Saturday, May 12, 2007

• A would-be regular trip downtown... that became special

  Instead of spending the afternoon poring over research papers about vanadium oxide redox flow batteries, I got to spend the afternoon with Jessica =).  (This means I'll have to work at home over the weekend on it though.)

  Before this, however, taking public transit on the YRT/Viva system leaves a few things to be desired.  First, the frequency of buses on certain routes is, at times, very low (up to an hour).  Second, synchronization of buses could be a bit better (sometimes I have to wait 15+ minutes for the next Viva bus to the GO station).  And lastly, when the buses are late, connections to certain green-and-white vehicles sometimes can't be made.  Although I realize it's difficult for the big admin guys to run transit service over such a large area while keeping fares below or at the same price as the TTC, it can sometimes be annoying.

  Anyways, the 11:01 southbound GO bus was 10 minutes late, so I was able to run for the bus and make it down to Union on time.  It didn't matter though, because I had to wait a bit for Jessica in the Designated Waiting Area, so I read the paper.  Apparently that movie about the weirdo military guys who're supposed to invade Iraq but ended up in Mexico isn't that great (1/5 stars).  Didn't have a pen to do the Sudoku or crossword puzzle though...

  After I found Jessica, we went over to MP (because that's where her Physics for Life Sci lectures are), tried opening the locked doors to MP102, and peeked through the (also locked) doors of the lab rooms on the first floor.  Then we went back to the MedSci building to look for the grad picture of her doctor... turns out he was in the class of 8T9 (do non-engineering students stick the "T" in their graduating year?).  Also tried to find her tutor's office in GB, but no luck with that.  Went back to the NSci common room to play a bit of Halo, but for some reason the exec turned off the system... so we couldn't play =(.  Also went into the computer lab to see if my marks were posted to ROSI (they weren't as of that time).  For some reason Jessica was fascinated with the use of my TCard to get into these rooms... I guess it is kind of cool; not too many other kids have swipe-card access to secret rooms...

  Then we walked all the way to the south side of Eaton's Centre (yes, Raphael, you read that correctly-- walked) to get some Greek food for a very late lunch... had a gyros dinner as usual.  (On a sidenote, I believe it was Thomas who got me hooked on this stuff on a field trip in grade 7... it's good stuff... so whenever I get Greek fast food, it's always gyros dinner.)  After, we went shopping in a whole bunch of high-priced places.  It seems like these high-priced places sell clothes with less and less fabric on it... I guess this is what happens when the client wants more with less from the engineering designers.  I suppose this is how the stores make huge profits to pay for the expensive overhead... hopefully I'll figure it out when I take that engineering economics course in third year (I think).  Apparently frills and pleats are "in" this season... I still think it looks weird, but maybe it's because I've been hiding in a "cave" for the last eight months or so.  Also checked out the Best Buy at Yonge/Dundas... it's not really that special; it's just like the one at Markville, but probably smaller.

  It only hits me now that we hit something like 12 or 13 stores in only two hours... I don't know whether that's an achievement or not.  Anyways, we took the subway down to Union, bought a one-way ticket for Jessica for the 17:20 northbound GO train.  Jess always wanted the train to go faster once we departed from Union... it's often much faster on the morning southbound trains for some reason.  (Note to Jessica: I'm sorry if you were annoyed by me trying to promote GO Transit over the TTC.)

  Got home at normal time (6:30pm) for taking the 17:20 train - and because of this I couldn't check my marks on ROSI because they're closed from 6-12 on Friday nights... that's like the most inconvenient time to be shut down (but I guess they figure kids don't want to be worrying about school work on a Friday night).  But now I can check them, and they're pretty good... but I anticipate Praxis II to be a sore spot for the term though.  In any case, onward to 2nd year of Engineering Science!

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