Tonight Hankishin and his bro are coming over for dinner, as sort of a last farewell sort of deal. The two of them have been good friends to me and my family. My mom was pretty close to them and also their mom who passed away a couple years ago from cancer. I've heard that Hankishin's bro has grown away from the church in recent months. That's sad indeed. Actually a lot of the people I know who lost one of their parents at a young age grew away from the church. I guess it's hard to fathom why God would allow such a thing to happen to them. You lose all faith when that happens and I can't really blame them. When you're younger you know you are worshipping a higher power, and yet when trouble comes, the "Big Guy" doesn't pull through.

It's gotta be tough to continue to believe in God after that, after you worship Him, pray to Him and read his Words, and He doesn't come through in your hour of need.

What's the difference between if you believed in Him and didn't, and your mother died. If you did, then people would tell you it was part of God's plan that He took your mother away from you. And if you didn't, then people would tell you they're sorry for this sad event in your life. In both cases people would urge you to move on. On one hand, because you had no control over it because it was God's will, and on the other hand, it was an incurable disease and you should just make your mom be proud by moving on.

Both ways, it's the same, but in the believer's point of view, you would blame God, whereas the non-believer, you would blame the disease.

Anyway, I am glad that Hankishin has remained faithful to the Lord. He has definitely grown up both mentally and spiritually since that time.

On Saturday I went to Mitchell's and picked up the Not To Us Chris Tomlin cd. It was $25+tax, way more than the $20 I could have gotten it for at MissionFest. I also picked up Hillsong's United cd. My brother got Delirious' new cd.

On Sunday morning I felt so thirsty, so I kept swallowing saliva to make up for it. I think I swallowed too many times, because after awhile it started to hurt, and then at the church picnic, everything I ate or drank hurt my throat. Then at Amy's bbq, it rained and all that, I was all wet on the way back to the car (we had to park far cuz of the queer parade). Anyway, I am sick now, at work.

Being sick sucks, I haven't been sick in a long time now, I've always been really careful of not getting sick. The picnic was lots of fun, I spent most of the time with monchichi watching the kids jumping on the inflatable bouncing castle. It's amazing how a little bit of jumping can make kids so happy. Syl almost got sick just watching them bounce! It was fun though, there were a lot of really cute kids there and I got to play with them a little bit. At the BBQ later I was able to catch up with BenC and #1. Both are doing fine. BenC had a new hairstyle.

The place we were at was a friend of Amy's named Dan. It was really nice, at the corner of Wellesley and Yonge Street. His condo was really sweet.. he definitely knows how to decorate better than I do. He booked the roof so we went up and did the bbqing up there. It was really windy up their though, plus the rain, so that's probably why I got sick.

I never thought I'd become one of those people who never goes to fellowship. But I have.. I haven't been to fellowship for 2 weeks in a row now, and I doubt I'll go tonight. Today it's at Dandaman's place, which is just across the street from mine, but I am so tired right now all I can think about is going home to sleep. I have not slept-in past 7am for over a month.

For the picnic on Sunday, I've been told to bring 4 canteloupe/honeydews. I wish I could have been asked first if I wanted to be involved with the bringing of fruit. They want all of us to meet at 9:15am on Sunday to gather the fruit. I know for a fact that there is no way I will get to church that early. My mom is late for everything.. she insists its our fault, but even last week when my brother and i went separately, she was still late, 15 minutes late for service, despite travelling down on her own.

There is no way I'll make that 9:15am time.

Today at work, we went out for some Pho. We walked down to Spadina and wandered around til we found a pho place. Shahid really liked the hot sauce in the red squeeze bottles.. and, he ATE the mini green pepper that comes with beansprouts. I kept looking at him waiting for the fire to come out of his ears, but it never did. He claimed the hot sauce was much hotter. (He put a lot though).

I think the guy sitting beside me got canned. He's a goner for sure, though I'm not sure when. My boss told me he was a going to get rid of him, over lunch yesterday. Btw, yesterday I had Manchu Wok. That's too bad though, I know that he's very intelligent and always glad to help out when needed. I think the trouble was he was given work that he normally doesn't do, and because of his quiet and shy persona, he never asks questions, and I'm betting got stuck a few times and just let it linger, thus --- he never really produced anything. Boss asked me if I knew what he was doing, but I didn't. I hope that didn't make him think he wasn't doing anything.

Anyway, that's pretty rough.

Raps got Chris Bosh as everyone suspected, but in the second round, they passed on Canadian Carl English, and picked up some dude named Remon Van de Hare. I was pretty disappointed in that move. And I was even more disappointed when I read some reviews on Remon. Apparently, he is a terrible basketball player. During his workout in front of some NBA scouts, he missed every single shot he tried. The only thing he has going for him is his 7'2" frame. He is basically a tall man who can't play basketball.

I think the combination of the heat and the morning light is causing the dog to wake up early every morning now. I've been fervently praying that we sell the house so that the dog can move back there. Well.. at least the mexicans have stopped honking.

My bro saw The Hulk yesterday and thought it sucked. It's amazing how sometimes we can totally be on the same page about something and then so different on another.

There's an internal job posting. When I read over the thing I felt that I might be qualified for it in 4-5 years. Yet, more than a few people urged me to apply for it. It's a management position.. how could I, having worked less than a year be qualified for that type of position? I read the qualifications, and about the only one I think I met was that I have a degree. So, I'll redo my resume on the weekend and give it whirl. The deadline is Monday.

Even with a fan blowing into it, and the A/C on, my computer still overheats. I've had it up to here with my amd. It runs far too hot, and I probably screwed up when putting on the thermal paste. Maybe I should take it apart and try it again. But I remember it being a HUGE struggle trying to seat it properly. I don't really want to spend another $500 on a new mobo and cpu.. I'm pretty sure a tube of thermalpaste is a lot cheaper. Even a nitrogen cooling system would be cheaper.. well maybe not, but a water-based one would be.

3 years ago I had the desire to supe up my computer, but I didn't have the money. Now I have the money, but no desire.

Tonight is Amazing Race and CSI, and the NBA Draft!

For some reason those mexicans were still celebrating something last night, because from 10:30pm and on, it was non-stop honking horns. So I grabbed my blankie and pillow and slept on my grandmother's bed in the other room (not facing Yonge).

Today in the Metro, there was a coupon for a buy one get one free Frappe. (accent et goo on the last e). I am drinking it now. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT BUY THIS DRINK. It tastes disgusting. It makes me wonder how much they pay those people on the infomercials for juicers... I taste bananas, carrots, celery, strawberries, cucumber, soy milk. It looks like someone ate too much brocoli and threw up into my cup. The only reason I'm finishing it cuz the thing costs almost $5.

6:15am... woohoo!

This Sunday my church is having their annual picnic. It'll be a Milnes Dam Park (?) and it will be from 12:30-3:30pm. The most exciting thing about it is that they announced they would getting Popeye's chicken instead of KFC. Mmmm... Popeye's...

After the picnic I'll be going over to some dudes house for a 'farewell' bbq for lil'amy. I heard that #1 will be there too, which is nice since I haven't seen him since last year.

I need a haircut. My hair when pulled straight down reaches the below my eyes now. I have to constantly pull my 'burns back behind my ears because otherwise i look like a hippie. I wonder when would be a good time get a haircut. I can't just have it shaved off this year otherwise I will look silly at the wedding, so I am thinking to go with a longer 'do' this year, and then getting a quick trimming just before the ceremony.

My project manager at work is leaving us. He's takinga year off to get his MBA and so the project will likely hit a dead-end by the end of this year, rendering my position useless. That's a rather unfortunate turn of events for me.

My computer at home is all messed up now. Originally I had a dual boot of 98 and 2000. I removed 98, but at bootup it was still asking me if I wanted to boot to 2000 or 98. Then I tried upgrading 2000 to XP, but for some reason it installed XP instead of upgrading, and it did this on the d: drive instead of c: drive. And, to make matters worse when I boot up it asks me if I want XP, 2000 or 98! 98 isn't even there, if I pick it I end up getting a 'file not found'. And now, even if I formatted my c: drive, xp would still be there, but on the d: drive, which makes no sense at all. So now I'll have to reformat the c: drive and then find someway of removing xp from the d: drive.

What a headache..

The dog is back to his 5-6 schedule. Perhaps it is getting too bright in the mornings, but today 5:15 he was up.

What's worse is that last night I couldn't get to sleep until 11:30pm, even though there was no Soprano's, there was some kind of mexican gathering at Mel Lastman Square, and at around 10 til 11:30, they were honking their horns as they drove by that area, which is just in front of where I live.. unfortunately.

Last week my friend/housemate/classmate Ç£MM£Ç's mom passed away. I was shocked by the news, because he never really told us she was even sick. Ç£MM£Ç is a great, warm and loving person. I'm sure at least some of these qualities came from his mom. I met her once, as Ç£MM£Ç and I posed for pictures at commencement. Sigh.. my prayers go out to you man..

I regret not picking up a Chris Tomlin CD, when he came to perform at Toronto's Mission Fest. Although I'm unsure of which one they were selling, the Not For Us album is really good.. I've been listening er.. sampling it for the last 24 hours, and it's really good, even for only 10 tracks. I'll have to go buy it now.. soon.. I suppose.

Anyway, what'd I do? Friday, I learned that a friend of mine broke the ranks of unemployment after over a year, scored himself a job with the provincial government. I was gonna hang with him friday night, but silly me I didn't hang up the phone properly, and didn't find out til it was way too late to do anything (9pm.. yes.. stupid dog indeed).

Today we made up for it, we went out to see The Hulk. A really cool movie. I thought the cgi would make it look cheezy like it did with Spiderman, but it was really good actually. The movie was really good, from beginning to just before the end. I didn't like the ending, but since I don't know much about the Hulk, and I assume the majority of the audience didn't either, in that regards it was an okay ending. The action was so cool, the graphics were amazing. I though Hulk was kinda goofy looking.. Ang Lee did a good job of it, direction was really quite good. The effects of making panes with different angles gave a really neat effect. We got there a bit late though so we had to sit real close. That was somewhat of a downfall because it was hard to keep track of all the panes when sitting so close. It's weird but somehow Jennifer Connelly seems to get better and better looking every year, she's also looking younger and younger. I suppose it's just the makeup, but she is better looking now than back in the Babysitter's Club days.. There were some really crazy parts in it, one part that made me jump, literally a foot off my chair.

I give it a slight edge over Matrix: Reloaded as best movie of the year.

After the movie we went for all-you-can-eat sushi, and Umi Sushi over by Kenny's and Starwalk. It was good stuff.. but the service was a little messed up, we'd order 3-4 dishes and we'd get only 2 of them, 20 minutes apart. It really messed up our appetites. I'm sure we could've eaten a lot more.. But in retrospect I'm glad we didn't, cuz I'm absolutely stuffed right now.

4:58am. Stupid dog..

Today when the subway got up to St.Clair, it stopped. The driver told us all to get off because the train was broken. About half the people got off, then the driver comes running out and yells "it's fixed!" and the doors closed. It was really funny looking at the expression of the people who had just left the train.. Then we got to the next stop and the driver told us to get off again. This time it was for real. When the next train came, of course it was packed and none of us could get on. Those bastards got the last laugh.. argh!

This morning at 10am a bunch of us went to the nearest "greasy spoon" to have breakfast. Mmm.. the food was yummy -- there's nothing like a bucket of starch and grease to begin your day. There was a fat old man sitting behind us who was hacking so hard I swear I though his lungs would pop out of his mouth. It sounded like the man was dying, but he wasn't... probably just too many meals at this greasy spoon.. lol

Okay, found a pretty good Christian internet Radio station, here's the link:

http://www.p7.no/metafiles/p7_i.asx

It's quite good, based in Oslo, Norway -- a city recently surveyed as the 3rd most expensive city to live, in the world. I can attest to this.. the souvenirs were the most expensive out of all the scandinavian cities, although, they also had the best stores. As I recall all their shopping places were always packed..

This station has a cool feature in that it tells you what song it's playing, and artist. (Makes it convenient for me to know which songs I need to download..)

6:05am. I think the dog is finally learning.. it took a whole month, but he is finally waking up after 6am!

Yesterday after dinner my brother and I went down to Mitchell's Field to play some tennis. There aren't any courts there, just a big wall we hit the ball against. The wall that we play on is brick, but the upper half of it is aluminum siding, and there are grooves in it going vertically that just fit a tennis ball. We brought along a copper plumbing pipe (about 15 feet long), and use it to pry our balls out when they get stuck (the aluminum part starts about 12 feet from the ground). Anyway, today when we went there, we found 8 balls there, I guess from other kids playing. The funny thing is, 4 of the balls had the same initials "A.I." on them. Well.. Mr. A I, if you're out there, thanks for the free tennis balls!

Both of us were pretty out of shape and were exhausted after just 30 minutes. I lost two balls by roofing them. But we found 8, so we still netted 6 of them. Pretty sweet deal.

The most entertaining part of the evening was when we discovered a huge gathering of ants, and we tried throwing stuff on them, and spitting on them. Haha.. good times.. They reacted pretty funny when I shaped my gum as a flat round disc and covered about 50 of them with it! When my brother and I are together, we stoop down about 10 years, in terms of maturity.. haha

Listening to this Danish radio station makes me want to go back to Denmark. All those countries -- Denmark, Norway, Sweden -- are beautiful places. Last summer when we were there for the cruise it was so unbelievable. People there seem genuinely happy. I certainly was. For the Copenhagen excursion, we got to go kayaking along the canals of Copenhagen. It was an incredible experience! I have this enormous urge to go back now. Some guy and girl are chatting on the radio now, in their foreign language, and for some reason I feel totally soothed from it. What a cool language..

I can sleep fine when there is constant noise, whereas if there are sharp sudden noises, that wakes me up. So, I wasn't surprised this morning when I woke up on my own at 6:15am. Last night it was so hot that I left my window open (the window faces Yonge Street below). All night all I heard was cars driving by, their engines roaring by, and echoed loudly against my building at the Trimark building. I didn't hear the dog crying all morning, which was great. I finally managed to sleep through it! Although I what really woke me up was the fact that I was FREEZING my butt off!

Last night I went to Fairview Mall to see Italian Job with a bunch of church folks. Mark Wahlberg, Seth Green, Ed Norton and Charlize Theron (yum!) -- what more could I ask for? Although the movie was totally predictable from the very beginning to the very end, it was still pretty entertaining. It was basically a cross between The Score (also starring Ed Norton), The Heist and Ocean's Eleven. Oddly enough, all three of those movies came out in 2001. The predictable twists and turns in The Job were exactly the same as those in Score and Heist, while all the humor and wit was from Ocean's Eleven. The Job and Eleven both had a black dude who specialized in explosives. They both featured armored trucks and both left the audience thinking that main characters were good guys, even though they're THIEVES! All in all though the jokes were pretty hilarious and the movie made us all wish we had Mini's!

Interesting thing we noted that Seth Green seems to always play this techie/spying-type role, like in Enemy of the State, American Sweethearts. I wonder if Seth will ever get to be in a movie with starring role rather than always playing the "runt".

5:45am.

Canadian Idol was much better this week. There appears to be more talent in Montreal than all of BC, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. That Mulroney guy did a lot less of the things that annoyed me last week. And there was at least some talent this week. I found it interesting that all the kids who tried doing Norah Jones songs made it through.

That reminds me last night I dreamed of going to see the Norah Jones concert, but I didn't have tickets and ended up outside pleading with the bouncers. Finally, Norah came out and I pleaded my case and she gave me front row seats! What a great dream, although I never did see her sing, since my dog woke me up... blast that dog!

Ooh, I keep hearing a rap song by Nas on internet radio... I don't know what it's called, but it samples some music from Beethoven's Fur Elise, and it teaches kids that they can be what they want to be if they work hard at it. Why can't there be more rap songs like this and less rap songs encouraging kids to sell drugs and become pimps? .. the radio station I've been listening to is called Boogie SKUM, it's based in Copenhagen. It's funny because when the Danish DJs come on, I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, but I can sooo picture them with ski-gear.

Today at lunch time we went to Fune again for sushi. I'd missed sushi.. it was sooo good! I had so much wasabi that i was tearing up!

I forgot, one other thing. Major rip-off for me and my brother. Yesterday I dl'ed Ninja Resurrection, Parts 1 and 2. What a disappointment, we thought it was the sequel to Ninja Scroll, but it turns out it wasn't at all. And to make matters worse, Part 2 ended as a cliffhanger, and THEY NEVER MADE A PART 3!! Argh!!

Also, on Friday we saw Akira. It sucked.. After the movie was over, my brother looked at me blankly and said "so, when are they going to explain what was going on?". That says it all.

The funny thing is, I'm just gonna keep dl'ing anime, even though 75% of the ones I've seen so far have sucked!

Btw, i haven't reviewed any music in awhile now. Any suggestions on who I might be worth reviewing? I've had it up to *here* with wc3. I think I'm finally sick of it. Somebody suggest something I could review, and I'll do it.

Today the dog woke up at 5:30, but I just kept my eyes closed and rested for another half hour. I fed him early today because I wanted to get to work early to get some work finished up. When I got to work, i couldn't go up because my security card had expired. They gave me an extra day to provide the letter of proof that my contract was extended. That's funny since I don't believe that letter even exists..

I can play mp3s on my iPaq. I downloaded a free copy of WinamPAQ, and a lower quality version of Bring Me To Life to my iPaq and have been listening to it whenever I walk the dog.

What else.. church was okay. Next week is "Concert of Prayer" for fellowship. Our small group is leading it. Why is that that I can say the exact same prayer as someone else, but they take an extra 15 minutes doing it? And it's not like I'm in a rush to get it done. Maybe I'm just not as eloquent. In prayer I find that people like to take the time to acknowledge that He is God, and throw in words like Sovereign, Majestic, Counsellor, etc. They'll devote a good 5 minutes of acknowledgement, like "Lord, we know that you are _____, and that you ____. We thank you that you are so _____ and ______. C'mon, I think He must know that. It's like saying Brian, you are Brian, and we thank you for being Brian. Brian, you are so Brian and so we pray to you, Brian.

It's repetitive and God is sitting up there going "ok, ok.. get on with it already..".

I think the things that bother me is that, yes, we should try to spend more time talking to God, but I think it we should focus more on quality time rather than quantity time. I think when I take the time spent to pray for individual people, then I'd say that was quality time spent (as opposed to just saying "God, please bless everyone I know"), or if I take the time pray for the different things going on in my life.

Why waste God's time? When you go and talk to your boss, or your father/mother, do you start out by saying how great he/she is, point out that they are your boss and how much power they have over you? I think the trick is not beating around the bush.

Anyway.. enough with that, back to work.

Today, I woke up on my own before my dog. And no, it wasn't because he didn't bark, I just woke up at 5:30. I went online to check to see if my DiabloII accounts were still there. They were.

I was excited this morning because I wanted to sync my iPaq to my PC and install some stuff from the web, particularly the Transcriber. Yesterday my bro wanted to watch Fist of Legend so I didn't get a chance to use my pc. Anyway, this Transcriber is pretty cool it allows me to write handwritten stuff and it converts to text. It's a pretty cool utility provided by Microsoft. I can write a full sentence and it'll show up after a bit of time conversion, like 5 seconds. Pretty rad.

I got an offer for my handspring from my old boss. He's diabetic, and he was telling me tha the Visor has a blood testing cartridge add-on, so it would be really useful for him. Now I'm contemplating the price. I guess $50-75 would be fair?

The iPaq inside its case looks pretty awesome. The case is aluminum with that chrome-finish look, and the ipaq itself is the same greyish color. I still can't get over how cool it looks!

5:21am. I didn't work out today, even though I planned on it. I was too tired.. I ended up lying in bed for an hour mocking my dog's whimpering and barking. I wonder if my neighbours can here me.. haha

Apparently 112,000 Diablo II accounts were deleted by Blizzard yesterday, because of the use of hacking software. I cannot believe there are even that many people still playing it.. Come on people, we are talking about a game that is over 3 years old! The Warcraft III expansion comes out in just 3 weeks! I read an article I got from fu's site, called "Plight of the Aging Gamer". It was a pretty good read, for me anyway.. I could SOO relate with the author! Here's the link.

Ah, I forgot to mention, the Devils won the Stanley Cup. I'm just glad the better team won. I hate it when teams come out of nowhere and win championships, as if the whole regular season was totally meaningless?

Yesterday I think I saw what was the final episode of Reboot, the CG cartoon. It was quite good. I'd been watching it the last 3 days. That's kind of neat, that show lasted so long..!

I finally finished downloading Akira last night. All 670 megs of it. Tonight I'll watch it with my brother. I've seen a bunch of anime movies lately, including Ninja Scroll (awesome), Spirited Away (pretty good), Princess Mononoke (saw it a year ago, it was really good), Perfect Blue (very very weird movie, i still don't know what really happened).

5:30am.

I watched Canadian Idol yesterday, and I hafta say that Canadian talent (at least in the west) does not exist. The show was terrible. The people they gave passes to Toronto (top 100 I think) were crap. These kids would never have made it past the first round on American Idol. I guess that just goes to show you why there are so few Canadian stars. But I it makes sense. They have 300 million, we have 30 million, so it's only natural we should only have 10% of the talent they have.

Then again, not a single person impressed me on Canadian Idol. Not even one. It was downright as depressing as it was pathetic. What's worse, that Mulroney guy is so annoying. He was always talking at the wrong time. Maybe it was the editing, but it seemed like whenever I wanted to hear an audition, that idiot would be talking. His commentary always interfered with what the viewers were trying to watch, or he'd talk too long. What a moron.

I was reading an article about CI yesterday and they were saying how Canadians don't want to be the next Canadian Idol, they want to be the next American Idol. Who really cares about being Canada's Idol? Let's look at the charts for a moment. Kelly Clarkson, last years' American Idol is 19th with her single 'Miss Independent' (by the way, this song blows). Let's say the Canadian Idol comes out with a song next year that comes in 19th place on Canadian charts. I can't even name 19 Canadian artists! And can anyone honestly tell me that name of this year's Popstars: The One winner?

Perhaps I was too excited about this show because of all the hype surrounding the American version. Or maybe the East coast and Toronto will be slightly more impressive. I hope so..