bridge

The two days that I've been back have been insanely productive (relative to usual summer days).

My proudest accomplishment is definitely laundering.
Instead of my usual routine of waiting for mom to come home and sorting everything out for me, I decided to employ the "can-do shaditude" and take matters in my own hands (lolol so cheesy) :] Machine washing was more of a challenge than I thought, the one at home has a way more confusing dial to choose wash setting than the shad one @_@ Hand washing, however, was a lot better than expected. I remember making up every excuse imaginable to get out of washing stuff years ago, but now I find it quite alright (similar experience as creaming butter and sugar). Spent the better part scrubbing socks, to the point of having 2 scraps on my fingers e_e"
Probably should get started on learning the rest of the cleaning skills, university is right around the corner.

On a lower note, I came home to find the house damaged from flooding. Apparently a flood happened a week ago and since then the management has came in and inspected for damage. Though actual fixing would probably take a few more weeks. Currently furniture and stuff are all over the place, holes in ceiling, 2 rooms are unusable, etc. Think I'm coping with it alright, only ever sit on my sofa anyways ;P Plus I've survived a whole month in half a dorm room.

Shad Roundup

Most amazing 26 days.

It's really impossible trying explain what the shad experience felt like. Looking back at my texts to friends back home, most of them were complaints about how sleep deprived I am. Although that is an integral part of the shad experience, there is no way a collection of words can even come close to describe what the month of July was like.
^cheeeeesy but true. I'm only starting to feel the impact of everything that happened and more importantly how everyone helped each other grow. I was nervous meeting the 48 other shads, but discovered that each of them are amazing in their own ways yet we all have so much in common. It's really the people (including the staff!) that make "our time together a dream like journey"

Summarizing everything that happened would be way too much work, so here's some memorable quotations/cool stuff/inside jokes that I hope I'll still get when I look back at this years later:

• "When I don't have to sleep for my dreams to come true"-Rochelle
• "Don't hold back because youhave no experience, that's what you get when it's too late"-Tim
  
• SWAG, what our business plan was full of. Of course standing for Sophisticated Wild Ass Guessing. Two important things came from the completion of the house project: the realization that I can (albeit miserably) function with a lot less sleep and that my bs skills leveled up by a logarithmic scale.
• "Life is a lot like a shad schedule, full of lies and misinformations"-Mike
  
• This is the environment that I want my future company to have:
• Shad Valley of Despair (similar to The Dip)
• Wicked problems. Jenny's seminar was amazing!
• "There's 2 rules to success: 1. Don't tell people everything you know"-Kevin
  
• Sprouts, Nim and Clobber, math games seminar ;D
• "Ask Mike" our unofficial moto
  
• "Can-do shaditude"-Lisa Marie.
  
• Words of wisdom from Rick Nanson, my favourite guest speaker:
  Would someone be able to differentiate you from a computer? (Alan Turing)
  What you do in your career, can it be digitized? (Kurt Vonnegut)
  Never start calculations until you know the answer (his physics prof, so to develop intuition)
  Simple, complicated and complex. World is complex, we're trying to solve it like it's complicated.
  "There's known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns"
  "God grant me the serenity to accept the thngs I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference"-Serenity prayer
  "In the times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equiped to survive in a world that no longer exists"
• "Here's a map of Nova Scotia, by a fluke g geography, PEI also happens to be there"-Mike, trying to keep our camping trip to PEI a secret.
  
• Businesses must be scalable.
• Construction noises following us where ever we go. Had to change lecture rooms 4 times.
  
• Burrito style sleeping bags
• Dal dictionary (shamelessly stolen from the monthbook)
  Bears: mythical creatures that Mike tell us scary stories about.
  Bottle: a weapon to hit someone...or to pass around messages.
  Curfew: a suggestion, not a rule.
  Dum Shad: what we become when we don't get enough sleep or coffee. (usually the latter)
  Explore Program: French kids who invade the cafeteria. (and hate us for "cutting" in line)
  Harry Potter Movie: a crushed dream.
  Schedule: The vaguest source of information, complete with spaces intentionally/unintentionally left blank. (Really wanted to do "embracing serendipity in an unserendipitous world")
  
• "The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the Shads adjust the sails"-Shruti
  
• "Shad is like pi (or 2*pi),-natural, irrational, and very important"-Clark
  
• Pomegranate Phone
  
• The Last Lecture-Randy Pausch

Shad Dalhousie 2011, divide and conquer <3

Shad Cup

Business plan is done and submitted.
Felt like UT Space Design report all over again, except this time we were only 3 minutes late. Improvement.
But forgot to attach a bunch of stuff, now I'm scared to death that it'll piss the guy sorting everything for the judges (Mike) out. @_@"

Strategy to deal with these kind of situations is as follow:

• Load up on sugar before beginning.
  
• Find a song in a foreign language and set it on repeat. Note it is important that I cannot sing along to it.
  
• Work work work work work work work work.
  

but, IT'S DONEEEE *does happy dance*
Now onto presentations for tmrw ;D

edit: presentation doneeee *house team fist pump* I can now sleep in peace.

embers

Wonderwall is also a popular choice.
Singing around the camp fire is nice :]

Shad meal plan

"orz
It's waaay too easy to overeat at buffet style meals, so this is the plan that I shall implement:

Breakfast
-1 glass of chocolate milk
-1 small bowl with 1 scoop of yogurt topped with cereal
-half a grapefruit (no idea why they dont cut it into chunks like the oranges...)
-1 slice whole grain bread with peanut butter (no more cream cheese & jam, what a delicious combo that is)
Note: fast to obtain, fast to eat, aka more sleeping time ;D My alarm went from 7:50 to 8:00 to 8:03 and hopefully to 8:05 tmrw.

Lunch
-1 bowl of soup, 1 ladle only.
-1 plate, half must be green.
-no burgers, fries, pizzas etc. Preferably no pasta either.
-1 small bowl of dessert, either eaten here or during dinner. Choose between ice cream or dessert.

Dinner
-1 glass of chocolate milk or another bowl of soup if today's is especially good.
-1 plate, quater must be green.
-same thing for dessert.

Willpower will be spent half sticking to this and half to not procrastinate (point: making this blog post instead of doing research for business plan). And some extra for sleeping earlier.

Week 2

Shall resort to weeks, saturday night is a relatively slow time so I shall shove blogging into this timeslot.

Sunday is the best day of the week. Two simple reasons, sleeping in and a sunday(sundae) bar at dinner! On nom nom. Only, but hugeee, drawback is deliverable for House Project. It's an absolute killer e_e

This week was the first week where we selected our afternoon, 3 hour long, seminars. I got bridge building (best design yuhh!), financial modelling (accounting), and math games (sooo fun. Remind me to teach you guys Nim).

Also had Project Pitches due, which is like a friendly rehearsal for our final presentation. Thought it would turn out disastrous, especially since our group members had a pretty big fight hours before it (which out a bit out of hand and the Program Assistants had to intervene). Turned out decently though :]

Weekend was a one night camping trip to Prince Edwards Island. Was reeeeally fun, and equally tiring. Falling asleep as I type as it's almost one e_e Photos are again on Facebook.

First day we took a Ferry to PEI and were let loose in downtown Charlottetown, in which the boundaries you can see standing in the middle of it @_@" Lunch was nice, but took up most of the time. A tour of the Province House followed.

Afterwards we headed to our camping ground. Few hours were dedicated to ShadCity, which is like building with minecraft sandblocks with SimCity level urban planning. Was so freakin cold e_e Dinner and tents soon followed. My tent mates said how we were <_<"

Second day we visited the home of Anne of Green Gables. Would've enjoyed that more if I actually read the book XD The site's beautiful though, so many pretty flowers. Then headed to a nearby beach for some relaxation and a kite flying challenge. Thankfully the weather was a lot better so I was able to step into the Atlantic ocean~

Lastly, and the highlight of this camping trip, is the LOBSTER DINNER!
Deliciouuus.

It was all-you-can-eat appetizers and desserts too, so I filled up perhaps a bit more than I should have. It's okay, sleeping past breakfast anyways tomorrow.

And speaking of sleep, that is what I shall do now.

Day 6 & 7

photos on fb

Day 6
Highlight was going to DOWNTOWN Halifax ;D There's a lot of artsy boutiques and pubs haha. Got almost all of my souvenir shopping done, with the exception of the most important one <_<" Shall devote some of my supposed shad creativity to this problem.

In the evening, we saw the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo Festival, advertisements for that were all over the city! It was quite a spectacle, though you'd have to do with blurry photos xD

Day 7
HIKED FOR SIXTEEN KILOMETERS. STILL ALIVEEEE.
Rained.
Jeans soaked, white shoes brown. Cold as hell again e_e
But wasn't as tiring as I thought. If I can hike 16km, I can do other regularly timed exercises *u*

Day 5

Today's my blog day for the official shad valley blog, here's to a complete entry ;D

After a third change in lecture halls due to on-going construction, we buckled down for some early morning learning. The topics of the day were Engineering and Medical Device Development. Both were extremely interesting and helpful as this year's project theme is designing for disabled Canadian children. The involvement of the amazing Spiderman in demonstrating the concepts of engineering was, well, amazing.

Rec time consisted of an intense game of ultimate frisbee. All the Shads got deeply involved in the game instantly, bringing out their competitive spirits.

In afternoon seminar, we were introduced to the principles of project management. A challenge of planning and building a tower from various office supplies was assigned. After much confusion and frustration, my group finally triumphed(ish). Although I'm not sure how much of the principles I will remember, the activity definitely foreshadowed the challenges to come in our House projects.

Speaking of which, today I was particularly surprised at how productive House time was. My group had our fair share of frustrations during brainstorming sessions, but we managed to come up with several ideas to conduct further research on. It is going to be a tough month ahead, but I'm sure that it will be an experience that we will all remember.

Day 4 (and bits of 3)

Yeah...daily blogging isn't gonna work out. Spare time is gonna be either spent napping for working on House/Committee projects.

Back to hiatus~
(and yet again, I'll try to keep fb album up to date with a short description)

Day 2

Was gonna stuff a week worth of stuff into one post, but that gets a wee bit hard to organize and navigate. Plus I get to up post count XD

Second day was very eventful. Started the day off with a photo scavenger hunt, similar to the one in Pisa/Lucca during gritaly. Ran all around campus looking and posing around random stuff. It was really fun going into buildings, they're like a maaaaze.

Had the first seminar, pretty interesting. Got to take my new stationary out for a spin xD I felt so bad yawning because the material we covered, creativity, is interesting. Just that I did NOT get enough sleep, even with a 30min nap beforehand.

Not gonna get enough today either, gots to make a last minute powerpoint for my shadspeak, which will be about gritaly. I have no talent to showcase LOL.

Laaaast rant before I get started on that, communal bathrooms are annoying haha. There's only 4 showers, so first thing when the clock strikes 10 is to run. Also not use to not having all my stuff already in there, today alone took me 3 trips to grab all my stuff. Funny that out of all things, I forget my towel @_@"

K OFF TO WORK.
(again photos are up over at facebook)

Dal 2011

Off to shad I go.
An adventure this will be :]

...
...
...

first day oveeer! Damn it was tiring XD

Met up with Jen at the airport and flew a blissful 2 hours to Halifax. The flight made blissful by sleeping of course, getting up at 6 is a pain. Met my roommate at the airport, didn't know she was on the same flight xD

Spent some time exploring a small section of the campus while trying to find the rest of the shads. It has nice scenery~ My room is nice as well, got one of the rare higher beds with drawers underneath ;D Also played some intense rounds of pig with punishment. It ranged from singing embarassing songs to saying cheesy pickup lines to a random shad of the group's choosing. Luckily I never lost.

Way too sleepy to add photos to here, so I shall link to facebook album. Nighty nighhht~

canada day fireworks!

Cummer style of planning events: only hours of notice beforehand, this time in the form of fb thread. Pretty impressive as almost everyone showed up. Ended up standing around and teasing Billy about how drunk he was the day before.









Not too impressive but still pretty fun watching it with everyone :]

On the note of impressive, I think this is pretty close: