I heart robots

Hi! Well, I did as Claire said and finally busted out my big, quality, awesome camera. When I got it out and held it and looked through the viewfinder I got his huge wave of "OMG, WHY DIDN'T I DO THIS EARLIER I LOVE THIS SO MUCH" feeling. But then I attached my favorite lens, the 50mm f1.4 that used to be my dad's, and the focus mechanism didn't work. This was the problem we had had with it before, and we had sent it in to Canon to get it fixed. Soooo, really disappointed that that happened again. But after messing with it for a while trying to fix it, I sadly took it off and got out my macro lens, which I love almost as much. It was like midnight and all dark out and the only lens that would really be good for outdoor stuff at that hour would be the 50mm to get some bitchin city light bokeh, and I would rather not go on a walk at night with my expensive camera out anyway, so I stayed in my room and took portrait shots of my weird toys.


That was a couple days ago. Yesterday was Tuesday and the ROM was free for students, so between my linguistics quiz and sociology class, I went with my friend Naufil, who lives on the second floor. He insisted on me taking touristy photos of him at every possible opportunity.


We didn't have that much time, so we kind of just went quickly through everything since he had never been there before. (Lame, since he's a second year and has been living right next to it for so long.) But it was fun and I saw a neat little video about meteorites. Huh! The dinosaurs reminded me of when I went to the ROM with my cousin Owen. I don't know why, but that just kept going through my mind when I was there and I was all, "wahhh I miss Owen" even though I JUST saw him last weekend. He is pretty cool. And for a 6-year-old, he knows a lot about chemistry. As he told me, it would take hours to go over it all.


Naufil quotes of the day:

Erin: Aw it's like a prehistoric chickadee!
Naufil: Erin, it's a bird.
E: ...What do you think a chickadee is?
N: Oh, I thought you said chicken.
E: ....Uh... chickens are birds too....
N: Well yeah, but not the REAL kind.
E: .........

N: Wowww, that photo's from 1673!!
E: I wonder why it's in colour.
N (extremely indignant): So what, are you saying there were no colour cameras in 1673?!

E: You bitch a lot.
N: Yeah, but at least I'm not like, mean, like you. Like, I don't just go, oh hey, those are bad shoes.

(Talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls)
N: I thought they were like, dead sea creatures.
E: What?! No!
N: Well then why do they call them the DEAD Sea Scrolls?


Pretty crystal! And that's the story of my trip to the ROM and my broken lens.

Shawarma & TV

This is super old news, but for some reason I never got around to watching Blur's music video for their song Coffee & TV. I don't know why I never did, since I knew it had milk cartons in it and I LOVE MILK CARTONS. Well I finally did watch it, and it's awesome! Um I don't think it will let me embed it here since it's copyrighted or whatever, but you should go watch it.

I spent most of this weekend with my mom's side of the family. We got together to scatter my grampa's ashes. It was nice to see my cousins, and I got to drive them around in a golf cart thing. I went to a cool espresso bar called Z'Espresso on Bloor St with my mom while it was raining a lot. I had a coupon for a free latte from the U of T timetable book, and I got a Nutella truffle thing too. Observe:





On Saturday night I went back to Vic and studied with Rifqi. I have a big Arabic term test on Wednesday and a linguistics quiz on Tuesday. So we studied. While everyone else partied. But at around 2:30am we decided to go out to get something to eat, since in Toronto there are more things open 24 hours than WinCo and Shari's. First we went by this pet store Rifqi knew about, to look in the window and see if they had goldfish, since he wants some for his room. But it was just a pet boutique, not a pet store. They had mostly doggy jackets and jewel-encrusted food dishes. Fail. So we went to a shawarma place on Yonge street. When I first got here everyone was so surprised that I had never had shawarma before. There is so much Arabic culture here. I don't remember the name of the place, but in this picture I took it says "Best Shawarma Doner." Sooo I'm not sure if it's actually called that or if it's a typo and it's supposed to say "Best Shawarma Diner" or what.


So we hung about there for a bit and then left with our food to go find somewhere to sit down. We settled on the steps outside of Starbucks.


Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.


Some pigeons started gathering around us. Rifqi is scared of pigeons and we were disturbed when one started eating a piece of chicken.


There was like, twice that many when we left.

I miss you guys. :( But I'm having a good time here too. Last night we watched Dazed and Confused and Pulp Fiction in the common room. Now I have to go to linguistics. And memorize the IPA alphabet and some charts by tomorrow.

Learning is Fun!

I went to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) today with Rifqi and Jeihan (see photo), since it's free for students on Tuesdays. The special thing until November is that the Dead Sea Scrolls are there, and I really wanted to go see them. I had to pay $6 since it's only general admission that's free (for regular people it would have been $28! HA!), but it was very VERY worth it. I might even go again next week. Rifqi and Jeihan are cheap and don't care about learning and culture and all that, so they went and looked at butterflies and dinosaurs. I spent almost two hours looking through all the stuff about the history and culture of ancient Israel and all the super old stuff they had out, and then finally the actual scrolls, but I still felt kind of rushed since I had to be out of there in time to go to my linguistics tutorial. (My tutorial TA is like a real-life jpmetz!) I could have spent all day in there! I would have really liked to have had more time. But I can always go back next week!
I love having the ROM two minutes away from my building, especially now that I know about the free Tuesdays thing. I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside but when we got out I took some quality photos of a tour bus and one of me and Rifqi. And some squirrels in the quad. Those black squirrels are EVERYWHERE. There are some gray ones too. But really, you can look around at any time and there will be literally three or four running around. Last night I was walking back to my room and I saw the hugest raccoon ever eating out of a garbage can. There were three of them but one was HUGE. It was like a husky.

I need to work on balancing out my study habits. On Wednesday last week I studied Arabic for 6 hours and then the next day I did 7 hours. Then the next 2 days I did nothing. :/

I went and played pool at the Cat's Eye (Vic pub type thing) with Naufil tonight, like we do a lot. I'm actually getting pretty good now! I beat him twice and he beat me three or four times. When we left people starting playing Super Smash Bros and it made me miss Ian. I wanted to play but I had to go do school stuff. >:[

What should I be for Halloween? What are you guys being? I have nooo idea. Apparently there's somewhere in Kensington Market selling cheap costumes so I guess I'll check that out. I want to go there soon anyways. Kensington is really close by and it's this neighborhood of vintage and indie and weird shops and cafes, and it's a bit hipster but very awesome.

In sociology today my prof told us that almost 50% of Toronto has something other than English or French for their first language. I thought that was cool! I always hear people speaking different languages on the street, a lot of Italian and Chinese and Urdu and stuff I don't recognize. But it is a bit unfortunate when you get a professor with a hard-to-understand accent.

I really want to see the movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape! I don't even know what it's about but I know it made Claire cry. And I think Johnny Depp is in it. I also want to see Weird Science. That kid from The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, Anthony Michael Hall, is in it. But I looked him up and he's real creepy looking now. :( But Weird Science was made in the 80's so it's okay. Did you know the jock from The Breakfast Club, Emilio Estevez, is Charlie Sheen's brother?? Hunh! And Charlie Sheen's real name is Carlos Irwin Estevez! No way! I'm pretty sure I wrote about this in my letter to Marinna but now it's surprising all over again.

Eyyyyy

Hi! I'm starting a blog. Because I felt like it. And because I wanted to show you these pictures, but I didn't want to post them on Facebook. Yay!

Here's some slightly blurry/grainy photos of my room. I'm still getting used to my new little camera.

My side:


Close-up of my cubby hole thing that holds my earrings and headbands, belts, etc:

My desk:

I love the built-in shelves:

This is our disgusting, non-working "fireplace":

And we can't even decorate the mantel, because these stupid tall shelves were built right on top for some reason:

Molly's side and my side:

Outside Upper Burwash:

South House!


Here's my across-the-hall neighbor Rifqi, looking scared:

Here's a delightfully odd photo of me, taken by Rifqi in his room:


I took this blurry picture while walking back from soc in Con Hall (MEAN GIRLS) because I thought University College (U of T is divided into 7 colleges) looked pretty:


I took this for Claire Fro while I was in J-Town. Look! Cowpiss in bottle AND can form!


These two were during Nuit Blanche, which is this art night thing that happens every year in Paris and Toronto:



Hooray, photos!