much as it is yours. Your original plan called for three weak spots, and I asked you to cut it down to one. If I had suggested we get rid of the weak spots altogether none of this would have happened.

What do we do now? Mope? No. We learn from our mistakes and make an adjustment to the blueprint for the new Death Star I'm working on.

Construction is going great, by the way. As you suggested, instead of constructing a defensive shell around the framework then working my way inward, I'm just building all the cool stuff in the middle first. I think you're right, it's the best way to go.

-------

Subject: AT-ATs... hell yeah!
From: Maximilian Veers
Date: A Long Time Ago 10:09 AM
To: Nardo Pace

WOOO! Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me!? These AT-ATs rule!

I cannot believe how awesome they are. I'm personally piloting one on our upcoming operation on Hoth and I can't wait to stomp on those rebel scum. There's like, no way to stop these things. I'm a big fan of yours, man. Big fan.

-------

Subject: carbonite transport device
From: Boba Fett
Date: A Long Time Ago 3:17 PM
To: Nardo Pace

I am currently transporting a bounty that has been frozen in carbonite with a device you created. I have been told to direct any questions or comments I might have your way.

This is obviously a new technology, but might I suggest adding a few security measures to the transport device's control panel? Right now anyone can walk up to this thing and flip a few switches to release the frozen prisoner. I'm thinking a number pad with a secret code would be great, or heck, even a plain old key.

Just a friendly suggestion. Oh, and thanks for the modifications you made to my rocket pack. That "ignition" button square on the back of the pack where I can't reach it is great.

-------

Subject: This darn bottomless shaft in my room
From: Emperor Palpatine
Date: A Long Time Ago 1:42 AM
To: Nardo Pace

You are responsible for designing my Throne Room, yes? Do not doubt it. I can see the truth inside you. It burns with a twisted blackness that cannot be denied.

I ask you this: Why is there a chasm in my room? Was it really necessary? What purpose does it serve? Nothing useful has ever come of it. In fact, sometimes when I awake in the middle of the night and stumble in the darkness while making my way to the Imperial Restroom, I mistakenly wobble along the shaft's edge. I also bump my knee on the Imperial Coffee Table, but that is another matter.

I'm expecting very important company today, but I fully expect that you will draw up plans for a grate to cover this errant hole and have someone build it tomorrow. It is your destiny."

ROFLCOPTER.

They have arrived!
Huckin' For Hearts is just around the corner (April 14th, 2007 at Stevestion Secondary in Richmond) and the discs I designed have arrived! Check it out!

Speaking of disc designs, check these out: http://www.discraft.com/gallery/supercolor/index.html ... an example of which below.

As you can see, the image on Discraft's SuperColors discs are printed right almost to the edge of the disc as opposed to a regular disc like the Huckin' For Hearts disc where the image is just printed on the centre circle.

Which brings me to this:

I mean, wouldn't you want to toss around a disc like Captain America? I'd have to order 50 of them at a cost of US$9.00 a disc plus shipping and brokerage fees which means I'd have to sell them for roughly what GAIA sells discs to non-members. Hmm...

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#109 - Tooting my own horn.

2007-03-24T23:29:00.000-07:00

A good day of Ultimate.

Vancouver Indoor Ultimate - Final Day
I won't talk about the Finals because that was a relatively foregone conclusion about 10 minutes into the game where Team 2 had a 10 point lead on Team 4 (the winningest team during the regular season) and held onto that lead all the way through to the time cap for the win as Champions of the Inaugural Season.

The Beer Finals earlier in the day, however, was much better.

Picture this: A tight close game with Team 1 (the team I'm on) having a 2 or 3 point lead on Team 3 the whole game. Team 3 makes a final push at the very end and ties the game with 30 seconds to go (in Indoor, there are no ties. Just sudden death overtime.) which means now first point wins.

This is the second time that Team 1 has been at a tie. The last time was last week against Team 2 and we LOST in overtime (thus us playing for third place instead of first). But anyway, back to the story.

Everyone's psyched up and I'm just pissed that we gave up the lead at the end. Four minutes into OT and no point had been scored yet, a real nailbiter. Turnovers and defensive brilliance on both sides. Finally, Team 3 gets possession on the far end of their own endzone in a corner. I'm poaching as usual. Their handler makes a throw to swing the disc to centre and I pounce on the disc and into the endzone for a Callahan Sudden Death Overtime Winning Point!

Wo0t!

I, of course, had to prance; so exulted and happy I was. :)

So all in all, Indoor Ultimate seemed to be a success. Many a person thanked Keating and I for our work at organizing this whole shebang. We've worked out a few kinks in this first season of ours and look to improve the rules and gameplay for next season (Jan - Mar 2008).

Yay us!

-jer

PS: No pictures yet. I was either too busy playing or keeping score so we'll have to wait for Christian to send me some pictures from today. In the meantime, click here to be reminded of what Indoor Ultimate is like.

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#108 - Peaches.

2007-03-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

Mmm...

I could eat a peach for hours.
Sneaky Peaches that is. Div 1, Thursdays, VUL Summer 2007 season.

Just showin' the love. On a T-shirt. In public.

Speaking of ultimate
Here's the final design for the Huckin' For Hearts Charity Tournament's disc (made by Discraft). The tournament is to be held this April 14th 2007.

Look for it on a disc near you.

Ashley Judd is out.
Bar Raphaeli is soooooooooo in.

Wait, shouldn't that be the other way around?

Ah, Jewish girls. :)

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#107 - My bum is sore...

2007-03-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

...from all the bailing I did up at Whistler Blackcomb this past Saturday. You sicko.

Black and blue
Went up to Whistler Blackcomb this Saturday with Izzy, her brother Simon, and Hank, a teammate from S.M.U.T. First time boarding in years and it IS sorta like riding a bicycle. Did alright despite the bails here and there. Even went down a Black Diamond run; a Black Diamond run with moguls. Man, that was painful.

Anyways, onto the photos from my cellphone which I only remembered to pull out near the end of the day.

Like the lens flare? Yay Adobe ImageReady.

Random cravings
An '86 Mustang GT. Black on black with black alloys. Supercharged. Please.

I intend to make a Mad Max-esque Pursuit Special. Yes, I'm a geek. And Max Rockatansky is my hero.

Air One
Visited the Air One hangar down at the Vancouver International Airport this past Friday with CrimeWatch. So cool.

Terry has more photos.

In passing
Mr. Michael Zona. A well-liked man in the West End community from complications due to HIV. His memorial service is this Sunday, March 11th. We shall miss him.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#106 - All I need are panties...

2007-02-28T01:48:00.000-08:00

...sexy sexy panties on all the ladies at this event.

Vancouver Flash Mob Pillow Fight
That's right, you heard me.

"A call-out to THE PARTY PEOPLE young and old, in and around Vancouver.

WHAT:
Vancouver FlashMob Pillow Fight

WHERE:
Vancouver Art Gallery - South Side (Robson Steps)

WHEN:
Same as last year and next year. That means 3:00pm on the first Saturday after the first day of spring. This year, it's on March 24th, 3:00pm sharp (not a minute sooner - synchronize your watch with BC Translink time). Finish at 3:15pm sharp. Then disperse quickly to the afterparty of your choice.

WHO:
TELL EVERYONE! Especially the sexy lady friends of yours.

WHY:
It will be really weird when "Out of Nowhere" all these people start to
Pillow Fight.

RULES:
Don't boff anyone who is not armed with a pillow (ie: bystanders or those with cameras).
Use common sense and be compassionate.
Look inconspicuous (for maximum flashmob effect, don't draw attention to yourself prior to 3pm).
Hide your pillow (preferably one made from down) so it's not visible.
Do not congregate in the location. Just try to be generally around it.

Just send this message to all the good vibe people that you know.

Cut and Paste and PASS IT ON!"

Click to watch. Don't forget to take your glasses off. :)

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#105 - I love reading.

2007-02-22T02:44:00.000-08:00

It's an addiction.

No, make that "sickness"
I HAVE to read. Newspapers, magazines, books, novels, comics, ketchup bottle labels; I have to read. This sickness of mine comes to the fore when my mind isn't being used, say when I'm eating lunch. Bite, chew, swallow, repeat. That in turn makes my mind restless and I look for anything to read, and yes, even ketchup bottle labels.

I recently brought up my boxes of novels, books, and collected essays up from storage and I got giddy getting so excited over stocking my once-empty bookshelf with stuff to read! Despite having read everything on the shelf, I love re-reading books that I like.

Note the double-layer of novels on the middle shelf.

My taste in reading is quite... eclectic. Lots of Star Wars, Tom Clancy, and Clive Cussler novels. Classics like J.R.R. Tolkien and (every Arts Student's favourite) The Norton Anthology of English Literature mingle with various Sociology, Political, History, and Anthropology personal interest books and collected essays. Thomas L. Friedman, Gavin Menzies, Jared Diamond, and Stephen Jay Gould line my shelves. Even depressing books from my favourite class at UBC (Sociology 250 - Crime in Humanity: Genocide), like the "Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang, make an appearance (though it's not after dinner reading).

Lots of reading to do now that I've brought all these wonderful books up. Not to mention more shopping at Chapters.

Two-wheeler
I might be going for bike lessons to get my Class 6 bike license. Because I want to strap one of these in between my legs.

Suzuki GSX-R "Gixxer"

Anyone want to join me?

-jer

ride with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#104 - I rock.

2007-02-18T15:27:00.000-08:00

One word.

And that word is...
Callahan.

-jer

PS: Sorry for the abrupt post. Haven't slept in more than 24 hours, what with Indoor Ultimate on Saturday afternoon followed by Chinese New Year's Dinner Saturday night with my mom at Prima Taste, a new franchised Singaporean restaurant downtown, followed by helping my mom move some heavy boxes into her storage unit till 1am, immediately followed by a File shift at Safeway at 2am till 10am Sunday early morning, then Winter Hat at 10am till 1:30pm today. Fun fun fun. And now I'll go to bed and pass out.

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#103 - Fat ankles.

2007-02-13T03:02:00.000-08:00

Well, just one really.

Cankles
I rolled my left ankle last Monday at Ulty Pickup at Point Grey Secondary School and it's still a bit fat and sore. Can't find my ankle brace but I'm sure I'm not even supposed to continue playing ultimate either. Come to think of it, my other foot has some achilles tendonitis that's been bothering me since Indoor Ultimate started.

But nevertheless, I still play. This past Sunday, Team 3, previously 0-5, beat Team 1 for their first win of the season. Team 4, however, continues on a roll with a 6-0 record. Then, the day after, I subbed in for Keating on the VUL Winter Hat String Bean team. Playing on grass again is so much more fun as I get to run full tilt again. Not to mention throw more hammers FTW. Like such.

Speaking of Ultimate
Well, I just can't seem to say no. As you might vaguely remember, I'm the Sponsorship Coordinator for Hucking for Hearts, a local charity Ultimate tournament benefitting the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

A rough draft logo. Probably not going to be used. Much the pity.

However, I've also been voluntold (okay, I didn't really put up that much of a fight) to become the Field Coordinator for Flowerbowl 2007 as well its Sponsorship Co-Coordinator. Great. More stuff to pad my resume with but more work.

By the way, Flowerbowl is a big NorthWest Ultimate Tournament held at UBC each year with many Elite North American teams coming in from around the continent. Some teams are even slated to be coming in from overseas! It'll be the lead-up to Worlds in Vancouver in 2008. Also, there's the Kids Tournament (think half-time show) at Flowerbowl. Watch the kids in action here.

Fun times, fun times. The other Jeremy (ie: Keating) has been coerced into being the other Sponsorship Coordinator as well as being the Disc Central Coordinator. Sucka.

Onto other things more serious
1) If you've noticed over this past week, I've added some new links in my "People" section to the right. One of which you MUST read is Baghdad Burning, a blog of a young Iraqi woman writing from the other side of the invasion by the US forces. Very eloquent and I hear she has a book deal. However, her blog hasn't been updated since the end of last year and it's mid-February. I hope nothing has happened to her.

2) The other new link is Post Secret. Basically, people hand-make postcards and tell their anonymous secrets on them and then mail them in. A kind of carthartic exercise I suppose. Some are funny, some are sad, all are real.

Funner things
1) Other fun links include OK GO's blog. They're an awesome band with awesome videos; awesome videos that win at the Grammys! Their main website is here but make sure you check out their "homemade" dance videos, especially the "Here it goes again" treadmill video. It's what made them.

2) Tanya, this is for you. Ikea Hacker. Basically, a site for people who do interesting things with Ikea furniture and products; using them in novel ways, accomplishing things that wouldn't have been possible with normal furniture. I, too, did something akin to an Ikea hack in my old apartment. Needing some more storage in my small room, I installed Ikea kitchen cabinets on rails above my bed's headboard as it made use of wasted wall space without the cost of square footage on the floor. Pretty neat.

3) If you clicked on the Hammer of Destiny video in the Ultimate section of this post, you might have recognized the bhangra music of Daler Mehndi. World famous and supremely humourous with wicked dance moves sure to impress the ladies at the clubs, watch it here on YouTube. You won't be able to turn your eyes away.

4) Bored at work? Want to kill boxhead zombies? Then this is just for you.

Click on the picture to play!

Use the arrow keys to move, 0-9 number keys to switch weapons, and space bar to fire. Now kill, maim, destroy!

5) Will Ferrell. Jon Heder. Skin-tight Lycra. Ice-cold nipples that could cut glass. 'Nuff said.

Click on the picture to view the trailer.

Anyway, that's it for now. Ciao.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#102 - A little taste.

2007-02-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

Of what you ask, worriedly I suspect? Vids vids vids.

Vancouver Indoor Ultimate
The short little video clip below is what Vancouver Indoor Ultimate is like. Unfortunately, because it's a video from the other Jeremy, it predominantly features the other Jeremy. The video is also too short. Just like the other Jeremy's... um, nevermind.

Click to watch.

The better videos are on Christian's Xanga. Fun fun fun. I'll update this space once I get more vids.

[Edit 02/11/07: Video's been updated. Thanks to Francis on Team 2 - Blackouts for the awesome vid. And thank God. The other Jeremy's been crowing about his handblock all day. If you want to see that particular vid, you'll just have to do a bit of detective work on YouTube.]

Magic
Damn card sharks.

Click to watch.

Damn card sharks.

Peace-keeping in the yard.
You just need to watch this. Premise: two rabbits are having a tiff. They get what they deserve.

Click to watch.

Chickens FTW.

Tiffany FTW
Also, I took Tiffany and Chelsea out for a walk tonight. Both of them have become rather well acquainted now. We were at Coal Harbour Community Centre (where there is a playground) and we were just walking through the park.

Out of nowhere, a big black Labrador Retriever came out of the darkness and up to Chelsea and started to chase her around me, trying to sniff her. Round and round Chelsea went trying to run away from this giant of a dog, meanwhile tying me up with her leash (from Coach!).

Tiffany, meanwhile, was barking madly and snapping at the Lab (as she is wont to do with strange big dogs). It was like she was protecting little Chelsea, now frantically trying to climb my leg seeking higher ground, from the big bad Lab. Awww...

Tiffany and Chelsea trapped in the kitchen while I cook pasta. Take that bitches!

They're so cute together too when they're walking side by side, sniffing at the same fire hydrants.

Anyway, that's it for now.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#101 - Sitting on dogs.

2007-02-10T02:59:00.000-08:00

What? Don't call the SPCA on me. I was asked to.

Chelsea
I forget what Chelsea is. A something-poo. Something like that. Half Toy Poodle; half-something else whereas Tiffany is a Tibetan Terrier/Lhasa Apso (she's too big too be a purebred Lhasa Apso). Tiffany's about four times Chelsea's weight, twice her size, and twice her age (Tiffany being 14 and Chelsea being 7). Chelsea belongs to Tai, a co-worker/friend of mine at Safeway. Him and his partner are away this weekend, hence the dog-sitting favour.

Tiffany on the left, Chelsea on the right. Tiffany chased Chelsea around the chair right after this picture.

The two of them get along well enough I suppose. Tiffany is usually fine with smaller dogs, even those entering her territory (my disaster area of an apartment). She was being "aggressively" friendly today though when introduced to Chelsea. Tiffany would nose up to Chelsea and sniff and sniff and sniff her all over, while Chelsea, being the smaller diffident dog, would try to get away from the crazy dog trying to sniff her privates.

The only issues are 1) Chelsea doesn't know where to go pee or when to go as my schedule doesn't match her habitual walking schedule at 1am (crazy dog) and 2) Tiffany didn't like Chelsea jumping on me to greet me. Tiffany barked at Chelsea out of jealousy I bet. Haha.

Anyways, it's 3:20am and I've just come back from a night of Citizen's Crime Watch (though nothing much happened tonight).

Ciao.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#100 - Yay, a milestone!

2007-02-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

Alright, not the most spectacular of "one hundredth" posts. You have been warned.

Indoor Ultimate
Well, if you haven't checked out Indoor Ultimate yet, please do. We're a small grassroots league playing out of a community centre's basketball gym. The rules are slightly different given the difference in size between regular and Indoor Ultimate.

Stall count is to 7 instead of 10. There are no pulls. Each point starts where the last one left off. No score cap, just a time cap. A half-court rule applies (where no point may be scored from a pass originating from your half of the court). um, yeah, those are the main differences in rules.

Team 4 is still undefeated. Team 3 is un-winning-ed (or something like that). Team 2 is just slightly behind Team 4 in points while Team 1 is just ahead of Team 3 with only one game won (against Team 3).

Fucking cold and wet Ultimate
Winter Hat has started. It's outdoors but the weather hasn't been kind as of late. Cold rain does not make for comfortable playing. Whine whine whine. Hey, you try playing in cold wet underwear. See how you like it.

In any case, I wasn't supposed to play Winter Hat as games (with Izzy and Jeremy's team) are at 10am onwards and I usually work File at Safeway. But I decided to come sub in today so I just started work at 2:30am and got to the field at 11am. Didn't get to play in the first game as it was ending just as I got there. Got rolled over in the second game as the opposing team was suspiciously stacked in skill level. Two Roughrider players plus other plus-skilled players with Jeff, the ex-VUL coordinator on the team. Yes, it was all random [/sarcasm]. Teams members are picked out of a hat (hence a hat league) but the concentration of skill level on that team is suspicious. Heh.

The team I played for (Stringbeans?) had a jersey colour of green. I don't have a green jersey. The only green shirt I have is my Dark Side of the Garden Threadless T-shirt. And I wasn't about to use that in a rainy muddy game. So, a little bit of tape and a Sharpie later...

It's all about perception. Either that or you're fucking colour blind. This isn't a black shirt. This shirt is green.

Moving?
I might be moving out of downtown and back to Richmond. From an apartment into a townhouse. Hmmm...

I'll talk about it more later. Off to a housewarming.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#99 - Snippets.

2007-02-03T08:02:00.000-08:00

Well, I forgot to post this vid on my last blog entry.

Youtube is teh shiz.
Continuing from my post of my trip to Australia, check out this video I shot at WUCC2006 of Vancouver's Roughriders vs. M.U.D., one of the many Japanese teams at the Worlds tourney. Click on the picture to watch.

As is with Youtube, the sound is behind by a second.

Wow. Just wow. Despite all their players being shorter than the RR players, the Japanese women's offence, patient and organized, just sliced right through the Roughriders' defence.

Kazakhstan 52 - Thailand 1
Seriously. In the Asian Games ice hockey game (apparently happening right now), Kazakhstan won the game 52-1 over Thailand. Now THAT'S a rout. Click on the picture for link.

Apparently the Hong Kong team is being coached by a former Vancouver Canuck.

For the inner geek
I'm sure you've all heard of Wikipedia, the online (and editable) encyclopedia. This fount of knowledge continues to educate me as I read up on people and things and events that I want to learn more about. But, there are other Wikis out there, one of which is Wookieepedia. Yup, that's right. Wookieepedia, a wiki for the Star Wars Universe.

A CEC YV-330 light freighter.

Sweeeeeeeeeeet. My inner geek just drooled at all the Star Wars information and pictures on that site. Browsed and browsed for hours. Geek.

For those fans of Battlestar Galactica, there's a wiki for it too at Battlestar Wiki.

Anyways, that's it for now. I'll talk more later on bikes, cars, and work.

-jer

geek to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#98 - Visual-diarrhea.

2007-02-02T03:47:00.000-08:00

Here we go. This post will make your Internet browser of choice days to fully load this page. Sucka.

As usual, click on the picture for higher resolution versions. If there are any events posted below that you're interested in, I have more pictures. Find me and I'll spam you with them.

Malaysia (October and November 2006)

My cousin and his bride. After we, the groomsmen, ate honey, bittergourd, and crazy spicy hot chilli peppers to buy our way into the bride's house. Don't ask. It's an Asian thing.

Catholic vows. Goddamn, it was blazingly hot in that church.

First beers (we, my cousins and I, poured from the taps ourselves) at the reception. Jerome, myself, Brendon, and Ian.

Aftermath of the afterparty upstairs in the hotel. Booze, smokes (of varying kinds - ciggaweed!), and used napkins. Haha, that was too gross.

The Petronas Towers. Fucking tall.

I missed Izzy's birthday (November 5th) while I was in Malaysia. But I had pre-ordered flowers for Izzy and got Christian (whose birthday was also November 5th) to pick up the bouquet and deliver it for me. Thanks Christian!

Singapore (November 2006)

Mee Siam and Lemon Iced Tea with Dad at Clarke Quay. Yum. Cheap too! S$5.00 each for dish and drink.

Singapore Ultimate. Muddy. But still cute. Seriously, the camera focussed all on its own.

Uncle Robert, Lynnette, and my little nephew. We're not really related but I grew up with Lynnette as our parents are really close friends. She's like my sister; my sister with a kid. Man, I feel old.

Tow-line water-skiing. Wow. This is by the beach but near housing complexes so instead of noisy motorboats at night, silent tow-lines zip water-skiers around the man-made lake.

Chinatown, Singapore-style.

Bumboats at Clarke Quay.

Clarke Quay at night. Blurry. So sue me.

Crazy cousins on the left. Cute cousin (Amy!) on the right.

Singapore Motor Show. There were other cars there I think. Ferraris, Lambos, Maseratis, Hondas, craps cars from China, Alfa Romeos, etc. but all these damn people kept standing in the way.

The Fullerton Hotel and the famous Merlion.

Second in a series. Note the menacing shadow and the leer the dirty dirty man (after my own heart) has on his face. Click here to see the first.

Australia (November 2006)

Uncles and aunt in Australia. Uncle Patrick sitting (who suffered a stroke recently) and Auntie Christabel put me up in their home while I was in Perth. Uncle Joe is one crazy guy and the oldest of the Lee brothers.

At WUCC 2006 at the University of Western Australia, Perth. Roughriders on the pull. Note the cast on the arm of the female at the far end. I forget her name.

Candice is down for the count after laying out. Again. I should email this to her. I forget which Japanese team this is (there were so many and they all looked alike) but I'm pretty sure it was a rout by the Japanese team.

Footblocks are allowed in the UPA. I know kung-fu! Hiya!

Osaka Natto comes over Western Australia. In fact, the Japanese teams rolled over all of the other countries in all the different divisions at Worlds, except for Mixed, winning in Mens, Womens, and Masters.

Back in BC (November 2006)

Being the good friend I am. Helping Terry and Tanya move from Nanaimo back home to Richmond.

Being the VERY good friend I am. Helping Terry and Tanya move from Nanaimo back home to Richmond in the blowing snow! It was a fun adventure though. If by "fun" you mean being bitterly cold and having issues with shrinkage.

December 2006

At Izzy's company's Whistler retreat at the Four Seasons Resort. An awesomely luxurious hotel room. Comes with a safe! And a warning label. Caution: Suffocation danger exists.

Caution: Suffocation danger exists for your gerbils. Seriously, what else are you going to suffocate in there?

Girls at Raymond and Shannon's (Izzy's cousin) wedding (the very next day on Sunday after the Whistler retreat above). Didn't have time to snap any other pictures with my camera phone save for this. Of course. I was a groomsmen at this wedding. Why? I dunno. Must have been the way they said my name when they asked. "Geeeeeeermany..." I couldn't resist.

Christmas 2006

Christmas time for Izzy with the help of Tiffany & Co. Oh and yes, Mastercard.

Ikea Prince Charming frog. Ribbit.

Cardboard, tissue hearts, white glue, and ribbon. Yay Michaels!

Almost done.

Finished product.

Earrings on my girl. Taken with my RAZR's camera so it's blurry. Click here for what they're supposed to look like.

Prince Charming frog eating Izzy. Either that or the frog threw up something funny looking.

Well, that's all the photos for now. And 2006. Moving on...

Ultimate indoors?
In late December, the other Jeremy and I started an indoor Ultimate league. Check it out at Vancouver Indoor Ultimate. Many issues had to be ironed out from location to availability to insurance but it all worked out in the end. Check us out on any Saturday till March 25th, 2007.

More Ultimate tournaments I'm helping out with.
Huckin' for Hearts and WUGC2008. Huckin' for Hearts is a local high-school level tournament benefitting the Heart and Stroke Foundation. WUGC2008 is the World Ultimate and Guts Championships which is to be held in Vancouver in 2008. Awesome. Worlds in Vancouver and I get to be a part of it.

Movies thus far

Smokin' Aces

Good movie. Watched this on opening weekend and it wasn't as busy as I thought it would be. Not as humourous as I thought it could be either. Especially with the ensemble cast it has. I was expecting something like a more violent Ocean's 11. But it was much more violent and darker than that. Still, good movie. Will download this once it comes out on DVD.

Little Miss Sunshine

Another good movie. Just watched this last night with Izzy, Nadia, Tai, and Stephen. Steve Carrell is good in it. As well as Paul Dano who plays Dwayne. You need to watch this. All about family. A fucked up family to be sure. But it's all about family.

Jobs jobs jobs
Looking for a full-time job with city/provincial/federal government agency or the like. Hook me up, 'yo.

-jer

Send me the love! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#97 - Wow, where the hell have I been?

2007-02-01T16:44:00.000-08:00

I blame the thousand photos I took on my vacation for the delay in updating this blog.

I need a scapegoat
The sheer idea of uploading and posting all my photos and writing about the rest of my trip to Australia and SE Asia really put me off writing anything at all. But let's see if I can't jumpstart this blog again.

Let's see how many photos I can cram in one post to describe the past two-plus months I've neglected this blog.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#96 - Tim sucks.

2007-01-17T20:01:00.000-08:00

Tim sucks.

Tell him why at ndestrukt88 at hotmail dot com (hint, click on his email address).

By the way, that's what you get for badgering me to update my blog. Bastards.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#95 - I'm alive.

2006-12-27T20:42:00.000-08:00

Sorta. Sick with the flu. Damn flu. Brb.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#94 - Off to Perth!

2006-11-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

Hello all.

Sorry for the lack of updates or photos. I promise that I'll get them done, at the very least, by the end of the week when I'm back in Vancouver.

Perth and WUCC2006
I'm off to Perth now, having delayed my flight from this past Saturday to Monday morning. I've missed one and a half days of Ultimate but never fear, I have three and a half days of Ultimate left. Lots of crappy photos will be taken, litres of beer will be imbibed, lots of oohs and aahs at the action at hand. I can't wait!

Visit the WUCC2006 site at www.wucc2006.org.
View photos of the WUCC2006 at www.wucc2006.org/photos.
Keep up to date with the scores at WUCC2006 Scoreomatic.

Until I get back to good ol' Vancouver, ciao!

-jer

play with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#93 - Back from the debauchery er... wedding.

2006-11-08T20:49:00.000-08:00

Lots of photos to share from my cousin's wedding in Malaysia but I'm being lazy about uploading them right now so many apologies.

Tired and lazy
Been busy visiting the relatives on my Mom's side here in Singapore before I leave for Perth this weekend so I can't find the time (nor patience) to edit my huge collection of photos from the wedding and upload them into my Photobucket.

But I will.

Look for an edit to this post soon. Till then.

-jer

write for me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#92 - Motoring off.

2006-11-01T20:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm leaving Singapore for a few days to go to Malaysia in preparation for my cousin's wedding this Saturday. My dad and I are taking a bus up to my aunt's place near Kuala Lumpur. It's a five hour bus ride and I'll probably pass out right when I get in my seat.

As for yesterday...

I've never been vacuumed
Went for a haircut for the upcoming wedding and went to a place in the local neighbourhood shopping centre. Ten minute haircuts are one thing. But vacuuming your head once you're done is another. This hose pops out of the wall and they suck your head free of all the little bits of hair. They also have a built-in vacuum within the floorboards to sweep the cut hair into. Ingenious!

You can't tell but it's pouring rain.

A veritable giant
On our way to more shopping, we took the SMRT (Singapore Mass Rapid Transit - the Skytrain equivalent for you Vancouver folks). A much more well-thought out system than the Skytrain even though parts of the system are almost 20 years old, give or take a few years. In any case, it was here that I noticed that I was about half a head taller than most of the people on the train. Wow. Singaporeans are short. Either that or I've been eating growth hormones without knowing it.

Lines to tell people where to stand and wait. More of a suggestion than a rule.

Videos warning people to keep a lookout for unattended baggage. Could be a bomb. Seriously.

Shopping
Went to Vivocity on Soowei's recommendation and walked around the half-finished brand new shopping centre for most of the afternoon. There hasn't been a grand opening for the place yet but businesses have been open for three to four weeks now while other stores have yet to be built.

Vivocity in Christmas cheer.

Overlapping of escalators in the five floor complex.

The GAP baby! There was also, of course, a Starbucks around the corner.

On the rooftop.

A wading pool on the roof for some reason.

You can see the cable cars to Sentosa Island, a resort island off the south coast of Singapore.

The entrance to Sentosa Island.

The Port of Singapore.

Old-school tupperware.

Safeway-owned product baby!

Goods from the Adidas store.

Yummy cleats!

Seriously. Those red shoes and black slacks do NOT go together.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm off to Malaysia. I might or might not update the blog in the time I'm there (depending on my free time and the availability of Internet access).

Oh and please excuse the blurry pictures. It's the combination of camera and cameraman that led to such shaky pictures I'm afraid.

Talk to you peeps later!

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#91 - Wandering about.

2006-10-31T01:38:00.000-08:00

Slowly exploring the local neighbourhood that my dad lives in. Did some window shopping in the local shopping centre, hoping to find a good deal on something, but nothing in particular. Bought some goodies to snack on while I walked about.

Pictures...

Bishan Shopping Centre, a relatively small mall. Walked through most of the place and didn't find anything too particularly interesting.

My dad and I eating Nasi Kandar in the air-conditioned hawker centre (thank God) within the shopping centre. You basically get rice and whatever dishes you want put onto your plate. [My dad requested his face be cropped out.]

The local branch of the National Public Library. I like the coloured glass alcoves that people can sit in.

The same design carries through in the interior.

The local outdoor hawker centre where the Hainanese Chicken Rice is very popular; worth sitting in the humid heat for.

A little girl curious about the carp and koi in the pond by the outdoor hawker centre.

A picture I snapped from last night. A 1970's (probably a '75) Toyota Celica GT. Damn, it's gorgeous. Would have been better in black though.

I have to look about for places to buy parts for the Corona. I've been searching the Internet for parts and places to source them from and Australia, of all places, seems like a hotbed of old-school Toyota hot-rodding. I'll have to look about while I'm there in Australia for Worlds for places and people to talk to about old-school Toys.

Anyways, that's it for now. My dad starts his vacation tomorrow so he'll bring me about to the busier parts of the city to take in more of the touristy destinations.

By the way, I haven't had a chance to go find Singapore Ultimate yet as I've just been wandering about this small neighbourhood I'm in. I think I'll play some pickup the week after when I get back from the wedding in Malaysia.

Anyways, talk to you all later.

-jer

ps: I'm holding a "Name the Corona" contest over at Project Corona. If you want to win a fabulous prize of sorts, click here!

shop with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#90 - In Singapore and sweating already.

2006-10-29T22:42:00.000-08:00

Well, I've arrived in Singapore. The flight actually arrived early last night at 11:45pm Oct 29th Singapore time. Customs was quick because the airport was relatively dead. My bags came out quickly from beyond the mysterious black hole so all's good.

The flight
The flight was too damn long. An 11 hour flight to Inchon, Korea and then an hour layover, and then a god-knows-how-long flight to Singapore. Couldn't sleep much as the seats in Economy don't recline that much. But, on the bright side, the in-flight entertainment was pretty good (more so than I've ever experienced). Lots of new releases to watch. Watched The Breakup, F&F3, Cars, Superman Returns, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, played Nintendo, etc.

Read some of my GIS notes but didn't do any actual work because I didn't want to drain the battery on my flight. Also, they had the lights off and on at different times to get people to sleep to get them set for the change in time setting.

Gate 39 at Inchon, Korea.

Singapore Ultimate
I have to find out where all this Singapore Ultimate is at. Heh. As in literally find the field where pickup is at. Two chances this week until I come back to Singapore from Malaysia where the wedding is being held.

Tired and gross
I hate taking such long ass flights. And it was so warm last night. Today is raining and hot and humid all rolled into one.

View from outside my Dad's flat at the rest of the HDB complex.

My Dad's kitchen (it's really big but you can't tell from the photo) and the herbs growing out the window.

Chillaxin'
I'll be at home all day today (Monday Singapore time) as my Dad's vacation doesn't kick in till Wednesday. I'm on MSN so those of you that have me on MSN can just leave me messages and I'll reply to you.

MSN whore.

Project Corona...
... is officially a go though it will be slow going. I don't have any preconceived notions that I'll get the Corona in tip-top shape in just a few months. I know it'll be a long, arduous, and frustrating process but as long as I'm patient about it, things should go along smoothly.

I've set up a separate blog for Project Corona at the aptly-titled projectcorona.blogspot.com. Visit it to see the (slow) updates to the car (which is as-yet un-named - look out for a naming contest soon!).

Others
Found Lauren's Xanga through Christian's Xanga (Lauren being one of the token white girls on Gunners UC). Heh. Good lookin' pumpkins guys! Hope the Hallowe'en party rocked!

Had to create a Xanga account and site just so I could post comments on Lauren's Xanga. I always found that annoying on my friends' Xanga sites; I couldn't comment because I wasn't a member. But I am now! So watch out Maria!

Speaking of Gunners...
...they apparently rolled over Spinach, a Div.2 team that moved up into Div.1, this past Saturday with a score of 13-5. Good job guys and gals! Next week's games are going to be very hard with two young, fast, tall teams. :(

But on a lighter note, according to Urban Dictionary.com, a Keating (as in Jeremy Keating) is defined as this. I think I almost threw up, laughing so hard. As well, a Pierre (as in the self-proclaimed MVP of the team) is defined as this.

How's that for teammates of mine? :p

Anyways, back to the grind of doing my GIS homework project on vacation.

[Note: Just got my marks back from my first GIS midterm. Wo0t! Passed it with a B of some sort.]

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#89 - Off!

2006-10-28T04:03:00.000-07:00

I'm flying off to Singapore/Malaysia/Australia in less than 10 hours! Still packing feverishly as per usual. I hope I don't forget to bring the underwear.

Mafia
Little does my mom know, she's part of the Wagon Mafia.

Sticker on Shelly, the 2003 Mazda Protege5.

That is all for now till I reach Singapore at 12:05am Singapore time on Oct 30th.

Bye!

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#88 - Project Corona almost a GO.

2006-10-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

Yes. I am crazy. But my love for old school cars knows no bounds. Well, almost.

1971 Toyota Corona
Please refer to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 for the off-again on-again saga for my quest for the 1971 Corona. However, Jared, the seller of said vehicle, recently posted the vehicle for sale again on Dorikaze, a local old school Toyota online forum mostly focusing on 1980's Corollas. Rod told me about it and we got in contact with Jared. We wheeled and dealed and thusly have acquired (well, WILL acquire this Friday if all goes well) the rear-wheel drive shitbox beater on the cheap.

First from the left. No school like the old school.

Jared has done some things since we saw the car last in the early summer. All the exterior lights work now. It's been aircared but with no catalytic converter (it's a 1971 car!), the driver's seat rails have been welded, and the seatbelts have been bolted into place. Yay! But it still needs a lot of work.

The car will NOT come with the red/polished rims. Just the gold/polished rims already on.

We'll be storing the car at Rod's place in Coquitlam while I'm away but I can't wait to get started on this project with the meager funds I already don't have. Especially having just come back from my vacation, I'll be dead broke. Man, instant noodles and spam for dinner again.

Threadless.com...
... is having a $10 t-shirt sale that ends today! Hurry up and buy a shirt from Threadless.com now! Gloria and I have purchased a few shirts together (cheaper shipping!). I chose the following two:

What would MacGyver do?

and

Dark side of the garden

I'll be getting them at Christmas when Gloria comes back in town. I can't wait! Also bought Isabella a cute shirt but I can't totally ruin the surprise for her so I won't say which shirt she's going to get. Heh.

That's it for now. More when I'm about to leave on my flight to Singapore!

-jer

drive with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#87 - Leaving on a jet plane.

2006-10-22T18:51:00.000-07:00

If you remember my posts a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was going to go to my cousin's wedding in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, visit my relatives in Singapore, and then crash with my other cousins in Perth, Australia while I take in the first few days of the 2006 World Ultimate Club Championships. wo0t!

Vacation
Well, the trip begins this Saturday. Isabella is driving me to the airport. :) My mom's going to be picking me up when I come back from my trip. I'll be missing a lot while I'm away. Mandarin classes, BCIT classes, Ultimate games, and, of course, most importantly, Isabella's birthday. :P

My itinerary is as follows:

Singapore Airlines - SQ 017 - Vancouver to Singapore

Leave Vancouver
October 28th
2:00pm
Arrive Singapore
October 30th
12:05am

Singapore Airlines - SQ 223 - Singapore to Perth

Leave Singapore
November 11th
9:35am
Arrive Perth
November 11th
2:35pm

Singapore Airlines - SQ 216 - Perth to Singapore

Leave Perth
November 16th
1:55am
Arrive Singapore
November 16th
7:05am

Singapore Airlines - SQ 018 - Singapore to Vancouver

Leave Singapore
November 16th
9:55am
Arrive Vancouver
November 16th
11:00am

As you can see, I'm flying with Singapore Airlines which is one of the best (and prettiest) airlines in the world. Seriously, they screen their stewardesses in that particular regard as well. :)

Also, I'll be flying on a Boeing 777-300, one of the newer Boeing passenger planes. First time on it. I hope there's more legroom in economy. :p

Anyways, I'll try to be good about updating this blog with words and pictures on my trip. I'll try to take as many pictures as I can and upload them onto the blog. Don't be surprised if most of them are Ultimate related. Heh. But I'm sure I'll get some shots of the wedding as well.

Talk to you all later. :)

-jer

fly with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#86 - Damn kids.

2006-10-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

You heard me. Damn them. Damn them to heck. :p More on that later sometime but for now: Click here. Our little Maria has been trash-talking the Gunners on her Xanga.

MIA again
And yes, I've been neglecting my duties once again but a lot is going on right now and I'll be sure to update y'all soonest.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#85 - Soaking wet.

2006-09-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back from our little trip to Gambier. But more on that later. It's been a relatively busy week filled with work, Ultimate, a funeral, a power outage, and the aforementioned trip to Gambier. Much fun but I'm pretty exhausted. But a new week of work begins anew. And as always, click on the pictures for higher resolution versions.

Souvenirs
My mom came home from her trip to Europe with her friend on Monday and I picked both of them up with their luggage in my little GTI337. I have yet to see pictures from the trip but I'm sure they're fantastic. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia were all on their itinerary. I had previously thought that they were going to take a trip into Poland as well, visiting Warsaw and Auschwitz, but they didn't.

In any case, I'm sure you're all wondering what sort of souvenirs she brought back for me, remembering that the last time she went on vacation (to Greece), she brought back a leather Volkswagen hat. And so without further delay, I present to you the good, the bad, and the ugly:

The loot from my mom's vacation.

In the middle is a Swedish national soccer jersey that I had requested. It's a bit large on me (okay, more than just "a bit") but if I tuck the jersey into my shorts, it sorta fits fine. There was only one size available my mom says so oh well.

The shirt on the left is a Russian league soccer jersey. I'd have taken a picture of the back (#11) with the Russian player's name (supposedly, he's quite the looker according to the female vendor who sold this jersey to my mom) but my camera's batteries died out. If someone can get a picture or at least a name of the player, I'd appreciate it. It'd be nice to know whose jersey I'm wearing.

Now, onto the hat on the right. Man, is that thing (monstrosity?) ever heavy. It's a Russian military summer hat festooned with all sorts of heavy metal huzzahforcommunism pins. I mean, each pin, by themselves, is interesting and neat but having over 20 pins on one hat equals a hefty fashion faux-pas like no other.

Pickup
No, I haven't picked up a random girl. No, I haven't bought another pickup truck like Marty though I fervently want to. (Okay, those were lame attempts at humour.) I'm actually talking about pickup Ultimate. Basically, random people getting together at an appointed time to play some Ultimate... and boy, is it ever fun.

Not to say that the regular season games aren't fun. They are in their own way. The camaraderie with teammates et al. is part of the fun but with pickup, there's less a focus on winning and more of just an enjoyment of the game. As well, it's usually the people that love the game that are willing to come out and start playing at 9pm in the evening (sometimes in the fall's inclement weather) and that makes a difference.

Pickup games are at lit fields at night. Mondays at Point Grey Secondary's very nice and new artificial turf field and Thursdays at Andy Livingston Park downtown (shittier artificial turf field).

Anyway, the game on Monday was super fun. Layout D's and massive hops by myself (coughcough) were to no avail as we (the dark shirts) lost by a massive amount to the white shirts but it was still tons of fun.

Tuesday-Thursday
Work. Work. Work. Boring as usual. Pickup at Andy Livingston on Thursday was fun as we played Goaltimate. We played that instead because there wasn't enough people due to the wetness of the weather but we had fun anyway.

Goaltimate in action. Thursday was darker and wetter than this picture.

Friday
As you might recall, I was asked to be a pallbearer at my friend's grandmother's funeral. (I hesitate to say who it is out of respect for privacy but she's a close friend of mine.) The ceremony was mostly in Cantonese so I (nor the other non-Asians at the ceremony) really had no idea what the Reverend of my friend's grandmother's church was saying but oh well. In any case, as a pallbearer, me and the others had to carry the surprisingly light (at least lighter than I thought it would be) casket from funeral home to the hearse and from the hearse to the burial plot at the cemetery.

It wasn't really unnerving at all to be a part of all this and my friend and her family were really appreciative of my help so it wasn't too bad of an experience.

Power outage
There was a scheduled power outage at my apartment on Friday (some regular maintenance work) from 9pm to 3am (I suppose when everybody is out partying it up at the clubs). That meant that after I finished work at 4pm, I had to get home, and finish all the cooking for our (Isabella and I) trip to Gambier before 9pm. Isabella came over to help and to sleep over as we would be getting picked up bright and early in the morning on Saturday.

After much discussion earlier in the week, I decided to make chicken curry for the assigned meal we were responsible for. Lots of whipping cream to make it tasty and coconut rice to accompany the meal. More on the results later.

After finishing at 7-ish and dropping Izzy off at a dinner with her Engineering friends, I trooped off to MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) to buy myself a new sleeping bag. The sleeping bag I've used for years was an old one; a very old flannel one. One that was the size of a garbage bag compressed. So, I thought it was about time that I got a new sleeping bag. I decided on a Raven sleeping bag and it ended up being really comfortable. A good buy, I'd say. :)

Yay! New sleeping bag!

Gambier
Larry, Izzy's friend and fellow grad student, picked us up from my apartment early Saturday morning for our water taxi ride to Gambier Island that leaves from Horseshoe Bay. Along for the ride was the rest of the grad students. After the one hour boat ride, Sheldon (the Engineering professor for the whole gang of grad students) picked us up at the dock on Gambier and we walked up to his cottage (more of a house than a cabin).

Lots of continously uphill hikes which some how defied physics and logic, the wonderful views, the gorgeous weather on Saturday, the lovely company, Jenga blocks providing endless entertainment; it was a wonderful weekend. Even the rainy Sunday afternoon didn't dampen (ha!) our spirits as we got soaked hiking through the forest and trails in and around the island.

Sunny Saturday and the view from the deck.

Sheldon (beard) and the rest of this grad students on our four hour hike.

Weighing down a fallen log on a trail.

Rainy Sunday afternoon heading down to the beach.

By the water.

Cool looking tree on an outcropping overlooking Howe Sound.

Oh yes, the curry. We had refridgerated the curry that was cooked the night before and when dinner time on Saturday night came around, it was time to warm it up and serve it after the appetizers (assigned to another two people) were done with. The main courses for dinner were curry and curry. The other person assigned to dinner was Ali and after we had told him that we were making curry, he decided to challenge us for curry supremacy by making a curry of his own.

I won, of course. :)

Coming back on Sunday, Izzy and I went to the hot tub and soaked away the aches and pains from the four hour hike from Saturday and the coldness from the two hour in-the-rain hike earlier that morning. It was a nice way to end off the weekend.

Monday
I went shopping with Steve at Home Depot for a maul handle. Why, you ask? Well, on Sunday morning (before it started to piss rain), we were out in the yard, splitting apart tree trunks (literally) for firewood and due to my sizable strength (and the glancing blow to the side of the handle), the maul handle cracked. And this was after we had spent a good half an hour fixing the new handle on. I'll be delivering the new new maul handle to Sheldon today.

Steve, my RCMP occifer friend, and I also went to IKEA to do some shopping for his basement. He needed some closet organizers. After that we went to Badlands Paintball for a small paintball part I needed for my Tippmann A5. Who knew a little piece of metal could cost over $16? After that, we went to his place to install the new crap he bought from IKEA and played LEGO Star Wars as well as Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows on his XBox. (Make sure to check out the hypertext for movie trailers of the games.)

Speaking of paintball, my Smart Parts Vision Impulse paintball marker has arrived at Waichi's place in Bellevue. I think it's time for a trip down south to bring that sexy toy up here.

Yesterday's pickup game at Point Grey was pretty rained out. Pouring rain last night. I'm hardcore but not THAT hardcore. Besides, I have to save myself for Saturday's games. Can't get sick again.

Isabella
Yesterday was also Isabella's first day on the job as a fire engineer. Apparently she spent most of the day reading manuals and boring documents to get up to speed on the four projects she will be working on soon. Fun stuff. Fun stuff. After leaving Steve's place, I went over to Izzy's and hung out. Met her dad for the first time. Heh. So far so good. Found some good pictures of Izzy and made her send them to me. I know she'll kill me and make me take them offline but I really like this picture of her.

Looking cute and pensive.

EDIT (09/20/06): So I got in trouble for posting the picture of her even though I think she looks lovely and cute. :( But if you look hard enough...

Anyway, that's it for now. Till next week!

EDIT (09/20/06): Forgot to mention that in our absence over the weekend, Slow Children Playing went 0-1 in a single header, Gunners UC went 1-1 (a default win followed by a tight loss against Spontaneous Ultimate), and SMUT went 1-1, I think, with a certain Mr. Keating making a successful Greatest (where he jumped out of bounds, catches the disc and throws it in midair, before landing out of bounds) that counted for a point (it happened in the endzone).

-jer

towel me off! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#84 - Once a week, perhaps?

2006-09-11T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hmmm... I still seem to be much distracted from blogging as of late thanks to Ultimate, the mysterious woman (Isabella), job searching, and surfing eBay for paintball equipment. So, in effect, I'm going to try to make this a weekly blog instead of my daily blog as it was earlier in the summer. I will make a post at least once a week, if not more so as to keep you updated with the goings-on in my life.

Work and jobs
Nothing particularly of interest. Worked at Slaveway for the most part which, because of the start of the school year, has been left bereft of workers with most of the student population going back to school during the day. That means that we're understaffed during the day and the shifts are spread out wider throughout the day. All in all leads to me working much later shifts than I'm used to as well as having line-ups literally down the aisles on nights when someone calls in sick.

I suppose it's a sign that I should get out of this menial job that I picked up while in university to feed my daily Delly habit (UBCers, you know what I'm talking about). But the job is so accomodating when I need it to be (availability and taking days off), the pay is alright since I've been with this unionized company for a while now, and I suppose there is that potential for me to be a manager of some sort. They keep on trying to talk me into it but I refuse each time. Yet each time I'm at work, I feel like I need to get out.

So as a result, I've been searching and applying for jobs in and around Vancouver (sorry Terry, no backhoe operator job in Nanaimo for me). I've mostly been looking at municipal city jobs or government jobs. I'm not sure but I suppose the stability, vaguely reasonable pay, and pension plans are attractive.

Edumacation
On top of that, I'm still going to be concentrating on getting my Bachelor's of Technology from BCIT in Crime and Intelligence Analysis (unless I land a cushy job somewhere) so things are in the works. As well, I'm registered in yet another Mandarin class but this time with Isabella so now, at least, I'll have someone to practice with. I keep on taking these classes by myself but with no one to practice with, I kept on losing all my Mandarin vocabulary after a few months. Hopefully, this won't be the case this time. And hopefully I won't get my Mandarin confused with the Cantonese Isabella has been teaching me: "Diu! Don't PK in the endzone!"

Ultimate - Fall season in the VUL
Speaking of endzones, the fall season has arrived in the VUL and things look to be shaping up nicely. I'm on three teams this fall and because games are only on weekends, that is a lot. In the summer, I was unofficially on four teams: SMUT on Mondays (mysterious woman Isabella's team), OH SNAP! on Tuesdays, Neutrinos on Wednesdays, and Slow Children Playing (SCP) on Thursdays (Christian's brother Charles' team).

This fall, I'm again on SCP for Saturday AM (10am and 11:30am games), Gunners UC (formerly OH SNAP! plus a smattering of Neutrinos and SMUT players) for Saturday PM (1pm and 2:30pm games) and SMUT for Sunday AM (10am and 11:30am games). So yes, my weekends are pretty much hooped.

SCP - The morning started out really wet with the clouds letting loose with rain right from the start. Since the Vancouver Ultimate League is a rain or shine league, we played in the rain, the slick grass making for spectacular slides and fumbles. SCP took its time to gell as a team and we got raped 12-4 in the first game vs. Freak Show.

The second game was against NICE CAKE!, a team I despised from the summer season because of their rough play, their ignorance of the rules, and their general bad attitude. SCP won the game against them 12-5 which satisfied my vengeful mood. However, a few of us had to leave that game early because we had to make it to another field to play for Gunners UC.

Gunners - Formerly OH SNAP!, I added some people from the Neutrinos (Dave, Ken, and Cecilia) who were willing to play in the VUL in fall. As well, I picked up other players from SMUT (Isabella, Cheryl So, and Jeremy Keating - who henceforth shall now be known as Keating). I also picked up Lauren whom I found off the VUL forums. OH SNAP! was previously the generic asian team found throughout the VUL. Fast, and agile, we'd come up against teams like us and we'd go head to head or we'd come up against tall white teams that would huck and sky us for the discs and we'd have to play fast and with flow to get points. But with the addition of the tall white boys with hops (Dave, Ken, and Keating), we are now more fully rounded (not to mention people who can finally catch my hammers! I'm looking at you, Christian!).

Logo designed by Cheryl.

Our first game was against Doggie Style, the generic fast asian team and because we matched their speed with ours, we crushed them 10-5 with our height advantage and their insistent deep throws to their striking girls while Dave was playing deep on defense.

Crest designed by Christian.

Our second game was against Desperate Peelers, a strong white team. We were down 7-3 pretty quickly but we came back to tie it up at 12up and then 13up and we finally won 15-13 in a long, hard fought game. They kept on breaking our cup with their frustrating over-the-top pop throws but made enough unforced errors (ie: we did not D them) that led to turnovers for us that led to points.

While on offence, we made good use of our speed, our hammers (ahem. :) ), and our never-say-die attitude to pull off the victory. I was so proud of our newly formed team and we didn't even have a full roster. Ken and Cecilia were away in Creston so we only had Dave and Keating for the white boy factor.

Most of us trooped on to Ebei after our games for an early AYCE sushi dinner.

SMUT - Because I had to work my File shift in the early morning on Sunday, I only got to SMUT's second game. Tired as hell from a lack of sleep and the previous day's four games, I didn't play as much but the game was pretty close. A 13-12 loss for SMUT but there were some definite turnoves there that could have been prevented. Oh well.

After the morning game, we all went for some bubble tea and sushi for lunch.

Sunday
Getting back downtown from lunch, I stopped by the local bike store to get a pump and another bike lock. I wanted to get my BMX (a GT Interceptor) back in working condition for cruising around and I knew that the tires were flat and the lock was crummy.

New toys!

GT Interceptor!

I went home after the quick shopping trip and promptly passed out for a few hours on the couch. I woke up and then decided to go hot tubbin' at my mom's place (which was also where the BMX was locked up).

Fixed up the bike though it needs a new rear tire and rim and added the incongruous bike lock and holder. Locked it back up in front of the building and then went to the hot tub to relax my muscles from the weekend's ultimate festivities. Spent a good hour soaking and rode back home for some Subway dinner.

The view from the outdoor hot tub at Coal Harbour.

Hot tubbin'. Werd.

Pallbearer
A good friend called me later that night and made a request of me; that I be a pallbearer at her grandmother's funeral this coming Friday. I don't think I've ever met her grandmother but I do know her family. Not to mention they're short one guy so I was glad to step in and help. I've been to funerals before but I've never been a pallbearer.

Highs and lows for the family this year. My heart is with them.

A wedding and Perth
On the other side of the spectrum, my cousin is gettng married this November 4th in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and I've been invited. My dad's willing to pay my airfare and the food and familial ties call though I still don't really enjoy going back to Singapore or Malaysia. The flight is too damn long for my twitchy legs and the people there (family excluded) just annoy the hell out of me. But, blood is thicker than water so off I go.

Unfortunately, I'll be missing Isabella's birthday on November 5th but I'll be sure to bring back something suitably impressive as a souvenir for her to make up for it. On a sidenote, Isabella and Christian both share the same birthday though they are separated by two years.

So anyways, since I'll be in South East Asia in November, I thought I'd try to make it out to the World Ultimate Club Championship 2006 that's being hosted in Perth (a short flight from Singapore/Malaysia and where some of my cousins are from). I could crash with them and catch some world-class Ultimate action. Now how cool would that be?!

Not to mention that while in Singapore, I'm going to try to hook up with Singapore Ultimate, the local Ultimate organization there. I've even bought a Vancouver Furious George disc in anticipation of a disc trade.

Gambier
Isabella and I will be off to Gambier Island next weekend (her professor is inviting all his grad students and their SOs to come out to his cabin) so I'll be missing next weekend's ultimate games. Sob. Sniff. But the island should be fun. And I'm sure there will be some disc action there even if I have to play by myself. ;)

Map of Gambier Island and the water taxi route.

Souvenirs
My mom's coming back today from a month long vacation in Eastern Europe. Poland, Russia, the Nordic states like Norway, Sweden, and Finland. She better bring me back some good souvenirs. The last time she went away (to Greece for a month), she brought back a LEATHER VOLKSWAGEN BASEBALL HAT as a souvenir. Let me say that again. She went to Greece and all I got was a LEATHER VOLKSWAGEN BASEBALL HAT as a souvenir. WTF.

Anyways, that's it for now. Till next week.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#83 - I'm still alive.

2006-09-04T02:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still alive. I apologize profusely for the many many weeks of stagnation that my blog has been afflicted with. I blame Ultimate, the mysterious woman, and life in general for my tardiness in updating my blog.

This will be a short update. I have to ease back into writing regularly once more. Can't shock the system, y'know. ;)

Ultimate
Well, the summer season is finally over. Oh Snap! and the Neutrinos finished in the top three of their respective divisions in the playoffs. Oh Snap!, top of the division in their regular season, ended up in third place in the playoffs while the Neutrinos, also top of their division in the regular season, ended up in second place in the playoffs. Both teams played well but it was so frustrating losing key must-win games. Sigh.

Oh Snap! - From L-R: Mike, Simon, Lorena, Maria, Sutha, Barry, James, Saem, Pierre, Christian, Jeremy, Cheryl, and Caitlin.

There was also a year-end VUL tournament that both Oh Snap! and the Neutrinos were a part of. In fact, both teams ended up having to play each other as we ended up in the same group. The Neutrinos rolled over Oh Snap! 13-4. So sad. Even with me playing for Oh Snap! :p

Neutrinos - From L-R, top to bottom: Vivian, Jenny, Cici, Cecilia, Francine, Karen, Tim, Amy, Angus, Mike, Jeremy, Ken, Dave, Hiu, and Leo.

But the fall season is about to commence (this coming Saturday) and I've started a new fall team: Gunners UC (Ultimate Club). It's mostly a carry-over from Oh Snap! plus some Neutrinos players plus the mysterious woman and her friend plus some random girl from the VUL forums. We'll see how we do this fall season. Nice and cold and wet. Tons of fun I tell ya!

Mysterious Woman
Most of you that read my blog have already met her. Her name is Isabella. She'd say that we met each other through Ultimate this past summer (though I'd like to point out that we have "met" earlier - I'm talking years here). She's subbed for Oh Snap!, played against the Neutrinos, and I've subbed for her team. After chatting at the Captain's Hat on July 15th, it just snowballed and we pretty much hit it off from then on and we've been pretty happy since then.

She's an Mech. Engineer with a Masters degree (impressive I know!) and a soon-to-be Fire Engineer at a Vancouver engineering company! Yay! She's got a good head on her shoulders and is generally fun to be with. I won't say too much more nor post any pictures lest I say too much save to say that you'll like her when you meet her.

Life in general
Besides Ultimate, I've been getting back into paintball. Spending more money that I don't have yet again. I blame Pierre and eBay. Boourns to the both of them. Boourns. It's just way too easy to give into impulse purchases but don't worry. I didn't buy another People's Republic of China Air Force helmet. Not this time, no sirree.

Recently purchased Smart Parts Vision Impulse with some ups. Damn you eBay. Damn you to hell.

I'm still in the running for the Crime Analysis program at BCIT. I thought I was rejected but because they're still processing all the undergraduate applications, they still have to look at mine. That and transcripts from Thompson Rivers University have taken their time in arriving at BCIT. If I don't get in, I'll keep on this path and take some bridging classes on GIS and statistics to bone up on the subject matter.

The dog is alive as well. Tiffany is currently snoring and twitching underneath my chair as I write this.

My apartment is a mess yet again. What else is new?

Um... I think that's it for now. I have to be at work in a few hours (literally) so I should probably head to bed. Let's see when I update my blog next. Bug me about it.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#82 - Wow.

2006-07-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

[Monday afternoon: Many apologies. A combination of being busy, tired, hot, lethargic, and elated has conspired to keep me from updating my blog this past week. But we'll soon fix that with this latest entry.

You know. Whenever I finish it. But safe to say that it has been an eventful week up till now. But we'll gossip tonight about me and my life. For now, Ultimate calls and a woman beckons. ]

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#81 - Scurrying about.

2006-07-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

So I'm singing along to Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado while I'm typing this blog. I'm finding it very difficult to verbalize the words as I'm trying to concentrate on not making any typos.

Phew. That was almost too challenging.

I've been busy as of late scurrying about, getting my resume, reference letters, and other documentation in order for my application to both the Forensics program at BCIT as well as the (closed) jobs at the VPD for Crime Analysis.

What I'll be talking about tonight after blogger.com's scheduled outage:

Crime & Intelligence Analysis Option

A Scanner Darkly

Theo (from the canadian punk rock band GOB)

Ulty

Till tonight.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#80 - OMGZERGRUSH!

2006-07-15T23:50:00.000-07:00

What a beautiful sunny day it was today. After a week of shitty weather, today's sunny almost cloudless day was a Godsend. I have a really dark tan now. But of course, it's not even. Just my face and neck, my arms to my shoulders, and my knees (I wear knee high soccer socks) is tanned. Every where else is pasty white.

Sigh, today was good. But it wasn't just because of the weather. But more on that later.

Thursday
I was scheduled for a short Cash shift on Thursday but I was called in early to do some extra File work. But when I got there, there were only two cashiers and this was at 11am. WTF. Obviously the lineups built up and I ended up checking for most of my File shift instead of working on my stack of tickets. Sigh. In any case, Tai made my shift interesting.

Tai
He's one of the senior Cashiers at our store and is gay. He's one mischevious little kid though (he's 38 years old). He's fun to work with sometimes but other times, his antics get a little bit carried away to the point of annoyance and a hindrance to the work at hand.

For example, sometimes he switches the tags around on the candy shelves while our other friend is working on stocking the candy, thus confusing her as to what candy goes where. He's been known to misplace some of my File work only for me to discover them in a bag in the office somewhere. On Thursday, he turned the Deli oven timer for an extra 10mins while the Deli manager was away. The chicken legs came out extra crispy that day. When he bought me my Starbucks Green Tea Frapuccino later that day, I asked for no whipped cream. What does he order me? A Tall Green Tea in a Venti cup with EXTRA whipped cream filled to the brim. Bastard.

His best prank, however, was one he played on one of the other senior Cashiers a couple of months ago. Earlier that week, he had joked around and told her that Friday was Jeans Day at the store. Apparently his joking around was convincing enough that she showed up to work in jeans without her uniform. Muahahaha... She walked in and wondered why no one else was in jeans and looked at Tai, laughed and rolled her eyes, and then smacked him. Muahahaha... that was great. He had to run home to get jeans too to show some sort of solidarity by his prank.

SCP
After work, I headed out to Camosun for a late game with Slow Children Playing (Christian's Thursday team). They've been on a losing streak as of late (for about a month now I think) and it's probably due to their lack of a full line of committed players on that team. They're awesome people to play with though. Very friendly and welcoming. They've dropped two divisions, if I recall correctly, from May and it's not looking too good for the third and final trimester. Even with my "stellar" help. I think I've dropped the disc a whole lot of times when I've played for them. :(

So needless to say, we lost that game on Thursday. Pissed me right off because it was, I think (and I'm sure Christian will vehemently agree) that it was my TO that led to them scoring the game winning point. Or something like that. I can't remember now.

In any case, me and my partner from the opposing team won the spirit game at the end so a moral victory for me anyway. :P

Friday
Didn't have much planned for Friday except for watching Superman in 3D with Patrick and Joe but it turned out to be a relatively momentus day. Went over to my Mom's to sign some real estate legal documents (she's a regular real estate mogul :P ) and she started to talk about work.

CIA
My Mom works for BCIT as an Instructor and Program Coordinator for the Institute's Computer Crime Option in the Forensics Department. Pretty cool, eh? In any case, she mentioned something that piqued my interest. A new option in the Forensics Department: Crime and Intelligence Analysis (CIA). It's a part-time Bachelor program from BCIT and the more I read about it, the more it seemed to appeal to me.

I've been hard-pressed to find my niche in life, floating around like a leaf in the wind, letting life take me where it leads. But the need to settle down and to find a direction has been pressing as of late, what with friends getting married, other friends being almost too successful at their chosen careers [/envy]. As well, more and more I find Ultimate to be an important aspect of my life. Not just as a sport (it IS a sport) but as a social event; a time and place to mingle and meet like-minded people (but more on that later).

What I mean to say is that I've really started to value my extra-cirricular activities a lot more and I'd hate to have to give those up for a career as a Police Officer. As much as I want to have an exciting job, staring danger down and fighting crime, I too want a life outside of work. And a police officer's job does not easily allow that.

What this CIA option allows me to do (when I get a job in this field - again, more on this later) is to allow me to still be involved in combatting crime by being a Criminal & Intelligence Analyst. It's one of the very few jobs out there that appeal to me that involves my B.A. in Psychology from UBC. I really think that I might have found my place.

The BCIT program is new for 2006 and the first class only has 25 spots available. There are 30 applicants already. And I'm number 31. And they're going to start whittling down the candidates. But I have an interview for the program on Tuesday with the Forensic Department's Associate Dean so wish me luck. :)

Another impetus for this whole thing is that through the grapevine, I hear that the Vancouver Police Department has positions opening up for Crime Analysts. I also hear that they were unsuccessful in finding qualified applicants from an internal posting and will soon post the job externally. I'm going to apply [crosses fingers]. Here's hoping.

Crime & Intelligence Analysis links here:
Crime & Intelligence Analysis Option (BCIT Forensics).
International Association of Crime Analysts.
Criminal Intelligence Service Alberta.
An example of crime analysis - statistics.

Superman 3D
The movie was alright. If you haven't watched it yet, don't bother watching it in 3D. I just saved you from spending four extra dollars and acquiring a headache. There were only four scenes in the movie that were in 3D and though it was sorta neat, the scenes were not really pivotal and the 3D-effect didn't really add to the movie. It was more a gimmick; a gimmick that gave me a damned headache.

As for the movie itself, it was alright. Kate Bosworth and Brandon Routh didn't really have great chemistry with each other onscreen. Kevin Spacey was great as usual. And James Marsden played the sucker in yet another love triangle (his previous efforts in that was in the X-Men movies as Cyclops). Other than that, nothing really fantastic. I liked Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest better. But Maria disagrees.

Saturday
Today was the VUL Captain's Hat Tournament at Winona Park and what an AWESOME time I had. I was worried that my legs wouldn't be ready (I've had shin splints these past two weeks) but they seemed to be fine with my day's rest on Friday and two Vitamin I pills I swallowed this morning. I attended the event with Joyce (from the Neutrinos) though she was eventually placed in another team.

The Captain's Hat is basically a tournament involving all the captains of the VUL's teams. We were all split apart into six teams, each with about three women and eight men. We usually played 5-2 (five men, two women). I got placed into TEAM FOUR with Nigel, Brandon, Trevor, Jay, Dave, Joyce (another one), Mary, Ian, Chisa, and Farouk. Chisa, a slight Japanese girl, had the best nickname ever: Chainsaw! Hahaha...

Anyways, it was the best Ultimate I've ever played in recent times and it was the best Ultimate I've been involved in as well. It really makes difference when you play with people of the same or higher skill level. It makes you play that much better. As well, as there were other more skilled handlers on the team (ie: everyone else), I finally got to play my usual position, the one I played when I was in my Div. 2 team: a popper/cutter and striker/goalsuck.

The former came into play one awesome point where I was designated as the only popper against the Zone Defence played by the other team. I kept popping in, helping our handlers break the cup, and I kept doing that in cycles all over the field. The disc would swing from handler to handler to me. I'd dump the disc and we'd do it all over again till I threw it to a teammate for the point.

The latter, striking/goalsucking, was more productive as I'd hang back threatening deep and middle till the disc was hucked and I'd burn my check all the time for the points to the endzone.

Trevor, Brandon, and Ian.

Dave and Jay.

Me burning up in the mid-day sun.

Farouk (blue) chasing his check.

Joyce (black) checking in the cup while Nigel (blue) works top and Ian (grey) works away cup.

Team Four went undefeated today. First game was won 13-6 against Team Three rather quickly. The second game was against Team One and we ended the game tied at 8-8. It was one of the longest games I've played in my life. Lots of awesome D's and turnovers. Both highly skilled teams holding each other up till the time cap expired. The final game was against Team Five and was won 13-12. The time cap had expired around the time we were at 10-up (10-10) but we decided to keep on playing till we were done. This game was also closely fought with Team Five being much more athletic in general. We'd gain a point and then they'd gain a point. They'd get ahead and we'd tie it up. Up until game point where an awesome D by Brandon led to a TO that led to Brandon putting it to me into the endzone for the winning point! wo0t!

It was flattering to get recruited onto two other Fall teams by other captains as a substitute. But I'm still trying to form a team or to join a team whose members I know better. I really want to play in at least Division 3 this fall. Some of us might just crash SCP and join their team or we might form another team. Izzy, another captain that has subbed for OH SNAP! before (and I've subbed on her team before to), was interested in forming a team as well. wo0t. Mmm... Fall Ulty. Cold, wet, and painful. But I digress.

After three long games this morning, we were all rewarded with BBQ hotdogs and BEER for lunch at around 2pm. Good times, good times. In any case, a hard day's running I tells ya. Yay my legs! And right after the Hat, I went to OH SNAP's practice with Christian who came to watch the last few points of the last game, followed by a sushi dinner, followed by bubbletea for dessert.

[Goddammit edit: So Izzy just told me that after I left, they had a draw for prizes and my name got picked. I could have chosen from discs and visors and shirts! Gah! I blame Christian entirely for dragging me away to OH SNAP!'s practice.]

Girls girls girls
What I also realized today was that I think I'm in love with Ulty girls. My next girlfriend (whenever that happens - I'm not going to force anything) will be an Ulty player. If not, she'll be one soon; I'll make sure of it. Ultimate is such a big thing in my life that I'd love to have my girlfriend involved in something that I love too. Saw some cute ones today at the Captain's Hat too. ;) Mmmm... Ulty girls.

I think that's enough for today. I have to take a nap before work starts at 4am. Gasp.

-jer

analyze crime with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#79 - Just another crazy Wednesday.

2006-07-12T23:58:00.000-07:00

Man, I feel old. My body is tired and broken. My neck aches, my back has been hurt since May, my shin splints are still there, and my right knee still causes pain. Maybe playing three or four days of Ultimate a week isn't such a hot idea after all. In any case, here I am, hunched over my laptop tippa-tapping away, all the while drinking some pink grapefruit juice out of a birthday mug Terry and Tanya gave me.

This looks like a job for SuperGrover! wo0t!

Slaveway
Well, today was a bit of a gong show (as is any day at Safeway I suppose). We had an File Audit today which basically means that someone from the Head Office comes down to check up on our work to make sure we have all our signs up and all of them put up correctly as well as proper price changes at POS (point of sale) as well as having our Air Mile tags up.

And safe to say, the moment I stepped into work (as a replacement for Chelsey who wanted the day off), I was immediately put to work by Teresa, the head File person, to get the rest of the tags up around the store. The Auditor was slowly making her way up and down the aisles with her laptop and we were in the next aisle over, feverishly hanging tickets and double-checking our prices.

Of course, since I was at work in the first place to replace Chelsey, a cashier, the linesup started to grow as the Front End was a cashier short. The Relief Cashier, Tai, called for me to check but Teresa told me to ignore the calls and to continue hanging the tickets. Cash Office staff had to come out front to help cash until the manager called Teresa and I twice to come up and cash. She had gone home by that time and I was still trying to finish up. Turns out the Auditor just left so I hopped back on a checkstand but not before getting an earful from the Cash Office staff for not coming up to check when called the first time.

Whatever. I'm just doing as I'm told so File and Office can fight it out among themselves. I'm just the pawn in all of this. I accept no responsibility.

But...

Later on in the day, our Manager called me up and told me he received the Audit Report from today's audit and we scored a perfect 100%. Wo0t.

Neutrinos
So right after work, I had to dash off to UBC for my two games with the Neutrinos. We've been bumped down to Division 7 but because of that, we're kicking ass. We're currently undefeated in this division and in fact, are creaming all of our competition. I think we're really a Division 6 team but we did so poorly when we WERE in Division 6 for some reason that we got bumped down a tier.

Ah well, at least we're gelling as a team now. The girls have improved a lot over the past two years I've played with them. The new guys as well. Much improvement means that they're more likely to get a disc passed to them as opposed to the split second hesitation a lot of the more experienced players have before letting loose the disc.

Will they catch it? Will their check beat them to the disc? These thoughts run through my head when I'm about to throw the disc to the new people who are notorious droppers. But no more. Much improvement means more confidence in my teammates.

Is baby blue a dark colour?
Speaking of teammates, Jenny, Hiu's girlfriend, the Neutrinos' captain, was feeling a bit miffed today at one of our opponents today. Apparently they were quite rude in "telling" her to change her shirt from the light baby blue she was wearing to a white one because the other team was playing as darks (black and dark blue). I was late in arriving to the field otherwise I would have spoken up.

Not so much as to the suggestion that Jenny change her shirt to one that matched the rest of the team (we were all white save for her) because if it's lights versus darks, her baby blue shirt should have been fine, but for the supposed rude way that she was told to change her shirt colour. In fact, the other team wouldn't pull to us until she changed her shirt. They wouldn't play unless she changed. WTF. Their jerseys were black and those that weren't wearing black wore dark navy blue. How is baby blue going to confused you? Dumbasses.

Jenny and the offending blue top, apparently too dark to be a light jersey.

Man, was Jenny ever pissed. And she still is too. Hahaha... crazy girl. But honestly, if I was there, I'd be pissed too at their rudeness. Oh well, low spirit points of them. Ha. Oh, and an email to their captain (who was actually the offensive person in question).

Vera's Burger Shack
That's what the Neutrinos had for dinner today after our games. It's one of the best places to get burgers around town. Visit them at www.verasburgershack.com. They emphasize quality over quantity. Always fresh patties with lots of different combinations and condiments. My personal favourties are the Lamb Burger, the Frank and the Power Burger.

The Frank consists of double cheese, double onions, the fresh all-beef patty, as well as half of a Frankfurter sausage on top. Mmm... the power burger has cheese, onions, and an egg. I think the Lamb Burger is pretty self-explanatory. But what I've been meaning to try, on a very very empty stomach of course, is the Vic. Double patties, double cheese, double onions, double bypass.

Vera's Burger Shack is teh winNAr!

Man, I think I'd pass out right after. In fact, every time I eat at Vera's, I never order fries because I know I'll just not be able to finish them. But the good thing about Vera's is that they have beer on tap so it makes for a nice dinner. Burgers? Good. Beer? Good.

Stalker
After dinner, I went back to Safeway (I know, I'm sad) but it was to visit Soriah who has had a problem with a stalker as of late. This particular whacko has hit on Soriah, asked her out numerous times, followed her as she walked home late at night, and given her flowers and love notes.

This guy is about 40-ish while Soriah is in her early twenties. She's told him many times that though she's flattered, she's just not interested. He flipped out on her once when she turned him down, screaming at her at her checkstand with other customers looking on aghast. Why wasn't he good enough for her? Why did she think she was so special? Etc. etc.

Well, he's been coming back to visit her at work more and more lately and so I've been showing up during her shifts more and more, just to keep an eye out. And lo and behold, the last two times that I've visited her at work, he was there. Even with me by her side, just chit-chatting with her, he still butted into our conversation and wanted her to focus on him.

I'd so stalk her too. :p

So she's filed a police report, gotten a restraining order on him, and she's found out that he's had priors. I'll bet you anything that they're going to be related; something to do with stalking, harrassment, or even assault. Jeebus. He's been banned from our store now. Our manager called him up (he left his phone number on a creepy love note he gave Soriah) and told him he's no longer welcome at our store. He told our manager to fuck off.

What a crazy motherfucker. Well, let's hope the restraining order works. He lives in the neighbourhood so it's going to be hard for Soriah to avoid him completely.

Puke
So after that drama at Safeway with stalker-dude and Soriah, I come home hoping to sit back and relax and what do I find? My dog not at the door to greet me like usual. That is a tell-tale sign that the dog has done something wrong. I walk into the living room and I see Power Bar wrappers and puke; chocolate puke. Damn dog.

Tiffany ransacked my Ultimate bag with my Power Bars and Power Gels and tore into them with gusto. She ate a complete bar but I guess the (dangerously and potentially fatal for dogs) chocolate didn't agree with her after she had finished eating so she decided to make several messes on the carpet.

Dammit. Why didn't I just choose to have a cat? Or fish? Damn dog.

-jer

wanna clean up some vomit? --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#78 - Well, it sure beats walking.

2006-07-11T23:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm too tired to really do anything constructive here so today's post will be more filler than actual content. Wait, is that really any different from any of my other posts? [That was a rhetorical question, thank you very much. Damn critics.]

If I had a million dollars
To hell with saving the environment. Or feeding the homeless. This is what I really want. [/greedy]

A 2006 Buell Lightning. A smallish V-twin bike.

A 2005 Suzuki GSX-R 1000 - Mmm... for about $10k.

V8 RX-7 - Check out www.hinsonsupercars.com

The latest incarnation of the McLaren SLR.

Mmm... boys and their toys.

In the same vein, ie: cars...
This past Saturday was Marpole Days down in the Marpole area of Vancouver. A little celebration of Marpole so to speak. Nothing too fantastic but I did catch a couple of cars at the mini car show. Don't mind my fat fingers in the fourth picture.

Oh Snap!
Only one game today against Festivus Tuesdays. Very windy day at Trafalgar. We came back from a neck and neck race to tie the game. Another fat-fingered handling day for me. I am teh suck.

A huddle down by our endzone.

Pierre making a catch.

Ass-slapping spirit game at the end. Caitlin won it for us!

After the game, a few of us headed out to grab some grub. After many trials and tribulations (well, okay. Maybe that is overstating it but...), we finally settled on Olympia Pizza, a Greek Restaurant on Broadway in Kitsilano. I ordered the Lamb Souvlaki. It was good.

Lamb Souvlaki with a side of FOB.

Anyway, that's all from me today. Off to bed.

-jer

eat with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#77 - 100% humidty.

2006-07-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

At least that's what it feels like right now. It's been such a hot and humid day with an overcast sky adding to the gloom. Not a fun day to be outside so I've decided to stay inside my apartment where it's cooler.

Nevertheless, onwards and upwards. Time to talk about movies.

Pirates of the Caribbean
Watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on Friday night with Patrick and Joe. It was a pretty good movie though it was definitely a second-in-a-series with a definite cliffhanger at the very end. For some reason, the official site is down so here's the Wiki link instead. Beware of spoilers.

Johnny Depp was hilarious as usual with his boozy woozy ways. Orlando Bloom was slightly more tolerable though I still dislike him. Kiera Knightley was her usual ravishing self though I still think her body is slightly disproportionate to the length of her legs. Still, fit her in a dress and she's hot. Just need to fix those British teeth.

The first and second movies were filmed together but I'm not sure if the third one was but I'm guessing it was based on the release date of the third movie in May of 2007.

I won't give too much of the plotline of the second movie away but I recognized Bill Nighy right away when I saw his character. I loved him from Love Actually.

Superman Returns
I have yet to see this movie though I've been waiting to con somebody into watching it with me. Visit the official site here: http://supermanreturns.warnerbros.com/

I've heard good and bad things about this movie and I've my own reservations about the movie but I still want to see it. In 3D! Yes, the movie has certain parts that require the donning of 3D glasses. I wonder how tacky that will be.

Ironman
Yes, indeedy. There is an Ironman movie in the works. Production is to start in December of this year with a projected completion date of Summer 2008. Actor/Director Jon Favreau has been signed to direct the movie and he even has a myspace account for the film.

Ironman by Adi Granov.

Check out the forums for Favreau's opinions on things Ironman as well as hints as to where and how he'll direct the movie towards. Casting suggestions for Ironman as well as who should be Ironman's antagonist in the movie. The Mandarin perhaps? As well, what armour will Ironman be wearing? According to Favreau, it'll be along the lines of the artwork by Adi Granov. Check out his artwork here.

Transformers
Another big blockbuster movie to be released next year. Visit the official site here: http://www.transformersmovie.com/ Click on "Watch the Official Announcement Now" to view the teaser trailer.

Wallpaper-sized for your enjoyment.

Can't wait can't wait can't wait. I hope they don't screw with the characters of the movie too much. I know old favourites like Bumblebee and Jazz won't be the Volkswagen Beetle and the Porsche 911 Carrera they respectively once were anymore as VAG has decided not to involve themselves in movies to do with fighting. [/grumble]

World Cup 2006
For shame. Italy won the World Cup against France via cheating, diving, and whining. For shame. Ah well, at least Marco Materazzi got what he deserved from Zinedine Zidane.

Mortal Kombat: World Cup 2006

Ha. That's my most favourite *.gif file thus far.

Another *.gif file making the rounds.

I'm not quite sure what was said between the two but apparently it was enough for Zidane to tar his retirement from football with that headbutt into Materazzi's chest. And I'm going to side with Zidane on this one as Materazzi is a notoriously dirty player. See some of his moves here.

Ultimate
My legs hurt. I have shin splints in the left leg and a bruised knee in the other. I won't be running too much in this week's games. But that would mean that I'd be a handler of some sort. But my hands are all fat. No, seriously. It's that feeling that your hands are bloated and thick. Water retention perhaps? You know, when you wake up in the morning and the ring you have on is almost too tight? My right hand has been like that all week. And I've been dropping the disc all week. Damn hand.

One last thing before I let you go today.

One Red Paperclip
Here's a guy that's got the right idea. Kyle Macdonald wanted to turn his investment of one red paperclip into a house. How could he ever do that, you ask? Well, he has traded one red paperclip for a house in Kipling, Sasketchewan.

Can you turn this...

into this?

Seriously. I'm not making this up. Well, okay. Maybe I've skipped over a few things here:

He's traded one red paperclip for a wooden fish pen.
He's traded the wooden fish pen for a sculpted doorknob.
He's traded the sculpted doorknob for a Coleman stove.
He's traded the Coleman stove for a red power generator.
He's traded the red power generator for an instant party (keg of beer and beer sign).
He's traded the instant party for a snowmobile.
He's traded the snowmobile for a trip to Yahk, British Columbia.
He's traded the trip to Yahk, BC for a cube van.
He's traded the cube van for a recording contract.
He's traded the recording contract for a year of free rent in Phoenix, Arizona.
He's traded the year in Phoenix, Arizona for an afternoon with Alice Cooper.
He's traded the afteroon with Alice Cooper for a KISS snow globe.
He's traded the KISS snow globe for a movie role.
And finally...
He's traded the movie role for a house in Kipling, Sasketchewan.

Wow.

Visit his blog here which recounts his trades and barters up to the present with pictures and stories.

5000+ hits!
Werd. And despite my recent laziness too.

-jer

i have fat fingers! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#76 - Stretching myself thin.

2006-07-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'd like to first apologize for the week-long hiatus in my daily postings. What with Terry and Tanya's wedding to catching up with all my friends back from around the world for the wedding to my crazy night shifts at work.

I'll try to recount all that has happened this past week without going into too much detail but I fear the photos of the wedding will take a while to load so please be patient.

Anyways, here we go.

The Wedding
Having slept over at Terry's house the night before, he and I spent the whole of Wednesday morning running last minute errands before lunch. I headed over to Gloria's at around lunchtime with my KFC meal (Hot & Spicy is the new KFC flavour) to write our speeches (with Zan's great help via email) and then headed back to Terry's to run to his sister Karen's place to change into our tuxedos.

Properly dressed, we drove ourselves to Brock House Restaurant by Jericho Beach in Vancouver. I called the girls (and therefore the bride) to see where they were so that the bride and groom wouldn't accidently see each other. And where were they? Still at Holt Renfrew getting their hair and makeup done. :P

I ran around most of the time getting the little small thing ready for the wedding, so much so that I pretty much neglected my usher duties towards the beginning of the ceremony. Unfortunately, that meant that some of Tanya's relatives ended sitting on the wrong side of the aisle. :S (Sorry Tanya!)

It was a beautiful event and it was nice seeing all our high school friends reunited again for this day. Speeches were made, tears flowed, the groom looked properly handsome, the bride was absolutely gorgeous. All in all a perfect day.

Well, mostly.

It wasn't necessarily because of Zan's presence but more so envy at the whole love and relationship thing at the wedding that brought me down a little. Here we were, celebrating our friends' union, talking about love forever more, and there Zan was, a foot away but too distant for me to have.

And she'll be leaving for Queen's in a couple of months and then after that, who knows? She'll probably be gone from my life.

But enough about that. That's all in the past now and I can't change a damned thing. Check out the pictures. I didn't have the time or the energy to resize them before I hosted them so please forgive me if some of the pictures taken (ahem Waichi) are desktop-sized.

Terry escorting his parents down the aisle.

Me escorting Mrs. Ho, the mother of the bride, down the aisle.

Stephanie, the bride's beautiful sister and maid of honour, walking down the aisle.

Mr. Ho escorting his daughter, Tanya, down the aisle.

Terry and Tanya under the chuppah.

The gang vandalizing Terry's car unbeknownst to Terry. Oh and Terry, I didn't write what was attributed to me. It was Brent.

Me and Tim.

The first dance. The song? "Cheek to cheek." An oldie but a goodie. One of my dad's favourites.

Tanya and the boys.

Terry and the girls.

Everyone (including boyfriends and girlfriends of the group).

Zan and I.

The wedding cake.

Zan and I making our short speech. I brought up the fact that Terry was in the Star Trek club in high school.

The boys dancing to music from Grease, the musical.

The girls dancing back at us.

Gretchen
Coming back from the wedding night, I had to head back into Richmond to pick up my car which was parked at Terry's house. He had gotten me to park in the spot where his dad's trailer used to be; where some small tress used to be. I had backed into that spot the night before in the dark and returned to the car in the dark.

As I tried to drive away that night, I got stuck in what I thought was a tire rut and plywood planks. I gave Gretchen a little more gas and I was free! Only to hear a weird scraping sound as I drove onto Terry's driveway. I thought it was some plywood that had gotten stuck in the undercarriage but when I stepped out to take a look, to my horror, I had ripped off half of Gretchen's front lip spoiler. Undaunted but pissed at myself, I smacked it half back into place and secured it with the handyman's ultimate tool: duct tape.

Thanks to Arthur, his jack, and his dad's tools, I was able to fix Gretchen back to normal this past Monday. I just hope I didn't hurt anything else underneath. To commemorate fixing Gretchen at 10:30pm in the middle of the street by Arthur's house, I just had to take a picture.

JDM tree monkey with Gretchen up on jackstands.

Reunion dinner
So after the wedding, Terry and Tanya went straight off to their honeymoon down to the States while the rest of us high school friends had a reunion dinner on Thursday at Tomokazu Japanese Restaurant in Vancouver for some good All-You-Can-Eat sushi. The food was pretty good but best of all was meeting again the high school people flung far and wide across the world.

Besides my favourite Unagi, the abalone and shark's fin sushi (no doubt fake) were pretty good too.

These chopsticks are fighting back.

The girls at sushi (L to R clockwise: Gloria, Devon, Selene, Doreen, and Ada).

After dinner, we went for a nice walk around Kits Beach before retiring for the night. I had to work at 5am the next day for a File shift. Exhausted-ness begins yet again.

Elimination 8s
Saturday, Canada Day, began with more File work at Safeway (at time and a half stat pay!) followed by a VUL tournament called the Elimination 8s. Basically, it's Ultimate with eight people per side. As a team scores a point, they lose a player till it goes down to two versus two (or eight versus two as the case may be).

Maria playing with some gross white stuff while Caitlin looks on in mild disgust.

Barry and Cheryl; naked and broken.

A hodgepodge team was formed with Bo and some Oh Snappers and though we had lots of fun, it was still frustrating to lose to Spud's team for seven straight points (the aforementioned eight versus two). Not to mention to lose all our four games. Ha.

Night Market
Later that night, my high school friends and I headed over to the Richmond Night Market yet again where I stumbled upon yet another interesting thing to take a picture of.

Note the bumps on the hoop for massaging and the "how-to-use" diagrams on the right.

Click the picture to read the text and decide for yourself whether it was worth the $20.00 they were asking.

Sunday
Went to my friend's going away party downtown. Had a bit to drink and moped with Soriah over the fact that we're both feel old. Apparently, we're going to get married now. We hopped over to Davie Street for some late night grub at Hamburger Mary's (closes at 3am!) before I left the group at around 1:30am to head over to Gloria's house for her going away event. We played Mafia till the wee hours of the morning till I had to go to work (and Gloria had to hop on a plane back to Toronto).

And the rest of the week till now
Monday consisted of more work at Safeway followed by go-karting in Richmond with Tim, Laura, and Waichi. I swear I got stuck with a slow kart. I had my foot down on the pedal the whole way and was getting burned by two-seater karts! Argh! Tuesday, Wednesday, and today consisted of poorly played Ultimate games by yours truly. Upset with my current lack of athleticism, health, and skill that I don't really want to talk about it right now.

Neutrinos on the sidelines.

Cici making faces.

That's all the writing and picture posting I can handle right now. I'm just still too damned tired.

-jer

sleep with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#75 - Exhausted and consumed.

2006-06-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

[A placeholder blog entry:

A flurry of activity these past two days with hardly a moment of rest. I'm back to the work with crazy early morning File shifts immediately meaning I'll have to delay my blog entry till tomorrow night. Besides, I know you'll want to see pictures and I don't have any from Terry & Tanya's wedding (due to my scurrying around trying to accomplish things).

I'll have to wait for Friday night to steal photos from Wai Chi and Doreen.

Not to mention Photobucket is currently down as of 2:15am Friday morning so there's no point in my posting any pictures I have from tonight's All-You-Can-Eat dinner anyway.

Until tomorrow night then.]

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#74 - Poker? I hardly know her!

2006-06-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

Spent the night playing poker. Came to the brink of being bankrupted many times but more on that later. Short post tonight.

Sunday
Work was pretty boring. Actually had a cashier shift this Sunday as opposed to the regular early morning File shift I usually have. This is what happens when a senior cashier comes back from maternity leave to work more hours to qualify for more maternity leave later on this year. She's already five months pregnant. That lady is just shooting them babies out. This will be her third one in four years. Crazy.

After work, I headed out to Richmond to Pure Tea Pub, a bubbletea restaurant, to meet up with Terry, Tanya, Tim, Devon, Doreen, and Ada. Ada had just flown in from Toronto for the wedding with her boyfriend. She's a doctor now. I call her Dr. Man and bow my head in respect. :) Haha. We chit-chatted for a bit before the people with real jobs had to leave, leaving the soon-to-be-married couple, Tim, and I in the place. We entertained ourselves with Big 2, a card game similar to Gin Rummy, but with our own rules (ie: the trading of cards).

Monday
Pottered about the house during the day, stopping by Safeway to talk to Natasha who has to show me how to do some specific File work this Thursday for my shift on Friday. Went out with Mike to play for S.M.U.T. for a friend, Izzy, who has subbed for OH SNAP! a few times. We still lost the games but Mike and I won the point our first time on the field.

Fack. I wanted to win too.

Headed over to Terry's brother's house (Stephen) and played lots of poker. In fact, a multitude of variations. So much so that my brain started leaking. We played Indian, Auction, Texas Hold 'Em, Omaha Hi/Lo, etc. etc.

Stephen, Terry, and Vince (fiance of Terry's cousin).

Vince, Tim, and Harley (another of Terry's cousins).

Jeebus, I lost so much "money" but it was all for a good cause anyway. :P Terry, you better win some wine from your niece's raffle ticket draw or I'll be pissed.

But I have to head to bed now. Busy day tomorrow and an even busier day the day after.

Again, I apologize for this abrupt post but I'll update this post and post a new post on Thursday!

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#73 - Gasp (a special double-issue).

2006-06-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

Breathless from a fun-filled and tiring weekend. And with so much to talk about, a special double-issue blog for Monday!

Thursday - Slow Children Playing (SCP)
That's the name of Christian's Thursday night Ultimate team with his older, skinnier brother, Charles, as captain. They're in Division 4 now, having been bumped down from Division 3 due to their continuing winless streak. I was free and bored that night and so I decided to tag along to film the team in action with Christian's brother's DV camera.

Slow Children Playing - Fun people to play with.

I brought my cleats just in case. And dressed in shorts. And a red jersey. And had extra water. Um... all in the name of coincidence of course. ;) And indeed, Charles did get injured; his tiny knee swelling to the size of a large orange. But despite my stellar help (and the withholding of my dangerous hammers), we still lost. Poor SCP.

Puck
Puck is Christian's Shit-Poo; his Shi-Tsu Poodle cross. After the game with SCP that Thursday night, I brought Tiffany along to Christian's house to get the two dogs acquainted with each other. I don't think Puck took to the intrusion of his domain by a bigger, stupider dog very well. Lots of growling at Tiffany and then hiding when Tiffany would approach him.

Ten-year old Puck up close. Ewok!

I was surprised by Tiffany's lack of aggression at Puck. However, on hindsight, I suppose she knew she was the intruder and was more curious about Puck than defensive like Puck was towards her. In any case, those two, and Snoopy, Lorena's dog, would meet again later this weekend. I wondered how that would go.

Christian and I then had a late dinner consisting of garlic bread and BBQ ribs, the gravy of which was yummy when sopped up by the bread. The leftover gravy got kept aside for Puck. My God, I think Lorena would have a fit if she knew what Christian was feeding his dog.

Friday - Tuxing it up
Met up with Terry and Tanya to try on and collect our tuxedoes for the wedding on Wednesday. I hate dressing up but for Terry and Tanya, here I am, looking like a penguin. I wanted to get a pink vest; you know, to put my own stamp of things but that idea quickly got shouted down. Damn. I think I'm going to have a pink vest with my tuxedo when I get married [/grumble].

I'll have pictures of me in the tuxedo and of the wedding as well for Thursday. So excited for my friends!

Wedding rehearsal
After picking up our tuxes, we all trooped back to Terry's parents' house in Richmond for the wedding rehearsal barbeque with all those to be involved in the wonderful day. Lots of food and lots of people. It was a fun time. The wedding ceremony was practiced with much discussion as to the order of procession and the pace of the walk.

Zan entertaining Terry's nephew and niece.

The soon-to-be-married couple.

Soon-to-be-relatives (L to R): Stephanie (Tanya's younger sister - I've known her since she was six years old and now she's almost out of high school), Mrs. Ho (Tanya's mother), Cheryl (Terry's sister whose continuous singsong laugh always makes me laugh), and Stephen (Terry's brother who causes all the trouble and hilarity in the first place).

Stephen, Terry's brother, is a magician and a hilarious man altogether. He did some magic tricks to entertain us all and left me puzzled, trying to figure out how he did it.

The trick
Stephen called me up to be his volunteer and handed me an "invisible" (ie: imaginary) pack of playing cards. He told me to take the cards out of the box and shuffle them. And then pick a card, memorize the card and keep it to myself, and then place it back into the deck. The deck of cards then went back into the box. Remember, this was all with the invisible pack of playing cards (ie: I was miming the whole thing). He took the cards and put it in his pocket. Then took out a real pack of playing cards from his pocket and handed it to me.

While I had the real pack of playing cards in my hands, he asked me to tell him and everyone what (imaginary) card I had picked. I had picked the King of Spades. He then told me to open up the real pack of playing cards and to fan them out. Lo and behold, a card was turned over and what card was it? The fucking King of Spades! Argh! This has been driving me nuts since he did it! How? How? How? Damn those magicians and their code of secrey. Won't tell me any secrets? Bah [/grumble].

Zan
Also at the wedding rehearsal, Zan told us all that she got accepted at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario for Medical School. Yay Zan! That's been her life-long dream; to be a doctor and now she gets to pursue it! Stupid UBC. UBC rejected her twice for unknown stupid reasons. In any case, I think she's happier that she gets to finally move away from home and to live her own life on her own. Independence for her must be such a precious thing.

However, as happy as I was for her, I was sad as well. It seemed as if we only had just reconnected after a two-month hiatus in our friendship only for me to find out that she'll be gone in two months for Godknows how many years. Sigh. It's like I lost her again. But, I can't be selfish like that. I have to be happy for her and I am. This is her moment to be who she's always wanted to be.

God, I'm going to miss her.

Saturday - OH SNAP! Practice
Had a fun practice this Saturday at Oak Park. Very bright and very hot and most of the team showed up which enabled us to have a enjoyable scrimmage for most of the early afternoon. I brought Tiffany along and Lorena brought her dog Snoopy and both of the dogs hit it off (more so because Tiffany isn't has threatened by smaller dogs than she is by larger dogs). I tied both of their leashes together and off they went, exploring the trees together.

OH SNAP! BBQ
Lots of fun as well in Christian's backyard. I mean having a house with a pool must be fun. Waitaminute, I have access to a pool and an outdoor hot tub downtown. Nevertheless, I'll let the videos and pictures speak for themselves save to say I was damned tired from all the strenuous activity Saturday for work today.

Video - Practicing layouts into the pool. James, Maria, and then Pierre later followed suit.
<--- Click.

Video - Snoopy, Lorena's Silky Terrier, swimming for the first time. Tiffany also took a swim for the first time later that day. Both dogs DID NOT enjoy swimming.
<--- Click.

Digging into the food. Thank you to all those that fed us all!

Me coaxing Tiffany closer to the edge of the diving board while Maria takes a seat.

Linda and Tiffany by the pool side.

Snoopy and Tiffany very nervously taking a nice lazy cruise in the pool on the floating chair.

Christian runs away after splashing Maria with water while Lorena watches.

Snoopy, a beautifully cute Silky Terrier, up close.

Simon and James concentrating on their dance moves, playing Dance Dance Revolution.

Maria and Lorena, both sisters, singing with Karaoke Revolution.

I was so tired today. Tired and achy. My muscles are all sore. Oh well, two more days of Ultimate then a week of rest till next Saturday's practice.

World Cup
Portugal vs. Netherlands game this morning with the Netherlands losing a dirty and badly reffed game. Lots of uncalled fouls as well as non-fouls called. Netherlands FTL. :( Now I'm confused as to which team to cheer for now as my team has been eliminated from the World Cup. :(

-jer

massage me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

*: Pictures courtesy of Cheryl, Lorena, and myself.

#72 - I'm leaking.

2006-06-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I'm leaking. Or at least my apartment is.

Leaking
Not from upstairs, but from me to the apartment beneath me. It's from somewhere in the bathroom walls; some piping or other or so the apartment's resident manager theorizes. Sigh, that means I have to get the apartment back into some sort of order for visitors to arrive (ie: plumbers and their ass cracks). It's such a pain. Tiffany and I haven't had any real visitors in months. But I guess I have some sort of motivation now.

This isn't the first time this has happened either. :S This building is starting to show its age I suppose. It isn't really that old though. Not even six years, if I recall correctly. Oh well, I like my little messy pad. I'll be staying here a while.

World Cup
The Netherlands vs. Argentina game ended in a 0-0 draw. The game wasn't too particularly exciting but I suppose it's because both teams were already guaranteed a spot in the Group of 16 so there wasn't any need to go all out. A lot of the yellow-carded players were given a rest but their replacements did a good job nonetheless. With the draw, Argentina tops out Group C and faces the weaker Mexico next while Netherlands has to play Portugal. Victor (of RS) have a $1.00 bet on the game as he is cheering on Portugal while I'm with Team Bright Orange.

The games I'm watching tomorrow (all of them since I'm off work this week - wo0t!) are the USA vs. Ghana and the Italy vs. the Czech Republic games at 6:30am and Brazil vs. Japan and the Croatia vs. Australia games at 11am.

As much as I dislike the United States on a personal level, I really want them to win in hopes that soccer (or football as it's rightly called in the rest of the world) comes to mainstream America. Imagine if there was a proper televised national league a la the NHL or the NFL. Wouldn't that be something? :) We'll call it the National Soccer Association... Oh wait, NSA is already taken. I'll think of something else. (By the way, if you clicked on that link, THEY'RE watching you.)

EDIT: Check this link out ---> Major League Soccer

Neutrinos
Dammit dammit dammit. We played Huckin' Eh today and it ended up being a tie. [/grumble] We were actually up by two points. We had good handling and good defence and the girls really stepped up their game today. But... after we converted a pull on a TO for a point, we quickly lost that point (cutting our lead to one) and received a pull in return (cont'd).

Leo and Hiu on the Cup.

Jenny, Hiu's girlfriend, taking a breather.

Tim trying for the disc.

Angus, trying to fix his glasses after a collision on field.

Cutting to the disc, a laser from Ken, it bounced off my two-handed catch attempt and thus it was a TO. My check picked up the disc and hucked it long into the endzone. Ken, our deep, was out of position as we were just on offence and couldn't get back in time to D the disc. The other team caught the disc for the point to tie the game. Fuck. Boo to me.

Mafia
So after that frustrating loss (okay, it was a tie but it still felt like a loss), we all headed over to Hiu's house for a birthday celebration for him and Cecelia. We ordered $125 worth of sushi from Samurai Sushi and gorged on raw fish and rice. It was pretty damn good after running in the sun. But after we ate, we got down to business... playing Mafia, a Neutrinos tradition.

If you haven't played this game, you're missing out on a chance to belittle, lie, cheat, and generally be an ass to your friends.

Read up on how this game works here. But generally, how this game goes is as follows:

People playing sit in a circle where each person is easily visible to another.
Each person is dealt a card from a stack of prepared playing cards having the same number of cards as the number of players.
Each person remembers their card and does not reveal it to anyone.

If you receive a Jack of any suit, you are Mafia.
If you receive a King of any suit, you are a Doctor, a special Citizen.
If you receive an Ace of any suit, you are a Spy, a special Citizen.
If you receive a Queen of any suit, you are God, the narrator of the game (a non-player - think Dungeon Master for you AD&D fans).
If you receive any other card, you are a regular Citizen.

There are a whole number of other possible character variants but this is the least complicated, yet still enjoyable, version of the game so this is the one we play. Anyways, usually in a group numbering about 10 and upwards, there are three Mafia, one God, one Spy, and two Doctors.

The point of the game is for the Mafia to kill off enough Citizens without getting killed off themselves during the Lynchings and for the Citizens to kill off the Mafia during the Lynchings without killing innocents Citizens. The game ends when all the Mafia are dead or when the number of Mafia equals the number of Citizens.

The game starts with God telling everyone in the circle to close their eyes (except God him/herself, of course). God then tells the Mafia, only, to open their eyes. The Mafia, silently through hand signals, decide to kill off one of the other players, the Citizens, in the circle. God then tells the Mafia to close their eyes. God then tells the Doctor, only, to open his eyes. He signals to God whom he wants to save. He can also choose to save himself. If, by luck, he chooses someone that the Mafia has "killed", that person is saved from death. God then tells the Doctor to close his eyes. God then tells the Spy to open his eyes. The point of the Spy is to check with God who really is Mafia. He only has one guess during his turn. He points to his guess and God signals him yes or no. God then tells the Spy to close his eyes.

God then tells everyone to open their eyes and proceeds to tell everyone some (creative and usual horrible) story of how the person the Mafia chose to kill died (if the Doctor didn't save the right person). That person is now out of the game. Thus begins the accusations and conjecture; the lies and the misdirection from all the players. Everyone discusses who could be the Mafia and after the time limit set by God, the Lynching begins by voting.

The Spy can divulge information about who is or isn't Mafia to the rest of the Citizenry at the risk of him, his identity now exposed, getting killed by the Mafia during the next round. But then the Doctor could come in and save the Spy from an untimely death. But then again, the Mafia themselves could pretend to be the Spy to throw off the Citizens but at the risk of the Spy himself finding out who is Mafia. Lots of alibis and verbal self-defense and lying and creative and convoluted thinking ensues. "Don't kill me. I'm an important person!" is the usual defense during the Lynchings. Tricky tricky.

The person with the most "I think you're Mafia!" votes is hanged and is out of the game. And so the game continues on and on. And everyone laughs and cries. Muahahaha.

There is a lot of strategy and reading of people involved. Not to mention misdirection and batting of eyelids. It's a really fun game. I think I'll get people to play this when everyone is back in town next week for Terry and Tanya's wedding. :) Oooh, also at the OH SNAP! BBQ and practice this weekend too! wo0t!

How smart are you?
Take this English spelling and grammar test. I made one mistake as well as two "errors" that I think are debatable for a 92%-ish score. How did you do? Click here to take the test.

Anyways, off to bed for a quick nap before this morning's games. Night!

-jer

spell with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#71 - Netherlands FTW!

2006-06-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

Too tired to post much tonight. Sorry folks. I'll do something tomorrow morning. Have to wake up early for some World Cup action.

EDIT:

Posting this early in the morning of the 21st. Netherlands versus Argentina in a few minutes playing for first place in Group C.

World Cup
The winner of Group C gets to play the weaker Mexico whereas the second place finisher has to play the stronger Portugal team, both of Group D. If Netherlands doesn't win the game, they'll be second place which should make for a pretty even strength match against Portugal. Now that should be a game to watch too.

Go Orange Go!

I'm keeping my eye on Robin van Persie of the Netherlands. He looks to do more good things this World Cup for the orange. He also plays for Arsenal in the English Premiership which biases me to like him more too.

OH SNAP!
So we played two games yesterday at Tisdall Park. A lot of our regular girls didn't show up but we manage to scrounge up some girls (thank you Caitlin and Stephanie!) via Maria's connection with the Killarney High School Ultimate team. We were worried we were going to have no girl substitues and would have to get Cheryl (who's been injured since the second game of the season) to dress.

Me showing off my socks. Look at Maria's face. She does not approve. No red knee highs today as I wanted to work on the tan on my chicken legs. Didn't work at all. :(

Amin giving the thumbs up.

Me filming the games with Christian's digital video camera.

Oh Snap (10) vs. Princess Layout (7)
This was a relatively easy game for us as their team wasn't as experienced on the whole as we were. However, we were up 5-2 and then we started to get cocky, I think, and let them come back with 4 points for the lead with sloppy defense and lazy offense. We did the Rabbit defense once but only when there were experienced people on the field. Worked sorta fine. We got our act together and came back from behind for the win with a hard cap at 10.

Maria throwing the disc upfield.

My skinned knee after a layout attempt.

Oh Snap (9) vs. Festivus Tuesdays (9)
This game was a bit tougher and we really had to pull out all the stops for it. This team was like ours in the sense that there were some very experienced people on the team and some new people on the team. So it was pretty even skill wise from the start. However, after being 1-1, they started to surge ahead to a 4-1 lead before we started to really go hard. Lots of quick hammer points by you know who straight from the pull to catch up. ;) We finally came back to tie it at 9 but the timecap established by the captains cut short our game.

Barry making a catch.

Me hammering to the endzone. Barry catches this one with a layout for a point.

Me jumping up for a catch.

Mike about to layout for the disc.

Simon getting his ass grabbed.

And there's a practice this Saturday at 2pm at Oak Park followed by a BBQ at Christian's house (that has a swimming pool). Should be a fun day. :)

Zan
Oh and Zan was playing for Festivus yesterday as a substitute. You can see her in action in the pics above. She's the one with the white shirt, black shorts, and black knee high socks. I wonder where she got them socks from... :P It was nice seeing her in action albeit against OH SNAP!'s girls. I love watching her play as I like to claim credit for her Ultimate skills. I remember always dragging her out to play ultimate and we always helped each other improve. Sigh, too bad she's not on either of my teams now. All the girls on OH SNAP! didn't want to check her as she was clearly a threat on the field.

But we're pretty good with each other now. Not awkward at all though I still miss her.

In any case, onwards and upwards. The game's about to start. Talk to you all later tonight!

-jer

bespreking aan me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#70 - Singing makes me pee.

2006-06-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

Seriously. It's either that or the 1.5L of Coke I had today while singing.

Oilers vs. 'Canes
Went to Christian's house today with Cheryl to watch Game #7 of the Stanley Cup Finals with the Edmonton Oilers trying to win the Cup from the Carolina Hurricanes after a come-back from a three-loss deficit in the seven game series.

The 'Canes seemed to be more energetic of the two teams early on and Cam Ward, the 'Canes' rookie goalie who eventually won the Conn Smythe Trophy at the end of the night, was a deciding factor in the 'Canes' success. The 'Canes struck first with two goals and only in the third period did Edmonton step up its game and scored a goal. But it was to no avail especially after an empty net goal by Carolina at the end of the third period. Ward was solid throughout and won the Cup for Carolina.

Rob Brind'Amour kisses the Stanley Cup.

It was also funny when Ray Whitney, a Carolina forward, hoisted the cup and yelled "fucking right!" on camera. Whoops. Yay live TV. Click here to listen to this one second clip.

Karaoke and Coca-cola
So after the game, Christian decided that he wanted us to play some PS2 games; his weird PS2 games like Dance Dance Revolution and a karaoke game, Karaoke Revolution. All I can say is that I ROCK at Karaoke Revolution! Even though Cheryl did sound better than me while singing, I consistently got the higher score. wo0t! Perfect pitch baby! Read more about Christian's karaoke game here. I must admit that it was fun, perhaps because I won handily. ;)

Singing "Smooth Criminal" by Michael Jackson.

My voice was so hoarse by the end of the night and I kept on having to drink (Coke) to soothe my throat. If I can't yell tomorrow at OH SNAP!'s game, I'm blaming Christian. After Christian and Cheryl tired of the karaoke game, they turned their attention to Dance Dance Revolution. We have video of Cheryl. 'Nuff said. (Watch out for a www.youtube.com video starring our Ulty captain in the near future.)

Contrite
Apologies for missing Sunday's blog entry for Monday but this weekend has been particularly hectic for me. However, this week looks to be good for me to finish up on some chores and tasks that need to be done. I'm off the whole week! wo0t for me! In any case, let me recount my boring weekend.

Friday
This weekend saw no Citizens' Crime Watch patrol much to Aimee's dismay. She was looking forward to it too. With nothing to do on a Friday night after work (since I was planning on going out on patrol), Doreen and I went out to the Richmond Night Market for some "dinner" and shopping fun. It's rather hard to explain exactly what the night market is but I'll try.

Think of it as an Asian bazaar. It has a food fair consisting of canopied hawker stalls selling everything from stinky Taiwan tofu to Singaporean curry puffs. The food is varied though there are competing duplicate stalls and you have to watch which stall is the more popular one to decide which of the two to go to. It's definitely quite crowded with lots of Asians doing the usual pushing but you'll see the occasional pale face, bemused at the goings-on.

The hustle and bustle of the food fair.

The shopping consists mainly of knock-offs and fake products though the RCMP does crackdown on fake products once in a while. However, most, if not all, who shop there know that there is no way a real Louis Vuitton purse is going to cost only $20 so it's really your own fault if you think you're getting the real thing.

Doreen stocked up on a year's supply of Made-in-a-sweatshop-in-China socks while I bought some hongAr pens for my friend who loves them. Oh, and you have to watch out for the healthy dose Engrish you will be bombarded with.

That's pretty straight forward. Engrish much, though?

After a second round through the food fair for some mini-donuts and some Dragon's Beard candy for my mom, we left the Night Market (seeing Mike from OH SNAP! walking in with his older brother) and I drove Doreen home. Spent the rest of the night watching World Cup replays.

Saturday
After working a short early shift at Safeway (someone needed the day off) and the requisite 30 minute chat with friends at the Starbucks next door, it was off to practice with OH SNAP! at Tisdall Park at 2pm. Not a lot of the new people showed up. In fact, only Pierre and Lorena (out of the new people) came which was a bit disappointing. But nevertheless, I'm always up for some disc action no matter who is there. Maria, Simon, Mike, Christian, and even Paul (from a competing team and fellow RS member) showed up. Props to Pierre who comes out to games in the Vancouver Ultimate League but lives in Coquitlam.

The weather was being a bit shitty (really heavy dark rain clouds) but when the sun did shine through, it was blazingly hot. We played Box Ultimate (like half-court basketball but with an endzone in the centre of the field), tossed the disc around some more in a reading-the-disc practice, and then did some layout attempts. Not a very good practice but fun nonetheless.

Went home after that, tired and sweaty, and watched more World Cup fun before taking a nap before my early morning File shift at Safeway the next day.

Sunday
After my 4am to noon shift at Safeway, I came home from work and pottered about the apartment in a lame attempt at cleaning up the neverending clutter while watching more World Cup action. This time, it was Korea versus France in a 1-1 tie that led to much chanting and joy down Robson Street in Vancouver as the Korean population, all dressed in red, took to parading down the street. Man, some of those Korean girls are teh hawt.

One group of Korean ex-pats taking a break from their parade down Robson St.

After that fanfare, Christian messages me on Messenger and invites me over for some swimming at his pool at his house with Saem. We end up going to Costco to do some shopping and eating all-you-can-eat (AYCE) sushi at Sui Sha Ya. The food was not bad and they even have unagi as part of their AYCE menu! wo0t! I'm so going back there just for that.

Mmm... raw fish. Who doesn't love some mercury in their diet?

Christian being a goof. Again.

After sushi, we headed back to the park across from Christian's house to toss the disc around some more and to try to get Saem's skills up to par. We tossed the disc till it got dark and then we all went home.

World Cup
Just a quick note: England plays Sweden tomorrow at the same time that Trinidad & Tobago plays Paraguay.

For more information on the games schedule, click here.
For more information on teams and their standings, click here.

Both games are on at the same time but on different channels so I'll be doing some channel flipping tomorrow morning. Cheering for Sweden and T&T. Oh, and the Netherlands plays Argentina on Wednesday. Now that's going to be an exciting game. Argentina is on a roll right now with Diego Maradona attending (all?) their games as a morale booster. (If you have to click on that link to find out who Maradona is, you're no longer my friend.) Watch the videos of Maradona in action below.

Maradona just warming up before a game. Just warming up. Nothing special. Nothing special at all.
<--- Click.

Maradona in action. Just amazing.
<--- Click.

So yeah, that's about it. I'm pretty sore from all the disc action this weekend and tired from all the weekend work at Safeway and all the early morning rises just to watch World Cup football games. But like I said earlier, this week is free for me and I plan on getting some shit done. :) See you all soon.

-jer

watch some football with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#69 - Don't be naughty.

2006-06-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

It's just a number. Not a sexual position of any sort. [snicker snicker] Ah, to be stupid and in high school again where the fascination with sex was prevalent among the boys and double-digit numbers pertaining to sex entertained endlessly.

Safeway
A nice short shift today at Slaveway. It was a bit busy at first with the requisite number of stupid customers holding up the line. Making illogical choices in the amount of change to give me and me having to explain to them why they should give me the four cents in their grubby palms; stuffing frozen vegetables into the magazine rack thinking I can't see you change your mind about them; and huffing and puffing when you can't produce ID when you request cigarettes and look under 25 years of age. It isn't my fault you look like you're a 16 year old high schooler y'damn retard. And besides, it's the law and I'm not going to get into trouble (and fined) for selling cigarettes to you. [/rant]

On the bright side, these two cute and funny girls came through my checkstand near the end of my shift and one of them noticed my new "flair" pin of the day. The cashiers were wearing pins made from gift cards that we were trying to promote. Safeway has a whole slew of gift cards (as well as phone cards) ranging from Safeway Gift Cards themselves to Home Depot gift cards to Starbucks gift cards to Blockbuster gift cards. But which gift card do I pick to use as my pin? Take a look below.

We had a display set out for Mother's Day last May with these gift cards. [shiver] Who the HELL would buy La Senza gift cards for their mothers? Ew!

So anyways, me and the two girls had some playful banter as I checked them through (and out). You can probably guess which direction the conversation went.

South. :P

And no Tim, I don't have pictures of them.

Seth Macfarlane...
... is one funny sonovabitch. This year, Macfarlane, the creator and voice actor of Fox's Family Guy, was invited to be Harvard's Class of 2006 Class Day speaker. Man, how come I couldn't have had him at my graduation? Though I can't believe they let him get away with some of the things he said, hilarious though they may be. Sit back and enjoy the video. Certain characters make an appearance. ;)

Seth Macfarlane making his hilarious speech.
<--- Click.

For those of you that prefer Youtube, here they are broken down into four parts:
Part 1) As himself.
Part 2) As Peter Griffin.
Part 3) As Stewie Griffin.
Part 4) As Glenn Quagmire.

Dr. Tran
Apparently, this short animation was featured at Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animations Festival a few years ago (according to Christian). Nevertheless, here it is. Made me laugh out loud enough for Tiffany to come and check up on me.

As you can see from this screen capture, this video is NOT work safe. Enjoy this at home.
<--- Click.

Get more of Dr. Tran and his ilk at www.lonesausage.com!
Learn more about Spike and Mike's here!

Netherlands versus Cote d'Ivoire
Big game tomorrow between the Netherlands and Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in the World Cup. Should be a fun game. Too bad I'll have to wake up at 8:30am again to watch this game and then run to work right away when the game finishes. :)

Go Orange!

So some people have asked me "why the Netherlands?" Why my connection with the Dutch? Well, I'd like to say that it's due to my dad and that it was his team to cheer for because his father worked for Dutch Shell Oil as an engineer back in the 1930's and '40's. But that's probably not it. Still I blame my dad. He is the reason I cheer on Arsenal as well in the English Premiership. That and I love the colour orange.

-jer

I'm not a macoddity! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#68 - World Cup fever.

2006-06-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

Nothing exciting to report. Had a relatively boring day up until the two games with the Neutrinos in the evening.

Neutrinos
Two hard fought games tonight, both against teams that apparently have moved up from Division 7 to Division 6. Both of the teams were actually pretty good enough for me to wonder why they placed themselves in Division 7 in the first place.

The first team, Wednesday Nude, was a bit disappointing in that their SOTG was a bit poor. Rough play against our girls in a non-contact game, not to mention their lack of knowledge in the rules of the game, which in itself isn't bad but when you argue with me and my rulebook in hand, you're an ass; an utter and complete ass.

They did not get a high spirit rating from our captain, that's for damn sure even though we won the game 11-9 on a soft time cap.

I was more impressed with the second team, Bru Cru. They only had eight players show up (with only three girls) yet they decided to play a four-man cup. Why would you want to run down your own players when you have no subs is beyond me but they were definitely the better team on the field yesterday. They had good flow on offence after breaking our cup and good positioning. They won the game pretty handily.

I think we need more work on our Zone Defense, especially with our Mids. Playing cup is one of the physically tougher assignments on Zone D but it's somewhat mindless in comparison with playing as a mid. They ARE the Zone Defence and it's hard to play it well. Mids have to watch out for offensive players coming in from the rear (zing!) but not follow them in all the way lest a second offensive player to take advantage of the opening in their zone.

The 2005 Neutrinos. Some of these players aren't with us anymore.

The Neutrinos had a practice this past Sunday (my birthday) but I was over on the island so I was unable to make it. But, they had a back-to-basics workshop that I definitely saw evidence of tonight. Especially with our girls. We lack very strong girls this season with Zan being out of the team and with Francine our only really skilled player. All the other girls are about average but are steadily improving. I think it's the fact that we haven't had practices and that as we bring in new girls to the team, we didn't really teach them the basics from the start.

This is different from OH SNAP! as we were a completely new team and so we knew from the start that there was a lot of training to be done with our new players for them to get up to an appropriate skill level.

England vs. Trinidad & Tobago
Trinidad & Tobago, the little World Cup team that could, surpassed all expectations with a draw against Sweden in their first game of the Cup despite being down ten men to eleven. They play England tomorrow, the perennial unsuccessful favourite powerhouse. We'll see what happens. Christian is cheering for T&T as his parents are from there. Hmm... Both are underdogs in their own right but I think I'm going to be cheering for the underdog's underdog in this matchup.

Yes, I know the black stripe should be going diagonally but I got lazy in MS Paint, aight?

But Netherlands FTW nevertheless. :P

Corey Martinez
Corey Martinez is one crazy man. Skilled to be sure. But crazy. I wish I could do this kinda stuff on my BMX but I just end up just crusing around instead of jumping off stairs and sliding down railings. I really like this video clip not only for the awesomeness of Martinez's skillZ but also for the music off this Federal video.

One of Martinez's many amazing tricks.
<--- Click.

Can someone tell me the name of this song? Many thanks!

EDIT: Thanks to Arthur, the name of this song is "Mario takes a walk" by Jesse Cook. I don't know how he was able to figure this one out in under 15 minutes. Arthur FTW indeed.

Anyway, off to bed. Have to wake up early for the England vs. Trinidad & Tobago game at 8:30am. :o Can't wait!

-jer

pass the ball to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#67 - Relief.

2006-06-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

An email from Zan and a quick chat by my apartment in person! :) Both were needed to put my heart at ease. I thought I had lost her forever. But...

Zan
The last flicker of hope that we could ever get back together after my transgression earlier in the year has been extinguished with her words. Though I must say that I am glad to hear from her again despite that bit of "never" news. I suppose this hope was something that needed to be put out anyway, if not for my own good, at least for a light to be seen elsewhere. This whole "we're not getting back together" thing is something that I had expected yet still wasn't fully emotionally prepared for. But I'm almost over that hump. I think it's the guilt in me that hangs onto the love. It was all my fault you see.

I guess one way to put another spin on things is to think of how things would have turned out otherwise. What if we had carried on after she had forgiven me? Would she be able to trust me again? What if I had decided to keep my mouth shut? Would I have been able to live with the guilt? What if I hadn't done what I did to cause all this emotional mess in the first place? Would we still have had our problems that would threaten to break us apart?

But I guess it's not particularly useful to play the what-if game. It only leads to more feelings of regret during a time which is to be about healing.

In any case, Zan and I are back to square-one; we are slowly and gently rebuilding our friendship on a clean slate. She's moved on. Boys are already after her and she is reciprocating. omgzergrush! And I'm about to move on as well. I'm happy that we've started talking again. I don't think I would ever have been fully happy again if I had lost her as a friend.

So yes, the relief I feel is quiet cathartic. A weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I feel that I can get started on life once again.

Birthday resolutions revisited
So this past Sunday was my birthday and with my birthday comes responsibilities towards my five birthday resolutions. Getting started on them all.

"1) Making sure I'm doing all that I can to make it into the RCMP. I feel as if I'm slacking a bit in this. Still have to sign up for some additional testing. Making calls Tuesday and Wednesday.

2) Time management. I'm late. Always late. When I get there, however, I do good work. But that's if I get there. Oh, apparently I'm sleeping over at Terry's house the day before the wedding. ;) That is a very good idea. Therefore, "be on time you bastard," I say to myself.

3) Making sure that Zan and I are okay as we can be, given the circumstances. This is something I can't rush but IS something I want to see done right.

4) Doing more things outside of my usual routine, meeting new people, and experiencing new adventures. I find that this is something that I am accomplishing this year (to a certain extent). I've made a lot of new friends and am doing more than what I used to do before (volunteer work, hobbies, sports, etc.).

5) I'm going to paint my living room wall, dammit, with or without anyone's help and generally spruce up my apartment. I own it after all. I really should take better care of it."

I think I'm doing pretty well so far considering it has only been two days since my birthday has passed. Numbers 3 and 4 are somewhat on their way to fruition. Number 5 should take but a day IF I get started on it which relates to number 2. That leaves number 1 and it's a work in progress.

But alas, no resting on laurels. I must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!

Scooterific!
Speaking of my birthday, here are some belated pictures from this past Sunday in Victoria.

A dangerous scooter gang. Watch out!

These scooters, rented from Cycle BC Rentals, are too much damned fun. As much as they make you look like a goof when you're on them, they are a blast to ride around town. I remember my Dad telling me all of the adventures (and misadventures) he and his brothers had back in the day with their Vespas. I have half a mind of buying one of these just for the heck of it. I mean, they're relatively cheap. About $3000 each if one looks at a Honda or Yamaha. Think of the fun I could have, riding in traffic, my pink scarf flying in the wind behind me. Ahahahahah... to be a West Ender. :P

Tats
As well, in another related birthday paragraph, I want a tattoo. I have a gift certificate from Sacred Heart Tattoo that I received as a gift from Zan from a while ago that I still haven't used yet (I hope it's still valid but there's no expiration date on it so it should be fine). I've been meaning to get a tattoo on my right shoulder since forever and I've had pretty much the same simple design sketched out since. Three black bars in a box filled with red (though I'm thinking about orange instead). I also wanted three dots (about paper hole punch sized) on the inside of my forearm along with an intricate design connecting the two sets of tattoos in UV ink. Read more about it here. Too bad that stuff is expensive. And the three dots on my forearm would be hard to hide away for jobs, etc. So for right now, it's just the shoulder tat.

Don't ask me what it means. Please.

I'm pretty set on the fact that this is what I want. But I just have to find the time and the impetus to get me to the shop to get it done. I hope I don't end up crying like a little school girl when they stick the needle into me.

World Cup 2006
Well, if you haven't been paying attention to the news, the FIFA World Cup is upon us and...

You heard me. The Dutch will win Group C, the Group of Death, I'm sure. [crosses fingers]

'Nuff said. I love football... er... soccer. I love the beautiful plays made. The only thing that pisses me off about the game is highlighted in the video below (though the vid is about Eurocup 2004 but nevertheless, it applies).

My face! My beautiful face!
<--- Click.

Seriously, when you watch some of the replays, the "injured" players are hardly touched at all. Lame way to try to get the opposition a yellow/red card.

Robot Chicken of the Day
Cuddles. He's so soft. And cuddly. And too damned tempting for his own good.

I just... I just want to help you with your clothes!
<--- Click.

It's so disturbing, it's funny. Kinda like me! :P

OH SNAP!
Only one game today versus the Underoos. We won the game 9-7 on a very windy day with lots of turnovers. Nothing fantastic to report but here are some pictures for your perusal anyway. (Pictures courtesy of Cheryl and her new Nikon D50 camera - Click on the pics for full resolution.)

Me about to throw around my check to Simon. Look at my ass!

Maria looking for a downfield pass past her check.

Christian on one of four successive unsuccessful catches (this one for a hammer thrown by me though it was a nice layout).

James spelling something. B... L... I don't get it. :(
(Apparently, this spells BLOOD. Thanks Andrea for being hipper than me.)

The corruption of a minor. I'm so going to hell.

More pictures can be found here on OH SNAP's page on Cheryl's website. As well, OH SNAP!, with the win last night against the Underoos, is now 2-1 in the 2nd trimester and at .500 overall thus far (5-5-0).

Christian brought a DV cam to the game so there should be some good videos posted here tomorrow. He didn't have the firewire card tonight to download them off the camera onto the computer.

Well, that's all I have for you folks today. Hope you're having a good one. :) Oh, and I'm liable to get to 4000 hits today! Thanks for all of your visitations. :)

-jer

scooter with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#66 - Turmoil and sickness.

2006-06-11T23:58:00.000-07:00

Back from my little side trip to Nanaimo, BC (on Vancouver Island) with Devon and Doreen to visit Terry and Tanya for a surprise pre-wedding outing to Victoria for Tanya. Sick as a dog because something on the island makes me sneeze and my nose all runny. Boourns to the island. Boourns. :P

[Tonight's post is pictureless but I shall update with pictures either tomorrow night or the day after when I successfully scam them from Terry, Cheryl, and Pierre.]

Friday
Had a fun night out with CCW. My partners for the night were Aimee and Paul. I was the driver while Aimee and Paul alternated duties as Base. Due to their inability to drive standard, I didn't get a chance to drive the police cruisers to Stanley Park as part of CCW's efforts to combat theft from autos in that area. Staked out John Oliver Secondary later in the night, chasing some suspicious kids, though one of two cars escaped.

Aimee posing by a VPD cruiser.

Replaced Jeff and Taylor on yet another long eye on a vehicle belonging to a suspect we've been after for three weeks. They were watching the car the whole night up until the point we relieved them from their post but 20 minutes after they left, the suspect started up his car and drove off. We were tailing him for a while all the way from Strathcona to Gastown and finally to Downtown where our Constable stopped him. Fun times, fun times. Had to flash my CCW ID card at a bouncer who wanted me to leave as we were parked in front of his club on Richards St., watching the Constable in action.

Came home at around 1pm and stayed online, chatting with Ulty friends till 3:30am. That would have been perfectly fine had I not have had to wake up early to make it to UBC the next morning. Jeebus.

Saturday
Woke up late (many apologies Cheryl) and rushed to UBC to watch the Flowerbowl with Cheryl, Jaime, Pierre, and Pierre's work colleague. We watched Furious George lose a hard fought game by one point to Post Turtle, a Calgary team. Layouts for points and for D's. Crazy crazy skilled play. Not to mention huck after huck as well as about three or four hammers used (Cheryl and Jaime are my witnesses) by the pros. See? Hammers are legitimate throws! :P

While all this action was going on, Cheryl and I were playing with her new Nikon D50 camera while Pierre took pictures with his iamamemberofthepapparazi 12" long-lensed camera. That thing defintely weighed a good few pounds and it's probably worth over $4000. Crazy man but good photographer.

Pierre's camera and Cheryl's camera.

Not the clearest photo but look at the vert! Wow.

After watching the Furious game, we went over to the women's fields to watch Prime take on Little Miss Bossy, an Edmonton team. Goddamn, it's so sexy when women do layouts. Seriously. Prime was up on Bossy by a few points when Cheryl, Pierre, and I had to leave for OH SNAP!'s scheduled practice, this time at Winona.

OH SNAP!
When I got to Winona, I heard the whistles of referees and immediately realized that all three fields at Winona were being used (two for women's touch football and one for softball). We staked a claim to the far side of the lowest field where softball was being played and had a reasonably good practice. Zone and handling were topics at hand as well as basic throwing and catching.

I had Mike run the practice as 1) Christian is teh suck at leading, 2) Mike is one of the better, albeit quieter, leaders on the team, and 3) I had to leave early for a ferry I had to catch.

I think the practice was relatively successful but more is needed. We just have to get used to the necessary small steps it takes for new people to fully develop all the skillZ that we require of them.

OH SNAP!'s next game is at Kingscrest, a shitty field in East Vancouver, against the Underoos.

Nanaimo
After leaving practice early, I headed out to Richmond to pick up Doreen and drove her back downtown to Devon's apartment. Went home for a quick shower before the girls came by to pick me up for our 7pm ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo. We made it there a few minutes shy of our 6:30pm reservation time but there weren't that many people in line so it wasn't an issue.

Read "A Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright and slept a bit on the ferry while Devon slaved away with her HUGE calculator, attempting to catch up on some work while we were sailing.

After we docked in Nanaimo and followed Terry's crappy directions, we surprised Tanya at the apartment by showing up at their front door (after Devon scratched her car's bumper on a big rock in the apartment's parking lot). After the requisite hugs and kisses, we all trooped out to the local Save-On (no Safeways in Nanaimo, for shame) and bought some food. Went across the parking lot to rent a semi-shitty Cantonese horror movie the video store clerk recommended called "The Eye." It wasn't that scary and the plotline seemed a bit familiar.

The girls woke up the next morning and took off for Victoria with Tanya while the boys (Terry and I) followed later. On their way to Victoria, the girls were pulled over for speeding at 117km/h in an 80km/h zone in Duncan, BC, garnering Devon's first ever speeding ticket ($196!). After we all met up (and as I started to get sick), we walked over to Cycle BC Rentals, a scooter rental place and rented ourselves some Honda Jazz scooters.

[I tried calling Amanda when I got to Victoria but all I got was an answering machine. I left a message but didn't receive a call back. I tried babe, I tried.]

Forming our scooter gang, we tore across the oceanfront roads in Victoria in our vicious little machines, four-stroke motors working at full capacity. Much much fun. If only the scooters were a little bit bigger. They seemed a little small for me as I felt the need to stretch out as opposed to sitting nicely, all prim and proper, within the footwell of the scooter.

After an ice cream break, we had to head back to the shop to return the scooters. It was much fun and at $16/hr (prorated every 15 minutes), it was a cheap thrill that I'd like to do again (having only ridden a scooter once before). They do have a rental shop here in Vancouver. Anyone up for terrorizing the cyclists on the seawall? :)

After walking back to our cars, we said our farewells to the soon-to-be-married couple and headed for the Victoria ferry terminal where we caught the 5pm ferry back to Tsawawassen, BC.

Met up with Christian, Cheryl, and Mike and had a late dinner at Honolulu Cafe in Richmond, BC. Cheryl, from now on, has no rights to vote for restaurant choices. That and her tastes in who looks good is suspect as well.

Birthday
For my 27th birthday thus far, I've received an American Eagle Outfitters polo shirt from Devon and Doreen, a Sesame Street Grover mug, and Super Nintendo games (yay Super Mario Kart!) from Terry and Tanya, and Lonely Planet's "Blue List: 618 Things to Do & Places to Go" from Cheryl and Christian. I also received some comics from Terry (Marvel's Civil War and some old school DC-issued V for Vendetta comics).

As well, as I had half-expected but dreaded, not a peep from Zan. Not via any means whatsoever. Perhaps I was expecting too much. I guess it'll be me to try to do something about this after all. :( The two months of silence is killing me. I mean, it's only my 27th birthday. How important is that, really?

Turmoil
As the days wear on, it seems to me that I've hurt Zan more than I thought I had. The silence on her part is both telling and confusing but it speaks to the place I am in her life now. I guess it really is time to move on and to accept the full consequences of my actions. Not only have I lost the girlfriend that I love dearly, but a friend I still cherish.

The thing is, though, we'll be at Terry and Tanya's wedding together, even possibly sitting at the same table with each other. If we're not going to be on speaking terms by then, it'll be an awkward situation for all those around us when we should really be focusing on the couple of the day. :( Besides, I still have her dress and she still has my Super Nintendo. Perhaps a swap is in order (though I think it'd kill me even more if I found out she couldn't be bothered to meet me and instead bought herself another dress).

After months of acceptance, I hate myself again. Is that a good way to start off the second half of 2006?

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#65 - Skys and lows.

2006-06-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

EDIT (06/09/06):

OK. So it took longer than expected to get back on track but here it is. I got the blog entry half posted but the formatting was all fuX0red up. So if you were visitng my blog yesterday, I apologize again.

EDIT (06/07/06):

Many apologies for the missed post yesterday. Blogger.com was having an update done on their servers and it seemed as if it took longer than expected in addition to some other problems. I tried to post my draft but to no avail. Even at 3am in the morning I think. Just think of it as a public holiday when you don't get your daily newspaper, like Canada Day but without the fanfare.

I'll have to post more later on tonight for tomorrow's readers as I'm about to head out for a late dinner with Arthur and his girl. See you all later.

EDIT (later that night):

Alright. Much to get to over these two days. I think I'll kinda spread the love around over today's post and tomorrow's. And unfortunately, it's a short post today. Tired from staying up too late and a steak dinner with mash at 11:30pm plus three hours of running earlier in the evening.

OH SNAP!
We played two games this past Tuesday, both of which were former Division 4 teams that moved down to Division 5. The first team we played was Trudeaumania. They were a fun team to play against. Not to mention they shared Sunchips and grapes. It was a pretty tight game with back and forth point scoring till we caught up at the very end to win 13-11.

The second game was worse. Not only did we lose but the team we played against was not spirited. As you know SOTG is an important part of Ultimate and this team had none of it today, surprisingly. Their spirit score wasn't as stupid as Nice Cake's 5.2/11 rating though. In any case, they were contesting all calls, even a guy's blatant foul on our girl, Rachel, whereby she got knocked over. I mean, seriously, what the motherfucking fuck!?!

To add insult to injury, I fucked up on one of the plays. I won't tell you outright but I blame the disc (I have to, I don't want to be my own scapegoat). You'll see it in the compilation movie posted below.

Hammers FTL
But first, yet another hammer vid. Click the picture to watch.

Me releasing the hammer to the endzone.
<--- Click.

Christian's compilation video of Tuesday's games taken at a lower resolution. Next week's game should have good video clips as we're using a DV camcorder intead of just a digital camera.

Mike with a poach D block in Week 2's compilation video.
<--- Click.

Lots and lots to work on at this Saturday's practice. More back-to-basic stuff but ncecessary nonetheless.

Hypocrisy
What am I talking about? I'm talking about the American Immigration Policy that George W. wants to enact or already has. I forget. The policy has more to do with all the Mexican workers sneaking across the border than with Canadians walking around with toques on though.

The Chief talking to the white folk.
<--- Click.

A fun little clip as it exposes the ridiculousness of the George W.'s policies as well as their double-standards.

Dead Puppies
How much would it take for YOU to kill a puppy? $10,000? $150,000? Watch the video and find out. Personally, it'd take me a whole three billion dollars to kill a puppy. :)

Victim and would-be dog murderer.
<--- Click.

I thought the girl who only wanted $10 was funny. :p

Old and counting down
I'm old. Or at least I feel old sometimes. It's my birthday this Sunday. Not only am I feeling like I'm old but I feel like my life's not quite on track yet. But, that's what my birthday resolutions are for. As well, for my birthday, I'm still hoping to receive some sort of missive from Zan. If not, it'll be a fun time at my friends' wedding, that's for sure.

I'm going to be away this weekend so I might or might not be able to update my blog this Sunday. But keep checking. You never know...

-jer

ferry with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#64 - More estrogen power needed.

2006-06-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

Short post. Nothing much going on except...

Bitches
How am I supposed to finish my File work if I'm continually called away to cash every Sunday morning? How? And then the senior File clerk bitches me out for not finishing my work. Fuck you biatch! You're all up the totem pole that you have no clue what's going on beneath you. Damn manager finally realizes that he needs more help on Sunday mornings. What he needs to know (and will know when I bitch him out tomorrow morning) is that we need more cashiers during the evening rush as well. Another gong show tonight as it was busy the whole night through with lineups down the aisles and all four cashiers (and the clerk-in-charge) feverishly cashing away.

I need girls
OH SNAP! is short on girls for tomorrow's game. Not so short that'll we'll default our games but short enough that the three hours of running will have our girls ragged and out of breath for most of the evening. Jaime and Terra are both out. So is Linda (to a point) but she's coming out anyway. Yay Linda. Cheryl's knee is busted (again) from the weekend VUL clinic. Tried calling around for subs but to no avail. We might have to switch up our game plan for tomorrow; put men on cup when we play zone and use our two timeouts wisely. Going to bring lots of water. Lots of running tomorrow. But yeah, if you're reading this, if you're in Vancouver, and if you've got ovaries, why aren't volunteering to help us out? :P

Padding, filler, and action figures
In order to keep you entertained, lest you desire me to dance naked on the tabletop for you, here are some short videos to keep you occupied at work. Click on the pictures to watch.

This is a Robot Chicken clip parodying The Fast and the Furious trilogy. A number of famous characters like Batman and the ever-pansy Boy Wonder make an appearance.
<--- Click.

The following three videos are all advertisements for G4TV's Star Trek 2.0, a stock market "game" whereby Star Trek stocks are bought and sold based on episodes airing on G4TV that day (ie: The Romulans attack the Federation in Episode #34, the Federation dollar goes down that day, etc.). Kinda neat in a geektastic way. In any case, the adverts are hilarious. Spock seems to have developed an ebonics mode of speech, however. :D

Spock and Jim at a coffee house. Spock tries to find a WiFi signal to conduct his bi'ness.
<--- Click.

Spock, Jim, and Uhura at the poolside with Jim applying suncreen lube on, being a bitch.
<--- Click.

My favourite. A parody of MTV's Cribs with the show visiting Spock's house. Werd.
<--- Click.

Well, I hope that was entertaining enough. I have to get to bed and rest up for three straight days of Ultimate games! Six games! wo0t!

-jer

play for OH SNAP! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#63 - I hate summer.

2006-06-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

For a number of reasons.

It's hot
It's not even summer yet and I was all hot and sweaty from playing Ultimate all Saturday in the sun (though I am thankful that the day turned out to be a wonderfully not-raining day) at the VUL Summer Clinic and BBQ. I apologize for the lack of pictures but I didn't want to just leave my camera laying around with 300 people milling about. You can't trust these Ulty types you know. :P

I guess it's a good thing I like taking showers. Mmm... showers. I love hot showers. I could stay in there forever. It re-energizes me and wakes me up in the mornings and gets me all clean and fresh.

But the humid and hot summer is the wrong type of hot. It's the sticky and sweaty and gross. That's reason number one.

Breakups
A disproportionate number of breakups happen in the summer, at least in my estimation. I'm not too sure exactly why yet as I haven't quite studied this psychological and sociological phenomenon but it's really odd. Most of my relationships ended in the summer months. And a whole lot of people I know right now are going through some sort of relationship strife as well. (Nadia, you get a big hug and a kiss tomorrow hon.) So yeah, that's reason number two.

Can't really think of a third as I write this so we'll just leave it at two reasons why I hate summer.

Friday night CCW
A semi-productive night out with Citizen's Crime Watch on Friday night. We were initially assigned Special Attentions out in East Vancouver but another unit, tasked to find a wanted suspect, found the suspect vehicle at the suspect's place of residence downtown. My unit was sent in to assist the other unit in keeping an eye on the vehicle and residence. My partner, Jeanine (from Cologne, Germany), and I kept watch on the residence for over one and a half hours. The first unit had been there for half an hour longer. Not soon enough, the VPD officers arrived. After establishing that the suspect was home, the VPD officers, warrant in hand, arrested the (lippy) suspect and he was brought into custody.

Hurrah for us! wo0t! As for why he was arrested, I can't go into too specific of details save to say "dun mess with the CRA." You can only get away without paying taxes for so long. As well, a car we were looking for earlier in the evening in East Vancouver was spotted by another unit in a Downtown Eastside neighbourhood we were patrolling. So two our of three Special Attentions accomplished. Not bad.

Late night supper
After ending the night with CCW at around 2am, I had to meet up with Christian to give him a textbook I bought for his girlfriend. (It's a long story. Don't ask.) He was up anyways and cajoled Cheryl into coming out for a late night supper at Wonton House (located at W.23rd Ave. and Cambie St.) which closes at 5am. We had a grand ol' time. Even spotted someone I knew from my days at Capstone Imaging. (Dor, David from Kancho was there with a date. She looked kinda young. Bug him about it.)

We left the restaurant about 4:30m and realized that we had to be at the VUL Clinic in less than eight hours. :o Ah crap.

Saturday and Ultimate
Christian and Saem arrived at my place to pick me up on our way to Park Royal Shopping Centre for two reasons:
1) to return the unused and not-needed gym bag I had bought a month ago (yay 60 day return policy!) and
2) to buy Saem some cleats, knee high socks, and a knee brace.

Unfortunately, Christian arrived at 11:40pm and the clinic was to start at 12pm. However, since Ultimate runs on Ultimate time, we were okay but the Lions Gate bridge traffic was not cooperating. We decided to go elsewhere. We took Saem to some special orthodics place for his brace but they were out of stock. We then decided to head westward on W. Broadway and I took Christian and Saem to G-Max sports down by West Broadway and Alma where Saem bought himself some $80 Umbro cleats.

VUL Clinic
We got to the Clinic just after 1pm and after scoping out the general action, decided to join the Group that I was assigned to, Group #5. Christian didn't sign up for the clinic but joined my group anyway (which also included Simon and Rachel - from OH SNAP! - and Lisa T.). Saem went off to insert himself in the throwing clinic. The rest of the team was scattered about in different groups.

The clinic was actually pretty thorough for beginners and early intermediates. They went through everything from SOTG to hammer throws to cutting to marking to even a quick scrimmage to practice all the skills learnt. Too bad there wasn't more upper level talk for those of us a bit beyond the early intermediates. I'd have loved the hear more strategy talk from some of the Furious players there who were mentors at the clinic.

All in all, I had fun. Not to mention the free BBQ at the end. Mmm... free food.

OH SNAP! practice
After stuffing ourselves with chips, hotdogs, and Pepsi, OH SNAP! moved ourselves off to the side to have a team practice. Some of the players "didn't know we were having practice after" or "had other things to do" and didn't attend the practice. :P Some people didn't even show up for the clinic. But with those that did stay, we worked on Zone Defence and Offence as well as some throwing skills.

I think it was a very useful practice for those that stayed. We should hopefully see some improvement if and when we play zone defence this Tuesday. [crosses fingers] Unfortunately, Cheryl and Barry Li both re-injured themselves again during the clinic/practice. Barry rolling his bum ankle in a sprinkler hold and Cheryl popping her knee out on a hyper-extension. Crazy people. Stop hurting yourselves! So sayeth the man running around with cramped calf muscles (though I must say they've been loosening up some - though they're still very tight when I contract them to go onto tippy-toes).

Carbs carbs carbs
After a hard day of running (we ended practice around 8pm), Simon, Lorena, Saem, Christian, and I went to Chianti Cafe, a nice little pasta restaurant on W.4th Ave and Burrard. Lovely lovely food. Ordered the Spaghetti Alla Carbonara - bacon, eggs sautéed with butter and parmesan cheese. Mmm... bacon. Mmm... eggs. Mmm... butter. Mmm... cheese. Mmm... pasta. How can you go wrong? I even had enough leftovers to take home and eat. :D Guess what I'm eating now as I type this blog entry. :P

Santa Barbara 2005 Invitational
College teams from Stanford, UCSD, UCSB, and UNT layout for the disc in this nice hightlight video from the invitational. Click the video to watch.

Layout grab.

Nice music too. Awesome plays though.

Ultimate links
Before we move onto other topics, here are some new useful Ultimate links for those of you interested in the wonderful sport of Ultimate.
Ultimate Talk, a place for Ultimate blogs to come together.
Ulti Village, a place for Ultimate books, videos, and DVDs.
Ultimate Lingo, a place to learn all the vocab screamed at you on the field.

Hard Gay
That's right. You heard me, I said "Hard Gay." Before you get your panties in a knot, what I'm referring to is a Japanese comedian who goes by the name of Razor Ramon HG (HG standing for Hard Gay). Read more about him and get more links to videos here. But really, just click on the picture to watch the video. Them Japanese are crazy I tells ya.

Hard Gay on Father's Day.

Anyway, that does it for me tonight. Hope you have a fun Monday.

-jer

talk to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#62 - What der hell is dat?!

2006-06-02T02:10:00.000-07:00

Man, I'm going to start a new fashion trend here in Vancouver. But, more on that later. But look out for The Chaser's War on Everything link lower down.

Tired
So tired that I fell asleep without posting my usual Thursday night blog entry for you Friday blog readers. Many apologies. Came home really late from work after closing the store. Pretty busy right till the end with a stupid customer who shopped for a month's worth of groceries and decided to finally pay right at 12am. What a seeyounexttuesday.

Stiff
And not in the good way either. The days after injuries are usually worse than on the day-of. I'm feeling really stiff and sore now. I can hardly flex my calf muscles (especially on my right leg) without inducing some sort of ugly grimace on my face. I've been stretching out my muscles these past few days at home to get them back into shape for the VUL clinic tomorrow as well as the upcoming Tuesday and Wednesday games.

It's not looking good though. Apparently, Jen says bananas help. But I've tried rubbing the bananas on my muscles but nothing is happening! Maybe I should be eating them for the potassium instead.

And lonely
Well, not lonely per se. I am surrounded, both literally (it's creepy) and figuratively, by lots of good friends who keep me company throughout the week. More so that I still miss Zan. Only just over a week till the litmus test. [Cringe] I have never been this apprehensive about my birthday before. [/Cringe]

My dependants
For those of you asking, here are my two kids. I apologize for the dark picture. I hate taking pictures with flash as it makes Tiffany all squinty and devil-eyed.

Tiffany taking a whiff of Bernie.

Tiffany tried to take a lick at Bernie. I think she thinks he looks tasty.

Ultimate as a tool
So Cheryl brought this to my attention yesterday. It's a 24hours (a free Vancouver daily rag) article about online love. But a certain paragraph in the intro caught Cheryl's eye and she immediately thought of me. Damn woman. (But just so you know, it is true.) :P

See if you can find what she was talking about.

New fashion
This is a video clip from The Chaser's War on Everything, an Australian satirical TV programme. In it, the host, Chris Taylor, finds out that he gets discriminated against for his fashion sense. Click the picture to watch.

It's all the rage I swear!
<--- Click.

I just love how he mainly targeted the Asian population for their over-zealous reactions. :D

Speaking of Asians
Here's a video about the Asian dating scene that was circulating the Internet a few months back. I've been meaning to post it up here but I've been forgetting. In any case, here it is. Oh, and white girls FTW.

Why do us Asian men have it bad?
<--- Click.

That Jamba Juice girl was cute though. ;) And did anyone notice Philip's T-shirt and what it said? Hahhahahahaha... that was awesome. I need to get that shirt.

What kind of flirt ARE you?
Apparently, I'm a fun flirt. wo0t! Wait, is that a good thing?

You Are a Fun Flirt

You just can't help yourself... you flirt with everyone you know.
Guys, girls, crushes, and friends. They're all victims to your charm.
You're into silly innuendos, sexy jokes, and playful touches.
You are a huge flirt, yet you never make anyone (too) uncomfortable!

What Kind of Flirt Are You?

Anyways, off to run an errand for a stupid person. You know who you are. Actually, now everyone knows who you are. :P Three dinners you owe me now!

EDIT:

Church Sign Generator
Here's the latest sign thus far. I think I'm going to get kicked in the junk for this one.

Anyways, off to make dinner then head out to tonight's Citizen's Crime Watch patrol. See you next... Sunday.

-jer

massage me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#61 - I'm all wet.

2006-05-31T22:47:00.000-07:00

Rain water is dripping from my hair as I type this blog entry. Tiffany is sniffing at my wet cleats. Playing Ultimate in the rain is always fun.

The Da Vinci Code
Watched this with Patrick today during the afternoon. He parked at my apartment and we walked over to Paramount Silvercity for the movie. We waited around for ten minutes for his "friend" to show up but she ditched us because parking was "too expensive." This was after Patrick had offered her last night to pick her up. Bitch. I hate people who flake out. But I digress.

The movie was actually better than I had expected. Because of my very low expectations, based in part on other people's reviews and my prior experiences of watching a movie based on a book I've already read, I was pleasantly surprised that I actually enjoyed the movie. Don't get me wrong, it's not "movie-of-the-year" good but it's actually not that bad.

The Mona Lisa is keeping mum.

Yes, a whole lot of scenes from the book were cut from the movie but not so much so that you didn't get the gist of the storyline. Still, I did feel that the plotline came together rather too quickly; the pieces falling in place too easily. But as a movie on its own, it wasn't THAT bad. It also helped that I haven't read the book in a year or so. But I'm digging out my copies of Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code for some re-reading. :)

(And I like, no, love Magneto... er... Teabing... er... Sir Ian McKellen. He's such an awesome actor.)

Neutrinos
Only one game today which was a good thing as my calf muscles were still tight all day from yesterday's cramp-up at OH SNAP!'s games. The weather was crap which was a big difference from yesterday's weather. The sky was darkly clouded and it started to rain just as we started to play. We did pretty well, winning the game against S.U.C.C.E.S.S. 13-8. We could have ended the game earlier but I started to slack (on purpose) on two points for a few reasons.

The Neutrinos from 2005 (Joyce, Zan, and Andres are not with the team anymore).

1) I wanted to stretch the game out. We were getting points one after another and it didn't quite make it as fun and exciting when you're pWning the other team. 2) As bad as it sounds, they were pity points as I know what it's like to get rocked on the field (just as long as your opponent doesn't know you just gave them pity points). And 3) My aching calf muscles!

Mamabirds
Getting back to OH SNAP! for a moment (as they are my pet project team vs. the more established Neutrinos team), I was looking around the internet for some Ultimate videos to show the new people on the team on what well-played Ultimate looks like and stumbled upon Colorado State University's Men's Ultimate Frisbee team, the Mamabirds. They have a video section that has a selection of videos spanning the years they've been a team.

A layout grab by a Mamabird.

Some very hard defence played by the Mamabirds with lots of "incidental" contact, layouts, and D-blocks. I love it. Not to mention they huck a lot more than a state university team should but they fit my style of play pretty well. Lots of adrenaline and aggressiveness. That's what I'd love to see out of OH SNAP! Perhaps a bit less testosteroney but the hunger and lust for the disc is something I want to see out of our newer players.

And for some home-brewed talent, visit the UBC Thunderbirds Ultimate Frisbee team as well as the SFU Clam Ultimate Frisbee club. And we can't forget about Furious George can we?

Don't make George more Furious than he already is.

They're Vancouver's and the UPA's premier Ultimate team.

Transformers: The (live-action) Movie
Taking a break from all the Ultimate talk for a bit, this little section is dedicated to Terry who, like the 12 year-old boy he still is inside, loves Transformers to bits. Here are some sneak peeks at the vehicles that are to be used in the movie already in production.

A Saleen Mustang tarted up like a cop car. Most likely Brawl, a Decepticon.

Here's Brawl showing his allegiance.

The new Bumblebee, a Camaro concept car. VW would not sell the rights to the use of a New Beetle for the purposes of the movie because of the violence involved. Besides, they already have Herbie, the love bug.. :)

And finally, the bad guy's bad guy, Megatron as a dual-turreted tank.

I must say Megatron looks pretty badass. And I hear Soundwave is going to be an Apache helicopter (probably to be renamed "Vortex"). As for Optimus Prime, he's going to be a red fire truck (or so the rumours go).

[Oh and Terry, shooting for Marvel's Ironman movie begins in December. wo0t! Plastic Man can bite my shiny metal ass!]

Christian's masterpiece
A compilation of other video clips that were shot by Christian at yesterday's OH SNAP! games with his little digital camera. I'm trying to con Jonathan into coming out and video-taping our games for us. Or at least getting him to trust me enough with one of his cameras. :) Click on the picture to watch.

Note subtitles.
<--- Click.

That's it for now. I'm all dry now as I type this. Thank you inventor of Gaia Dri-Weave fabric!

-jer

watch me with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#60 - Hammers FTW!

2006-05-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

You heard me right. Hammers for the win. But more on that later.

Technology is expensive
Referring to my previous post (#59 - Just another Monday) wherein I discuss how I got locked out of my very own apartment building, I had to buy a new keyfob today to replace my defective one. It cost me $65 dollars! And all there is inside is a square inch of circuit board, a few resistors, and solder. Man, I swear the Strata Council of my building is making money hand over fist with these keyfobs. Built-in obsolescence I think.

In any case, I am free to move about my apartment building now. Huzzah!

Derren Brown: The Heist
You need to watch this but before you do, read this first.

"The Heist was shown on the 4 January 2006 at 9.00pm on BBC Channel 4. In the show, Derren Brown used his skills on selected participants who answered an advertisement.

Under the guise of a motivational seminar (where they would allegedly learn Derren Brown's skills), Brown eventually got participants to rob a security van - in what was ultimately an elaborate set up. The robbery involved holding up a security guard (who was an actor) with a toy gun Derren had earlier given them and taking a case filled with real money from him. Four people were selected to carry out the robbery from an initial field of 13, with three of them actually taking the cases. The idea was that after the conditioning they received, they would voluntarily rob the van of their own accord (which three out of four of them did). There was no prior mention of the 'crime' to the participants and they were not (directly) instructed to do it. The three that did it did so as a result of the conditioning and their own choice, not instructions from any third party, including Derren.

Brown associated colour, music, and phrases to build the participants into a highly-motivated state, converging all of those psychological empowerment tools into a single set-up. The seminar subliminally anchored freedom, childhood, opportunity, and romance into various criminal acts. After having previously been convinced to steal sweets from a shop (for real), they were shown the euphoria that could be gained from criminal acts.

This programme also contained a reenactment of the Milgram experiment carried out by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s in the aim of selecting four of the most motivated of the group. The majority of subjects in this experiment were willing to administer lethal electric shocks to another person on the instruction of an authoritative figure (unbeknown to the subjects, the electric shocks were not actually real); these were the same results as Milgram himself found." - From: Wikipedia page on Derren Brown

Click on the picture to watch the video. You might want to watch this at home as it takes a long time to load (it's a full TV episode after all) but it's very worth it once it has loaded.

Derren Brown on The Heist.
<--- Click.

Wow. This video is right up my alley in terms of my university Psychology degree and own interests. A lot of my Psyc classes at the University of British Columbia dealt with Milgram's experiments as well as with Zimbardo's experiments, both of which are famously studied due to their ethical issues as well their demonstration of the amazing willingness for a subject to blindly follow the orders of a person of authority (Milgram) and that that prison guards and convicts were self-selecting based on their disposition (Zimbardo).

(I'm very surprised that they let Derren Brown conduct those Milgram experiments again and that they let what happened in the video happen. Lots and lots of ethical concerns right there.)

I also had to study this crazy stuff again in my Sociology classes dealing with crime in humanity and genocides of the 20th century. Now that was a very interesting but depressing class. I had to do a lot of research for my term paper on the Nanking Massacre, otherwise known as the Rape of Nanking where the genocide of thousands of Chinese occurred. :( I still have a grudge against the Japanese government for their lack of a formal apology, not to mention the revisionist history still in their school books.

Anyways, give those Wikipedia links a read. Very interesting stuff. As well, make sure you watch the Derren Brown video. Give it time to load and be patient. You won't regret it.

OH CRAP!
So today's games didn't quite go as planned. We lost to two teams, Nice Cake (bitches) and Underoos, that we shouldn't have lost to, especially Nice Cake which was 0-5 previously and had a Spirit rating score of 5.3 out of 11. I won't talk too much about it as I've bitched and complained about it enough tonight (but Nice Cake are seriously bitches - calling a foul on incidental contact when you ran over me? Don't make me bitchslap you back to yo' momma. Fuck). I think we played okay but definitely not at our best. Lots of mistakes were made but a few of us were having an off game so we'll deal with the losses. Lots of good bounces for the other teams didn't help either. And neither did their gargantuan stature.

On a personal note, I tend to get easily frustrated and angry when stupid plays are made or when stupid mistakes occur. I know I shouldn't be like that in front of the team (especially as some sort of faux game captain) but sometimes I just can't help it. As well, in a way, I use it as a way to get me pumped up and motivated with my A-game. In any case, I apologize to my teammates for my swearing and punching of ground.

Onto the pictures courtesy of Pierre (who takes great photos but needs to keep to the six second rule - inside joke). Lots of them so I'll keep them small. Click on each of them for larger resolution versions.

The first line (vs. Nice Cake).

Me doing some sort of really long stretch to get the disc off (vs. Nice Cake).

Me throwing around my barechested check to James (vs. Nice Cake).

Simon making a catch in mid-air (vs. Underoos).

Christian going to the ground in an attempt to catch the disc (vs. Underoos).

Rachel catching a point (vs. Underoos).

Christian sucking back on some badly needed H2O while Arrlann, one of our two mentors, looks on.

Me cramping up bad (my calf muscles) and Mike, ever the gentleman, helping me up (vs. Underoos).

Linda jumping to try and block an outside-in pass (vs. Underoos).

Arrlann, Saem, and Cheryl being goofs (vs. Underoos).

After the game, Christian, Saem (Christian's college buddy), Linda, and I went out for some good eats at Senhor Roosters, a Portuguese joint in town (review courtesy of www.soowei.com - Mindless Ramblings, a fellow Singaporean here in Vancouver). Good food and they let us stay an hour and a half past their closing time. :o Oops. I left them a big tip so they should be happy. Lots (and I mean lots) of ribald humour, not-so-subtle sexual innuendos, and dirty puns. Linda, you're a brave person to have come out to dinner with the three of us 12 year old boys (because I certainly wouldn't have). Thank you. :)

Hammers for the win
Okay, so maybe we didn't win either of our games but this sure as hell made me happy after. This is a vid (beautifully shot my Christian) of me making two successive boulder cuts (running away from the disc then cutting sharply back) and then making a hammer throw to the endzone against Nice Cake. Hammer throws are notoriously low percentage throws but only because people don't practice catching them enough and those that are thrown, aren't thrown well. But like they say, there are always exceptions to the rule. :P

Click on the picture to watch. The audio on www.youtube.com is a little bit slow (behind the visuals by a second). Let me know if you want me to send you the 63.4Mb file (bigger, crisper picture and proper audio - only for serious fans). :P

Me making a boulder cut towards the disc.
<--- Click.

This was my one moment to relish in an otherwise disappointing two games.

In any case, off to bed with dreams of more beautiful hammer throws.

-jer

hammertime! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#59 - Just another Monday.

2006-05-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

So tired
So very tired. After the movie on Saturday night, I went to work to do my File shift in the wee hours of the early morning (not before posting Sunday's blog entry). A relatively quiet day on Sunday morning. Came home and passed out only to do it all again today. Yet another relatively quiet day at Safeway today. Slacked a bit in the back towards the end, chatting with other slacker friends (go union!) about nothing in particular. Other than that, it's been a boring two days at work. Nothing much to report I'm afraid.

Locked out
Coming home from work today, I was temporarily locked out of my own building. My building has a built-in security system with keyfobs and scanners and it's all nice and safe. One can only access the floor one lives on via keyfob scanner in the elevator so it makes it very hard for a thief to gain access into one's apartment. BUT, if your keyfob goes haywire at 10pm on a Monday night, you're pretty much SOL*.

[*: "Shit Outta Luck" for those of you unhip - Courtesy of Urban Dictionary.]

My keyfob works perfectly fine for opening both garage doors and so I was able to park Gretchen in her usual spot. But upon trying to access the elevator, I discovered my keyfob was inoperable with the keyfob scanners at all the elevators. I had to call Crosby Property Management (property management company for the building) and get them to wake up the Resident Manager (who is only on call from 8am to 5pm) for me. Just as I hung up with Crosby PM, I recognized my neighbour who lives on my floor coming back from walking her dog, a cute young Alsatian mix. (Actually, to tell you the truth, I recognized the dog as I usually see her husband with the dog. I've never seen her before tonight.)

And so, I was let up into my floor by my neighbour and am posting this from home (instead of my Mom's which would have been where I would have been forced to go and sleep had I been unable to go home).

Vancouver
While trying to find a picture of The George (my apartment building) on the internet to use in this blog entry, I stumbled upon this instead. Click on the picture to learn more about Vancouver and its neighbourhoods.

A map of Vancouver neighbourhoods.
<--- Click.

Pretty neat and interesting with all the stats. :) I love my city. I don't think I'll ever leave it.

Afro David
Referring to two previous blog entries (#41 - Damn thieving bastards! and #47 - What the HELL is an aluminium falcon?), Mastercard has finally sent the affidavit for me to sign saying that, "no, I did not spend over $1100 on Western Union calling cards in London, Ontario."

How to steal my credit card information via Western Union.

This is not the first time I've had to do this. Previously, I had lost both my driver's license and my Mastercard while playing paintball and that particular thief spent over $2500! I still don't understand why Mastercard doesn't put some sort of alert on unusual expenditures and have them call me to verify. Stupid Mastercard.

OH SNAP!
Two games tomorrow at Van Tech. Hopefully, the practice on Saturday helped out the new people on the team with the basics of the game. I'm all excited to play again. For the past two days, I've been flipping the disc at home waiting for Tuesday to arrive. As well, this Saturday's practice might be cancelled as we might attend the VUL clinic and BBQ instead.

Unfortunately, the weather looks like crap.

The Da Vinci Code
I have yet to see this movie. I'm apprehensive about watching a film with such high expectations from the book.

This movie better be good.

I hate watching movies based on books I've already read. I remember my first experience with this was with Jurassic Park, by Michael Chricton, in Grade 8. I had picked up this novel from the school library mostly because of the dinosaur skeleton graphic on the front cover. I was already a voracious reader at a young age and a thick adult novel didn't faze me at all. I read the book, cover to cover, in a span of a week. It filled my head with all sorts of fanciful ideas and had my imagination in overdrive. Imagine the thrill I felt when I found out later that month that Steven Spielberg was going to make a movie based on on the book!

I saw the movie while on vacation with my Dad in Washighton, DC, and although I was impressed with the computer graphics and the realism of the dinosaurs, I remember being disappointed that some of my favourite scenes from the book were cut out. And that's why I know I'm going to be disappointed the same way. One can't truly turn a book into a movie without some serious editing of the storyline.

[Oh and by the bye, I watched my first porn video while on that vacation at my friend's house in Washington, DC. He had stolen it from his older brother and had hid it in a shoebox in his closet (how horribly cliched on hindsight). I remember us laughing nervously while watching the video until his sister came into the room. We quickly switched back to the cartoons we were supposed to be watching.]

I'll be watching this movie on Wednesday with Patrick at Silvercity Paramount at a matinee. I hope I won't be wasting my money.

Threadless.com of the day
Get it? Get it? Oh, the hilarity of puns!

"The Communist Party" by Tom Burns

Ah yes, I'm easily amused.

Oh and...

Devon
If you're reading this, visit Terry's blog. He has a question for you.

-jer

party with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#58 - Discs, mutants, and ninjas.

2006-05-28T01:03:00.000-07:00

A relatively eventful weekend. Relatively. I'm sure most of you had much more exciting weekends. But when one (I'm not sure who but I think you know him well) derives joy from watching one's pet fern suck up the sunshine on the window ledge, I'd say anything else is exciting.

CCW
Had a great night out at CrimeWatch with the Vancouver Police Department on Friday night. There were a few Special Attentions we were unsuccessful at but my partner (Nektario, whom I call Terry for short) and I recovered two stolen autos to add to CCW's already impressive number of recovered stolens. Fun night, though there is one CCW member that is annoying. He, know to me as "Annoying Man," does NOT listen to the briefing or the radio and is always off doing his own thing. He then clutters up the airwaves while we are out on patrol with his useless chatter, asking questions that he should already know the answers to. I always yell at him (in my own car and only for my partner's benefit) to shut the fuck up.

CCW's 3000th recovered stolen auto in 2003.

On Friday, Terry (not Life of TK Terry who needs to update his blog like he said he would) and I had to help Annoying Man find a stolen auto assigned to him that we already knew was in the area (funny enough, right by where Steve lives, a friend who recently became an RCMP officer in Langley). Annoying Man says he and his partner have covered the street and can't find the car. Base (the unit in control of all the units in the field) tells us to go help him. We take a slow drive down the block and at the very end of the street was the stolen auto. We got one of our other units to take a gander at the stolen auto's heat signature with the IR scope but the stolen auto was cold (indicating it had been parked for a while).

So there was no reason not to be able to find this vehicle if Annoying Man had diligently checked each and every car on the block. [Grumble grumble] Oh well. That gave Terry and I our second recovered auto for the night. [High fives myself]

OH SNAP! Practice
A relatively good amount of people showed up to practice this past Saturday so I was pretty pleased. As well, we hooked up with another VUL team, the Wing People (Thursday nights - Division 6) that was coincidently practicing on the same field, in order to make practice more viable. They only had three people from their team show up to practice plus their mentor compared to our nine plus Jenna (our mentor) and Paul, an RS friend and enemy (he plays on the same night on a different team).

Thus combined, our mentors ran us through some standard drills quite useful for the new players. Drills on cutting, drills on throwing around a check, drills on zone defense and zone offense. Finally, we had a fun scrimmage to end the practice. All in all, a very good day.

And the weather held out too, which was amazing. Every time we've tried to schedule practice, it has always ended up being rained out. Though the dark clouds threatened that day, the rain didn't fall and I was happy.

Serendipity
For all you high school people reading this, the captain of the Wing People, the other team at the practice, was none other than Lisa T., who was a year younger than us at Charles E. London Secondary School. What a small world. She is the same as I remembered her, looking young as ever; being small, cute, and spritely. She was on the student council at London along with myself and others and I vaguely remembered seeing her in the Faculty of Arts at UBC.

Charles E. London Secondary School. Richmond represent!

In any case, she's now a teacher at Richmond High and David Thompson (IIRC). I can't imagine a little cute girl teaching Social Studies to a classroom full of jocks. Yay Lisa!

Destiny (Wing People's mentor's awesome kid) and Lisa making faces. Lisa, I'm loving the shirt.

Anyways, she volunteered to play with OH SNAP! when we're short on girls and asked if I could play on her team when her team is short on guys. It seems as if her team has an issue with commitment. You'd think that if you paid money to play, you'd show up. But apparently not. And we're thinking of having practices together again as our teams' skill level is about the same. They used to have practice on Saturday mornings at David Lam Park in Yaletown but they had it at Douglas Park this past Saturday because their mentor just lives up the street. So yeah, hopefully, we'll be seeing more of each other.

Oh and for those of you wanting to keep track of the goings on at C.E. London, click here for the school's official website.

I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!
After practice and a quick dinner at Hawker's Delight, Christian, his girlfriend Rachel, Waichi, and I went to go watch the 7:45pm showing of X-men3: The Last Stand at Silvercity Riverport. It was a relatively enjoyable movie so long as you sat back and remembered it's a popcorn film, versus it being a movie with a serious and complicated plotline.

I have a few quibbles with the movie (not just in the X-Men geek sense) but with the movie in general as a film. But I digress. My favourite characters from the movie were:

1) Katherine "Kitty" Pryde aka "Shawdowcat" played by Ellen Page.

She's so cute in this movie. I think I'm in love. The previous movie she was in was Hard Candy. Read more about it here in a previous blog entry of mine. Definitely some scope to her acting. I'm going to keep an eye on her. ;)

Watch her in a scene from the X3 movie here. When the Juggernaut says "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" It really makes that scene so funny. I love Ellen Page's hair up like that and the smirk she gives to Juggernaut (played by British footballer Vinnie Jones).

and 2) Dr. Hank McCoy aka "Beast" played by Kelsey Grammar.

This picture reminded me of a Penny Arcade comic that was published awhile ago when word spread that Kelsey Grammar was going to be playing the role of Beast (click on the picture to enlarge):

From Penny Arcade. Hilarious stuff!

Hahahahahahha... I cracked up when I read this the first time. I still giggle like a schoolgirl when I read it again and again.

As for the movie, I won't spoil it for you (due to the requisite cliffhangers) save to say that you HAVE to stay in the theatre after the credits have run their course. And that's all I have to say about that. How did I know to stay? Because I'm a geek.

I am a toque ninja
Just for you Sex Blogger, just for you.

Don't make me break out my ninja throwing stars.

Oh, and I only pretend to be smart. And don't do that good a job at it either. :P

Ask a ninja
A hilarious site for us ninjas. Visit www.askaninja.com if you haven't already. Here's a pertinent video for all of you intending to buy gifts for your ninja friends (hint hint). (Click on the picture to watch - listen for the derogatory Canada connection!)

It needs to be at least "this" big.
<--- Click.

Yes. Please make sure you buy us ninjas quality gifts. ;)

Want to make sure...
... that you'll make it to hell? Visit http://www.churchsigngenerator.com and have your way with the Christians. Here's my ticket to the Devil's playground:

Don't forget to wash up after!

Now that I've thoroughly offended you Christians, please send all your complaints via papyrus scrolls to my email address listed below.

Hugs and kisses!

-jer

complain to me! --> [idontgivearatsass@hotmail.com]

ps: A photo update to #53 - Birthday Resolutions. Pictures of Terry's completed fence! Click here!

#57 - My next victim.

2006-05-25T11:59:00.000-07:00

I hardly try to keep them around but when I do, they inevitably die on me. If they aren't making a noise for me to feed them like my Tiffany does, I'll soon forget about them, unfortunately. But don't fret, they're only plants.

Bernie the fernie
That's right, Bernie the fernie. This little green plant that was the cutest one out of the litter of plants we have at my Safeway. So he was the one I picked.

Good luck Bernie!

Too bad he's doomed. I'll try to keep him alive as long as possible but I'm not holding my breath. Why did I buy him then? He was on sale! And I like having plants and flowers in my apartment as much as I kill them all the time.

The best ones to get are carnations as they last a very long time in my mason jar vase but Tai says that they're cheap flowers and don't speak well for me when the ladies come over. :P You know, if and when they come over.

Safeway, bitches, and racism
So Soriah had an incident at work yesterday with a racist customer. A French-Canadian woman tried to go through Soriah's till but Soriah was cleaning out a checkstand and wasn't "open." The woman then made a fuss and went off to do more shopping. After a while, when Soriah was at another checkstand checking customers through, the woman showed up in Soriah's line.

The woman, not having a Safeway club card for the discounts, started to make a fuss over some pricing. Finally, a customer behind the woman in line lent her his club card. She turned to him and asked him where he was from. He said "Korea." She then made a little bow to him and said "arigato!" (Omg, could that be the worst thing to say to a Korean?)

The woman then turns to Soriah and asks her where she was from, and Soriah, hating the question and being born in Vancouver, said "here." The customer kept on asking the same question and Soriah kept answering the same answer till she finally got tired of the game and said "my parents are from Africa."

The woman then says (I am not making this up): "Africa. That's why you're lazy [referring to the earlier incident when Soriah had to turn her away from her checkstand]. That's the problem with you Africans; you with your big hair and big noses..."

At this point, Soriah was in shock. After a moment's awkward silence, Soriah, with eyes brimming, told the woman that she was not longer welcome at our Safeway and told her to leave. The woman then shut up and left the store. Huzzah!

I, myself, have had only one racist incident in my eight-plus years of dealing with customers at Safeway and it wasn't half as offensive as that woman's comments.

Marty
Jason, the night crew clerk at Safeway, finally just bought himself a red 1990 Toyota 4x4 SR5 V6 pickup truck. And wouldn't you know it, despite Gretchen and her fancy gadgets, power, and 12 years of technological progress over the 1990 truck, I'm still damned jealous.

Gretchen, my 2002 GTI 337, out near Lillooet, BC.

I say "finally" because Jason has been looking for the right Toy (short for Toyota) truck for over a month now. He was in a car accident and his Chevy Cavalier was written off so each and every time I worked with him at night this past month, he was always poring over the latest Buy&Sell magazine, looking at the Toyota trucks for sale. (More about Jason and Marty here.)

Marty, a 1985 Toyota 4x4 Ext. Cab with 338,xxx kms on his odometer when I sold him.

Man, I have half a mind of putting Gretchen into storage and buying another Toy truck. I miss having a truck. I miss Marty. Mind you, I only had Marty for a short while before I sold him but those few months had me hooked onto Toy trucks forever.

Supreme Commander
Ok, so besides being a slight anime geek, I might have a penchant for video games. But only a slight one at that. But a game has gotten me looking at prices for a new gaming machine even though I am eatingdogfoodIamsopoor poor. The game is Supreme Commander by Gas Powered Games. (Click on the pictures for the high resolution pictures!)

A gigantic spider bot scything away at tank-sized opponents [in-game graphics].

A mammoth submarine aircraft carrier with smaller (but still gigantic) destroyers in escort [artist's conception].

Nuclear weapon in use with realistic scope of damage [in-game graphics].

I won't bore you with the geeky and nerdy details of the game save to say that I want to play this game. (It is to be released in 2007.) It is the culmination of all the real-time strategy games that have been in existence since the personal computer was used for entertaiment. The game engine is fantastic. The AI is fantastic. The graphics are mind-boggling. And the gameplay is to die for. Read more about the game here at Gamespy.com.

Threadless.com of the day
So being a nerd, one has to watch out for those that would push you around. You know what I'm talking about, you blogging nerds. How should we defeat those that would dare cross us? Safety (and power) in numbers.

"Nerds unite" by Rocky Davies

It's like we're the Constructicons and we've joined together to form Devastator! [Makes transforming noises] Hahaha.

No idea what I'm talking about? Read more here!

Omg, I'm such a nerd. :(

-jer

transform with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#56 - Are you Finnished?

2006-05-24T23:53:00.000-07:00

My most useless post. Evar. Well, not useless if you want to know what an intermezzo is or what singing a cappella is all about. Or if you LOVE polka.

Orihime!
So, by way of a YTMND page at Leekspin.com, I have found the perfect music for driving myself up the wall. Click on the picture to give it a listen. But be warned, you won't be able to turn away.

Orihime spinning leek.
<--- Click.

Had fun? :D

So the repetitive music you hear is actually an intermezzo of a real song, "Ievan Polkka," sung by Loituma, a Finnish singing quartet, in a cappella. Here they are singing the full song. Enjoy! Click on the picture to start the polka!

Loituma
<--- Click.

Muahahahahahahhahaha... [/ominous laughter] I know you all enjoyed that.

Bleach
The anime character pictured above spinning leek is Orihime Inoue, from the latest anime that I'm hooked onto, Bleach. (Click here to find out more about it.) I've caught up with the latest Naruto episode (#186) and am reading from the manga (comic books) as well. So, in order to satisfy my cravings for anime while I wait for the next Naruto episode to be released, I've turned to Bleach. I blame Christian entirely.

Ichigo Kurosaki, the main character on the anime Bleach.

Ichigo Kurosaki facing a Hollow, a monster from the spirit world.

Ichigo Kurosaki as a Shinigami, a soul reaper, brandishing his zanpakuto, Zangetsu.

Man, this is sad. I'm addicted to Japanese cartoons for 10 year olds.
Dereck, save me! :(

Anyway, that's enough polka and anime geekiness for now. Talk to you all later.

-jer

dance with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#55 - Tired as fuck.

2006-05-23T23:18:00.000-07:00

I know that when I usually say "short post tonight," it usually ends up being a long winded ass of a blog entry. But I mean it this time.

OH SNAP!
We had two good games today against PBC (Bo's team - Cheryl's ex-coworker) and Grasshoppers (Paul's team - Veleno on RS) and we won them both. The scores were 10-3 versus PBC and 7-6 versus Grasshoppers.

Lots of good flow by the team. Nice short passes. Not as many hucks as we're prone to doing. As well, we had the drive to win, more so than we usually do. That's the level of competitiveness I'd like to see from now on. (To keep track of OH SNAP!'s progress throughout the season, visit the team standings page here.)

We were almost going to be short on girls but luckily, Jenna, our VUL mentor, and Stephanie, Maria's friend, stepped into play. As well, Christian's brother, Charles, also came to play for us.

Cheryl (www.sittingsidewayz.com) and I took a bunch of photos. She took more because she's a gimp and didn't play, so if you have complaints about the photos, talk to her. In any case, here we are in all our glory (click on the pictures for higher rez pictures):

Jenna (our fabu mentor) throwing around Bo to Charles, Christian's brother (vs PBC).

Me looking downfield past the cup (vs PBC).

Simon with an endzone throw to Terra for the eventual point (vs PBC).

Christian marking against an eventual second very bad hammer throw (vs Grasshoppers).

James catching disc despite hard man-on defense (vs Grasshoppers).

Mike marking a tall guy with Jenna chasing a green shirt and Christian sauntering along as usual :P (vs Grasshoppers).

Christian wearing the punishment hat (a jester hat with bells) for two successive bad throws. Look how dark it got (vs Grasshoppers).

(Update 05/27/06: Here's a clearer picture of Christian wearing the punishment hat. This update is at his behest.)

It got really really dark and dangerous but because we had set a hard cap at 8, we had to go till a team got to 8 points. And then it started to rain. Great. Just great.

And during the second game, my calf muscles cramped up a lot. Probably because I didn't really have a big lunch today. And not enough water beforehand, unfortunately. But, I sucked back a lot of those PowerGels I bought for the team. No one else wanted to try some white, sticky, and thick liquid protein. I wonder why. :P Oh, and Cheryl brought Gatorade. Always thinking about the team, her and I.

Dirty Little Secrets
Wow. You have to read this blog, Dirty Little Secrets. I found her through a comment she made on my previous post about Victoria Day. I feel so voyeuristic and slightly dirty reading her blog. But of course, I have it bookmarked. I mean, it's only slightly dirty.

Anyways, I'm tired as fuck and need to take a long nap. I might update this post tomorrow. Stay tuned.

-jer

play with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#54 - A veritable cornucopia of videos.

2006-05-22T23:44:00.000-07:00

But first, some bitching. Please bear with me. Or you can just skip down these first few paragraphs to get to the videos.

Curses
A dreary day today. The weather was crap with rain throughout most of the day, this long Victoria Day weekend. Useless. Thus, because of the crappy weather, people had nothing better to do than to come to my Safeway and shop all day long. They weren't at the beach, they weren't rollerblading the seawall, they weren't having picnics; they were in Safeway, in line-ups down the aisles. All at once.

I started at 9:30am and didn't stop cashiering till I got off work at 6pm. The two managers there today were also cashiering. As well as Matthew, a grocery clerk. In any case, I guess I had to work to earn my time-and-a-half stat pay. I was hoping for a sunny day so that people would be out doing their own thing and would leave us alone.

I wonder how much this hot air balloon cost the company.

Drama
Political feuding between my store's office staff is giving me headaches. The fight is between one of the senior office/file clerks and four other equally senior office/file clerks. They feel he gets away with a lot of unfinished work; they feel he's slacking to a point where it really affects the productivity of the other members of the office staff, myself included.

He does, in fact, not finish work that he's supposed to finish that day and, instead, concentrates on other work that isn't as important. Thus, that means that the next day, the next file clerk who comes in is boned with more work than he/she can finish in one day and then that extra work gets transferred onto the next file clerk and so on and so forth. I have felt the effects of his laziness and it's just frustrating when you have so much work on your plate and only a certain time to complete it in.

He's not a bad guy. He's looked out for me in the past but still, he needs to stop slacking and earn his pay. I just don't want to get inbetween a shouting match.

Ultimate
Zan's only going to be coming out to one last Neutrinos game this Wednesday. That means no Ultimate for me on Wednesday again this week. But she's going to be busier now so I get to play from next week onwards.

Oh, and Cheryl thinks that I'm being to negative about OH SNAP!. Positive thinking, she says. Ultimate is one of the few times I'm vaguely aggressive and competitive and thus I hate losing and I hate losing to crap teams even worse. But I guess we are a brand new team so it'll take a while for us to get good together.

There was a scheduled practice today for OH SNAP! but it got rained out so Christian, Cheryl, Simon, Lorena, and myself went to The Reef (http://www.thereefrestaurant.com/), a Caribbean restaurant on Main St. and King Edward Ave., to have dinner. Food was good. Drinks were good. It was all good. Just don't ask me to say my Chinese name in Cantonese. You know I'll just fuck it up. And then you'll laugh. Damn that Lorena! :P

Babble
Okay, enough talk. Onto the fun stuff, a veritable cornucopia of videos! I should really spread these out throughout the week but since it's a Tuesday, the first work day of this short week, you're hung over from the long weekend parties, and you are just plain bored at work, here they all are.

For Terry
This isn't from the supposedly soon-to-be-made movie but it's cool nevertheless. Click the picture to watch the video.

Just an ordinary semi-truck. Really.
<--- Click.

Too bad the colours don't match but still, it's pretty cool. (Oh and Terry, we forgot to go to Imperial Hobbies to pick up Marvel's Civil War! Click here to read about it! Booourns!)

The new hotness
Not that I keep track of what's hot and what's not in the music scene nowadays (I usually just listen to my collection of CDs) but this new Nelly Furtado song, "Promiscuous," is pretty catchy, not to mention she looks damned hot in this video. (Again, click on the picture to watch the vid.)

Nelly Furtado in "Promiscuous."
<--- Click.

Her body is so toned! I guess Victoria, BC IS useful after all.

What is heaven?
This question is posed to young kids. Click the picture to watch their responses.

Aww. Ain't she cute?
<--- Click.

Haha... Okay, so the video is obviously in jest but my two favourites are: "That's where drunk Daddies drive to" and "I'll never know." :)

Threadless.com of the day
Twenty days till the litmus test. [Crosses fingers.]

"Missing piece" by Steve Rivenbark

It sucks to be nervous for one's birthday though, isn't it? I want it to be a happy occasion but I'm going to be nervous all day, on tenderhooks by the phone.

Anyways, that's it for me. Here's hoping that tomorrow is a drier day. I've been itching to play some Ultimate all weekend long.

-jer

curse with me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#53 - Birthday resolutions.

2006-05-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, not New Year's resolutions, but birthday resolutions. Short post tonight. Tired from fence-building yesterday till past 10pm, late night coffee, and then an 8-hour shift from 3:30am onwards.

Reformation
I thought that since my birthday is halfway through the year and that New Year's resolutions are hardly adhered to a few months after they are made, I'd make some birthday resolutions to keep myself and my life on track.

1) Making sure I'm doing all that I can to make it into the RCMP. I feel as if I'm slacking a bit in this. Still have to sign up for some additional testing. Making calls Tuesday and Wednesday.

2) Time management. I'm late. Always late. When I get there, however, I do good work. But that's if I get there. Oh, apparently I'm sleeping over at Terry's house the day before the wedding. ;) That is a very good idea. Therefore, "be on time you bastard," I say to myself.

3) Making sure that Zan and I are okay as we can be, given the circumstances. This is something I can't rush but IS something I want to see done right.

4) Doing more things outside of my usual routine, meeting new people, and experiencing new adventures. I find that this is something that I am accomplishing this year (to a certain extent). I've made a lot of new friends and am doing more than what I used to do before (volunteer work, hobbies, sports, etc.).

5) I'm going to paint my living room wall, dammit, with or without anyone's help and generally spruce up my apartment. I own it after all. I really should take better care of it.

There we go. Five is a nice round number. There's nothing there too fantastically hard to achieve. Just need to make sure I apply myself. And now that it's posted for all of you to see, you can hold me accountable. Or so the plan goes.

Do you have any new resolutions you'd like to make? Let me know!

Making crooked houses
Terry and I have decided that we can build things on the fly with ease. A guess here, an estimation there, and quicker than you can say "let's build a fence," it is done.

Well, not really. This past Saturday was fence-building day with Terry. We were replacing the door that separated his backyard from the front of the house and we were all set to do so when we realized that not only would we have to replace the door, we'd have to replace another section of fence as well (my fault for pointing that out).

So, in one fell swoop, the project doubled in size and in cost but we soldiered on anyway, winging it as we made the fence piece by piece, the blind leading the blind. Made several trips to Home Depot till we finally had all the material we needed (like the 100 3 inch wood screws that were being carefully allotted). We really started in the mid-afternoon with our measurements and our cutting and the general discussing of ideas. Ended up working till past 10pm on the fence till Terry's cordless drill ran out of juice and we had to stop at around 80% completion.

We made a separating fence plus a door and door frame but just needed to fully secure the door's hinges to the posts we had set in concrete. (Pictures of the work are soon to follow once I chase down Christian and his Bluetoof connection.)

[Update 05/28/06: Pictures of the gate and of Terry's "to-scale" drawings.

Remember, this man is an engineer.

The finished door closed.

The finished door open.

Looks like a professional job to me!]

I had to work today so Terry and his parents finished up the rest of the work in my absence. Apparently everything works. I might need to visit the house to view my handiwork in the daylight. Think your parents would mind me snooping around, Terry?

Ramses was the biggest playa around
Who knew that the biblical story of the Ten Commandments was a romantic comedy? A hilarious trailer featuring clips from the classic 1956 movie "The Ten Commandments" by Cecil B. DeMille starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner.

Poster for the 1956 movie.

Click on the picture below to watch the funny trailer of "Ten things I hate about the Commandments," a spoof on DeMille's The Ten Commandments, "Ten things I hate about you" (1999 Heath Ledger vehicle), and other teen high school romantic comedy movies.

(Yes, I finally figured out how to turn a picture into an internet link. wo0t!)

Moses and the burning bush.
<--- Click!

Special guest appearance by Samuel L. Jackson with one of the more memorable lines in the video clip.

Last but not least...

The Threadless.com t-shirt of the day
Everyone's entitled to a shitty day once in a while, even Batman.

"Lost a wheel" by Rocky Davies

There, see? Doesn't that make you feel better now? If you're having a bad day, someone out there is always having a shittier one. Nothing cheers me up like another person's sorrow.

Ha. Just kidding.

Have a shitty Victoria Day!

-jer

Holy Roadside Assistance Batman! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#52 - Is it a bad sign...

2006-05-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

... when you're home alone drinking with your dog?

Somehow, I think so. Damn. :(

Rickard's Red
Eating a curry dinner and drinking three Molson brewery beers given to me by Rod who did a project with Molson this past year (as part of his graduating year UBC Mech Eng. project). He received a year's supply of booze from Molson as a gift. That was two weeks ago. Half his supply is now gone. Damn alcoholic. Currently enjoying a Rickard's Red.

These ads are posted above urinals, hence the wording "Aim well."

It's a lovely beer. Rickard's Gold is a nice beer too.

Another beautiful day
It was bright, hot, and sunny. I enjoyed it from the shade, most of the time, as summer is my least favourite season weather-wise. I hate feeling hot and sweaty and sticky and icky and the sun gives me headaches. Boofuckinghoo. But when I'm sitting at the local Starbucks (I'm NOT addicted!) with my friends on our break, checking out the local "scenery," summer is getting to look better and better. If we were working at the Davie Street Safeway store (#90), I bet the "scenery" would be a lot better as that store is very close to English Bay and the beach.

I think summer has arrived early this year. Lovely ladies coming into work with their bikinis and beach towels ready for an afternoon of sun-tanning. Too bad I was stuck indoors at work staring wistfully out our glass doors.

Safeway
Speaking of work, it's been more and more of a gong show each week. The more they cut hours, the more the rest of the staff suffers. Not to mention that some of the new cashiers are either a) stupid, b) slow, or c) stupid and slow. That and they don't show up for their shifts.

This one new girl, who shall remain nameless, did not show up for her shift at 7:30pm today. We were too busy up front to keep track of who's coming and going and only when it slowed down a bit did I get a chance to check the schedule only to find out that she was 45 minutes late. I got my manager to call her and she told him she had plans and she couldn't make it in. He said she can't just not show up with no notice. She then promptly quits.

WTF! Seriously! WTF!

I wanted to reach into the phone and smack her upside the head. But, other more reliable cashiers were called in and stayed late and so issues were solved.

Crazy Ass Japanese
Why oh why do they subject themselves to all sorts of indignities and torture? Click here to watch the vid. This video was sent to me by two people: Geoff and Teggie_gal.

This picture only makes sense when you watch the vid.

Okay, okay. It actually makes no sense at all.

The man in the picture is Ernesto Hoost, a K1 fighter. Read more about him here. I'm not sure if the other men in the video are K1 fighters as well but that's not the point. The point is that the Japanese are crazy. That is all.

More depressing music
Sent to me by Arthur, my dealer in all things illegal (music and otherwise). Click here to watch/listen to James Blunt (and Mischa Barton of "The OC") in "Goodbye My Lover."

James Blunt's album "Back to Bedlam"

James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover
"Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what's mine by eternal right,
Took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won't stop there,
I am here for you if you'd only care.

You touched my heart, you touched my soul,
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I've kissed your lips and held your head,
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I am a dreamer but when I wake,
You can't break my spirit,
It's my dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be.
I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile,
I've watched you sleeping for a while.
I'd be the father of your child.
I'd spend a lifetime with you.
I know your fears and you know mine,
We've had our doubts but now we're fine.
And I love you, I swear that's true.
I cannot live without you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

And I still hold your hand in mine,
In mine when I'm asleep.
And I will bare my soul in time,
When I'm kneeling at your feet.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I'm so hollow, baby.

I'm so hollow.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow."

Great. That song made me feel a whole lot better. [/sarcasm] Thanks Arthur. :p

Threadless.com of the day
One of the few times that "yes, there is a banana in my pocket. And no, I'm not happy to see you, that way" applies.

"Snack" by Clark Wimberly

Well, maybe I am a little bit happy to see you. ;)

-jer

sing to me! --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]

#51 - The Internet is for porn.

2006-05-17T22:38:00.000-07:00

No, seriously. That and downloading more Naruto episodes. But more on that later. Nothing much to report today. Lazy unproductive day. I feel like poop.

New jerseys
If you couldn't tell from the picture I posted of OH SNAP! teammates in the previous post, we've finally got new uniforms in the form of MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) dri-fit-esque jerseys. We also have a new logo (a sequence stolen from www.threadless.com) instead of the previous fingersnap picture seen on the mockups posted previously.

New OH SNAP! jersey front.

New OH SNAP! jersey back with my number, #21.

This is all thanks to Cheryl, OH SNAP!'s captain (admin), who scouted out the bestest (it's a word!) cheapest jerseys for us to wear as uniforms. The thing is that they are made from a different material from the GAIA jerseys that I normally wear and so these new ones don't breathe as well.

But, then again, it was a blazingly hot day on Tuesday so that might just be it. I might have to tear the sleeves off the new jersey though. All my other GAIA jerseys are sleeveless. You know, to show off my ripping biceps.

Wait, why are you laughing?

Cheryl...
... hasn't had a good week. First, her cat, Kitkat, goes missing (read more here). And then in yesterday's game, she tore a ligament in her right knee. According to her internet research (which I hear all M.D.'s love - hurrah for self-diagnosis!), she needs to rest her knee for eight weeks!

Eight weeks with Cheryl on crutches and out of the game (not to mention the other sports she plays on the other nights of the week). What that means for the team is that we're down one girl for the rest of the season after only two weeks of games.

Crap.

Neutrinos
I didn't play in today's games for personal reasons. Well, I did want to but there were extenuating circumstances surrounding the issue that may or may not be settled soon. I wish things could get back to normal so that I can play on Wednesdays again. In any case, the Neutrinos lost both their games. So I hear from the players from today, there were a lot of turnovers, dropped passes, and just a general sense of tiredness from the team.

Crap.

Avenue Q
I've been meaning to mention this Broadway play for ages now but I keep forgetting about it. Find out more about the show here! This Tony-award winning show is part Muppet-show, part sex-talk, part musical and I hear it's a wonderful production altogether. I mean, any show that has songs about masturbation and how the Internet is for pornography being sung by puppets HAS to be good.

The Broadway cast (and puppets) of Avenue Q.

Click here to watch a video clip of the song "The Internet is for Porn." You will need RealPlayer to view the clip. Click here for other video clips.

I wish I could fly off to NYC to watch this. But I'm too poor. But perhaps one day.

And finally...

The Threadless.com shirt of the day
You might have to stand back a bit for this one. Or at least squint your eyes.

"Mosaic Messiah" by Peter Peterson

Amen.

-jer

laze about with me. --> [seakrait@hotmail.com]