An Assortment of Things

I've been mostly silent lately due to a lack of things to talk about. Well, not so much a lack of things, but rather, a lack of significant enough things to talk about. These last few weeks have been quiet for me, what with midterms brewing around the corner again I don't really have much time for hobbies.

At least, that's what a sane and responsible student would say.

This is what I say instead.

Thanks to my brother, Brian, I've been indulging in an old vice of mine. A decade ago I used to watch a lot of anime, but by the end of High School I dropped out of it and lost interest. It just wasn't for me anymore. Plus, I took a peek at what was being released and it was meh.

But then 2013 came online.

A lot of people are hailing 2013 as a revival of sorts, a lot of stellar animes were released that were unique in terms of both art and story. I guess people were tired of having to chose between either "cute" high school girls doing "cute" things or buff guys training harder to beat up other buff guys.

Unfortunately, none of the ones that I liked this season are PG so I'm not sure I can really share them on my blog. You either get an excessive amount of violence, fan service, or both. That doesn't deter from the fact that I really liked them and they're good, but I need to keep my blog family friendly.

Does this count as family friendly? Anyone who recognizes the reference gets 100 Dogecoin.

I also used to play a lot of Starcraft 2 back in my undergrad year. I liked it, it was a challenging and stimulating game that forced you to make decisions based on what your opponent was (or wasn't) doing on the fly. Failure to do so would mean a crippling defeat in the next few minutes.

Seriously. I have had games end in 6 minutes and 30 seconds because of a minor detail I missed 6 minutes into the game. Starcraft is an unforgiving and relentless monster and that's part of the reason why I stopped playing. I started getting angry, frustrated, and I just didn't have fun anymore. Enough was enough and so I stopped.

And my brother, the bad influence that he is, has converted me to League of Legends. A game that I swore I would never touch because I hate working with teammates.

But it's fun. I'm enjoying it. Every game can turn out vastly different, there's a variety of ways to play, a variety of characters to chose from, you can make mistakes early in the game and still win, it was easy to pick up, and if you want to goof around and play a round for fun, great. Starcraft didn't let me do any of these.

Starcraft also didn't let me play as a pyromaniacal little girl and her stuffed bear.

Though these indulgences may have to taper off in the near future. Second round of midterms may be coming up and I got an invitation to start marketing again. Anyone remember me doing that? The pay is good, hours flexible, and I could always use more money.

Hopefully things warm up though. It's been frosty over here and I'd rather not be outside in minus 30 degree weather.

Project Cold: Phase 1: The Marketer

The idea behind Project Cold was to find a way to force myself to interact with people. I'm by no means a socially awkward or anti-social person, but I feel that I could do with a bit more extroversion and comfort with conversing with strangers. But there's that caveat as always, I needed to find a way to monetize this project.

My first attempt was online. I failed miserably and we'll pretend like it never happened. Maybe I didn't have enough practice? However, a friend of mine was looking to hire marketers and I saw this as an opportunity to further my Project Cold in a different prospect.

I guess I basically just got myself a second part-time job.

Maybe I'm less trustworthy online or something?

I'm certain most of you are familiar with student painting companies. And so my job was to head out, knock on doors, find people who were willing to get an estimate of a painting job, and repeat. At first, I was only making commission. I was paid a set amount for every phone number/booking that I succeeded in getting. I needed to quickly learn how to convince people to give me their phone numbers or else I wouldn't make any money at all.

(Un)fortunately my friend had to stop for personal reasons but at least he transferred me to a different manager.

Who then started paying me a flat rate + commission which was a significant boost in wages.

Still, it wasn't easy. Easily half of the houses I visit have no one home. Then, most of people who are home aren't interested, or recently got painting done, or plan on doing it themselves. It's funny because I look at some of these houses and the garage door is literally peeling away. Yes, I'm sure you did a lovely job painting it last summer.

So it's that small fraction of "maybe" interested people I have to work at convincing to go and get an estimate. To put things in perspective, if I get even one booking an hour, my total earnings become over double that of minimum wage. 2 bookings? I'm making over quadruple minimum wage. So you have poor Damian running around, trying to hit up as many houses as possible.

During January and February it was cold, dark and miserable with snow everywhere. I'm jumping over snow piles and sliding on ice. Now in March all that snow is melting and I'm jumping over puddles and slush.

Puddles > Snow piles though.

And how successful have I been at persuading people? Maybe I've just been lucky but I've been consistently making at least double minimum wage. On my best days, I earn over quadruple that of minimum wage. Less than 20 hours work and almost $500 richer for it.

I know it's not much, a second part-time job isn't that amazing but this is way better than my part-time minimum wage fast-food job. Plus, I'm actually talking and interacting with people to the point where I can push them to get what I want. AND I'm getting exercise because I need to get away from my computer to do this. I also set my own hours which is great. I head out when I can and I'm motivated to do so because $$$$.

That is until I find a way to make money playing computer games.

Some of you may have noticed that this is Phase 1 of Project Cold. This is because I may have a way to improve and make things more efficient (i.e. more money, less work). Unfortunately I won't be start doing this until May.

Until then, if you live in Canada and are greeting at the door by a tall, out-of-breath Asian trying to get your number for a free estimate on painting, give him your number. He needs the money.

Back to classes

Welp, the break could only last so long. And now we're back. Back to the school. Yay. No, really. I'm exploding with enthusiasm here. There's nothing I enjoy than pulling all-nighters and then falling asleep at the front of the class and then drooling on myself.

Not exactly my finest moment.

If you were Asian and male maybe you could be me.

I'm technically done. You know, now that I've got my degree and everything. Unfortunately, these days an undergraduate degree doesn't get you anywhere because nearly everyone has one. So that means we have to upgrade to a graduate degree.

And to do that, I need to do various per-requisite courses to even qualify for some of them. I need at least 4 more courses for Speech and Language Pathology. But taking into consideration what my prof said, maybe I should start looking into Marketing as well.

Which means taking some Economics courses.

This is my understanding of Economics.

I've also been looking into jumping provinces for grad school. But because my grades hover around the B level (as opposed to people with As who can go anywhere) I might have to go to Saskatchewan. For people who don't know the run-downs of the provinces of Canada, it's basically this:

British Columbia: Asians and the ocean.

Alberta: Oil and Canada's rednecks.

Saskatchewan: Flat lands and Native Americans.

Manitoba: Lakes or something?

Ontario: Capital of Canada and Niagra falls.

Quebec: Crazy French people.

Nova Scotia: Fish.

Prince Edward Island: Funny accents and potatoes.

Newfoundland: Fish and funny accents.

New Brunswick: More funny accents.

Yukon/Northwest Territories/Nunavut: Native Americans and cold.

Fellow Canadians may have deduced my home province based on these partially incorrect stereotypes.

In the meantime, I'll be taking Linguistics courses and a friend of mine looped me into a MWF Sociology course which killed my 4 day weekend. I don't even need this course, I really wanted a lax term but my parents kept hounding me claiming that unless my schedule was fuller I'd be wasting my time and my life. And so I caved in and added another course to my schedule.

Ian, this course better be the GPA booster you claim it is. I gave up my 4-day weekend for this.