Author: sikander

three incidents, a dream, two reviews, and some worries will i narrate to you today. so sit back, stretch your legs, get some pickles from the kitchen, and jump to the next paragraph.

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 I was sitting in the library reading a novel and eating. One is not officially allowed to eat/drink in the library but lots ignore that rule and smuggle some snacks every now and then. I had a Pepsi can, a Chips packet, and a Bounty Chocolate bar with me. I was sitting on a table that was near a window [the windows are huge.. reaching from the floor to the ceiling]. These tables have vertical separators in the middle for privacy. People can sit on either side and do their work privately without having someone in front looking at them. There was no one else in this row of tables and so i had complete privacy. I was messing with my hair, bitting my nails, picking my nose, sucking the choclate off my fingers, basically stuff you do when you are 100% sure no one else is watching.I finished the drink and then looked around for a garbage can. It was too far away. I turned back and placed the can on the floor behind me. Someone was sitting on the other side of the table that was behind me. I could see the person’s feet.

While driving to university, i pass by a bus stop that has a shoe ad on it. A woman wearing a towel is standing with her back towards you, the viewer, and is showing her ummm *stuff* to a guy standing in front of her. The guy is saying, “Nice shoes”. I’ve passed by that ad more than a couple of times.

So when i leaned back to put the Pepsi can on the floor and saw her feet, i stopped and looked at the shoes. And i kept looking. After ~15 seconds or so [15 seconds is a lonnnng time to look at someone’s shoes. just stop here and count to 15] i realized that i should not be looking at someone’s shoes like this [pervert !!] and so i started to unlean and go back to the novel when i caught a movement in the window. I looked up and saw the girl looking straight at me. The window reflected both of us at such an angle that we could see each other clearly.

She had a quizzical look at on her face. She also had a slight smile on her lips and i think, or rather imagined, that her eyes were twinkling [yes the reflection was that clear]. Her posture was projecting the question, “Why are you looking at my feet ?” at me. The instant i saw her looking at me, i felt as if i were falling down a dark bottomless blackhole. I felt as if my body was in that chair but my insides, my brain, my stomach, my intestines, and miniMe, the real me who lives in my head, were falling while desperately trying to hold onto something that would save them. I was embarassed beyond belief. I cannot recall feeling this embrassed in my entire life.

Thankfully miniMe recovered quickly. I did not betray any emotion other than maybe turning red. heh. Immediately I looked towards the left pretending as if i were looking for a trashcan [which i was !!!] I had already spotted one at the far end of the table. Quietly I stood up, grabbed the can, the empty chips packet, and Bounty’s cover, my bag, and the novel, dropped the trash in the trashcan, and left the campus.

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 I’m walking in the hallway towards a locker. She had asked me to put some stuff in there. I knew her locker number and combination; she told me that yesteday. The campus is virtually emtpy. I walk on, humming a tune to myself towards the locker. It wasnt hard to find it. I also knew what the lock looked like. I tried the combination and the lock opened. There was a grey plastic bag hanging from one of the hooks. My stomach growled. I had not had breakfast in the morning. Like I, she also loves junkfood. I reach in the bag thinking of borrowing a cake, choc bar, chips, or whatever was in there. My hands touch something that felt like a plastic bag. Yes !! I pull it out while the brain sends a “Calm down. I’m sending you some Food any second now” signal to the stomach.There i was standing all alone in front of a locker in the university holding this. My brain reeled while the stomach jumped up and down twenty times in one second. A very very nasty experience.

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 ‘Three incidents, a dream, two reviews, and some worries will i narrate to you today’, i said earlier.
Alas, it is 1245 and i have a class at 9am tomorrow. I need sleep.
Stay tuned for the rest of the presentation. It will, hopefully, be narrated tomorrow.

the end is near.. apocalypse now [the first time i saw it (in highschool) i did not like this movie. then i saw ‘the making of apocalypse now and i loved it. and now i think if i see AN again, i’ll like it]. this really is too bright. i always try to keep the colors dark so that any lurker lurking around at night (with the lights off in his/her room) wont go ‘yearrrrrggghhh too bright‘ if he/she stumbles here. and the new monitors dont have that old-fashioned knob to increase/decrease the brightness and contrast. instead they have a button that brings up a menu on the screen and then you have to scroll down and select contrast/brightness and then click the other button and that brings up yet another menu and then you get to change the settings by pressing the up or down butons. so basically by the time you change the settings, you’re 30% blind.

tuesdays are my fav day of the week. mondays i have class at 9am and so mondays is suck but then tuesday is right around the corner and since i have only one class on tuesday [@2 pm], it’s a virtual weekend all over again. IF i dont have anything due on wednesday and i usually dont. all the assgnments are due on either thursday or on friday. today was tuesday.

one of the few things i like about TO is driving on the highways. I had to goto Steeles + DonMills and so had to take Highway 401 and then 404 to Steeles Ave. The highways here are huge; 4 express lanes + 3 collector lanes + bridges merging in and branching out all from all over. There is this stretch on the 401 where you pass under 8 bridges in less than a minute. At one time there are three bridges over you; one above the other. The 410 bridge from 401 East and the Gardiner East exit from 427 South are so high theyre scary. They remind me of snakes whenever i see them.

The other thing i would miss if i ever get out of here is The Humble & Fred Show on Edge102. I listen to that show on mon, tue, and fri when going to the 9am class.

Went to Math class at 2pm. I have a 25% take-home test for it due on thursday. I’ve done part of it. The rest i guess i’ll do on wednesday. That class was fun. Not anymore. All this new weird stuff is confusing. Network flows, Graph Colouring, Isomorphism, etc was interesting. But Generating Functions, Permutations, and similar stuff is ugh.

That’s uhh.. about it. Another day gone like the wind…

i love coincidences.. theyre so unusual and if either person/event had happened just a few seconds sooner or latter, then the umm.. the coincidence wud not have taken place.. wtf was that ?? you know what i’m talking about right ? huh huh ? good !!!

the doorbell rang; i went to the guestroom and looked thru the blinds to see who it was. whoever it was, they had already entered the house so i didnt get to see how many people had arrived. or if they had any kids. but i saw another car enter the street from dendron and park in front of our house. people got off… three kids.. our age. i went back to my room.

<tangent>
we had a formal dinner invitation on friday night [09th march]. It was an eid-millan dinner at candles banquet hall. we were among the first ten people who showed up.. bleh.. shudve remember this is a desi dinner.. the actual ETA is always an hour after the expected ETA. oh well. suits suck.. well some do. the one i wore wasnt what i would call a “good” suit. it was ok; a dark blue one.

last time i wore it was on a 14th august [independence day] dinner back in 2k. the invitation was for the whole family but skid and thrawn didnt want to go. i did. so i called dooh but he wasnt home, andvari wud rather die than goto a formal function with me :P so i called ed. IIRC, he was asleep at the time but he agreed to me picking him up in 15 minutes [hey why wud anyone refuse free food !!] yeOldScaryOne was there and i thought Zerologik might be there too; but she wasnt [phewh]. the other family on our dinner table called us ‘the laughing brothers’ cuz i was unable to supress my laugther when the waiter brought a plate of grass for us to eat and i put way too much sauce on it [some green salad thing]’ :)

anyways, back to the present [tis almost a week old now hey]. the food at the banquet hall was very good.. but it’s so damn hard to get to it.. hundreds of people all around you, virtually no space to walk freely, and a long lineup near the food stations. i think… i _think_ i saw pignose there.. atleast whoever she was, she was an exact replica of her. it’s highly unlikely, but i remember when i first saw her, i froze and thought, ‘wtf is she doing here’. after a closer, errr.. longer inspection, i realized its not her. but when she walked past us for the third time, i was 99% sure it was her… but… thats so unlikely.. i mean.. it’s virtually impossible.. oh well whatever.. it just reminded me of that Carleton ep.. and the incident fits in nicely with the ‘coincidences’ theme.

10th march.. had to work on my csc228 assgn2B. also mat344 assignemnt was due on tuesday. and had another dinner invitation tonite; ABHaleem. this one was better; kids our age. but they’re going to York University. and ABS dissed UTM in front of dad-dee the rest of the day was spent cleaning the house for tomorrow. had a minor row [over directions and h4w h4w h4w.. but nothing terrible serious.. but i wonder who they turn to when they cry] oh and also managed to put the chandelier in our sitting room. had to get different screws and bolts from CanadianTire and had to dig around the depression in the cieling before the chandelier’s holds fit in properly. it looks nice now.

11th march.. and today and the partay at our house. three days.. three dinner parties.. compare that to OTT.. bigg difference hey…and this brings us to the coincidence part.. </tangent>

there were four people in my room.. gL00m, diablo, u7, and thrawn. gL was talking about cricket, someone was on the pc [downloading mp3s ala napster] and the short fat kid [methinks his name was usman] was just standing there… with his belly touching the ground. i heard some people come up the stairs and then maa entered the room with two more guys.. she was introducing them, ‘ this is venom and this is..’ when venom interrupted her and said, ‘ sikander ?!? i know you !! remember me ? venom ‘. i was dumbfounded.. i just looked at him the way a duck would look at an electorn microscope [meanwhile the brain was running a search algorithm trying to fit the face with a name and memories]. he replied, ‘ we were in the same class in jeddah. dont u remember ? i used to borrow cds from you.. syndicate and some other games ‘ jeddah ? i know this guy ? ‘ venom who ? ‘ and then all of a sudden the search found a match.. and memories came flooding in.. ‘ OHHHHHH… venom !!! i remember you… wow ‘. and then everybody laughed [h4w h4w h4w]

he was in my class back in grade 9 in jeddah.. we used to exchange games every now and then. he was an expert at narrating stories [his usa trip etc etc] and he was the tallest student in our class. and then one day he just stopped coming to school.. i dont remember when or why or whether i called his house.. it’s a blank. and now today, after more than four years, here he was.. standing in my room. what a small world :)

we had exactly 40 guests that night; we were expecting ~50 [average of 5 people per family]. it was a very nice evening.. i had fun.. talked about cricket, soccer, university, urdu school, old friends, highschool teachers, games, cars, bikes, blahblahblah. each family brought one dish with them so there was plenty of food.. and coke

last week [on sunday] sahan came over to type her english ISU on the pc. their computer wasnt working. btw her brother was at our party [seneca college] but he just sat there.. and didnt really talk to anyone except himself.. which kinda freaked out diablo.. and everyone else too.. oh well.. almost everyone tried to include him in a converstaion but he just didnt want to participate.. fine with me.

and that brings up us to today [AYBABTU reference] tis funny.. am writing about stuff that happened almost a week ago

this week.. been busy with the csc228 project; the project plan is due tomorrow. have to type that up today. right now am in the comp center.. waiting for the mat344 class.. 2 hours.. ugh. three people in my group [ida, azih, me]. the project is a simulation of an auction house. there are members and there are items for sale. the members put items up for sale and can retract them from the auction whenever they want. members also bid on the items and can buy them when the auction ends or when the bid price reaches the max bid price of the item [hey we have to end it somehow.. a timer wud get complicated] we also have to keep track of a members buying habits, his average buying price, number of items bought, just a bunch of statistics.] the project is due in a month.. april 12. there is a small presentation on it around the end of march; aizh taking care of that. i have to type up the plan and the rest of the coding, testing, and documentation is divided up amongst us.

i really want this project to work flawlessly. but what terrifies me is that we have to do this on UNIX [Solaris] ackk !! can u imagine how hard the debugging is going to be ? i’d rather be on hell !!! actually.. i think its about time i install l00nix on my system [ON A SEPARATE HARDRIVE] that wud surely help. command link unix is soooooo old now.. gawd knows why they still use it in every university.