So it turns out that Xanga is a total bitch and that no one is able to subscribe to my blog.

Maybe i’ll make a new account, but man, I don’t think there’s any easy way of backing up a few months’ worth of posting.

So, as you all know, I’m organizing that badminton tournament, and it’s
quickly getting complicated.  Originally, I was sorta sad because
there were only 9 teams doubles signed up.  A few weeks later,
today, for example, I have 29 teams.  Yeeeeeah.

It’s been up and down in terms of organization.  I don’t drive a
car, so I’ve got to figure out in advance when I can get a ride from
someone so I can pick up a hundred or so bottles of gatorade to bring
to sell on the tournament date.

Other than that… While i was in toronto, i got a few calls for people
signing up for the tourney.  Being the handy guy that I am, I had
a pen on me at all times but was forced to write down the names and
phone numbers of these signups on the backs of ATM receipts.  On
the way home, I lost one of these.  I had no idea how many people
were on that particular receipt, i had no idea what their names were, i
only had a vague recollection that it was at least one male.  I
don’t remember if he had partners written on it.

So that was a few days ago… My dad found that particular ATM receipt
earlier today, so I was pretty damned releived.  But then another
problem arose, and that’s this post it note I found in my sister’s
room, written in my handwriting, with an asian sounding name. 
There’s a 50% chance that this is the name of someone who signed up for
my tournament.

But I don’t remember.  Nor do I remember if this particular person
is a male or female.  And, I did write down a phone number, but it
seems that I ran out of ink for the last number and probably figured
“it’s not all that important”.  So i’ve got 6 out of 7 phone
digits, an asian sounding name.  I don’t remember if i was
supposed to arrange partner(s) for him/her either.

I’m telling you, if you think that owning a PDA helps you organize your
life, that’s just capitalist propaganda.  All it does is rot your
existing organizational skills, then make you dependant on something
that is so whorish for batteries that you give up on using it just to
go back to a pad of paper anyhow, and by then, you don’t have enough
remaining intelligence to put these papers in usefull places, or to
write relevant information on them in the first place.

Man, I must be getting old.

These be my supa fly azn stylin oldschool footwears.

Whenever i go on trips to relatives’ houses, especially longer duration ones where i’m going to be living in for a few days, I have to remind myself to bring slippers with me.

I don’t do slippers.  But I did do martial arts, and one of the souvenirs I have of the era is half dozen pairs of kung fu shoes.  generally regarded as acceptable in-house wear since they’re like semi-slippers. This trip, I finally remembered to bring them along.

But it seems I forgot my running shoes.

So when we arrived at Pacific Mall sunday afternoon, our first stop since leaving Montreal,  I was looking all over the van asking “Did one of you move my shoes?” and unfortunately, that was exactly the problem– no one moved my shoes.  They were still at home,  about 500km away.

I am a genius, after all.

So I did what anyone in my situation would do– just go shopping in kung-fu shoes.  Now, considering that I was wearing shorts, that might’ve looked a tad unnatural.  Luckily, most people operate as if on horseblinders, and they look straight and that’s about it, not much left right up or, more importantly, down lookin’ action.

But what they looking at anyway? What, you want a pair too?  If you think they don’t look good on me, they’ll be the last thing you see before you wake up staring at the ceiling.  There ain’t nothing wrong with my shoes. Nothin’.

 

Stop starring!

Last time I played badminton was Saturday at my RsM club, and my right quad was still showing signs of wear and tear from playing at the Y and Claude Robilliard in a two day succession.  I didn’t fall or anything that day luckily, but I did stagger and find myself flatfooted more than a few times.  So rest is good.

 

Ontario is doing well for me, I think, at least physically.  I somewhat regret not loading up my files on my USB stick and bringing it here to work, because I’m going to be swamped when I get back to Montreal, but hey, maybe this is for the best.

 

Prioritize.

 

My right leg has recovered nicely… I think I’ll be at 100% capacity by the time I get back to Montreal, which is good.  The problem though is my right hand… I’d worn out the thumb muscle and my gripping power in general from all the recent badminton, and that’s not recovering well at all because of all the videogames I’ve been playing.  Don’t laugh.  Playing videogames takes a lot of muscle out of your hands.

 

On that note, I went to the arcade at Pacific Mall and played a few games of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Street Fighter: Third Strike.  These used to be my primary cave games, and I daresay I wasn’t bad at either.  But I was totally slaughtered at this arcade, by players who looked like they were ten years older than me.  All at once this strikes me as impressive and sad at the same time.

 

It’s all relative though.  If they’re not as good as me, I call them ‘punks’.  If they’re better than me, I say that they’ve ‘gone too far’ and ‘need a life’.  Heh.  The world revolves around me, after all.

 

There are a lot of outlet malls in Ontario, the kinds of places where there’s litereally craploads of stuff at discounted prices.  While I was at Sportscheck (a chainstore for sporting goods) I came to a certain realization, myself being a sports enthusiast—there’s so much shit in this store that I really don’t need.  Despite the great prices, there wasn’t a single thing in that store that I needed.  I play badminton, I have a racket, basically, the clothes on me and the shoes at my feet.  Some people play basketball, some soccer… take your pick.  But the vast majority of the stuff in the sports stores today aren’t even for atheletes—it’s just another fashion store standing on the moral highground of a fitness oriented perspective.

 

But maybe this I just me because I tend towards ‘function’ over ‘fashion’.

 

This sorta ties into other questions I have for society.  When you pick up a piece of clothing, are you thinking to yourself that you want to wear this just because you want to wear it?  Or is there ‘more to it’, like, you want to identify with a certain group of people?  And is that alright? Is that wrong?  I don’t know.

 

I guess there is a limit though—a difference between being a pathetic wannabe and being someone who just admires a certain person or class of people.

I’m going out of town for a few days to Ontario… scarborough,
missasauga, toronto, you know, the typical asian route.  Not much
do do out there except oogle around Pacific Mall if you ask me– that
place is a whole lot more enjoyable when you’ve got lots of extra
disposable income lying around.

Seems the only way for me to get away from work is to just go somewhere
where I can’t do any, since the concept of ‘vacation’ in montreal
doesn’t seem to stick very well.

It’s one of my favs, so for your entertinament, here it is again.

Go and check out VG Cats. Go! NOW!

And now, for a change of pace, we’ve decided to cut
the power.

I’m writing this on my trusty pocket pc because after
having about 3 screenfuls of hard worked postage on xanga, the world decided to
have a thunderstorm and cut the power. Zip.

And so after some pretty foul language i whipped out
the mini keyboard and decided to type (as we speak) before I lose the idea of
what I wanted to talk about.

So my last post expressed my desire to fall
unconcious.  Yes, I did take a nap…
About thirty whole minutes I guess.

Then I had to head to the Montreal General Hospital
for a job interview.  The job: Unit
Coordinator.  My girlfriend hypothesizes
that the job is is just mecretary work (male secretary), but upon meeting human
resources, and getting to talk about the position, it turns out to be a lot
more.  Aside from mecretarial duties,
such as the mundanities and trivialities like answering phone calls, filing
paperwork and giving pleasant smiles to guests, there’s that whole ‘dark side’
of the Coordinator.  He’s like the guy
at musicals who wears all black and has a radio on his hip, and evertime the
scene changes, his job is to make that transition flawless.  No one knows that he exists– only that like
a knife out of darkness he strikes to get the ‘dirty deeds done’.  That means I’m basically an ambassador
between my unit and other units in the hospital as well as units in other
hospital.  I have to not just call
people up, but follow up, conduct investigations about the status of orders
we’ve placed, as well as communicate frequently with the emergency rooms for
the check in and check out nature of intensive care units.  Basically, the unit coordinator is the
person who coordinates.  The nurses and
doctors handle all the medical stuff– but while they’re the gears, the
coordinator is the teeth on those gears and is the way by which units interact
with eachother.

Testing consisted of an interview which took about an
hour in french and english.  Interviews
are an interesting thing because they’re often rather personal questions
forcing you to evaluate yourself, which is something I surprisingly don’t do
often.  I mean, I’m constantly trying to
learn new things and improove, but the interview process is like a snapshot
that wants to know right here, right now, just who you are and what are you
made of.  What, really, have you
accomplished?

It’s a nice little reality check that I need once in a
while.  It’s funny because I kinda like
the interview process, because it gives me this little moral boost to gloat
about what i have managed to do in life. 
Usually I just don’t think about it… But okay, if you’re going to
force me, well…

The crazy thing is that i spent 4 hours at the
hospital getting interviewed and tested and whatnot.  Other things included reading and writings tests in english and
french (good god, I hate having to write in french because I’m so horrible at
it) and some stranger tests, like the classic “One of these things is not
like the other” tests.  I swear, i
could hear bert and ernie riniging in my ears with the eerily jovial jingle,
and it was driving me insane.  I’m not
sure what they were trying to test really– I mean, I know they were trying to
test my pattern recognition abilities, but I’m not entirely sure how this
relates to my potential job.

Aside from a second interview (this time by the
prospective unit’s head nurse) I’ve got another 4 hours of testing lined up for
next friday, which I think is insane. 
I’ve got computer aptitude tests, which will probably be something silly
like tiping while blindfolded as a monkey molests my ears or something.  You know, to see if I can work under
pressure.  I wouldn’t put it past
them.  That sounds, you know, pretty
standard procedure nowadays.

They’re also going to make me do a physical.  Among other things, they told me to ‘bring
running shoes’, and expect to give urine and blood samples taken.  Okaaaay. 
Sure.  So… Um, i’ll prepare …
By… Um… Eating and drinking extra?

I felt like I was on Gattica or something.

But it seems like this could be really interesting, if
i do get that job.

Okay, now to fall unconcious.

Damn, I’m supposed to be going to a birthday get
together, so I guess I’ll have to put that off for a few more hours.

Last night, went to Centre Sportif Claude Robilliard and did our challenges.  Dead tired.

But I played a lot better yesterday than I did at the YMCA, that’s for
sure.  Our first game, we got beaten by a pair that was at least 3
years younger than me, and that was a tad miffing.  They beat us
about 15-4 or something really embarassing like that. They seemed
pretty happy.  They even looked at us funny when we asked for a
rematch, the kind of way that says to me that they’re thinking in their
heads “rematch? but man, that last game was so boring… I dunno…”

But we played a rematch nonetheless, and then, by god, did we burn
them.  You gotta keep in perspective that yesterday morning I was
working on the stairs again and I was using a hammer and cement
spreader so long that I was having trouble clenching my hand shut, much
less really holding a racket.  And my cousin had been playing
badminton the night before too, so we were both running on 60%
efficiency at most.

But we won, about 15-8, without really putting in too much
effort.  Thing is, we were so low on energy we had to beat them by
sheer force of intellect, we couldn’t afford to waste any energy on a
bunch of punks if we were going to last the night.  But they sure
got what was coming to them, that’s what they get for underestimating a
bunch of old timers.

But as the night wore on I was getting really tired.  At one
point, I tried a lateral cross court jump smash (jumping high, sideways
towards the right and smashing sharp left) and my right leg gave out on
me… so when i landed, i just sorta spilled over the floor, rolling
into the fire exit.  I really though i was about to crack open my
skull on the corner of the door, lol.

Another time, the bird had just been dropped to the net in front of
me.  Normally, it would be an easy three steps for me to get
there, but on my second step, once again, my right quadricep just
decided “Hey, listen buddy, I ain’t paid enough for this shit” and
decided he was gonna take the day off.  So my graceful lunge was
not so graceful.  I accomplished in 1.5 steps and a half collapse,
half dive, what would normally take me 3 big steps.

Still got the bird, but my precision was off by about a foot and it
landed out anyhow.  Might’ve had something to do with me being
distracted trying to keep my head from hitting the floor.

But for the rest of the night, despite our really, really old-manish
performances, we took on all challengers (all the intermediates, since
the pros don’t challenge people, they WAIT to be challenged) and had a
winning streak.  Then we handed out some flyers.  Mission
accomplished. 

And now, time to fall unconcious.

(Actual back may be different from pictures shown)

Yesterday night, as part of the RsM team’s Dojo Destroyin’ tour, I went
to YMCA with my cousin to go and promote the tournament.  Big
mistake.

I was exhausted from having workd on the staircase yesterday.  I
was barely able to run, and all my power shots were weak, while all my
precision shots were out of bounds because my muscles were too
imprecise.  That, and for some reason the YMCA was empty last
night, so we only got to challenge maybe 4 people total.  I was
getting a bit sloppy and at some point, on a jump smash, I hit myself
with my racket– right handed swing chops straight onto my left arm’s
funny bone.  I felt an electric spark course though every nerve of
my body, and it almost made me fall over, it at least made me drop my
racket with an audible clatter.

This morning, back to work on the duplex.  And so the saying goes
“any shithead can tear a house down, it takes something special to
build one.”

If i thought that busting up the staircase up was hard, damn, was I
wrong. Pain was redefined, thanks to the expert opinions of both my
arms and my aching lumbar, when I helped my dad redo the
concrete.  And you figure, it’s one of those ‘just add water’
situations.  Really, um, NO.

Yes, you just add water to MAKE the concrete.  But then again,
we’re not like construction workers with an actual mixing
machine.  We’re doing it by hand with a gardening hand shovel and
a basin, and damn, that stuff is heavy to stir.  Even worse is
actually rebuilding the stairs with it.

I kinda knew that it wouldn’t take “just 3 hours” like my dad
estimated, and the actual time of about 5 hours, and the fact that we
weren’t finished when we left, confirmed my hypothesis.  Seeya
tomorrow you goddamn stairs!

But I guess the alternative, which is to hire out people who will
charge about 2000$ CAD for the job, is not that attractive, so we’ll do
it ourselves.  There’s something vaguely like male bonding when you’re
forced to slave away to manual labor.

Ugh, my back is pretty tired.  Having gotten home at around 1pm, I
had a stand up lunch while stringing some rackets that I have to
deliver later tonight to a client.  And as part of the tour, I’m
going to Centre Claudre Robilliard tonight with my cousin to challenge
the players there, also to promote the tournament.  I’ll be amazed
if I have enough energy to serve the damn bird over the net, nevermind
impress anyone.

Did I mention that I’m on vacation?  What I need is a sweedish massage.

To reiiterate my response to someone who actually emailed me
complaining that I wasn’t posting enough, the reason is because I’m on
vacation.  I.e., not at work, meaning, I’m not sitting in front of
the computer all day bored out of my mind with nothing better to do.

Go out! Now!  Mush!