I actually sat there watching the House go through each MP as they announced each person's name while waiting for my dinner to do its thang.

It looks like we will have an election late January, so let the campaigning begin!

There has already been an announcement tonight from Olivia Chow that she is resigning her post as Toronto councillor to run, yet again, for federal MP.

Michael Ignatieff, who is an author of terribly boring books, made a similar announcement and will running under the Liberal banner-- which is interesting because he seems quite Conservative.

There apparently are also rumours that Raymond Cho (Scarborough-Rouge River), and Denzil Minnan-Wong (Don Valley East) will also be running for federal candidacy. Cho, like Chow, was a federal candidate in the 2005 election, however, I am uncertain under which banner, if any, he will persue.

The key themes I will be keeping particular attention include:

• Cities and the New Deal


• Health


• Climate Change and the Environment


• Immigration and Related Services


• Economic Development and Trade

I'm hopping on the blog bandwagon again.

Inspired my Ramanan's great blog, I too wanted to start to expand my blog network to better connect with my digital world. (Did that actually make sense?)

Allow me to introduce my link log. This will not be news to those who subscribe to my RSS, since they've already discovered some weird test links that I've created earlier this week.

I still have to fiddle around with the backend coding, but the bare essentials have been implemented. Special kudos to Chris for referring me to the linklog code, and also to Matt of hitormiss.org for providing the instructions and actual scripts.

The overall themes of my linklog will obviously encompass what I feel are noteworthy, with special emphasis on planning and development issues; public transit; and Canadian politics.

I feel the need to blog.

I have dedicated this week to my good friend GIS. This last lab is pretty crazy because there is only one page direction, which in summary, pretty much says "Here's all the data, just go with it."

This is pretty crazy, as I'm used to being spoon-fed on how to proceed with these lab assignments.

So here I am looking at what's data is available, and I found it quite freaky on the wealth of data that is available out there. In Statistics Canada, you can actually get geospatial information on almost anything.

Anything.

Anyways, I managed to find geographically where the single people are. This data is cut down even further into:

• Never been married
• Divorced
• Widowed
• Common Law
• Common Law with Children

The list goes on!

For this research project, we are bounded by the Township of Woolwich, which kind of sucks. Nevertheless, I'm thinking of doing a locational analysis on where a bar should be optimally located in the Elmira. Haha.

Talk about useful reserach! I wonder if my professor will approve.

Or, I could do a queery [sic] on who's gay in Elmira, and maybe hang out there more often.

Update: Unfortunately, there is no such information from Statscan. I guess no lingering around in neighbourhoods for me. Tee hee.

It was unofficially foreign film bonanza this past weekend.

C.R.A.Z.Y. is film about a typical middle-class suburban family in Quebec through the course of the Province's Quiet Revolution .

Zac Beaulieu is the second youngest of five brothers. Through the course of his childhood into his adulthood, he struggled to handle his own sexual identity with obviously conflicting interest with his rather traditional father and his Catholic family upbringing.

The film also showcases some of the great classic rock , including Pink Floyd, the Stones, and David Bowie, as well as the pot-craze culture of the 1970s.

What is most evident and intriguing about this film is that it demonstrates the accelerated pace of secularism that is so prevalent particularly in the province of Quebec.

At first, it seemed like your typical "gay coming of age story." However, I found this movie truly identified with me not only because I did struggle with getting a hold of my sexual identity with the conflicting interests of what is expected in the many variables of Canadian suburban living, from attending and abiding the rules of the church, to the need to confirm and make your parents proud.

Since I was young, my mother always told me that "whenever you run into trouble, just pray and let Baby Jesus know, and he will answer." And throughout my childhood and adolescence, I (arguably naively) continued to listen to my mother and let "Baby Jesus" know how I just wanted to be like the others. It was just so captivating to witness Zac encounter an almost parallel storyline.

Also, there is a few quite emotional parts in the movie that really demonstrate the love and bond between Zac and his mother. That intense sense of mother-child intuition that was captured so wonderfully.

In short, three things: (1) C.R.A.Z.Y. is quite the delight, (2) Quebec makes great movies, and (3) Us English Canada should really learn and try to grasp.

C.R.A.Z.Y. - [imdb.com]
Canada submits C.R.A.Z.Y. to Oscar - [indies.blognewschannel.com]

There is a frenzy of spam from all you planners in my Hotmail these past days, so here I am succumbing to peer pressure.

Welcome to the 2005 edition of getting to know your friends. What you are supposed to do is copy (not forward) this entire e-mail and paste it onto a new e-mail that you'll send. Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then send this to a whole bunch of people including the person who sent it to you. Put your name in the subject line. The theory is that you will learn a lot of little things about your friends, if you did not know them already.

1. What time did you get up this morning?
10:30am (Was late to work)

2. Diamonds or pearls?
Neither. Everyone who asks for these items will be receiving jewelry from Wal-Mart.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
C.R.A.Z.Y. with Eugene and Bow. Review to follow.

4. What is your favourite TV show?
Nothing really appeals to me lately. CBC Newsworld with Peter Mansbridge.

5. What did you have for breakfast?
Chinese bakery buns fresh from Markham.

6. What is your middle name?
Kitchener-Waterloo, I mean, Ka-Wei Damian. In that order.

7. What is your favourite cuisine?
If it's edible, I'll eat it. But Chinese is up there in the ranks. Also, Shima's Persian rice, that's always a delight.

8. What foods do you dislike?
See above.

9. Your favourite Potato chip?
Ms. Vickies Jalapino

10. What is your favourite CD at the moment?
Westlife - Face to Face. Haha.

11. What kind of car do you drive?
My feet. Does the Sentra count?

12. Favourite sandwich?
BLT and Cheese on a bagel bun, please.

13. What characteristics do you despise?
Bad work ethics. Cockiness. Unwilling to try new things.

14. Favourite item of clothing?
Track Jackets. Perfect 'cuase it's so versatile.

15. Where in the world, on vacation, would you go?
To Kansas, to see the wizard.

16. What color is your bathroom?
In rez? Ivory. At home? Ivory.

17. Favourite brand of clothing?
I suppose AE occupies the most room in my closet, but not really exacly my favourite.
Remember boys and girls: Don't submit to corporate propaganda. Haha.

18. Where would you want to retire to?
Vancouver. Or maybe stick around in the T-Dot and buy a cottage? Oh baby.

19. Favourite time of day?
Anytime that is not getting-up time.

20. Where were you born?
Hong Kong la.

21. Favourite sport to watch?
Does WWE Wrestling count? Maybe Ping Pong. Maybe "Boys Gone Wild."
I have to say, I still love baseball.

22. Who do you least expect to send this back?
Me. Cuz I can't believe I'm doing this.

23. Person you expect to send it back first?
I don't expect anyone to.

24. What laundry detergent do you use?
Sunlight

25. Coke or Pepsi?
Coffee

26. Are you a morning person or night owl?
I'm neither. I like to sleep in, but also likes to sleep early.
I just like sleep.

27. What size shoe do you wear?
9

28. Do you own any pets?
His name is Samosa. Yep that's it. He's a cute pet.

29. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with everyone?
I totally deserve bragging rights!
I GOT THE PLANNING CO-OP WORK REPORT AWARD!
I haven't won anything in so long!
I get a picture with the Dean tomorrow. What should I wear?

30. What did you want to be when you were young?
A firefighter. Yep, that's happening.

31. Favourite Candy Bar?
My roommate's Indian sweets.

32. What is your best childhood memory?
Meeting Al Leiter, the former Jays pitcher. He asked me if I saw the game prior to the autograph session, and I said 'yes'. He asked me who won, and I replied 'the Jays'. I was like in Grade 2.

He rocks, and I lub him. I should find his baseball card.

33. What are the different jobs you have had in your life?
Filing bitch - Mom's Work.
Crew Trainer - McDonalds.
Bookseller - Chapters.
Office Bitch - Planning Department.
Transit Infrastructure Analyst - Queen's Park.
Office Bitch (Again)- Planning Department.

34. What color underwear are you wearing?
Transparent.

35. Nicknames:
Most recently: "Yo, Girl."

36. Piercing?
Cock.

37. Eye color?
Dazzling Dark Brown.

38. Ever been to Africa?
Nope.

39. Ever been toilet papering?
Save the environment.

40. Love someone so much it made you cry?
Nope. I'm heartless that way.

41. Been in a car accident?
Yes. Daddy driving along the 427.

42. Croutons or bacon bits?
BOth.

43. Favourite day of the week?
Friday

44. Favourite restaurant?
Hard to say. See Question 7.
In Waterloo? Shandiz.
In Toronto? Summer at Margaritas

45. Favourite flower?
Tulips. Lots of them.

46. Favourite ice cream?
Green Tea.

47. Disney or Warner Brothers?
CBC. Warner I guess.

48. Favourite fast food restaurant?
Tim Hortons. Go (sort of) Canada.

49. What color is your bedroom carpet?
Ivory again.

50. How many times did you fail your driver's test?
Once for my G. Damn you Aurora.

51. Before this one, from whom did you get your last e-mail?
Mr. Shawn Chow. Which is also survey spam.

52. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
It's all about budgeting.

53. What do you do most often when you are bored?
Eat. See a movie. Spank the monkey.

54. Bedtime?
Very difficult to say as a student.

55. Who are you most curious about their responses to this questionnaire?
Beats me.

56. Last person you went to dinner with?
Golden Mango party with Shawn, Shima, Martina, Paolo and Greg.

58. What are you listening to right now?
Sounds of the Planning ladies talking.

59. What is your favourite colour?
It's hard to say, because it varies depending on the sitution.
Generally. Refer to colour codes: Trendy Green #CCFF99, Indigo #330099.

60. Lake, Ocean or River?
They are all wonderful. River.

61. How many tattoos do you have?
Zero.

62. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Egg

63. How many people are you sending this Email to?
None. Just this blog. But feel free to do it, and remember to send it to me.

64. Time you finished this e-mail?
2:11 pm

You can always rely on Shawn to provide us a dose of his euroness. This review is sort of spoiler-ish.

Cinema Paradiso foreign film about a small Italian village dated back in during the war, and specifically about the compelling friendship between, Salvatore, a young boy with a love for cinema, and Alfredo, the neighbourhood theatre projectionist.

Of course, Salvatore has a love interest in this film, which included a very convicing on-screen kiss. Shima, Shawn and I agree that it's hard to find a tasteful, convincing, and not-overly-sexual kiss, and this really gave it to me.

By the way, the girl, Elena, really looked like Kimmy Gibbler from Full House, but sweet.

Anyways, the love interest was only secondary to the dominant plot between Sal and Alfredo. I was seriously quite moved by the development of great friendship- and even almost familial father-son love- between these two characters. The film followed through Salvatore's bond with Alfredo from his days as a young child, through this adolescence, and even up to the times well into his adulthood.

There were many teary moments in this film- but not overly and unnecessariy sentimental like many 'chick flicks' of today. It was enough to really illustrate a great sense of realism that I really became compelled to. I almost felt like I wanted to give Alfredo a really big hug, just because he expressed so much love to this boy.

Plus, little Salavatore was just so cute. Everytime I hear his yell "Alfredo," I swear, I'm going to cry.

(...also when I see cream sauce in my pasta.)

Neuvo Cinema Paradiso (1989) - [imdb.com]

I had the luxury this week, to fix up some small issues with the website. If you care to know, here's a briefing:

Dirfication and Dashification
All archives files are now in Smart URLs. Smart URLs aims to use real text to name blog entry files, replace possible spaces into underscores, and convert all text approrpriately to lower case. As I found out through my geek research this process in the web world is known as to dirify.

Words these days are getting pretty ridiculous.

I'm not sure what's the etymology of "dirify." I'm assuming it's either from the word "directory" or "dirty." Maybe someone out there knows.

I've encountered dirifying from my years of working with Movable Type, but I just never did it because I personally don't like underscore URLs. Well, I don't like underscore anything, and I prefer to use dashes to signify spaces.

I managed to find a MT Dirifyplus plugin, and now I'm good to go. I'd like to call it "dashify."

You heard it here first folks. Dashify.

No more layer gaps
I noticed quite a long time ago that my page has been loading with this irritating gap in Firefox and Safari browsers between the top banner and the body elements, as well as the body elements and the footer. Surprisingly enough, it was fine in Internet Explorer all this time. Anyways, it was pissing the hell out of me, and now it's finally fixed.

Wordpress Vs. Movable Type
I was feeling quite ambitious tonight, and I installed Wordpress into the webpage. But after a quite a bit of work on it, I found myself still attached to Movable Type. I'm not sure if it is because I'm just not enjoying having to familiarize new applications, but I find that the layout customizations are really annoyingly difficult.

I think Wordpress is better for pre-formatted layouts, and not for implementing layouts from scratch. If you're interested in how far I got, feel free to take a peek before I clear it.

At the same time, Wordpress is kicks MT ass when it comes to implementing Dynamic Templates. I still can't seem to understand the process for to get it working. Though I suppose Static Templates aren't necessarily that bad.

Banner links to Homepage
This is intuitive is it not? Well, not precisely, since I just got that link running.

Comment Archives links to Entries
Self explanatory. It's easier to reference to the actual entry where the comment was made.

Who hates having haircuts, say AI.

AI!

It's been a month since my last confession haircut, and usually around this time there are vital signs that indicate the need for a trimming:

1. There is a prominent border that separates the long strands of hair on the top of my head and the side strands-- most evident during my morning look


2. I start to do the following when I'm bored:
   • Twirl my sideburns
   
   
   • Play and go through my hair

Being that I really enjoyed my sister's new fobby haircut, I thought I'd steal the hairstylist's business card form her. So there I went, feeling confident that I'd get a nice fobby, yet equally important, conservative haircut. There was quite a lot of people at that place-- which I suppose was expected given it was a Saturday afternoon. Then I looked at the sign, and apparently the whole on OMNI News: Cantonese Edition's news team gets their hair done here.

The anchors aren't exactly people from L'Oreal commericials, but still. At least they have some hairstyling cred.

Shampoo: Rub it baby, rub it
Anyways, it was time for my shampoo; the best part of everything haircut adventure. But to my dismay, a twentysomething fobby boy was the only one in sight who could wash my hair. Through my experiences, they usually do not have a good head-rubbing track record, and he was no exception. He pretty much didn't give a shit, and used his pussy hands and just lathered as if my hair is going to bite off his fingers.

Anyway, suffice to say, he totally didn't give me a very "organic experience." Oh man, it just feels so good to have someone rub my head-- vigourously and rhythmically.

Must... get... mind... out... of gutter

Personally, I enjoy the hands of a trendy see-lai digging into my scalp, my temples, and every other part of my hair region. Seriously, they totally know how to rub a man's scalp. There were on many occaisions where I'm totally moaning in my head (just like Herbal Essences) just because it felt so damn good.

Yeah, the shampoo guy was pretty crazy-- aside from the pussy fingers. I was actually kinda shocked and freaked out. Not only did he manage to get water rolling down my back (which is intersting given that I'm in a horizontal position), he almost gave me a whiplash on the sink, as he almost let go of my head after lifting it up to get the back portion of my head.

Ah!

Watch out: Snip snip
Anyways, the haircut portion was no good too. I swear, I've always wondered, how does one effectively communicate to the stylist of exactly how your hair to be cut? In the beginning, I was thinking that I'm just lousy at communicating, but now that I'm totally anal and have extensive conversations with the stylist before s/he brings the knife scissors, I'm really starting to get quite irritated.

Well, my hair is not bad-- aside from the fact that it's apparently according to Bow and Leo, "prominently shifted"-- and there's nothing that a little product can't fix-- but my hair totally didn't look like what I had in mind-- it never does.

Well, at the same time, trying to look like Steven (right) from BOYZ is quite ambitious I suppose. Tee hee.

Next time, I'm totally going to print out this picture of Steven and show it to them. Arrrgh.

This is what you do when you don't want to do GIS.

I was so desperate for distraction that I was stumbling on the Muchmusic website for some dirt on Ashlee Simpson (BTW, she will be having an autograph signing at Markville on Wednesday evening). Instead however, one of the promotional contests caught my eye.

It is called Hit on my guy, and win. This contest is to promote a particular line of hair care products that I will not name. However, what is cool about it is that you can dress your guy from head to toe. From underwear, hair styles, facial hair, you name it!

After about 20 minutes of fun, I came up with this guy. Isn't he a dish? Haha.

His name is Clint. This is in memory of Clint Moffatt emailing me. Haha.

I actually registered to enter for the contest, and of course, I receive a confirmation email. I'm not sure whether I should be insulted or embarrassed because the email's saluation is "Hey Girl."

I should've known better than to browse on Much. I blame this on you GIS lab assignment.

If you have time to slack off, please try it out, and don't hesitate to send me a copy of your hot guy!