the blog of procrastination: 01/01/2004

the university system...

i'm a little frustrated at the way universities hire their professors.

as many of you heard, i have had a tremendous amout of frustration and grief over my new process control and dynamics professor. he is arrogant, inconsiderate, rude and overall just an asshole. i'm worried about two things with regards to this course: 1) i will not learn what i need to learn about process control, an extremely important topic to engineers 2) i will leave this course with a 60%.

there have been endless rumours about how brutal he is marking/preparing exams and midterms. he has no problem failing students. my problem is that, if i want to go to medicine, i can't screw up anything. i need to do well in everything, one bad mark really reflects badly.

i realize that universities are a business. they're in the business of generating funds/money. and the way they do that is by building their reputations through outstanding research. but they need to start recognizing (especially UofT) that undergraduate students are the largest population at most universities. TEACHING, really needs to start being of primary importance.

granted, i have been very VERY lucky with the undergraduate program i chose. i've had many professors and the majority of them have been fantastic. i don't think many artsies at UofT can say the same thing. but one bad apple can really spoil the bunch. so far, he's beein ruining the second semester of my third year. and i'm not happy about it.

posted by Ivan @ 2:53 PM

okay, it's finally time...

a strange day indeed i pick to update my blog, but at least it got done right?

my holiday were....interesting. i left for florida/bahamas on a very sour note, and i expected to have a fabulous vacation to make me forget it all. even though the days in florida were fantastic, you'll notice that there are very few pictures from the actual cruise. that's because i was very sick on the boat with the flu. fever, cough, runny nose. i even had a stomach flu, so i ate only about 1 meal during the whole 4 days. i missed tons of buffets and great food.

all in all, the vacation was not as relaxing as i would have hoped, but it was fun anyway.

note: there's tons of stuff here, all titled. i'm sure you're too lazy to read it all, so just find what's interesting from the titles.

notes about disney world

i enjoyed disney world quite a bit. but for completely different reasons than when i was 10. some of the new rides there are pretty spectacular. my personal favorite is the ride dinosaur, where you pretty much ride in this "time travel machine" (read:fancy cart) and see all these robotic dinosaurs. the atmosphere is really intense and the dinosaurs look pretty spectacular. they also take pictures of you while you're on the ride at the moment the T-Rex is really close and roaring at you. my mom and irene literally had their eyes completely shut, while ethel was drawing back in terror. hahaha, it was great.

animal kingdom was really great. just imagine a glorified zoo. there's a safari ride where you ride in a truck and see tons of different animals with no barrier between you and the animals. lions, tigers, elephants, rhinos, they were all there. pretty cool.

epcot center has the mission to mars ride where they simulate the forces you feel while on a spaceship going to space. that's a pretty cool ride too.

disney world is also a technical masterpiece. i realize this is the engineer in me talking, but it's spectacular how efficiently everything is designed. from the line-ups for the rides, to the parking lots everything was put somewhere and everything was done for a good reason. they had some impressive industrial engineers working for them.

captioning for pictures

from left to right: 1) here's me at magic kingdom. the classic disney shot. 2) here's a picture of a tiger at animal kingdom. it's not as cool cause the picture is small, but i love how amazing this shot is. it's as if the tiger is staring straight at you. 3) irene and her favorite disney character eeyore. 4) outside my favorite ride: dinosaur. 5) irene and i in a nice shot at epcot. 6) hahaha. this is irene and yvonne pretending we were on a roller coaster when in fact this ride was really really slow (and boring). 7) yvonne and i in front of finding nemo montage. 8) our cruise boat, the sovereign of the seas. 9) the family at epcot center. 10) the kids discussing strategy while playing a trivial pursuit quiz game against other people on the cruise.

vacation video!!!

my initial plan was to do a short video everyday on my trip. but this file only contains days 3,4 and 5 (disney world days). i stopped on day 5 because on day 6, when the cruise started, i got pretty sick. so click HERE if you want to download all my trip video. they're pretty amusing. for me at least.

right click above, press save target as. it's zipped so you gotta unzip the file. any standard windows media player should play it. tell me if it doesn't.

birthdays are sorta like valentines day... sorta...

beers from around the world, re-modded ps2, mp3/usb flash drive, dim sum, economics hmwk, amazing crab dinner, fried banana cheese cake. i've had a great day, but i feel as if something's missing. yeah i know, that's sad, what i can i say? i'm in a stage in my life where i feel something's missing and i can't say i'm 100% happy (which i can usually say). all part of the journey i guess. i'll get over it.

the mandatory school update...

although i'm very pleased that i kicked ass with my marks last semester, this semester is more brutal than ever. i DO get most thursdays off and every other tuesday off (which means every other week i have only 3 days of school), but i'm busier than last semester, if that's even possible. school's school.

the mandatory sports update...

my frustration with the leafs is slowly growing. it is true that we're missing half our teams, but embarrassing losses to all the top teams in the east (devils, sens and flyers) is make me weary. mogilny and nolan should help though. too bad they're not back for a couple of weeks.

i've noticed recently that Mats Sundin (for those few who don't know, the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs), is almost as much a politician as he is a hockey player. that's how important hockey is in Toronto. he needs to appear at charities, fundraisers etc... and he needs to talk to the media practically everyday. and just like a politician, he needs to say the right things and do the right things at his job. i must say that Mats is doing a fine job indeed.

Michelle Wie is simply amazing.

back tracking to christmas again...

the annual christmas party (this year at my house), was by far the most... unique... one yet. it was fun. highlights definately include wendy whistling rudolph the red nose reindeer and dustin's crazy piano note skills. the making of gifts were definately a nice touch. i fear i will run out of ideas really fast if we keep this up. my artistic skills only go so far.

here's a picture of some people at my house on new year's eve to celebrate christmas/new year's. notice the excessive amounts of yellow shirts. too bad you can't zoom in enough to read all them. i have to say, those were some awesome presents simon. props to you.

in conclusion...

okay, that update took a long time. but it wasn't as long as i thought it would take. updates should be more regular now that i have this giant one over with. thanks for reading!

posted by Ivan @ 11:28 PM

January 29, 2004

January 26, 2004

January 18, 2004

January 08, 2004

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