The past Thursday I had the opportunity to climb the CN Tower for the first time as a part of a fundraiser for the World Wildlife Fund. It was quite an interesting experience.

The whole thing started around the last week of May, when I realized that maybe I should get myself in shape once more. I’ve been kind of slacking off at the gym, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get things started for the summer season.

And what a start it was. I trained twice a week almost every week since then. I remember dying on the Baldwin Steps behind Casa Loma on my first attempt. I never ran stairs before, not to mention running 144 flights (that’s 1728 steps!) in an all-out, do-or-die fashion. Eventually, with the encouragement of Daniel and Levi, I discovered a pace that worked for me. The key to the race was apparently: 2 steps at a time, and never stop.

My goal was to finish the climb in 15 minutes. Admittedly, this was a little unrealistic, but I thought if I gave myself an impossible time, I’d push myself harder. I was pretty nervous on the day of the run, which sounds a little silly, but I couldn’t help it — the anticipation, the pre-race nerves, what if I totally fatigued half way up?

After all the administrative chores, along with all the security check-points, a WWF volunteer registered my timer wristband, and that was it, time to run. The next 20 minutes were a blur. I couldn’t quite remember when, but I think it was around floor 47 when I told myself that I was insanely stupid for signing up for such a task. My legs were on fire. Reading the flight numbers slowly go up by one was a torture, I had to force myself to stop counting. After passing the 100th flight of stairs, my legs were done with 2 stairs at a time, I had to switch to doing 1 steps, I was also tasting blood at the back of my throat — so that’s why they tell you to breath in through the nose.

I ended up getting a time of 00:17:58, and placed 390 overall — all sorts of disappointing. I was pretty sure that I could do it in 17, but alas, I was almost a minute late. A lot of fun was had by all though, so it was all in all, a great afternoon / evening.

I want to thanks all the folks that sponsored me for the event! I ended up raising $420.00, which is pretty amazing! Congrats to the FreshBooks “old-school” team as well, they placed 3rd overall as a team with the average time of 00:12:47!

Back in second year of university, I received an email in my gmail from the University of Toronto, letting me know that they’ve received my application to the Doctor of Dental Surgery Program for the 2006-2007 session, and requires some further documentation from me. Indeed, the thought of going through with dental school myself will make my mother no doubt very happy, but I couldn’t help but think about pulling someone’s teeth out — a rather frequent procedure for a dentist I’m afraid, and to that, I say “no way!”

At the time I felt bad for this “Dentistry Tim”. People make mistake all the time, and the poor guy might miss his deadline for supplement documentation if I don’t redirect this email to the right guy. So I gave University of Toronto a call, and they said they’ll fix it, all was well.

Fast forward to last month. I received another curious email from the University of Connecticut for Dentistry Tim, this time for Oral and maxillofacial Surgery residency. My first thought was surprisingly joyous. After all, it’s nice to know that Dentistry Tim has made it through his first few years of Dental school, and now is moving on to such a prestigious international surgical specialty. I fired an email back to the University of Connecticut letting them know that they’ve got the wrong Tim, and they should notify Dentistry Tim of his missing documents at once so he can continue to be considered for the residency. Admittedly, I was a little annoyed. How can someone be so careless to put a wrong email address into such important applications? Not to mention, twice!

About a week ago, I got another email from Loma Linda University, telling me that they were thrilled to offer Dentistry Tim an interview. By this point, half of me wanted to fly myself all the way to Loma Linda University and pose as Dentistry Tim. Imagine the possibilities:

Loma Linda: So, tell me why, in terms of of your ability and experiences, we should accept you into our residency?
Me: Well, I once knocked a kid over and some teeth fell out!
Loma Linda: … Uh…. wha…. umm… I beg your pardon?

Needless to say, doing so would probably lend me some jail time for identity theft. So I laughed it off and gave Loma Linda University a call, letting them know that they’ve got the wrong Tim.

At this point, even my friends thought it was rather ridiculous, one joked that one day I’ll get a password reset email for an account of some sort:

I laughed it off, and went on my merry way… until today, when another email popped in for Dentistry Tim, except, not Dentistry related at all:

Looks like Dentistry Tim managed to buy custom car parts using the wrong email address. Not only is this guy a Dentist, he also drive nice cars. One would think he still have lots of education loans to pay off, but that’s outside of my knowledge regarding Dentistry Tim.

What I do know though, is his address, and I feel like writing him a post card, complete with a photo of the CN tower on the back, and write something along the lines of “You know that interview? Yea, you would’ve missed it if it wasn’t for me, as well as all those due dates for supplementary submissions. So on those counts, do yourself a favour and stop mistyping your email address!” A better idea — ask my cousins who lives in the same city as Dentistry Tim to order copious amounts of Pizza to that address! Okay, only kidding. Though you must admit the thought of it is awfully tempting. I mean, were you expecting me to send a care package with a “Good Luck with Oral and maxillofacial Surgery” note attached?

It’s been a while since I last posted. With twitter so popular, who actually blogs nowadays? No matter. It’s been a busy few weeks getting adjusted to my new life at FreshBooks. It’s been going well. Everyone is so very welcoming and brilliant, sometime, I feel like I’m the one with the least experience in the room compared to everyone else. It’s great though, to be feeding off the energy at work — there’s such a good vibe there, and no days are ever dull. Just take a look at the photo above for example. Who gets to sumo wrestle at work?

Adjusting to the working life has surprisingly been more difficult than expected. I’m constantly finding myself “bored” during the evenings. Not a good thing, bored means unproductive times, and unproductive at the age of 22 doesn’t sound at all appealing. I figured it’s time I started investing more time into self improvement, but I couldn’t quite think of a place to start. There are all sorts of things I could improve on, say, learn how to program again (learn a whole new language while I’m at it), but I almost fell backward on my butt from being dazed and confused when I went to the bookstore the other day trying to find a tutorial book. That’s just say there are a lot of books about programming out there.

Out of frustration, I went back to my favourite past-time — the piano, and started jamming. Half an hour into the session I tapped myself on my forehead and said “duh!”. Clearly, what I needed at the moment was not to learn a new set of skills, but to built upon what I already know, and I was already doing it for half an hour. I decided that for the next few months, my goal is to get my groove on the piano back. Learn a new challenging pieces and expand my repertoire, all the while research a bit into what I would like to work on non-musically.

So that’s the plan I stuck with. I ended up purchasing the “Kingdom Hearts Piano Collection” book (shipped all the way from Japan!). The pieces are quite challenging, yet fun, and will hopefully be enough for me to tackle for the next few months. Currently I’m working on the piece called Kairi. It seemed to be an intermediate piece out of the entire playlist, so I figure I’d start from there and see where it goes.

Until then, if anyone has any great reads in terms of business and marketing, or any interesting reads in general, feel free to suggest them to me. I could use some guidance in picking out some books out of the millions in stores.

I also made a little funny/cheesy self-promotion video when I applied for the position (available after the jump). Freshbooks wanted, as an option, a video to be sent in describing why you’re interesting and how you enjoy helping people. I thought the “call for video”-video that they made set the tone for a less serious self-promotion, and encouraged a more fun and wacky submission. So I started brainstorming ideas with some help from friends, wrote the script, shot the footages, and edited. It turned out to be a fun little project for a weekend, not to mention a chance to revisit my media roots from high school and PTS. Special thanks goes to Dan T, Dan K, Amanda, Heather, Howard, Peter, Wilfreda, Alex T, Alyssa, Shanan, my sisters, and my neighbours for either starring in, or helping me in the making of the video.

Admittedly, there were some concepts that I didn’t present too clearly. In case you were wondering. The “Assist” sequence at the end starts with me chlorinating a pool. When I appear behind the TV at 3:15 I had just fixed said TV, and the last montage of the sequence at 3:44 was me directing my friend Howard on how to do peform an Ultra Combo in Street Fighter IV. Though it should be noted that in real life, he dominates that game (I rarely win a match against him!).

The video was apparently a hit with the crew at Freshbooks, and though they never told me, I think it gave them a good first impression before the interviews. So here’s a tip on job hunting — Anything filed under “optional submission”, is really “required submission”.

I feel both very excited and very fortunate to find myself in this spot, and am looking forward to doing what I can to help Freshbooks and its customers have a rocking invoicing experience.

Let this image serve as a preview of the photo-set to come. Speaking of photo-set, I’m quite stoked to be finally gutting my dust-collecting desktop and refurbish it with some brand spankin’ new parts tomorrow. Then hopefully I won’t have such a hard time processing photos.

Things are finally looking up a bit, hopefully it will get better as this year unfolds.

First up was the 2009 Canadian Auto Show. I’ve never been to one before, but decided to go this year because the family is looking into a new car next year to replace our problematic Camry. It was also nice to go with Peter, since he knows so much about cars. The auto show was kind of like Disney World for Pete, his eyes glimmered with excitement every time a “worthy” car came into view, models names, features, and various little fun facts would come flowing out of his mouth. I was quite impressed with the amount of knowledge he has for cars, and made me extra glad that I was with him at the auto show, otherwise I’d be discombobulated beyond belief.

The best part however, was when we reached the Suburu floor, where Baymba, the Sumo Wrestler featured in the Sexy Suburu Campaign was there to take photos with the guests. Did you know Byamba was featured in “Oceans 13″? He also has never lost a match while competing internationally. Craziness.

I also got to do “the walk” at my Convocation yesterday! It was a day to “tie up some loose ends”, shall we say. First stop, the University Bookstore to get the official frame for my degree, and of course, order my grad photos, a “to-do” that is overdue by a year. I also went back to my old office to say hi to everyone, I miss it! I suppose now that everything with Guelph is over, I should write some sort of reflection on the past four year of my undergrad life, for myself if anything. Maybe later.

Of course, Mommy was very proud:

On a side note. I go skating every Saturday from 7:00pm – 9:00pm with a few friends at the Pleasant View Community Center, so if anyone ever wants to join the fun, come on down! Rock Band at my place afterward!

Nevertheless, this is an exciting day today, for it is my very first American Thanksgiving… spent in the US of A. It’s quit exciting, we are apparently having a huge feast tonight, and then the cousins and I are going to line up for some black Friday deals, imagine, I can finally experience the joy of elbowing crazed shoppers as we race for the door crasher deals, and the pain of getting trampled over by hundreds of people. Don’t worry, I’ve got my helmet, gloves, and knee pads ready.

Will update more later, probably when I return home from my trip. Seattle and LA are amazing cities that has very different things to offer (I’ll write about them in depth later!). I definitely recommend a visit. San Diego tomorrow, followed by Vegas, then home for the Holiday blitz. Not counting the jobless-ness, life is pretty good right now.

Time for more adventures.

The past week was quite the eventful one indeed. First, as said last post, I was invited by my friend Dan to go up to Montreal to attend EA’s release of their new game “Boogie Superstar”. The event was pretty cool, with lots of food, EA staff, and enough Boogie Superstar running for everyone to give it a try. The whole evening I was speaking to programmers, designers, project managers, and marketers, making me feel like I should’ve gone into Computer Science or Business, since being a Bio-Med guy there seemed pretty out of place.

Boogie was actually quite a fun game, but it was clearly targeted to the teeny-bopper crowd. I won’t lie though, I did enjoy the game when I was playing it, and I can see kids getting excited over this game. There were plenty of food to go around at the event, and we event got a tour of the studios (no photography allowed, obviously), as well as some great swag — a free t-shirt and a copy of NHL ‘09! Sweet!

The next day we explored downtown Montreal for a bit, then went to Science Centre Montreal where I felt right at home. I was especially ecstatic when I got to try out an interactive game where they translate your alpha and beta brain waves into kinetic energy to move a little ball. The objective of the game is to win by moving the ball to your opponent’s side by thinking really hard. That said, I had a disastrous lost my friend Dan since I found the whole thing very amusing and could not concentrate hard enough to win this battle of the minds.

On Friday, some of the East-coast ex-Disney cast members came up to Toronto to see High School Musical 3 (what else?). I was intrigued as to how the movie will do on a theatrical level. The last two was acceptable for a Disney Channel movie, but way too cheesy for it to make it in the theaters. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie. Granted, there was obviously some very cheesy moment that almost made me spew the coke I was drinking through my nose, but over all it was a pretty well enjoyable movie and a fitting end to the High School Musical series if you’re willing to look past some awkward dialogue and cheese. The gang then hung out after for some desserts, a great time, as always.

The next morning I crawled out of bed to go to the gym at 7:30 in the morning. Both my trainer and I gave each other the “This is way too early” face. You know it was too early when the gym hasn’t even officially opened. That said, I found the silent atmosphere a pretty good place to work-out. In the afternoon, I went to watch the Sound of Music at the Princess of Wales, it was shorter than I thought it would be, but it was delightfully done, and every moment was filled with fun. Props to the actors and actresses playing the Von Trappe children, way too cute. In the evening, I went to Heather’s place along with my sister Tina and friend Raymond to chill in Heather’s hot-tub. Makes me want to get one in the backyard, hmmm, hot tub.

And that was that, a great way to end October, I’m looking forward to what November will bring.

I’ve finally updated photos from George’s “See-ya-later” gathering from the beginning of August, I’m a bit behind in terms of photo uploads (didn’t even know they were sitting there!). Check out the slide show after the jump, or head here for the entire set.

So I’m sitting here, trying to bathe in the warm swathes of air spitting out of my central heater. It’s a crazy nice day outside, at least, it appears so. The sky is clear with just streaks of cloud here and there, it’s almost like a cute painting, but temperature wise, a cool ten degrees Celsius. My gym trainer has canceled on me for the first time ever, and it’s only been the first week! I miss my university gym, where everything isn’t so monetary and filled with contracts and fine prints. Talk about the real world.

It seems these days there’s not much to write about. It happens, sometime, you just don’t know what to write. I know, there’s the politics — both in Canada and the United States, and the crazy economic free-fall, but I feel like there’s enough opinions and in-depth coverage on the interweb and televisions these days that covers said topic. Besides, I’m simply burnt out from all these election and economic discussions in person with friends and family, I don’t think I need to spew more here.

I’m doing more resume hacking at the moment, I can feel a job offer coming up soon, which is pretty good after two months of hiatus. I’ve recruited my friend Howard to help me out with some of my Halloween projects, which, will look fantastic if everything is to go as planned (I’ll definitely blog about this one!). And finally, I’m taking a week-long trip to The West Coast in the States in November, and from the itinerary I’ve built up, it looks like there’s plenty of excitement to go around.

Oh yea, below is the slide show from George’s goodbye gathering, enjoy!

Wow, it’s really been a while since I updated. The summer was officially over a few days ago (or was it last week?), which seems particularly crap-tastic when you look back on days like this one. This photo is from the end of August on the Grand I Yacht at the Seven Seas Lagoon of Disney World in Florida. As you can clearly see, I was a very happy man, and so was everyone else on that yacht.

What was going through my mind at the time, you ask?

Nothing, except that “warm and fuzzy” feeling. It was the summer. I was on an 1.2 million dollars yacht. My friends Dan K. and Amanda just got engaged, and I was surrounded by some of the best and finest friends I could ever ask for, and thinking at such times — is highly overrated.

The photos are finally ready. As I mentioned last entry, I took no part in taking photos at Disney World, too busy leading Tim’s Eleven around! (Har-har, Get it? We had 11 people, lead by me, Ocean’s Eleven? Hello? Anyone?) The photo above is taken and retouched by Dan Truong, and you can find them lovely photos here.

More photos and commentaries to come!