blogg! blogg!

Ah, finally finished with my frigging, bloody taxes. i had to do 2 tax forms. one for quebec and one for canada!!!!!! took me 4 hours! Canadian taxes are due the 30st (somebody told me 31st, but i wasn't fooled. there is no 31st), and thankfully, I am not as big as a procrastinator as I thought I was. I was actually done on the 20th, but mailed it off today due to way too much work, and not enuff sleep (by my account. people think 6-7 hours is enuff, but not me. plus, i'm not a day person). and the lady at the post office... man, she was working at the pace of "night of the living dead." there were only 2 people in front of me and that took forever! but, this isn't the first time i've seen her at work. i think she always work at this pace. not fast enough to get your brains. at least not for a long while, but eventually, she'll get to you! munch.. munch.. munch...... hmmm, i'm getting hungry.

Another crappy weather day. Yesterday it was all rainy and I didn't feel like going out. Today I had to come out becuase the cells need feeding, but it was still cloudy. Sometimes, I think they take long to eat than I do. But, at least I can say I did a little bit of work. I was trying to do my taxes yesterday, but failed. I even called the governement for help. hehe. Of course they tell me to refer to the website, which I checked out and ask "what on earth...?"

before i got here, i passed by this dude who was asking for money on the streets to feed his kid. i've seen him several times already since the Christmas season. Sad tho. I do live in a sorta rich neighborhood. Makes sense they would ask everyone around. Maybe I don't look like a kid anymore. oh well. whatever. hmm... don't they get welfare? i hear that as long as you have an address you can get welfare. he doesn't look too weak anyway. lots of energy.

i should go buy some food. i'm down to pasta, potatoes, carrots, and a bit of broccoli left. then there is the whole lot of sauces (relish, ketchup, mustard, salad dressing, mayonaise).

My time has been a bit staggered and today I actually found out about it. While it may still be the 14th yesterday, today was the 16th. My 12 hour displacement (caused by my, I'm sure, accidental push of a button on my cell phone) led me to be late for my 9:30 AM rendez-vous. Man, I felt bad for making 3 others wait (2 were my advisors and one from a different school down the hill). For a while, I thought I have arrived to the future, where newpapers were claiming the 16th, while I was certain it had just turned 15th. Fortunately, I was only about 15 minutes late. Then it was typing, typing, typing, the whole day. Finished two sort of report-like objects, which I delived by courriel before 5 PM hit (15 minutes before), with time to go to the boucherie for lunch. Take out. I had salmon with god knows what salads. I closed my eyes and picked 3 outta the bunch to choose from. The place is own by Austrians, so I can actually throw around a few German words for the fun of it.

Few updates on my site... back to geocities... the following has been updated:
wish list, french, CV, tissue culture (in graduate studies), and links..... and of course my journal will be updated regularly.

Today is the day before our Easter break begins (4 day break woohoo), and as I was reading my articles, I hear a bunch of noise (screaming, drumming, and trumpeting -- very bad trumpeting). Naturally, I thought it was a class watching a movie. But, the noise got louder... and Louder... and LOUDER... and curiosity got the better of me. I opened the door of my office, and there was a group of students parading down the hallways, banging on something (pots and pans???), dressed like a marching band, and making as much noise as possible. I didn't know what to make of it, so I ran into another lab asking has the world gone mad. After the noise subsided and the band had disappeared into another hallway, I saw the secretary of biomedical engineer in the hallway as i was headed for my office again. the hallways were now littered with those packing popcorns, and she goes "did you do all this?" but, it was a joke. she knew what was going on. students are just happy that the trimester has come to an end (at least the classes). though, exams are at the end of april. strange that classes end already. One month to study????????? no freaking way!!!!!!!!!!!!! Canadians have it good here.

So, yesterday we went to the sugar shack. There were like 40 some odd people going from our school (all masters and phd students). We had a lot of fun while in the bus -- singing, taking pictures, and just yaking the nite away. We left around 5pm, so you can imagine that we did get into traffic. Our tickets told us it was a 30 minute ride. Nope, more like 2 hours. On the way, we started getting restless... but when we were close, there was this clearance pole (for traveling under bridges) that we didn't clear. We dented the bus!!!! Can you belive that? We saw an indentation going into the bus roof. It was a rainy day, and when we got there we were quite hungry. We had to mess around for 30 minutes before we were let into the eating room.

There was this huge moose head hung from the roof in the eating room, which i didn't notice until close to the end. First thing that was served was the bread. Gobble... gobble... gobble... with maple syrup of course. Then "Christ's ears" (or fried lard more like it -- it was actually good), some red beets (which were very good), pickles, salsa (funny taste), ham, eggs, potatoe. I ate everything! For dessert, some sugar pie (holy cow, never have i ate something so sweet), some other fried thingy. We didn't get a "grandfather" (which I still don't know what it is, but legend has it, its good). then maple syrup on snow, outside. Actually I think i had a bowl of maple syrup. everyting was drenched in it (auto drenched of course, they don't do it for you). even my milk and coffee, i couldn't resist putting some syrup on it.

We had signed up for a horse drawn cart ride, but we wanted to take pictures first. Haha, we missed the second ride!!! doh! but we caught the third one, in the nice sprinkle, grey sky. car/ horse route. Took maybe 10-15 minutes. Experienced a three-point horse turn on the streets. The horseys were named Fanny and Kim. both according to my friend, were pregnant. Wonder which is the stallion!! Supposedly, there were wild animals in the woods, but i didn't see any. Maybe we didn't go deep enuff. Didn't see any maple-syrup leaking trees either. it was quite dark.

after that, danced like mad. well, didn't really know how to dance, but more like, jumped up and down like mad hehe. it was fun. but had to leave by 10pm for those of us who want to catch the metro back home. back at home at 11:45. perfect, waited for the first metro, second one -- perfect timing, and bus -- perfect timing -- just about to take off. but, we noticed something interesting. the bus was no longer dented. geez, did the bus driver fix it while we were eating and dancing? or did she yoink another bus? and we didn't take the same route back (no more clearance poles).

so, it was fun. would do it again if it were sunny. geez, for 5 bucks (ride to and back, food, and cart ride), it was all worth it. :-)