My worthless two-cents

I don't know a lot about U.S. Politics.
The little I do know comes from Harv's passionate speeches on his love for Obama and how he plans on marrying him (i added the latter in myself) and sitting in front of the TV at lunch when the only programs that won't make me rip my hair out is CNN. Sometimes when I see something interesting, I'd go and google it and read about the stuff.

At any rate, I have no problems with Palin's candidacy as VP. At first I believed it was a smart move on the republicans to choose a woman to run with McCain now that Clinton's out of the picture. And as much as I like Obama > McCain, McCain really isn't so bad (too bad you can't make voice changes).

However, it suddenly came across me today when someone mentioned McCain's age (which I previously knew about already but didn't pay much attention) that if McCain happens to die on the job, Palin would act as the President. I can't really judge whether she would be a good VP, but I do know that she is not qualified to be the president.

At a time like this, with the war and the financial crises and God knows what the U.S. has been getting themselves into, they simply can't afford to let that happen.

Let's be pragmatic here. I hope when people are voting, they realize the age+Palin combination problem...

Beautiful inside and out

A lot of guys assert that they like girls who "take care of themselves," meaning that they dress nice, put on make up, and accessorize. And come on, honestly, who hasn't seen a girl change 180 degrees with and without makeup on? There's a Chinese saying that goes "世上只有懶女人沒有醜女人," which translates to "in this world, there are only lazy women, there are no ugly women." In other words, you are only unattractive if you are too lazy to take care of your looks. As far as cliches go, I'm going to have to say that it is WRONG. Here's another cliche, "if you don't cultivate your inner beauty, no matter how much time you spend on your looks, you are still ugly." As far as this cliche goes, i'm going to completely agree.

Case-in-point. There is this girl I know who does not leave the house without make up. She has a lot of nice clothes and she is always dressed up. Lots of shoes, lots of makeup, lots of clothes. She can be attractive when she's all made up but a lot of guys make fun of her and call her fat. I used to defend her because she is just bigger than your average chubby Asian girl, there's a long way to go before you get to fat. But after I got to know her better, she became more and more unattractive to me. I'm at the point where I have begun to describe her inner and outer appearance with all kinds of things that should not be said out loud.

You know, no matter how unattractive you are, if you are a good person with all kinds of inner beauty, no one will insult you out loud because they will respect you. Please take some time to at least TRY to do some introspection and develop some inner beauty. All those cakes of makeup on your face isn't doing it for anyone. I'm sure we've all got some work to do with our own personality, I admit myself that I still have a long way to go; but if you continue to spend all your time on attempting to make yourself look nice, you are just a waste of space because there are people out there who, despite do not have wonderful personalities, at least undeniably provide occasional eye candy for people naturally. If people are still making fun of you when you are made up all the time, you have a lot of work to do.

They should invent a thing called human compost so that the people who are wasting our precious resource in the environment with no contribution to society whatsoever at least have a purpose in life. Just lie there until you become fertilizer. Thank you.

</rant>

Oh, That Yellow Bag!

I brought my lovely yellow bag on this trip but wherever we went, the bag kept stealing the thunder. It wasn't until half way through the trip when we went through the pics did we realize that the bag is EVERYWHERE. We had to exclude it from most pictures thereon after, though sometimes it manages to still steal a scene or two.

AYCW Sushi Buffet

Some time in the last year or so I learned a new acronym called AYCE, standing for All You Can Eat, most of the time referring to Sushi Buffet while sometimes it can be applied to Korean BBQ.

Normally AYCE sushi charges around $15 for lunch and $20 for dinner, give and take a few dollars. Obviously, for the most part, it's never really "worth it" to go to AYCE or else these places would not be making money.

In order to cut down waste, since when things are free people tend to take more than they can finish, AYCE restaurants will threaten to charge you if you have too much leftover at your table. However, in a relatively busy but unorganized restaurant as such Ye's Sushi in Waterloo, where they have almost no competition, wasting seems to be almost inevitable.

For most people, you don't go to AYCE unless you are really hungry. If you are really hungry, you want to eat right away. You start with ordering a lot of food and a lot of the time, the food will take a long time to come or it will not come at all - but you are never really sure which is which.

So, for example, you order the first round and it takes about 20 minutes for about half of the food to get to your table. Realizing how long the service takes and how hungry you are, you decide that you should order the second round before your first round is even served. By the time half of the food from the second round is served, you realize that some of the stuff you ordered in the first round isn't here yet. Are they just really late or should we order again? If you ask the servers, they won't know and if you really want the food and you are still feeling hungry (in spite of the vast amount of food still sitting at your table from first and second round), you will order again. Sometimes the food will come twice. Sometimes by the time the food does come, you are already full.

Last week, when we went to Ye's sushi with Adam's sister and cousin, I ordered a dish of squid towards the end of our meal because I still had room to eat. It came after we finished eating our ice cream, resulting in us cramming the food down so we dont get charged.

Today was even more ridiculous. Thirteen really hungry students ordering mass amount of food that came really slowly and half of the food didn't come at all for the first three rounds. At one point, one of Adam's friends got really fed up and ordered 20 tempura shrimps and like 5 rolls because he didnt get to eat half of the stuff he wanted to eat. However, when you order in that quantity, the order gets backlogged. Our side of the big table was also ordering tempura in smaller amounts, like 5-8, so it kept coming and we kept passing it to their side of the table. At the end of the meal, when the restaurant was not as busy, all the rolls and tempuras arrived. Needless to say, we were beyond full. A lot of the food was crammed and split open on plates and inside sauces to make it look like we finished the food. On top of which, lunch buffets don't serve sashimi so to eat salmon sashimi, you have to order to salmon sushi (fish on top of rice) and the guys would just eat whats on the top and leave the rice around.

Watching that much food get wasted is really really frustrating. All You Can Eat suddenly turned to All You Can Waste. I don't approve of the way Adam's friend ordered all that food, but it is not soley his fault. AYCE sushi restaurants really should

1. Organize their system better so that people know whether or not the food is coming (they have machines in Vancouver and Japan to keep these things in order).
2. Find a way to cut cost without using rice as a means to keep people from eating sashimi. Just because rice is cheaper than other types of food does not mean it should be wasted in this manner.

And lesson learned

• Don't order in bulks when the restaurant is busy. It's hard when you have a big table and everyone is hungry; but perhaps the alternative is to give them a bunch of orders consecutively in smaller amounts so that the food will (hopefully) come faster.

I think I'm done with AYCE sushis after today anyway, cramming all the food made me feel really really sick. And I'm going to avoid eating at Ye's from now on, just because the restaurant's system causes so much waste.

Red and white

I'm so beyond annoyed at the moment, I am on the verge of crying.
Three years ago, I received in the mail a brand new red Sony Vaio. The first red computer I have ever seen. The colour, known as raspberry, is one of the pretties colours possible for any gadget.

Over the last three years, I have kept the laptop in pristine condition. I don't think I've ever kept anything with so much care in my life. Those who know me know that I am really careless with all my stuff, but with my computer, three years without a single scratch.

Just now, I came upstairs, I found five huge scratches on it.
I honestly have no idea what gave it the scratches.

To think of it, the computer really means a lot to me, on so many different levels..
For one, it's one fo the most expensive presents I have ever received. When is there going to be a time when I get to receive a two thousand dollar surprise out of nowhere?
For two, it's my first brand new laptop. Even though for itss price, the specs arent the greatest and now the batteries broken, it was still mine.
For three, for what its worth, if anything was good about the computer, it is its looks. Never have I seen another computer that's comparable to its looks. I have looked at a ton of other laptops out there since, but I have yet seen one that looks as good as this one.
And last, its the first item that i have kept in such good condition for so long.

Now it's marked.
i don't even know how.
one of the scratches stands out so much you can't ignore it.
The white contrasting against the red.
When I complain about my computer from now on, I can longer say that at least it's pretty.
yeah
there you go