Friday, April 07, 2006

Wow...hectic two days!

Hey all!

The last two days have been chaos! So that's why I've not updated in a while. As you can see I have no pictures to go with todays post. I'm sorry. I had to leave my laptop at home because I'm leaving straight from the university to go on a field trip with the second years as a tutour. So, I'm using on of the computers in the computer room to update today.

So, Wednesday was lots of fun. I had a relatively mild day at university. Did a lot of reading and had a stats lecture which is always fun (sarcasm). Strangely enough, I actually understood most of what was being said in the lecture. Anyone who has ever had to do anything vaguely statistical will agree with me that understanding anything with regard to stats is an experience that will probably never be repeated and thus should be savoured. Enough savouring.

After that I returned to the honours room with some of my friends. I got hounded by Laura again about the SRC stuff and decided that I have just had enough of her. So I quit the sub-comm. I'm so chuffed with myself about that. The whole experience was rather an eye-opener. Laura actually pulled the 'Fine, well you are not invited to my party' card. She was really pissed off with me and actually said these words: 'See, this is why I don't have my "Thank-you-for-being-on-my-sub-comm" party in the middle of the year like everyone else, and have it at the end of the year instead!' Her immaturity was rather shocking.

Anyway, after that little experience, I went home, tried to do some reading and then went to have dinner. Half-way through dinner, and might I add 20 min early, my friends came to pick me up to go off to street racing! Like as in 'The fast and the furious', only legal. My sister decided to come along at the last minute too.

Well, what can I say about street racing? It is such a load of crap! All the guys take themselves so seriously and have these massive egos. It is cool once they start the actual racing but because of the way that it is run, you basically watch them start racing and you never find out who wins. So, after about the first 5 'races' it gets a tad boring. My friend David and his brother-in-law, Ben, loved every second! They are such nutters!

Sorry to all those that are reading this and love cars and all that they entail. I realise that I may have offended you with that last paragraph but, I really don't get the whole car thing. They are designed with one sole purpose; to get you from A to B. So why waste all that time, effort and money on getting a body kit for your car simply so that you can look, in your own eyes, cool. Since this is probably getting some of you hot under the collar, I will cease this topic.

Thursday was not much better. I arrived at university and tried to get some work done. I had to go to a meeting at 11:30 am, then another at 12:00 am and yet another at 12:30 am. On top of all that I had to go and rent out my graduation gown for the graduation ceremony that took place that evening. So I went to the 11:30 one and discovered that they had changed the time to 13:15 instead! They hadn't bothered to let us know that they were changing the times but they just did. So that made me slightly irritable. So I returned to my office to do some reading and didn't. I ended up just chatting to a friend of mine for the remaining time.

I then went off to my 12:00 meeting and ended up waiting outside my supivisors office for 15 min only to discover that he had decided that as it was graduation, we would be too stressed to have a meeting. So he canceled it without telling us. So I then figured that I'd try going off to see if the person that I was supposed to meet at 12:30 was there yet. Luckily for me, she was. So I got that out of the way and went up to the honours room to go and try to organise my life somewhat.

I then went to get my gown which took a good half an hour, after which I went to the 13:15 meeting. Not worth writing about.

I left shortly after returning to the honours room. I drove home in the ridiculously slow traffic, with that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I was going to end up late for my graduation.

Once home, I preped by first having some lunch, then taking a shower and getting dressed. I was supposed to leave to go and fetch my grandmother on my dad's side at 4:45, but, as always happens in my family, we were late. I had only two tickets to my graduation. That is excluding myself. I naturally had to attend my own graduation, so had a ticket of my own. I actually had quite a dilemma about who to take with to my graduation. Under normal circumstances it would have been a really easy decision. Any sane person woul just take their parents.

But, due to the fact that mine live on another continent, I had to pick someone else. So, now I had to choose: do I take my mom's mother or father? On my dad's side, my grandfather died two years ago so I naturally just had to take my grandmother. But my mom's family was a bit more problematic. If I took my grandmother, my grandfather would get offended (He is rather sensative and incredibly stubborn).

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I got to graduation, late. I wasn't too late though, thank goodness. I ran into some friends outside the hall and they told me what was going on and what I had to do. I discovered that one of my friend's moms is in a wheelchair. It came as a bit of a surprise and I really wasn't expecting it at all! He never mentioned anything to me. I hope that he is okay and that she is too. It's odd how people do this kind of thing. Something major will happen in their lives and they will just not mention it at all. I had a friend who's sister got engaged and he never mentioned it until he was really stressed out with helping with all the wedding plans. Odd...but at the same time, there are times when you just don't really want people to know and make a fuss over the situation.

So, the graduation ceremony got started with some rather carrot-up-the-arse ushers shooing us to our seats and then hushing us anytime we asked for a program or the time. Then, once we were all in place and waiting the ceremony got underway. The senior scientists in the Science faculty all came parading in in their weird outfits. They all then seated themselves on the stage and the dean arrived, followed by some guy carrying the university mace.

I had o clue that we even had a university mace! And why the hell do we have it anyway? Apparently the thing weighs 17kg.

After a few speeches, they started the graduation procedure. We had to que up and wait for our name to be called. We then had to walk to the centre of the stage where the dean sat. He would then stand and pat us on the head with a strange little beret thingy. While he did this he would lean over and shake your hand while congratulating you with a very naughty-little-boy look on his face. It was rather strange...

We then had to walk to the far side of the stage from where there were two people who took your hood/sash thing and placed it around your neck. They would then take a photo of you as the thing was placed around your neck. As you walked off the stage on that side someone would give you your degree-on-paper thing and a little tube to keep it in. Once you had that, you were ushered into a side passage where there was another photographer that took your photo and you then moved back to your seat in the hall.

A friend of mine nearly didn't get hit on the head by the dean with the beret and as result nearly didn't graduate! It was really funny! Then, at the end of the procedure, the faculty people formed a procession and left the stage. While they were parading out of the hall, there was a song sung by a chior playing over the sound system. Once they were all out, the music stopped and they played 'I feel good'! It was really random and unexpected!

The rest of the evening was rather dull. I just took my gran home and went home for some dinner.

I still have so much to write about! I had a really hectic weekend and its Tuesday already! So many updates, so little time...Anyway, I'll try to update as soon as possible.

Stay safe! Remember, you only have one life, so look after it!

Cheerio!

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