Stupid bus driver alert!

The bus driver on Oakville transit route 19 yesterday, should be fired. Yesterday, when I was getting back home, I took the bus from the go station, at 6:30 pm (In the complaint I made over the phone, I accidentally said 7:30 - stupid me!) This driver was totally out of his senses. Maybe even under the influence of something. In the buses here, there is a little chord that you pull(or a button you press) to let the driver know that you want the bus to stop at the next stop. Pulling the cord, or pressing the button, rings a little bell, turns on a sign that says stop requested and shows a little indicator on the dashboard for the driver to know that someone wants to get off.

But this driver, missed the stop at least two times! First, it was a group of three girls, who had requested a stop, but the bus kept going, and only stopped at the next stop. When the girls realized that he had passed their stop, one of them yelled out at him, "you missed our stop! Now we're gonna have to walk!" I didn't think much of it, because I didn't know if they had requested stop early enough. But I did find out that the driver is an idiot when I requested a stop, and instead of stopping at oakmead and Nipigon, he kept going all the way to river oaks! And When I finally walked up to him and said, "you missed a stop!" he said, "Sorry, I just noticed."

I had to walk back, in the cold windy weather, with a portfolio in my hand, and my bag on my back. It had snowed earlier, and the sidewalk was slippery. My toes started getting really cold and I was thinking I'd get frost bitten. The walk back home was pretty long. I was cursing him every step of the way. And I knew I was going to call Oakville transit and complain! But their phone centers had closed and so I didn't get a representative. But I did leave a message. I don't think they'd call back so I will call them up again. And I think that girl should too! That's the only way to fix these guys!

Ready to taste freedom

Yeah. I'm so close to getting the christmas holidays, so close to not having to go to any classes, no assignments,projects or homework. But I will have to work on my portfolio. I am also being asked by people to do some 'stuff' for them. I will disclose these in the future, when I'm done and ready to show you guys. So its a really mixed feeling.

And GAH! I hate all these adverts! I'm being lured into spending more money on stuff that I think I need. I almost purchased a Deviantart plushie and a subscription today. I admit the plushie is really desirable and the subscription would be awesome, but I have been surviving without it to date, and I will survive without it in the future too.

Back to the freedom thing... I tend to loose myself when I'm alone. I just kick back, relax and watch time pass me by. So, I really need someone to control me. To keep reminding me to not slack off and work. Now I think I miss my parents. That reminds me, the funniest thing happened the other day. I was eating dinner, and I felt like I was in pune..... why? guess. no guesses? Because I REALLY didn't like the way the rice turned out. I hated my food, but I had to eat it, because I didn't really have anything else, and I was really hungry. I was eating because I HAD to! did this ever happen to any of you?

Flashback and fast forward

I slept like a bear!

I was a little hungry tho...I wish I had more bread.

I didn't even want to cook. I wished there was someone to cook for me.

That's how tiring the class was.

In the afternoon I had a pizza...kseniya was pretty pissed at me tho.

Because of the following conversation:

"Kseniya, are you a vegetarian?"

"Yes."

"Do you eat fish?" (I knew she did)

"yes,"

"Is fish a vegetable?"

...

I laughed so hard. I knew this was going to bring me immense joy.

I decided to go back to class and do a survey.

I asked all the canadians if they were vegetarians.

I just want to tell gemal (I don't care if that's not spelled right)

"just because you're black doesn't mean you're cool"

I think this post is gonna make quite a few people angry.

Gerard stayed back today even after 5 o clock to take a look at drawings.

which is good because I wouldn't have paid 100 dollars per class if I wasn't even gonna get critiqued on my drawings.

He looked at mine and juan's and kseniya's

He even took pictures which he's gonna post on the life drawing blog.

I think I should go there and comment on the drawings and post a link to this blog post.

Nah, I'm too much of a chicken to do that.

anyways. gotta go now.

if I don't finish this assignment I'm screwed!

I didn't come to canada to get turned down...twice.

So, I was talking to oliver late at night the other day, and I have been meaning to blog about it since. Because its something that has really inspired me. I was just busy with the art history thing first, then the typography assignment. Never mind. Back to the topic. What happened that night really reminded me of pranav and sujata. When I was in India, they were my driving force. Suju because of how good she is, and Pranav because what a hard worker he is. Now that I think about it, when I came to canada first, I was really serious too. I was like "I didn't come here to slack off. I will work like Pranav and I will try to do everything as good as Sujata." That's not to say that pranav's work wasn't good, but Sujata's bar was definitely higher.

So I would work really hard on all my assignments and sincerely go to class, and talk to teachers and be the foremost kid. But I didn't focus on the portfolio at all. Because I had come to realize that I wasn't nearly as good as the others. I figured the natural way to go would be to finish my art fundies, and by the end of the course, I will be good enough. But that was a big mistake. Art fundies didn't really give me anything to add to my portfolio. And thus my interest in my classes went away too! I keep saying 'This is not helping me with my portfolio so what's the point!' And I have atleast 3 assignments that I handed in late.

Ah, gotta stop getting distracted! Back to my point - When oliver blogged about him showing his sketchbook to Mark Mayerson, I was really surprised...and excited... If oliver could tell me where I could get a hold of him too, it would be awesome! I talked to oliver about it, and he told me he stays in room A160 from mondays 2-5! I didn't know such a arrangement existed. But oliver's apprently the first person to go up to him and that makes me not feel so bad about my ignorance. But I do admire his will and his efforts. And so he simply said to me,
"I didn't come to canada to get turned down!"

And I remembered me saying similar thing to myself back in winter 2007. Oliver's from new york. He can drive back and forth in one day. Still he considers it such a big deal. I am half way around the world from my home. Shouldn't that amount to something? And that realization made me feel really disappointed in me. But with that came a new determination to work harder. And I am drawing more each day. I have a good feeling about this year's portfolio. I will get in!

"I didn't come to canada to get turned down twice!"
Just an end note to those who thought this wasn't up to par with my writing ability, all I have to say is, "I'm sorry I wasn't doing it for the sake of writing. I was doing it so that I have something to keep reminding me of my goal."

So, someone other than me DOES read the blog!

Last night, I happened to bump into a first year animation student, who's also a student counselor at sheridan. I was just sitting in the pit, trying to download some things, because internet at the house is not suitable to download large files anymore. He comes up to me, and he recognizes me. He says,
"Hi, are you in fundies? Do you have a blog?"
And I'm like,
"Yeah, a lot of people do."
god that was so stupid! He probably thought I was being all cocky about one widdle blog that I write and someone other than my friends happened to stumble upon it.
"What?... Do you mean a lot of people read your blog..."
"No, that's not what I meant, I was just saying that a lot of people(meaning oliver,) from art fundamentals blog."
Because I was definitely under the impression that he mistook me for someone else. Because one thing my blog isn't is memorable enough for a total stranger to remember about it and come up to me to say 'hi!'

But then he probably thought I was trying to avoid the whole thing... and he said,
"Hey, I didn't mean to scare or alarm you."
"Oh, no, I'm not alarmed, I'm glad, but where is this going?...ummm, hi! I'm yash, and you are?"
"Oh, yes, it is YOU!. I'm Sam. I'm a student counselor here."
"Oh, hi, what are you doing here?"
"As in what am I doing in the pit right now? I was just..."
"No, what program. "
"I'm in animation first year..."

And so we talked about getting help, and tips and pointers for a portfolio and stuff. I got down his email address, and hope to talk to him again sometime soon!

Lookin smart, Pranav!

Whoa! Overdue update heading your way! Watch out! hehe... I don't know what I was thinking, but now that I look back at what I wrote 5 seconds ago, I find it RIDICULOUS! moving on!

I finally ended up calling pranav up. It was Monday morning, and I was sitting at the dining table with my bowl of cereal and dear MBP. I was chatting with aayush. I had talked to sujata yesterday, and she told me Pranav had moved to the city now. And that he is getting better. I now wanted to speak to him personally and get to hear how he was doing, who are his roommates and stuff. So I called him up.

He said he's gonna get internet at his place sometime soon now. Ummm.... we'll see about that! hehe. But what really touched me, was him sounding more relaxed and cool about the class work and homework load. I was really relieved to heard him say "If I can't finish something, I just go to the teachers and say I can't do it." Not giving work precedence over his health is something we've been telling him for almost a year and he finally gets it! Now I'm sure EVERYONE has changed. NO exceptions! He also told me he had uploaded some pictures on orkut. I thought it was odd that I wasn't notified, but I said I'll check them out.

And I did check them out. two of them were pretty good pictures. The third one, however, I can't say much about it. But still, seeing him all better, made my morning. And I was thinking about the pictures all day. It was the one thing that kept me smiling. Because the rest of my day was a big disaster. one mishap after other. I will tell you about that briefly, as I don't want to make this entirely about that.

First, Vironica was supposed to take me to buy boots. She also offered to drop john at his friend's place, who's dog he's taking care of. I thought I'd just go along, and get my shoes and be back by class time, but I was wrong. When I realized that there was no way I was making it to class in time, I decided to skip it. And then, we went shopping for my boots. But one store after the other, we found nothing but mediocre stuff or ridiculously expensive ones. Finally at Zellers, I found a pair that was gonna be a good value for money. Then, at staples, I bought the lexmark wifi printer that I was desiring, but when I brought it back, and tried to get it to work with my computer, it just wouldn't go. After lots of fidgeting around, I called up lexmark, only to find that they don't support leopard yet. there are no compatible drivers. Damn!

So, I had to go back to another staples, and get a 'comparitively' lamer hp device, that had a really HUGE power brick, and didn't even come with a USB cord, has a useless 4x6 printing 'cartridge' thingy.. you load up paper in that, and put it in the paper tray, and it feeds the printer from there. Isn't that silly! And totally unnecessary. Also, it does not have a USB port for me to plug in my camera or other storage device and print directly from there! How inconvenient! First time I tried to print a photo with it, it BOMBED. It only printed one smal strip correctly on one 4x6 photo paper, and ejected the thing. said that I need more paper! What the hell! And when I reinserted that paper for it to finish printing, it wouldn't even get done with it and shove the paper out. So I manually canceled it and when the paper was out, I saw some random colors... That was so infuriating!

Don't even get me started about the scanning! Puhleez! I just want to forget about it!

My first snowman!

Yay! I finally made a snowman, all by myself! I was so excited! I have the pictures up on my flickr page. I don't want to spend time uploading them on blogger again. So you can head over to flickr.com/photos/yashrg and comment on them! I'd love that. Plus, did you guys know blogger now supports open id commenting? I hope this will open a wider window to people who want to respond/interact. Anyways, on with the details!

I woke up after a good night's rest and I went downstairs to get some breakfast. I had heard in the news that there's gonna be shovelable snow outside by sunday morning. They were right(for the first time...LOL) Vironica was resting on the couch there, and she said there were shovels on the verandah and that the snow is suitable to make a snowman. I was really excited! That's what I've been waiting to hear since the summer! (Last winter I was too scared to 'play' in the snow) So I ran upstairs and put on my clothes. Came running down and walked outside.

First, I had to shovel some of the snow from in front of the door. And I've NEVER shoveled snow before. And vironica was laughing out really loud looking at my goofy ways. She had to instruct me on the 'art of shoveling snow' but then I was on my way. It was quite an exercise and got me plenty warm. Then I went ahead and started rolling a snow ball for the base of my snowman. Because I wasn't sure how big I could get it without breaking it, I wanted to be on the safer side and keep it small. Plus, this was my first time and I wanted to aim for a realistic goal. I had to decide earlier on where it was going to end up so that I can roll the big heavy ball into place.

Then I started on the next ball. By the time I was done, I figured this was all I'm going to do. I thought this was good enough. Besides, it didn't seem very stable to me and I was scared whole thing would topple. But Vironica egged me on, so I started on the head ball! This one just collapsed under pressure when I was rolling it. I guess I overestimated its integrity. Vironica was watching me from the window and she laughed out too. I redid that and thus, the 'making' of the snowman was done!

Now for the ornamental finishing touches! I dug out two small stones from under the snow and shoved them in there. Didn't get the placement I wanted, but then I was happy with how it turned out.. gives it an expression... LOL. I put in a carrot for the nose, and some celery for the arms. I tried using the brocolli to make hair, but it didn't work out. green hair doesn't look very adorable. So I used that to make buttons on its torso. Vironica pointed me to the plant that had brown tiny flowers. I liked that idea and gave my bald snowman some hair. Sticking stuff in there wasn't very easy, took a little poking and re-enforcing with more snow.

And I just couldn't help but put in a little leaf where his private parts will be. I had always loved that concept in cartoons when lets say dexter removes his clothes, a little leaf will appear in front of his penis. It was just so hilarious! But finding a green leaf at this time was impossible so I just put a yellow leaf I found on the lawn. It was great. And when all was done, I couldn't wait to get back inside. My shoes were getting all wet.

Good thing that we took pictures, because the thing had fallen apart by evening because the temperature rose, and there was little rain. I will do another one sometime soon. Maybe even BIGGER! but I'm really glad with this experience.