hmmm

Hmmm... Why does everything thing have to do with cancer? Is this some kind of mainstream stuff that young adult fiction books must have? I mean, sure the story would be sad like every other novel does if some lovely character is that unfortunate like Kate Sedgwick to have cancer but that’s just only sadness though, definitely not emotionally resonant. The idea of main characters being diagnosed with cancer has become overused to the point of where the readers can pretty much predict the story line.

除了癌症之外，經典的三角戀情也在這本書上演，Kate、Keller、Gus三個人的三角戀。「Bright Side」幾乎可以說是「Anna and the French Kiss」的重症悲情版。Bright Side主角Kate Sedgwick跟Anna Oliphant一樣都是剛到一所新學校展開新生活，也同樣地在這新環境中遇到傳說中的男神Keller和St. Clair。不止這樣，兩位女主角都不約而同地於故事中以極度平凡的口吻，來形容自己的外表，可我這種魯蛇讀起來，那些條件明明就是正妹還裝，不知道是我標準太低，還是女主角太做作且過度謙虛。

不過大概也是這樣才可以讓女讀者與之共鳴，共鳴什麼呢？當然是共鳴「外表浮雲，內在先決。」這種unrealistic的概念。靠背....又選到一本target國高中生的書了，決定下一本不挑這種款的。

在這邊要說一下書裡其中一位男主角Keller，先不談那投胎六萬次才有那麼一次的外表，個性上來說，靠夭啊！明明就是個無敵大douche，趁亂告白還在那牽拖酒精作祟，而且又是射後不理有小孩的爸了，還在那邊賣弄老招，得不到又在那嫉妒，跟心上人Kate交往後，那整個正人君子的形象根本是裝出來的啊。書中他的一些舉動真的讓我翻了不少白眼，差點沒一拳往Kindle螢幕上砸下。還是Gus這廝相較起來利落瀟灑，我欣賞他！

看我打那麼多就知道這本我不是很推了....anyways

Friday January 22, 2016 - Got invited by Bao and Thomas to go to downtown Oslo with them. Thought it would be like an afternoon hang-out touring around the city or something along that line, but after knowing the meet up time was 9 pm I was pretty sure it’s another kind of hang-out. Yup, pubs. The thing is, I forgot to tell them that I don’t really drink. Anyways, we still ended up going to three different pubs that night with me holding my glass of water in the pub. It’s not like I’m pretending it to be Vodka or something. My body just can’t seem to process alcohol properly like other people do, ALDH2 deficiency perhaps?  I could still recall the last time I was drunk, my head was held together with duct tape and my consciousness was trapped in a hijacked bodies saying stupid things like “Look, a microwave.” Like it was a thing of wonder.

If you are wondering what the title Seveneves means, all I can say is it’s ambiguous. 880頁，這是近期我讀過最厚的一本。從在加拿大時開始讀，到台灣後有空也拿起來看，然後就這樣一路讀到挪威才結束。從2015年八月十四，斷斷續續讀到昨天，也就是2016年一月七日，整整快五個月。

起初月球爆炸後，人類開始尋求生存之道，短期內打造了多個火箭，通過篩選，從不同的國家中挑出一些精英人類送上太空，好以延續人類血脈和文化。沒多久月球爆炸產生的大小碎片開始轟炸地球，把地球炸成個人間煉獄。而被挑選上太空的人類則已居住在Cloud Ark裡，不過安穩的日子過不了太久，Cloud Ark的人類分成兩派開始內鬥。打到最後便到了本書2/3的地方，後面的1/3則是發生在5000年之後的時空。

細節不能說，講太多就破梗了。

Seveneves前2/3沒有所謂的主角，後1/3才有一位勉強突出的角色。老實說前2/3我讀得有點想睡，但讀到2/3結尾的地方，我狠狠地被Neal Stephenson揍了一拳，那拳之後整本書開始變精彩了，而最後1/3根本是驚喜不斷，不過也有很多沒講明白的地方。

Last Saturday I went to Kiwi grocery store after workout like usual and guess what? I saw they were selling PONZU in Norway! Halle-PONZU-lujah! ポン酢!!! Almost burst into tears when I saw this. 

I literary stood there for like five minutes thinking about whether or not should I put one into the basket and take it home with me, then I pulled out my phone and did some currency conversations. And holy jeesus, this tiny 100mL little fella costed 355 JPY which with this amount of money I could buy a half litre bottle of ponzu at any given grocery store in Japan.

But I’m in Norway tho. The reality is that everything here is dyrt. (現學現賣挪威文)

NSB my ass. Go fæk yourself!

Yesterday when I stepped outside the house, I was an hour away from my very first Norwegian class in Norway. By the time I got to the classroom, I was 15 minutes late. It’s not because I was not being punctual or didn’t care much for the class. It’s because my train to Oslo was delayed for half an hour. Oh jeeeezzz, this totally shattered my first impression of a good-student wannabe to the teacher.

If this ever happen again, I will DESTROY you NSB!

It has been a month since I’ve arrived in Norway with the mission to find an engineering related job, but no luck so far.

It seems like every job here requires at least a master degree plus a few years of experience, regardless the ability to speak fluent Norwegian. I get how the education here is free1, so looks like everyone is happily getting their master degree. However, the tuition fee in Canada is ten times higher than in Norway2 which means not everyone can afford university, let alone doing a master. Some friends I know even work several part-time jobs just to save up enough money before the enrollment date for upcoming semesters, not to mention it’s difficult to keep up with school while being exhausted by work. Anyways, it is kind of like a drawback to be a non-EU foreigner who wishes to work in Norway.

Although I still have five months of time before UDI’s so called skilled-job-seeking permit expires, I really need to get my job before Christmas because I don’t want to spend this Christmas and New Year ALONE at home and UNEMPLOYED. It would suck big time if it comes to that :(

A friend of mine was asking me this morning “If it is so hard, why not going back to Japan or staying in Canada with us?” 

Because I like Norway, despite I’m currently unemployed :P

1: The textbooks are not free.

So, I was going to check the price for my two textbooks required by my Norwegian language class at Folkeuniversitetet and just before I held the books to this price-checking scanner, this old lady approached me and asked “Unnskyld, er du kinesisk?”

Without a second thought I answered “Ja” then I immediate regretted my decision by just saying that without a thorough explanation of who I really am. I should’ve gone like “Nei, men jeg snakker kinesisk.” or something along that line. 

Anyways, this lady thought I speak Norwegian, so she started her next sentence in Norwegian probably asking me something related to Chines because I recognized the book she was holding in hands. That book in the orang cover was written by a Taiwanese author who I’ve seen the video of her giving a speech on TED and her book was one of the projects on Kickstarter got funded (Yeah, I’m a big fan of Kickstarter :D). 

I stopped this lady by saying “Sorry, I only speak a little Norwegian.” and she was like “Oh, sorry. Yeah, I have a question. What are the differences between the Chinese in Taiwan and Mainland China.”

And I my mind I was like “Aha!!! Classic question! You’ve got this Paul.” 

For the next five minutes, we just stood there and exchanging questions and answers. It turned out this old lady was a Norwegian language teacher because she also recognized the two books I was holding in my hands which has På Vei written on the covers and På Vei was one of the course materials she used when she was teaching Norwegian back then.

結帳的時候，她在我身旁跟我說道，「因為你是加拿大來的，英文不錯，那在挪威大家都會想跟你講英文，所以這將會是個問題。」

「我已經體會到了這點。」我答道。

以前在日本的時候，因為身邊的日本人都不會說英文，也不會說中文，所以變成我只能硬著頭皮講很破爛的日文，但也因為這樣日文精進的速度更快。

Went to the gym this morning with my brother. It was our chest & leg day, but I didn’t get to do the leg part because I freaking screwed up my lower back when I picked up two 55 pounds dumbbells off the floor for dumbbell press with improper stance. Never thought I could get a severe back pain from a simple chest exercise, and look how that turned out.

Snap! Just like that.

Now I walk like Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I couldn’t lie down comfortably on the bed, let along shitting on the toilet without pain. My back is held together with duct tape right now.

I was actually gonna go to a local acupuncture clinic that my brother (an ex-patient who have also suffered from lower back pain during last summer) recommended. And guess what? It closed on Sundays. Good lord, now I need to wait for 24 hours as a walking potato with a knife sticking into it. 

What an amazing book! It’s probably the most intense apocalyptic novel that I’ve ever read. Unlike the last book I read, this one really kept me glued the whole way through. The writing was impressive! Maberry really had me believed that a zombie outbreak could actually happen. Can’t wait to finish the next sequel “Fall of Night”!!

愛死這本fast paced超級緊湊的書。從第一頁到最後一頁，在書中的世界裡大約只過了24小時。故事大致上就圍繞在Desdemona Fox和Billy Trout這兩位已分手的情侶。Dez是一名警察，Billy是位記者，書中敘說著兩人是如何在outbreak中各自經歷險象環生的場景，而後相遇，絕望之時再相互扶持。總分十分，我真的會給個九。太好看了！

So here I am posting my first archery practicing videos and testing out the video/audio quality of newly purchased Canon G7 X, which is awesome by the way. I can hear myself swearing at the other end of the lane when I missed the target. Aside from the ugly backyard-archery setup, these videos are perfect! 

Face上有三個target，從中間那個開始，再來是上面，最後是下面那張。第一張靶根本悲劇，不知道在射三小。第二個好一點，但還是鳥鳥的。第三張可媲美Robin Hood，可惜要射最後一箭時，電池沒電，所以沒拍到。

Target 1:

Target 2:

Target 3:

It took me forever to finish this book and the worst part of it is that this book is actually not that exciting at all. In fact, I had to force myself to continue reading this book until the last page and it was brutal. Maybe it was because the lack of text-to-speech feature that made everything kind of slow. I mean, Stephen King already revealed who Mr. Mercedes was at the very beginning of the book so the only thing that he left us to be expected is when will Mr. Hodges confront Mr. Mercedes. 

I used to read on my way to school on the bus and the way back. Now, I don’t have school to go to so I have less time to read. 

Anyway, I’m now on the 35% of the book and still waiting for the freaking climax. Stephen King actually tells you who the murder is at the beginning of the novel. Quite an interesting way of writing a detective/mystery fiction. I’m kind of exciting to see what will happen later on.

It’s all over now, but not officially over yet. I still need to wait until June 9th to get my OFFICIAL degree and walk onto the stage and shake hands with professors from school. Until then, I’m still a student. 

It’s been hell of a semester this term. Made some new friends, good or bad. One thing that I’ve learned from this term is be sure to do a reputation check on the person that you are going to team up with in the class, otherwise you are probably going to waste plenty of precious time just to dealing with his or her sh!t. 

Here is the story. At the beginning of this semester, I was asked by this Mr.L who I’ve never be in group with, to be his partner in ENSC-427. Without a second thought I said “sure”, since he was the first one who ask me. Then, friends around me started to leak me some not-so-good stories about Mr.L, but I was like “Meh... it’s my last semester I don’t really care. The worst thing that could happen to me is that I would have to carry this guy, that’s all.”

AND I FREAKING DID!

It was effing waste of my time. This Mr.L wouldn’t do shit. He can’t even tell me what this one simple line of ns-2 coding does nor come up a decent abstract of our project. All he did was sitting there in the lab scrolling down the mouse like crazy pretending he’s doing something important. OMG! you are a 5th year electronic engineering major student, how can you be so.... Anyways, one day I had enough with this guy so I made an appointment with our professor. There were only Mr.L me and the prof in the office. The professor was so shocked of Mr.L’s limited abilities as an engineering student and his contributions to this project. The professor even asked Mr.L “How did you even survive the first year classes?” I later suggested to the prof that I want to split the group and would like to finish this project alone. Then she said “If you’re splitting the group, then I will have no choice but fail Mr.L here because 98% of the work were done by you and he’s only going to get what he deserved, which is that 2%. And this 2% of grade is definitely not enough for him to pass this course, not to mention getting higher letter grades”. I suddenly felt bad for Mr.L after I heard that, so I was like “What other options do I have? Because I don’t really want him to fail the class.” And the prof said “One option is to still have him in your group, but let him write the final report in order for him to contribute the project.”

And I took it. Fortunately, Mr.L was able to come up a report and “we” did pretty good on the powerpoint presentation, so at the end I got a solid grade so as Mr.L. 

Honestly, if I’m given a chance to go back in time, I would never ever want him to be in the group. 

我又覺得選錯書讀了～該死的Goodreads

這本要是拿給七八年前的我看，那也許還能感動幾分。現在的我看來，就是幾個高中生的情感糾葛，加上很莫名其妙的多角戀。