Posi+ive is an HIV/AIDS awareness ad campaign directed by Brian Gonzales. Interesting eh?
4/28/08
4/27/08
I'm Back
So I haven't updated in ages (Don't you just love it when I start a sentence with a conjunction?). My last week in Halifax went by like a whirlwind. I'm back in the San Francisco Bay Area now and I couldn't be any happier. In this post: exam results and a weekend with the IT director.
Marginally passing two midterm exams and failing the mid-year exam in Abstract Algebra made me feel on edge throughout this semester. It's not like I didn't study. In fact, for the first few months, I went to every single lecture, satisfactorily completed all my assignments, and made sure that I understood every single concept introduced. Needless to say, the material was complex and required much patience and dedication to digest. My awful academic performance last semester demoralized me to the point where this semester, I only went to class if an assignment was due.
I was actually already preparing a contingency plan in case I fail the course. To my surprise, the final exam was as easy as exams could get. I think the professor just wanted to test if we got the basics fully understood. After obsessively checking my grades every single day after I got back home, I found out that I earned a B in the course. That means I got a solid A in the final exam. Sweet!
The day after my last final exam, I boarded a plane to San Francisco. I wanted to savour my freedom from my parents a little while longer so I decided to spend a weekend with a man I have never met and barely spoken to on the phone. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have done that. He could have been an ax murderer or a serial rapist for all I know. Anyway, I was lucky enough that he turned out to be as he said he was.
On our way to downtown San Francisco, he talked about his career choices and told me some interesting anecdotes from his life. He was very nice - way nicer than the San Francisco Republican Party official I went out on a date with last summer. What's more, he spent 17 years living in Halifax, although he was away on business trips most of the time. The company he was working for at the time set up the IT infrastructure for Dalhousie University and Halifax before the outlying townships got amalgamated into what we now know as the Halifax Regional Municipality.
We made it in time for our reservation at Restaurant Cortez. I originally wanted to have dinner at either Gary Danko or Michael Mina but I didn't want to get dressed up considering the nine-hour plane trip I had to take prior to our meeting. However, Cortez was more than adequate; it's a one-star Michelin restaurant afterall. The dinner was uneventful, which is a good thing in this case. Our conversation centered on our experiences living in Halifax and common American perceptions about our northern neighbors.
Saturday was pretty subdued. We ran errands and went to Trader Joe's to grab some blueberries and wild rice for dinner. He took me to one of the parking lots at California State University East Bay for a driving lesson. I'm not going to rehash the near collisions and mild panic attacks I had. Suffice it to say, the car was still intact when we left. We had dinner with his friend later that day. I found him interesting but he looked a bit worn down from working three jobs and going to school at the same time. Lives of cash-strapped university kids can be so depressing at times.
He took me to Grizzly Peak to see an aerial view of the San Francisco Bay Area on Sunday. He said that it's surprising that I know so little about the tourist destinations for someone who grew up in the area. The view of the bay from up there was breathtaking; you can almost see the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge had it not been for the fog. Afterwards, we went to the University of California in Berkeley supposedly for a walking tour of Telegraph Hill, but there was some sort of cycling event so there weren't any parking spots available. So we left, had lunch at the Elephant Bar and Grill in Emeryville, and then drove home to my parents' place.
Marginally passing two midterm exams and failing the mid-year exam in Abstract Algebra made me feel on edge throughout this semester. It's not like I didn't study. In fact, for the first few months, I went to every single lecture, satisfactorily completed all my assignments, and made sure that I understood every single concept introduced. Needless to say, the material was complex and required much patience and dedication to digest. My awful academic performance last semester demoralized me to the point where this semester, I only went to class if an assignment was due.
I was actually already preparing a contingency plan in case I fail the course. To my surprise, the final exam was as easy as exams could get. I think the professor just wanted to test if we got the basics fully understood. After obsessively checking my grades every single day after I got back home, I found out that I earned a B in the course. That means I got a solid A in the final exam. Sweet!
The day after my last final exam, I boarded a plane to San Francisco. I wanted to savour my freedom from my parents a little while longer so I decided to spend a weekend with a man I have never met and barely spoken to on the phone. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have done that. He could have been an ax murderer or a serial rapist for all I know. Anyway, I was lucky enough that he turned out to be as he said he was.
On our way to downtown San Francisco, he talked about his career choices and told me some interesting anecdotes from his life. He was very nice - way nicer than the San Francisco Republican Party official I went out on a date with last summer. What's more, he spent 17 years living in Halifax, although he was away on business trips most of the time. The company he was working for at the time set up the IT infrastructure for Dalhousie University and Halifax before the outlying townships got amalgamated into what we now know as the Halifax Regional Municipality.
We made it in time for our reservation at Restaurant Cortez. I originally wanted to have dinner at either Gary Danko or Michael Mina but I didn't want to get dressed up considering the nine-hour plane trip I had to take prior to our meeting. However, Cortez was more than adequate; it's a one-star Michelin restaurant afterall. The dinner was uneventful, which is a good thing in this case. Our conversation centered on our experiences living in Halifax and common American perceptions about our northern neighbors.
Saturday was pretty subdued. We ran errands and went to Trader Joe's to grab some blueberries and wild rice for dinner. He took me to one of the parking lots at California State University East Bay for a driving lesson. I'm not going to rehash the near collisions and mild panic attacks I had. Suffice it to say, the car was still intact when we left. We had dinner with his friend later that day. I found him interesting but he looked a bit worn down from working three jobs and going to school at the same time. Lives of cash-strapped university kids can be so depressing at times.
He took me to Grizzly Peak to see an aerial view of the San Francisco Bay Area on Sunday. He said that it's surprising that I know so little about the tourist destinations for someone who grew up in the area. The view of the bay from up there was breathtaking; you can almost see the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge had it not been for the fog. Afterwards, we went to the University of California in Berkeley supposedly for a walking tour of Telegraph Hill, but there was some sort of cycling event so there weren't any parking spots available. So we left, had lunch at the Elephant Bar and Grill in Emeryville, and then drove home to my parents' place.
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