We did it. We scored a try tonight, and only lost 7-1. I knew it would happen. What this means is that next week we are going to start dominating. We are just slow starters that is all. I only had to spill a bit more blood than last time in order to get on the scoreboard so it wasn’t so bad.

So touch footy trials on Monday. I could not believe how intense they were. Crazy. We had 3 coaches carrying around clipboards watching us play. I could not believe how serious they take the game. I played alright, I think I have figured out all the rules, now I just need to work on strategy and stuff like that. Good news is I made it through round 1 so I only need to hang in there for 2 more trials and hopefully I can crack the lineup. I am the only non-Aussie there so the odds are somewhat stacked against me but I have no choice but to just make it happen.

Thank god I am starting work next week. I really need it. At my current pace of spending money I will be living in a gutter and not eating by month 5. I go through money like paper down here it is nuts. I may have to start gambling more as a second source of income. If you are feeling generous, please send donations in the form of a cheque in my name to me. Or just give me your visa or mastercard……

I had my first test last night I think it went alright seeing as I barely studied. The saying down here “P’s get degrees” (P as in pass) is definately rubbing off on me, I am gonna be so lazy when I get back home. I have a feeling that I am going to be battling for a P in my econometrics course. I know nothing at all and I have a test next week and at this moment I would get dominated. Seriously, I sit in lecture and the prof might as well speak Swahili and I would comprehend the same amount of material. I come out of that course and I am so depressed it is shocking. My only consolation is that everyone back home who is taking Econometrics is also doing poorly, so glad to know we are all in the same boat even though I am on the other side of the world!

Other than that, things are good as usual. Not sure what is happening this weekend yet but I am sure it will end up being pretty large. I may end up in Canberra, we shall see how I feel tomorrow. Next week is gonna be massive though, gonna be running the gauntlet from Thurs-Sat. Highlight will be the booze cruise on Thursday night, I can’t get enough of them. The theme is golf pros and tennis hoes. What do you guys think, Venus Williams or Serena Williams??

So flashback to last Wednesday the 22nd. I just got in from touch footy after we suffered another loss. We got steamrolled again, put up a total of 0 points while giving up a ton. I really didn’t know what else to do, I came home bleeding this time so it wasn’t for lack of effort. This week I am guaranteeing victory, Captain Iron Mike will not go 0-3. So I was sitting on the floor watching the Commonwealth games and decided I should go. I booked a flight, bought some tickets and headed out to Melbourne on Thursday afternoon. Best decision I ever made. The atmosphere there was unbelievable, I was sitting in the Melbourne Cricket Ground, otherwise known as “The G” with 81,000 people just going wild. The place was massive. I watched the Kenyans dominate the 3,000 metre steeplechase, saw some good hammer throw action, and two Aussies break records, one in the long jump and one in the pole vault. Weirdest thing though is that you can bet on anything down here, even amateur sports. Too bad I figured this out afterwards, or maybe that is good. If I had known I would have laid down so much cash on all the Kenyan runners, I would have cleaned house. I also watched the doubles squash which was pretty cool as well. The reflexes of these athletes is insane, they are so quick, it was really cool to see live. I saw the Canadian men play the English and unfortunately they lost. It was even worse because I was alone with my Canadian flag with some damn limey bastard kids from England in front of me and they would not stop chirping me. Good thing I made friends with this aussie girl because I was running out of ammo but she was giving it right back to these limey’s. It was hilarious, she was 9.

The atmosphere around the whole city was great, I spent most of the days just wandering around all of the venues they had set up and watching different events on big screen TV’s. As for the nights, now that is a different story. The hostel I stayed at was pretty weak, and the people were no fun at all. I ended up going out on the town by myself and I had a pretty good time, mingled with some locals and all that good stuff. Doing random things at the spur of a moment is great, I wonder where I am gonna end up next weekend. Hopefully not in a gutter or anything!

Oh yeah, tomorrow is also a big day. There are touch footy trials for the Aussie University Games. So if I make the team I get to represent my Uni against other ones from this area and we can then move on to the state finals, should be exciting. Time for more Eye of the Tiger!

Captain Iron Mike (0-2, 0 points for, tons against)

I didn’t take many pictures so this is the only one where I don’t look stupid. Yes that says a lot about the other pictures. My friend Cayleah stole my hat so I stole her sweater. I am striking the country club pose.

As many of you may or may not quite remember, yesterday was St. Patty’s day, where everyone comes together to let their Irish out for just one day.

My day started, well, the day before. That’s because I had a history paper to write. No, it wasn’t due on St. Patty’s day…it was actually due the Friday a week before. Now under normal circumstances I would procrastinate until the night before, or if I’m feeling daring, the morning that it’s due, then write it all in one sitting and just barely finish it in time. Except I’m no longer in engineering and so regular deadlines don’t apply.

You see, I’ve determined that in arts there is a deadline, and a real deadline. The deadline comes in the form of a date and time, normally when there is a regularly scheduled lecture. The real deadline is somewhat abstract and varies upon course and person. It’s a matter of a cost-benefit analysis you see, since in arts there’s this beautiful thing called late marks. This mythical creation does not exist in the faculty of engineering nor math. You either hand things in on time or you don’t hand it in at all. After determining the rate of daily mark deduction, you simply compare with your maximum mark loss threshold and then you have the real deadline.

I found out last week that my history (of popular culture) course had a penalty of 2% every working day. That’s right, weekends didn’t even count! Given that kind of rate, I probably would have gone 3 whole weeks before handing in my paper. Alas, the prof also stated that she wouldn’t accept papers that were more than a week late. Not quite what I wanted but hey, losing only 10% for being a week late isn’t something I’ll complain about.

So apparently it takes almost 7 days to procrastinate and about 4 hours to write a history paper. This is why I didn’t start writing my paper until about 3 am, the morning of St. Patty’s day. Throw in a few hours worth of nodding off while trying to write it and I finally finished around 10 am.

I went to campus around noon and after an hour of wandering around I finally went to line up to get into Bomber. Given that Bomber is just ridiculous on St. Patty’s day, it took me about 2 hours to get in…in the early afternoon. Bomber was just wild and I had a blast. I managed to spend a total of 20 bucks for the whole day. That’s right, you heard me. 20 bucks for all St. Patty’s day. I even ate a burger. Being physically asian, not having slept for over 30 hours and not having eaten all day combined to give me extreme alochol amplification powers.

I was so tired that I left the bar around 8:30 pm. I got home about 15 minutes later. I remember walking into my house and hearing my roommate Tony yell “hello? who’s home?” from upstairs. Being drunk, I thought to myself how hilarious it would be to not answer. So I didn’t. I then realized how funny it would be to go hide. I then heard Tony’s footsteps rush down the stairs just as I ran into the living room to hide behind the wall. And then as he slowly crept into the living room I jumped out to scare the shit out of him. Or at least that’s how I remember it and I remember finding it so damn funny. But then I also remember 30 seconds lying down on the couch and passing out.

You know those nights after you come home from the bar at like 2 am and pass out on the couch and then by the time you wake up it’s like 5-6 am? Yeah that sucks. But yesterday – oh yes – I woke up from being passed out on the couch, still wearing my toque and my jacket, and I looked at the clock. It was still 11 pm! It was the greatest feeling ever. Not only had I passed out on the couch but I was about to go to sleep hours before my usual bedtime!

Fin.

So Wednesday night was opening night the Macquarie University Touch Football (meaning Rugby) league. I was pumped to get in there and mix it up, ready to dominate as usual, had the cleats on, rocking the team uni, and then I met the team. Couple of American guys who have no clue how to play, that’s fine I think to myself, Aussies will come and teach us. Two Aussie girls show up, they have played before but apparently “forgot” the rules. Aussie guy strolls onto the pitch, I ask him if he has played. He says yes. I said can you explain the rules to the Americanos. He says he has to put his shoes on. So we only have 7 players, you play 6 on the field, 4 guys and 2 girls, so we had one sub. Girls had no sub. There I am immediately thinking that things are not looking good. With my one career game of touch footy under my belt, I am trying to explain the rules, then the ref asks for team captains. So I look at my squad, nobody wants to be captain, I think to myself, this team needs a leader, so I immediately annoint myself Captain Iron Mike. No voting, I just said I will be captain, they said cool, and all was good. So the game starts, I line up at the center of the field ready to start the play. I look behind me and my team is leaning on the face like 50 yards back. It was then that I knew was going to be a very long game. We got degraded. The other team just steamrolled us. I was hating every minute of it. I was trying to make things happen out there but I am only one man. At one point I danced through 3 players on their team, only to see the rest of their team closing in on me with nobody from my team in sight. In the end we lost like 9-0. And I am pretty sure my lung collapsed from the motivational speech I tried giving at halftime. I think I played 37 minutes of the 40. Oh ya, 3 girls on our team turn up late, and say they will play next week. Play, hahaha, not when Captain Iron Mike runs the show. They will be riding pine, muhahaha. I kind of feel like Charlie Conway from the Mighty Ducks movie, except I am lacking an Emilio Estevez-like figure to guide me to the promised land. Emilio where are you?

So after that debacle of a Wednesday night we can move on to my debacle of all of Thursday. So Thursday was wine tour day. Nice day in the Hunter Valley, have some wine, enjoy the weather, sleep on the bus and go home right? Not at all. Start getting into the wine tasting when I immediately figure out the best way to go about this. Just point at bottles, say you want to buy stuff for your parents, and just taste everything in sight. So by the end of the wine tour I was feeling quite good. This is when I arrived at a crossroads. Do I go home or go to the bar? Well, I was gonna go home, when I heard the voice of an angel say “Beers are $2 at the bar.” I did some quick calculations in my mind and realized it would be more expensive for me to go home than to go to the bar. So I went to the bar. And then we descend into chaos. There are those nights where you are on fire, well last night was one of those nights. Actually, it was more like a bonfire. I was still feeling quite good from the wine, and 6 double fists and $24 later, feeling even better. Then it was time for the dancefloor. I pulled out everything I had, I was absolutely dynamic out there. I wish I had video footage cause it was unreal. I had a circle formed around me at one point and when I left the circle I had a girl ask me if I had any more dance moves left. Well I looked her right in the eye and said “I’ve got more tricks than Houdini out here baby.” And I strutted (stumbled) away. Best thing ever. That was definately a night for the books, wish I could have had some support out there, could have used a wingman…..

There are many types of interruptions. We here at Pleasant Interruptions are in the business of, well, delivering pleasant interruptions. Not annoying, unpleasant interruptions.

The frequency of comment spamming here has increased exponentially over the last few weeks and so I finally decided that manually deleting them was becoming too much of a pain in the ass.

We here at Pleasant Interruptions like to pride ourselves in, how shall I say, being ‘hip’ and ‘down’ with today’s technology. It is only appropriate then that I have installed a modern anti-spam missile system. It will work tirelessly to protect the borders of our sanctuary from the evil spambots.

Even though I don’t have cable, I catch the highlights to his show whenever his site is updated.
On his show called the “Rick Mercer Report”, Rick goes around exploring the far corners of Canada and shows viewers what Canada is all about.
He also talks about many political issues, pokes fun at politicians and their policies, and all that fun stuff.

Just recently he tried to auction off a “Liberal Leadership” package on Ebay which had to be taken down cause the bid went from 15 Canadian dollars, to 16 Million in just one week.

But anyways, its a great show…I wish I had cable to watch it, if you do have cable, you can catch it on Thursdays on the CBC at 8PM. Its a funny show, and if you have any knowledge about Canadian politics then you’ll understand most of his jokes.

His internet site has highlights of the show where you can watch, and are also awesome, but not as good as the real thing.

So tune in!

Well I have almost been down here a month, can’t believe how fast the time has gone. It feels like I have been here for a while now with all the running around I have been doing, it just never ends.

Last weekend was another cracker as they say down here. Had a big night on Friday night, me and the shirt had a big one at the Surf Rock, it was a pretty good performance in my opinion. Didn’t end up getting to bed until 6AM, but for some reason you feel much better on no sleep down under. Maybe it is the getting up and jumping in the ocean, not to sure. Almost forgot about Wednesday, went for a little booze cruise out on the harbour. That was good times as well. It is true what they say, it is easier to walk on a rocking boat when drunk.

Saturday was my first experience at a NRL (National Rugby League) game. It was hilarious. The home team (Manly) got spanked, but that was not important. There was a streaker, which was pretty funny, and then a guy went on to the field and tried to fight the security guard and got pummelled. It was hilarious, then everyone in the crowd starting chanting “the securitiy guards take it in the ass” and throwing beer at them. Apparently that is normal around here. I spent all day Sunday on the beach skim surfing, which is awesome. It involves a small wooden board and then trying to surf on the thin layer of water as the waves pull back from the shore. It also involves a lot of pain. I am hurting a lot today, but it was worth it. I also got initiated by some bluebottles, which are thankfully non-posionous jellyfish. The bastard stung me good but I laid a beat down on his jelly ass.

I have also finally be christened with an Aussie nickname, which is a pretty big deal down here from what I am seeing. Everyone has at least two nicknames. I am now “Iron” Mike. So from now on, I will only respond to Iron Mike, just so you are aware.

On deck for this week is a Hunter Valley Wine Tour, which I will actually partake in. My last tour to a winery was in France and I could barely inhale the air due to events that occurred the night before. After that is Friday night in Sydney for St. Patty’s day with some Irish guys from the Uni, that will be interesting to say the least.

One more important lesson that I have learned down here is a very important phrase It is very versatile and pretty much applies to anything, so I suggest living by it.

“Just make it happen….”

Bomber Wednesday a few days ago was a blast. I went pretty early…7 pm to eat dinner with a bunch of friends and then follow-up with some (and by some I mean lots) drinking. Bomber was unusually busy early on this week because of a (failed) attempted take-over by Laurier. Laurier apparently has a drinking club and they had sent out e-mails telling everyone that they were gonna try to “take over” our beloved Bomber by packing it with Laurier students. They were told to arrive around 7-8 pm. Naturally, a bunch of UW students got a hold of the e-mail and in response urged everyone from UW to go early as well.

It was rather amusing actually. About 30 Laurier students ended up coming out (well, at least as part of the take-over group…although there were others as well I’m sure), most of them wearing purple shirts with their cheer “Go Hawks Go.” All in all, it was a pitiful attempt but definitely made for a good Bomber night.

The best part of the day after a night of partying is looking through all the pictures that were taken. Most of the time there is no recollection of them ever being taken which makes them all the more interesting.

My housemate Daveed offered to get us drinks and he promptly came back with 2 shots in his hand. I was caught off guard as I had been expecting 2 beers in his hands. I asked him what the shots were. He told me they were called “Snake Bites.” “What’s in them?” I asked. Jack Daniel’s. Tequila. Tabasco sauce. As lethal as any snake’s venom I’m sure.

The following sequence of pictures beautifully captured the essence of what I can only describe as the worst drinking experience ever. A big thanks to Laura Quigizzles and Nikki for the excellent camera work. And to Justine (in the pictures) for uhh cheering us on.

PS: No I didn’t puke.

A good roommate of mine came over for the first weekend of March, we spent some meaningful time together.

Mostly, the biggest event was him buying a guitar for me. (In fact, he owed me some cash, and I suggested to buy something for me to pay off)

Voila
There we were, we went to the Long & McQuade, checked out a long-yearned Telecaster. Because of our budget, we only could afford one Made in Mexico.

Sun burst body,
bright yellow neck.
Soft and nice touch.

Although the pickup is not as great as my first guitar, Gibson Lucile, and it makes quite a noise on a high gain, overall the guitar is very slick and smooth for its price, indeed. Well it’s a Telecaster for Roy’s sake!

With the telecaster, there is the song by Master Buchanan I must learn; The messiah will come again.

The true pilgrimage shall have begun…

Well after much haggling with my academic advisor back at Waterloo and a lot of running around campus over here, I finally have all my classes sorted out. I have a grueling schedule, 12 hours of class all packed in between Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Very intense. I am taking Critical Thinking, Genetics, and Financial Econometrics. I think my critical thinking class will be good, it will help me to make the critical decision to go to the beach instead of class. As for the beach, so far I have spent 6 hours there his week, and 6 in class. Very disappointing, but due to some rainy conditions my beach hours were drastically cut down.

In other news, I went out to one of the favourite local Uni bars on Wednesday night. It was a pretty crappy place, so me and my English friend decided to get belligerently drunk, which worked out very well. I ended speaking to some French guy and a guy who moved to Vancouver from Korea and who spoke very little English. It was interesting to say the least. I was also hit on by the Macquarie University Bicycle, and I must say, it was a very weak effort on her part. She started with the classic “where do I know you from…” It didn’t work out too well for her after that, she lacked creativity and didn’t have what it took to seal the deal. Another factor working against her was the fact that I could still see at this point of the night.

This weekened should be another quality one, got a poker game lined up and some friends from Uni want to go to Mardi Gras which is on Saturday night here. I was planning on going but it is a big gay and lesbian thing down here so I may just stay in. Sunday I am off to some music festival and the big soccer final between Sydney and Central City, I can’t wait for that, it is gonna be mental in that stadium.

Hope things are warm back in Canada, I heard it is -6 or so, not too bad. It is cooling off here, only 24 today…..