Summer slash Winter Plan

Re: My summer plan
What a disaster. I ran/jogged just short of 100km this summer, which is approximately 100km more than I probably would have done. I’ve actually bulked up a little, except for this past week. I’m afraid the USA has mitigated the effect, if it hasn’t reversed it. This just means I’ll have to do some extra work during this fall semester.
Piano? I touched it three times. I haven’t touched it since I cleaned my room in late July.
Writing? After reviewing my first idea, I killed it swiftly. A conservative estimate on the number of (creative) words I’ve put down on a document is 6k. I’ve done half of that on this trip alone. This one is solid good, I promise. I’m just a much more visual guy than a story guy. I feel like the other one fits better as a tv series or something. That’s how I envision it anyway. I watch way more TV shows than I read, and I’m pretty good at predicting act breaks and plot twists and structures. I just need to work on producing more content, regardless of quality. The amount of content is often more paramount because it gives practice. Nobody goes from zero to superstar in one script.
Language? I learned a bit more French, I guess. Not a whole lot and I didn’t see the point of getting my French Tutor after my trip. Thanks to Nintendo making really cheap power adaptors (they don’t do voltage conversion), I didn’t use it at all during my trip. I did download some more French movies though... I’m actually liking the work of Goddard.
--
Winter Plan (Resolution)
1) Get a job quick. I dropped Co-op like a rock to throw away my safety net, so I need to do this ASAP. There’s one thing holding me back though, and that’s my parents. With my other (final) sister gone, I’m now responsible for handling all of their bills. If I were to go work at a remote location...
2) Study (harder). I’ve been slacking in the last two years. I admit this fully. I’m not going to screw around this semester. Take my word for it.
3) Reduce my carbon foot-print. I’m just going to use my U-Pass everywhere. I’m committed to taking the transit to school every day. Weekends? Well, maybe not.
4) Anything from my Summer Plan could apply here.

On the way home from California. WOT

First off, we woke up at 4:30 am to start our drive back up to Richmond. We’re just under two hours left and I’m done driving for the day. I’m just honestly mentally drained.
I’ve purchased maybe 200 dollars worth of crap, which isn’t that much at all. I just hope that crossing the Canadian border would go really smoothly so I can be at my bed.
You know what? This sucks. Summer is over and all I’ve got to show for it is a massive deficit on my bank account. Yeah, I guess I am more worldly and can say that I’ve visited these places (because I have), but I don’t really feel any different. Am I supposed to?
The United States is really interesting because it is almost a complete duplicate of Canada. They’re just people like you or I. One major difference I noticed is that their food servings seem bigger than our Canadian counterpart. Don’t even try to compare their servings with Europe’s. I’ve actually struggledto finish one of those ‘value meals’ at certain restaurants. I know that whatever’s at the restaurants will make my heart stop, but it is just a human urge to just finish putting that last chicken strip in my mouth. I’m just not used to having a meal I can’t finish. This happens so much that by the end of this trip, I just give up and leave the rest. I believe this is a fundamental US obesity problem.
Speaking of obesity, it is much worst in USA. I don’t know the mechanics behind it, but the people here don’t seem to feel shame about their weight. They’re just trekking along in taco-bell, stuffing more tacos with cheese into their mouth. Disgusting.
Anyway, I find that you can get the exact same shopping experience everywhere because all the stores are the same big name corporations. Gamestop, Zellers/Target, Macys/Bay/Sears. All the fashion stores sell mostly the same crap. Food is mostly the same. The main thing different about each city is just the layout and the one or two ‘tourist’ attraction, and you can find thousands of these tourist attraction photographs/videos on the internet. There’s abosolutely nothing you can’t get right at home. (Someone even recorded the Simpson Ride in Universal Studios in LA) Whether you would seek out these things is another question.

The Road back home.

Tomorrow will suck major dick. Will be trying to do a 16hour drive back to Vancouver on two different shifts.

I'm not sure I can do this.  If it isn't doable, we will probably get a room tomorrow night and bleh.
---

China Town in LA and San Fran

So, whatever happened to the car?
Early the next morning, we called for a towing company to come to the motel to drive our car to this Chinese car fixing place called DT Auto Repair. They said it’ll be around twenty minutes before a guy arrives. That’s alright.
Twenty minutes later, we called the towing company again. Hm, apparently the guy’s car has some transmission problems and can’t come anymore. Slight irony.
We called DT again for another towing company, and etc.
Twenty minutes later, we called again. They had the address wrong. It’ll be another twenty minutes.
Forty minutes later, the guy arrives. He looks at the license plate, and raises the towing cost by 35 dollars. He mentions some bullshit about how he didn’t realize we needed it towed to Chinatown and how it was another pricing zone. It was only 8 minutes away by car. The thing is that we told the guy the address beforehand and he agreed to the price.
We basically told him to fuck off, and we called the first guy again. Apparently, he fixed his transmission problem.
Twenty minutes later, we departed for Chinatown.
If I said I perused the streets of LA, I’d be lying. I pretty much just walked up and down two streets and saw the phony ‘tourist’ Chinatown. There are the wide and clean streets with the Taiwan Republic founder statue and whatever.
Whatever I saw, it didn’t look like many authentic Chinese people visit there.
The San Francisco China town is the polar opposite from LA’s. It is right beside the city’s centre and has an unhealthy amount of traffic coursing through it. Parking is a complete nightmare in part due to the curvature of the road (It is very hilly), and partially due to the strange parking regulations. You can’t park during certain hours of the day (some from 4 to 6pm, others from 4-7 pm.) On some days, you can’t park from additional hours for the sake of street cleaning. I wouldn’t ever want to drive there.
Despite the frequent street cleaning, the roads are still filthy. Chinese people are everywhere in cramped quarters. Bleh.

Universal Studios and Walk of Fame.

Universal Studios is kinda neat.
The best ride has to be the Simpsons. It is well worth going if you're in LA. Terminator was cool. Jurassic Park was cool. Mummy sucked.


The Walk of Fame or Stars or whatever is complete bullshit. It is just a bunch of slabs on the floor with names on it. Yeah, that's kind of neat, but it is also really dumb. If you're going,  don't stop and yell at every one of the names.
Skip.

Collision in LA

There's been a car collision.
We were travelling south on the Interstate 5 when traffic slowed to a crawl. I predicted that there was a traffic accident. Little did we know that it was an omen.

When we reached the scene of the crime, I was surprised that the 'accident' involved only one police car, flipped over. There was no second vehicle that was impacted, just five other police cars and a fire truck thirty miles from the nearest town.

Anyway, on the drive to LA, just as we reached our hotel, my sister crashed into curb during a turn into an alley. She was all like "Hey, I can turn here" while everyone else was like "No, don't!"
Her turn to the curb ruptured the radiator, causing the antifreeze or whatever to ejaculate all over the sidewalk. We drove the rest of the way and parked it in the hotel.

The good thing that came out of this is that we get to experience the world class transport system of LA.

I'll wait until the bad.

Is America just dumb, or just Jack-in-the-Box?

Early this morning, we left for California. I was really surprised at the distance between Richmond and the Peace Arch border. It was only like forty minutes away. The US-Canada border, for those of you who don’t know, has a huge stone structure (called an arch) with a metallic gate that’s not operational. On the stone is an inscription which says something along the lines of ‘The Border hasn’t been closed for fifty years.’
Anyway, we waited thirty-five-ish minutes before arriving at our the USA’s welcoming centre.
“Can you show me your passports?”
“Here they are, sir.”
“Reason for visit?”
“We’re just tourists, and she is going to study in the USA.”
“Any documentation for that?”
“Yes.”
We gave him the visa sheet. He looks at it.
“Move along and pull over. You’re all going to have to go inside.”
So, we were escorted inside the building and given a thorough look at an empty office. No cameras and no cell phones allowed.
-
-
-
Forty minutes later, we were happily on our way. Unable to recall doing anything inside in Border Office, I decided to have selective amnesia for the event.
Slightly later, we stopped for breakfast and lunch (I shall call this term brunch) at Jack-in-the-Box, a famous and apparently widely available franchise existing only in The USA. There, I met the first retarded cashier at Jack-in-the-Box.
I don’t want to sound hateful or anything, and I certainly didn’t mean anything malevolent. I hope employees at the reputable chain of Jack-in-the-Box don’t take this personally. She was just retarded in the way that she’d take ten or eleven seconds to find the right button to push on the cashier. I’m immediately reminded of the scene in Ideocracy where Joe goes to “Saint God’s hospital” and his ordeal with the Receptionist.
At first I was all “Well, it IS just a fast-food joint. Can’t expect the brightest of the bunch to end up there,
but then we went to a second one in Oregon. It was a retarded fat Hispanic guy. I felt like I was speaking a different language because I had to constantly repeat it. It wasn’t just me either, but he had trouble with the orders of two in front of the line. Queue Idiocracy again and Joe’s “faggy speech”. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, fuck you and go watch it. Movie of the 2500’s.
I don’t mean to say that everyone working there is retarded. I understand that these people probably aren’t the types that have fruitless writing hobbies on the side working on that last ‘great idea’ which came in a dream. The two encounters have left me wondering if the whole franchise gets a huge tax break for hiring medically retarded people. They probably do, and good for them.
Anyway, I’m typing this up on the road. I’ve got to find something to do while not driving this 15 hour slash thirty hour round trip. I actually went on a kind of spending spree today. I purchased two shoes (of the non-sucky variety, fuck you Ruel.) which is essentially my current shoe but non-broken. I really ejaculated money to the cashier when I bought nine shirts. Wow. That’s the most clothes I’ve bought for myself in a day.
I’m just holding off for more splooging due to the extremely limited car space we have. My sister is bringing in everything she needs for the next five years at Stanford while the other three of us carried the most Spartan of clothes.
Before I sign off on this, I want to tell everyone that they can call me at my number, but just remember that I’m roaming and that the calls will be something like a dollar per minute for me. If you call me, talk for the whole minute, at least have thirty seconds of speech. None of this “WHERE ARE YOU RIGHT NOW? OH OK BYE.” I don’t have billing by the second.

Going to California.

Going with my Mom, Sis, and her boyfriend to California (San Fran) and LA. We'll be gone for a week and a half until the end of the month.

I'm going to take this opportunity to buy some much needed newer clothes and shoes. Right now, I'm kinda reluctantly going. I just don't really see the point in going anywhere, you know? It's just going to be the same-ish style architecture, with similar stores (but with lower prices). There's not really any single 'awesome' tourism places.

At least this time, we'll have access to a car, so my feet won't explode like Europe.

Canada

I have my complete fill of Civ4 DS game.

Came back a couple of days ago, I've just mostly been sleeping and not doing anything. I think I've had enough of that, so I'm going to occupy myself with new stuff now.

Back from Amsterdam

It was Vancouver-rainy.

Went to the Anne Frank House. Not that impressed. Came out depressed due to the content.

Train

I’m typing this up while still on the 15h train ride from Rome to Paris. It doesn’t sound as horrible as it does, but it is nowhere near awesome. While in seat form, the six seats in the little couchettes are actually very nice. They’re like a meter wide individually, which is more than normal. These can be folded up into little ‘bunks’, which is far less comfortable.
Vatican
I can now proudly state that I have walked around the border of an entire country. Yeah!
The Vatican Museum is pretty interesting, but the excitement quickly disappates. There were a lot of statues made from various rock types, displaying mostly pagan gods (which doesn’t really make sense neat the Vatican, really.) and many other retread art forms. The biggest joke of the museum is the Sistine Chapel. It is a dinky little etching on the ceiling of a profusely packed room. Everyone has seen this already, and it is really, authentically pointless to go to the Vatican just to see it. The only redeeming fact is that I can tell others I’ve seen it.

Rome

There's obviously the collesium to see in Rome, as well as the Vatican.

On the whole, the city is extremely walkable. Everything is within a 5 by 5km square, so it is really simple to walk everywhere.

We're gonna leave tomorrow night on a train back to Paris.

It'll take approximately 15 hours. Yeah.

It won't be fun.