#10. Webster's Falls

Today, I took my dog to Webster's Falls. It's a waterfall, up on a mountain.

I also drove my mom, who was visiting. She took enough pictures to open her own art exhibit. She didn't bring me any food though.

#9. Guitar Lessonzzz

Today, I stayed up until 5 in the morning playing guitar with a friend. It's pretty much the latest I've ever been up doing a singular activity, except from that time in Grade 4 when I stayed awake all night playing Banjo-Kazooie with a group of friends. Granted, it was my birthday, and the massive amounts of Coca-Cola we ran through in that night could have probably fueled the workforce of a small country for a year.

For some reason, I've become guitar tutor to a number of people, which is weird because I don't even think I'm that good - and I'm not even getting paid, which makes me feel like I should be sitting on a mountaintop and dispensing wisdom and wicked sick riffs to weary travelers.

#8. Oktoberfest

Today, I went to Oktoberfest. It's a pseudo-German celebration in Kitchener, which used to be known as 'New Berlin'.

It was sort of disappointing because instead of being laden with German food and German beers and German polka music played by German people wearing German lederhosen, I was surrounded by a thousand students drinking Coors Light and Molson Canadian and listening to a horrible mishmash of Katy Perry and 50 Cent, which made me feel like the $15 entry fee was a total waste of money when I could've gone to someone's backyard kegger instead. Gasp.

Ah well. New thing of the day.

#7. Microwave

Today, I microwaved something in the engineering lounge.

Despite basically living in the school's engineering lounge for 5 years, I have never needed to heat food - mainly because I like my meals the way I like my revenge. The difference today was the foot-long rib-wich in my hands. Dilemmas. I could eat it cold, but the rib-wich was designed - no, evolved - to be eaten piping hot with melted cheese and warm toasted bread.

To give you a scope of the situation, I was standing in the middle of a busy lounge, with one of the two daily-made rib-wiches in my hands, drawing envious peeks from the people around me. The microwave lay just ahead, and only two minutes of irradiation separated me from a delicious warm lunch.

This is pretty much what the microwave looks like:

[Engineers don't even clean their bodies.]

You'd think that with 500 of the smartest people in the city, we'd be able to figure out a way to keep the microwave clean, but no, apparently, cleanliness is inversely proportional to intelligence. That means as people get smarter, they get dirtier. Which makes Pigpen from Peanuts a freaking genius.

Anyways, I used it after much deliberation, which only goes to show that health concerns are inversely proportional to the deliciousness of food.

#6. Statistical Unreliability

Today, I wrote a midterm for Staistical Reliability of Software.

Ever wake up on Christmas morning, earlier than you wake up on the other 364 days of the year, alert and bushy-tailed and wide-eyed, and run downstairs in a bursting fit of anxiety, your tiny footstomps awakening your poor parents, to find a stack of brightly-wrapped presents, surrounded by the smell of pine and cinnamon and cookies, tearing them open in excitement to find that you got exactly what you asked for, and more?

It was like the exact opposite of that.

#5. L4D2

Today, I taught my girlfriend to play Left 4 Dead 2. She thoroughly enjoyed it, much the same way I enjoy shoe shopping or grating my crotch.

She can't even walk properly in-game. This does not bode well. How are we going to survive the zombie apocalypse if she can't even manage to walk? I can't leave her behind, and I can't carry her on my back (not after taking her to that noodle house one too many times). I think my only option here is to move north before the collapse of society even occurs. Which is going to SUCK. I can't stand cold weather, or Orca whales. They can all suck my ****.

#4. Weapons Shoppe

Today, I went down to the lakeshore.

I've been there numerous times, but this time, I got to visit this really cool weapons shop. They sell all sorts of things like suits of armour and swords and stuff. They're usually closed, probably because they see me coming and I look like the kind of person who would not be very trustworthy near any type of sharp object. Not even a pencil.

I also had an 'iced caramel latte', so with that amount of sugar and caffeine in my body, it's probably a bad idea to allow me near so many bladed weapons.

#3. Arduino

Today, I got my hands on a set of Arduinos. They're these microcontrollers.

[Your brain is shutting down.]

It's a 2x3" package of utter geekdom. You can program these babies to do anything. You can build a robot that detects intruders. Plays music. Flashes a light. Marries you, then steals your money in the divorce and runs off with a hippie.

Honestly, they're pretty cool for little experiments. Consider it like a robot brain. I plugged it into my computer and played around with it for a while, until I got depressed at finding out that a robot brain no bigger than my palm is apparently smarter than me.

#2. Hot Pot

Today, I tried out a new restaurant downtown. It's some sort of Chinese Hot Pot restaurant.

You eat Chinese food. Out of a pot. The pot is hot.

[Self explanatory, but people who read my blog must be mentally retarded and need an explanation.]

The cool thing is, the pot of boiling soup sits in the middle of your table, on this little burner. You're brought selections of meat and vegetables, and you put them in and cook it yourself. People call this unique. I kind of think it's a cop out on the part of the establishment when they make you do the cooking, then charge you $20. Then again, I guess you're paying for the secure feeling of not having someone spit in your food.

My mom does this at home too, but this is the first time I've had it in a restaurant. It makes me wonder if my mom is being just as lazy as the people who own the restaurant - by tricking her children into cooking their own food, under the pretense of a fun family activity. I wonder the same thing about "Family washing night" and "Stimulating the dog's anal glands funtime".

Weirdly enough, it was probably the healthiest meal I've eaten in years.

#1. Sarawak Laksa

Today, I made one of my favourite foods - Sarawak laksa.

If you've never tried laksa, go and book yourself a ticket to Malaysia right now. I'll wait until you get back. Are you going? Good.

... okay. Hopefully you went and got some, otherwise the next paragraph is going to be a little torturous. I don't think I'm going to do this justice with just an explanation. But I'll try. Because I am awesome (not as awesome as laksa)!

Sarawak laksa is a blend of thin rice noodles, topped with Malaysian fare such as huge, juicy prawns and tender chicken meat, as well as a generous helping of fresh bean sprouts, fried tofu, and halved hard-boiled eggs, all doused in a coconut milk and curry broth. It's the most delicious thing I've ever tasted, but I can't eat more than a bowl a day or I'll explode (from happiness, not poop).

Of course, the pseudo version I made doesn't hold water to the authentic, straight-from-Malaysian-street-vendor version, but I did my best. I had to travel over half the city looking for an Asian supermarket because my usual one went out of business. Suspected because they sold foods that were TOO TASTY.

I ended up buying a sauce packet instead of making the broth from raw ingredients. Where am I going to find... galangal? I don't even know what that looks like. Is it a vegetable? A root? Part of a human body?

Anyways, here are a series of pictures:

[Prepping the chicken for lunch!]

[This is probably pure cholesterol. Yay!]

[Shrimp, boiling. I'd make a joke here if I could.]

[Please don't lick the screen. It's dirty and full of germs.]

Restart

Okay guys, I'm really sorry.

I'm lazy. That's pretty much my excuse. I haven't been keeping this blog up to date because I have a million posts backlogged and they're jammed down the pipe tighter than Jack Thompson. I just don't want to take the effort to sort through all that stuff.

So I'm going to just start anew - I'm going to toss all those old, backlogged posts, and forget about them. I'm just going to continue my blog from today. Maybe someday, when I'm free, I'll go back and write about what happened this summer/fall, but I doubt it. Chances are, no one will read it anyways, but hey, you never know.

If I do miss a blog post, for whatever reason, I'll fill it in on the following Sunday - that'll be my catch-up day. Sometimes I get lazy again (it's a medical condition) - or my new thing of the day takes longer than a day. I'll try not to leave everything until Sunday though.

I don't even know why I'm apologizing.