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Jazzy_T Newsletter
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Happy
Holidays
To you and yours.
Hello friends.
I have designed this mail-out as a means to keep everybody up-to-date with my life, so we can better stay in touch.
Feel free to respond to, forward, print and frame, or simply discard these emails on a regular basis.
SEASON'S GREETINGS!!
This month's issue is a special one. This edition is not only sent online via the e-mail, but also has been sent via good 'ol Canada Post, and will be arriving in the mailboxes of friends and family. Consider it the "Starving Student's Answer to the Christmas Card." Please feel free to grab a pen or pencil and scratch out some notes back this way, or if you know of anyone who would like a copy of this volume go ahead and print them a copy. My UBC mailing address is located at the bottom of this letter. I hope you enjoy and keep subscribed to the «Jazzy_T Newsletter». Best wishes and Happy Holidays to everybody at this time of year.
God Bless.
~Trev~
In this edition of «Jazzy_T»
- The Return of Wile E. Coyote
- O Christmas Trees, O Christmas Trees; why are you falling over?
- Stay Up-to-date, join the «Jazzy_T» web community.
- "Me fail English? Thats Unpossibel!"
- UBC: The City that NEVER Sleeps!
- The Hunt for Red November
- Exams: Modern Man's Menorah Meltdown
- Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Jolly Diwali, Rollicksome Ramadan and a Festive New Years
The Return of Wile E. Coyote
I am telling you. No matter where you run, no matter where you hide, if you are a ROADRUNNER, he'll find you.
Imagine that! There I am, just outside Gate 7, UBC Campus, awaiting my BCAA tow truck, when out of the woods behind Place Vanier dashes out a COYOTE. Well! I couldn't believe it. First flying squirrels, then Ronnie Raccoon and family, but a coyote! Walking across intersections like he was the dean or something. Quite the show. What was even funnier however, was the reaction he received as he walked past pedestrians hurrying home after classes down University Boulevard. This event was quite something. Naturally, I approached this confused, lost pup. Unlike Wile E., he didn't chase me down with a pair of Acme© Rocket-packs, nor did he vanish of the side of a cliff, but rather -- this cute little canine walked around me, and headed on his way, down West Mall, off to wherever it was he was headed. The event almost made the next 2 hours spent out in the freezing cold waiting for the tow truck worth while -- almost.
O Christmas Trees, O Christmas Trees; why are you falling over?
This story just barely makes it out before press time ladies and gentlemen. HERE'S THE DEAL... I had my four final finals ending with Physics on Thursday morning, followed by a saxophone lesson, dinner, and whatever I wanted to do. I ended up going to bed that night after 40 hours of having been awake. The point of these facts: I was in a fairly dead sleep. So, somehow I woke up 11 hours later at 9 in the morning, looked at my alarm clock, set for 9, and noticed that it read [______]. This of course represents an empty display... Power Outage. (Ever wonder why its called a "power-out" rather than an "electricity-out"? Anyhooooooo..... Guys down the hall had 830 exams that morning. So I go to wake them up, no sooner do I do this then I see them coming back into the house: their ECON exam was to be written in Osborne Centre, a gym, in the dark -- so profs gave them the option of writing at another time. They took it. After a shower in the dark, I went upstairs Commons for a dark breakfast. MMMMM Old cereal and warm milk! Off to my van I go, through Place Vanier South toward L-Lot. WELL! For those of you who don't know -- between the houses there are cement walkways, with cement roofs above you as you walk... WELL! (said twice for effect)... A 35' tree had been pushed over by the wind, basically torn the cement around its roots right outta the ground so that a whole family of squirrels could live underneath it, had toppled over the cemented roof, and broken so that I had to walk through branches to get outta this thing. It was quite the forceful storm I must say. Those winds were FIERCE! Indeed, as the drive home would prove, electric busses weren't operating, Broadway was closed off at sections, traffic lights weren't facing the drivers at intersections, and the city of Vancouver, once again seemed to be crippled by nature. Just sure glad it didn't snow.
Stay Up-to-date, join the «Jazzy_T» web community.
Ok, here's the deal, listen up. At least ninety percent of you who read this letter are frequent Hotmail users. And therefore, you have all the requirements necessary to complete the tasks I will now set forth to explain. Point your browser to http://communities.msn.ca/jazzyT and click on the link "Join Now" to the left of the screen (top). It will probably prompt you to sign in using your .NET username and password. This is just Microsoft's fancy-dancy way of asking for your Hotmail username, ie. [email protected], and password. Once you have finished this, and I have received and accepted your request to join, you will officially become a member of the greatest Web community on the Internet, the «Jazzy_T» Web Community. As such, your browsing power on my preferred web page will become virtually limitless. Not only will you gain access to dozens of photographs and web pages, but there are cool new features like a BBS and Access to files I have posted. The BBS is simply a Bulletin Board System which allows you to start a discussion in the forum, where I or others may reply to it, etc. Much better than email or MSN for the little things in life. New entries on the site include (or will soon include) More Prom Pics, Commencement Pics, Mazatlán Pics, Summer and Fall Pics, and some pics from the end of the school year: Love's Labour's Lost, Dance, Band stuff, and the Grade 12 Awards Night. Files I plan to post include extra copies of each of these «Jazzy_T Newsletters» in HTML format, as well as any witty jokes or soundbytes, and copies of my recent work on campus. Chemistry answers, Calculus solutions, and Recent Papers may grace the walls of this section of the site. Final and in-progress essays are something I plan on posting for reading or download in WORD format, for those interested in the content, or just wanting to comment on them (these comments are happily accepted for the in-progress works). I am always updating and improving my Community, so be sure to be a return visitor. I will also point you toward my alternative Web Page at http://www.geocities.com/J_a_z_z_y_T/ . May I add, that these steps are definitely a worth-while activity to impart on. Stay Tuned, Stay in Touch, Stay T'ed -- Jazzy_T'ed... Carpe Diem!
"Me fail English? Thats Unpossibel!"
Speaking of posting essays, many of you will simply not believe this. Perhaps unknown to some of you, but definitely understood by most of you, I, Trevor Barry, was never an English-Enthusiast. My attempts to write an essay in high school often left much to be desired. Indeed, I was lucky to earn anything in the 80% range on a paper back in my Mission Secondary days. Often times, I found myself totally dumbfounded when I would receive my essay back in class -- the one I had spent so many hours creating, the one I had tried so very hard to shape, the one I had bled all over the paper to organise and execute -- covered in more red pen than my own black Epson ink. I would feel my academic ego deflate within me, and I would choke down my adam's apple trying to determine why! Why had this masterpiece in rhetoric which seemed to flow as smoothly as my own thought pattern, why had it given me only a C+ ? Certainly there would have been some sort of mistake. With these horrible memories to recall as I entered the upper realm of intelligent thought and academic heuristics that defined the UBC department of English, I couldn't help but feel timidly ostentatious at the bleak idea and outside chance that perhaps this new world would appreciate my eccentric logical unity. But without much hesitation I would dismiss this silly fantasy. After all, I'm Trevor Barry, the same dead-beat who scored a whopping ZERO on the UBC Dept of English's infamous LPI Exam. Zero! Zero, on a test, marked out of six I believe, a test designed to accurately determine cognitive levels for exchange students trying to enter UBC from overseas; a measure of one's aptitude at the language. With these dismal factors in my hindsight, I was indeed dreading to see my level of (if any) success in taking English 112. Well! Lookie here, y'all ain't never gonna believe dis! I'm walking into the final exam for this course with an A. I received 95% on my Research Essay! And the research essay is the meat and potatoes of the whole course! Not only that, but all I require on this final exam is to score 77%, and I walk away from English 112 with and A-. I could have even had an A+ going into this exam, except that I never actually did the last assignment... oops! But, that's another story, which I will comment on a little later.
UBC: The City that NEVER Sleeps!
As you will see if you join the «Jazzy_T» web community and read my essay numbered 4.4, insomnia is the main threat among the "numerous new-found obstacles that threaten the survival of the first year student." The cure to this disease all depends on your own personal definition of the word sleep. Winston Churchill and Cosmos Kramer are notably known for their ability to muster up only a few quiet moments of REM and be contently rested and ready to go. On the other hand, emphatically, most people require their beauty sleep. Although I have had my experiences with insomnia in high school, it doesn't quite match up to the situations you have in rez. A bad (yet all too typical) week in grade twelve involved getting up at 0500 for Jazz Band rehearsal a 30-minute drive away, and getting to bed after Basketball and homework at about 0100 the next day, repeat ad infinitum. But here its different. For the second last week of classes, the final week for labs, I found myself (and many others in my house -- as my house is predominantly SCIENCE students) awake at all hours of the night. Frantically finishing off Physics homework and Chemistry pre-labs, and trying diligently to get started on term papers and research essays, the days of the week blurred into a quasi-warped shift in the equilibrium of space-time. I would sleep for an hour at lunch, an hour after class before dinner, and an hour somewhere between midnight and when class started. What made this week-long feat possible was the enormous cast of fellow all-nighter workers down the hall with their doors open at all hours. When the week finally drew to a close, I looked forward to nothing more than the sweet, soft, inviting texture of my own twin-sized bed back at home. Unfortunately however, after becoming accustomed to the irregular sleeping patterns indicative of the rez student lifestyle, I was unable to fall asleep much before 6 in the morning during the weekend, still having to wake up at 10 o'clock to the pleasant warmth of my dog's tongue as my father commanded our German Shepard to jump onto my bed and "wake up Trevy."
The Hunt for Red November
Well, finally the hard work and lack of sleep would seem to have paid off. That Sunday night I lay down in my bed, staring at the alarm clock to the left of me, telling me that in five hours I would have to wake up, drive into Vancouver, and hand in the Physics assignment I had yet to complete. After about 20 minutes, I decided to gather my things, and drive out then. "If I'm just gonna sit here not sleeping anyway, I might as well be driving myself back to rez, where I can wake up 5minutes before class starts." So, off I went. I was in my room back at 'home' by 0100, and I noticed that Mark down the hall wasn't in his room. Mark and I are in the same Physics class. So, I head upstairs to greet Mark, and consequently meet my destiny and doom for the next week: Tetris. The four phys121-boyz decided to pull an all-nighter, trying to beat the Tetris high score, and finish the Physics Assignment in the meantime. Well, by 0630, Trevor (that's me) had successfully achieved the all time high of over 90,000 points, and we had only an hour to get ready for class. Excitedly Mark and I got ourselves together, and went to our lecture soarin' high on our second winds. We even took pictures with the prof. Then 0830 hit, and OH MAN... it hurt. I would spent the next 2 lectures totally unaware of who I was or what I was doing. Somehow I managed to get every note jotted down in Chem, but I honestly don't remember any of that lecture at all. Went home after 26 hours awake. "Ok Trev, sleep for 2 hours, back to class by 1300." Slept till 730pm... missed dinner. This wouldn't have been so bad, except that compounded on top of this was the fact that Sabrina had beaten my score on Tetris. Well, the hunt for Red November was on. To appreciate this pun, you would have had to have played the Nintendo® version of this Soviet puzzle game at some time in your life. Mark and I spent the next 96 hours of our lives on Tetris. I failed to complete my final English 112 essay (see above). Luckily for me, it was only worth 5% of the term grade. Mark on the other hand, submitted his 25% worth term paper two days late, at the expense of about 15% per day. (30% * 25% = 7.5% off the term). As for the high scores -- My personal best at NES Tetris lies at about 170,000. Mark at about 185,000; and Pete down the hall came through with the yet-to-be-defeated 208,000 points (at which point the Kremlin gets shot into space). Alexey Pazhitnov was the Russian programmer who originally designed the game. The story behind this game, and Nintendo's acquisition of it is a really interesting tale to be told -- look it up on the internet. It was known as the game from "behind the iron curtain" just toward the end of the cold war. Over the years, this game has become known as the most addictive video game ever, catching thousands and thousands into its clasp. I played video games all my life without catching this Tetris-craze. Yet, inevitably, it finally caught me. During our infamous week, Mark and I attracted approximately 15 others into our Tetris cult, and practically took control of the girls' lounge on second floor. I have since given up my addiction to this console system drug. The following weekend I picked up an old second hand cartridge of Game Boy Tetris at Microplay for $10.
Hello. My name is Trevor, and I am a Tetris-o-holic.
Exams: Modern Man's Menorah Meltdown
Exams are not a pleasant aspect of life. When you are sick, however, exams are the worst possible treatment. Just as a child anxiously awaits each passing day in December, so that he or she may open another cardboard-hinged door to receive an advent calendar chocolate; just as the traditional celebrators of winter solstice would count down the 12 days of Christmas; just as a Hebrew celebrator will day by day illuminate the room a little more intensely as he oxidizes the wick of another yet candle on the menorah as a countdown toward Chanukah; likewise, the first-year student slowly endures the agonising day-to-day struggle of checking off each passing exam, and thereby getting one step closer to the finish line. No doubt, the best Holiday Season of your life will be that one which occurred immediately following your first term at University. To compound the agony however, add to it a head fever, soar throat, stubborn cough, runny nose, and an inability to study, read, or think -- never mind making it out of bed to write a Final Exam at 0830 after a restless night of tossing and turning (if indeed one decided to waste time for sleep at all). Pardon my whining, but I can't see where I'm going -- its cold and dark and the candles on my menorah are either burnt out or have melted down to nothing; and all I have to compensate for my lack of vision is a hardening pool of hot wax exothermically solidifying on my forehand.