It Is A Small World

I'm sure during sometime of your life, you've been really good friends with someone and then due to some reason lost touch with them and always wondered what happened to them? Well I did. My friend's name was Angie. I had met her during the summer of 1999 when I was called in to work at a day camp I used to work in and pulled in a favor when they had asked me to help since they were short staffed. That week I actually met her sister first, who I immediately had a crush on. I treated the situtation with way too much insight that things never surfaced but I ended up getting to know Angie in the process. I had found out that she was at McGill in her last year and I was starting McGill in september. Although she was a couple of years older than me, we hung out quite a bit that year. I always enjoyed her company but felt that I ruined it a bit because I was in my "I have a crush on every girl" stage of my life. When we did stuff I'd always hope for more but on the other hand never did anything to show my feelings for her because I was always so afraid.

Then one day I really messed things up. I needed a date for Semi Formal because I was told that everyone brings a date. I mustered the courage to call her up and she picked up. Before I could say anything she said she was on the phone with someone else and that she didn't want to keep HIM waiting. Hearing that for some weird reason freaked me out, so I said "oh ok" and said my goodbyes. Thinking that HIM must be a guy she is either into or going out with (to this day I don't know WHY I would think that), I then immediately called my runner up girl and invited her to be my date, and she said yes. While I was asking girl #2 to be my date, however, Angie called me back to find out what I wanted. I ended up laughing a lot, at the situtaion of having 2 girls on the phone at the same time, and made some excuse about why I called, bever mentioning the fact I had a crush on Angie or wanting her to be my date for a party. She sounded extremely weirded out and I never her from her again. I tried calling her back but I always had to leave a message and never got a call back. It could be just a coincidence and she just got busy or I freaked her out so much that she jsut didn't want to talk to me anymore. I being me, thought it was the latter and hated myself for a while for acting so childish.

Over the years I bumped into her once or twice here and there but never long enough to say more than "hi". I've always wondered what had happened to her. That all changed today.

Today at Old Navy, I saw someone looking at pants and I went up to her from beind. I said "Bonjour, Hi" and the person turned around, and it was Angie. My first reaction was confusion. I guess I was just taken so aback from seeing someone I hadn't seen in a long time. She, on the other hand, seemed really excited. She shook my hand and started to ask me all kinds of questions. She kept reapeting "Wow it's such a small small world" over and over again. She told me thigns about herself and I was so happy to hear things were really working out for her. I always admired her and had hoped things would work out for her when I knew her in my McGill days since she used to worry a lot about things. Her cell phone started to ring adn she was so caught up in our converstation that she kept telling me she was going to ignore the call. Finally, she said "I better go, he has a temper and he's waiting in the car", and she left.

I had told her that over the years I was had tried to contact her via e-mail but it never worked. She told me it was because McGill changed their e-mail system but her address was still her name @ the new mcgill system. That being said, I potentially have a way of contacting her. The big question is - should I? On one hand I would love to catch up with her properly and see how things are. I always felt like our friendship died prematurely. I'd also like to show her the kind of person I have become since when we used to hang out. On the other had, I feel like to start calling someone from out of the blue is like invading their life. She's probably got a boyfriend, a whole new set of friends, a weekly routine, etc. It would probably feel weird for out of the blue, some guy from her past starts contacting her again. That is why I didnt ask fer directly if she wanted to get together some day. Who knows, perhaps I'll see her again at Old Navy some day...

My question fellow readers, is what are you thoughts? What would you do?

Deadly Passage

Saturday night I was invited to a Murder Mystery Dinner in Hudson... DUN DUN DUNNN!!!!It was a really good time.
We were all given characters and had to dressed up. The story takes place on a Millionaire's cruise ship near the Galapagos Islands in 1928. The millionaire got interested in Peruvian Artifacts and had invited a bunch of Guests on board his Cruise. While in the ocean, he made an announcement to marry his secretary who is 30 years younger than him. Then shortly afterwards, he was KILLLED! We then had a book which had questions and answers to be said during the night, slowly unfolding the tale. At the end of dinner, we then discussed and revealed who the killer was.
The players were:


Chris Dye as Captain Scerdilidas Konstantinopoulos (the host)


Arvind as Senor Raoul Alvarado (the Peruvian ambassador)


Nikki as Augusta Bold (the head housekeeper)


Noelle as Simon Decree (the attorney)


Maryam as Amanda Goldman (the daughter)


Ken as Edwin Goldman (the son)


Adrienne as Sarah Jones (the secretary)


Jillian as Camillia Perez (the archaeologist)


Andrew as Arthur Seat (the observer)


Dan Beirne as Dan Beirne (the Dan)

[Both Dan and Andrew were not characters in the actual game. Dont' get fooled like me... Only Andrew came dressed up although he didn't need too.]


And myself as William Cruise (the adventurer)
(I didn't know but Chris had sent out a list of the descriptions for everyone's costumes. I came dressed up as a cross between The Crocodile Hunter and Nick Fury when I SHOULD have worn a light pale buttoned shirt, a straw hat and lots of flashy jewlery. I guess I wasn't THAT off..... yeah....)

The evening was full of eating


shmoozing


and Dan dancing



Fianlly towrds the end of the night, we discovered that the killer no other then....
NIKKI!

Apperently, the nurse did it because she was in love with the millionaire and took care after him when his wife died btu when she foudn out he had fallen in love with the young hot secretary she got extrememely jealous. So jealous, in fact, that she used a Perusian dagger artifact.

The whole night was a lot of fun. I eneded up crashing over but unfortunately needed to get to work for 12pm. I was trying to convince Arvind to drive me since I had no idea where I was and how to leave Hudson. Arvind was trying to get me to call in sick so he wouldn't have to drive me all the way to Fairview mall and back. I just felt uncomfortable with lying and finally convinced him to give me a lift to work. Once there, I discovered that for some strange reason they had asked a lot of employees to work the same day. So in fact, we were like 11 people when we're normally 5 or 6. I totally could have caled in sick and it wouldn't have made a difference in the store at all.

How is school going? AWESOME

Everyone has been asking me lately how everything is going at school, so I thought I'd do a little update on what I've been working on for my various classes and how I've been doing. Basically in each of my 6 classes, we've had small assignments and bigger mid-term assignments or tests. Starting next week, we're alreay moving onto our final projects and we ave final exams in the last week of the semester. There are 15 weeks per semester (3 semesters in all) and we're already in week 10.

Basic Design I:
This is my Illustrator course. Illustrator is used to draw things ont he computer and is widely used for logos. We had a small midterm that involved following the steps and drawing small pictures like the fish I put up in an older post (I did VERY well on it).
I also had a second test where I had to trace logos in a fast and efficient way. I managed to barely finish in time and found it to be one of the more difficult things I've had to do this semester although I'm hoping I did well enough (marks are yet to be handed back).
Right now I'm almost finishing up my midterm project which is compositions. the project consists of taking a logo and then repeating it in a certain fashion. We have to do this with 5 concrete shapes that we trace and 5 abstract that we make up. I promise to put up all of them one I"m finished but for now here is an example of what I'm going ot hand in:

Starting with this image I traced over



I then did a composition known as Gradation In Size where, basically, the worm is getting smaller as you move outward from the top left corner.



Not too sure on all the details on our final project be we were told to bring in a photo of somethign we want to draw. I'm debating over a comic book character and maybe my favorite movie, The Blues Brothers!

Image Processing:
This is my Photoshop course. it's where I'm learning the software used to manipulate photographic images. It's the one used to take your head and put it on a body of a hot model...

I've had 3 small projects which involved adding color to an image and fixing up various images (One of them being the Duotone stuff I put up a while back).

Our midterm project involved making an animation by drawing out our cartoon in Illustrator, adding color with Photoshop and then making it move with another program called Image ready.

I had many ideas but ended up using this one:



It's supposed to move but I'm not sure how to get it to work off this website (try clicking on it or downloading it). Just imagine the head is bobbing up and down and the arms are playing the guitar while the speakers are booming.

I don't have much info on our final project for this class btu we were told to bring a book on a subject we like and will have to make a book cover or something for that subject using pictures form the book.

Creativity:
Probably the most interesting and fun class I am taking, we basically ahve been asked to create all kinds of things and use our head in different ways. We had a midterm project that was my poster that I painted a picture of a King Neptune character in front of his under sea castle. I'll try and get picture of that to put up. I spent a lot of time painting it and ended up with a 19/20 for my effort, original ideas and presentation (we had to show off our poster and talk about it for a few minutes. Luckily I had 4 years of chem presentation experience...)

We have a midterm exam that involves doing a brainstorm session with the class. Basically, the more ideas I have to give to the pot, the more marks I'll get.

Graphic Design:
This class is a non-computer class where I have to draw all layouts by hand. We had a huge midterm project that involved making 16 layouts using cut up magazine pieces. I spent a shitload of time making it (takes forever to cut up magazines and paste them!) but it was worth it - I got 19/20.

Our next assigment is to collect pictures of our assigned color (mine was orange) and we're going to have to make some sort of label.

Edition 1:
This is my Quark Xpress course. It is the program that allows us to do layouts but on the computer instead of by hand.

Our first project was making reproducing a layout my prof created, step by step only using Quark Xpress:



The second project we had to do was make another layout, for a phonecard poster, but this time using all of the 3 essential programs (photoshop, illustrator and quark xpress) with less guidelines to follow and doing most of it by eye. I had to hand it in today but here is what it looks like:



Our final project will involve us making our OWN poster competely from scratch. I have ot come up with concept drawings, a drawing of how I want it to look, find all the pictures and put it all together. We have 5 weeks to do it with a different stage being need to be completed by a specific week. Can't wait to get started on that one.

Computer Techniques:
Probably the least exciting course, but fun non-the-less due to the really cool prof we have. It's a course to learn all the shortcuts on Mac OS-X and have to be fast and effecient on the computer.

We had a few little things to do including a small quiz on the shortcuts (which I aced).

Today we had our midterm. He kept scaring us, telling us it is a test where he will sit with us individually and tell us to do certain things on the computer. He will be checking to see how fas and efficient we are on the computer. He kept telling us that it would be hard to fail but also hard to do really well.

In accordance to him telling us that we should treat it like an interview, I came dressed in a tie (but forgot my buttoned shirt so I went a-la-Avril Lavigne). I was really worried about not doing well, so I volonteered to go first and get it over with. I knew how to do everything he wanted me to do and he helped a bit on the way which I thought meant I'd lose marks. In the end he tallied them all up and showed me my results: 19/20! he told me he was really suprised how fast I was at doing everything in my first semester!

Well I really hope I can keep up this trend. Stay tuned for me to add pictures and comments on more thigns I'm working on in the near future.

Adventure #6735 in a series

Well this morning was interesting. Interesting enough to write a blog post about it at least. This morning, like every weekday morning, I ook the bus and metro to school. Like always, I was listening to nice relaxing music (Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brngs the Flood - HIGHLY recommended) and taking a nap so squeeze in some more sleep before class. Usually I wake up when we reach Lionel-Groulx since I need to switch in order to get to Atwater. This time, however, I opened my eyes just in time to see the stop move away. No problem, I calmly waited until George-Vanier and then swapped sides, waited 5 minutes and returned to Lionel-Groulx. I got out and crossed to the green line. What felt like an hour later, the metro finally shows up. I anxiously enter and sit down. We take off and all diorder has now been claimed to order... until I hear on the speakers "Prochain station CHARLEVOIX"!?! So then I got off and swapped yet AGAIN direction to get back to Lionel Groulx. Once there I was JUST about to get off when I glanced at the subway map and realized I was now on the right line in the right direction and sailed on through to Atwater. So if anyone wants to know if the metro system is running well, yes it's working fine...

I Survived Vaganza 2006

Vaganza VI was AWESOME! I had SUCH AN AMAZING TIME! We all put a lot of effort getting this thing to work and it was such a success in the end.

We charged 3$ (5$ for non-students) and had a bake sale with REALLY good deserts and snacks. Our good friends from Ottawa, the Carleton Improv Association came all the way down to give us a helping hand. In return, we gave them a couple of full hours for them to perform alone. Montreal's Without Annette also had a full hour doing their famous UNO long form show. After every hour, we got all the performers together for a group photo. Each photo was the reenactment of a different book. During the middle of the night, those that were still around, had the opportunity to see us all dressed up for our ANIMALS theme.

In the end, we ended up raising 300$ and because I work for the Gap Inc., the Gap Inc, will match what we raised and make it a total of 600$! All of which is going to the Juvenile diabetes Research Foundation.

Once Vaganza was over, I got a lift home by the Carleton guys since they were going my way, which I was grateful for sine I had visions of me passing out on the metro and riding the car back and forth for hours. Once at home I had passed out for a solid 2 hours, slept again a little bit later, went for dinner and finally called it a night at 11pm. This morning I woke up at 10am feeling great. I had asked for the day off work and probably could have worked after all but am glad I now have a day to relax and remember all the fun times I had the last couple of days.

Ona personal note, I don't know why but I find that whenever I am thrown in a situation where there is maximum fun, it is like being on a high, and when the fun is over, I feel a bit sad or lonely and it takes me a while to get back to normal (Is this normal?).

I've been with McGill improv for 3 years now and have really gotten close with everyone on the team. I have the best time when I hang out with those guys, such a good groups of people, and it saddens me that by next year we will all be split up and spread all over the place. Not only did this Vaganza mark 24 hours of improv, but it also was the last big event that all of us will have been together. It was a pleasure performing and hanging out with all of you!

For pictures of the night, click HERE!

24 hours is a LONG time and from being so tired I don't even remember everything that went on but here are some highlights of my Vaganza 2006 experience (in no particular order):

-I show up at 12pm to help setup and drop off my stuff. 10 minutes after opening the room with Andrew and Adrienne, a bunch of construction workers come in with all these tools and things trelling us they have to fix a window. Thankfully it was only for an hour that they would be making such repairs.

-Having heard from Andrew that the total costs for the event were cut down to only 70$!

-I show up just in time to perform for the 4pm hour and started performing well from the beginning.

-A lot of my friends had shown up including Norm, Caitling, Shing, Joe and Katherine, Nadine and Sophie!

-A few people I knew but didn't expect to come were there as well including Dave from chemistry and my brother Lorne!

-I learnt that my brother is just as crazy as I am. When he was asked to give suggestions for the game "Choose Your Own Adventure", his suggestion for "How to dispose of the Ewok" was to "Boil it in it's own mothers milk"...

-Carlton Improv showed up on time and didn't get lost! They also put on an excellent show at 7pm.



-Without Annette came and also put on a very funny show.



-For one round of 187 the object was Moose Heads and seeing my brother in the audience inspired me to say "187 Moose Heads walk into a Russian Bar and the Bartneder says "What, no Squirrel?". I think only my brother got that joke.

-For City Slogans, we got Chawanagen. After a few jokes, asked for another place and was given Chicoutimi... Also, City Slogans is now my favorite line up game.

-Everyone had brought really awesome props and we had used a lot of them. Most of them were weapons.

-During Ilya's hour, he decided to try really crazy stuff and made our performers do a rendition of Puppets where the puppet master couldn't move as well which basically resulted in an actor who couldn't move being moved around by someone else WHILE having someone on their back doing nothing.

-Ilya and I were doing a scene about a boy and his Bar Mitzvah making lots of Jewish jokes. Him and I were the only Jews around...

-For the book suggestions for the hourly photo, A Tale of Two cities was ALWAYS suggested.

-During the hour I hosted, I decided to try different games. While introducing the first game, Story Tell or Sing, Mariana got SUPER excited until she realized we were going to play Story Tell or SING and not Story Tell or DIE and looked completely disappointed.

-Joe was picked for Family Dinner and it was probably the BEST skit for that game that I have EVER seen.

-I gave Shing prize for participating in one of the games I picked. Only later on did I realize the prize was an electronic game that needed a TV to work. Shing has no TV...

-The celebrity that I had to guess who I was portraying in the manipulation game Celeb Cafe was Jim Morrison.

-By the middle of the night I finally realized why everyone was wearing jackets. The window to be fixed was in fact only removed and boarded up (badly) with wood, causing gusts of extremely cold air to enter the room slowly (Yeah it took me like 10 hours until I realized there was even wood in the room...).





-I got to play Dolf Lundren in a Party Quarks game

-It took an EXTREMELY long time to get Merav to say "Making out" while trying to guess that Andrew was a French teacher who like to make out. Ilya's reference to both "first base" and my saying "kissing him is like a party in my mouth and everyone is invited" didn't help...

-Arvinds costume for the Animal theme was pinning several sheep to his clothes.



-Both Andrew and I decided to wear an Animal from the Muppets T-shirt for the Animals theme...

-Noelle had to guess "Elated Slinky" was what Arvind wanted to buy in Shop Keeper. After my first attemp, which was coming on stage, saying I my buddy Ted and I were driving to L.A., purchasing a map and then screaming "We're going to L.A, TED!", didn't work, I came back on as a kid needing to purchase a My Little Pony doll because my friend Elle, ate ming. Arvind and I had to repeat "Elle, at it" like 10 times until she finally got it...

-Going down to Gerts for a beer with Carlton people.

-Having a conversation with a few girls about thier breasts.

-Constantly being bugged about my mom making sandwiches.

-Carlton having performed 2 shows. The first show (at 7pm) being packed with audience members and Improv members. The second show (at 1am) having the same exact people minus the audience memebers...

-Having paid money to eat bagels from Tim Hortons before realizing that in the morning we will be serving free bagels. I being the one who suggested free bagels in the first place...

-The last hour ended up being a giant line up game fest with 15 performers on stage!

-Giving away all the gifts last minute because we forgot to during the night...

-Hearing from the audience member who one the Old Navy gift certificate for 25$ (Neale) that he really needed new clothes and was really appreciated to have won that gift card.

-The fact that for some reason, the first and last picture I took at Vaganza involves Mariana looking dead on the floor...

-Hearing my mom tell me on Saturday once I was home at 1pm that she wanted to come down the night before and bring sandwiches for everyone! (But couldn't because she didn't have the car...)

The coolest Gala that never happened

I havn't had the chance to update my blog on a regular basis so I"m trying to catch up on things I missed out on writing about even though they happened a few weeks ago.

Back in february, my brother called me up and informed me that he won tickets to a Gala event at the Ritz-Carlton hosted by MIKE FM 105.1. MIKE FM is a radio station that plays rock music but is broadcating only a few hours a day on a Greek radio station channel. My brother likes them quite a bit and was excited to win these tickets. He had told me that it was going to be a party with food and lots of people and there was goign to be a chance to win all these crazy prizes: A trip to Cancun, a car, a diamond ring, or 50 000$ shopping spree at a diamond store. It sounded like a really cool party. I was really excited to go. I even dressed up all nice at work for I had no time to change in order not to be late.

However, the night wasn't as cool as is COULD have been. Yes, it was at the Ritz, but the room was quite small. Yes, there were people, bu everyone stayed in their own group. Yes, there was food, but only 3 kinds of Hors-D'euves. Yes there were prizes to be won, but only 1 of the 4 prizes was given away. We played a reverse draw where everyone had a card and if you're card was picked you were OUT of the game.The last card holder then had to choice to win ONE of the 4 big prizes. He/she had to pick cards out of bags and when 5 of the same card was picked, the prize on the card was won. Of course, the woman who had the chance to win one for the big prizes got the least expensive prize (diamong ring) but it was still a nice gift. Just seemed kind of like a jip.

All in all, I thought it had potential to be a really cool party, had it had more food and more people and a more livelier atmospehere rather than the cramped, jagged feeling I did have.

Here are some highlights of the night:





"This is going to be the coolest party ever..."











Dan, Rachel and I - Enjoying the free wine












They had a Mountie officially count the deck of cards











Which is the lucky card?











"Five of Diamonds. It's a sign of good luck!"

VAGANZA VI - THE UNDISCOVERED IMPROV

This Friday (March 3rd) at 12pm all the way to Saturday (March 4th), McGill Improv will be having it's 6th annual 24 Hour Improv show!

This year we're pulling all the stops! There will be prizes (from a 25$ gift certificate to the COMPLETE 6th season DVD set of Dawson's Creek). There will be special guests:

All the way from Ottawa (and the third place winner of the Montreal Improv Summit), the CIA - Carlton Improv Association (I tried searching them on Google and only my OWN website came up...) will be entertaining us from 6-7.

The Montreal famous Without Annette will be following the CIA afterwards at 7-8pm.

On saturday at 11pm, The SSMU president will be joining us on stage AND there will be free bagels to munch on!

Every other hour there will be some crazy theme! After 3am, there will be LOCKDOWN! No one comes in and no one comes out.. and all the performers become ANIMALS! (No really, that's our theme this year). There will also be a bake sale going on.

The whole thing costs 3$ (5$ for non-students) and entitles you to come and go a much as needed within the 24 hours. All the money raised will be going to charity. AND, for every dollar raised, the ever kind people at Gap Inc. (Parent company of Old Navy, where I work) will match every dollar!

So if you missed out on Nuit Blanche last week, here's another chance to be entertained ALL NIGHT LONG, get NO sleep and free breakfast!

Here's the poster I made for the event: