Overheard conversations

We all eavesdrop. Not necessarily on purpose, but say you're walking down a sidewalk Downtown, you're bound to overhear some funny conversations.

Last week, while shopping at Carrefour Laval with Joey, we're following this family. They stop in front of this store called Chado. We overhear the teenage girl say:

"Mom, this is not the place! We're looking for Le Chateau, not Chado!"

As we walk past them, the girl turns to speak to another member of the family:

"Mom thought we were going to Chado, but we wanted Chateau. She brought us to the wrong store!"

We continued walking, and could still hear this girl talking 30 feet away:

"It's not Chado! It's Chateau!"

That's when I turn to Joey and say:

"We friggin' get it. Chado and Chateau sound similar. We all know it's the wrong store. Chado, Chateau, Chateau, Chado. Shut up already and get over it, tabarnac."

Today, we were at Costco, and as we are walking to the car, we overhear this Chinese couple speaking in Cantonese:

"You're so silly!"
"No, you're silly!"
"No, you are!"
"You are!"
"You're silly!"
"No, you're silly!"
(I kid you not, this went on for like 30 seconds...)

You're both silly, now shut the heck up!

Maybe I got Anger Management issues.

And all that jazz.

Ok fine. That was a cheesey opening for this blog entry, especially since I didn't even watch Chicago.

Anyway, I went to see Vince play tonight at Café L'Utopik. I only stayed for the first set, but it was good. The songs seemed more mellow than when I saw him with Amy at Mile End Bar, but that may have been the beer. If you get a chance, you really should go check him out and support our very own starving artist. So maybe he isn't starving, doesn't mean he doesn't want your money.

Vincent Stephen-Ong

(Vince, please make out the royalty checks to Mr. hurc, thanks!)

Weekend of Recovery

As everyone seemed to have already predicted, I did not catch the flu. All I had was the common cold. Still felt like shit though. The worse part were the headaches. I had to take Friday off from work (although I did have to work remotely from home) and rested most of Saturday. By Sunday morning, I was good to go, even for my weekly hockey game.

Speaking of which, I think I'm getting pretty decent at playing goalie. The only goals going in these days are 2-on-1 and 3-on-1 breaks, which are extremely hard to play. But I have decent mobility and good positioning most of the time. I do need to work on controlling rebounds better. I wonder how I would play on skates and agaisnt rubber pucks, instead of those much softer orange hockey balls.

So that was pretty much my weekend.
However, the week has been shitty so far. Monday was crappy, today was a little better. More on the week another time.

Making it through the day

Another day, another stressful 8-9 hours at work. Still feeling kinda groggy, but the Nyquil helped me sleep a good 7-8 hours. My throat still hurts. The bad news is that I still feel sick. The good news is that I don't feel anymore sick that I did the day before. Subdued yay.

Within 5 minutes of sitting down at my desk, I've got this one escalation that really got on my nerves. It's one of those, this wouldn't be a complaint if the original person/people did their jobs correctly. And I'm the only one that seems to really care. And the customer has my direct phone number at work. I guess I'm screening my calls all day today.

The day felt extremely slow, especially since my head was bobbing back and forth from the dizziness. I don't know how I was able to stay awake until my shift ended. But I did. Another subdued yay.

Flu, Flu, Go Away, Come Again Another Day

I woke up this morning, feeling pretty good actually. Then 30 minutes later, the headache accompanied by his good friend, the sore throat. Oh frig. Feels like the flu again. This would be the 3rd or 4th time THIS YEAR ALONE.

Tonight, I just downed a little cup or Nyquil, so I'll be passing out soon. Also rubbing my chest with VaporRub before going under my covers. Hope this flu doesn't come out and play.

In any case, I gotta find out more about these flu shots and get me one of those. I don't mind getting "sick" and taking days off, but the flu is the worse, because you cannot function normally when your head is throbbing, your nose is stuffed, your throat is hurting and your body feels like a ton of bricks.

Splitting headache

I wake up to the clock radio this morning. It's not very loud. I can't even hear what is being said, or even what song is playing. But it's loud enough to wake me. I squint my eyes when I move the blinds to look outside. The sun makes me rub my eyes, it's already morning. I didn't sleep that well last night, but have to get ready for work. I hop in the shower. I stay in longer that I probably should have, but it's okay, I've got time.

I get to work, everything seems normal. That's not a good thing. Phones ringing off the hook, customer complaints, agent faces buried in their hands. Looks like a long day ahead. Within a couple hours, my head starts to throb. I feel a headache coming. A meeting is called, and it's one of those "longest meetings we've ever had". It was painful. It's painful enough when I'm completely healthy. It was excrutiating. I take two aspirin, hoping it will ease the pain. It doesn't.

Hopefully, tomorrow won't be more of the same...

Special Commentary on The Big Adventure

I posted an old comic strip on Amy's blog that Daichi and I drew way back in 1997, during our University days. It's about the heroic adventures of a whale called Big Blue, and his pig sidekick, Ditchie. His arch-nemesis was Whale-O-Saurus, who also had a sidekick, a sea horse named Horsey.

Anyway, the strip only lasted for one half-assed story, but it was hilarious. We called it The Big Adventure. I would draw one or two frames, pass it to Daich, and then he would draw another one, and so it went. You can pretty much tell who did what. The nicer widescreen angles were all done by Daich. I pretty much suck at drawing. The strip was done in one 1.5 hour class.

The main inspiration for the main character was the teacher from our 308-350 Numerical Analysis course. I don't recall his name at all, but the reason we called him Big Blue was because he was big-set guy (trying to be PC here) and always seemed wore a blue shirt. We drew the strip during his class for maximum creative output.

Speaking of his blue shirt, I don't know if Daich and Amy will remember, but during this class, we started noticing a... trend. That blue shirt seemed to come back into the wardrobe rotation pretty quickly. And we would also notice other shirts he would frequently wear.

"Didn't he just wear that shirt last week?"

So we made up a schedule to test our theory. From Monday to Friday. We would write down the shirt he would wear for every day of the week. We had class with him on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that was easy. It finally took us 3 weeks (after running around the department trying to find him and see what he was wearing) to complete the schedule.

And we were right.

He had a specific shirt for every day of the week. Sure, we all have our own little routines and wardrobe rotations. But comon'! Could you have made it so obvious! For the rest of the semester, he would follow that schedule exactly as we had predicted! I wish we still had that schedule somewhere...

Actually, I might still have my 350 notes somewhere...

Grand Opening

welcome to house.of.hurc.

I've finally decided to start up my own blog. As much fun as it is to post on Amy's blog, I think Daich and I have started to overtake that blog with our own rants, pushing Amy out of the limelight, where she belongs. :)

so pull up a chair and get comfortable. I hope you enjoy reading my banter.