I never thought this day would come: my puppy is sick. He has been faithfully sticking to my lamp for the past two years, watching me while I do nothing in particular at my desk. But now, he’s lost his wonderful suction-cling ability and can no longer watch me from on high. It would have been bad if he had fallen off while I was driving, but — oh wait — I don’t have a driver’s license. From now on, he’ll have to stick to sniffing at my textbooks while I work. He’s currently making his way through a chapter on object-oriented software development for me. What a trouper.
Archive for September, 2004
Yesterday, I bumped into a friend of mine who I met in Music last year. We talked for a while over coffee, since we hadn’t seen each other for months. Just as she needed to leave, she quickly flipped through the newspaper just to see if there were any interesting headlines. When she turned to an ad for the Canadian Idol finale, I pointed to Kalan and spoke with utter poise and grace: “I LOVE KALAN! HE’S GOING TO WIIIIN!” She smirked and retorted that she had been rooting for Jacob. It turns out that she grew up with him and they actually used to sing together before. Funny how things like that turn out.
But once Jacob was eliminated last week, there was no doubt in my mind that Kalan would win Canadian Idol. As great as Theresa is, she doesn’t have the ability to amass thousands of obsessive teenage girls to her side. Kalan and Theresa are really different kinds of performers, so I can’t really say who I think is better, though I prefer Kalan. He managed to make that bland Awake in a Dream song actually sound quite good. Theresa fits the singer-songwriter category best, so that cheesy pop tune really doesn’t work on her. Jacob’s recording of the song is really funny, since it’s not his style at all.
I was really excited last night when Kalan performed I Can Only Imagine. I know that he listed it as his favourite song to sing in his Canadian Idol biography, but I never thought that he would actually perform it, since it is a very blatantly Christian tune. I was so glad he made the effort to try it, although the end performance wasn’t really stellar. For the first time, I actually voted for more than a minute. I didn’t count, but I think I ended up getting around one hundred votes through to his line. I knew that he didn’t need my support, but it was fun since I never got to vote for American Idol.
I can’t wait for the next World Idol, since Canada will have a much better chance of winning this time around.
I think I’m one of the few people who is excited about going back to school. The newness of the school year is just exciting to me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to land a co-op job in the next few weeks and meet a few people in my classes. It will also be interesting to see some of my church friends coming to the same school as me now. It’s unlikely that we’ll have classes together, but at least I’ll have more of a chance of seeing them during the week than before.
I suppose it also helps that I’m not intimidated by UBC anymore, whereas I felt so lost during my first semester a year ago. This university really isn’t as big as it seemed when I first came onto the campus. Good luck to everybody with your first days!
252 years ago, nothing happened. Because September 3, 1752 never existed. And neither did September 4 through 13. A couple of weeks ago, I learned that leap year days were incorporated into the Gregorian calendar in order to account for the slight errors in the original calculations of time units. But scientists didn’t realize this until hundreds of years after the system was originally created, so the calendar was several days behind real time. To correct this, Britain decided to remove eleven days from the calendar in order to catch up.
To commemorate this special day, I am quitting my job.
Okay, so it’s really because school starts next week and because I’ve finished all the tasks they assigned me. But it just sounds so much cooler if I say that it’s to celebrate the irony of this nonexistant day. Or something like that.
I’m beginning to realize that most of the things I do are influenced by an image of myself that I’m working towards. My attempt to fulfill this projection isn’t really a conscious effort, it’s somewhat of a conglomerate of goals and ambitions that I have. It’s reflected in my involvement with co-op, course schedules, hobbies, and even the Web sites I read. I suppose it’s not a sweeping revelation, but it’s nice to understand why I do some of things I do.
This future me lives in a small apartment somewhere in Silicon Valley, where I work for a budding, innovative technology company. I have enough money to enjoy the luxury of a nice Apple Macintosh computer and the company of a nice pet, yet I’m not so well-off as to get carried away with money. I’m single, and probably not looking. I’m an active member of a local church, which feels like home to me. I serve in ministries that help meet the needs of my community. In my spare time, I’ll be writing and studying music.
God willing, that’s where I’ll be in five or six years. I’m a little apprehensive about calling this my ideal lifestyle, but nevertheless, it seems to be what I’m working towards. It should be very interesting to see where I actually end up.
