Tuesday, January 31, 2006

pop quiz

inspired by a (semi? non?) accurate observation my prof made about my personality the other day, i had the sudden urge to test myself with some of the personality inventories available online. anyway, i stumbled across this one site and took most of their tests... some were lighter in nature, others more complex and profound. looking at some of my results, i dunno whether to laugh or cry laughing! i'm all over the place. i took the myers-briggs inventory last semester and there was enough fluctuation then, but i thought i finally got it right in the end. apparently i've changed again. and the end descriptions i got for some of the tests were so negative and depressing, it was hilarious really... but there's always a bit of truth behind all humour, so yah... dunno what to make of it all. except laugh :) the word association test is what i would consider one of the lighter ones... they give you a bunch of words that you're supposed to rate as positive, negative or neutral, and the premise is that answering delays may correspond to issues with that particular word. my top 5 delays are listed below. i don't really believe this means anything ;)

I have issues with...
future
money
history
men
walls
Take Word Association Test

Monday, January 30, 2006

*sniffle*

i got a cold over the wknd. not sure why... the weather, maybe? anyway, i hate colds... the nasal congestion drives me insane at night. and now i'm so dehydrated... in class today i felt like my lips were gonna fall off my face. so what did i do about it? buy myself a cup of coffee, of course... you know, the best hydrating drink ever.

i'm trying to be healthy, really ;) but it's sooo hard. my chocolate consumption has sky-rocketed since last month and it's hard enough to control that. though i've cut down a bit as of late. of course, when i've eaten up all my chocolate and i haven't gone out to buy some more, it makes cutting down a little easier. people, PLEASE, for the sake of my health, do not feed me chocolate!!

my mom mixed in some brown rice with the white for last night's dinner. i flipped. i can eat brown rice at other people's houses, but when it's being cooked in my own kitchen, for some reason it drives me nuts. yes yes, it's healthy, i know, but i'm not asking for much... i have very simple tastes... i'm perfectly happy with stuff like white rice, white bread, broth... heck, i could have that as a meal! but please, leave my white rice and white bread alone!

although... i did see a commercial on tv [confession: i started watching american idol a coupla weeks ago] and apparently wonderbread has this new kind of bread that has all the nutrients of brown bread except it still tastes just like their white bread. now THAT'S innovation! i'll have to try some and see for myself if the bread lives up to what it promises in the commercial.

ughhh... i hate the sniffles......

p.s. i don't like DADF#AD tuning. sorry B, but my bar chords sound horrible! my fingers weren't meant to bar. i could even stretch that and say they weren't meant to play guitar... but i don't want samuel to feel unloved :P

Monday, January 23, 2006

holy DADGAD, batman!

alternate tuning, where have you been all my life?!

to think i coulda been playing open DADGAD chords all this time... *smacking forehead*

anyway, i came up with a name for my guitar:

- samuel Xavier martin -

what? explain the name? sure! his first name is samuel because he's a lot like old testament samuel. hannah (which coincidentally means grace) was barren and she prayed earnestly for a son, promising the Lord that if He blessed her with one, she would "give him to the Lord all the days of his life" (1 Sam 1:11 NASB). did you know that i went eight years without my own guitar?? yah... so anyway, when the Lord blessed hannah with a son, "she named him Samuel, saying, 'Because I have asked him of the Lord' " (v. 20). well same here. and so, like hannah, "for this boy [guitar] i prayed, and the Lord has given me my petition which i asked of Him. so i have also dedicated him to the Lord; as long as he lives he is dedicated to the Lord" (v. 27-28).

his middle name is Xavier because i wanted to name him after the X-series line that he's from... model 000X1, to be exact. and his last name is martin cuz... well, cuz he's a martin!

---

i have a confession to make. i was actually praying for a piano :P but i guess i wasn't meant to have one. yet. anyway, i'm very happy with samuel :) and besides, there are too many female guitars at church... they're all gonna be fighting over samuel! granted, he's smaller and skinnier and more fragile than they are... not much to look at... but he's still da man ;)

Sunday, January 22, 2006

^_^

...but two guitar returns and four trips later, i have my martin :)

(that's not his name, btw. i'm still deciding on one... and yes, it's a he.)

Saturday, January 21, 2006

>.<

who knew guitar-shopping would be so stressful......

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

much ado about nothing

my patience is wearing thin with my applications...

the CanIL one was easy enough. too bad i couldn't pay online, but that's ok... so i have to bust out my chequebook, write out a cheque, stick it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and mail it... but i thought the whole point of an online application was to avoid the whole mailing hassle? anyway, that's fine. though i wish i had known earlier, then i woulda just snailmailed the whole package. transcript-wise, UofT's ROSI is really convenient... i request it online, pay it online, and they send it out for me which saves me the time and effort of making the trek downtown and using up another stamp. so i can't complain there. (and sorry to be so hung up on the stamps, but first of all, i don't mail things out on a regular basis so it's not like i own a set of stamps that i can grab at my convenience... anything i need to mail out will require an extra trip down to the nearest post office, which requires even more time and effort, not to mention the added hassle of arranging transportation since vehicles are not readily available at my house.) tyndale, on the other hand...... anyway, that's ok. i'll work it out with them at the end of the month after transcripts are available.

but ACTS... yes, that application is really something... so first of all, i opted for the online application. but i can't just start applying, i have to create an account with TWU. ok, that's fine. so they sent all the login info to my email account. great. wait... where is it? usually these things get sent within the minute. well... that's ok, i'll just wait patiently... go down and grab a quick snack. honestly, i don't know how long i actually waited, but i couldn't wait any longer so i resubmitted my request. a few minutes later, i get the email. so i try to log in with it... but it doesn't work! oh, wait, could it be because i resubmitted my request and so they resetted my password and now i have to wait for the second email? lovely. ok... so i get the second email after some time, log in, and *finally* begin the application.

one of my peeves (and again i have to apologize for the whining, but i'm afraid i might implode if i don't) is when applications don't give me enough space to write out my whole name. yes, it's a bit on the long side, but it's not that long!!! the ACTS application gives 15 spaces for first names. my whole first name, including the two spaces separating the three names, takes up 16 spaces. so what do i do? combine the first two? cut off a letter? only use 'grace'? for unofficial things, maybe... but not for an application. so i sat there annoyed for a few minutes and eventually typed in 'Merry June Grac', and right below it, in the preferred name box, i typed 'Grace (won't fit above)'. so then i was satisfied. but then my dear observant brain caught something... how many spaces does 'Grace (won't fit above)' take up? count them, ppl... 23!!! i proceeded to count the total number of available spaces in that box. 3o. 30, ppl!! because you know, generally people have these short official first names of less than 15 characters that appear on their birth certificates, but when it comes to what they want people to call them, these preferred names have the tendency to be MUCH MUCH longer, twice as long in fact, up to 30 spaces long!

ok. moving on. so i filled out my step 2 personal info just fine. oh yah, all that stuff above, that counts as my contact info, step 1. there are 14 steps in total to this application. but as soon as i got to step 3... oh boy, here we go again.

when i first found out about ACTS seminaries, i thought it was one big school made up of a bunch of little schools in collaboration with each other. i wasn't totally wrong, but really, i should've known better after being severely scarred by UofT. let me briefly explain myself before i go on.

my entire UofT story is a novel in itself, but anyway... if i had to give advice to prospective students, i would tell them the exact opposite of what those horrible people at the university fair told me: NO, UofT is NOT the same wherever you attend, and YES, it makes a HUGE difference what campus you choose, because NO, they are NOT the same even if they offer the same programs, so DO NOT get fooled and think you can easily transfer from one campus to another because it's the same university anyway, because each campus runs things so differently from one another that they might as well be separate universities! the most ridiculous example i can come up with about my own devastating transfer from UTSC to St. George is the fact that my first year bio wasn't directly transferrable because scarborough campus lacked an evolution component, and my first year chem only counted for half a credit because scarborough campus lacked an organic component. and these are core first-year science courses, ppl! RIDICULOUS! THEY'RE BOTH UOFT! shouldn't at least their core courses be transferrable?? ahhh, but now you see what i mean... anyway, some of you know that the theory of evolution doesn't sit well with me, especially back then when i was particularly headstrong in my 'creationist' mindset, so imagine what went on in my head when i found out that i HAD to take an evolution course in order for my program requirement of first year bio to count so that i could graduate... yah. and the chem? i can't remember how i worked that one out, but that's ok, i don't wanna dwell on this subject anymore.

ok, back to my ACTS application. so i'm on step 3, academic interests, and i come upon this...

My seminary choice is:

  • Canadian Baptist Seminary
  • Canadian Pentecostal Seminary
  • Candadian Theological Seminary
  • Northwest Baptist Seminary
  • Trinity Western Seminary
  • Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary
  • No Preference

    * ACTS is associated with six theological seminaries. Please select one from the list above to study under.
WHAT?? you mean i'm applying to ACTS but i'm really not at the same time cuz i'll actually be studying under only one seminary??

oh. ok. interesting. no wonder no one's ever heard of ACTS... people keep giving me these blank faces whenever i mention it. now i know why. it's just an umbrella title. cuz i'm sure people have heard of trinity western or canadian baptist or pentecostal or any of the other seminaries mentioned.

so after my short-lived eureka moment, the dilemma began to sink in... which seminary do i choose?? i didn't even realize i had to choose one! my church is non-denominational (at least that's what p. andrew told me when i applied to tyndale) so that doesn't help. if i opt for no preference, that means they'll be choosing for me and who knows where they'll stick me! i might as well make an informed decision. so i emailed a wise friend of mine (who also happens to be a pastor and living out west) hoping that he would share a bit of wisdom and guidance in the matter. and of course, some prayer is needed before i make my final decision.

in the meantime, i wanted to skip the question. the next one asks, where did i hear about ACTS? so some parts of the application are required and others are optional. unbelievably, this is one of their mandatory questions. that's fine, i wouldn't even mention this question, except for the fact that i couldn't choose! 15 choices and none of them were 'from another seminary' or 'in a coursebook' or something along those lines... and no, they didn't have 'none of the above' or even 'other' which usually comes with a blank for me to write something in. so i couldn't make up my mind which lie to choose (cuz that's what i'm essentially doing if none of the given choices were how i really heard about ACTS), so i wanted to skip the whole page and go on to the next step.

they wouldn't let me. i have to fill out ALL of the required fields before i can move on to any of the other pages. and yah, i have to go through the steps chronologically, so until i decide what seminary to study under and what lie to choose about how i heard of ACTS, i can't fill out anything else. isn't that just lovely?? and to top it all off, i recalled the payment incident with my CanIL application so i wanted to find out if ACTS accepts online payment, but that's not until step 12.

and...... that's all for now.

excuse me, i'll be needing my chocolate fix for the afternoon.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

weeeeee

it's a skating rink out there! i nearly slipped five times this afternoon by virtue of just standing... of course, there were several contributing factors (aside from the freezing rain): no-grip shoes, sloped ground, strong winds, and lack of mass. the funniest was at the gas station... i stepped out of the van with one foot on the ground and one hand on the door, only to have this big gust of wind blow the door out and me along with it. i did slip, but i was clinging to the door so i managed to keep my butt off the ground. i had to pull myself along just to get to the tank, and i had to hold on to the van while pumping the gas cuz the wind kept blowing and the ground was sloped and i kept gliding away......

Monday, January 16, 2006

amandes chocolat

i scarfed down an entire box of chocolate-covered almonds in one sitting just now.

and now i have the hiccups. not to mention all the saturated fats i need for the next two days.

warning: don't try this at home.

Friday, January 13, 2006

no words

speaking of Christian... this totally blew me away:

http://headtochrist.com/

make sure to check out the whole site... bio, journal, news, everything...

let me know what you think.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

over drinks

i don't normally post on the spur of the moment, but this reeeaallly had me thinking:

"we're automatically drawn to God..." (that is, the evidence of His presence in other people's lives.)

this was the explanation a friend gave me over drinks tonight. yah, i know, it's not Christian rocket science... but if you were to suddenly realize that this is what's governing all the laws of attraction in your world, i bet you would have a eureka moment too.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

it's morphin' time ;)

happy new year, tout le monde!

so i thought i'd change the look of my blog a bit. you know, make the switch from one default template to another. hard work, i know.

i didn't get as much rest as i would've liked over the holidays. i was writing papers up until the morning i left for san diego, and the entire trip was pretty jam-packed and more stressful than your average vacation (though i was able to marvel at God's creation a few times, and those precious moments alone made the trip worth it). for the second year in a row, i spent the bulk of my birthday in an airport / on a plane and was barely awake for the countdown. and then i blinked and found myself back in school first week into the new year. and yes, i'm already behind... ugggghh.

so what was i doing a year ago today?






i was able to visit the hospital i was born in just over 24 years ago.












i also got a chance to visit my old house.








i took these pics from my yahoo photo album of last year's trip to the philippines. click here for a refresher.

i would've made an album of my cali trip, but i had to leave my camera behind for my dad to use. my mom took a million pics, but it's not the same cuz it's not my story to tell. though i might post the odd pic... like the one of the chocolate fountain at my aunt's wedding. i'm drooling just thinking about it!! next time, next time.