Y2kk Update: One ring to waste my money on...

... one ring to rule the last four fucking years of my goddam life...

But I finally got it. After whining and complaining and bitching that they wouldn't give it to me last year, I finally got it...

... my stupid motherfucking, Engineering iron ring, that is...

Hell, the thing ain't even made from iron. Supposedly, my stainless steel version was cut from some god-forsaken man-hole from an oil rig that sank off the coast back in '82...

Sounds more like an asshole if you ask me then... or if you too had taken one good look at any of the fucking engineering alumni at the iron ring ceremony that I attended, of course...

Now, the iron ring is truly a symbolic sort of piece of shit. It's literally just a hunk of metal, carved from a single block of ore or some shit like that, to remind us to never fuck up our engineering jobs as badly as the bastards who had built that '82 oil rig did... Of course, in reality, they probably pried mine from the cold dead fingers of an engineer so damn dumb he welded his hands onto a stainless steel pot. Bur whatever...

I mean, I worked four long fucking years for this ring, if not more thanks to this fifth quasi-year that I'm now stuck at university in. I've wanted this iron ring ever since I was a little child, you know... It was one of my goals in life. To get my father proud of me, to wear the fucking useless ring on my right pinky finger right in front of my family and bask in the glory of actually achieving something in life for once... something meaningful, you know?...

But ay, there lies the rub... because just like with everything else in my life? My sense of accomplishment just feels like a pile of shit instead...

The ceremony itself was pretty fucked up. I mean, you know that the lunatic who made this iron ring ceremony in the first place literally was just doing it as an engineering grad prank or some shit like that, as we newbie engineers literally had to hold a fucking chain of iron in our hands as we recited some fucking messed up Engineering Apostle's Creed, tugging away at some anvil parked at the altar of the room in the meantime... WTF?...

I swear to God, all the alumni at that ceremony probably laughed at how seriously all we undergraduates were taking the whole goddam ceremony... I'd be half expecting to see myself on America's Funniest Home Videos, if only cellphones or cameras were actually allowed into that ever prestigious University College room. And if only I were actually in America, that is...

Hell, besides all the cultist chants and dogmatic mantras that we had to oath? Something just felt like a Candid Camera joke of a moment with the whole goddam iron ring ceremony that day...

Seriously, something just struck me as ironically awful when the head of the table announced that this was the 81st anniversary of the first iron ring ceremony to take place at the University of Toronto. And considering Kobe Bryant had just recently rained down a torrent of hellfire and brimstone and a total of 81-fucking points on my precious Toronto Raptors? Something just told me, and something just made that whole damn iron-clad tugging affair of mine, seem like just one big fucking yank at our undergraduate chains in the end...

It was all so ridiculously dumbass looking. We were all in suits and business attire.. yet we were all facing and worshipping the century old rusted anvil at the forefront of the room as our forefather throughout the ceremony? WTF?...

Bah... still... I guess I should be thankful for what I do have... and I do have my fucking engineering iron ring... finally...

I still remember how left out I felt last year, when the goddam asshats in university rejected my plea for the iron ring that I fucking deserved to get... I mean, I still took pictures with the group who had suited up to get their rings. I completely felt out of place however, being in civies while everyone else looked like they were ready to move onto real and better things in life...

Now, I didn't feel left out last night. I just felt ridiculously dumbass and overdressed, that's all...

Dangerously overdressed, really...

As short story short?...

Suit up, IvanF.

My funeral black tie was legendary...

...

It's also kind of funny, that what actually felt like my real iron ring ceremony? Well, it actually took place when I was still at my fucking workplace that iron ring morning...

I mean, I had told my manager that I had to leave work early yesterday afternoon, to make it to my iron ring ceremony at 5 pm sharp. If I hadn't told my boss that a couple days before, nobody at work really would've been the wiser... except for the fact I would wear a fucking suit and tie to the office for once, that is...

During the morning of the actual ceremony day, I noticed that one of my unit coworkers had brought in a box that looked like it was for a cake. I asked her what it was for, and she just gave me a blank response, claiming she didn't know what I was talking about... Bah, I'm so dumbass. I just shrugged it off and actually thought that I had been seeing things. How naive can I possibly be?...

Well, they caught me off guard at work. I never really saw it coming... Who would've thunk that my coworkers would actually celebrate my iron ring ceremony day by buying a bunch of sweet ass pastries for us to enjoy in the morning? I guess I'll thank them big time for that, especially since I was starving like hell at the time...

... and a few freebies always make you feel better, after paying about thirty damn grand for a goddam iron ring essentially...

Now, I guess my work unit will celebrate any occasion, apparently. But still, it felt kinda nice to be appreciated in that way, to be in the spotlight if only for five minutes as I gave my little speech about the iron ring and the origins of how it came to be at U of fucking T... After my little anecdotes, I really had nothing to say or to do but to inhale my pastries and hope to God that I don't spit up on my fucking goddam suit. And I don't even know if I actually got that part of the equation right...

Still, to be honest? Besides maybe some good talks with fellow engineering friends later at night, I really do think that my little pastries get-together in the morning with coworkers was the highlight of my day, if not my week...

I know that it was all just a meaningless gathering, worth about as much in the end as I can pawn off my fucking iron ring at a shop for. But still, it was the first time that I was the lone star at work for once, and I do always seem to be the one craving attention in the end..

... I am the noname whiner afterall...

Not to mention the fact that the free pastries kicked all sorts of ass...

I guess I should suit up more often then.

That brunch was legendary...

...

Of course, all of this shit ass, rare as hell positive news comes off of what I considered to be a disastrous week at work... Well, it was a week where I did absolutely shit at work, which is a good thing. My main client for the time was sick so I couldn't really get any new programming requirements to do, and the branch that I work in was having a big meeting day with public speakers and shit like that too... so everyone was out of the office...

... the thing was though, I couldn't go...

Not that I really wanted to. But a day off of work, not to mention a free fucking lunch, is always good in my books...

But alas, as the rookie still in my squad? I was ordered to sit back and hold down the fort as cannon fodder... and fucking play second fiddle to the temp worker manning the receptionist booth up front...

So yeah, I spent most of my day just telling people over the phone to fuck off, and then by swearing countless expletives at my monitor as the men's Team Canada hockey team was fucking things up against goddam Russia... God, that was embarrassing...

Bad day? Yeah, I kinda think so...

But I did have to go to the actual meeting place for the branch conference at one point, simply because I had helped design some cheapass PowerPoint slides for my group's presentation and I was ordered to help run them. Now, I never did quite reveal to them that this was my first time ever using PowerPoint in my entire fucking life, but meh... I had pictures and slides fade in and fade out on cue, so who the fuck cares?...

The only real problem was with the midi music file we were using... The thing is, my branch's presentation included a sing-along part, with fucked up lyrics that make my iron ring Engineering Creed seem like fucking Shakespeare in comparison. And since the new lyrics had quite a few more verses than the original source music did, I was forced to loop the music in actual PowerPoint (rather than go through the effort of splicing together midi or MP3 music in editing software that neither I nor my work office simply had...)...

... and the problem was, the break in the music when the loop fucking happens?... was goddam atrocious at best...

So yeah, while I was manning the slides with my trigger thumb while the rest of my go-happy workers group was swallowing their pride up on stage, eventually the break in the music for the fucking loop happened... I had definitely warned the singers up there that it would occur, and that a slight pause for loading time would ensue. I just never realized beforehand how fucking obvious the sudden cut in silence would be on the fucking goddam loud-speakers in the conference hall, that's all...

This not only threw the entire singing crew off, but it also threw the entire fucking crowd (which had actually gotten into the whole sing-along lyrics thing up on the slides) into a whole fucking messed up tizzy as well.. And God, I could do nothing but slap myself silly in the fucking head at just how fucking goddam fugly I had fucked up the whole presentation, all thanks to having some real shit ass, missing music in the background... Where the fuck is a Muse when you need one? Where the fuck was my second fiddle?...

Fucking bah. Whatever...

At least thanks to having to come down to the meeting hall just to pull off the slides for the bored as hell crowd? I got to run away back to my fucking useless Team Canada whoring, with pretty much an entire tray full of fucking cakes and desserts that I had stolen from their lunch tables...

And garlic bread. Oh shit, don't forget the fucking garlic bread...

Genius.

My bad breath was legendary...

...

One last thing to note before I go and waste away the rest of my evening...

I went to the Canadian AutoShow in Toronto with some of my university friends from last year. It was my first AutoShow, and it wasn't a bad experience or anything... I was hoping to find a bunch of fucking hot chicks there, only to find whores who I wouldn't even touch with a ten foot pole, let alone a hot poker to, you know, poke her with...

Bah, nothing much happened at the AutoShow... it's just that, since my friends were Chinese?...

God, we Orientals are so damn cheap... we always want to get the most out of our fucking money, now don't we?...

There are only so many damn awful car designs that I can hurl at, before I literally get sick of the aerosoled new-car-smells. Yet my friends made us meet at the AutoShow entrance around 11 am, and we didn't leave the fucking place until eleven at night... That's twelve fucking hours of walking around, just staring at cars that we either didn't give a damn about, or vehicles that were too damn pricey for us to ever goddam afford. If it wasn't for dinner at Pickle Barrel in-between, my feet would've gone insane from all the fucking callouses that they got... and at how fucking callous I was at all the fucking ugly car designs there, of course...

... not to mention the fact that in a fit of irony, I got a fucking bloody papercut from a Canadian Military poster of all things... WTF?...

As for the walking and fucking drone marching, it got to the point where I was so fucking tired, I even started lying down in the fucking minivans at the show, just to get my energy back... And yet my friends still refused to leave, simply because they had paid good money to be there. And hell's bells, a true Chinese would never leave an amusement park before it closed at night, lest he not get the full value of his price of admission of course....

Hell, my friends were even hoping that the AutoShow stamps on our hand would be valid the next day of the AutoShow as well... Are they insane? How many fucking horrible Hondas, Acuras, and Toyotas can they froth at until they realize that all those fucking cars are made of the cheapest damn materials known to man?...

... well, almost as cheap as my goddam iron engineering ring, that is...

Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if the fucking ugly Toyota Avalon we sat in was the remains of the oil rig that sank back in '82...

Now, I was hoping for some hottie booth babes at the AutoShow or some shit like that. And while they were there, I just can't believe how used and whorish they all looked, as you can almost taste the fucking STDS and botox injections on your tongue from just staring at all those T-shirts too fucking tight on their breasts... if such a thing was possible (and yet it was, somehow...)...

And at the iron ring ceremony yesterday, of course I had done the same thing. All the women there were dressed in their interview wear, and I couldn't help but stare, as quite a few of the chemical engineers in the room had done their hair for this shitty ass event as well...

Sadly, none of the girls were actually hot to me though. Either my standards have been raised, I've been neuteured and sterilized by work, or it just ain't Spring yet...

... or even sadly enough, I ain't a fucking teenager anymore...

I'm now officially a fucking goddam engineer, afterall...

... not like there's much difference between the two, mind you...

And all I have to show for it?... is this goddam AutoShow stamp on my hand...

... and a fucking goddam, iron ring...

And it all sounds like just so much goddam fun, now doesn't it?...

Well, maybe not 'fun'...

But with the suit and tie and iron chain?... well?...

... let's just say, it was legendary....

Y2kk Update: Well, I'll try to keep this update as brief as possible...

... pretty much just like I did for my two shitty ass presentations over the past two weeks...

Yeah, my design project's deadline season is now in full swing, and I suffered the first two casualties of it over the past two Thursdays. Both dates were formal presentation dates for me... the first being for the professors and administrators only, and the second to anyone who would bother to show up...

... nobody did, not that I'm complaining... except for the goddam people marking us, of course...

The first time we presented though? Well no, I didn't pull off one of my patented performances of actually improving the flow of my diatribes thanks to anxiety, as I often did back in high school and shit like that... Hell, wasn't it just last year for my Software Engineering course, that I actually did much better in my actual project presentation than I ever did in practices? Of course, that was perhaps because there was a fucking hot professor there watching me right in the stands, as fucking hot bitches always manage to calm the nerves...

... but alas, there were no hot fucking women in the stands this year... fuck...

... fucking goddam useless engineering...

And for my first presentation? I guess I didn't do too badly... I really fucked up on the Powerpoint slides though. I was so damn used to my old ways, of only having to click once to change slides, that I completely forgot to constantly keep clicking the fucking mouse button every time I made my way to a new fucking sentence or point... My partners had set up the whole presentation to be point by point by bulletpoint, I mean. Only parts of each slide would appear at a time, and I was simply thrown off by that shit since I had never actually tried that crap before...

So yeah, halfway through my presentation? I quickly glanced up to the fucking projector screen, and fucking saw that I was on the fucking wrong slide... by a fucking wide margin, mind you...

Of course, I panicked. I lost my train of focus, kind of just froze there, and stared at the projector screen for God knows how long until I wheel moused my way to the actual slide I was meant to be on... After that huge pause and a resequencing of nerves? I think I did alright from that point on. Problem was, the damage had already been done...

The first presentation wasn't worth much at all. Basically, it was just a dry run for the real shit coming the week later, where part of our mark would be graded on how much we actually take the professor's suggestions to heart and improve ourselves... and what exactly was his criticism of me?...

Well... at least, he never mentioned once that I was on the fucking wrong Powerpoint slide...

... he did complain however, that I had shut the fuck up as I just kept staring blankly at the screen... a valid complaint, mind you...

So when the real presentation came along this past Thursday? I made sure to memorize every single fucking time I had to click the fucking cordless mouse. I refused to embarrass myself in front of my peers and potentially the press yet again this week, and I became flawless in the whole of the presentation rehearsals during God knows how many times I practiced that day...

... problem was, there is such a thing as practicing too damn much...

I was fine for the first half of the goddam presentation. But ironically enough, even though my Powerpoint slides were exactly where they were meant to be?... Fuck, I still managed to flub and fuck over my lines as soon as I got to the same fucking part where I fucked up the week before. I mean, I had suddenly developed a taste for fucking cotton mouth this time around, and I simply couldn't fucking enunciate any fucking word that I tried to out of my goddam mouth...

I must've sounded like a retard, getting second place in the Special Olympics or some shit like that...

Sure, I recovered. But the damage had been done... as two weeks in a row, I had let my group down right in the middle of the fucking presentation...

The thing is, I only made things worse when the students in the audience started asking questions... My group partners were taking all the answers basically, and I felt obviously left out because they were getting marks for their aggressiveness while I was sure that the professor was marking me down as silent throughout the whole Q&A... Sure, I had managed to answer a couple of questions by that point in time, as simple as those inquisitions were. But percentage wise? Things didn't exactly look good for me when my two friends started spotlighting the floor as a bloody hell duet... and we were being marked individually to some extent, so...

So, for a question that I knew that I could barely answer? I don't know why I inclined my head and hand and heart and wrist to my partners so that I could tackle the question myself, but I still fucking did so before I could eveb fucking think up what the fuck I was going to say...

And once again, I fucked over myself and my group by going off on a tangent. Thankfully, my partners sort of cut me off before I had made a complete fool of myself. But not soon enough though, I'm afraid... Basically, I was answering all the questions that I had wished I had been able to answer before (yet remained passive and silent for), while kind of completely ignoring the question at hand that I was actually supposed to be goddam answering...

Sure, maybe my words can't really convey just how dumbass I looked out there. But rest assured, if this was my last real presentation for my school life ever? It was definitely not a good one... though I suppose it was definitely one that I will remember, for better or for worse really...

It just sucks that I had the whole presentation bit down in all my rehearsals, yet I simply choked when the real shit came knocking at the door... I know that I'm completely out of practice with presenting in front of people, considering I've had maybe a mere two or three other presentations in my entire university career. But still, I seriously had thought that maybe working at a real job would've improved my improv abilities on the spot somehow, you know?...

... 'fraid not... sucks to be me, I'm afraid...

And now? Now, I'll simply be reduced into just trying to save face by redeeming myself with the next paper for this design project course of mine, a bloody hell progress report due this Thursday that is... So I suppose, instead of writing this download update of mine that nobody will ever read? I should really just get cracking at that...

It still breaks my heart and puts me to shame, to know that I let my partners down though... I absolutely hate embarrassing myself in front of people, for God knows what reason. But even more so, I really do hate embarrassing people that I care about, which sadly enough is the status quo still around these parts...

Meaning what? Meaning, I guess I haven't changed much since high school in that bloody hell regard...

... I guess, some things just never change...

But bah. That's old news and new news...

... because it all just sounds like so much goddam fun, now doesn't it?...

Y2kk Update: Well, I just got back from my Chinese New Year festivities, the kind of which that has terrified me for years...

Now, the dragons are cool. Dragons are always fucking cool...

But the fucking Chinese lions that do all the fucking dancing?...

Fuck... they horrify me more than clowns ever have...

... they just keep on sending them in... fucking goddammit...

You know what they do, right? The lions, I mean...

They jiggle and prance and pounce around your zone like an oil baron predator, until you feed them your fucking money for good luck in the year. They're literally loan sharks holding you for ransom that way, bobbing their fucking fluttering eyes right in the mug of your face until you finally submit and fork over your hard earned cash... obviously, the more money you give, the more luck you're supposed to receive in the Chinese New Year...

My cousin actually had a decent joke, for perhaps the first time in God knows how long. I've always been fucking terrified of those fucking horseshit, lion shit dances, ever since I was small I recall... So tonight, my cousin started doing his own jig impression of me tonight, claiming that I'm going to be fucking mugged by one of these fucking lion things in an alleyway in the middle of the night...

And I dunno, just seeing a fat man like him bubble about to the beat of the lion dance war drums, imitating how I would be frantically checking left and right around the dark alleyways to the sound of the goddam music, until I got ransacked from a fucking lion up above?... Guess you had to be there. But meh, I laughed... whatever....

Where the fuck are my dragons when you need them?...

And yeah, my cousin was born in the same year as I was, so we're both going on to the age of 24 this year. And I guess most people know from Chinese buffets and shit like that, that your own fucking birth animal returns every twelve years or some shit like that...

Yeah, I'm from the year of the dog. You're in my house now, dawg...

I better have some fucking good luck this year, otherwise I'll be kicking ass and raising hell (or Helen). I mean, at least in 2005 I was able to get my first real job... Then again, I was paid fucking minimum wage for my goddam programming at first, got fucked over by a worker bee bitch in the meantime, and fucking couldn't complete university in four years time due to my design project partners bailing on me the year before...

The year of the dog is my fucking year, and I fucking expect better. I fucking hope that this is the year where I finally get my first secure, full time employee position. This will also be the year where ironically enough, two of my cousins, my brother and I are all graduating from fucking universities with degrees at once. And at least I'll finally get my fucking engineering iron ring, which is worth at least a pretty dime on the black market at least...

I hope my family situation improves this year, as my brother might get to return home for a while provided where his business work takes him. And my cousins are starting to settle down themselves, leaving more time to actually talk about shit other than their own friends, whom they've now essentially ditched in the past I'd wager...

The only real question is, what the fuck else does the year of the dog have in store for me? Will this finally be the year where I fucking get a fucking girlfriend, even though I basically got shut down by two and a half fucking women in the goddam past year?... although I ain't naming names or telling stories here, that's for sure...

The only real question is... will this be the year of the dawg?...

... or the year of the bitch?...

Will this please be the year where the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup, or the Toronto Raptors win the NBA Championship?... Considering both teams are sucking ass right now, I seriously doubt that either of them will make the playoffs, let alone get past the first bloody hell round. But at least Canada still has the fucking Winter Olympics to bide our sweet ass time for a sweet ass victory...

I just wonder if I'll ever get that full time position that I've been gunning for at work. I mean, while things are still decently rosy at work, the weight of politics is sort of... well?... starting to weigh on me, or whatever...

I work for three separate factions now, although mainly only two. And the thing is, while the two departments pretty much get along with each other on the outside, they really do seem to hate each other whenever the other side leaves and all facades come off... Of course, the thing is, I have loyalties to both sides of the camp. And whenever I seem to do one a favour, the other side definitely doesn't seem happy that a) I'm now doing less for them, or b) that I'm now helping some person that they obviously can't stand...

I'm also having a few other problems at work... as naturally, the morning that I sleep through my alarm clock is the morning that I fucking have a fucking important meeting at 9 am sharp...

I guess in the end, there was nothing really to worry about that shit, considering I called in and got my coworker to kind of cover for me by claiming I was taking a crap or some shit like that... Still, out of all mornings to sleep the fuck in, why the fuck did I choose that morning?...

I normally wake up around 7:20 am, and make the 7:35 am bus for the 7:58 am GO train to Toronto. Thing is, even though I woke up from my fucking alarm that morning, as soon as I checked my clock? It was suddenly fucking 7:40 am, and I was fucked... Sure, I took the next available bus that arrived at 7:50 am, but that bus of course always misses the train that I needed by five mere fucking minutes. And thus, I was forced to take the next best trip to Toronto arriving at 8:15 am, which I knew would get me into the city at least ten minutes later than I had to be...

Well, my coworker covered for me, and another worker was late as well, so nobody was really the wiser when it came to my morning shit (or lack thereof, considering I didn't get to shit in the morning and thus endured a 9 am to 2 pm meeting as a constipated asshole, really). Still, it was a fucking close call, and I'm fucking lucky that I didn't doze off long enough in the morning to miss that backup bus that I did manage to just catch... Hell, I could've been late in the morning any other morning and just worked it off at night, so why the fuck did I happen to sleep in the one fucking morning where I had a fucking important meeting of all days?...

I'm just scared right now that I'll fuck myself over for my next important meeting in the morning as well...

... fucking lion dance, lyin' hearted scared, really...

Well, at least from now on, I'll make sure to check my surroundings in fucking alleyways to the fucking sound of war-drum music...

But until then? Until I cross that bridge?... well, is there really anything else to say here, but to wish you all?...

... a God Speed, a Good Will Hunting, a God Bless Us, Everyone...

... and of course, a Happy Chinese New Year...

Afterall, it's my time. It's my time, dawg.

You're in my year now, bitch.