So I’m taking an eight month co-op term working here and I’ll be back in school in September for the last two semesters of my diploma. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing after that, but that’s next year and I’ll worry about that later.

At the same time during that too, I bought an iPhone 4! I really wanted one especially since I’ll be commuting to and from work which is over an hour long each way. I needed the music and the apps and the TV shows.

As usual, you can find me at BCIT’s MyLife Student Blog where I’ll talk about my experience at school or at work.

I have also updated my movie list from last year. I managed to hit 100 movies for the first time and ended the year with 111! The last movie before the year ended was Moneyball.

I made a new list for this year. I’ve seen 3 movies this year. I’m sad that Tinker Tailor Solider Spy didn’t get nominated for an Oscar, while Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close did. I won tickets to an advance screening so at least the movie was free. It was definitely way too long and could be much shorter (2 hrs and 9 mins). Mission Impossible 4 was actually really good so I’m glad we picked the right movie to watch. The downside to both these movies was that both times I had the person behind me kicking my chair. First it was a man and his long legs. Second it was a woman my age and every time she jumped from a scene, she’d kick my chair. THANKS.

I also made a list of books read this year. I’m trying to get 50 this year since I don’t have school for the first part of the year. Right now I’m at 3. My current book is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s quite long so it might take me awhile to get through it.

That’s all for now :)

My breakfast on Sunday at Pearl Drops

Despite the last few weeks being the most difficult time in my life (wish I was exaggerating, my life had been really calm before then), it is a huge learning experience of how to juggle all these things and still make it out alive.

The next month and a half will not look pretty, but staying positive will help me get through all these assignments and exams and I will leave this semester in one piece. They did warn us that this semester will be hectic, but I never imagined it to be this crazy.

I have been bent, but not broken. And there’s nowhere to go but up.

PS: You can find me on the BCIT‘s image slider! We’re still kicking around at the end of those images. I’m the Chinese girl on the right hand side!

I also managed to write about the workshops I attended last week with the Peak Leadership program from BCIT. I attended two workshops: Personal Branding and E-Portfolio. You can read up on that at my portfolio. I think that site will mainly focus on more professional things that occur in my life, whether it is workshops or conferences or such that I attend.

I’m still debating if I should have my picture up. I’m not sure if it leaves a good or bad impression with employers or whoever looks at it. But then with one look at my name, they already know I’m Chinese and female. So…

*

Also, I got published! Well, it’s in my school’s newspaper, but still. It is actually something I also put in my portfolio, under a section called Publications. Since my school’s newspaper website is still not really up and functioning yet, I managed to screencap the PDF of the issue and posted it there instead.

I wish I have more photos to post, but it seems like I have zero time for the post-production of any pictures. I don’t mind taking the pictures with my camera, but the hardest part is transferring them onto my laptop and editing them, even if it is a really simple procedure. I rather spend the time working on my assignments!

Fingers Crossed with the Co-Op front. I haven’t hit the point where I’m worried about it yet. I will reached that point soon and I’ll start applying to all the jobs. Right now, I’m still applying to a lot, but mostly the ones where I’m really, really interested in.

Hope everyone had a great long weekend!

P.S.: Despite not having a Thanksgiving dinner this year with my relatives, it turns out we end up buying a tiny portion of Chinese-prepared turkey. It’s pretty salty, so I’m not sure how much I’ll enjoy that.

I have the Canucks game PVR’d. I didn’t even watch the Season Opener! I was busy at school working on fixing the final question in my Database assignment.

While there are positions posted on the Co-Op website, I need to use my connection and network and hope that someone knows someone that works at an IT computer that hires co-op student. So, if any of you works for an IT company, let me know. I can send you my cover letter and resume your way until I get my online portfolio up.

Since I adore lists, here’s a list of what I’ve been up to since my last update:

• School has been crazy. I can barely keep up with it since there are all these classes and they’re all new to me. Here’s a list of my courses this semester:
• Object-Oriented Programming with Java
• Procedural Programming in C
• Relational Database Systems
• Computer Organization/Architecture
• Discrete Mathematics
• Business Communications 2
• I am a blogger for BCIT’s MyLife blog. I have two entries up there currently. I’m going to post my third entry today. You get to read about my school life. It’s actually pretty interesting.
• The weather is gross. I don’t like it.

– is what we said ALL DAY.

But yeah, birthday and all that. Another year older. It’s hard to think you’re “grown up” nowadays when you’re still living at home and going to school. At least for me it is. When I actually have a full-time job and move out, I’ll probably feel like an actual adult, doing adult-sy things. Until then, I’m just a kid living at home. But that’s a few more years down the road.

All and all, a great birthday. FREE JUICE(S). STEAK DINNER. CAKE LATER. I still have a birthday coupon for ice cream and have to pick up my birthday gift from Sephora. LOL. I went on a spree to find free things. No Baskin’ Robbins though. The ones that I knew existed all closed down. It just never took off here with so many other options to go to.

PS: Let’s home this Oracle version works. I need to pre-do my database lab so I can start on the assignment tomorrow during lab.

So to prepare for school, I finally made that batch of Rice Krispies that I said I would make months ago. Of course I ended up needing my mother’s help (like every single time). But I think it turned out great… other than I might have put too much butter and mini-marshmallows in after the first batch dried up from cooling down. And also I put all the marshmallow in the bowl in one go. Uh yeah, that’s why I prefer to clean up rather than cook.

PS: What a comeback from the Blue Jays!

Fun. I also started coding my new layout. It’s not doing so well. Maybe I’ll work on it today and tomorrow since I have nothing better to do.

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, I went to Stanley Park with Christian and Naomi. It all started out great until I ran out of batteries and I put in my spare and it was empty too. Either way I learnt a great deal from them about photography, plus I got exercise from all the walking. Can’t wait until we do another photo-walk again!

After it was an awesome commute from Downtown to White Rock. The 351 (Bridgeport to White Rock Centre) is one of those snazzy yellow buses with coach buses seats and air conditioning. Not gonna lie, but I don’t mind having it for every single bus ride. (They have them for Hong Kong.)

Then it’s Labour Day Monday where my parents “dragged” me to White Rock Pier. Yes, the same White Rock that I was at on Saturday and Sunday. I can’t complain since it was a gorgeous day out and I’ve never been. And yes, the rock is painted white. I really should find out if the rock was originally there or only put there after White Rock was created. It’s a chicken or egg kind of deal.

And I’m only down to 5 movies left before I hit 100 movies watched! I also updated my about page with some minor adjustments. I am hoping to watch Limitless soon. I still have A Single Man and Blue Valentine that I keep putting off. Apparently I should watch E.T. too. That’s 4 right there. Also I am really disappointed in Thor. The end.

PS: I’m still debating if I should stick to uploading photos to my blog via Flickr (lower), or have it hosted on my own domain (top photos). I have no opinion on either other than I have to upload some on Flickr anyway. The down side is that they’re at different sizes, or else I’d stick to both.

Or so I thought. Apparently Tuesday is the Orientation Day for first year students. Wednesday is supposed to be my first day… but not this time because I have only labs that day. But labs for the first week are cancelled. You cannot believe how disappointed I am. What a nerd right.

Instead, I started another trial of Project 365. Here’s Day 1 and Day 2. Maybe this will get me blogging again ;)

Who said they wanted some links?

• Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things - I don’t know why this is funny because it’s horrible, but it’s definitely interesting. He’s just… looking at things.
• James’ Face - Some guy photoshops his friend’s picture on facebook. Friend hates it. Too bad my stomach still hurts from laughing so hard.
• GetGlue - Okay, so it’s another of those “check-in” sites. This time it’s TV shows and movies (mainly) and music, topics, etc. after that. After submitting to get physical stickers three times, they’ve finally arrived! I need to take a picture of them…
• WriteOrDie - A web program that makes you write. If you stop, it can erase your words or play annoying music (RICKROLL’D YOU!). This is how I make myself write during NaNoWriMo.
• Mary-Sue Litmus Test - So I must admit I’m running out of links. But hey, if you do write, try not to make them all Mary-Sues or Gary-Stus? Okay good.

It is really easy to make. It suggests that you boil the package into hot water for 2-3 minutes. We skipped the Japanese instruction but it didn’t seem to matter. The package we bought made 12, so it seems like 2 cups of rice seem to be enough.

All you need is:

- Sushi Rice (I assume you know how to make those already. Cook the rice, toss in vinegar.)
- Seasoned inari packages
- Kimchi! (Optional)

We decided to throw in some kimchi since the sushi rice seems too plain. Luckily, we have some laying around!

It is my dinner time right now. That makes me so hungry! We ran out of inari packages at home so we’re making kimchi sushi tonight… I think!

Or do people not do landing pages anymore? I will need to reroute the blog to a separate page then. Hmm.

The last time I updated my Movies page was at Terminator 2! That was at movie 71. Now it’s up to movie 86! I am watching a movie after this blog entry and hopefully a few more of those Futurama movies will bump me to up 90 soon. At least I know I will make it to 100 movies this year, after trying to reach that mark for so many years!

At this point I’m just looking to going back to school. I can’t believe my summer break is finally almost over. It will be nice getting back to a normal routine. I’m just not looking forward to waking up at 6:30 when it’s still freakishly dark outside.

Before that, I still have a Vancouver Canadians (baseball) game to go to, grabbing my U-Pass and new Student ID, and a Photo-Walk with my tweeps! Despite my hermit-like state this summer, I actually did a lot of things with my parents and friends. Maybe I’ll do a recap thing in the near future to celebrate the Summer Break of 2011.

I seriously still can’t believe there was a person up at that sign. I didn’t even notice until I put up the picture on Flickr and started typing in the comment box. Where was I during the editing process?

PS: And now it’s 87 movies since I re-watched Jeux d’enfants (Love Me if You Dare) between starting this post, editing and uploading photos onto Flickr, and finishing this post.