Celebration

Got back from a satisfying but tiring vacation. Mainly, it was a theme park rush with a bit of shopping in between. I don't think I've ever needed to line up so long for rides. Each attraction would take at least 30 mins, although it's usually around an hour or more. Especially in Universal Studios where their lines are usually outside and without consistent cooling fans, it was pretty hard to bear. It also seemed like Camp Week or something as there were groups of identically dressed kids everywhere, taking up big chunks of queue lines at a time. Everything from kayak camp to children's camp to bible camp.


The airport/airplane part of the trip was surprisingly smooth. No delays, security issues, etc. It actually went relatively fast, and the lineups were pretty short.


Epcot was generally a good experience, with the exception of Soarin', a new ride. That ride took over two hours worth of standing in line, half of the time on sloped surface, and the ride itself was terrible. The pretext of the ride was that you would "soar through the skies on a hang glider". Thus I was under the impression it would be a roller coaster similar to Tomb Raider at Wonderland. It..wasn't. In any case, never again will I go near that ride.


The new ride at Animal Kingdom is pretty decent. It's a pretty good idea to get the FastPass. However overall the best theme park is still Islands of Adventure.

Finally, see the nice fireworks from Epcot:

Haha...I don't remember hearing that random scream at the time...

I never got around to finishing that book, which I'll do very soon.

Friendly Fire

My course selection is in capable hands and now I'm off to Florida for a week on a chartered flight. Maybe I'll get hot towels on the flight which I've never had before (on a flight). Let's hope there isn't a nutcase in the airport/plane who tries to spoil that book for me.

This post is the bom

Excerpt obtained from Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss about Shaw's recommendation to remove the second 'b' in 'bomb':

I can scribble the word "bomb" barely legibly 18 times in one minute and "bom" 24 times, saving 25 per cent per minute by dropping the superfluous b. In the British Commonwealth, on which the sun never sets, and in the United States of North America, there are always millions of people continually writing, writing, writing... Those who are writing are losing time at the rate of 131,400 X x per annum...
George Bernard Shaw on Language, 1965

And this was in 1965. Can you even imagine how much time has been lost since then? (Apparently 131,400 X x...) Although, it does seem to take less time to type 'b' than to write it, so maybe our losses have been alleviated...

Edit: Changed the "About" section slightly.

In a good way

:-(

Aw man, missed my obligatory Canada Day post.

Making a timetable for university is going really badly as so many of the half courses have only one set of times for lectures, making the placement of labs at a reasonable time nearly impossible. The organic chem course had the brilliant idea of making us choose one of two lab times: 8:30am-12pm or 6:30pm-10pm. Brilliant.

Ryuu no PUREETO

I've been playing Pokémon Diamond recently, and I actually managed to stumble upon two shiny Pokémon, which are basically just extremely rare (somewhere along the lines of 1 in 8,192 chance in each wild encounter) and have different colouring than normal.




I found my first, which was a shiny Onix, at Iron Island. It was really tricky to get because it was in a double battle where I was forced to fight along with Riley and at first I was really annoyed because I thought you weren't allowed to catch Pokémon in double battles. (Which is true, but if one of them faints and the other is left you can catch it) On the first turn we basically knocked both the Onix and Golbat into red health, and I think the Onix summoned a Sandstorm. Unfortunately I had to knock out Riley's Lucario which would have otherwise tried to faint the Onix, and the sandstorm took care of the Golbat. Then I proceeded to put it to sleep and it was caught.

EDIT: I didn't realise it was so unclear in the pictures but basically the Onix is greenish-brown coloured.



Just recently I found a shiny Staravia (but now a Staraptor as pictured) in the Trophy Garden while trying to get wild Eevee.

I wonder if the encounter rate has been increased? Otherwise I'm just extremely lucky. Although, the shiny state doesn't really affect status or anything as far as I know.

Yam Cake

First year is...done? Nice. And now's it's time to move out.
Having an almost four month summer vacation is different, and the year DID seem like it went by faster. Now it's time to slow way down and relax a tiny bit in the summer. :P

Digging through old receipts I found out that I actually went to a lot of movies this year, at least to me. I don't usually go to movies too often, but being able to walk to the closest movie theatre really helps :D I'm definitely going to miss being downtown and able to walk to so many places nearby.

Sep 11: Borat
Oct 02: The Illusionist
Oct 23: The Prestige
Nov 02: Manufactured Landscapes
Jan 15: Pan's Labyrinth
Mar 15: 300 IMAX
May 05: Spiderman 3 IMAX

PS: OMG THE DUSTBALLS THEY'RE EVERYWHERE.

Manufactured Landscapes

Alphabet City