March 2005 Archives

My last class is on friday. That's scary. I'm almost done first year. Well I still have the lectures to go to. Welcome to crunch time.

Look, I made a nice pretty schedule for me.

Thursday, March 31
Copy notes day.
Friday, April 1
math136 8h
Saturday, April 2
math136 4h
japan112r 4h
Sunday, April 3
math136 4h
japan112r 4h
Monday, April 4
math136 4h
japan112r 4h
Tuesday, April 5
math136 4h
japan112r 4h
Wednesday, April 6
math136 2h
japan112r 2h
cs134 4h
Thursday, April 7
math136 2h
japan112r 2h
cs134 4h
Friday, April 8
math136 2h
japan112r 2h
cs134 4h
Saturday, April 9
math136 2h
japan112r 2h
cs134 2h
math137 2h
Sunday, April 10
math136 2h
japan112r 2h
cs134 2h
math137 2h
Monday, April 11
math136 final
math136 3h
Tuesday, April 12
japan112r final
japan112r 3h
Wednesday, April 13
cs134 3h
math137 3h
ger101 3h
Thursday, April 14
cs134 3h
math137 3h
ger101 3h
Friday, April 15
cs134 3h
math137 3h
ger101 3h
Saturday, April 16
cs134 final
cs134 3h
Sunday, April 17
math137 4h
ger101 4h
Monday, April 18
math137 4h
ger101 4h
Tuesday, April 19
math137 final
math137 3h
Wednesday, April 20
ger101 final
ger101 3h
Thursday, April 21
Kicked out of residence day.
Friday, April 22
Plan to Orlando.
Saturday, April 23
Cruise until the 30th. Missed Birthday Count: 4.
Sunday, May 1
Tentative date of return flight.

So theres my WHOLE month of April planned. すごい　ですね.(If you can't read it, you suck; get the font). So I'm going to be doing losts and lots of studying as you can see. Then my summer starts. That's going to be even MORE fun. I'm hoping to get a job at American Eagle. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm not. It's a minimum wage job (7.45/h), which means working 40 hours a week, for four months, you only get just over $4700. Nevermind tax. Not enough, especially if I want to buy a powerbook (which I do). So, I'm thinking of taking a second job at Le Petit Liban downtown. I was offered a job there when I was down for Jack's birthday party. I just need to find out the details. Hopefully it would help my income. Then, I have co-op. My "placement", working for my mom's Real Estate Office doing web design. Then, I have my two distance ed courses. ECON101 and ECON102. So, as you can see, my summer will be sufficiently retarded.

I'm tired right now. Today has been a long long day. It was nice out, and that was fun. But now I'm tired and I should do a math136 assignment. I really, really don't want to though. I'm so drained. I went out to dinner with JD and Chris. We went to Jack Astor's and it was yummy. Except I'm still in no mood to work. Christ. Anyways. People are giving me, attitude so I'm going to bust a cap. It's tsunami aid, bitch!

I have a list of things I might be getting, and talking about it makes me a horrible and shallow person, but I'm in love so I'm going to do it anyways. First, I'm most likely going to be getting a 17" Powerbook G4. Maybe even really soon. Not only that, I'm upgrading the memory amount, getting an iSight, the Garage Band Jam Packs, AND Final Cut Production Suite *drools*. I'm incredibly excited. Then, even more exciting. If I'm extremely lucky, I might be getting a car. I'm not so sure about how this one is going to work out though. I'd love to have a car, but I can live without one. But the powerbook is much more likely to happen because I'll be able to pay for it after all the work.

Well, I've wasted my weekend. I'm not entirely sure how it happened either. I came home planning to do German, Japanese, CS, and Math. Essentially the only thing I really did was German. Japanese I already had the written part done, and no pictures were sent to me. Math and CS weren't touched (I even think I managed to lose my math136 book). So when I get back tonight I'm guaranteed to be in a crappy crappy mood. However, I just put my chain in my mouth and it smells really good. So that at least made me happy.

I've essentially planned out my whole month-ish time period until I'm done finals. People are already bothering me and telling me to go home. There's one exception on one night where I might go home, but I really shouldn't. It has bad bad news written all over it. I need to study like crazy for these finals.

In other good news, although I didn't actually get to go to ikea I did find what I plan on purchasing from ikea. This bookcase set, with these lights (maybe) and this CD tower in the middle (in birch).

I've also been looking at the poweebook I want. Sigh. I need jobs. A lot of jobs. High paying jobs.

Stupid fucking weekend.

Dear World.

I have four projects to do. So piss off, I'm not going out.

Love Mike.

Wednesday Morning. Shit to do today: Tons.
Longer Weekend, starting tomorrow. Shit to do then: A little note reading.

Go fucking figure. CS project, German final project, Japanese final project.

Ok, so my head hurts. Today was a not fun day. After four days of very limited amounts of sleep, my body has decided it really really hates me. My body, and the world. Mel's having her massive birthay shindig, and I'm not even going to be able to go. I miss it by one day. I'm on a cruise, and I get off it the day after her party. It's a little upsetting. So that's a great way to set the shitty mood that will be this blog.

Wednesday night I stayed up all night studying german. It was really a pain in the ass. There was an hour around 8:00am (Thursday) where I was afraid I would pass out on the SLC tables and not wake up. So I eventually packed up and went to the cafe in ML. Unfortunatly I encountered the exact same problems there. So, I eventually got past that with some more coffee and wrote my German Lab Test. I think I did relatively well. I hope. I'm really enjoying how that class is progressing now, even if it's almost over. My brother picked me up afterwards, and I drove home. I know I did something with someone, I just don't remember what. Eventually I hung out with Adam and Phil. We had super happy fun times and watched Legally Blonde. It was good. Eventually I took them home, and got a few hours of sleep.

Friday I got up early. Sorta. I had a doctors appointment. What I orginally thought was a 9:30 appointment was actually an 11:30 appointment. Which screwed up my schedule. I managed to get the appointment done though. I also made the 12:30 train which was the train I was hoping to make with Phil. And who did I see when I got on the train? Alyssa! Crazy times. She was going to an interview at Ryerson with a boy. Phil and I waited for his friend Orianna, and then we went our seperate ways. I was to meet Jack and Chris at the Eaton Center. And meet them I did. It was nice seeing him again. We shopped around (not really), and then ate. After eating we met up with Phil and Orianna because Orianna needed to spend hundreds of dollars on make up. Then we eventually made our way to Jack's party. It was awkward at first. Sitting in second cup with Phil, not knowing what was going on. After a while, all the drama passed over and it was super fun. We went to this really nice restaruant, Le Petit Liban. We ended up spending so much, even only on salads. I got offered a job too, because I'm a slut.

Saturday was a continuation of the party. The hop. We wandered around downtown. We did dinner and predrinking. We went, and it sucked. Explosions of gay boy drama everywhere. I didn't enjoy it. Now gay boys are being typical, and feeding off the gay drama and I can't handle it. So now, I'm back and tired.

Ok, so right now I'm extremely frustrated. Livejournal does the comment time based on the server time the journal resides on, rather than the time of the person posting it. I can see how this is easier for them, but that's really annoying for me. Since for whatever reason, my server seems to be out in the Atlantic Ocean (that was my clever way for saying not on day light savings time). I'm also breaking my common livejournal rule: only 1 post a day (even if my previous post was useless). I've decided that at this point it's going to be ok to break that rule for two reasons. First: the reason I only did one post a day was to make it easier to copy the posts into other layouts, but for March-onwards I'm using this layout. Second: if I'm annoyed enough by this comment business, I'll revert back to Moveable Type and buy the package. It's a one time fee of $99 for unlimited authors, compared to three yearly fees of $25 to make it work on livejournal. My only fear is that people will be super lazy and cooperate with posting. Decisions, decisions. I think I'll just wait until the time comes to deal with all that business.

Ok, so today I've decided (quite rightly) that music is the key to my happiness. Now, I realize how stupid it is actually making a comment like that. Of course music is a small key to everyone's happiness. I think the fact that I'm a little more eccentric that most makes that statement a little more profound. Today, walking back from german I was singing Busted! songs in my head. For those of you who don't know Busted!, I'm just going to say you're missing out. Those of you who do are likely to know how much I enjoy them, and how many good times there were with Busted! involved. All of those good memories tied to Busted! came back and hit my like a freight train on laughing gas. Halfway between MKV and V1, I went on good memory overload; literally. I started laughing really hardly, so hardly that I started almost sobbing. Keep in mind that all of this happened while I was walking by myself, with other people in the general area. It was great. Spice Girls also do this for me.

This whole annoyance with Livejournal is going to cause some serious, serious issues. I can see it now. All of my friends are way too lazy to do what I had originally planned to do with livejournal, nevermind what I was going to do with moveable type. I'll have to wait and see. I was talking to Josh about some plans at dinner. It should be fun. I'm going to play the Sims 2.

I'm so tired. *sobs*

Today has not been a good day for my fingers. I cut under my nail on my middle finger on my left hand. Then when I was trying to be asian and cook spring rolls, I burnt my thumb on my left hand. It wasn't fun at all. I've been crappily tired today. I missed CS, again. It wasn't nice. I spent most of the day cleaning. I had to clean my whole room. I vacuumed three times. I had to reorganize the desk, and all the books in the bookshelf thing on top of my fesk needed to be reorganized. Then all the clothes needed to be cleaned up and put away. Then, I had to do the dishes. It wasn't fun. Or was it?

Condom gotcha started today. People are already out. I'm in it. Yay. I also started with Heb B, because I'm a slut or something. Tomorrow is goign to rule. German and afterwards means that I have to spend time with Rosa to work on the final project. Then after that before Japanese I need to memorize the skit and work on it with Josh. So, this will be fun.

First and foremost: The photoshoot stuff is a big secret conspiracy. Just suck it up and do what I tell you to, and everything should work out for the best. For those of you who HAVEN'T gotten back to I have this message for you: Stop being a face, and respond to an email. It's not that complicated. If you don't, I'll either be forced to cut you, or replace you, or both. If I have to post this message again, it's not going to be as nice, and I'll definatly be using names. Thanks to the following people for emailing me back: Heather, Heather, Jess, Mel and Alyssa. Special mention to Adam who's too lazy to email someone, and to Stef for mentioning it over MSN.

Moving on. This week has been crappy. Not bad crappy; I enjoyed it. It was just a lot for my body to handle. At some points it was too much for my body to handle, as shown on Tuesday and today when I slept in. Thursday I woke up, but JD wasn't going to class so I just stayed. Today was bad though. I slept through almost a whole CD that was my alarm that went off at 7:00. Realizing that I was that tired, I reset the alarm for 8:00. I managed to sleep through the whole CD at 8:00 waking up at 8:45 with a 9:30 class, 15 minute travel time, and a meeting with my professor before hand. That was fun. On top of that, my phone ringer had been hit and switched to silent so none of my room calls from my mother came through. I forgot to charge my cellphone, so ontop of it being near dead it was on vibrate because it wasn't plugged in and automatically switched to ringer. Good times.

I had my german quiz today. It wasn't bad. I just, couldn't remember what some of the verbs were. I did well considering that I had to catch up. I'm still not 100% caught up. There's a little more catching up that I need to do. It might get done today if I don't feel like doing Algebra. Which means it will probably get done, since Algebra is just depressing. I have to learn a lot for the midterm on monday. On top of that, there's a formal that I'm going to tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it (even though I hate formals), I just need to try and not be a downer because of all the work I have to do. I'm such a killjoy.

The 2005 Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities is out. It's always fun to read it. I'd like to remind you all, that for something like a week or two, University of Waterloo had a FULL PAGE AD in the business section of the Globe & Mail. That runs you roughly about $20000 per printing. Nice to know where the funding is going. After asking graduates about how they felt about Waterloo on certain subjects here's what they got.

In Teaching and Instruction, 59% said it was Very Good, finishing second in its category (Comprehensive) after Guelph (66%) [19th overall]. Which is understandable. I've only had 10 professors, and while for the most part they were good I would only rank two or three as very good.

In The Learning Environment, 61% said it was Very Good, finishing second in its category (Comprehensive) after Guelph (64%) [18th overall]. Which it is. Considering that last term, my BUS111W lecture of 200 people was my largest lecture, more than double my next ones, I'd say the environment is good. Unfortunatly the libraries suck. Luckily I don't need to use them.

In Student Services, 40% said it was Very Good, second in its category (Comprehensive) after Guelph (51%) [18th overall]. I'd like to say this: We have student services? Other than the TC, Student Services at Waterloo consists of walking from (taken straight from my experience): Hagey Hall to MC, to Hagey Hall, to MC, to Renison, to MC, to Hagey Hall. After all that, and people finally saying that: they would move my classes, they would enroll me in class, they would put me on the waiting list for classes; none of it got done. Nice work Waterloo. Pull your heads out of your asses and figure out what you're doing. Luckily, the CS Advisors know what they're talking about and they're the only ones I have to deal with now.

Waterloo got 37% in Extracurricular Environment, finishing third in its category (Comprehensive) after Guelph (59%) and Victoria (41%), and didn't even make the top half ranking.

Talking about Library Resources, Waterloo scored a 43% finished 4th in it's category (Comprehensive) - I'd stop saying it, but people would forget what category we're in and compare us to U of T, Queen's, Western, or McGill. They're in Medical Doctoral; and they're still on the shirt we have making fun of other universities. It finished after Memorial (68%), Concordia (46%) and Guelph (46%) [15th overall]. It's no surprise that Toronto ranked at the top. I'll trade you our sugar cube, and brain for your peacock. Keep in mind that the sugar cube (Dana Porter Library) is the highest ranked place to have sex in the Waterloo area.

83% of graduates would Recommend To a Friend or Relative, and who blames them. I hate it here and I still recommoned it to people; it will always be a better choice than Western (Cheap shot number 4?). We finished top in our category (Comprehensive), beating out Guelph (82%) and Victoria (68%) [5th overall; tied with Mount Allison]. We also tied for first with Guelph in terms of Significant Benefit, with an 83% [Tied for 7th overall with like 5 schools (15th on the list)]. Finishing up 11th overall on Rating the Entire Educational Experience with a 71%. I'd like to take this oppurunity to point out that most of the top rated school overall by graduates are small, small schools.

Interesting notes so far on the student opinion section. Guelph always seems to come out ahead of Waterloo. Must be all the sheep; wool must make people happy. That and they're all alcoholics anyways. I kid, Kristen, you know I don't think you have sex with sheep. I'm pretty sure you said wool makes you itch. When Macleans began to conduct the survey about satisfaction, many univeristy encouraged Maclean's to include them in the results (with the exception of York, which refusd to participate - Gee, I wonder why).

Overall on the actual rankings, in Primarily Undergraduate Acadia finished 3rd. Like last year (and the year before I think), the top three spots haven't moved. I think they might have flipped around slightly last year, but this year nothing changed; St. FX, Mount A, Acadia. My dad must be dancing somewhere. All small, east coast schools. I'll remind you that he went to Acadia, and my mom did grad work there. They're very found of Acadia. I'll have to admit, seeing the shot of Acadia made me sad I wasn't there. It's a gorgeous school (and it finished 1st in the reputational survey). Laurier ranked 6th. Like I've said (read: complained), Waterloo is a univeristy town, and you can tell.

As far as Comprehensive goes, we all know Waterloo finished first; that'll teach Guelph for thinking they're good at stuff. It ranked top in reputation and alumni support; although it's operation budget is sketchy. I think it's ironic that the small picture for Victoria (which ranked 3rd) has a guy who is clearly a big fag. FAG! Tee hee.

Waterloo had an Average Entering Grade of 85.8%, ranking 12th. Of all the schools ahead of Waterloo, only one other was in the Comprehensive Category; Victoria. All the rest were Medical Doctoral schools. Eat it. Seeing pictures of other universities was nice. There's at least one other univeristy that doesn't know how to make buildings look appealing (Sim Fraser has one fugly building); crazy proffessors also seem to be common. Quickily returning to the National Reputational Ranking, Waterloo finished 1st in Best Overal; 4th in Highest Quality (after 3 Medical Doctoral schools); 1st in Most Innovative; 2nd for Leaders of Tomorrow.

I'd like to appologize; it was an extremely choppy summary. I basically went with what they gave me in the magazine which is hard to do since it's a bunch of random charts with little to no flow. I try my best.

Ok, so I didn't actually write anything new. But I promise I will. I'm just tired.

Grade 8 was a little different without Matt, Chris or Chris. Like the beginning of grade 6, Andrew and I were on our own so to speak; it was near the middle of grade 6 that we really started talkign to Matt, Chris and Chris. So when grade 8 started we went back to doing our own little thing, with alot of help from Pokemon. There was no business selling bean bag babies this time; it sufficed in grade 6 when we wanted to take money from foolish classmates. God Bless Mrs Groves though for buying so many, and for somehow knowing that even though Kim was in love with me, and even though I was only in grade 6, that I was still a big fag. Pokemon became the big thing in our group of friends that was now spread at two different schools. For whatever reason, it picked up a lot. It was something that tied the group together just before we were split up. I remember by the end of grade 8 just being ready to go to High School and be done with Our Lady of Peace. So when I started at Loyola, I was extremely happy. I was somebody now, right? Hardly. I was shattered to learn that I only had one class with Andrew. Well, one class and lunch which made it bearable. Second Period Gym with Mr Aresenault. It was interesting to see who was in that class. One of the first people I saw was someone I hadn't seen in months. I was going to say four years, but it's not true. Andre was in my gym class. He came and said hi, and we did the regular pleasantries. I hadn't seen him since Appleby. I assume he didn't get in, since he was at Loyola. Although that's not fair. He could have been like me; scored high on the entrance exams, aced the interview, and didn't go. Although I find that hard to believe personally. The reason being that, before the extrance exam the last time I had seen Andre was in grade 4 and he wasn't in the best shape. I mean no offense by that, he had his reasons. Reasons that I will not go into because they are his business. We talked, then I went and sat with Andrew, displaying classic Carrots and Celery behaviour. I remember how on the second day of class, Andre and I got in trouble for not having gym clothes. There were a few of us who got in trouble, although he had totally said we could buy uniforms in class. We had to sit on the bleachers and not talk to anyone. So I sit on the bleachers up againt the wall, took 30 seconds to try and figure out the rest of my day, and homework I'd have to do. When I looked up, Andre was sitting down next to me and complaining. Before I could open my mouth and tell him to leave we were getting in trouble. Add 25 more pushups to the 50 we already had to do. Great way to have Andre reintroduced into my life.

I still remember how uncertain those first few lunches were. It was odd. The table was our same old group from elementary school, plus one more: Taylor. He was a friend of Matt's. I remember how quickly magic cards started with them, and how our table grew. I had never before seen magic cards. Like, ever. So it was interesting. I had to learn to play to have somethign to do with them at lunch. Boy, I will never let myself live that one down. It didn't take long before I stopped and would talk to people who I had class with while they played. I remember how Rob joined our group of friends. There was some disagreement on how this happened when I was talking to him. As far as I remember, Andrew and I were talking about Diablo II as we did our warm up runs in gym when Rob came over and started talking. Rob recently informed me he never played Diablo II. So I find it amusing that we argued about it. I'm sure he lied, and so is he. He was a quick addition to our table though. He played Magic Cards. So did Mike Yip.

Mike Yip and I had 4 out of 5 periods together in Semester Two. We had also gone to Mini-U together. He was in the same group as Matt, Andrew and Fly which allowed him to discover their common love of Magic Cards. His older sister Carmen was one of my Junior leaders. So Mike quickly joined the group. This is when I like to think the group was at it's best. It really was too. Well, with Andre. He was there too. Not that this was bad, I just think I forgot to mention that. He also played Magic Cards. Grade 9 was a good year. I still think Chrono Cross is a gorgeous game. We played it at Andre's house once, along with Xenogears. Unfortunatly, things would lead to disaster. Andre, Andrew and I all had the same personality faults to a certain degree. There was a certain point where we would do things to seek approval of each other. This lead to tension near the end of grade 9. Mike Yip and I were on the Reach team with Matt and Fly, so Andre and Andrew pulled closer together. After that, Fly, Mike and I went to EMC and when we came back Mike Yip and I were Mike Squared. I don't think it went over too well.

That's something that changed my a lot; when I went Mike Yip and I were the only grade 9s from Loyola. We roomed together, obviously. We stayed in McNeil residence, I still remember. The first night Mike and I weren't sure what to do, we hadn't met up with his friends from elementary school and couldn't find Fly. We walked down to the common room, to try and pass the time. It was so obvious that we were out of place. We were watching some of the grade 11s play card; we didn't play with them we were too scared to talk. Much music was on playing songs that I had never heard. One of the kids was being loud and obnoxious: "God damnit play some good music." Missy Elliot comes on the screen: "Thats more like it!" Now at this point my music exposure was almost entirely what Kiss 92 played; not Missy Elliot (which is probably why they later went bankrupt). It was a shock to me. The music, but more so the music video. For those of you who havent seen the music video to Get Ur Freak On, I suggest you watch it as soon as possible to try and understand what Iw as going through.

[ dear mike, don't forget: emc stuff (music, girls, keys, course) ]

Midway through grade 10, things had blown up. This was caused by the hiatus a few of us took from the group near the end of grade 9. By second semester, the group had seen the addition of James Hine as a friend, and Olek, Oscar and Gustabo as pawns for Andrew to try and control. I don't even remember what the boiling point was. I just remember Mike Yip left to sit with friends we had, and eventually Rob, Olek and I had left to walk to McDonald's for lunch with Andrea, Dan, Nick, Dave and Tim. At this point Rob and I were really close. Like, weekend sleepovers (the kind that Andrew and I used to have), Munn's Dance Chaperoning, Volunteer Hours Galore. By second semester I had no more contact with my original group of friends. The new group would go out every weekend and see a movie. The amount of movies I saw in in the six months before we went away to Holy Trinity.

[ dear mike, don't forget: emc stuff, mini u, etc ]

End Pre-Holy Trinity

The very first Mike Haddad History Tour I officially gave was to Adam Steczkiewicz because we're losers like that. Or something. It took place as a walking tour around River Oaks; something like a walking tour in London. It was pieced together from bits of walks that I used to take during the summers I spent at Saugeen. It starts at Our Lady of Peace, winding down Shannon Creek Trail to Callahagn and Leacock; up Towne and along Saugeen to Munn's Creek at River Glen Blvd; down Munn's Creek before cutting off to Harman's Gate, along WestChester and Andover; along Sixth down past Holy Trinity to Munn's, then over to River Oaks Blvd via the River Oak's School side of Munn's Creek. It's all quite confusing, and I'm sure that somewhere in there I butchered the proper use of a semicolon (for which I appologize). It tends to deviate after that depending on my mood, and the weather. With Adam, we continued across Upper Middle down Elm and through Oakville Park So it basically consists of walking through my old "stompin grounds" if you will, with me talking about myself and what I used to do; people I used to be friends with; sports activities I stopped taking part in. So let's try to make this something more official.

I didn't always live in the lovely Oakville. No, I was a proud Torontonian; born and almost raised. I lived there until I was six. I went to one school in the East Beaches for Junior Kindergarden and one school in Parkdale for Senior Kindergarden. Oh Parkdale. I don't recall what the school was called. On no, I do: Alexander Muir. It was old. It also allowed me to form a great friendship with a Japanese girl that ended when she moved back to Japan. So old that my parents went there. It makes me wonder about what highschool would have been like at Parkdale Collegiate Institute. Think about it. The school was over 100 years old when my parents went there. My dad still holds the bench press record in the gym. Do you have any idea how scary that is for me to think about? It's scary.

Growing up in Toronto with parents who grew up in Toronto meant one thing: I wasn't allowed to go outside very much. The park down the street was extremely sketchy. I went back to the one in the beaches a few months ago; they had cleaned it up a lot. Unfortunatly it wasn't clean when I was living there. Not that it mattered much. In the beaches, there was no one my age, and when I stayed at my grandmothers for a year I got in fights with the neighbours. Luckily for my birthday my parents bought me an SNES. Needless to say I was in heaven. I'm sure that to this day they regret making that purchase. I was to be extremely addicted to Nintendo throughout most of my early life.

When we moved to Oakville, we were one of the first families on the street. I think for a while my parents were extremely antisocial. I blame the fact that they both worked like crazy. I started at St John's for grade 1, with no idea that I would be once again switching schools when then year was over. So, making friends was a challenge. Not an actual challenge, but a challenge in the sense that everyone in grade 1 is carefree and fickle. I was probably a big pussy too. We went through a number of nannies until I was in about grade 4. So up until that point I really didn't do much outside of the house; it was easier for both the nanny and my parents that way. I did have friends though. Two in particualar that I was close with: Rylan and Mario. That's not to say I didn't meet other people, because I definatly did: Andre, Adam, Amanda, and Kaitie; I was just close with them because they lived right near by (and when you're in grade 1, going from Towne and RiverGlen to Sixth Line and UpperMiddle took way too long). The amusing thing about that is I don't think any of us talk to each other anymore. Mario is extreme gino styles, and Rylan is a scene punk. So you can see how that might cause some conflict. We were good friends until around grade 7, when things like that started to matter (As if they really do matter). We did the regular things. Ball hockey, video games, board games and swimming in pools. Talked about girls, and teachers; what it would be like when we finally got into highschool. Whatever. It was fun while it lasted. Oh those crazy games of "Nicky Nicky Nine Doors".

By the time Rylan, Mario and I had our falling out I already had two close groups of friends. The first were the male friends, the other were the female friends. This of course being the case because in elementary school it was taboo for groups of friends to be co-ed. The male group consisted of the following people: Andrew and Matt the brothers, Chris M and Chris Q. It started with Andrew. I am no longer able to recall how we became friends. I know that, looking back, we always told stories of how we met in grade 1. I know this to be extremely and blatantly false. I was probably insecure, and suffering from a huge bout of Carrots and Celery Syndrome, when I said I had met him in grade 1 and we had been friends since. I'm sure he was going through the same thing. We both hated everyone in school. However, we weren't in the same grade 1 class and I hardly talked to many people in that class. They all knew each other from kindergraden. We weren't in the same grade 2 class; we weren't in the same grade 3 class. We didn't have a class together until grade 6. However, by that point I know we were almost inseperable. I remember us being excited that we were in the same class. So our friendship developed somewhere, it's just a question of where. I'll get back to you on that one. Matt was his older brother, and the two Chris' were his friends. We called Chris M Fly. For the record his fly was never actually undone, we had been having a conversation about the leather things they place on the front of school buses when he walked by. That was the male group of friends. Every morning we would meet at Andrew's house and we would play videos games. Goldeneye was the big one. Oh the memories. The other group of friends was the small female one. Kim, Danielle and Christina. They were pivotal in many things, I'm sure. The developement of certain tendencies.

Having the group of male friends was really good for my mental growth, if that makes any sense at all. I don't actually think that's a good way to describe it. It was a nice way to discover myself. Yes, that's right. Somewhere in between the ocarina and the farm life I started thinking about who I wanted to be. Before I got into grade 8 I had already decided that I was going to go to UWaterloo for CS. I'm still not sure how I knew that Waterloo had the best program at that age; it will forever be a mystery. I remember how torn I was after I started going to Mini-U over the summer. Andrew, Matt and Chris would go with me. Andrew had decided he wanted to go to Mac (last I heard he was taking computer science there). What was I going to do. One part of me had already been determined to go to Waterloo (since you know, in grade 6 I knew it was the best - I blame my father). That was tough on what little mental stability I had. I got over it.

End Pre-Highschool

(I hit enter by accident. So I'm taking this as a sign to take a break. I'll continue the rest in an edit later.)

I promise that as soon as I'm not sick, I will write the "Mike Haddad History Tour" Entry.

Don't forget, you can check out the blog here from now on. I'm already tired of the layout. How horrible is that? Luckily I have the most FUCKING AMAZING idea for the layout that I'm going to use when the site opens. You just wait!

I also need to fix the archives ... again.