Steve's Trials and Tribulations

Been a while...yet again

2004-12-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

Well, now that my birthday has come and gone...

Full House is one great Korean TV series (first started playing in July 2004). I suggest you watch it because I just do. It puts all Chinese TV series and dramas to shame. Mainland Chinese series are only for people over the age of forty. Taiwanese series reuse the same (horrible) actors and actresses (think Vic Chou and Barbie Xu in Meteor Garden, Meteor Garden 2, and Mars). As for series from Hong Kong...I don't think I even need to talk about that.

Full House is about a girl's friends selling her home for money when they trick her into going on "vacation" to Shanghai. She meets a popular actor on the plane, the subject of many scandals and the such about girlfriends. She also manages to completely annoy him and also lie to him for money since the "all expenses paid" portion of the trip was a lie given to her by her "friends". She returns to her home, only to find out that it's sold...to the actor. They decide to contract up a marriage; after the divorce, she gets the house (her late parents built it for her; it's a really nice place by the beach, secluded too). However, after two weird love triangles and various hardships, they fall in love.

I laughed, I cried.

Churchill's guidance department sucks

2004-11-30T16:43:00.000-07:00

That is officially the truth (yes, because I said so).

First time:

I requested for a transcript so I can send it along with my application to the University of Waterloo. Guidance wouldn't let me get one, even if I pay the $1.00 fee! That's surprising, since that should be a public service, since taxpayers are paying for their salaries. I'm paying to get a transcript, and they still won't let me get one! So the secretary says she'll talk to the person managing the relations between Churchill and the various universities in Canada.

Second time:

I walk into guidance, only to find that the secretary isn't there. I talk to two counsellors instead, one of them being the liaison between Churchill and the universities (hereafter known as The Liaison). They still wouldn't let me send a transcript (or even buy one so I could send it myself; hell, I'll even pay the postage), and insisted that I send it in April.

Third time:

I call Waterloo the next morning. I ask them if it is possible for me to send a transcript now. The lady on the phone says "Yes, as long as you have completed or are in enrolled in the courses that you will need for the program you are applying to." Bingo. She also mentioned that the sooner the transcript gets received, the better.

I go to guidance again. Same two counsellors. They continue to insist that I cannot send it out, unless I have a letter from Waterloo, or if I'm applying for a scholarship. I tell them I even called Waterloo. The Liaison takes an obvious hit to the ego that I didn't trust her (nor should I; she herself didn't even go to university). She says that I cannot send it unless it's in the aforementioned circumstances, and calls it final.

Her excuse was that it was too much work. She mentioned how there are 700 twelfth-grade students residing at Churchill, and that they wouldn't send transcripts out twice for everyone (once now, once in April). That was completely irrelevant. Are 700 students applying to Waterloo? Are 700 students applying to Waterloo and requesting a transcript right now? No.

She also claimed that in her 17 years of working at Churchill, she has never encountered a situation like this. Oh, so that must explain all my friends who have managed to go to a university in Ontario by sending a transcript in November from Churchill.

She then says to me that she "doesn't want to see my face again."

That was incredibly rude. These are supposed to be people that interact with students, not condescend and use "it's too much work" as excuses for their incompetency. Way to fail at life, guidance department.

You should see American guidance counsellors. For each student applying to university or college, they write a personal report about the student. They put their heart and soul into it. For free too. I'm paying guidance a dollar to print off a transcript and seal it in an envelope, and they still wouldn't do it. Great job, guidance. Looks like Canada fails yet again.

I am so pissed. I need to vent my anger. If you are retardedly supporting the retards working in guidance, you are not just a retard, but also a...okay, I ran out of things to say, so I'll just call you a retard again.

You retards.

Blah

2004-11-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

Been a while...

If you have not yet seen My Sassy Girl, do so immediately. One hell of a funny romantic comedy. The "prequel", Windstruck, is not bad, but it was quite depressing. Not an official prequel, and although there has been much speculation to it, I honestly doubt it is, despite the fact that both movies share the same director and same lead actress (and the main actor from My Sassy Girl pops up in a minor role at the end of Windstruck).

Watch it.

Kiss - 여자이니까

2004-11-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

"Because I'm a Girl" by Kiss (the defunct Korean girl trio, not the rock/metal band) is one of the best songs I have ever heard in a while. The music video was so sad and so touching that it put me in tears. I can summarize:

1. The girl (who isn't a Kiss member) meets the guy, a photographer, by walking into a picture he was taking of someone else. She apologizes and hurries off. The guy gets the photo developed. She later then sees him at the hair salon and then becomes his hair stylist. She accidentally gets soap in his eyes, and this foreshadows something. He leaves his tuque at the salon and she finds him at his studio to return it to him.

2. The two fall in love. They go riding motorcycles and doing photoshoots (the guy likes motorcycles and photoshoots of beautiful women...wait, which guy wouldn't?). The guy is seen working in his dark room and he leaves a bottle of some chemical open on a top shelf. The girl takes a picture of herself that she finds at the guy's apartment, cuts it in half so that she's remaining, and tapes it onto another picture of the guy (half and half). She then tapes it onto the wall.

3. Tragedy hits. As the guy takes pictures of the girl, he runs out of film. She decides to get film for him and wanders into the dark room. She sees it on the top shelf, and as she reaches for it, she knocks over the open bottle of chemical, and it spills into her eyes. Cut to the scene where the girl is being rushed through the ER, screaming.

4. The guy contemplates what has happened. He sees the picture the girl made and holds it for a bit. He races his motorcycle down at the tracks for a final time (I think he has a career in GP racing) and then hands the key over to his friend. He then takes the picture, rips the top off so the girl's half only remains, and puts only that on the wall. He leaves.

5. We see the girl having bandages around her eyes unfolded. She learns the guy has grown distant, especially when that he wasn't there for her recovery and when she visits the guy's apartment and sees that her picture that she made has been ripped with the guy's half missing. She eats ice cream while watching TV and cries, while narrating how the guy has left her for a better life and everything. She's obsessed with her eyes, and shows that when looking in the mirror at the salon.

6. She visits the race tracks to see if the guy is there. She notices a blind man (sunglasses) sitting on a bench, and that he throws something for a dog to fetch. She walks over, stops a couple of metres ahead of him, and a picture blows off the bench to her feet. She picks it up and sees that it is the very first picture the guy took of her when she walked into the photo. The guy looks for it with his hand, and she starts to cry, realizing that the guy has donated his eyes to her and here he is right now.

7. Flashback to the guy in the operating room, where he touches her arms one last time and then gets something slipped over his face, but with holes for the eyes. It goes to another scene where they both walk out of the operating rooms with bandages around their heads and they pass by each other.

8. She hands the photo back to the guy, and he thanks her, not knowing who returned it to him, and he walks away with his dog. She stands there crying. The clincher is the guy walking away, narrating how he loves this one girl, and how he can't be with her right now because he gave her the best.

This music video is over two years old, and Kiss broke up in April 2002. It was incredibly touching...I doubt I'd be able to do something like that.

Hot chocolate

2004-11-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

Hot chocolate is like a warm hug on a cold day. It is so good.

Yes, I did steal that first line straight from the Nestle can of hot chocolate powder mix.

Never, ever...

2004-11-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

Go to bed at 5 am.

Christ, I feel terrible.

Been a while...

2004-11-05T21:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I bothered to write something...

So Bush won the election. Oh yay. Oh nay. Whatever. Some people are creeping me out these days...who actually admits that he or she is a stalker? I honestly didn't believe it was a joke that day on the 199 home. That person just scares me in general.

In fact, people scare me in general. Some people have the most superficial friendships ("Oh, I hang out with them in the morning at school!"), and believe that they even know people because they go to the same school.

I wish some people would go get a lobotomy.

The US election

2004-11-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

I will be glued to my TV, watching the progress of the US election tomorrow, even though it really doesn't matter to a Kanuckistanian like me.

Whoever wins, America loses.

Casshern

2004-10-30T13:52:00.000-06:00

Despite having a weird and sometimes disturbing plot, the Japanese movie Casshern is a great movie. I saw it last night with the English subtitles. Amazing directing and special effects. Despite its more or less cliche ending, the movie states many truths about human nature, and these perceptions run deep.

It's about a war being fought between two sides, with the Eastern Federation finally winning over the Eurasian continent. However, with the long war, the planet is a wasteland and people everywhere are left increasedly susceptible to disease. Dr. Azuma, a geneticist, proposes his new neo-cell treatment, which can rejuvenate and revive the human body. This research also goes to a very personal level, as his wife, Midori, is stricken with disease and her status is worsening every day. During this time, a war is still being fought (it gets weirder...), and his son, Tetsuya, defies him by enlisting.

Midori and Azuma learn of Tetsuya's death, and that he will be given a formal military funeral near the laboratory. Midori goes immediately. In the meantime, a bolt of lightning crashes into Azuma's laboratory, where many body parts are inside for the neo-cell research. It basically starts some interesting stuff, with the body parts coming together and reforming humans who walk out of the soup they were in. The military is brought in to kill most of them, in fear. Some escape, however, and then hijack Midori's car. She dies, but they look to her as a martyr, and place her in their new fortress. The new humans, the "neo sapiens" then declare war on the human race and start to mass produce robots to eliminate humankind.

Tetsuya is reborn through his father's neo-cell research. He is enhanced with armor research from another scientist: his fiancee's father. He takes on a new name, Casshern, and goes out to fight. However, the memories of war still plague Tetsuya, and makes him question what is really right or wrong. The plot then starts to unfold as the "war" gets more sinister, in terms of racial elimination and peculiar revelations.

It's a great movie. I recommend it to anyone who can read English subtitles with patience.

Halloween Day

2004-10-29T13:28:00.000-06:00

Today was our costume day at school. I didn't bother dressing up, but I did notice many amusing costumes. Albeit, most of the girls that dressed up looked like whores. However, there was Tony the Tiger, "chicken man", a guy dressed up as a giant tampon, and we even had our fair share of guys in drag (with the waxed legs and all).

That was great.

So, about that Chem test...

2004-10-27T17:06:00.000-06:00

I got 98% on my Chem test. It brought my overall mark down 1%, down to 97%. Grrrrrrrr.

Time to shoot myself.

I hope I aced that Chem test

2004-10-26T20:00:00.000-06:00

Today's Chem mid-unit test was pretty easy. Or at least, I hope. By the way, Tina is mean.

Not as mean as me.

I want to learn Korean

2004-10-25T17:17:00.000-06:00

I'm serious. I want to learn Korean...mainly because of Se7en's amazing song, "Passion" (roughly translated from Korean) on his Vol. 2 album. That song was so amazing. I now think of him as the Korean Usher, and I love Usher. There are a ton of other good Korean songs, like "Missing You" by Fly to the Sky. My friend keeps sending them to me (because I keep making her), and they sound so good. Unfortunately, I can't understand them. That makes me want to cry.

Not really. But still.

Grrrrr

2004-10-24T20:56:00.000-06:00

I don't mind people who ask me for homework help or what not on a Sunday night. What I do mind, however, is people asking me to do their entire project on a Sunday night (and this project is due Monday morning). After I had thought that was already terrible enough, my "friend" then decided to tell me that his scholarship is on the line because of this.

So I told him that he's screwed.

So bored...

2004-10-24T17:54:00.000-06:00

There is absolutely nothing to do these days. Sure, I want to shop, but I only ever see the same clothes over and over, effectively wasting my time. It's already snowed here, and stores have yet to stock winter stuff. Did I mention that it's damn cold outside? It is.

I wish there was something better to do than surf Addicting Games, or listen to music all day long (not that I really mind). Everyone's in full IB, so they're effectively in "lockdown" because they can't do anything these days. Life is so utterly wonderful.

And I hate snow.

SNL

2004-10-24T16:46:00.000-06:00

I can't believe I didn't write about this yet, but Ashlee Simpson being caught lip-syncing last night on SNL was hilarious. Her first song was "Pieces of Me", which was played fine, but when it got to "Autobiography"...

The drummer started playing the right song, and the rest of the band were waiting for the vocals to kick in to start playing. However, someone in the back screwed up and started playing the first song's recorded track again. Ashlee was caught off-guard, and quickly put her mic near her mouth, and then the track started to fade as someone realized their mistake. Ashlee then has no idea what to do, so she dances around like a leprechaun. Her band then starts playing the previous song again, trying to salvage anything (granted, they were smirking the entire time), but Ashlee continues to do her Irish jig and then walks off the stage. SNL goes to a commercial.

At the end of the show, she apologizes and blames it on her band. The clincher is this:

From Lucky Magazine:

LM: What are your takes on lip-synching?

AS: I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd never lip-synch. It's just not me.

That was great.

I hate anime

2004-10-24T16:10:00.000-06:00

Well, other than the fact that I dislike people in general, I hate anime fanboys with a distinct fervor. I don't mind the odd person watching anime, but when people go out of their way to download it? It makes me want to shove a pencil into their forehead because they're wasting all my precious bandwidth. What's worse is browsing around on CP when I'm bored, only to click a random username and to be brought to a page in which the person has decorated with thousands of pictures of "Naruto".

Please don't talk about anime with me. I'll hate you for the rest of your life (or mine, whichever comes first).

People people

2004-10-24T14:59:00.000-06:00

For some reason, the world is running out of people people. You know, those people who actually can read another person's body language and actions, and make inferences as to what that person is feeling?

For instance, if you feel you're annoying someone, chances are that you probably are. Don't make it worse for the other party by further annoying them. Hell, the worst you can do is repeatedly ask them to verify if you're annoying them. Leave the damn person alone, unless you want him or her to know that you're socially inept (but by continuing to annoy him or her, you've pretty much already done that).

Take a hint, people.