Adventure #6474 in a series

I was working tonight at Old Navy and they had placed me in the fitting room section of the store. While I was there, I recognized a customer. Turns out she had attended the Emanuelle Shreikee, shabbat dinner way back in March and had sat with her boyfirend (I'm guessing that's who he was) at the same table as my friends and I. After her and her friend had tried on some clothes and decided to leave, she comes up to me and told me her birthday is saturday night and INVITED me to attend her party. The weird thing is it wasn't an invite to soem house party or a bar it was an invite to a dinner at a restaurant. I don't know a thing about this person except that she is Jewish and he name is Maanyan.

IU'm not sure if I'll go or not. My friends thought she was kind of crazy when we met her at the shabbat dinner, but I'm alway sdown for randomness. I mean, thats how I ended up in Australia. Had I not randomnly bumped into those Irish chicks I never would have looked into SWAP.

I guess it all depends on how I feel on saturday since tomorrow night I'm going to ALL YOU CAN PLAY LASER TAG at Lazer Quest!. It's from Midnight to 6am and I'm heading there with my good buddy Norm and even my friend/boss Mike from Old Navy might show up with some of his friends. As long as there aren't too many people there that we have to wait a lot to play, it's going to ROCK! if I'm not too tired, then I'll hit up that dinner party. Should I go?

Going aways are sad...

Last night I attended a pot luck that was held in honor of the 5 McGill Improv members that are all moving away this summer. Not only are we losing 5 members, but between them and the others who are all busy, and the fact that we don't have that many new members, the team is pretty much falling apart.

None the less. My time with this group as a whole has been fantastic and last night was loads of fun. The unplanned theme was pizza since Andrew made pizzas, Nikki bought a pizza and I brought frozen pizza pockets. Mariana made some really cool vegy foods and apperently King Kevin Casey made an amazing keish. I don't like keish so I"ll just have to take everyone elses word.

After dinner the gifts were passed out to the Leavers, Mariana, Ilya, Gil, Andrew and Ken. Bryan had handed them all copies of their list of shows they perfomed in over the years. I had slaved over 8 hours making a photocollage on my computer which everyone loved and the non-leaves even want me to make a copy for them. Finally Adrienne handing out specially made t-shits to the 5 people going away. They all loved them.

It's sad they 5 more of my friends are leaving Montreal but at least most of them are stil here for a couple of more months.

For pictures of the night, click HERE!

Fun Times in T DOT O DOT

It's been a few days since I've been back but I've been busy (a.k.a lazy).

Friday marked the last day of classes for my first semester of Graphic Design school. WOOHOO! I think I kicked ass in everything and I'm really enjoying it. I had only one class on friday and it ended early. When we were done the prof asked us "So, you're done you're all of your courses. What are you going to do now on your week off?". No one answered, so I yelled out "Lets go DRINKING!" My McGill roots showing wildly. Long story short, I ended up at Mad Hatters with the cool kids in my class.

After a few beers I met up briefly with the awesomely cool Mariana (Gentlemen she's single...), caught up with what was going on until my phone rang. It wa smy mom telling me to hurry to the train station because there was some sort of protest happening in Belleville that could affect the trains. SO I sai dmy good byes and ran over to the train station to find otu my mom was completely right and the train line to Toronto had been blocked by the Native Indians in Ontario as a protest against something. So I had to take a bus to Toronto instead of a train.

I ended up sitting next to some crazy art chick in her 30's. I was just reading amagazine until I notced her reading over my shoulder, which prompted us to talk. As much as it was interesting to talk to her (she even showed me some of her cool art stuff on her mac laptop and even let me show her MY art stuff from my USB), she just souldn't stop talking. I couldn't even take a nap. Even with my eyes closed it took a while to get her to stop (I'm I like this???). Anyways, I could have been next to someone way worse, plus she was nice to talk to and she even gave me her e-mail adress, although she mentioned a husband and I didn't see a ring on her finger so I'm kind of afraid to e-mail her...

I got into Toronto at 11pm (2 hours than expected). My brother picked me up and after a quick bite out I was in his apartment with his ever so lovely wife, Connie and his adorable sone, Charles who is only 14 months old.

The weather was really shitty and all I did when I was there was go shopping and see lots of family , which was both fun and exciting.

Saturday, I went to Centerpoint mall with my bro and then we went to a Procter and Gamble warehouse sale where they had all kinds of things on sale. There was toothpaste, perfume, make up, hair dye, cleaning products and even computer games. I'm not a big computer game kind of guy but my brother convinced me to check out the selstion and I ended up buying XIII for 10$. I've been playing it a bit since I've been back and the fact the it even works on my computer makes it a fucking cool game. Besides that fact, it IS a fucking cool game. It's a Doom, first shooter type game in comic bok style with a Bourne Identity style storyline and the best thing about it... wait for it... is that one of the characters is voiced by ADAM WEST.

Saturday night, we went out for dinner with my cousin Lori and her daughter Corina. I had an amazing plate of linguini in brandy rose sauce with red snapper. HMM HMMM!

After dinner, Mark and I went to watch The Sentinal which was a fun movie to watch but nothing great. It was kind of week in plot especialy near the end. There was a bit of a "He's really a bad guy" kind of story line going on at the end but I figured out who it could be well at the beginning of the movie. Definitely a rental.

Sunday morning I had breakfast with my aunt and uncle who live out there and then went back to my brothers apartment where we grabbed Connie and Charles and headed over to Chapters. That kid LOVES looking at books. He can't read or even understand what abook is yet but he just has a fascination looking at so many books! It was like he found a giant cave loaded with treasure.

The afternoon was spent in a few malls and the evening was spent having dinner with my other cousin Lori from my dad's side of the family. She's getting married in October so it was fun to tlak to her for a while, especially since I hadn't seen her since before I moved to Australia.

Monday morning I actually took the metro to the train station. Tha was funtastic.
Five hours later I was home safe and sound and played XIII for a few hours!

Overall a good weekend indeed.

Franztastic and Deathalicious!

Last night I went to see Death Cab For Cutie and Franz Ferdinand in concert. The show was F(*KING AWESOME!

The night started with me meeting up with my good friend Norm and his friend Ameen (If you ever read this, sorry for the spelling!) at McGill. Marina was supposed to meet us there as well but she kept calling me and telling me she STILL hasn't left her house, so we arranged to meet at the venue, the CEPSUM (U de M auditorium) instead. Norm drives Ameen and I to the school and we find parking. We then walk to the nearest map and realize we are at the wrong end of the street and agreed it was too far to walk. So, back in the car we went and drove down the street only to find no place to park, turning around and parking back in the EXACT same spot as before, and then walking to the entrance. Shortly after, Mariana finally met us and confessed that she was late because she couldn't decide what to wear for the plans she had after the show (you're SUCH a terrible friend Mariana, haha). Then my buddies Mike, Alex and Jason showed up and the circle was complete...

...Only to be broken up once we got inside because and co wanted to relax and sit down in the bleacher seats (the venue was a skating rink) while the rest of us wanted to stand amongst the rest of the crowd.

The standing area filled up pretty fast and by far my favorite moment of the night was when Norm screamed out all of a sudden "FUCK YOU PSYCHO BITCH!!!". Norm had just broken up with his girlfriend. I think everyone in the whole place stopped talking when they heard that. That then became our call if we got lost in the show.

Eventually the lights turned off and the opening band, The Cribs came on stage. I had never heard of them but after a quick intro of something like "Yo we're The Cribs from England" (the acoustics for vocals were not very good for a rock concert...) they just started to rock HARD. Being just a trio, the guitarist and bassist started belting out lyrics in harmony and thrashing while the drummer went nuts and at one point even stood on his drums while continuing to drum. It was a GREAT start and really enjoyed their opening song until I found out that ALL their songs sounded the same and they did the same schenanigans during each song.

After their set, I was dying to go the bathroom and to hydrate myself so I took a chance and squeezed through the crowd towards the washroom. On the way there, there was a line of people moving in one direction and found it odd that there was a girl with crutches and two people behind her was a guy with crutches. What are the odds of that? Then it turned out the guy was Dave Kolin whom I studied chemistry with! Turns out he broke his leg skiing. OUCH!

Up the stairs, there's a huge line to the toilets and there was a guard letting women into the men's room which was now a "Unisex Bathroom". Inside, there is this long line of men and women bending around a wall. I peer around the wall and see there are no guys at the urinals. "Screw this" I thought to myself and used one of the urinals while hot chicks kept passing me to use the stalls.

Back on the floor, I searched and located my friends (thank God Mariana is tall!). I walked along the outskirts of the crowd until I was lined up with my friends and attempted to push my way through. A giant challenge it was indeed because some people thought I was being such a jerk trying to push my way through that they were being JERKS SQUARED! Some just REFUSED to budge even an inch. I was about 5 people behind my friends when every single person around me joined together and said to each other "We shall not let Joshua Bateman pass through!". I started to scream out Mariana's name and she just couldn't hear me. My phone started to ring. I pick it up and it's Mike, watching me from the bleachers and he says "looks like you're having some trouble, eh? Hahaha". Feeling totally discouraged, my hopes came up when finally Mariana happened to turn around and with her armed stretch out, brought me in to the sacred land known as my circle of friends.

And then Death Cab For Cutie marched on stage. The stage had two 7 feet tall white square houses with windows and a back drop of white trees. Their set was amazing. I thought it would be really melow judging from their music but they really rocked on stage. All the musicians were really into it. The coolest thing was during the set, they started to swap instruments or play two at once. For the final song, the groupies set up a miniature drum set and the singer jumped to it and started to do a drum solo with the drummer! For the finale, the bassist climbed to the top of an amp and simultaneously jumped off and hit a note on his bass as the singer smashed his guitar on the stage! Totally not something I expected from that group!

The lights were back on and it was the last intermission before the big guns. This time Mariana chanced it and took a trip to the bathroom. Meanwhile the floor was starting to really get cramped and I literally couldn't even turn around anymore. The show was going to start any minute and Mariana came into view but couldn't get past the wall of jerks. I then put myself on a possible suicide mission, said my goodbyes to Norm and Ameen and jumped back into the crowd to reach Mariana. Seconds later the lights turned off and the band had reached the stage. Without a thought, people started to rush the stage and Mariana and I followed. The band started rocking out immediately and the crowd went wild! While during the first two groups everyone kind of stood in place bobbing their heads, now everyone was just dancing, jumping and plain out going crazy. I immediately got into this trance and totally let myself go to the music. I just let the crowd direct me where to go. I ended up bumping into Ameen followed by Norm and next thins I know it, I'm at the FRONT of the stage! I remained there the rest of the show, listening to amazing Franz Ferdinand tunes like "Take Me Out, Do You Want To, and Matinee". They were BANG ON the whole time.

For their encore, they played the song Michael which Norm was really hoping they would. While jumping up and down with Norm, all of a sudden an arm wrapped around my shoulders and some guy starts to sing with me. It ended up being Surjit! A really cool guy I met at McGill through all my FROSH involvement. What a crazy way to catch up with a long time friend!

For the final song, there ended up being 3 people playing the drums while the other musicians just went nuts and with a heartbeat it was all over.

We then made our way to the T-shirt stand where I bought a wicked Death Cab for Cutie shirt for only 25$, although Norm was screaming at me from across the way to buy a girl shirt.

Exhausted, we said our goodbyes, made to Norms car, went for a bite to eat and Norm drove me home.

In conclusion, I had an AWESOME night seeing an AWESOME set of bands with AWESOME friends! That was definitely one of the best shows I had ever been too.

Passover That Beer Mate

This post is for Jess. Rather then just a small reply I decided to write a post since I have some time to kill until my father comes home.

So what is Passover? It's a Jewish holiday that happens aroudndthe time of Easter every year. It spans over 8 days and the date always changed per year because the Jewish calendar follows the Lunar cycle. It is basically a holiday to remember the events that happened in the past around this time thousands of years ago. We spend the first two nights celebrating by having the family gather around the table and we read from a book called the Hagada which is full of stories and information to remember the stories of the past. The story best represented in the movie the Ten Commandments, starring Charleton Heston, is about an astronaut that crash lands on a planet filled with talking Apes and... No wait that's Planet of The Apes. The Ten Commandments is the sory of Moses the then leader of the Jewish People.

As for how the Jews ended up in Egypt, going further back in the bible, Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, had 12 sons. One of them was his favorite, Joseph, and the others resented him for it. Long story short, they faked his death and sold him off as slave and he ended up in Egypt. After helping the Pharoh of Egypt decipher some crazy dreams he had, Joseph eventually went up the ranks in Egypt. Many years later, Jacob and his sons came to Egypt for the harvest and Joseph came forward revealing he was in fact alive and well. Eventually Jacob and his extended family move to Egypt and all is well.

I think years pass by and Egypt is full of Jews. The nice Pharoh who let them into the country dies and an Evil Pharoh takes over. He makes all the Jews slaves and they have to build pyramids and cities for him. He also puts out a law to kill all the new born children. One woman takes her son and puts him in a basket and then throws it in the river so he can escape death. As the baby boy is floating along, the Evil Pahroh's sister, notices the basket, finds the boy and claims him her son. The boy is raised as royalty in the Pharoh's household and it looked upon well by the Pharoh which makes his own son, Ramses uber jealous.

Somewhere along the line, Moses discovers he's really Jewish and leaves the Pharoh's estate and journeys on his own. He eventually comes across a burning bush and is spoken to by God. I can't remember what happens next but he eventually becomes a messenger of God and in his name goes to Ramses, the new Evil Pharoh since his father dies of old age or something, and asks to let the Jews out of Egypt. Ramses says no and Moses, with God's help does some fancy tricks like turn his staff into a stick. Then he says something about "if you don't do what go says, you guys will be in trouble" and Ramses says something like "Yeah right!"

After this results the ten plagues where all kinds of crazy things happen in Egypt. I can't remember them all but remember some being water turned to blood, locusts, darkness and all the cattle died. The last plaque was the death of all the first born children. Now the holiday gets it's name from the fact that the angel that was to pass over and kill the first born children was told to "pass over" all the houses that had lambs blood smeared on their door frames, to signify they were Jewish homes.

After this the Jews with Moses as their leader and Joshua as second as command (yes I'm in the bible, and I knew everyone then as well, from Ezeikiel to Schlomo...) marched out of Egypt with the Egyptians following behind. The story goes that in their exodus from Egypt, because they were in such a rush, the women didn't have enough time to let the bread rise and they ended up with unleavened Bread which is signified by the Mathias we eat now during the holidays.

On the way, they pass Mount Sinai where Moses climbed up and stayed up there I think for 40 days and was given the 10 commandments by God (hence the name of the movie). He finally comes down and finds all the Jews doing totally non-jewish things like worshipping idols and what not. They broke all the rules before they even existed!

I'm not sure what happened next but I think that's what spawned another Jewish Holiday, Yom Kippur (day of Atonement) which is when we fast for 24 hours, but that's a story for another time.

I'm sure half the stuff I said was wrong but I hope that helps answer Jess' question. Anyone, please feel free to correct all my mistakes...

Week-END

This weekend was pretty interesting so I thought I'd rant about it.

Thursday (yes in my world the weekend costitutes anyday of the week that I feel like including) I had lunch with the very lovely Nadine Alby. It was good catching up with her after not seeing her for over a month. We go way back to the ol' chem days.

Friday I had a really fun class. For my final project in Creativity, we have to make a self portrait using any materials we want. My prof convinced me to buy a toy and cover it in playdo to make it resemble me. The toy I'm using as a mold is Jack Skeleton from A Nightmare Before Christmas because he is made long and thin (like me). So I basically spent 4 hours playing with playdo and listening to some tunes on my cd player.

Friday night I joined the very lovely Mariana Vial and among other people made our way to St Thomas High School in Pointe Claire to volunteer for the Montreal edition of the Canadian Improv games. The competition which involves high school teams battle it out on stage, was a lot of fun to watch. The little guys have a lot of positive energy. I also enjoyed seeing the poster I created all over the school and finding out that my name was printed into the panflet at "Josh Posterguy" since the organizer, Dave, had forgotten my name.

Saturday was spent inside school working on a project. I finally escaped from my prison and made way to the surface to meet up with Shing. we ended up in China Town and had some good ol' All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet. the food was mediocre but the company was priceless.

Following dinner, I ended up at a house party celebrating the end of the CIG games. It was a party filled with beer, music and Super Smash Brothers Melee! Very interesting indeed...

Sunday was work day but was fun as always.

I guess what I am really excited for is this weekend. On Wednesday, Passover begins. Thrusday, my brother and his family are coming to stay with us. I have a 3 day weekend since I have no school on friday and no work on sunday all because of Easter. Then saturday night is the Franz Ferdinand/Death Cab for Cutie concert!

School Update

Time is flying. I have 3 more weeks of school until I complete my first semester. Then I have 1 week off to relax before hitting the computers again for 15 more weeks. Over the summer to boot!

I have a bunch of really cool projects I'm working on and can't wait to post them online. In the meantime, I handed in one of my midterm projects recently and finally got around to putting on this site.

For my Basic Design class (intro to Illustrator) we had to do a composition project (which I spoke about in an earlier post a few weeks ago). Basically we had to trace 5 shapes (logos) and make 5 of our own abstract shapes. Once all our shapes were done we had to choose from a book what kind of operations we wanted to use on each shape, thus resulting with a pattern.

































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Knights Of the Oblong

Who would have thought - Two dress up parties in one month...
Tonight I attended a Medieval Times party at my friend Norm's girlfriend Hana'a place. We had to all dress up, were given a story and special powers and had to talk to other characters and, if need be, challenge them. If challenged you would have to play a rock-paper-scissors type game of tiger-hunter-hippy, where the hunter kills the tiger, the hippy beats the hunter and tiger eats the hippy.
There were many different kinds of characters and costumes. Hana was King Arthur and Norm was Morgain, Arthur's sister (wig, breasts and all...). I went as a knight/barbarian. I had a vikingsd helmut, a sword, an axe and an eye patch. My background was that I lived in a small village that specialized in Bonzai plants. I was at war with a dragon named Trogdor. I ended up improvising the rest of the night which led to:
-getting one Knight to talk peace to Trogdor on my behalf
-Selling my bonzai plants to a drawf in return of a spell stone
-Giving my spell stones to Trogdor in return of peace
-Joining King Arthur's knights of the round table
-Unvoluntarily seducing another knight and then conceiving a child
-Asking a lady's hand in love only to be rejected
-Killing myself due to said objection
-Being ressurected as a dragon by Merlin the Magician
-Using my seduction spell to bring back the dead Morgain who then became now my corpse bride
-Having my dead bride be turned into a frog by Merlin the Magician

All in all I had a great time.

Here is a pic of everyone:


For the rest click HERE!

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!"