Fri and Sat happenings
Before I begin, I'd like to let you know that the DC Perspectives link on the right isn't fully functional as yet. For the time being, it's just been inundated with randomly generated dummy text. Not trying to teach myself classic Latin literature or anything, but I've only just collected all of the photos that I think will be interesting to put in there, It comes to about 15 MB, so I desperately need to find a way to reduce the quality a notch. I'm considering making a collage or something similar. The thing should be up by next week since my scholastic year ends this Thursday. Grade 12 complete, yahoo!
Yesterday, Friday, was one of the most eventful days of my year. Mr Langston, my counsellor, cordially informed me that I would be an unsuitable candidate for this year's valedictorian. This news didn't quite come to me as a surprise considering the level of participation I had had within the school. I tried pushing my academic performance to see how far I could go, but that didn't seem to work either. If you're even remotely interested, you can read my nomination statement here. I put in a lot of time and effort into this essay simply because it feels so good to talk about yourself for paragraphs on end and actually have someone read it.
I spent the rest of the day begging people to sign my yearbook. I'm trying mighty hard to follow pursuit since signing yearbooks seems to be the norm of the season. Mr. Janz, my English teacher, was all too pleased to sign my yearbook. He even shook hands with me and wished me the best of the luck, which is all doubly cool. He, being an English teacher, used some creative similes to describe my personality — I will keep to myself for the sake of brevity.
During lunch, Mrs. Birsan (Physics teacher) and I talked at length about the IB Programme at NWSS and how things could be improved. I quite modestly informed her that she doesn't give her students enough homework. I also suggested to her to take in double-starred problems for marks, but I said that only after carefully scrutinizing the horizon for spying grade 11's who looked ready to splinter my skull.
I think Mrs. Birsan thought it to be a splendid idea.
Our conversation was presided by Kelly Lu, an old IB graduate from our school. It took him almost by surprise when I came right in front of him and exclaimed "Hi Kelly!" It was like having a grade 10 stranger appear in front of me suddenly and yell "Hi Rajesh!" as if he had known me for years. Our conversation moved from IB to exams to Waterloo to engineering to jobs to real-estate to careers and finally PHP. It then ended with him giving me his card and asking me to email him my resume. Call that networking.
I found myself having to confront many girls that day for reasons I fail to understand. Well, if it were commonplace girls, there wouldn't have been any particular problems, but the girls I had to talk to were IB heroins who always somehow manage to give me the jitters. After expelling what seemed like a couple liters of sweat, I managed to get a few jobs done and a few requests served. It was quite the mental workout talking to them, trust me.
The evening was spent rushing a practice Physics provincial and watching Madagascar on pirated DVD. The night was spent writing a three page yearbook entry for Adrian — an activity that managed to consume an entire hour of my precious sleeping time.
We're going camping for a single night this Friday to Saltspring Island. So I found myself shopping this afternoon for a heavy-duty backpack, a comfy sleeping bag, and a pair of photo-chromatic lenses. The optician was a good marketer and so we ended up purchasing a new gun-metal frame for me as well. I think gun metal will go well with the tuxedo on graduation day.
I came back home and rejected my University of Toronto offer, and my stomach churned in anguish. I looked out my open window. The clouds hung low, the sky looked overcast. It was mildly raining. There was nothing poetic about it. Nothing at all.
