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Metamorphosis

Monday, July 18, 2005

Almost time

I'm leaving in five days. How do I feel? It's quite the bombardment of emotions: happy, sad, excited, nervous, giddy, anxious. Still, I haven't been able to revive that awesome feeling of pure euphoria that I experienced when I first found out I got the job - quite possibly The Happiest Moment of my Life and single-handedly responsible for dropping my average 12%. I think a part of me still doesn't believe that in a blink fo an eye I'll finally be out of here. All this waiting has desensitized me.

I've been leeching music like a mad man in a attempt to satisfy a year's worth of downloading in a few days. One of my goals is to not ever be cooped up in my room doing the anti-social stuff that I typically do here, in my "normal" Canadian life. No downloading, no random web surfing, etc. As I've already said, a good rule of thumb is that I should only be in my room to sleep and eat. That's a good mantra for the year: "Are you sleeping? Are you eating? Then get outta here!"

[ posted by asynchro @ 6:57 pm | Permanent link | ]

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Reading material

So close, only a few more days!! It didn't really hit home -how close it really is- until I was at the grocery store the other day, checking the expiry dates on yogurt containers and realizing, "Hey! I'm not gonna be here when these expire!"

Not that I plan on letting my yogurt expire, mind you.

I'm finding it harder and harder to concentrate on studying as the date gets closer, but it doesn't stop me from trying...

While downtown to pick up my visa at the Japanese consulate last week, I stopped by the UofT bookstore (something I've been meaning to do for months) to check out their Japanese book selection, as I hear it's pretty good. Pretty good doesn't even begin to describe it. They have, by far, the most extensive collection of Japanese language/culture books I have ever seen in a single physical location. An entire wall. It was like searching for "Japanese" in Amazon and seeing the results appear right there in real life. After perusing for a good hour, I found 6 books that peaked my interest, and being the responsible shopper I am I made a list so that I could go home and thoroughly research each of the books on the net before making the plunge. Being the irresponsible online shopper I am, after reading one or two favourable reviews of each on Amazon I ordered them all.

These are the books:

The links are all to Amazon.ca and I keep talking about Amazon because of their review system, but I actually bought all the books from Chapters.ca as they have really caught up to Amazon.ca in terms of price competitiveness, title selection and perhaps most importantly at this point, title availability - when I ordered the books last week, each was available and "ships in 24 hours" on Chapters, but not Amazon.

[ posted by asynchro @ 7:49 am | Permanent link | ]

Sunday, July 03, 2005

The next thing

[I've got my flight booked for Sunday, July 24, 6:26 AM. Countdown on the left. Three weeks less a day. I figure two more weeks of studying and one week of ... not studying should work out quite nicely.]

I never really officially adopted a mantra, but I've been reading a very inspirational post about personal mantras at 43 Folders, and as a chronic procrastinator I've found one that fits perfectly:

"Don't do the whole thing, just do the first next thing."

Or, under a slightly different light, "it pays to be short-sighted". Although I haven't realized it until very recently, I think I've used this philosophy to great effect with regards to, of all things, working out. Since I seriously became a fitness freak just about two years ago, I've always been looking ahead to the next week, but only the next week of workouts. Always only scheduling, at whatever cost, the three workouts for the next week, but no further. Assignments? Exams? Dumped by my girlfriend? Ultimately impossible goal? Doesn't matter, all I know is that I'm working out three times this week and the only thing that'll keep that from happening is an injury (twice), or an occasional, roughly once-a-term break from working out. Any mathie will tell you that by induction, if you do this week after week then you'll hit your goal at some point. I don't know when, but I think I did already. Actually, I didn't really have an explicit goal, but it was probably something subjective, along the lines of "I want to be able to look in a mirror and feel good."

So where do I go from here? I don't know, but this week I'm working out on Tues., Thurs. and Fri.

[ posted by asynchro @ 9:37 pm | Permanent link | ]