Alex's Alliterative Adventures

I’ve spent the past week or so cooped up in my room, juggling resume spamming, corporate research, scheduling phone interviews between time zones totalling 15 hours of time differences (with and without daylight savings time), writing thank you notes, completing assignments, skip- er, attending lectures, investigating 3D mesh animation, climbing walls, cooking, cleaning, and eating. I’ve been working or being otherwise ridiculously productive for between 10 and 18 hours each day. I finish assignments while waiting for emails to download, I write blog posts while the professor moves between slides, and I implement linked queues in C++ between mouthfuls of barely cooked pasta. I’m also thinking about getting a job.

In my experience, getting the chance to sing in a choir is compensation in and of itself. That being said, it certainly ups the singers’ moral when the local student audiences reward the choir’s performances with thunderous applause, screams for an encore, and free booze. Why isn’t singing this popular in Canada?

90 applications, 4 phone interviews to date. More posting when I’m employed or dead.

In the mean time, you may amuse yourself with the Team Ryuko videos.  I think they’re toronto based, which makes them more awesome

I have a splitting headache.  I get headaches extremely infrequently, and I’ve never had one that I would identify as anything more than mild discomfort. If it didn’t feel like a tiny gnome was trying to excavate my upper left sinus, it would be really cool.

Some statistics: I’ve applied for internships with at least 48 companies so far.  I’ve been rejected by three, and I have a potential phone interview with one. A vast majority of the rest have probably rejected me already, and I’ll never know.  I’ve narrowed the 955 applicable job postings on waterloo’s employment site down to 49, most of which I’ll apply for, all of which I’ll have to apply for by my own means in the next 8 hours. I’ve been given two personal industry email addresses, and the inside scoop on several companies in at least 2 countries. I also have one part-time job lined up for about a month from now.

Trying to become gainfully employed builds character.

If you answered Swedish Berries, then you were wrong.  I have no idea of what they actually are, but it’s sure not Swedish Berries, that’s for sure.

I’m sorry, Adrian.

woo.

Swedes are a very reserved people. They follow rules, and they’re very aware of what is and what isn’t socially acceptable. This is when I was very confused when the casually whistling Swedish guy grabbed my butt. He then looked at me, smiled, and said something in Swedish. When I responded in confused, broken english, he told me that I looked so bored. He was quite glad that he succeeded in making me look much less bored.

I’ve been groped before, but only at crowded parties where my new close acquaintance disappeared before I could spot them. Now I have irrefutable proof that I am in fact a nice piece of ass.

A very strong argument could be made for the idea that there are two things which number among the best things in life.  One of those things is being at the absolute end of your ability, being so ready to give up that another attempt seems like it would be harder and more painful than anything else in the world, being so desolated by your failure that you can’t think of anything else… and then getting up, giving one final effort to the shouting and kind words of friends, and accomplishing things that you thought you never could’ve done.

The other of those things is free cheese.

When both of those things happen to me in the same day, I’ll be able to sleep happily tonight.  After the homemade lasagna, that is.

(ETA of rockclimbing pics: unknown.  current status: MIA.  response: draft letter of condolenses for next of kin)

I’ll actually talk about the real world as opposed to self-righteous idealism when I get home tonight.  Keep eating free cheese.

edit: I’m tired, and therefore a liar.  stories tomorrow.

For some reason, I’m really stretching for topics for a new post.  I figured you guys didn’t want to hear about how we’re reducing bandwidth consumption by applying texture compression algorithms in my mobile graphics class, and that’s about all I’ve got.  In the next few days, I’m going climbing and I’ll have finished applying to jobs (hopefully), so I might have some exciting tales at that time.  Until then, here’s the canned blog post:

 

There’s a Swedish word, “Lagom“, that can’t be directly translated to any other languages. The closest possible translation is usually said to be “just right”, “enough”, or “in moderation”.  None of these words really carries the meaning across, though, because they all imply settling or a lack of satisfaction, whereas lagom is more of a perfect amount; better than excess. When a rich man drives a nice volvo instead of a flashy corvette, it is said to be lagom.

There are certain things about Swedish culture which are really quite lagom. The world could learn a thing or two from this country.

Like most languages, the Swedish names of the days of the week have their roots in mythology: