guilt?

After tommorow morning at 10 am, i will finally be finished with my dedications to the first year of university. Fortunately for me though, the presentation that i will be giving tommorow is worth nearly nothing, and so i have about as much motivation to prepare for it as i have for actually cleaning my room for once instead of just taking things from one pile and moving them to the next pile.

Seriously, my room is so incredibly messy, i wonder how i ever get anything done in here, but then i realize that I don't. After many years of having my own full-sized room, living in a 7 by 8 foot den (that's smaller than a jail cell btw) took a bit of adjustment at first. But now i've adjusted; the major adjustment being the reduced number of piles but increased height and girth.

Now that i'm finished all of my exams, I didn't have to head straight to the library right after my quick non-sufficient breakfast like usual, and instead spent nearly the entire day perched on my throne in this chaotic mess. Which is probably why the mess is bothering me for the first time, because i'm actually in my room for once.

I'm not one that hates changes, but one that generally fails at attuning himself to them quickly, and so I don't really know what to do with myself now that i have no commitments right now. I don't have that constant weight on my shoulders like usual or the nagging voice in my head telling me "Justin, you really shouldn't be playing a fifth Dota game, get back to pretending that you're studying". So now that i have all the time in the world to do whatever i want it's quite awkward because i still feel as if i should feel guilty for doing nothing like i usually do. I almost feel like i need to have work to do to make myself feel normal again. Hopefully a summer job will pop out of nowhere and that could be a reality.

Anyhow, i'm going to pretend that i have to go and do something important so that i will stop writing this post, because if i don't i am quite sure i could write forever about my feelings and then you would want to drive some manliness into me even more than you had already wanted to previously. So... i have to go. Believe it.

cussed.

Throughout the school year i've gotten very used to being yelled at by various people. At first, it was quite alarming when, some friends and i were studying at Gerstein, (the arts and science library; in other words, not my turf, and home to some very adamant studiers trying to get into med school and law school and various other impressive schools) and found out the hard way that some hardcore studiers don't generally appreciate a group of four nerdy asian guys huddling around a computer and playing mario kart on a bad emulator while they're trying to study . It probably didn't help matters that we like to scream like girls when the computers beat us.

The guy decided to that he wanted to take his cussing to the next level, and decided to follow me after i had packed up and started leaving, all the way to the elevators, telling me i'm an idiot the whole way. He probably just wanted a break from studying, and me, the small asian kid with a dumb look on his face was just that carrot hanging in front of his face.

But that's not it. Having long since moved out of the Gerstein library, and into the engineering library (where it's generally a lot louder, and less productive) i've still had my share of yells. Usually people just understand seconds after they walk in, the mindset that the people that use the engineering library have. "Hey, i'm probably so screwed for my next test/quiz/lab/(insert some other method of being raped by course assessment here) that i may as well spend more time making paper airplanes and throwing them at the stucko roof so that they get stucko (hurr hurr) than i actually do studying, and i should probably listen to loud obnoxious music at the same time"

But of course, there are the people that just don't have any notable observational skills whatsoever, and so miss out on the red herring. It's generally these people that have been the ones to say to me the following: *these actually happened*:

Justin: *unplugs headphones to lend to a friend, forgetting that loud rap music about sex and drugs is playing on his laptop, music begins to blare loudly as justin frantically hits all of the buttons on the computer that do NOT make it stop swearing and being profane.*
Unidentified voice from unidentified location: YOU KNOW, SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY COME TO THE LIBRARY TO STUDY. GAWD.

Justin: *laughs uncontrollably at a youtube video no one else finds funny*
Scary Chinese Librarian Man: SON, this is a LIBRARY, SHUT YOUR MOUTH or i will remove you.

Nowadays, i'm trying to study in some remote corner of an empty building, and there's older students playing big 2 EVERYWHERE. And they're all but quiet about it. I would rage at them if i wouldn't get my butt handed to me...

Thanks Karma D:

emperorshipness.

My friend Leon and I were on our way back from a late-night mcdonald's adventure one night when he posed a question that sort of blew my mind.

"Hey... wouldn't it be sick if you were an emperor?"
"... huh?"
"Seriously... you could tell anyone what to do, and they'd have to do it. People die if they disobey the emperor."

Isn't that insane!?

Just think about it. In a democracy, there's a whole bunch of laws and stuff that are set out the there to uphold justice, and keep people in order and all of that, but somehow I feel like laws in North America are always broken. Some people just aren't scared of authorities for some reason.

But take a second and think about emperorshipness (I have just decided that emperorshipness is now a valid english word :D ). With the kind of dictatorship that they had in China back when there was large quantities of emperorshipness, the people wouldn't dare step a toe out of line, because the punishment was death for like... everything. They even grew their hair out until they looked like those aliens from avatar... just because the emperor told them to. A whole bunch of the stuff that they did was pretty much for no better reason other than the emperor telling them to do it. And they had to.

Leon went on that night to tell me what his primary rule would be if he was emperor. No one may be taller than emperor Leon at any point in time. This would mean that anyone taller than him would have to walk in a permanent awkward crouch 24/7. Can you imagine a whole kingdom of people walking around squatting all the time while one man just struts his stuff?

Now I start to think, what if it was me who was emperor? There's a ton of things that i could do, and no one could say no. How about this? No one but the emperor may talk while performing another action at the same time. I would feel so special with this rule hanging over everyone's heads all the time. Just think about how often in life you are doing something while talking. It would mean that if someone is talking, and they need to blink, they would be required to pause mid sentence, blink, and then return to speaking. If someone was in a hurry to get somewhere and someone happens to ask them "Hey, where are you going?" Well then they would have no choice but to skid to a complete stop, catch their breath, stop panting, speak, and then head off hurriedly once more. No one would ever get anything done. Maybe that's not such a good thing...

I'd probably end up just having the rule that I must be complimented in the middle of every sentence spoken.
That would be awesome, people would never be able to stop thinking about me. I'd get my ego stroked endlessly :D

"Hey daughter... do you -Justin is fabulously attractive and comical - want some tea?"

"I'm quite tired i'm going to - If Justin were to be compared with an animal, he would be a dragon, for so great is his power and gracefullness that it only myth and fantasy could even attempt to capture his nature - go take a nap."

"GET THE HELL OUT OF - Never was there ever a more emporable emperor for emperorshipness than emperor Justin the ultimemperor - MY HOUSE YOU UNGRATEFUL CHILD."

... yeah this post was really stupid :D

Triple-thick.

I love eating at chinese restaurants. There's a lot of reasons that i do, but maybe a large part of it is that it makes me feel a little closer to my racial roots even though nearly everything chinese is alien to me.

There's this small chinese restaurant named "Kom Jug" that's basically my default late-night eating destination. It's open until around 3 am, and it's really cheap, so it's perfect. Whenever I go, I always try to order my usual order in chinese, in hopes that one day if i practice enough... maybe i'll actually be able to speak a bit of chinese, even if it sounds terrible. Somehow though, the servers always manage to decipher what i'm trying to say even through my triple-thick Canadian accent (I know you, like me, also thought of McDonald's Triple Thick Smoothies after reading that). The thing is, I've been there enough that all of the servers know me and my friends as well as our usual orders. And that gets me thinking that there's a good possibility that they really don't understand me everytime i order my "pei dan sow yook jook" Maybe, they only just had to decode my ramblings the first, second and third time that i ordered it, and have just resolved to smile politely each time that i return, all the while not understanding a thing that i'm saying. I wonder if there really is no hope for me being able to speak any amount of chinese...

Most of my friends in university speak chinese, and even the one white boy that hangs out with us speaks a huge amount more than I do, he only started learning this year too... It's gotten to the point where he can actually hold conversation in chinese with them, as i stand by listening intently for one of the five words in total that i actually understand. I kind of see him as my rival in proving to the rest of the group that I, contrary to their firm beliefs, am quite in touch with my chinese side. Unfortunately, he as long surpassed me in China-man-likeness. Very sad Justin... very sad.

Whatever, i'm sure that all of you love me simply for who I am... right?

eastah

I really miss the easters of the past... I remember back when i was a bit younger and my parents would actually set up an easter egg hunt for us kids; sadly those days are gone. Way back then, i was a champion. The living room would be rigged as the battleground, the place where i came alive. Eggs were hidden in, over, under and around everything; and no one could dig out as many as me. Maybe it was just because no one else in my family had the same driving hunger as i did for the chocolate. They would take their sweet time and lazily stroll around grabbing any eggs they just happen to see. But me, I would pull out my trusty treasure map, kept and kept secret through the ages, marked with all of the greatest hiding places that i had discovered and would be repeated each year. With my trusty map, i would never fail at claiming the regular egg stowed out of sight in the stationary drawer each year. But it wasn't just my map. If anyone ever came close to my eggs, i would tackle them out of the way and stuff them down my pants, claiming it as my own. I'm a nasty egg-hunter. I wish we could go back to our old ways. I miss the chocolate hunting.

I was in Markham this weekend to visit family for easter. On the way to my grandma's house we came to a busy intersection. The lights were just changing, and a middle aged chinese woman was making her way across the road. As she noticed that a glowing red hand had replaced the white walking sign, she began to trot in hopes of making it across the gap in time. Unfortunately, her trot was actually slower than her regular walking, and used more energy . By the time the opposing light had turned green, she hadn't finished crossing, and so began to once again trot back to the center curbed-island at the intersection, where she planned to take refuge from the passing cars. My little brother and I both found it rather amusing that the distance to the center was greater than the distance it would have been for her to complete her crossing. It became even more comical to us when we saw the dejected look on her face as cars passed her on both sides, and she was stranded, having failed. I laughed for a while. I'm going straight to hell.

We got to my grandma's house where i discovered my 6 year old cousin's toys left on the table. Bakugans. If you've ever heard of them you would know like i do how stupid these little toys are. They're basically yu-gi-oh in the form of plastic toys that can fold into a ball shape so you can roll them. When i saw that my cousin had left them out that day, i scoffed and thought to myself how juvenile these toys are, and how any grown person in their right mind would never fall for the fad. I then proceeded to play with the toys until i went home.

villain victory?

SPOILER WARNING: This post may possibly ruin the endings of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Can't say i didn't warn you now.

It's always funny when i'm watching a movie and my parents walk by in the middle of a fast-paced action scene. Of course, they're drawn in right away, they sit down and start watching with me. My mom does her usual shpeel, coaching each individual character; "duck! run! shoot! don't get shot! oh no!" as if they can hear her, and will actually take her advice... which they never do. Inevitably, she ends up very disappointed.

But then, when the smoke clears, the scene ends, and there are incapacitated bodies on the floor with one victor standing tall above them, they realize that they didn't know any of the plot up until that point; and had just cheered the villain to victory.

One of my biggest qualms with movies, video game plots, and tv shows is how the good guy almost always ends up winning. It's not uncommon for the bad guys to take away a couple of the mid-movie fights, or for a super-stud sports jock to steal away the chess club captain's dream girl. But in the end, that bad guy gets beat up, and that dream girl realizes that the football captain has an IQ of ln(1) GET IT!? Yeah, that was a bad one.

For once i really just want to see the bad guys win. I want to see the good guys in a movie actually fail for once, and not be redeemed. Wouldn't it have been super interesting if instead of Harry Potter vanquishing the most powerful wizard in the world in something like two pages of the book... don't even get me started on how disappointing that stupid book was, i mean really? Did you just run out of ideas Rowling? Or did you just want people to talk about how you lost your touch? I'll save that rant for another post though. But how cool would it have been if the "chosen wizard" had been killed by Voldemort instead of the reverse occurring? Maybe i'm just saying that because i never really like Harry's character anyways.

Lord of the Rings. How the hell did Frodo pull that garbage off? That was definitely a fluke. Sauron's fiery-eye-of-doom-tower was like half a kilometer away when he managed to destroy the ring. After all of the times in the trilogy that he was able to find Frodo in the most unlikely of places, he can't tell that he's right under his nose? That's dumb.

I wonder what Voldemort, Sauron and Darth Vader would have done if they had successfully taken over their respective fictional worlds. When there's no good guys left, what's there to do? I don't think villains party. I just kind of picture each of them sitting on a throne, the most powerful person in the the world... playing DS because there's nothing better to do... they already killed everyone.

Hey directors of movies, read this post and take my advice. Kthnx.