Brose's Blog Page of Burnination

Last update was like, Tuesday, from what I can see, and this morning (Friday) I've only been playing more NHL 2004, so I only need to cover like, Tuesday night to Thursday night (or some people might like to call "last night"...)

Tuesday I believe I blogged before I went to work, so logic says I went to work after I blogged. No wait, I went and got my tires changed first before I went to work, and I had lunch at a pretty good dumpling place at that Chinese mall by Dundas and Cawthra, you know, the one w/ the Wall of Nine Dagrons.

I then proceeded to go leech SoA notes off of Jason, spent 90 minutes and $38 to photocopy like, 550 pages of stuff. I'll use it...some of it anyway =P

By the time I got home, Starcraft has commenced its chipping of Halo's lead I believe. However, I really needed to work on my work report, as I was expecting Simon and Paul over Wednesday night for the Leafs game. Thus, I got cracking, it has been awhile since I last wrote an essay or paper of sorts, but I actually had the outline and everything thought up of already. Between writing the report and looking at Starcraft's Korean-ing of Halo, I got about half done when I went to bed.

Woke up the next day, and finished my work report around 2pm. Around 2200 words, so it was more than enough even accounting for the word reduction after editing/proof reading. (=P just tried to ctrl-s this post, so the after effects of the work report is still in me)

Didn't have much to do, so I went to Square One to do a bit of window shopping, and stopped by the store to see Kelvin, the person who's going to take my place in helping out my Mom during the afternoon, heh. He's my family doctor's son, so I've known him for quite awhile now.

Went home around 6, 'cause the game was at 7. But at 6:50 Simon said he needed to do his work report, and can't make it. Saj'd out good... So Paul decided not to come over, and I watched the game by myself. Great game too, too bad we couldn't have seen it together...After watching Mogilny crunch people and scoring and such, I got into NHL 2004 mode again =P

So then it's yesterday. Had a dentist appointment in the morning, and after lunch and a couple more games of NHL, I headed off to my Dad's to visit him, as well as asking him to proofread my work report. Stayed at Dad's for about 4 hours or so, and between watching TV and such I also completed my "e-visit" from my co-ordinator.

Then headed to Markham for Dimensions meeting, which lasted a quite enjoyable 3+ hours, but at least 1 of those 3+ hours were spent watching Fairchild =P

Got home, slept.

Oh yeah, CECS is getting ninja'd 'cause I BS'd my entire work report, and I'm going to go to my Dad's again to get him to help me write comments on my own work evaluation (outstanding, here I come) and work report evaluation. So suck that down, CECS.

Eek, I'm starting to phase-out on my blogging, nearing a blog a week, and my memory isn't good enough to recall all the stuff that I've done, I just spent like, 5 minutes trying to remember what I've done since last Thursday or something.

Thursday and Friday weren't of much interest, I woke up and went to work. Got off around 7pm or so, and then went home. Probably played NHL 2004 before and after dinner, and then went to bed.

Saturday was my "moving stuff to Wen's place" day. After getting my bookshelf and matress loaded on to the van, my Mom told me to go home and pack stuff to move in that night. So I did that, but it didn't take the entire 7 hours my Mom gave me. So I advanced into the playoffs in my NHL 2004 season, swept my way into the Stanley Cup Finals and had a 3-0 series lead before I had to meet up for dinner. After dinner we drove into Waterloo, moved my stuff in, got keys etc., then off to home.

Won the Cup when I got home, and got a few wins in the new season as well.

Sunday went back to MCBC, been awhile since I last visited there. So that was nice. Classic Wilfred and Simon story, they decided to go past 3 plazas to go to the Chucky Cheese's mall to get milk. I was like, "I'm pretty sure that at least one of those plazas we passed had a convenience store.." So we ended up being 15 minutes late for Sunday School (the milk was for Sunday School...)

Sigh, wanted to have lunch w/ the guys from MCBC, but they took forever to decide where to go, I started "ding ding ding"-ing them after 15 minutes, and it wasn't another 20 minutes after that they decided. =P

Went to a Portugese chicken place called Nando's, it's kinda like Swiss Chalet, but no ribs and only chicken. The chicken is more grilled than rotisserie'd, plus you get to choose how spicy you want your chicken. What's interesting is how you can eat in at the restaurant but half the stuff is self-served. You need to order at the counter and all they do is bring you your food, everything else you get yourself. Overall the meal was pretty good, it's basically a spicy version of a chicken-only-Swiss Chalet.

After work I got DB to come over for dinner, 'cause I didn't feel like eating out/spending money. In anticipation of that I got some chicken thighs for like, $4. Cooked them in some teriyaki seasoning stuff I brought back from 'Loo, made some rice and udon. The entire meal cost less than $10 I'm sure, probably around $8. So divided evenly, that comes to less than $3 per person for dinner. Quite the deal, I can't even go lower than that at Wendy's. So, the moral of the story is, if you have the time, go buy stuff and cook it, save some money. (If the avg meal cost like, $5 [and that's fast food], I saved like $2.50 [at least], in a school-week I save $12.50, so that means I can get a video game every month by cooking for myself, what a deal)

Usual stuff happened on Monday, woke up, work, leisure stuff before dinner, NBA playoffs after dinner, didn't do work report as planned... =P

Go to Gamefaqs and vote for Starcraft if you haven't already.

So I went up to Waterloo on Tuesday evening, because I wanted to get my textbooks early and I don't like how the online bookstore works (I'm just paranoid about them selling out of textbooks and then I won't have the text for like, the first week [during which I probably won't read the text had I had them anyway] of classes).

Anywho, so I was up and told DBA (Duy, Bao, and Alan) about my plans. I returned Alan's call when I left work around 6pm and told him I'd be up in an hour. So around 7pm I knocked on DBA's door. No response.

I figured maybe they're still eating, so I called Alan's cell and the number inside. No response.

Long story short, a visit to Mel's, more knocking, buying a pizza, watching the first period of Leafs vs Sens Game 7 at V1 and an hour later, Bao picked up the phone at their place.

Apparently they were playing Smash and didn't hear any knocking or phone ringing =P

Quite the ninja-ing, but it was understandable for me, 'cause I've spent enough time in their basement playing Smash to know =P.

Anywho, so I was thinking about the concept of "ninja-ing" and such when it suddenly hit me that Sagara Sousuke, the male lead character in "Full Metal Panic" and "Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu", is definitely a Ninja.

Well, actually, my conclusion comes mainly from his actions in "Fumoffu", but still...

Since to my hypothesis that around 50% of those who read this blog haven't bothered to view enough FMP:F, I'll just point to the episode where I find Sousuke to be the most ninja-licious (hopefully this will give some incentive for those who haven't seen this anime to see it, I find it absolutely hilarious, and it's rewatch value rivals Family Guy for me):

Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu - 1st story of Episode 5

There are more evidence of Sousuke's ninja-licious ways, but I'll leave it at that for now...

Edit:: Duy updated!!!111!!11111!!!!1!1 shift-eleventy-one Well, maybe it's not too much of a big deal, but at least it makes use of the link to his page, even if it is used once every 2 months =P ::end Edit

Edit edit:: I just noticed that I'm reading Duy's blog 11 days late, I guess I got used to his page having Feb 13th as the latest entry and haven't been checking it out. I also noticed that Bao seemed to have taken the link to Duy's page off from his blog, awhile back too... ::end Edit edit

So it's Sunday night now, and I got home around an hour ago after watching Kill Bill Vol. 2 with my Mom and Stepdad.

As I'm sure everyone who reads my blog reads Bao's and Wen's, they've gotten a pretty good idea of what these guys think of the movie (unless they didn't read their blogs so it wouldn't spoil the movie for them, in which case is not a problem, as I'm sure they wouldn't read this post either, seeing the title)

Anyway, overall I liked KB2 more than KB1, mainly because KB2 actually has plot, and an excellent one at that. I don't need to sell this movie to anyone, so basically here is my breakdown of the, um, what do you call a movie that's broken up into 2 parts, a duology? Whatever...

Overall, the two movies forms up a seemingly simple revenge plot to Kill Bill, the genre of the entire story to be is actually drama/action.

KB 1 = action part of the duology, and nothing else (unless blood is a genre).
KB 2 = drama part of the duology, where the story actually unfolds and stuff, and quite emotional, lead characters were well played.

Comedy was incorporated in both movies, much more so in KB2.

That's about all I want to blog about about this duology.

Now onto the other part of this post's title.

After watching quite a few games of the NHL playoffs, I wanted to play some hockey. But I can't skate, and I don't have 9 bots around who can skate even if I knew how to skate, so I opted for playing hockey on my PS2. So I got NHL 2004, conveniently the price was recently reduced to $40, so bonus.

Anyway, the newly incorporated Dynasty Mode for these EA Games was a really good idea. Usually, at least for me, sports sims gets boring after you win game after game after game. You mastered owning the AI so much that there's no point in playing anymore. Well, the Dynasty Mode conveniently deals with that problem in a clever way, by bringing in "leveling up" concepts. From what I can see, I have to at least play (I'd probalby simulate once I win the first Stanley Cup) 3-4 seasons to get all the stat boosting upgrades as my team's GM. So, the replay value is really upped with the Dynasty Mode, making the game much more enjoyable. It's kinda like sourcing up in FF 7, you know you're omni, but since you can get more omni, you don't mind spending another 20 hours sourcing up =P

Damn Leafs need to beat the Sens in another game 7, oh well.

Oh, I forgot to mention that in NHL 2004 you can make your own team, and they have ol' 'sauga as a choice, so I made the Mississauga Ninja-Pirate (the 's' at the end wouldn't fit...why does the char limit have to be so little?), and filled the entire team w/ created players, featuring myself and friends of mine, he he.

So that probably adds to the fun I have, for example, when Duy scored the OT winner in a game, I was like, "YES! Good job Duy!".

Hm, the Ninja-Pirates need more wins now...

For Jack Sparrow'd, the road was never mediocre.

First off, who in the heck has a surname that ends in an apostrophe D? And you'd think an abandoned child would change such a silly surname, but no, Jack was sometimes stubborn about things, and this was one of those things (or maybe it has something to do w/ the dogtag that he's had all of his life, who knows?).

As far as Jack knows, or is concerned of, he's an abandoned orphan. Since he was 4, he has no recollection of having a mother or a father, or grandparents, or aunts, or uncles, or cousins, or sons, or daughters, or grandchildren, or great grandfathers, or great grand aunts, or god-fathers, or being a god-father, and so forth and so forth, ... ..., etcetera etcetera.

Living off the streets of Osaka as a beggar-child/thief wasn't easy, but Jack managed. Using his wits more than using his brawn, for Jack was small and slender in build, ol' Sparrow'd earned his living sneaking bread and sake out of stores and sushi out of sushi bars. Once in awhile pockets were picked for entertainment money and whatnot.

However, one fateful evening, in the busy streets of Osaka, Jack picked the wrong target to pick pocket. The thin old man, whom Jack thought to be easy picking, was actually a Ninja, and since Jack wasn't a Ninja nor a Pirate, he obviously couldn't beat the old man, who was a Ninja. But the old man saw potential in Jack, and needed another pupil, so he took Jack into his secret Ninja lair in the outskirts of Osaka, or wherever there are forests and mountains. Jack never found out the old man's real name, from that day on, he was simply known as 'Master'.

Under the guidance of Master, Jack Sparrow'd learned the ways of the Ninja, else known as "Ninja Tactics". His fellow pupils included a man named Edge, who was trained in the arts of throwing; a captain named Falcon, who was trained in the arts of speediness; another named Strider Hiryu, trained in the techniques of swording; and finally a guy called Ryu Hayabusa, who was mastering the ways of Ninjitsu. Now, the reason why Master wanted 5 pupils instead of 1, was so that he wouldn't be ninja'd: it was too risky to let 1 single person inherit all of his skills. The Master was rather wise in anti-Ninja tactics.

10 years passed quickly, and Jack learned the ways of the Ninja Tactics well from Master. He also developed rather strong brotherhoods with his fellow pupils, seniors, if you will. Once he learned everything that he could from Master, Jack, not to disappoint, stayed true to the Ninja Tactics and left Master and his brothers to build success for himself.

Now, Jack learned that by incorporating the mixture of cowering and back-stabbing, he was a very successful thief and assassin. Since we are in Japan, of course the Yakuza has use for Ninjas. Naturally, Jack soon found himself working exclusively for the Yakuza, and Jack Sparrow'd was slowly climbing the Yakuza ladder.

At the tender age of 23, Jack Sparrow'd was head of the "Stealthy Sloth" Division of the Osaka Yakuzas. When he was not stealing artifacts or assassinating Yakuza enemies, he found leisure in taking a ship out to sea and ransacking the sushi farmers. Thus, he was a Ninja, as well as a Pirate, a rare hybrid most call Ninja-Pirate, or Pirate-Ninja if you will.

But good fortunes were not with Jack much longer, as the second-in-command of the Stealthy Sloths, Bar Bo-bobobo Sa, long envied Jack's first-in-command job.

So, Bar Bo-bobobo Sa set Jack up the bomb on the mission to steal the ancient artifact the Black Pearl. Once Jack secured the artifact, Bar Bo-bobobo Sa knocked Jack out with a tranquilizer dart in the back, took the Black Pearl for himself, and called the cops. He also left Jack a nice Darth Vader Pez-Dispenser, the contents a mystery.

Jack was arrested by the police, but he soon escaped using the reliable Ninja Tactics.

However, now Jack is hunted by the cops, as well as the Yakuza, who were convinced by Bar Bo-bobobo Sa that Jack had kept the Black Pearl for himself to sell in the Flea Market.

Thus, Jack Sparrow'd left for "some made up city" to escape the heat on both sides, vowing that someday he'd return the favor and Darth Vader Pez-Dispenser to Bar Bo-bobobo Sa...

Brief update about my weekend during the 1st intermission of Leafs-Sens game 4.

Went up to Waterloo Saturday evening, mainly to see Wen's place so I have an idea of what I need to bring for the upcoming term (as well as getting in the way of their studying, muhahahaha, /jk).

Anyway, as I drove Duy, Bao, and Alan back to their place, we caught Jason just as we were turning into their complex. So I decided to race Jason to the house, but I forgot about the omni speed bump that their complex had. Thus, my '93 Camry lost : (

Played some games that night, went to church next morning, got home around 5:00 pm Sunday.

Last two days were pretty routine, went to work, got home, watch hockey, eat dinner, more hockey, sleep.

After the Leafs game tonight I'll blog my D20 character's background story, I figured it's better this way so that the other players will know more about my character rather than just Bao, and I don't have to bother emailing/sending it to Bao.

Watching Leafs vs Sens Game 3 right now, so I don't have the mental capacity to multi-task watching and writing coherent sentences....

So I'll update about stuff later.

Seems like there's been some problems w/ pop-ups on my page, I don't know what's causing that since my page is like, the same as any other as far as I can see.

But I did take off the chatter box thingy since it doesn't seem to be used, plus I recall Bao took it off his page since it was causing some problems for someone...

Back to the game.

So last update was like...Friday, so there's quite a few days to talk about in between. I guess I'll focus mainly on the highlights:

Saturday

Bao's poker thingy. We played Texas Hold'em, it was pretty fun. I was really overzealous in the first 3 rounds and was down from $4 to like, $0.80 after 3 rounds (Alan won big on the first game, got me and Bao good). Then I started playing more conservative, and slowly crawled my way out of the red. At my peak, I was maybe $4 up. The game lasted for about 2 hours or so, I ended up winning like, $1.50.

DB had to go back to their old house for dinner, so instead of ending the party then, we asked if we could come back when they finished dinner. Turned out we could, so David, Alan, Ray, Lowry and I went out for some Chinese Food.

Back to DB's, some smash, followed by some card games, including Mao and Euker. After Euker, we just like, talked about random stuff until like 5, where DB's Mom woke up and stuff... ...

Sunday

Wasn't planning on sleeping but did, so I ended up missing church : (

So, went to work, and worked until 6.

Mom was going to have some of her friends over for tea and stuff, so I opted to go to my Dad's for dinner and brought a rental over, which we didn't watch. We ended up watching 2 episodes of Simpsons and an episode of Malcom before I fell asleep, since I didn't really got enough due to the events of the previous night.

Went home and like, slept.

But I did see an ad for Boston Pizza that night, wanted to try it out, so I was looking to see if Paul and Simon were available for dinner sometime upcoming week.

Monday

Same routine, woke up, watched 11am serial on Fairchild TV, got ready and left for work.

So work from like, 12:30 - 7 or so, then I got to go home.

Did stuff until dinner, can't quite remember what.

Watched movie "Basic" after dinner, overall not a bad movie, but I think the writer went overboard on the plot twists, there were about 4, 5 plot twists in the last 15 minutes of the movie, which, kind of makes the plot a bit confusing to reflect back on. I say a good bonus feature in mystery/plot twist type movies is to have the writer or director tell "what actually happened" in the plot.

Confirmed dinner at Boston Pizza w/ Paul and Simon, slated for 7:30 on Tuesday.

Tuesday

Once again, 11am serial on Fairchild, off to work until 7pm.

Then it was off to Boston Pizza, the ad I saw was for some "western"-style pasta from $10.95 (and up), but coincidentally, Tuesday was Pasta Night at Boston Pizza, where all dishes on tha Pasta Night Menu was $8.95, so we opted for the Pasta Night dishes, he he.

Talked about casual things, like hockey, CS, Simon's project ideas, how a pizza can qualify as an appetizer (we ordered one between the 3 of us, as well as pasta =P ), and so forth.

We were going to go to the YMCA after dinner, well, I was a bit reluctant since it is exercise, but Simon thought the service desk would be closed at that time (like, 9:15 pm?), so we decided to go on Wednesday, that's like, today.

Oh yeah, I stayed up until 4 am on Tuesday "night" since the Donkey Kong vs Duck Hunt battle on GameFaqs was so damn close. Good thing DK pulled through =P

Wednesday (Today)

Well, today for 8 more minutes according to my XP clock.

More 11am serial, and more work. Rather busy at work today, since we got a lot of shipment from different suppliers, plus people are getting into the mood to buy stuff for Easter. Was able to get off work at 6pm today though, since I forgot to return Basic, so I had to go back home to get it and return it.

Gas was rather cheap, 62.9 cents, so I filled up.

Simon and Paul decided to go biking since I wasn't really up for the Y, so I went to Simon's since I don't have a bike. An hour or so later we were headed for the Y, since the bikes were omni-failage and it wasn't worth it having them break down every 50 feet we rode.

We actually managed to spend close to 2 hours at the YMCA, did some running, rode the bike machine, skipped a bit, talked about martial arts, failage attempt at lifting weights, and more running. (Actually, I found out that I'm like, 15 pounds lighter than I checked in on my last physical)

Home = dinner + shower --> Blog writing time.

Since the emergence of "Chindia" as the world superpower is only a matter of time, I figured it was a good idea to try some Indian cuisine outside of the Waterloo Plaza.

(Off-topic: Lacrosse is on TV, but for some reason the mascot is in a bubble bath with two women (cheerleaders?) in bikinis, wtf...)

So off our family went to the relatively new Indian restaurant opened in that plaza on Matheson & Bristol (where Popeye's and Domino's is).

T'was an interesting experience.

Ordering took awhile, as the restaurant didn't seem to have enough waiters, even though there weren't a lot of tables requiring service. The wait for the food was reasonable for a restaurant, kind of like East Side's wait for 3 people, I'll assume. By the way, the decor was really nice, gives the restaurant an extra kick of classiness, or something like that...

We decided to go w/ "sizzilers" tonight, so an order of chicken and an order of mutton, and 3 orders of flat bread, all "different". Both chicken and mutton were good, the portions fairly reasonable as well, however the dishes tended towards spicy, so Duy probably wouldn't touch them. The breads were pretty much the same, except for density of dough, so to each his own. The food is definitely better than Taj Palace, and was expected to be, considering the decor of the place and prices they charge.

What's nice about this restaurant I found was that you'd never run out of water, any time your glass was half empty, they come and fill it. (I guess they expected that you wanted a lot of water since the stuff was spicy)

The bill wasn't too expensive either, we paid $42 including tips for 3 people, so that comes to $14 a person, so around East Side price, and I would say the quality was East Side like as well, as far as I can tell for Indian cuisine, that is.

Angry Iraqi mobs took the lives of 4 US civilians and 5 Marines yesterday, and in totally gruesome fashion as well. The 4 civilians were security guards from a US security company, they were probably hired by some "rebuild Iraq" company, etc.

Anyway, the mob attacked the security guards when they were in their car, then went on the burn and mutilate their corpses, and hung one or two of the corpse for demonstration purposes. All the while the mob was cheering and yelling in jubilation at their "accomplishments". The Marines were killed as their vehicle was bombed, don't think their bodies were "played around" with.

US television stations of course did not show the burning corpses or hanging bodies to start, and I think all save CNN didn't put the graphic pictures on the Tube. The Internet, of course, probably has plenty of pics for those who wish to search for them (I didn't bother).

Up to now, the "official" body count of US troops is at 597 in Iraq, and with the civilian killed here and there, that puts it at 600+.

The end result of a war the George W. instigated, based on claims that he has yet to justify. Regardless there were any Weapons of Mass Destruction or not (facts so far point to not), I just feel that all the lives that were lost because of this War on Iraq was so NOT worth it. This wasn't anything like Desert Storm, where the US troops dominated and then left (or something like that...), according to my Mom this is more like Vietnam, where the US troops just continually got pricked left and right, until they had to retreat.

Now, if this war was all about oil (as some speculate it is), then the lives lost were all the more wasted. I agree that sometimes you have to fight back (like after 9/11), but sometimes I gotta wonder if George W. thinks about the possible losses before he picks a fight, I mean, it's not like he's leading the Marines into Iraq, now is it?

Bah, end rant.