HAH!

I swear I have the most hilarious friends sometimes…

Imagine this–a Filipino dude with longish straight hair and crooked teeth speaking in a Shrek’s Three-Little-Pigs-accent.

And he can say anything with that accent. Anything. And it cracks me up each time. I was practically wiping my eyes at one point.

I can’t even imitate it. I just have to remember it and I start giggling again.

Not only that. Today we were walking in Carrefour and we passed by the fish section. And you know how fish can stink, right? Well, Mikey just takes a deep whiff–I mean DEEP! And he scowls and goes, “I hate the smell of fish” and walks quickly away from the area.

Why in God’s name did he go out of his way to properly inhale the stinkin’ stench in the first place?! It was more than a little obvious we were walking next to fish, and that it was going to smell weird. But he just goes and fills his lungs up with it and then glares disgustedly and walks away.

My eyes are watering with mirth just thinking about it. I have no idea if anyone will find this as hilarious as I do.

It’s 1:43 in the morning, cut me some slack.

Boredom — Thy Name is SRC

I’m bored.

Don’t you know I’m bored?

I am.

Never been more bored in my life. (Except maybe during my Children’s Literature class in Dawson)

Even though I have my trusty laptop with Internet access. And headphones so I can listen to music. Or watch the many videos I have on this thing.

But I don’t want to do that right now. (Though I am listening to music while I’m typing this up). I want to talk to someone–do a lot of engaging in simple mindless jabber. Or at least be with people. But this place is empty. (Save for some SRC members that I couldn’t care less about). My friends are either in class or off-campus. And I have another hour and fifteen minutes until my next class. And everyone on my MSN list seems to be offline. To top it all off, I’ve been free since 8:30 a.m. and it’s now 1:22 in the afternoon. My brain is rotting and leaking out of my nose right now.

The good thing is that I was with my friends for a while, but then they had to go do whatever it is they had to do. I got so antsy from sitting around reading that I went for a walk around campus. It’s pretty cold outside but it was a refreshing change of pace…even though I ran into absolutely no one I knew enough to chat with. Ugh…

I wish I had a car. Or something.

If I knew the guys who went to Landmark were going there in the first place I would have tagged along…at least I would have something to do. Le sigh.

Disorganization, Anyone?

You’d think that the faculty in charge of student registration would be able to easily tell what courses a student did and didn’t take. I mean, they record it, don’t they? Don’t they?!

I guess I just don’t understand how I could saunter off to college at 8:30 in the morning, stand in line for hours (literally–for some reason they don’t have a little thing called ‘online registration’. My only theory is that the college IT people are retarded…no offense to the mentally challenged), pay QR 10,150 (roughly $2,780), and get a timetable that has three (out of five!) courses that I’ve already taken.

Side note: If there were too many parentheses in that paragraph, I offer my apologies. They follow me around a lot, I can’t seem to get rid of them. Just ask my good buddy Lebne–she shares the same affliction. You ought to see our conversations on MSN–it’s nothing less than mind-boggling. We often resort to very violent means to get rid of them. They’re a plague on our typing lives, goddammit! Anyways…

Yeah, so that’s what happens. The only courses that they got right were Accounting II and Marketing II. The other three are HR Managment II (which I just freaking took!) and Business Communication, which was my independent study course, and–get this–Productivity Tools I!!! That’s the one I fought to get a challenge exam for and passed! That was way in the beginning of the term too, I can’t believe they didn’t even record that in my file. And the thing is, they take these mistakes as a matter of course. The lady who gave me my schedule cheerily gave me some add/drop forms and told me to come back on Sunday to fix up my schedule. (Please, allow me to inform you that Sunday’s the first day of classes and I don’t have a proper schedule…*sighs*)

Incompetency makes me twitchy. But at least they’re friendly Canadian incompetents. Guess I can’t ask for better in that area.

Random Thoughts of the Day

I met up with my friends yesterday at college since I volunteered to help out on Registration Day for new students. I hadn’t seen them in a bit of a while so it was good to be around them again. The Student Representative Council had organized a Greet’n Eat where they had a free breakfast set out where new students could eat and meet with the members of the SRC, so they knew who was representing them and what kinds of activities the college had to offer. My job was to snap photos of the event.

It didn’t go exactly as planned. As far as I could see, there weren’t really a lot of new students. Besides, there were no classes and the event started at 8:00 and finished at 12:00 or 1:00…and I doubted a lot of people would want to get up early just to go to college, even if there was a free breakfast involved. Moreover there were lots of arguments over the music that was playing–either it was too ‘hip’ or too slow or too stupid and annoying. (What does “too hip” even mean? It was dance music played at a reasonable volume…what’s wrong with that?)

There were also booths set up, some representing clubs (like art and music) while others represented different services the college offered. There was hardly anyone interested in any of them so often-times there was no one behind the booths. (It’s hard to sit behind a booth for long with no one to talk to). At one point all of my friends and I were gathered around the art one, just talking and fooling around. I did take many photos to pass the time, though, so at least I did what I said I would do. Besides, despite the fact that the turnout of students was less than satisfactory, I had fun. There was also a band, of sorts, that played a few songs. (One guitarist and one singer/keyboardist). They were all right–it was enjoyable enough. I tried to take pictures that showed the band up close because the amount of people in the audience was laughable.

After the band was through, people were asked to come onstage and show off any talent they had. (The horror!!!) Needless to say, there were few volunteers. There was this one dude who put on a short beatboxing performance–he was pretty good. Not the best I ever heard, but not terrible. Then Sarah and Amber (the singer/keyboardist with the band) sang an a capella version of Save Tonight by Eagle Eye Cherry together. I have to admit, I admire people who can just get up and do something onstage without being prepared for it firsthand. I wouldn’t really have the guts. As outspoken and sarcastic asI am–I admit to being pretty shy too. In any case, Sarah and Amber were the last people I saw onstage because after that I sat down on the floor behind the booth with my friends to blab and argue about when and where we were going to go out and eat. (We decided on the food court in Villagio). We also vehemently shared our annoyance at some dude who went up to recite Arabic poetry. The man had no rhythm at all! It was ear shattering.

The highlight of the day though, was my collection of Random Thoughts. When there was nothing going on, I grabbed an application form, scrawled the date and titled it ‘Random Thoughts of the Day’. Then I proceeded to ask my friends to give me a random thought. I got a fair share of ‘huh?” looks but ended up with an interesting collection. Some people were more generous than others with their thoughts during my collection spree, so I grouped them together:

Woot, Saudi Arabia, You Really Do Know How to Set an Example…

I (quite shamefully) admit that I didn’t know about this before, but now that I do, I feel strongly enough to participate in it. Thus, really, I’m not supposed to be blogging today. I know that my blog (or journal, whatever you want to call it) says nothing of particular importance, but I feel that it is my right to have one and my right to say whatever the hell I want in it…whether it’s mind-bending, random or mundane.

My point? This:

Fouad Al-Farhan is a Saudi Arabian blogger who has been detained by the Saudi police for 27 days (so far) because of his blogging. He hasn’t even been charged with anything yet. He is the first Saudi Arabian blogger to post under his real name and be outspoken about reforms and the injustice that goes on in his home country. He is a husband and a father of two little kids. You can find out more information about Fouad here and here. There’s a petition you can sign as well.

Let’s hope he gets out soon…

Happy New Year Folks!

I haven’t been on here in ages…so I thought I’d post this little year-in-review thing that I pinched from Sparklymoon. It’s kinda long, so I put it under a cut.