foda
yesterday was frustrating (to the point of tears) for four reasons.
1. The girl with the dragonlady mom who i had found to take my room for the school year found out that she was off the waiting list for 2nd year rez at mac. which is why she was taking inexplicably long (well.. not inexplicably anymore) to sign the mini-sublet agreement form I had written up and faxed to her in Taiwan. on top of this, they were arguing (though nicely, i must admit. i think they didn't want to hurt my feelings, but the mom kept whining and whining, and ugh she just didn't understand the concept of a deposit) that the $410 deposit was too expensive for having only made the agreement a few days ago. or something like that. even though that's what i had told them, and what was agreed upon in the house. but i was stuck in a corner since i hadn't gotten anything writte on paper, so technically, they didn't have to pay me anything. but then.. i wonder if that meant i could use their cheques since they didn't specify what they were meant for. So after lots of aggrivation on my part, and multiple calls from taiwan to canada to taiwan to canada to canada, we decided that Pei-Wen will help me find someone take the house for the school year and if we don't find someone by september 1st, I will return her cheques, and she will write me a cheque for $200. NO FAIR.
2. A while ago, someone accidentally bought a carton of milk that was non-lactose free. that is to say, regular milk. this would normally be no problem, but I'm the last one in the family who drinks non-lactose free and non-soy milk. lactose-free has a leathery aftertaste and looks bluish. soy-milk is only good hot and as a dessert. but i digress.. i drank this new bastard milk with the expiry date of July 07, to taste curdled goodness. NO FAIR, PARMALAIT!
3. We rented Matchstick Men. it started out slow but picked up nicely. I liked it. but the ending? NOT FAIR!!
4. Auntie Cerise dropped by to chat with my mom. they were sitting by the computer, and i was by myself watching a special about boobs on A&E. i'd wince everytime they'd say "breasts" because i saw cerise's reflection in the fireplace, twitch every time. but i didn't want to change the channel as if i were ashamed.. though i were. NO FAIR! just kidding. Cerise asked andrew, who was also at the computers, how his school year went as far as grades. andrew told her about how he placed 13th or a number around there, out of his whole class. After he was celebrated, Cerise asked my mom how I did. My mom told her i did "medium" with "some good marks.. some not as good..". then they watched me for a few seconds, with an unintentional side pony tail, wrapped in a blanket with only my head showing, watching a female bodybuilder flexing her massive chest and talking about breast implants. later, my mom asked if i heard what she said, and i said yes. then i started TEARING! (tearing? tear-ing..) andrew kept putting his eye right in front of mine (we only have one each) and asking if i wanted ice cream (70% of the stuff we say is ripped off from family guy), while my mom got all agitated and grabbing kleenex. i just wanted to watch some boobs! i was surprised at their reactions though. they were more reassuring than lecturing (the "take this as a lesson" speech). it seems like all my brothers are doing so well right now. mark is getting acceptances into grad schools, chris got into medicine, and andrew is ranking crazy high out of his classes. and i got two c's. i keep seeing those two stupid Cs on my grade report. they were so unnecessary. i don't feel jealous at all, but i do feel like i'm defective, that i'm not living up to my potential, that i'm the two stupid Cs in the family. it makes me so sad. i don't like when people try to tell me not to worry about the marks, because not worrying is how i got the marks in the first place. the worst, though, is when people tell me "well, there's much more than medicine. who cares about medicine?! this only matters if you want to go into medicine anyway.."
so anyway.
two days ago was a very eventful day.
.. hm.. worst worded sentence...EVER! (which reminds me. i want to "most relaxing classical CD...EVER!" i already have the "best classical CD...EVER!". and i really likes it.)
so. what happened on saturday? the plane crashed. the plane we fly in. my dad's plane. the one insured for 2 million dollars.
it didn't really crash, but it's more exciting to say it did.
andrew and phil (our flying instuctor..and the nicest guy...EVER!) were flying around the airport in this pattern called a circuit. i was watching from the car, waiting for my turn. i heard the engine quiet down a bit, so i figured they were practicing forced approaches, which is when you purposely idle the engine to simulate an engine failure, and glide to a landing. i glanced up a minute or two later, to see them on the last part of the circuit, and about 500 feet or so up. usually, at this point, the plane should be aimed straight down the runway, but our plane was still to the side. i watched as they did a quick turn and then touched down. i heard a slight "fump" but couldn't see them actually touch down since i was on the other side of the airfield, and there were a few parked planes in the way. i didn't realize anything was wrong until i noticed they hadn't moved to take off. suddenly i saw a guy on a four-wheeler zoom out from the hangar on a straight line to the plane. i got really worried at that point, so i stood on this old obsolete fire truck that we had parked beside. i still couldn't see the plane, so i started to consider all the things that could have happened. it's possible andrew or phil were hurt, which would explain the four-wheeler coming out so fast. but no ambulance came, so i guess that didn't happen. bill, another of phil's students, was flying solo at the time, and he kept going, so i could only guess that it was something minor. next i thought that maybe it wasn't a simulated forced approach, but a real one. in which case, i was sure they'd all be fine. eventually, after maybe 20 minutes, andrew and phill walked back. phil went to the radio room, and andrew came to tell me what happened.
they had a hard landing, and realized that the foot pedals were jiggling. so phil said that they must have popped the front wheel. which isn't really a big deal at all. they steered over to the grass runway and got out to survey the damage. (it turns out the guy on the four-wheeler is just kind of crazy and zoomed out on account of a flat tire). the front gear was totally ruined, it wasn't even straight anymore. the wheel was popped so badly that the metal rim had fallen off since they were basically driving with the metal rim on the asphalt. as phil inspected the front wheel, andrew went around the plane and saw the left wing. it was bent in the middle. it had bent so much that the huge wrinkles in the skin of the plane poked a hole in the front near the stall indicator. usually the wings tilt upwards at about a 30-40 degree angle. but from the middle of this wing onward, it was completely horizontal. the wrinkles/folds in the sheet metal were very dramatic. i guess what happened was that the tip tanks were full, and as such, with the hard fall, the tip tanks pulled the wing downward.
phil was really upset. we'd never seen his swear before. nor seen him so agitated. it was the first time in 25 years that anything like this had happened before. he felt so awful.
but what's strange is that phil said he's landed much harder than that before, but never had that much damage. the landing wasn't even hard enough to set off the emergency location transmitter, which sometimes sets itself off on normal landings.
i feel so bad for phil. poor guy.. he was really really upset and angry with himself. and remorseful. and so on.
so no flying for andrew, most likely. and i'll be taking lessons in a rented plane since i'm so close to finishing my license anyway.
phil said to tell our dad that he'd understand if he didn't want phil to teach us anymore. ahhh..i feel so bad. i wish we had said somethign to him, but we didn't know what to say.
i leave for hong kong tomorrow. i'll be back on the 10th. so if you're going to break into my house, break into it before then.
i kicked rosco by accident yesterday. i thought maybe i had killed him.
i feel like i've wasted a whole year.
STOOOOPPAD CEEEES!
i decided to drop cultural anthropology for macroeconomics.
i want to apply for another athlete's scholarship, but i need a reference. i dont' know who to ask. maybe katrina? but what if she says no!? aie.
i'm listening to sgt.pepper's lonely hearts club band (The song) and a line in it reminds me of one night last year when leah and i tried pot for the first time. i was tired anyway and i'm pretty sure i wasn't affected at all, since we tried so little, but leah insists that i was pretty high because i spent twenty minutes staring at the glossiness of the pictures on her wall, while fiddling with the same few strands of my hair. but i still think it's overrated and most of the time, people are overacting because they want to think they're high.
i'm not sure if i'll have internet access in HK. i want to spend as little time as possible on the laptops of my relatives, just because. so maybe no posts. but if i find my digital camera, you'll have lots of idiotic pictures, probably mostly of buttcracks. which reminds me: chris' university graduation was the first graduation where we didn't take a picture of a stranger's buttcrack. seriously, you wouldn't believe how many buttcracks are out there at graduations.
it's somewhere around 30 degrees celsius in HK right now. eyeuck.
i think hong kong means "Fragrant Port". i'll let you know what it smells like.
one of the first things we'll do when we get there is visit the graves of our ancestors. that is, my great-grandparents, and my mom's little sister who died when she was 8. the grave site is at "happy valley" and you can see it from the road. it's an entire hillside that's absolutlely COVERED in graves. so many graves. all packed together, so tightly you can't get to some of them.
poor phil..
he's such a nice guy.
:( :( :( :( :( :( :(
1. The girl with the dragonlady mom who i had found to take my room for the school year found out that she was off the waiting list for 2nd year rez at mac. which is why she was taking inexplicably long (well.. not inexplicably anymore) to sign the mini-sublet agreement form I had written up and faxed to her in Taiwan. on top of this, they were arguing (though nicely, i must admit. i think they didn't want to hurt my feelings, but the mom kept whining and whining, and ugh she just didn't understand the concept of a deposit) that the $410 deposit was too expensive for having only made the agreement a few days ago. or something like that. even though that's what i had told them, and what was agreed upon in the house. but i was stuck in a corner since i hadn't gotten anything writte on paper, so technically, they didn't have to pay me anything. but then.. i wonder if that meant i could use their cheques since they didn't specify what they were meant for. So after lots of aggrivation on my part, and multiple calls from taiwan to canada to taiwan to canada to canada, we decided that Pei-Wen will help me find someone take the house for the school year and if we don't find someone by september 1st, I will return her cheques, and she will write me a cheque for $200. NO FAIR.
2. A while ago, someone accidentally bought a carton of milk that was non-lactose free. that is to say, regular milk. this would normally be no problem, but I'm the last one in the family who drinks non-lactose free and non-soy milk. lactose-free has a leathery aftertaste and looks bluish. soy-milk is only good hot and as a dessert. but i digress.. i drank this new bastard milk with the expiry date of July 07, to taste curdled goodness. NO FAIR, PARMALAIT!
3. We rented Matchstick Men. it started out slow but picked up nicely. I liked it. but the ending? NOT FAIR!!
4. Auntie Cerise dropped by to chat with my mom. they were sitting by the computer, and i was by myself watching a special about boobs on A&E. i'd wince everytime they'd say "breasts" because i saw cerise's reflection in the fireplace, twitch every time. but i didn't want to change the channel as if i were ashamed.. though i were. NO FAIR! just kidding. Cerise asked andrew, who was also at the computers, how his school year went as far as grades. andrew told her about how he placed 13th or a number around there, out of his whole class. After he was celebrated, Cerise asked my mom how I did. My mom told her i did "medium" with "some good marks.. some not as good..". then they watched me for a few seconds, with an unintentional side pony tail, wrapped in a blanket with only my head showing, watching a female bodybuilder flexing her massive chest and talking about breast implants. later, my mom asked if i heard what she said, and i said yes. then i started TEARING! (tearing? tear-ing..) andrew kept putting his eye right in front of mine (we only have one each) and asking if i wanted ice cream (70% of the stuff we say is ripped off from family guy), while my mom got all agitated and grabbing kleenex. i just wanted to watch some boobs! i was surprised at their reactions though. they were more reassuring than lecturing (the "take this as a lesson" speech). it seems like all my brothers are doing so well right now. mark is getting acceptances into grad schools, chris got into medicine, and andrew is ranking crazy high out of his classes. and i got two c's. i keep seeing those two stupid Cs on my grade report. they were so unnecessary. i don't feel jealous at all, but i do feel like i'm defective, that i'm not living up to my potential, that i'm the two stupid Cs in the family. it makes me so sad. i don't like when people try to tell me not to worry about the marks, because not worrying is how i got the marks in the first place. the worst, though, is when people tell me "well, there's much more than medicine. who cares about medicine?! this only matters if you want to go into medicine anyway.."
so anyway.
two days ago was a very eventful day.
.. hm.. worst worded sentence...EVER! (which reminds me. i want to "most relaxing classical CD...EVER!" i already have the "best classical CD...EVER!". and i really likes it.)
so. what happened on saturday? the plane crashed. the plane we fly in. my dad's plane. the one insured for 2 million dollars.
it didn't really crash, but it's more exciting to say it did.
andrew and phil (our flying instuctor..and the nicest guy...EVER!) were flying around the airport in this pattern called a circuit. i was watching from the car, waiting for my turn. i heard the engine quiet down a bit, so i figured they were practicing forced approaches, which is when you purposely idle the engine to simulate an engine failure, and glide to a landing. i glanced up a minute or two later, to see them on the last part of the circuit, and about 500 feet or so up. usually, at this point, the plane should be aimed straight down the runway, but our plane was still to the side. i watched as they did a quick turn and then touched down. i heard a slight "fump" but couldn't see them actually touch down since i was on the other side of the airfield, and there were a few parked planes in the way. i didn't realize anything was wrong until i noticed they hadn't moved to take off. suddenly i saw a guy on a four-wheeler zoom out from the hangar on a straight line to the plane. i got really worried at that point, so i stood on this old obsolete fire truck that we had parked beside. i still couldn't see the plane, so i started to consider all the things that could have happened. it's possible andrew or phil were hurt, which would explain the four-wheeler coming out so fast. but no ambulance came, so i guess that didn't happen. bill, another of phil's students, was flying solo at the time, and he kept going, so i could only guess that it was something minor. next i thought that maybe it wasn't a simulated forced approach, but a real one. in which case, i was sure they'd all be fine. eventually, after maybe 20 minutes, andrew and phill walked back. phil went to the radio room, and andrew came to tell me what happened.
they had a hard landing, and realized that the foot pedals were jiggling. so phil said that they must have popped the front wheel. which isn't really a big deal at all. they steered over to the grass runway and got out to survey the damage. (it turns out the guy on the four-wheeler is just kind of crazy and zoomed out on account of a flat tire). the front gear was totally ruined, it wasn't even straight anymore. the wheel was popped so badly that the metal rim had fallen off since they were basically driving with the metal rim on the asphalt. as phil inspected the front wheel, andrew went around the plane and saw the left wing. it was bent in the middle. it had bent so much that the huge wrinkles in the skin of the plane poked a hole in the front near the stall indicator. usually the wings tilt upwards at about a 30-40 degree angle. but from the middle of this wing onward, it was completely horizontal. the wrinkles/folds in the sheet metal were very dramatic. i guess what happened was that the tip tanks were full, and as such, with the hard fall, the tip tanks pulled the wing downward.
phil was really upset. we'd never seen his swear before. nor seen him so agitated. it was the first time in 25 years that anything like this had happened before. he felt so awful.
but what's strange is that phil said he's landed much harder than that before, but never had that much damage. the landing wasn't even hard enough to set off the emergency location transmitter, which sometimes sets itself off on normal landings.
i feel so bad for phil. poor guy.. he was really really upset and angry with himself. and remorseful. and so on.
so no flying for andrew, most likely. and i'll be taking lessons in a rented plane since i'm so close to finishing my license anyway.
phil said to tell our dad that he'd understand if he didn't want phil to teach us anymore. ahhh..i feel so bad. i wish we had said somethign to him, but we didn't know what to say.
i leave for hong kong tomorrow. i'll be back on the 10th. so if you're going to break into my house, break into it before then.
i kicked rosco by accident yesterday. i thought maybe i had killed him.
i feel like i've wasted a whole year.
STOOOOPPAD CEEEES!
i decided to drop cultural anthropology for macroeconomics.
i want to apply for another athlete's scholarship, but i need a reference. i dont' know who to ask. maybe katrina? but what if she says no!? aie.
i'm listening to sgt.pepper's lonely hearts club band (The song) and a line in it reminds me of one night last year when leah and i tried pot for the first time. i was tired anyway and i'm pretty sure i wasn't affected at all, since we tried so little, but leah insists that i was pretty high because i spent twenty minutes staring at the glossiness of the pictures on her wall, while fiddling with the same few strands of my hair. but i still think it's overrated and most of the time, people are overacting because they want to think they're high.
i'm not sure if i'll have internet access in HK. i want to spend as little time as possible on the laptops of my relatives, just because. so maybe no posts. but if i find my digital camera, you'll have lots of idiotic pictures, probably mostly of buttcracks. which reminds me: chris' university graduation was the first graduation where we didn't take a picture of a stranger's buttcrack. seriously, you wouldn't believe how many buttcracks are out there at graduations.
it's somewhere around 30 degrees celsius in HK right now. eyeuck.
i think hong kong means "Fragrant Port". i'll let you know what it smells like.
one of the first things we'll do when we get there is visit the graves of our ancestors. that is, my great-grandparents, and my mom's little sister who died when she was 8. the grave site is at "happy valley" and you can see it from the road. it's an entire hillside that's absolutlely COVERED in graves. so many graves. all packed together, so tightly you can't get to some of them.
poor phil..
he's such a nice guy.
:( :( :( :( :( :( :(