Finally back from Saint John, New Brunswick (to be differentiated from St. John's NEWFOUNDLAND). Needless to say, sketching school is pretty ridiculous. We drive for like 12 hours to get to a lil' town (well, not so little. they did have walmart's and zeller's and a value village) which was probably owned by the Irving Petroleum Corporation. Their ubiquitous presence at every other block was kind of obvious. We also contributed to the 300% increase in the Asian population as most of the local chinese restaurants were also run by caucasian people. for example, the House of Chan fast food stall at the food court in the New brunswick square was run completely by Caucasian folk. No offense but just like black people who sing well cuz of their soul, only chinese ppl can really cook chinese fast food ... it's the soul in chinese food that makes it taste and smell great. (And a combination of sweat induced by the heat from the wok)

I also realized that Canada has great differences in climatic zones even within the same latitude. I packed nothing but shorts and t shirts to discover that it was super frigid (as it was 25 in montreal when I left. that is in CELCIUS for those of you who haven't realized that the Metric system is EASIER) and it dropped to 8 celcius.

So, valuevillage is my friend. I bought a gas station attendant jacket for 10 CDN.

I must say, looking at the stars without the city lights is pretty amazing. Makes you think how can people doubt there is a God and how much He totally loves us? He made that for us to appreciate.

Sketching? yeah. I sketched. With much pain. and turmoil.

Ikea. People love Ikea. I did at one point until you realize when you want to keep your furniture and move it with you, you can't take it apart. Ikea furniture is only made to be put together and hence, they have stupidly designed connections where its easy to put in but impossible to remove. That and the fact that there are pointy ends to the furniture when you are taking it apart . The end result, a long slice along my side? Well, it might have been less damaging had I been wearing a t-shirt but thats another story. It was boiling hot in the apartment. I don't know why, but my apartment tends to retain internal heat. That and the fact Tim's computer system is basically a heating system that does homework and plays mp3s. So hence the shirt was off because I was sweating buckets. (For those who have witnessed my incredible ability to increase humidity in a room by 3000%, thank you for understanding.)
Anyway, what should have been a 20 minute tops ordeal, turned out to be an hour ordeal while I tried to remove some screws... I mean, Just make them into real screws instead of having individual pieces. POor Tim was trying to help me out. I got fed up and went to play some piano.

My dear readers, you may notice my more cynical outlooks on things lately and nothing has been terribly informative. Perhaps I am exposing reality as it is and telling everyone that the corporate giants out there are out to screw us over. But, I'm seriously not jaded but a relatively positive guy w/ bad experiences with consumerist products.

I wonder if at times, our own minds and rational get the best of us. We often RATIONALIZE about things without thinking about the greater picture and not realizing how little we do know. I think that can be quite ignorant and I myself can be guilty of that. Regardless of what my thoughts are, I think one ought to base judgements not only on personal opinions but rather, tangible evidence of the things we think about or rather, to find support in what we think. We live in a world of evidence and sometimes, we choose to live in our own reality that we create ignoring that reality exists on its own without us ever even wanting it to be. The fascinating thing about the human mind is that we can cause ourselves to think what we want to think even if the answer is in our face. It's funny how we got this thing called choice.

While i'm on this rant about things, I know most of you have been anticipating the release of the new Justis Kao:Invisible CD. 6 new tracks of brand new arrangements and his hit "Sustained" released! Buy it FIRST @ Markham Theater for Performing Arts, Aug. 16 after the Justis Kao:SUSTAINED Concert. And who will be there to open the show? MY dear and beloved friend the Eighth Wonder of the world, (Not JayZ or the Hanging gardens in Babylon) BUT MR. Adrian the 8W Fung himself will be opening this slammin' show. Oh yeah, Epidemic (aka. Gerald the man Chan) will be there with him too.

BE THERE, or you'll miss out on an awesome show.

wow. 10 days sure goes by quickly when you're having fun.

To my man Ivor Man Lee Chee: Thanks for being a brother in the past 20 odd years. It's been a blast knowing you and having you as a friend. Lets hope we do not join the BTTR club. "We ride together, we fart together, we die together. Bad boys for life."

To my ex-roomate Adrian: Words cannot describe our relationship in the past 2 years. You are the man. and you are going to the top.

To everyone who reads this: I love you guys.

So. another rant on technology and also the business world.

Rentals:
Is it pure coincidence that every single car rental agency in Montreal (the big names) have rented their cars out TODAY.

Canada post:
Postmen need to really be careful where they give you your delivery notice and make sure they bring it to the right postal outlet for pickup.
Otherwise, you get sent on a telephone chase to find out where your package went.

Fido:
Why can't they have customer service reps at the fido store so you can get a rebate and a fone handed to you personally by an employee of their company rather than sending Canada post to do do it?

Cell phones:
Why did my cellphone die as i was trying to find the whereabouts of my package?

Compaq:
Why is it that laptop computers will die after one year of warranty is up?


BUT:
still thankful for being able to have all these things to complain about . For real.