Snowy and Cold

It's been two weeks since I last volunteered at the PLC. I've been busy with projects and such, so I took the last two weeks off. Since my piano is blocked by a lot of stuff at the moment, I haven't been able to touch my keyboard for the past two weeks! It felt weird to touch the piano again, but it was almost welcoming in a sense.

Once volunteering was done, I went home and tried to study a bit, but to no avail. Therefore, I went out and hung out with a friend for a while. (I promise to study my butt off later today! It's already Sunday...)

After hanging out with my friend, I went home and got ready for dinner with my 503 group! We ate at Forbidden City at T&T. I got the chance to try out a new egg plant dish, which turned out to be pretty good! I also had the chance to have a friendly nonschool discussion with my group mates (which we never really had while we were working on our paper). It was a very enjoyable affair! =)

Once I got home, I got out my camera and took a photo to submit for this week's photo challenge: sweets. I always wanted to do water splash photography (or whatever its called) and so I did for today! It took me abou 40 minutes to set up, take a bunch of pics and to clean up. It then took about an additional 10 minutes to photoshop it and upload it onto flickr. Here's a picture of what my set up looked like:

And here was the results... top part was cut off due to my poor positioning =( And wet background...

Linguini Salmone at La Vienna

For those who don't know where La Vienna is, it is located on Kensington in Little Italy (if that's what it's called in Calgary). For $17 after tax and tips, it was a pretty delicious meal. My only complaint is that some parts of the sauce tasted extremely salty... The salmon bits were smoky, but had a nice texture. This dish is something that you can't get at Olive Garden!

The place was pretty dim so don't mind the flash photography.

Woot Woot!!

Hell week is fast approaching, but fortunately professors seem to understand the stress we're going through, thus trying to make things easier for us (ie: rethinking assignments so that we don't have to hand in multiple double-digit papers and presentations! I understand that it's important to persevere through tough and stressful times, but I'm glad that they helped lighten our load! I was starting to get slightly senile from all these projects/assignments/tests... =P

506 today: Discussed our second assignment more, which is great since I have a better direction for my unit plan now! I never expected a unit plan to be so difficult to construct! I've been chugging away at it for some time now, but it's no where near completion =(. It does frustrate me, but like I said, it will probably get easier in due time.

After class, I went to bestbuy to purchase myself a new keyboard. The reason why I need a new keyboard is because I need a quieter keyboard for the night. My old one is not bad, but gets kinda clunky when I type fast.

Also, I wanted a keyboard that is 100% compatible with my macbook, so what fits that description?

It's so slick and matches well with my laptop! Ah, Apple is crushing my soul... but it doesn't feel bad at all! Sure, they're expensive, but you can't deny that they look nice! =P

(Wow, blurry hand syndrome... don't zoom)

My first PD Workshop for this semester!

I had a long day at school today, around 12 hours in total! I got there at around 8 AM and left at around 8 PM. =P

Before class, I actually managed to get quite a bit of stuff done. I started off in the atrium, but it was too dark for my tastes. I then travelled to Taylor Digital Library and worked there. For the first time in my university career, I used one of the dual screen computers on the main floor. It was cool having two screens, but yes, I still had a lot of clutter on both screens since I had so much room! Weirdly, I enjoyed moving my head as I gather information from one screen and wrote it down on the other (one screen was in front of me, while the other one was positioned almost at a 135 degree angle from the first). It felt like a great neck exercise!

502: It was pretty much a work period, which was nice. Our group got together and talked a bit about where we're going. So far so good! Everything is working out extremely well! We also got our papers back that we handed in a couple weeks ago. I got what I gave myself on the self-evaluation, which was an A-. Pretty stoked since I was rambling about interdisciplinarity... I realized more of what it was a couple days after writing my paper... =P

505: Lots of storytelling today! There was very interesting legends that I heard! Four types: entertainment, instructional(?), moral and spiritual/sacred. We got back our tests today and I was extremely surprised I did quite well! 1% short of an A-. =P I was seriously expecting a C on that test since I was so strapped for time. =(

501: Guest speaker today (one of the 502 seminar leaders) since our main prof was doing a conference in Sicily. We watched Gangnam style in class and talked about why it's so viral (the need to be imperfect)

After an hour break, I had a PD workshop on Teacher Professional Growth Plans (TPGP). It was a very useful PD since I learnt about policies behind TPGP and the different types of contracts that we can potentially get once we graduate. The presenter also informed us of the process of applying for a job. It's not just simply applying, but rather a whole lot of things to do, such as applying for a salary estimate, learning how to start subbing RIGHT after April, etc.

A very productive day today! Everything seemed to be going well... until I was driving home. I swear I saw a couple flashes on 32nd Ave (somewhere between 26th and 36th street). I didn't see any red light cameras though... not that I recall speeding or doing anything illegal... Oh well, I guess I'll find out in a couple week's time if I was indeed caught doing something wrong =/. Cross my fingers though!

And then when I got home, I realized that there was gum stuck onto the front of my jacket! Good thing it didn't get on my pants, but it was on the bottom of my jacket, which then transferred a bit of itself onto my seatbelt... Gotta clean that up tomorrow when I come home from school! Or maybe if I'm lucky enough, it'll be cold enough and the gum would freeze, thus making it easier to scrap off tomorrow... (highly doubt it) =(

For today's picture, here are the booklets/forms I got from the workshop:

FOR THE GREATER GOOD... well most of the time.

Once again, I started my Tuesday morning with a group meeting. We quickly checked to see that our paper for 503 was formatted correctly, and then we submitted it via blackboard. Once that was out of the way, I had 506.

506: The fun one can acquire via work stations! Though I have to say that the work stations make my inquiry idea for my unit plan look like bullcrap... =( It's amazing how they took 7 stations to cover the ENTIRE grade 9 ecosystem unit!

503: The different schools of ethics. We did a quick ethics questionare that tells you which school of thought you belonged too. Apparently I'm a moderate utilitarian, which means that I believe for the greater good. Very interesting, since I guess I kind of do, but at other times I feel like I'm the other type (starts with d... I believe...) in that I feel like it's my duty!

After class, I went home to pick up my brother so we can go grab our flu shots. It wasn't too busy at the clinics, so we got our flu shots quite quickly. My arm is sore from the shot, but at least I'm not having an allergic reaction!

Today's picture

My current display picture when I use my LCD monitor at home.

Cluttered Desktop

506's unit plan is slowly, but surely being pieced together. It sure is an agonizing process, but I hope that I can finish at least one of them for tomorrow morning... As I said before, practice makes perfect. I can't wait till I'll be able to WHIZ through lesson plans and perhaps come up with them on the spot (like how I do in Karate at times =P).

Another nice day, but unfortunately I was stuck at home working on 506 for ALL DAY pretty much... I didn't get a chance to look at my other assignments but that can wait till tomorrow I guess! =P Time is definitely travelling too fast! Or I need to find a way to stuff in more hours into a day!

Today's picture

My desktop as I was trying to work through 506. On the right is my own document. In the middle was a pdf copy of a chapter from the Science 30 textbook. The far left consists of a sample lesson that I'm trying to imitate.

At times like this, it would be nice to have more than one monitor! Unfortunately I do not have the space or the monies... =( I will have to deal with what I have on hand!

The need to be more flexible!

I blame the loss of whatever flexibility I had prior to the groin injury I suffered last year, which to this day, hasn't really gone away fully. There are times where it feels not bad, but other times where it pains me to kick.

Starting tomorrow though, I'm going to try and stretch out a bit... will this help really? I don't really know! Benefits of stretching (aka: working on the splits) is that hopefully I can still gain some flexibility before it's too late! (Can it ever be too late? Once again I'm do not know!)

After a normal karate day, I went home and worked on the reference section for my 503 group paper. It's the first time I ever written a group paper and it has been a pretty good experience. I was able to see how other people write on an issue where we all have similar viewpoints. I hope that this will help improve my sophistication!

After that, I chugged away at my 506 lesson plans... making these plans are a lot harder than I imagined... One reason could be due to the topic, which is on electromagnetic energy (field theory, EMR, etc). I never taken physics in high school so I don't have a clue of activities that are done in the classroom, so it's difficult to come up with ideas! I know that I can look examples up, but I would like to leave that as a last resort. =/

As for today's picture... well I didn't take a picture today so I guess it'll have to do with pictures I took on GT5.

This is my wallpaper when I'm using my laptop's display. Integra Type R surrounded by cherry blossoms. Ah... I miss Japan.... =(