The setting is on UofT Campus, near midnight…

As I was getting a bit restless after having some 10pm coffee and having had stared at my computer for at least 10 hours, it was time for a late night walk – to enjoy the night, think a little, and just enjoy the city while it was not covered with humidity and pollution. Walking didn’t seem very efficient so I grabbed my bike and ventured off to the campus. It was really nice to just bike around while no one was around. I remembered the summer after second year when I ended up spending most of it working in Toronto, while living on campus. It was then when I too had time for these walks.

Eventually, as I was biking, I ended up in the alley in between of Lash Miller and McLennan Labs. There on the ground there was a big blue woman’s bag, and a textbook (I should’ve taken a picture!). The whole picture seemed a little suspicious to me, so I called the campus police who promptly arrive to check out the belongings. The guys were really friendly and equally surprised to find a random bag on the ground. As we chatted they found that the wallet inside was still full of money and the cellphone wasn’t stolen. But if the bag wasn’t stolen, what was going on?

Just when we were about to leave, somebody ran from around the corner! No, it wasn’t a robber. It was a little asian girl, dressed in a blouse and a skirt, wearing some sort of sandals, and looking a lot like a typical frosh, was running towards us. It turned out that she had a mental breakdown earlier that night and therefore she just dropped her bag and went for a run around campus. I don’t remember how the conversation went from there on, except for the police wondering if she actually understood that her bag with house keys, cell phone, a purse full of money could had been easily stolen. She didn’t seem to follow their logic.

I don’t want to be mean or stereotype, and perhaps the girl was so stressed out that indeed she didn’t realize what she was doing, but perhaps it’s just little girls with Gucci bags full of money  that aren’t used to understanding these things, maybe both.

On a slightly related note, I really want to share this picture – “Parenting Fails”. It amazes me that some parents would try to j-walk with a toddler when a traffic light is a minute away.

“According to the averages, you should apply to at least 5 jobs a day, and then maybe you would get a job at the end of three month…” – was nagging my step-mother. Really? You think so … hmm.. Interesting how she seems to believe in the statistics, but not in the basic concepts behind them.

I already did the statistical approach to applications once, when I applied to 18 different universities and ended up in the one that I applied to last. Not because I didn’t get into another ones, but because the last one was always the first choice among 16/18 schools on the list.

Now, 3 months is an ‘average’ statistic, which means some people out there spend 16 month, and some people spend 16 days waiting to get a job. So why the f_ck should I play safe and apply to all the jobs posted, left, right and centre? Sure I could waste my energy sending resumes to a bagillion of companies simply because I can, or I could approach this efficiently and only apply to places where I see myself being employed. Kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you? I wouldn’t unless there was a flaming truck speeding my way and about to run me over. Just like that, why should I do the ‘average’ amount of useless work, just to get the ‘average’ outcome. Gosh I hate it when people don’t make any sense!

I have this chinese tea pot that I love and cherish, but unfortunately cannot use. If I do, it will fall apart that very second. When I was fiddling with it yesterday, I noticed just how similar this tea pot is to the human heart, or our emotions. On the outside, if you look from the distance, the pot is completely normal. It looks good, it looks like it should serve its purpose, and you would not suspect that anything might be wrong. Go ahead, look at the picture below, I will wait…

If you look at the tea pot a little closer though, you will find that every inch of it is laced with cracks. The pot would’ve fallen apart already if it wasn’t for the glaze that firmly holds the pieces together. Add a little hot water, touch it a little too rough, and the pot will shatter in tiny little pieces, but be careful, handle it gently, and the pot will hold its shape for moths to come. (I am trying to be optimistic)

Do you see the similarity? Just like this pot, sometimes you can’t tell that a heart had been shattered, that somebody’s emotions are ready to spill. All you see is a tea pot and all it takes to break it is a little careless touch.

Great performances should have a lot of people in them, cost a lot of money, and be sold out months ahead of time, right? Wrong!

“How Coyote Was Swallowed by The Sandia Mountains” is a show organized by a small group of talented people, and yet it provides as much fun and entertainment as any other great show you might have seen. I went today and really enjoyed it.

The play was written as somebody’s thesis in drama and cognitive science. The story unfolds near Sandia Mountains, which are near Albuquerque, New Mexico. A woman moves into a house by the mountains to figure out the reasons why her older brother left home and then launched himself from the top of a cliff, never to return again. In the process she finds peace and learns something new about herself.

Tickets are $10 at the door.

Location: Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse: 79A St. George Street

Upcoming showtimes:

• Wednesday, July 7 at 7:30 PM
• Thursday, July 8 at 4:15 PM
• Friday, July 9 at 9:15 PM
• Saturday, July 10 at Noon

We all love Free, don’t we? Free food, free internet, free stuff – it always gets people’s attention and gets us excited. But, do you think there could be too much free? I am convinced there could be!

Today I spent most of my day emptying my closet and throwing out all things that I thought were not value-adding to my life. Among the usual school notes, receipts, and random paper junk, I ended up throwing pens, boxes, highlighters, stickers, screws, mints, labels … and a load of various promotional materials that were accumulated throughout the year. Bags filled with junk left my room never to return again. I should be satisfied right now, but not quite, and this makes me realize the downside of Free.

Free stuff is only good when it’s useful, but unfortunately my minds make me want free more than I should (read Dan Ariely’s “The Upside of Irrationality” if you don’t believe me). Falling into the trap of the price of zero, I accumulate all this stuff that was never wanted, if not for the free price that I paid for it. This is ridiculous, and yet it works!

I am sure everyone can find something in their room/house that doesn’t belong there, that needs to be thrown out, and yet not be able to toss it away. I know I, for example, have a stack of t-shirts in the closet that were given to me by UofT for volunteering my time. The shirts aren’t too bad, but they aren’t my first choice of clothing. Unfortunately, because I know that each shirt has an absolute dollar value, I cannot just throw the pile away, as those are perfectly normal shirts! As a result, I am somewhat forced (by my mind) to keep and to occasionally wear something that doesn’t give me the pleasure that some other pieces of clothing might.

This is a funny concept because if I were completely rational, then I would have acted as follows:

Since the shirts did not cost anything to purchase (but my time and effort, which I value at $100/hour minimum), then their value is $0 and therefore I would be loosing nothing by throwing them away.

However, because I am human, I get emotionally attached to these shirts for the “experience” value that they posses, and although I don’t like wearing them, I keep them around. It just doesn’t feel right to throw away something that came to me so easily and yet has both emotional and a monetary value, all at a cost of free.

I know I am not alone in behaving irrationally and that everyone has something they can’t throw away. What’s your story?

After some last minute ad-hoc planning, on the go shopping for grills, marshmallows and other randomness, my friends and I took off to the Lake Simcoe today  (View Larger Map) . The weather was fantastic – sunny, blue sky, light breath. It was even too hot for my liking, as  I spent most of my time either swimming, or hiking, or reading/sleeping in the shade.

As I was swimming around, I realized something – ever since many years ago I tried scuba diving, swimming in lakes became less pleasant than it had always been before. While diving that one time many years ago (in the ocean, mind you), I noticed how many creatures lived beneath on the ocean floor. Now, every time I swim in a lake I can’t help but to think about all the things that might or might not be swimming under me. It is silly, more so it is unnecessary to think about that, but I can’t force the thought out of my head! Most times I can relax and just swim (and today I did for two hours+), but the swim isn’t always as pleasant as it once used to be. Weird eh?

Recently I started reading some Russian literature, and more precisely Evgeney Onegen and some of the romantic poems by Pushkin. The writing is beautiful and it reads like a charm; I’ve been really enjoying it. However, I remember that when I was in school in Russia, the teachers used to ask us to read a lot of this literature, and better yet memorize a lot of it; I hated it then! I was probably 12 years old and it made absolutely no sense!

Back then, I knew it made no sense to me, and I knew I didn’t want to read or memorize all this stuff, however, the education system didn’t allow me to do otherwise and therefore my grades on literature-related items weren’t that great. Now thought, I read one of the poems and I remembered it. Why ? Because now it has relevance and meaning – I don’t have to try hard to remember it.

Think about it this way, if you have a choice to turn left or to turn right while driving, but the object of your interest is to the right, chances are you don’t need to convince yourself that going that way is the right choice. Exactly the same it is with my mind – I now like this poem and I don’t have to think too hard in order to recall the word. The crude English translation of the poem I read is below.

I loved you: love is, perhaps,
In my soul is not extinguished;
But let it not bother you anymore;
I do not want to cause you any sorrow.
I loved you silently, hopelessly,
Modesty and jealousy was stressed;
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,
As I wish God give you another love.

~Alexandr Pushkin

(russian version of the poem)

Anyways, my messed up mind is not the core of my thinking here. What amuses me even more is that however illogical and unproductive memorizing Pushkin was, nobody did anything about it! Some parents somewhere needed to get up and ask “why!”, some teacher needed to say “why not something else…”, but nobody did. I mean, I could understand the persistence if all the graduates of that school came out the smartest people on Earth, but that’s not nearly the case. Then why is that nobody ever questioned whether there was a better? What is it about people that stops us from asking “Why?” and taking an approach that’s not the same as others think it should be?

p.s. In all fairness, there are people out there who take innovative approaches to learning and living, but they are dime a dozen.

Thesis is over and therefore I no longer need this 20″ LCD monitor. It could be yours for just $140 or 7 equal payments of $20, all provided immediately upon your arrival to pick this thing up.

The monitor is good for school work, movies, ebooks, virtual desktop plants, and other media that you might find entertaining or painful, that’s whatever you’re into.

Cables are included and so is the original box. If you want to know more about this monitor, consult with HP by following this link.

On Wednesday I had a pleasure of watching “Onegin”, a ballet by The National Ballet of Canada, put together to the music of Tchaikovsky and based on the poem “Evgeniy Onegin” by Alexander Pushkin. The performance was wonderful! I loved it for the romance, for the dancing and the music. The dancing in particular was impressive, it was gentle, soft, tender, and filled with emotions. Even sitting on the 4th ring I could grasp the charm or the intensity of a moment. I also somewhat adored Xiao Nan Yu who performed the role of Tatiana that night. Her long legs and flawless motions were very appealing. Combined with soul-touching music the performance left an impression. At the end I felt it a little hard to swallow from all the intensity, but of course crying was not an option for a guy who took his mom to the theatre. I would love to watch this again sometimes.

This song is really catchy!

On the other hand, I just want a happy family. Being on a cover of Forbes would not be too bad, but the next month nobody would know who you are anymore … but your family will. right?