What's been Wang this academic year

Okay so I think the reason I haven't been posting very much is because last semester I was a TA. Since my life revolves around the statistics department to the point that I actually smell like Evans Hall when I'm not there, and since I couldn't (and can't) write anything about my students, I had very little to write about. Also, my blog is now read by my parents, and has been brought to the attention of the faculty in my department, including my advisor (due to the time I ate ketchup on my chocolate cake), not to mention being imported onto Facebook, so I can't just go around talking about people all willy-nilly on the internets. When you take away work and friends, I find myself lacking in material.

I suppose that's also indicative that I'm working more effectively and don't have as many little tidbits to share about the things I read, watch, play, and eat. I only get about 8 hits a day on this blog, so I also might as well just share them with the 8 of you individually, and you're all my Facebook friends anyway. Then again, it's possible that if I wrote more, I'd have more than 8 hits; it's a vicious cycle.

I'm realizing now, though, that this was a bad idea. With the writers' strike on for the last four months, I could have totally tried to build my brand and become the iconoclast I've always dreamed of being. Hell, had I been more on the ball, I might have started Stuff White People Like before whoever started it did. I could even have taken a turn writing about American politics (long story short: Clinton), although my contribution to the political discourse goes no further than what I learn about on The Daily Show. Since TDS was heavily affected by the strike, my contribution might have consisted of me finally looking up Obama Girl to see if she was hot. Verdict: yes.

Instead, I've spent my free time playing video games, spraining my wrist, suffering from hives, eating popcorn, learning about proxy servers, and trying to SOCKSify Windows Media Player. My chance to reclaim readers and become a conversation piece amongst my friends is gone. I'm okay with that, because that's how I do things here at I,DW. There's something romantic about wasting opportunities and continuing on anyway. Plus, Guitar Hero is really fun, proxy servers are interesting, and popcorn is delicious. The wrist thing sucks, and don't get me started on hives.

After much work, I beat the entire Hard career on Guitar Hero III and am now onto the second-to-last set of songs on Expert. Unfortunately, I don't see myself getting to the last set anytime soon. I think I've been able to get this far because up until now all the songs have been within my abilities on the actual guitar, which are wasting away because I'm spending all my time on Guitar Hero. Now, though, I'm up against things I am incapable of; this hump will take longer to overcome. I really believe that once I get past this stuff, I will truly be a better guitar player. The danger is that I'll actually want to play Raining Blood.

I've decided to complete my Garfield and Friends collection. I bought volumes 4 and 5 on a whim and now I'm hooked, so my current plan is to buy a volume every time I need something from Amazon that isn't expensive enough to get free shipping on. Volume 3 came with a package of four electric toothbrush heads, and I suspect volume 2 will come when I decide to check out The Jam's "All Mod Cons" or Japanese sci-fi flick "Tetsuo II: Body Hammer".

Last week I went to my first ever rugby game: the "World Cup" between UBC and Cal, named after the long-defunct Vancouver World newspaper. Apparently I unintentionally chose to attend the two biggest powerhouses in North American college rugby, and they meet up every year for a two-game series. I went in not knowing who I'd end up cheering for, now that I've been at Cal for four years, but on the first tackle I found myself cheering for the T-Birds. You can take the boy out of UBC, but you can't something something something. I figure this is sensible because I could conceivably still get kicked out of Berkeley, while it's far less likely that UBC would strip me of my Bachelor's degree.

Rugby, it turns out, is a beautiful game (who knew?!) and I enjoyed watching a sporting event that isn't completely big business. Without commercials, an actual sporting event can be held in under an hour and a half (who knew?!). In the end though Cal won 35-17, which was a disappointing result for me, but I took pride in knowing that this was the least lopsided game Cal has played all year. To put things in perspective, their season opener was won on a score of 99-3, and the week prior to the UBC-Cal game, they had among their weakest second halves of the season, only winning 78-22. Beside the UBC kicker missing four straight kicks, the biggest difference as I saw it was that every time a UBC player got tackled, he went down and lost about 7 yards -- pardon me, metres; rugby is such a civilized game -- while all the Cal players could have four T-Birds hanging off them and still leg out a 5 metre gain. So aside from all of Cal's team being totally on the juice, it was a really close match.

Funny, though. I'm so used to only following hockey in Vancouver that I kept almost mistakenly calling the T-Birds the Canucks. This lasted until the Golden Bears opened up a 10-point lead; after that I started almost mistakenly calling the T-Birds the Grizzlies.