There is a new reality show on TV called Beauty and the geek, which I found the idea is quite genius. It’s a mix of blind date and competition game show. The show pairs up several teams of hot girls and nerdy geeks. Each partner in the team has to use their strength to help the other one overcome challenges targeting his or her weakness. For example, the tests includes car repair for girls and ball room dancing for the guys. It’s funny to see how people in the two extreme ends of social spectrum cooperate to win the grand prize. I guess to make the show more interesting, the participants are chosen in a way that they are typical stereotyped blonds and geeks. Indeed I found the mind of man and woman ain’t the same, the show just exaggerate the difference and present it in a very funny way. I’m just thinking of a similar reality show for the Canadian market by pairing up a English speaker who know little french with a french speaker who know little English.
All posts by hevangel
Overwhelmed
Recently, I got overwhelmed by church activities. There are too many meetings and events going on, and I am stressed out since it eats into my private time. Preparation for Worth Youth Day is good, but do we need to spend so much time doing all these things? Someone may prefer better prepare themselves spiritually, while someone simply don’t have such a need. Why force everyone follow the same path on spiritual quest? Tonight I had wasted 3 hours in yet another tumid meeting regarding the up coming St. Mary fund raising event, which should last no longer than 1 hour. I feel that we have way too many fund raising activities and it really bothers me. I rather spent the time working on my thesis or even sit back to relax a bit. All church activity should be on volunteer basis. Once someone committed the minimum effort, others should not push more works onto his plate than he is willing to take. Making everyone share the equal amount of work doesn’t make sense at all, since everyone’s expectation is different. Some people always complain they had did more work than others. But they gladly signed themselves for the job at first with no one forcing them. They never consider the option of doing less, which is perfectly fine with most people who want less work. Church stuff is not like real work, people don’t get pay for their service and there is no measurement on deliverable. I’m sure God doesn’t care how much time we put in, as long as we had made some effort. Serving God more may indeed accumulate more treasure in the heaven. The question is suppose that every resident of heaven is equally happy eternally, then what is the use of having more treasure if it can’t buy you more happiness?
library
The library at work was closed down and the librarian got fired last week while I was in Saskatoon. Not many people will miss the library, as they all think it is just a waste of resource to hire someone to order books and keep track of magazines. I’m among one of the few customers of library, who feel sad that it’s closed. I do agree the librarian is kinda redundant and useless, but the library is where I get my weekly magazines from. Now when the library closed, it fetters me from getting my Economist and Harvard Business Review. I hope the company will hire a junior librarian or even a co-op student soon, so that the library can go back to business.
I am the table topic master in today’s toast master meeting. The topic is “Beautiful BC”, which the chairman assumes BC always stands for Birthish Columbia. I put a twist on the topic and use BC as an acronyms. The speakers and club member had fun and lots of laugh, and I think I did not a bad job. My hand gesture and flow of words still need more improvement. Gota remind myself avoid clapping my hands in my speech. The word of the day is Effulgent, it an adjactive with the same meaning as bright. I tried to use Effulgent in my speech, but I don’t make it bend in with my speech very well. However, this excerise give me an idea. I just subscribed to the dictioary.com word of the day mailing list. I’ll see how can I use the daily word in my blog starting today.
speech preparation
Today is quite unproductive at work, not only I had 3 hours of meeting straight from 11:00a.m. to 2:30p.m., I did a brain dump to another colleague of what I had learnt in Saskatoon in the afternoon. The meeting in lunch time is not project related, it’s a mini seminar organized by the Toastmaster club on how to prepare a speech. The speaker is Marget Hope, a specialist on speech from SFU. I believe had I attended similiar seminar taught her before, but obviously I had forgot everything I learnt last time. Giving a speech is very different from writing an article. When writing an article, people usually use fancy words and complex sentence structures, but in a speech, simple sentence is usually the way to go. First she introduced the bubble diagram to brain storm ideas, then briefly on the technic of walk thru, talk thru, real rehersal and mental rehersal. After the seminar, I felt I am more prepared for the ice-breaker speech I have to do in Toastmaster, so I signed myself up do it the week after.
I think my chess skill really had improved, I slaughtered Gordon with a major advantage. Moreover, I tried the Sicilian defence dragon variable and really appreciate its beauty. I decided to focus on this as my main defense strategy in king pwan openings.
fun run
Thirty six minute for running 5 km. I’m sure that’s definitely one of my personal record. Since a little kid, I’m never good at running. In highschool P.E. lessons, I’m always one of the slowest few in the class. Running for 10 laps and around the school run was like torture to me. After so many years, out of totally unknown reason, I signed up for the Science World Fun Run sponsered by the company. The registeration for the run is free, include a free T-shirt and high-tech shoe tag for individual time keeping. I guess it’s partly due to peer-pressure. Not only Pat started running to keep fit and wanted to come, several other friends at work also signed up. I was so worried that I would be the slowest one again. Fortunately, not including the girls, I am still faster than Louis and Jackson. Pat’s time is pretty good, only about 100 meters slower than Jackson. In the first half of the run, I stay besides Pat, so it was not very tried.
On the second half, Pat let me “runs free” and I keep up without walking all the way until the finishing line. The final 1km is the toughest, even though I was able to see the dome at the end point, there still a long way to go. It takes some self control for my exhausting yourself too soon by dashing prematurely. I think in long run, psychology plays as an important role as the body. There are times that I wanted to slow down and take a break, it is the mind force myself keep running. Actually I feel happy finishing the run, partly is due to the sense of accomplishment, and partly is due to chemical released in my brain from the vigorous exercise. I am planning to take part in the 10km run next year. Maybe in a few year when I’m not that busy, I’ll really start training to run a Marathon. Complete a Marathon race is now official added to my life time to-do list.
Today is really a busy day, it has been non-stop after the fun run in the morning. Right after the run, went home took a quick shower, then go to Richmond to have the farewell lunch with George. The guy go back to HK for good and got a job offer in the HK science park. Then it’s the weekly dancing class. This week is learning cha-cha for the 2nd time. I can feel my moves are better than last time, still I have problem counting beats. After that, we have to help out Krispy Kream distribution in the church. The fund raising for World Youth Day is a hugh success, I can’t imagine we had sold over 300 hundred dozens of donut. We were so careless that we forgot to order a box for ourself. Luckily, someone didn’t pick up their donuts and we could take that box home. Now as I’m writing about donut, I can feel my hunger and I know it’s time for me to stop writing and have a donut.