Thursday, February 26, 2004

Birthday


Birthday was fun. I went to Boundary Bay with Louise and Briged at 9, and ordered beer and pizza. Rachel was the first to come, but she didn't stay long since her schedule is crazy and she doesn't know how to drive. We had to call Laurel twice before she came. TJ, Emily, and Alisa were there too. Pizza was good, beer was great, and they gave us brownies and ice cream with a candle. So I'm old now. 23. wow.

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Bush Must Go!


Bush has done a lat of bad things during his presidency. he is so far in the pockets of corporation that I don't understand how anyone can't see it. He misled Americans into supporting his war to get oil, but his latest attempt to destroy what any semblance of a respectable free nation that we have left, he is trying to write discrimination and oppression back into the constitution. He is trying to undo the work of more than 200 years of struggle for the basic freedoms and rights that Jefferson wrote about in the preamble to the Constitution.

The US is supposed to be a secular state. This too is written into the Constitution. Yet somehow many of our politicians seem to forget this. What about 'Under God' on our currency and in the Pledge that children recite every morning? That was added in the '50s when the nation was so afraid of the Communists. Is it applicable? No. We are one of the most diverse nations in the world. We are NOT a Christian nation as some want us to believe (or become). Bush is trying to have us believe that gay marriage is a threat. The Governator of California even speculated that continuing to allow gay marriages will result in violence and rioting!

Bush is of the position that marriage is a purely religion institution, and since his religion finds gay couples morally wrong, it should be illegal. What's the difference though if I were to go to a courthouse with my girlfriend and get a married by a judge? I will not be having a Christian wedding. Does my marriage constitute a threat as defined by Bush? If Bush thinks he can impose his Christian ideals on Americans through constitutional amendments, then what is the difference between him, and Muslim Clerics in Iran, or the Taliban in Afghanistan? In the 1960's Iran, makeup, miniskirts and high heels were just as popular among young women in Iran as they were in other parts of the world. I don't think Bush has a chance of passing a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriages, but if he does, it will mark the beginning of the loss of any rights we have left.

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Beer, Icecream, Death


Tomorrow, my birthday, I am going to Boundary Bay because it's the best bar for Birthday Beer. 9:00, be there or be square. (Those of you are cannot attend as a result of being in another country are excused. You can have a raincheck)

I ran out in another desprate attempt to procrastinate, and got icecream. I ate half. Now I'm tired.

paper...

Monday, February 23, 2004

I just shrunk half my clothes... Does anyone use hot water to wash their clothes anyway? They should just remove the hot setting. Now I have to find the bastard that actually did wash their clothes in hot. The stupid guy tricked me too, because he took my clothes out, washed his on hot, and then put my clothes back in, so I didn't even check to see what the temperature was!!! grrrrrrr.........

Job

I still haven't heard anything from Interac about when I am supposed to be in Japan, or if I am really teaching in Machida. I sent all my paperwork to them in November, but I have heard almost nothing since then. Right after I sent it all in I received a reply that they had gotten it. But the middle of January, I had heard nothing else form them, and I started getting antsy and sent them another email to make sure everything was okay. They said that they wouldn't be confirming positions until the middle of February. It's now the middle of February, and I am getting antsy again. It is less than a month from my graduation date, and I hoped to be in Japan soon after. I need to start thinking about plane tickets, a place to stay, and all kinds of stuff. But how am I supposed to do that if I don't even know when I am supposed to be there, or even if I am actually going to be teaching in Machida? It's really frustrating, especially when I should be concentrating on writing my two research papers. Ugh

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Pictures



The one above was taken with my Canon SLR, as was this one, and this one was taken with my medium format camera. It's a little light because we were in a hurry to get out of the dark room and messed up somehow. I think I know what went wrong though, so next time I will get it right.

Monday, February 16, 2004

Pictures!!!


Yuka finally taught me how to develop my own pictures! It was actually really easy. It sucks that I just now learned how to do it since I will be going to Japan so soon, but I will try to do it in Japan too. This means I will have to find an apartment with a good bathroom. I will probably start spending hours at a time in the bathroom... It was pretty easy. I was a little concerned at first because the room wasn't completely light proof, but my negatives turned out well, and there didn't seem to be any problems. My own dark room will probably be more light tight than this one though... We spent a lot of time preping the room before we even started developing the negatives, and I had some trouble trying to load the film onto the spool since you have to do it in complete darkness. But once it's in the tank, you can turn the regular lights on for the rest. After reading so many B&W photography sites, I thought that they way they did their chemicals was a little shady because they reused everything. According to the instruction sheet, for every 15 times the developer is used, you should increase the developing time by one minute. It seems a pretty inexact science, but it worked out.

Printing was actually more difficult that developing. You have to do test sheets to get the right exposure time, then check the contrast. If it doesn't have enough contrast, then you add a filter and try again. In the entire 4 hours we were in the dark room, we developed 2 rolls of film and two good prints. Once you've tested exposures and contrast on the paper, it should be easy to get the timing right on the actual paper, but the last print we tried to make, one taken by my new camera of Red Square, turned out bad even though we thought we had the exposure right. It's amazing how quick it was though. I think that after that 4 hour lesion, I can go there by myself and be able to do it fine. I think I will try to find some time next week to go back.

Pictures will be posted as soon as I get some scanned. Right now there are just two of my sister and I. The one of Western that didn't turn out so hot is neat looking anyway, but it is so light that it wont scan very well. Ciao!

Friday, February 13, 2004

One more thing. This site is number one for the search how can i find a professor to teach me how to use my supernatural powers. I don't know who searched for that, but it's number one.

Camera is mine!


I got my camera in the mail on Tuesday along with some chocolates from Ai (Really good berry cream cheese chocolates). He packaged it very well and upon first glance it appeared really nice like he said. Unfortunately, closer examination revealed that is was not exactly how he described it. (see previous link to the auction page) The lens was not perfect. Far from it. It was quite obvious just looking through the view finder lens that there was quite a bit of gunk and grime in there. But the worst was the taking lens (the one that exposes the film). When I opened the shutter, I immediately noticed splotches and stuff on one of the inner elements of the lens. Not good. This looked like fungus. (And more fungus) I sent the guy an email saying that it was not as described, and he asked me what I wanted to do. I said that I would rather not spend the money to send it back to him since I had paid for shipping once already, so I suggested that he refund all but $15 or so, and I would keep it and see if I can get it cleaned. Teri, my eBay guru, said it'd never work, but it was better. He refunded me $50!

Yesterday I bought a roll of film so I could see how bad the lens is. I've brought my Cannon with me today to use as a light meter so I know what settings to use for correct exposures. I am not confident with guestimating right now but I don't have a regular light meter. Hopefully this will turn out to be a cool $12 camera!

In other news this morning, I hate my history class. I skipped yesterday because I didn't have my bibliography, but the teacher skipped too, so I am going to try turning it in today. It will be a sucky paper. I have never written a good one for that class. History papers suck. unless you are a revisionist or can speak the language, you can't write anything new about Japanese history. Everyone has already written it. That's why I like the paper I am writing about Koreans in Japan. They still exist. People can ask them things. You can't ask old dead people things.

Thursday, February 12, 2004

iMovie Fest


Take a hop over to The iMovieFest Site and check out some of the movies that students submitted. I thought that "Trampled Under Foot" and "Lost" were the best of the student submitted movies, but the one about Ninjas and the ResTek movie, "Virus.exe" were good too. I was amazing what people could do with absolutely no experience. Watch out though. Even though none are longer than 5 minutes, they are 25 - 35mb each.

Sunday, February 08, 2004

6 Weeks!!!


Which means five weeks of class. I haven't even really gotten far into my papers yet. I have what feels like an entire library of books in my backpack, but I haven't read any of them yet. (I actually have every book relating to Koreans in Japan that the Western Library had in English, plus some that the UW library had). Every time I find time to read, I read something else. It's an interesting subject, but now that I have to read it, I don't want to. Cool how that works isn't it? I need some kind of study shot. I think Emily must take 5 of those a day. Maybe she can hook me up. :-)

I got my TESOL certification on Tuesday. Donna, the instructor who observed me, didn't tell me that I had passed. Instead, I received an email from the TESOL office telling me to come pick up my certificate. I still haven't had my meeting with Donna to see how I actually did. But AUAP is done now. The last day of class was last friday, so I can consolidate my working hours so that I have a big study hole between classes and work. Then I will be ablt to go home at 5 for dinner, and be back up at campus by 6:30 to study until midnight. Now if only I could get ahold of some of those injections of studiousness I would be set.

I still haven't actually received the camera I bought from ebay. They guy said that he shipped it tuesday, and since he charged me more when I asked to have it shipped by US Post rather than UPS, I assumed he shipped by 2 to 3 day. But since it's not here, he either sent it by 5 to 7 day and ripped me off, it got lost, or just ripped me off.

I got a call from Dansen yesterday from the free McDonalds phone that he uses, but since it was talking is a strange voice, it took up the first 6th of his three minute phone time for me to figure out who he was. It was still cool though. I will have to find me one of those when I get there.

Take a hop over to www.amychavez.com for a one dollar ebook version of a book she has written on Japan called "Guidebook to Japan: What the other guidebooks won't tell you" (everything from how to get to a naked festival to how to avoid Japanese gangsters). It's pretty good, and what I did to avoid studying all weekend.

Monday, February 02, 2004

Week 5

Well, It's busy time now. I had my TESOL teaching observation last thursday. I think it went okay, but the response that I got from Donna was kind of strange. She said, "I suppose you want to know if you passed, and right now I can say it looks like it, but I have to add up the numbers first." Doesn't it seem like if she thought I passed, that her numbers would add up to me passing? It's not like this is a standardized test. It is based solely on her opinion. So if her opinion is that I passed, it seems like she'd know that I passed. I have a meeting with her this Wednesday to talk about it.

It's starting to become busy time. I have to have my annotated bibliography for my 20 page paper turned in tomorrow. Next week I have to have another bibliography and detailed outline for my 10 page history paper in, but I haven't even started researching yet. I barely know what I am writing about. So to prepare for all this, I spent the entire weekend not watching the Super Bowl commercials, but shopping for this. Cool eh?