first shift at the aquarium & 10,000th picture.

so today was my first day of volunteering at the aquarium. it was pretty cool.

though apparently, when laurel emailed that it started at 9:30 and to come early, she meant 9:30 WAS the early. which i didn't realize. so i went and got there at about 9 and had a fun half hour of waiting around in the lobby awkwardly LOL. but yeah once we got started and people arrived and we set up the room it was pretty cool. 930-1130 or whatever it was was pretty cool, it was k-gr2. even at that age, there're quite a few kids who're pretty damn brilliant, it's pretty cool to see. i mean, it's gonna be those types of kids who sign up for these programs in the first place, but still. and i didn't relaly have much to do - their parents stuck around the entire time and then laurel did most of the coordinating and the shark dude did a lot of the talking so there wasn't much for us to do, really.

but we did help them out when it was time to make crafts, and the dude i kinda stuck with, a short little chinese kid called Glen, was pretty independent about it though - "yesss i know how it looks! i already know how to do it". but yeah, we made this like card where the shark's mouth is a popout thing and..yeah. glen is a bamf; his shark had a skull in it and shit and it was sposed to be a pirate and the pirate's sword and hat were there too. and blood. much blood in the water. LOL. personally i think his shark looked the most badass but that's just me.


and then that was the morning really, the k-gr2s. had lunch and hung around for a while, and thennnnn: gr3-5 time.


the buggers are damn smart. if the k-gr2 were all over laurel, the gr3-5 were all over laurel's friend, some phd dude she brought in to talk about sharks - really cool guy, actually does shark research and stuff. but yeah, he had a little powerpoint and talked about various aspects of shark badassery (cause there are so damn many), and the kids (particularly the 2 jadens. well, one of them is a jayden.) were alllll over him, always bursting with some new fact they knew to introduce to everybody else. it was pretty cool to see that not all gr3-5s are all like the kids who have blackberries by that age and not caring about anything else besides their phones and xboxes. and then yeah we went to the shark penthouse again, which i forgto to mention with the k-gr2s; it's just the area above the shark exhibit. really cool stuff. and while with the k-gr2s we had nothing to do, the gr3-5 was only marignally more. their parents weren't around so we had to make sure nobody fell behind or got seperated from the group.. not a hard task considering it was basically a 1:1 ratio of volunteers/students + laurel + sharkbeastdude, so..yeah. LOL. one of the jadens was always hanging behind cause he was so into the stuff ,it was pretty cute. but yeah, we still didn't have to do a whole ton because they're so awed and into the animals and knowledgeable that if you talk to them while they're watching you get the air of "im staring at this awesome animal. stfu bitch you're distracting" LOL. i guess the only time they need help is pointing out where the animals are, and after that they're all set haha.

so overall it was a pretty fun day; i think i'll continue doing both shifts until i get hella busy or something.





anyways, after volunteering, i bused into downtown and promptly took out my camera in a way that made the battery door open and 1 of the batteries fell underneath the bus and got crushed.


oops.

well that gave me an excuse to go over to broadway camera and pick up another set of eneloops which was apparently on discount so that was pretty cool. but yeah, i decided to finish up my buildings assignment for photo cause the pics i got from going to qep that one day were a bit meh; i wanted some better pics so i walked most of the way from the beginning of downtown until the canada line stop more or less, and in the process, i got my 10,000th shot. it be below:

i'm pretty happy with this picture and will probably end up using it for the assignment, so good thing my 10,000th wasn't some shit missclick LOL. and here's another from the same walk:

i tried to focus this at the hyperfocal point but the da40 i had on doesn't have a focus scale so i just kinda guesstimated (and failed a bit. the foreground is pretty OOF, like those plants there. $5 mr. wong's gonna say they're distracting, and with good reason too)


and now having woken up from a nap, i can say despite my 5 hours' sleep....

volunteering at the aquarium is pretty damn awesome.




edit:: forgot to mention, i totally talked the shark dude after his talk to the little kids, asked him how he got to where he is now and stuff. turns out ubc is pretty awesome, and yeah we talked about stuff like volunteering for labs for the prof in uni, just whatever i can get, and that sort of thing. i was going to get his email but i think he left while i was putting away tables LOL. also, he brought a shark body to show everyone - a blacktip. it was so funny cause the kids were all over it, feeling the sandpaperlike skin and the teeth and stuff, and the volunteers were just sitting there not wanting to do anything, but you could feel it in the air that the volunteers were like ZOMG I WANNA SEE TOO LOL. and eventually he asked if we wanted to feel the shark and yeah we all pounced. LOL IT WAS SO COOl

thanksgiving

...was rather depressing. shitty weather, stayed at home doing nothing. wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee so here are two random pictures that were outtakes from my buildings assignment for digital photography; they don't focus on the buildings enough and more on the lights and what not, he says.


wow, that was the shittiest topic change ever. LOLOL

hail the villain

it's pretty cool to be a fan of a small band. cause, just wait, in 10 years they're going to be huge, and i'll be all i knew it bitchessss, i was a fan from the start.

hail the villain: they be beastly. they were one of the bands playing on the small stage a few weeks ago on the rockstar uproar festival, and most of the bands on that stage just kind of came and went. i was standing by the main stage, on the opposite end of the floor, so most of the sound was just kinda meh anyways. not the case when hail the villain came on. sure, some of the earlier bands got the crowd up and moving some, particularly new medicine, but that band had a bit too much poppy-type sound to their music for my taste. with hail the villain, you knew it was metal; that first guitar riff from Take Back the Fear was clearly audible from across the floor, and it sounded catchy, thick, metal. i literally did turn my head when i heard it, and though i was too paranoid about losing my spot right against the fence of the main stage to move, hail the villain definitely played a great set.

in an interview i watched of them later, they talked about what an honor it was for them to be on a tour like rockstar uproar, with huge bands like avenged sevenfold and disturbed on it, as opposed to warped tour which practically every small band does. and damn did that show through in their set - they kicked ass and really got people moving. the chorus on Runaway - when i say GO - got many a mosher jumping and thrashing to it. i admittedly wasn't paying too much attention to the second stage for most of the time, but hail the villain definitely made me pay attention, what with the ass kickery and stage presence they had.

and now, 2 weeks or so later, i've finally given their music a listen. and it's pretty cool stuff. i guess it does tend to lean towards the rock side of hard rock/heavy metal, but that's not a strike against them or anything, it sounds great regardless. and talk about imagery, after a few listens (and a visit to their website, which is pretty damn cool for just a band website. check it out! hailthevillain.com) it seems like there's a movie playing anytime their songs are. they also mentioned in that interview that their various members brought together punk and metal influences, that shows too. there's some pretty catchy guitar parts that are resoundingly metal-ish, and their general vibe is that hit-and-run pace of punk.


i feel like i'm reviewing them. let's cut that shit out. LOL.

but yeah, cool band, and in 10 years, i guess we'll see how big they get. for a debut album, Population: Declining is beastly; they're definitely a creative bunch: just take a look at their mv!

that felt good.

but first, this didn't feel so good:

fucking 4 hours of photoshopping. fuck. that. shit. i mean, i finished the project in the end, but jesus christ, i am never ever ever ever doing any graphics related in my future ever again unless someone has a shotgun to my balls or something. i guess in the end it was educational, but oh my shit that was an eyeball-raping few hours of my life. did you know that staring at a picture largely consisting of black and grey for hours on end results in boredom and depression? go figure. anyways, here's the end product before/after, the assignment was to make a photo into a painting:

and now the after:

if it doesn't look like a painting to you, shut up, i don't care anymore. it's done and over with.


anywaysssssss....i finally went rock climbing again for the first time in at least a month, and damn that felt good. my fingerpads are still burning right now, but it feels good in that satisfying way. climbed for a bit over an hour which is more than i usually did but i don't feel that sore; a lot of the new 5.10 routes were pretty easy. and then there was the odd one which was impossibly hard and made me go whattheballs?

 i'm pretty fond of "what the balls" as a phrase right about now.

but yeah, it was pretty fun. rock climbing is always so satisfying as a whole and on a route by route basis, it always makes me that good-tired. afterglow-tired LOLOL. actually there was a route entitled "after glow", i lol'd.

i'm just going to add one last line here so as to make the ending of this slightly less abrupt and awkward.

whee.