yeah, people you’re with can make all the difference – gi

My 4A term ended last Friday and boy, did it go by quickly. 4A started off while I was still out of the country, travelling in limited expanses of Singapore. Upon arriving back in Canada, I spent a day at home before I raced frantically to Waterloo to catch school on the second Monday (I eventually missed the first week of classes).

Then 4A officially started for me, lectures were still slow, and I made a pact with myself to attend all lectures this term (after practically not going to any of my classes in Singapore, and travelling everywhere, I felt that I should try to be a more diligent student in 4A). I’m sure whoevers reading this can already guessed how that turned out : P

The rest of the term went by quickly, even now, I still feel that that night we went out for drinks after I got back to Waterloo happened just a month ago. It’s actually been around four months since then. I guess it’s because I’ve been doing a lot during the term, not necessarily school related activities, but lots of other stuff. In this reflection, I will attempt to list out what I’ve done, what I didn’t do, and what I’ve learned in 4A.

What I’ve done

• Followed an active sport schedule: Tuesday – Swim, Wednesday – Badminton, Thursday – Squash, Friday – Badminton, Saturday – Badminton. Particularly proud of this. Keeps me occupied and healthy.
• Went to Niagara Falls. I had my car one weekend so Alex, Gianne, and I went on an awesome trip to Niagara-on-the-lake, the falls, saw a generating station, etc. Pics to come! Oh and, Gianne’s first time on a Ferris wheel!!
  

  Niagara Falls!!

  

  Shes so happy : )

• Went for Summerlicious at Canoe in Toronto! It was so good. Thanks JLP for the invite.
  

  We sat at Table #6 at the corner, this was the view.

  

• Stayed up for 44 hours. Working on ECE 438 project overnight, then the next day went swimming, and then went to last bomber, then went home and died.
• Went to last Bomber, first and last time of the term.
• Went to Wonderland!! : )
  

  The group at Wonderland!

• Live with a cat : P
  

  Fat cat at my house

• Had breakfast at Crossroad in Elmira with roommates
• Shoot a bow (archery)
• Flown a kite. Even simple things like flying a kite are hard to find time for. Glad I got to do it. Also, it was gianne’s first time flying a kite!
  

  Assembling the kite!

• Hung out with people on my front porch in loo. It was the best, had chairs and would just sit there, have a drink (and nothing). I miss that porch already.
• Did something that I’d never thought I’d do.
• (Theres probably more that I’ve forgotten…)

What I didn’t Do

• Have a barbeque. I rented a room in the shortcut house this term and there was a nice backyard. I wanted to have a BBQ there but that never happened.
• Put out disposable cameras around campus. I had this idea to put out disposable film cameras around campus in the morning and have a sign that tells people to take a picture. I would come back at the end of the day and collect them. I would have been interesting to see what pictures would have been taken, but alas I never got around to putting them out. I did buy the cameras though.
• Go to more Bomber
• Didn’t make Ais Kachang. Had it in Singapore, said I would try to make it. Never happened.
  

  Ais (Ice) Kacang!!! So GOOD!

• Didn’t make curry. I said I would, but I didn’t.
• Win at Settlers of Catan. I haven’t won since 2007.
  

  Playing Settlers at Alex's

• Find a partner
• (Theres probably more that I’ve forgotten…)

What I’ve Learned

• Don’t leave all your projects to the end. Every course I took this term consisted of a project. When you have to work on all of them at the same time, it’s not very fun
• Alcohol can make anything good…and silly!
• I love sad movies.
• Good friends are rarity these days. People can be so fake or heartless.
• Jealousy killed the cat. Seriously, it can kill more than your cat. (Not the cat I lived with though, he’s fine)
• If you want something, just go for it. Even if it doesn’t end the way you think it should, if you don’t, you will regret it. (Legally, of course)
• (Theres probably more that I’ve forgotten…)

Well there you have it, what I did, what I didn’t do, and what I’ve learned. This note is probably very long and if you had the patience to read all the way here, I congratulate you, find me, I’ll treat you to a drink. But seriously, this is my 4A. I’d say it was the most fun of all the terms I’ve had at Waterloo so far, I’d anticipate 4B to be even better when everyone that was there in 1A is all back together. It will be a grand finale. See you then!

Yours truly,

Arthur

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Please watch this video as well:

It was a very good trip. I was scared that the trip wouldn’t go well because I haven’t really planned where to go on what day. However, before I left, I had bought a book named “Tokyo City Guide” by Lonely Planet. It listed what there is to do in each major district in Tokyo. So the plan was to basically visit several districts each day. This plan worked out pretty well. (Just remember to check what day of the week things are happening, for example, if you want to check out the cosplayers at harajuku, go on a weekend; and many things are closed on some days of the week)

There way to much to write down now, however here are some final thoughts on Tokyo:

1 ) Its huge.
2 ) Transport is awesome.
3 ) Food is not as expensive as I thought, especially sushi (Except for rice).
4 ) Those who say that the only cute/hot Japanese girls are the ones you see on tv or internet or magazine or etc, your wrong, during my 5 day stay in Tokyo, it was rare to see an unattractive girl, (or maybe its just the Waterloo effect). The girls really know how to put on makeup.
5 ) You never know when you’re on the ground floor in Tokyo. The city is built on layers, there will always be another floor below your feet.
6 ) Everyone dresses incredibly well. The people are on the bleeding edge of fashion. If you take a moment to look at what people wear, you will notice that everything matches, from the jacket, to the shoes, to the belt, to the purse/bag, to the hat, etc.
7 ) Japanese people are respectful.
8 ) Japanese kids are disiplined (and funny). Only foreign kids misbehave.
9 ) Old Japanese people are so “auntie” or “si lai”.
10 ) Everything is so fast and busy, there is no rest time. The only “slower” time was during our visit to a park or shine.
11 ) Peruvian flute bands ARE everywhere.
12 ) They have 18+ material in convenience stores.
13 ) Everything is so new and clean and shining.

There is definitly more, but im at the airport right now and am very tired. So thats all for now! I’ll upload the pictures and videos soon! Actually, I’ve already uploaded some videos, so check them out! (Search username: Arthaha)

AKOK

So I considered buying one of these GPS loggers. The one from Gisteq was 60 something but after shipping it would have been $100! So I go on amazon and found that a decent one would cost 60$ with free shipping. That’s not bad, but I wanted something for around $30. But then it hit me, my N95 has a GPS in it! There must be some kind of GPS logging app for it.

I was right, there are several actually, Nokia has their own called “Sports Tracker” or something, but this was the one i decided to use: http://code.google.com/p/ttgpslogger/wiki/GettingStarted. It was simple to use.

So I start logging, and generating log files, but how do I use them to geotag picture? Well, I did it with a program named GeoSetter http://www.geosetter.de/en/index.html, it takes log data as input, and geotag your pictures using the time stamp. So be sure to have the clock on your cameras and phone in sync!

Here are a few samples of GeoTagged pictures I uploaded to flickr, you can see where i took the picture by clicking on the “map” link that appears on the right hand side…

Another highlight of this trip is drifting down Lombard Street, Haha, i lie. No ones drifting down THIS street. Even if it is the “crookedest street in the world”. But it was still a pretty good experience. We actually drove down TWICE, because we didn’t have the first time on video. So the youtube link you see below is actually our second drive down. It was pretty easy to drive down this street, we were in a corolla so the turning radius was quite small. It’ll be quite hard to drive a larger car, say a hummer, down this street. We even played some 得飄 得飄 music which seemed to be appropriate.

So heres the “travel video blog on youtube by akok” – Jethro Ma

So after some research on Wikipedia, the reason why they made this street crooked here is because the hill was too steep to make a road straight. Not very stupid actually (unlike what i said in the video).

After that, the rain really started coming down, but we still trekked to Union Square Park where they have a giant Christmas tree set up:

- AKOK

p.s. Vote on my diPolls:

http://www.dipoll.com/index.php?poll_id=695 Peter Chao vs Mychonny
http://www.dipoll.com/index.php?poll_id=674 Girls’ Generation vs Wonder Girls
http://www.dipoll.com/index.php?poll_id=681 Ebay vs Amazon

Hi everyone, good morning, for anyone who sees this post, please give my diPolls some votes and rate it 5 stars!!!
It’s very simple, you just go to the page and select A or B, thats it! Give it a try : D

Here are my polls:

http://www.dipoll.com/index.php?poll_id=695
http://www.dipoll.com/index.php?poll_id=674
http://www.dipoll.com/index.php?poll_id=677
http://www.dipoll.com/index.php?poll_id=696
http://www.dipoll.com/index.php?poll_id=681

So, I thought Id share some of the more interesting photos since then…

These pictures were taken with one of my very first digital camera, the sony clie palm device that i owned.

Back in 2004, the high school caf served horrible food. The fried chicken was actually one of the better dishes. The best was by far the poutines they had. While they had this crappy food, people did their homework in a cafeteria during lunch, sometimes the day that it was due. Good times. But eventually people get bored of doing homework and get our fair share of exercise playing soccer outside during lunch, people still play soccer, but not as much, i guess.

I remember walking down a hallway and discovering these weird boxes stuck to the wall. I didn’t know what they were for then, and i still don’t. I guess it might have been an effort to make an ugly school not so ugly.

No, I did not actually use up all 15…yet

More to come.

More soon!