Shiiiinerama

This post marks a new beginning. The fulfillment of one of the goals I had in mind when I started this blog. This post is officially the first post which I have used in order to procrastinate my way away from study. I'm guessing it'll be happening a lot from now on....

I'm happier now =P Doing more stuff with people, and generally having less time to think about how lonely I am (which, technically means I'm not lonely because I'm with other people... whatever).

I'm pretty decided on doing the Theory of Computation course, but might go to the other lectures, just because it seems really interesting. I'm sure I'll get bored of it though =P Final final decision doesn't have to be made until next Monday or Tuesday though, so I'll leave it for the time being. Choosing that course also means that on Mondays and Fridays I'll have two lectures: one at 8am and one and 4pm. That's a long, long break hopefully I'll do some study in. Or try to cram assignments into. One of the two.

So I left you people last when I was gonna start my assignments (didn't happen) and do capture the president. I met some new people at dinner, and we talked for a bit, and subsequently missed the rules of capture the president. After finding out the rules, I dawdled for a bit, before deciding to go to my room and at least put on a top of the colour of my team. On the way out I dragged another guy out of his room to follow me, who didn't want to play, and, as I wasn't particularly keen either, we just watched it unfold.

The game is played as capture the flag, except the 'main' flag is a person. Basically there's a large field (the entire housing area, completely with houses and stuff in the way), which is divided down the middle. If you are on 'your' side, you are safe. However, if you are on the opposition side, if you are tagged, you go to jail. You are in jail until someone saves you (I think they needed to get to the jail and do something - I never saw it), or there's a "Jail Break," which is announced over the speakers.

If you are tagged you must be escorted to jail by the person who tagged you, and they can only tag one person at a time. This means that in a two-on-one situation, you're going to get someone through.

The goal of the game is to bring back the president (worth three points) or one of a few 'minor' flags (traffic cones) back to the centre base. Of course, these flags are on the opposition side, so it's hard to get to them. This, of course leads to quite a chaotic setting, with people running everywhere, dodging around each other and even some tactics involved. All in all, a pretty fun game.

Unfortunately, slightly dangerous too, with all the concrete pillars, gardens, steps and buildings in the way. And even more unfortunately, the game was ended slightly prematurely by this very fact. First major injury that I heard of was one that I saw very close to after it happened. Some guy was chasing some dude, and he ran into a building. His finger was bleeding pretty bad, and it looked broken - from what I could see. The window that he ran into was also broken (but not shattered).

The one that ended the game was pretty shocking though. Well, from what I've heard. One story was that a guy tried to jump a step, screwed up, got his foot caught on the step and went face-first into a wall. Thus teeth missing, broken collarbone, broken arms, not pretty. The second story is slightly less worse. Apparently some dude ran into a wall, and knocked himself out.

Regardless, there were emergency vehicles on the premises. Numerous, in fact. 2 ambulances, a fire truck (????) and a police car. Either way, not a good way to end the game.

That brings me to Friday. I did more laundry. Tried to dry my clothes in the dryer (it took two cycles), went to classes, went to the library to look up a book or two. Managed to forget about lunch until I was on my way to my 1 o'clock class, all sorts of fun things.

From the library - see, I did go inside :P

The evening was a 'legendary' barbeque (which wasn't really that good), but with a (fairly famous) live band on stage. All their songs sounded a bit same-y, but the last two songs were fairly good, and partially redeemed them in my eyes. I was going to go ice-skating after that. When I got there however, it turns out that they were out of skates, and hence I had to give up on that idea. Bubble-tea was the go instead, and I spent an hour or two chatting with new people, which was pretty fun. Hopefully I will get to go ice-skating while I'm here.


And that brings me to today. Shinerama day. Shinerama is a Canadian-wide event in which people go to their local city, and shine shoes for donations towards Cystic Fibrosis research. Of course, noone actually shines shoes. Instead we all hit the town in our designated street corners and do basically anything to get money. My group didn't do anything too spectacular. Someone had a trumpet, but it's not particularly good for solo performance on a street. Another one had a guitar and played that and sung. She was actually pretty good.

But mostly we just asked people for money. It's interesting how people respond when you ask them. The question was generally "Do you have any change to support Cystic Fibrosis research?" or "Would you like to donate money to find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis?" Many people just ignored us. Some people said "sorry, I don't have anything at the moment." Some people went with "Sorry, not at the moment, maybe on the way back," which I thought was a pretty good line. We also got a few "No"s to the second question. Which I think is a bit harsh, but oh well.


All in all we raised $300 in about 4 hours. The other group from my house (and partner house) made $500 doing a street-rhythm thing, which would've been heaps of fun (I chose the wrong group apparently).

It was, however, pretty fun, although very exhausting. Something about people walking through your corridor at 8:15 in the morning with a megaphone shouting "GOOD MORNING FOURTH FLOOR. It is time get up if you want to participate in Shinerama. WHICH YOU ALL DO." Apparently not many people did, as of the 100+ people in my house, only 4 'regular' members and 3 of the advisers turned out. Good fun though.

Crashed back to my room at 4 and fell asleep. Went for dinner, went for a bit of a walk after dinner, and now I'm back in my room, procrastinating by writing a blog post =D I should get onto that study sometime soon though. Also, any suggestions for something to do on my assignment would be awesome. I need to find an application of AI in a specific case, and research (a little) what it needs to do its job, how it does it, etc. I need two of them. At the moment I've got one - Deep Blue (the chess-playing computer). I'm blanking on another one though. Suggestions, once again, would be awesome.

Tomorrow I'm going to Tenth Avenue Church - hopefully I'll find my way there alright. Should be good. Now it's 11:40pm, and I guess I'd better do a little bit of work before I head to bed.

Bye =)