One Last Time...

I finally post, even though I've got one more assignment, and one more lecture to go.

It's sad knowing that it's just about over. It hardly seems real, almost like when I got here. I've just about finished, I've got a week or two of hard work ahead of me, and then I'm outta here.

It's my life at the moment, even though at the back of my mind I always knew I was going home, it's still managed to creep up on me.

That's not to say that I wont be glad when I get home. In fact, I can't wait to get home. At the same time though, I still want to be here, with all the friends I've met.

Most of all, I don't want to forget the people I've met, and the good times I've had. Part of the reason why I'm keeping this blog, and part of the reason I'm so trigger happy with my camera.

I don't want to forget a single detail, a single person, but when I look back, I realise how many people I no longer can picture, or really remember, from Primary School, from High school, people that I've known fairly well, yet have faded away to the edges of my memory.

There are too many people in the world, all over the world. Far too many of which I'd like to remember, and see, and interact with regularly.

Anyhow. It's been a while since I've told you what I've been doing, so I'm going to have to go back a long way. Hmm...

So it's been very cold lately. We had snow (well, I called it snow, everyone else called it slush - but there was stuff falling from the sky that was falling slower than rain) for all of about 10 minutes a couple of nights ago, that was cool.

It's also very, very cold in the mornings. The other day there was ice on the pavement, and many people on bicycles slipped as they were going around corners. I almost stacked it walking up a hill. Since then, they've brought in this cool little tractor thing that spreads salt all over the footpaths in the morning, to melt the ice. Clever =)

Incidentally, that photo at the start of the post was taken at 10am. It's still very cold then too =P

I've been doing a lot of work lately unfortunately. My ambitions for my ray tracer weren't quite met, but here's what I produced:

With no reflections:


With reflections and shading and stuff:


My version of that original picture I showed you:

And refraction, which didn't quite work too well:
And here's one which is very wrong, but looks kinda cool =P

It would've been cool to do some other stuff, but I didn't have time (refraction took me a very long time - it just didn't want to work for me).

I've also had a bunch of other assignments to do, and now I've got to study for exams.

So, last Friday night (a week ago today), I went out for all you can eat Sushi with a bunch of people from class. We went after 9:30, so we had all you can eat for $15.95 (excluding tax and tip).

Our first order was 9 serves of Tuna and Salmon Sashimi, which the manager asked us to confirm, twice, before only giving us 5 of each. We had about 5 or 6 rounds, and we walked away definitely getting our money's worth (but still not falling-over-and-dying-full).

Saturday we had a house laser tag game. We went to Richmond (read: Asian Centre) for it, which took us more than an hour by two busses and a bit of walking. It was a lot of fun though, very cool seeing the lasers shoot through the air and stuff. We split up into two team, and it was just a "shoot as many people as you can" game. The guy that won dominated unbelievably. In the first game he doubled the next person's score. In the second game, he quadrupled it.

That's an pwning if I ever saw one.

Why was he so good? His little brother had had his birthday there for the past 8 years.

Saturday night was the Winter formal. Quite honestly, a waste of time. Many people queued up for ages to get a ticket. They only gave away 50 each day for each session - there was a 4:30 session and a 6:30 session. Of course, everyone wanted the 6:30 tickets (who has a formal dinner at 4:30? =s). On the first day, I got there just before 5 (when they started giving them away), and there were more than 100 people infront of me. On the second day, I got there at 4:30, and just got a ticket (although we were originally about 10th in line, but there was a lot of pushing in and stuff going on).

Apparently later in the week, there were people lining up for 2 hours. The irony? On Saturday (the day of the formal) there were still tickets left.

As for the formal itself, it was a fairly sad affair. It was in our normal dining hall (which, admittedly is fairly nice), and it was probably nicer than usual. They'd dressed the place up, with decorations (we even had a tablecloth =o), and stuff. We waited outside for a while (of course), before getting inside, picking up a tray like we normally do (how classy), getting our food, sitting down, eating like normal, listened to about 10 minutes worth of speeches and awards, got up, and left.

Total time spent there was probably 45 minutes, maybe an hour at best. Totally not worth it, but we did get to get dressed up, so I got to wear my suit which I'd lugged all the way here.

Of course, being in Mack House, naturally, when in a suit, we play Super Smash Brothers:


Since Saturday, it's been all work, and little sleep. After I made my last post, I slept for 4 hours, the next two nights were 6 hours. I've got a bit lazy though, procrastinated a fair bit over the last couple of days, but it's all good.

Wednesday and Thursday night were the traditional Mack Serenades, which was quite funny to watch. It's a tradition that a bunch of Mack guys go around to all the other houses, and sing and dance in a "make the ladies swoon" sort of way. There were 7 guys in total (me not being one of them of course), but I did go and watch them 7 times (each show was about 20 minutes).

There was a lot of bad singing and acting going on, but it was lots of fun to watch. I've got the whole video if anyone is interested (but it probably won't be very exciting for anyone who doesn't actually know the performers).

Anyhow, that brings me to about now. Last day of classes, exams start on Wednesday, not sure what to think (much like it was when I got here). I'll be really sad to leave this place, but I'll be extremely happy once I get home too.

Ooops... and Happy Birthday to Calvin too. Even though his birthday is technically over by his time, it's still his birthday my time, so it's all good =P