summer is winding down............
The past month has gone by in a flash because of how busy I've been. I've been doing stuff for retreat, softball and work, and also trying to figure out my courses for next year. But I still have no idea how that stuff managed to keep me that busy..I guess I just take a long time to do things.

I'm still totally unprepared for the school year ahead. I still haven't finished signing up for courses yet...today, I managed to get into one of the two courses I couldn't get into..and to get in the other one, I just need to get into one of three full courses. I really hope I can get in.. And I still haven't started looking for a design project topic and group yet..I have never been so unprepared for school. In the last few years, I would've been figuring out how to get all my textbooks by now, if I haven't already bought a few of them. I guess I'm just waiting until I get the rest of this summer stuff out of the way first...work, fellowship cup, and just doing the things I wanna do this summer but haven't had the chance to. It's likely I'll be graduating next year, so this might be my last summer ever...unless I somehow wind up doing grad school, which is rather unlikely.

softball...rough times...for the last three games of the season, we could've given elton john a run for his money with our rendition of "Candle in the Wind"...cuz man were we blown out. Never before have I heard of a score of 44 nor a losing margin of 39...
but I still think there were some people on the team who enjoyed the season, because it's not all about winning. there were people on the team who felt they had improved, and hard work paying off is always a reward. I also got a chance to bear more leadership responsibilities in aaron's absence the past couple of weeks, though I must admit it was not easy, and I don't know if I did such a good job...but then I don't know what else I coulda done..



- posted by Andrew @ 6:05 PM 0 comments

 
days of yore..


summer retreat...but six years ago. you might not find waldo, but you might find....
me, anthea, kelly, car, bi, karen, pat, vinci, gabe, calvin, iris, kim, rach, leonard, bernard (?), gigi, angela, laura, lunny, scott, leo, susie, edison, cynthia, rebekah, helen, sam, mike, bing, glen, lily, eeds (?), jen, manda, olive, joyce, miranda, ardyce, richard, dennis, kezia, tiff, auggie, lawrence, johnny, kim, steph, ava, joseph, will, caleb, garry, anita (?), colin mccartney, plus a bunch of people I can't see clearly, don't recognize or remember the names of.

- posted by Andrew @ 10:01 PM 0 comments

 
another day, another blog
hm..haven't blogged in a while. no time...don't even remember what I've been too busy doing. nothing much to blog about though. I went to a wedding last saturday...second wedding banquet I've been to...but I had the worst seat. kept having to rush to a closer table whenever an interesting speech was being made. our table was also behind something like a wall, relative to the stage. boo. and what was with all the kissing games??? I don't even know where to begin with that. how de-meaning...

been sick all week..and most of last week...coughing like a...(what coughs?)...whatever. a LOT, and HARD. kept me up most nights this week...I'm surprised I've still got so much energy. maybe it's cuz I'm looking forward to retreat...leaving tomorrow at 1:15, back...around 4 or 5 on sunday?

erm..had softball practice this evening...last sunday we were pummeled 35-2 by last year's runner-up and previous champs..

course selections...are going terrible. I can't get into two of the courses I want...I really shouldn't have slept at 5am on monday...apparently, if I stayed up for another 50 minutes I would've been able to pick up all the courses I needed...but no...I went to sleep for some reason. and the thing is, I don't even really regret it, cuz at the time it totally made sense to me to sleep...I was finally getting really tired, after spending four hours trying to figure out courses...only to realize they posted the course timetables two weeks before, and I still have yet to check if all my courses fit together, let alone picking all of them...at the time I still wasn't sure of two or three of them. so I felt like even if I stayed up till 6 to choose courses, I'd just be choosing relatively blindly because for all I know most of them may not fit...so it seemed like I was actually much further behind than I thought, so staying up that hour would make no difference since I'd have to figure out whether all my courses fit together anyway. all that, and I was actually falling asleep in my seat...which usually means I'm really really really tired cuz I don't usually fall asleep without my own permission when I'm staring at a computer doing something..anyway, they're gonna review the enrolment capacities on monday so I really hope they open more space for those two courses, or I'm gonna be stuck with taking other courses that I'm not really interseted in and moreover, they wouldn't really have anything to do with the other courses I'm taking, and taking those courses alone wouldn't help me in those areas much.

catchy songs nowadays:
killers - somebody told me
billy talent - river below
franz ferdinand - take me out

and the best alt-rock station we can pick up in toronto: 103.3 the edge. not that I suggest you only stick to one station...because no station is perfect..you need a mix, even if it's mostly with similar stations like edge102 and 97.7hitsfm, heh.

- posted by Andrew @ 1:03 AM 0 comments

 
another day, another blog
had a loooong day today.

went to church...today I was a helper in the preschool room...first dayhahahhaha I just realized I kept asking kids whether they were in jk or sk today...I'm glad the kids weren't smart enough to pick up on that...one of the reasons I love kids...I'll get to that in a bit...but yeah, this is the first day of my shift..I'm doing it for the month of august, except for the weekend that I'm away at summer retreat, 13-15th.

one of the best feelings I get from doing daycamp or helping out in the preschool room or interacting with kids in general is when a shy kid opens up to you....it makes you feel sooo special. it feels like you just brightened up a kid's life. and it's so much easier just to talk to kids cuz you don't have to worry about them judging you or catching on to your stupidity..hahaha...but there's such a level of comfort when talking to kids that you can't get when talking to adolescents or older. today there was this girl that was sitting apart from everyone else...I only noticed her towards the end...not sure if she was sitting there the whole time (except for story time, snack and crafts when everyone had to sit together), but I started talking to her in english (that's another thing...there is no such thing as awkward small talk with kids...the term 'small talk' has no significance in that context...talking with a kid is talking with a kid)...I asked her why she's just sitting there...and after she was silent and I repeated myself a few times...she finally replied in cantonese "because I have to wait for my mom to pick me up." (she was actually sitting near the door)...so I was like "ohh..." (or something) and then started to talk to her in cantonese..forgot what I said cuz I was interrupted by some other kid...actually it was this really young kid (3 yrs old?) that was looking dazed and confused but quiet and gentle the whole day and shook a big teddy bear in front of his face and he started smiling! awwwwww so cute. so I gave him the teddy bear and turned back to the girl, Crystal. by then she had stopped talking cuz she saw my attention diverted..but when I turned back she said something to me in cantonese again...and that just felt so good cuz a moment ago she wasn't talking to anyone and not doing anything and now she's voluntarily telling me something....she said "last night my mom wanted korean bbq (??...I forgot...some other food place/thing) but I told my mom I wanted mcdonalds" so I asked her back in cantonese "so where did you guys end up going for dinner?" she paused so I added "did you end up going to mcdonalds?" and she nodded (?..or said yes...just something affirmative). anyway, I think that sealed her position as number 1 fav kid in the class, after week 1 anyway...hahaha. sigh...I really wish I was better at cantonese...such a cool language. and that way I could also talk to kids! I'm okay now, because these are just kids...but even then, I often can't find the words to say what I want or fulfill the intended purpose...and the weird thing is this time around, the teacher is much more hardcore...as in, she actually gave me a briefing before she started the program (during recess, when I came in for my shift) and told me exactly what I would need to do...and when she started talking to the kids...well, she was teaching mostly in cantonese and she told me to translate...okay, even though I'm not so happy that my cantonese isn't so good, I'd still love a chance to try it out given the right opportunity, and I hate to disappoint people or not be able to do what they ask for, so I gave it a shot...and fortunately it wasn't too hard, so I was able to translate more or less what she said throughout the lesson. not everything, but the main stuff. especially like the bible story. good thing her story was already written out in english..she just taught it in cantonese. well the class is all cantonese..just that a small number of the children may not understand...one of them is mixed. aaanyway, I'm still baffled as to why she didn't get the other helper to do anything specific...she got no briefing (that I saw...but I did come in a bit late), she didn't end up doing much (I had to carry out all those briefing instructions plus translate) and all she did was help hand stuff out during crafts..weird. oh so there is one teacher and three helpers, one of which is an adult..well..."adult"...parent? yeah, that's probably a good way of describing...and the others are teens...well, "teens"...youth? yeah, youth is a better way of describing it...hahaha...it's annoying how out of nowhere you're now in your 20s...what is going on, seriously. the least of the problems with that is now all of those "adults" and "teens" generalizations get messed up >.<

aaanyway...(how long are blogs supposed to be?)...after church I had softball practice...pretty good turnout...10 people came..though one of them just dropped by to say hi cuz she had three teeth taken out yesterday...(ow!!)..her face was still swollen...I was only expecting around 5 to show. practice was okay...but man, my throwing was so off!! kept missing people...arg.

after practice, went to the Lights game...(how long are blogs supposed to take?.....)...they are playing a lot better now...and dennis is back from vacation...being pro at short...and eeds stepped it up on the day before her bday...everyone was hitting well...it was a good game to see..good job lights!! but I heard they prolly won't make playoffs...even if they win their next and last game, a 5-5 record is prolly not good enough to be top 8 in their 19-team division...too bad! they just needed a few more games under their belt...

afterwards went to eeds' bday dinner...at mongolian grill....cool stuff! it's like teppenyaki (sp?) but with mongolian food...you pick what you want and they cook it right there for you! mmmm wok hay is so heung...haha. I'm still kinda full from it...5.5 hrs later...

afterwards we went to...play softball. no joke. these people are just softball fanatics. we found a park and played...juniors vs. seniors...but we weren't keeping score. I was soooo full. felt even fatter than usual..

okay, after that it was home time. I've been home for 3 hrs...no idea where the time went. this blog "only" took 40mins...I guess I'm just so tired everything is done slooooowly. had all these emails to sort out and just other miscellaneous stuff. anyway, if you've made it this far, congratulations.

- posted by Andrew @ 2:29 AM 1 comments