teaching

I love being a teacher. Not only do I feel the satisfaction and accomplishment of teaching other people how to play piano, I think it's really surprising when I get a card or a gift from them.

Yesterday, one of my students gave me a gift!


It came with a really nifty card that has a game of "Tic Tac Snow" on it. Basically, you can move the trees and the snowmen to play tic tac toe with it! There are even 3 extra pieces at the bottom that you can punch out and play with. Being the type of person that is easily amused by small things, I thought the card was brilliant. There was also a cute snowman on the envelope too.



The gift turned out to be a mug filled with yummy goodies from Starbucks! There's hot chocolate mix, biscotti, chocolate, etc. And a lovely brown bow. Soooo delicious.

Here's a close-up of the mug!
I think it's precious. I love how there's marshmallows over an open fire. Burnt marshmallows are one of my favourite things to eat (everyone thinks I'm gross when I eat my marshmallows that way but I can't help it... it's so crunchy on the outside and so runny and gooey and sticky on the inside... mmmmmm).


My student and her family don't know this but Starbucks is currently my favourite coffee stop. I've never tried anything from Starbucks and disliked it. I would be an extremely happy woman if I could drink Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Pumpkin Spice Fraps every day while eating a Pumpkin Scone.

creepy bus story

A couple of weeks ago, I was busing back to Rideau from my favourite Starbucks (mentioned last post). On the bus, I felt someone watching me. I turned to my left and saw someone who looked like a hobo0ified Santa Claus staring at me. He seriously looked like he had saved up his life savings just to take that one bus ride. I smiled and said "hi" because usually if you let someone know that you know that they're staring at you they stop. However, this guy was like "I can't stop staring at you". I was like "PARDON ME?!" and he repeated himself and added "there's just something about you..."

Thoroughly creeped out, I got off the bus at the next stop (Rideau Center woohoo) and the hobo followed me through the mall. CREEPY

cloudy days suck

I hate how I always think of interesting things to write about whenever I'm walking around or I'm on the bus but whenever I actually have time to write about them in my blog, I always forget.

I woke up really late today but somehow I had gotten ready for work earlier than usual so I took a super early bus to go downtown (I start work at 13h00 but I took the 11h30 94 bus). The 94 picked me up a little late but that ended up being perfect timing because as soon as I arrived downtown, the next bus I needed was pulling up. The bus driver of the second bus (the 97) was pointing down at my feet when I got on the bus and I was all confused until I realized that my headphones were dragging on the ground. I really like the mid-day bus drivers because they're usually friendly and have conversations with people and make jokes and stuff.

I went to my favourite Starbucks - the Bank Street one (they make the best pumpkin spice fraps/lattes and they are super friendly and talkative) and read A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick for about half an hour before deciding to go back to work. I hopped on the 2 to go back to the Rideau Center so I could walk back down to uni. I've noticed that the downtown busses usually have really shady characters occupying the funky-smelling seats and I'm usually the youngest occupant in there.

While at Rideau, I decided to walk around the mall and go to the Buck or Two to buy a notebook so I could write down my thoughts and post them here later. After looking at over-priced notebooks for a couple of minutes, I looked at my watch and decided that I should head to the university to avoid being late for work.

The 13 minute walk proved uneventful and boring until I reached the building where I work. There was a notice taped on the door that coldly explained that the building was closed due to some maintenance thing. I tried the doors and they were locked. I tried entering the building via other sets of doors (there are always multiple ways to get into any university building) but they were all locked. I think that's kind of of weird because I swear I saw someone walkining inside and he didn't look like a maintenance worker...

I tried calling work and no one answered so I went to Chapters and picked up a comic book that I had been eying for a while - Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse vol. 1 by Ben Templesmith. The art is spectacular and the storyline looks interesting.

Then I bussed home and as I told my mum that I was fired (my dad's idea) to freak her out. Now I'm supposed to be doing my German assignment but I really can't be arsed to do so.

I'm kind of annoyed that I'm not working today because I pulled together a snazzy outfit and I 'm more efficiant at doing my homework at work than I do at home. I'm also really mad because I just found out that I had anassignment due at 03h00 this morning and I thought it was due at midnight tonight. FML

Here are some pics:


This is was my outfit + my fave jacket that I bought a couple of days ago. I got that scarf yesterday.



This is part of the cover of Wormwood. Sorry for the bad webcam quality. And for my chipped nail polish.



Here's a bad quality snapshop of a random page in the comic.



I really need to charge my real cam's batteries so I don't need to rely on my webcam for photos. But this is the Gentleman Corpse. The pictures look a million times better irl.



This is from the back of the comic, where there are pictures of the original Wormwood sketches and pin-ups. I really liked these drawings and it's a shame that my webcam doesn't take nice photos

talking about now

Whenever I get bored, I alwys like to write down interesting things I see around me on post-it notes. By interesrting, I mean things that seem to be some sort of anomaly from what I would normally see in my every day life.

At the momemt, I kind of forgot my post it notes at home or somewhere in one of my purses or who knows where so I'll write down stuff here instead.

1) The hug thing from my last post

2) A group of guys with the exact same faux-hawk (+ dyed blond and looking really stupid) walked by. They kind of all looked the same. I really do not understand how anyone can find faux-hawks attractive. Real mohawks plz.

3) A guy walked by me while I was eating lunch. He had long curly hair, a wear cape-ish trench coat, and a tricorne hat. He seriously looked like a pirate but it didn't look like he was wearing a costume; it looked like he seriously dresses like a pirate all the time.

4) I have a really good friend that I met here. She loves to cause trouble... today in our chem dgd, she started calling people on her cell phone. As soon as they'd answer and start talking, she started blowing on the phone. I could hear people getting mad on the other side. That wasn't as bad as Monday's calculus dgd. The room we have for that has microphones at the desks and our TA is this Chinese guy with a really thick Chinese accent (this Chinese girl always argues about everything he does too but that's beside the point). Anyway, my friend kept turning on the mic and rubing her finger / finger nails on it which would make a really annoying loud scratchy sound which really confused our TA. Then she took out her phone and put on a really high-pitched noise (full blast) that really irritated our ears. Then some random dance music turned on (oops). We couldn't stop giggling. I think ppl kind of figured it was us (except for the TA) but it was really funny.

5) The guy beside me is eating something with A LOT of curry. In fact, there's so much that it's making my stomach knot up and I feel like throwing up.

6) I keep seeing people I know from work/highschool/not uni. It's kind of surreal.

7) I just looked up from my computer. There was a guy sitting at the table across from me. He was staring at me while drinking coffee. Creepy.

8) I'm trying to be quiet because I'm in a library but I can't stop laughing. I'm listening to a story called Got Milk. It's about some guy with a third nipple that spews inky black milk. And him licking himself. I don't think this should be a horror story. It's more of a comedy. It's great.

hugs are a sexuality radar

You can always tell if a guy is straight or gay by the way he hugs.

If he does the typical "man-hug" (where guys clasp/shake hands and put one arm around each other), the guy is usually straight.

If a guy gives another guy a real hug, then they are usually gay.

If a guy is bi, they do either or.

I got this idea while seeing a guy give another guy a real hug. In fact, he kind of ran up and gave him a huggle. It was cute but kind of weird to see a guy do that.


Notice that Bush is only using one arm for the hug and the other guy is using both arms.

on the topic of death

Lately, I've been seeing death everywhere.

I've started watching a movie called Waking Life again. Whenever I see that movie, I always become phylosophical and deep and I start questioning everything around me. Before reading this entry, I'm going to suggest that you assume that there is some higher entity out there, like God, just for the sake of this discussion.

Anyhow, the death thing started when I was getting ready for class. I didn't have enough time to watch the whole movie so I was just going to listent to the music at the credits. Since I have the illegal pirated a really weird version of the movie, I have to manually find the beginning of the credits, instead of just using the scene selection tool that is typically available in movies made in the 21st century. While I was looking for the credits, I found one of the last scenes near the end of the movie where the main character was talking to a pinball guy about time and dreams and death.

The pinball guy was explaining a dream he once had. Before the dream, he had read an essay by Philip K. Dick about his book Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said. Basically, long story short, four years after Dick wrote his book, he went to a party and met a woman who was exactly like the female character of his book; she even had a boyfriend and an affair with people with the same name and job as the people from his book. Later on, Dick had to go mail a letter and in the parking lot, he saw a really sketchy guy standing by his car. Dick approached him (something that he'd usually never do) and asked "Can I help you?" the guy told him that he ran out of gas so Dick gave him some money (something else he'd usually never do). After driving off, Dick realized that the guy had no way to get to a gas station so he drove back and found the guy and dropped him off at a gas station. That's when he realized that the gas station and the guy he helped were also right from his book. He went and told his priest about it because he was getting pretty freaked out. His priest then told him that what he was describing was from the Book of Acts (from the Bible). Dick had never read that so he went home and did that. Then he noticed that the story and even the names in the Book of Acts were the same as the book he wrote. That's when he came up with the theory that time is actually an illusion and that some demon had created the illusion to make people forget that Christ was supposed to come again and that we were actually living in 50AD (when the Book of Acts was supposedly written).

Now in the pinball guy's dream, he dreamed that he was talking to Lady Gregory and she said "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe" and proceeded to tell him that Dick's theory of time is right except that we're not in 50AD, we're in a single instant that's eternity. It's in that instant that God is posing a question "Do you want to be one with eternity/do you want to be in heaven?" and we're replying "no, not yet". So "time" is really just us saying "no" to God's invitation and death is when we finally say "yes". And it's like that for everything that's alive. yadda yadda yadda and so on and so forth

Right after watching that scene, I was walking to the bus. On my street, I saw a dead squirrel. It didn't look like it had been hit by a car or mauled by some animal; it looked peaceful and at rest. As soon as I saw it, I thought "yes", not as if "yes i love dead animals" but rather "yes it was finally ready to become one with eternity". And then suddenly, Dead Tree by Dir en Grey started playing on my mp3/mp4 player thing which kind of creeped me out because I was staring at a dead thing and listenning to a song about death.

Then the next day, I was on my way to class and I saw a dead skunk and a dead raccoon on some streets that never have dead animals on them, which was pretty weird. And then I keep hearing discussions about death. And I can't stop thinking about it.

I don't really think of death as death but rather of change. I keep seeing this symbolism everywhere so I'm starting to think that some big, radical change is going to happen soon and I can't decide if it will be good or bad.

meat spin

last friday, i watched bruno with my mother at the cinema.

i've seen a lot of racy r-rated movies with my mother so it wasn't like she's really prudish or anything. she works at a hospital so she's not phased by crude things and we usually get a good laugh out of it. however, bruno was so bad that my mother and i walked out after watching the first 40 minutes and we refunded our tickets.

the clean parts were pretty funny but the dirty parts made trashy internet porn look like classy artistic nudity. some people have been saying that it's supposed to be so awkward that it will make you laugh at yourself for feeling awkward but it even made me feel really uncomfortable and grossed out and i NEVER get grossed out. the worst part by far was the seen where there was a close-up of bruno's dick and it was spinning around like a propeller. talk about a major turn-off. it was really disappointing because the trailers on TV looked really good. i know that a lot of ppl didn't expect much from the movie because of borat but i thought that borat was kind of funny.

my mum and i didn't have a ride for the next couple of hours so we decided to visit Chapters, which is across the parking lot from the cinema.

i was super excited because i got a book about vintage fashion and then i found my favourite volume of my favourite comic: transmetropolitan by warren ellis! right next to the transformers section lol. i was really excited because i've never seen it at the bookstore before... in fact, i've never seen that comic anywhere except through online scans so when i got to physically hold it, i was blown out of my mind. what i loved about transmetropolitan is that it really opened my eyes to the world around me. a lot of the issues that happen in the story are like every day live and can be applied to real life issues - such as the last american presidential elections (the one in transmetropolitan is so similar even though it was written years prior)

here are some pics of the volume:

this is the front cover. this volume is called the new scum and it features the "hero" of the story - Spider Jerusalem, a famous journalist.


this is part of the back cover. it features one of Spider's favourite phrases and a plot summary. and some reviews by some ppl.


the first chapter/issue of volume 4. each section is about 22 pages long. the background shows election posters. the story happens in a futuristic society (the near future)



i really adore his tattoos and i like how much detail is put into every drawing



i think it's neat how the rain looks in this picture. the rain is quite subtle in the original image but in this photograph, it looks really defined


I've always really liked this cover. It reminds me of the front page of a newspaper + i like anything related to aliens and tattoos and bubblegum


It's a shame that this photo came out so blurry. This is what the letter says:
"To: SPIDER JERUSALEM

Originally to MITCHELL ROYCE
cc: GARY CALLAHAN

Spider Jerusalem is requested to attend Greenbrook Tower at eleven a.m. to conduct an interview with Senator Callahan. Failure to do the Senator the same courtesy done the President will be perceived by this office as press bias and deliberate insult.

ALAN SCHACT
Political Director

DO IT - R"


Haha i really love this picture. Royce looks so crazed. Royce (mentioned in the note in the last picture) is Jerusalem's editor. This is the last chapter/issue in this volume



this is the first page of a random mini-story at the end that doesn't actually have anything to do with the plot. it's just some more spidery goodness. yum yum ♥





















at the back of the graphic novel, there's a cover gallery which shows the cover artwork for transmetropolitan. the one with the smiley face is my favourite one of all time. the 3 eyes represent the transient community - they're a community of ppl who are trying to become aliens and they're pretty much outcasts of society



this page shows all the volumes of transmetropolitan. there are 10 volumes in total plus an extra one at the end - volume "zero". in total, there are 60 chapters/volumes and it is well worth the read: i strongly recommend this series to everyone but you need to read each volume in order for the next one to make sense. the volume i have is at the top right.

electro cleanup

last night, i decided to do a full physical cleanup of my laptop. i got the idea to do that because my laptop fan was so loud that i actually had to double the volume of my music in order to hear it and you could hear my fan everywhere on the second floor of my house.

i had my computer cleaned once before but i had forgotten which screws to take out so i had to check online. i am so thankful that the internet exists because there was a website for my exact computer model.

that's what the part of my laptop under the mouse/touchpad looks like! i thought the microchip looked cool; it was directly under the touchpad. the other microchip on the right is for my finger scanner. i needed to remove this section of my computer first before i could remove the keyboard itself but i didn't need to clean this section.



This is what it looks like underneath the keyboard! i edited out the pin# because i don't want people stalking my laptop or something. i think it looks kind of low-tech for some reason. i needed to remove the keyboard to get rid of dust in and around the fan, which is in the top left corner.


This is a close-up of my computer fan. as you can see, i wasn't done cleaning it because there is still dust everywhere. the copper covering was annoying because i can't remove it so it covers half the fan's blades and the edges are sharp. when i had my laptop cleaned by a professional, he had a special laptop vacuum that pulled out the dust so it was cleaned in a couple of seconds. unfortunately, i don't have one of those so i had to use tweezers, my fingers, and a washcloth. it took a long time to clean...


this is my ghetto-fied laptop, before i put it back together. you can see my fan again. that blasted thing! you can see my finger-scanner on the bottom right, above the IBM logo


next, i removed all the keys on my keyboard + the trackpoint (the red thing that can be used as a mouse instead of the touchpad). i put all of the keys in order on my bed so that i wouldn't screw up when i put them back. i've had this particular laptop for 3 years but there's a few keys that i've never used so i'm pretty sure i wou't have known where they went. plus, it makes a cool photo anyways.


this is what my laptop looks like without the keys. if you click the picture, you'll see a larger version of it. you can see all the crumbs and dust and shit which looks pretty gross. imo, those white things looks like nipples, especially if you were to see it in person. the transparent stuff in the middle of the white is squishy and fun to play with. i had to use my fingers and tweezers to clean this.


hey look i made a smiley face~. i took this pic before i washed the exterior of my laptop so it still looks grimy haha


in conclusion: my fan is still noisy so i think it might be broken because there's nothing caught in there but it's kind of more quiet now

an omen that i will become famous one day

i recently discovered a really awesome band called wild beasts. they have a really unique style of music... rock but falsetto so it sounds rockish and classical at the same time and they have really catchy tunes (i suggest listening to The Devil's Crayon and Hooting & Howling). this is the band:



while i was looking up photos of them, i found a photo of one of the guitarists (i think it's hayden thorpe, who is also the singer but i'm not sure). his guitar looks a lot like the bass i borrowed from my friend during the school year for honour band! this isn't the first time i've had something similar to a celebrity... i also had the same jacket as the winner of the first season of america's next top model and the same belt as tetsu from l'arc~en~ciel. all by coincidence too!


this is the photo i found of hayden:


this is a photo of me and the bass:



aren't they so similar?!

tagelmusts are fashionable

according to wikipedia,
a tagelmust is an indigo dyed cotton garment with the appearance of both a veil and a turban. the cloth can be larger than 10m in length. other colours are now being used but indigo is saved for special occasions. the tuareg are an ethnic group who originally wore the tagelmust. intheir culture, tagelmusts are worn by adult males and are only taken off in the presence of close family.

the way a tagelmust is wrapped and folded is used to show different clans and regional origin. the darker the dye, the more wealthy the wearer.

now, tagelmusts are often worn by people going into the sahara desert, as it effectively helps protect the face from sun and sand. many tuareg men are afraid to wear the tagelmust due to civil unrest.

i was looking through my fashion folder on my computer and i found a magazine scan from a fashion mag. in the scan, there's two photos of models wearing tagelmusts. i thought it was funny because i had recently learned how to wrap a tagelmust and i took a photo of it. i thought i was being kind of innovative for taking a photo like that but apparently it's big in the fashion industry!


this is the magazine scan that i found.



this is the photo of myself that i took! i wrapped the tagelmust myself thanks to some youtube tutorials. it literally took me 12 seconds to do

i am so indie and cool

just kidding; i'm definitely not indie at all

i went out with one of my close friends for the last time because she's part of the german embassy and she's moving to india on tuesday. i'm going to miss her a lot. we went out to a nice little café downtown and had baked treats and cappuccinos, then we walked around the market.

i felt kind of cool cuz i was wearing a new t-shirt that i bought with a new pair of blue pants
(ignore my bad hair... my dad drove the car with the roof down and i pulled another all-nighter again)



then my friend and i went to an obscure used-book store and on the third floor, i found a korean GQ magazine and i bought it for $0.42!

that's a major steal because there's a foreign magazine shop that sells mags for $15 - $60

i didn't know that GQ is a magazine for guys... i guess i didn't notice that there wasn't any articles geared towards girls because i'm used to reading online fashion blogs about men's fashion. i really like male models!


this is the cover. lol tom cruise is on it but in the magazine, the article about him is only a page long + one page for a picture



james franco. i took this pic for tiffani because i know she really likes him



exclusive interview with DBSK! aka one of my fave boy bands



lol asian tourist stereotype.



glow in the dark louis vuitton shoes?! YES PLZ



good lord... i need this burger



this is an ad for a makeup kit for men... now we know why asians always have such nice skin!



that beard looks gross. you can only pull that look if you have thick facial hair but this guy's is scraggly and thin. in the original picture, it looks really photoshopped on!



YUM! i can't even begin to describe how absolutely decadent this guy is. i wish they would say the model's name so i could look up more photos of him.



changmin! my fave DBSK member. he is such a sweetheart and his smile makes me melt.



DBSK! they look so happy and cute! (but what's new haha)



cigar ad. i don't know anyone who smokes cigars and i don't think i've seen a cigar ad in a magazine before, except maybe a really old issue of national geographic or something



this cig ad was on really thick paper and it has silver in it and the cig cartons are embossed so they feel 3-D



an ad for the older version of my laptop! i remember how i thought that laptop was so modern and cool haha. i think it's 3 or 4 years old. i thought it was weird to see this in a 2009 magazine, especially a korean one, because their technology always seemed more advanced than the western world...



this thing has real teeth in it. according to my sources (aka Jun and the GD, the skull is Damien Hirst's diamond skull which you can read more about here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6712015.stm