| Marc 的个人资料Markalark's Glass-Palace...照片日志列表 |  工具  帮助 |
|
7月20日 Well this was unique…We had quite a day today. Ate my 40mg dose this morning and everything went fine. 2 hours later though, things went a bit hectic. For the first time in 4 years, Stephanie the only person around me who always double checks everything I eat, who always chases down waitresses to make sure that whatever I ordered blindly doesn’t contain any peanuts and who always brushes her teeth twice after eating something that may have been in contact with peanuts or other nuts, accidently fed me a peanut sauce meal. She had bought some various-flavored tuna cans and checked the labels of two of the three. The only one that she hadn’t read carefully had peanuts smack dab in there. And not “traces of peanuts”; the real deal.
I took three or four bites and noticed that something was wrong right away: itchy throat, and minutes later, spasms in the esophagus; nothing too severe, but enough to know that something was wrong. It reminded me of the small intolerance I had to beans and peas a while back. We checked the label to confirm my suspicions and then, seeing how things weren’t THAT bad, I decided to chug down some Benadryl and ride it out. Everything went well and the symptoms slowly went away. About an hour later, almost nothing remained except the excessive drowsiness brought on by the Benadryl. Lessons learned? Always check labels. I’m not yet bullet proof, but my experiment seems to be going in the right direction as the allergic reaction was a lot less severe than last time I consumed peanuts in any serious degree. I better keep it up then. -“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief  7月15日 Everything is splendidThings are going incredibly well on the Peanut front. Three weeks ago when I went from 10mg to 20mg, I got pretty nauseous for the first three days but then it got better. This week, I went up to 40mg which is the equivalent of 1/8 of a whole peanut. Nothing at all happened! NO side-effects whatsoever. So week 9 of this little science project is halfway through which only leaves 11 more weeks before there are no more increases and where I’ll be eating 5 peanuts every day. Up until now, I’m extremely impressed with the results.
On the non-peanut agenda, I encourage you to go visit and comment this little blog that the short film project I am in is asking me to contribute to. Might give you some insight on what’s happening on that front and give you hints on what to expect from my little movies. - Well it's good to know that you'll be okay
6月11日 More discoveries.Week4
The past couple days have been perfect. No more side effects from the 7mg of peanut flour; which brings me to a (tiny) problem:
Through the help of science buddies of mine, I was able to fish out the actual data from the original science experiment in the UK (glory to the internets). It seems that the dosage they were using were not in milligrams of flour, but actually milligrams of peanut protein. Since the flour we are using is 50% peanut protein, I have been taking only half the dosage that the original experiment was using. It’s not that big of a problem, it just made me ease in a LOT more gradually into the adventure than what they did with their lowest tolerating test subject. So next week when I go up to 10mg of peanut FLOUR, the real experiment will begin.
The paper really is useful; it shows what exact dosage they used on all the subjects and what specific reactions were witnessed. I now know what I can expect (like stomach pains, nausea, runny nose, throwing up –yay-) and that the symptoms are normal and should subside after 2 or 3 days (pretty much what I’ve been experiencing with the dizziness)
Huzzah for science! -Under a red hot moon take a bus downtown to the graveyard shift tonight.
 6月3日 No news means I’m dead/good news.Week2
Not much to say about the second week of this little project. I guess that’s incredible news then. No headaches, no nausea, no dizziness… My body seems fully adjusted to the 5mg dose. At the end of the second week, we’ll try a higher dose and see what happens. Day 15-Day18 Ok, we decided to up the dose to 7mg on Sunday. 10mg seemed a bit high as a next step and we want to go easy on me. On day 15 I got a bit dizzy again but nothing out of control. Day 16 was a bit harder as I got dizzier than the previous day. I then decided to take Val’s advice which seemed to work well on week one. Whenever I get dizzy, the next day I take a slightly lower dose and then go back up the following day. It seems to do the trick because today, Day 18, I took a full 7mg dose and everything is ok. I think that easing the body into a higher dose in a seesaw manner really is the way to go. We’ll see how tomorrow goes. -St-Scholastique ou parc Forillon, fallait partir de bon matin, pour les touristes ou leurs avions, on est toujours dans l'chemin.
5月21日 Little Science ProjectsDay 4
Ok, today was a weird day… Since I’ve been feeling dizzy a bit too much to my liking the last couple days, Val and I went back to the lab (which will henceforth be called, THE LAIR) and measured up a couple of 4mg doses in the hopes that they will go down better. The strange thing is, the entire morning I’ve felt slightly dizzy and it wasn’t until I had taken that 4mg dose at lunch before I started feeling better. Like an old burnt out alcoholic, shivering with a cold sweat until he drinks his first bottle of bear at 7am, is my body becoming dependent of the peanut flour I am trying to tame?? It might also just be that Stephanie is coming down with a cold and I’m starting to catch it too... Time will tell! Day 5 Well this is new… I tried 4.9mg at breakfast in vanilla flavored yogurt. I know this is very unscientific, taking too many things out of the equation at once, but I was getting pretty sick of being dizzy. So we are now about an hour post consumption and I am feeling really great. Maybe the anxiety is less present; maybe, the bike ride might have helped… I’m not quite sure… But the results are there and I can live with depriving science of a great leap at my health’s expense. -Let's go surfing now, everybody's learning how
5月20日 My mithridatism reportOk, so here goes. I’ve been told that I should be documenting this little science experiment I’m doing. I’ll try to keep it short and to the point as this should warrant daily reports, at least in the beginning stages of this all.
It all started a couple months back when I read an article on how 2 or more labs in the US and UK have been giving small amounts of peanuts to kids in order to let them build up an immunity to the peanut proteins that trigger an allergic reaction. It got me intrigued so I scanned the interweebs to find some more info. The most complete report I could find was this. It seemed very straightforward and simple so I thought about trying it out. It took me a while to get my hands on the same kind of peanut flour that they were using, the one with 50% peanut protein in it. I finally found it in Virginia and had it shipped to my house. I made charts and graphs and figured out that a 1lb bag would be more than enough for this little experiment. Bag cost: 5$. Shipping cost: 8$. Once it arrived, I needed to weigh in really tiny amounts of the stuff. That’s where Val came in trumpets blaring! We went to her lab and used an atomic, laser powered and magic regulated super scale, capable of weighing in Über small amounts of anything. 2 hours later, we had these little vials, almost empty but holding just the right amount of poison in them.
Day 1
I was ready. All I needed then was time. I waited up until last weekend where I knew I had 4 days off from work. Perfect for this little experiment. After much procrastinating, I finally gathered up some friends and went to the park right next to the hospital’s Emergency room and had my first taste. 4.8mg mixed in some coffee flavored yogurt. We then spent the next 3 hours talking on the grass, reading, playing some music and taking pictures (Maude and Stephanie immortalized the experiment). Everything went relatively fine. I got a bit dizzy, a major headache and wound up being really tired by the end of the day, but I tend to scratch that off to the excitement and anticipation of eating poison. Very psychosomatic… Day 2 Day two was a lot better. I was at home when I took in 5mg in the same yogurt. I got a bit dizzy, but I went outside to work on my motorcycle and everything seemed to go a lot better. Maybe the dizziness is all about me getting worried that something MIGHT happen, and getting my mind on other things lessens the symptoms… No headache and I wasn’t tired at all; a lot better than the first day. So I took advantage of the sun and went for a ride on my bike. Day 3 First day taking the peanut flour at work: 5mg in coffee flavored yogurt. I took that during the lunch break and I got really dizzy in the afternoon for about an hour. Then it passed. But it seems that sitting and working, having all the time in the world to think about what’s happening in my body does not help. I think tomorrow I’ll try to take a little bit less and see if there’s a difference. If I’m still dizzy, I’ll try taking it at a different time. Maybe if I take it in the morning, I’ll be busy thinking about getting ready for work, taking a bike ride and the symptoms will be less…. - If you catch me at the border I've got visas in my name
 2月24日 Watashi wa benkioshite imasen.This week is hectic; so many things to do and yet so little time. The main thing on the agenda is the upcoming and dreaded MID-TERM exam of Wednesday for the Japanese as a
Japan and China share this strange linguistic bond I have not seen anywhere else. Kanji, one of Japan’s 3 alphabets is a direct grab of China’s already established symbols, but the pronunciation has changed to accommodate the sound of the word they already used at the time. The best equivalent I can find is if a Spanish person would have seen for the first time a drawing of a house made by a French person, they would have thought of the word “Casa” while a French person had meant “Maison”. Now the main (HUGE) difference in this flawed analogy is that these symbols are an intricate and integral part of both Japan’s and China’s written language, used to create word stems that have symbols (Hiragana in Japan’s case) that follow to conjugate and complete the sentences. What that means is that if a Chinese person walks up to a Japanese speaker, they won’t be able to communicate verbally, but will have no trouble whatsoever in writing down what they want and understanding each other, even if in their minds, they have a totally different sounding word popping up when they see the Kanji representing a cat. Now, I really need to study instead of taking my lunch break to write all of this so I will leave you with both these links to keep you entertained. One is an invitation; the other is puzzlement on why we would need such a thing as a SIMPLE Wikipedia and sentences like: "Our eyes cannot see those kinds of light, but there are some cameras that can see them. But it must be good cameras that got an special amoúnt of things [sic]". -I drove to New York, in a van, with my friend, we slept in parking lots, I don't mind, I don't mind  2月20日 Wave–particle dualityI can’t believe it but it seems to be happening. The days are finally getting longer by the minute (literally). For the first time in what seems like YEARS, I got out of work yesterday and I was shocked to feel my pupils contract not as a byproduct of prescription opiod intake, but as a direct reaction to the luminescent beams coming from above. Unlike hedgehogs and vampires, I prefer to live my live bathed in the warm rays of our sun. Whatever they say, there’s no substitute for the real thing.
My walk back home from work usually takes me about seven or eight minutes, but last night, the combination of human-like photosynthesis and the freshly fallen snow kept me outside for almost an hour. There’s been a lot of snow falling on Sherbrooke since the beginning of winter, but I seriously can’t recall one more instance where it fell so wet and sticky. Absolute perfect snowball material; and you just know it the second you step on it. It has a specific sound and feel that tell you exactly how you’re going to spend the next haft hour. I spent mine practicing my aim on anything that moved, wet mittens in my hands and a smile on my face. It has officially been confirmed. I go way too often to the corner store bakery. This morning when I asked for a muffin, she actually gave me two on the false pretense that it was slightly broken and when I tried to pay with a twenty, she told me to eat the muffins and come back when I had some change. -Leap, yeah take an atmospheric leap and Let the jet stream set you down
2月18日 These Crazy BonesI think I’ve finally figured out the intricate inner working of our social (read communistic) health care system yesterday. The main beef everyone has about it over here is the long waiting times one has to endure in order to get proper (albeit free) consultation and treatment. The patient/doctor ratio is just ridiculous. On Monday, I went to the Emergency doctor clinic to have my arm checked out as it still hurts like crazy over a month after having crashed my snowboard on the ice dunes of the Bromont slopes. I got there at 9:06, exactly 6 minutes after the clinic opens. By an odd feat of physical impossibilities and MAGIC, there were already 57 people in line in front of me clutching their little numbered tickets like they could be exchanged for shiny golden prizes, redeemable at the registration desk. I stood there looking at mine, number 22. The little screen on the wall blinked twice and changed to number 65. People coughed all around me. If only I had gotten there at 9:05…
After 45 minutes of waiting and the screen still not showing any digits in the seventies, I decided to hang on to my ticket and to go take a walk outside. I eventually wandered past my workplace and so decided to go check my email. Minutes became hours, a meeting took place and it was only after having lunch that I remembered that I was still officially standing in line at the Doctor’s office. I then decided to walk back there to see what was going on. Upon arrival at around 1:30, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that patient number 16 was being called. From there on, everything was a breeze. An hour and a half later I had passed through the entire gauntlet; having seen a doctor, gotten X-rays for my wrist and elbow, seeing the doctor again and received my prescription pain killers. The good news is, my arm isn’t broken; it’s just very badly sprained. Medical predictions are that it should be good as new in a couple of months if I can perfect my right turns and keep from falling on it again. -I started nothing, I wish I didn’t.  2月16日 Fermented Milk and SuchCheese is so delicious. I really love it in all its forms. From the soft, almost oozing Camembert that has sat on the table for a few hours to the ripe and strong scented blues veined with mold, it’s always a feast when cheese is involved. To my great surprise, I stumbled upon a really simple cheese recipe that went marvelously well with our Indian themed Valentine’s Day dinner on Saturday. All you need is about two liters of fresh milk, a hot stove, one third of a cup of lemon juice and some patience. It’s quite a sight to behold when the cheese curds actually separate from the whey and agglomerate. Once strained and compressed, you get excellent Paneer cheese that resembles the texture and taste or Ricotta; great to accompany yogurt based meals or salads.
5 Days left until application closing time. The latest news I have read were that over 15,500 people had sent in videos. Add to that a week of inflation, I estimate that 17,000 applications will have been handed during the month-long window. Out of those 280-something hours of footage, the officials have to choose the 50 most eligible candidates. I can’t imagine what kind of work that implies. Best of luck to everyone who has participated; you have one chance out of three hundred and forty of getting picked. Not bad odds at all if you ask me. -I came as a call, I came as flat, I came too soon so I came back
2月13日 Better than ShatnerIt’s weird how everything is all about perspective. For the past 5 days, we’ve been having unusually high temperatures. The highest it’s been was yesterday with +9 degrees, and everywhere, all you see is people who have traded their thick winter coats for light shirts, their heavy snow boots for sneakers and you can be sure that tuques are nowhere to be seen. When you come out of 3 months of deep freeze, it’s hard to imagine that just 6 months ago, the same 9 degrees would have brought chills and moans from everyone still trying to cling to the last warm rays of summer. But in the middle of February, we welcome with open arms the few degrees that bring us to the positive side of the scale. There’s nothing quite like being able to go ice skating around the lake without the burden of four layers of clothing or being able to go for a two hour cross country ski ride without once thinking about the risk of hypothermia or having to plan an exit strategy of how to make it back to the car with the added weight of your girlfriend’s frozen cadaver.
We went to see Le Double Signe’s new play yesterday at the St-Laurent Theater. I wasn’t so sure about it at first; it seems that the last three productions I’ve seen lately were so dark and gloomy and all about human suffering and everything that’s gruesome about life, and I really wasn’t in the mood for any of that. With a title like “The Dead Girl’s Smile”, you can see how I went there apprehending another dark night. It turned out to be a really great play that had murder as a backdrop, but managed to have enough life and energy to counter-balance it all and leave you with a good feeling when the curtain comes down. It’s worth going there just to see the amazing performance of Véronic Rodrigue who portrays a girl who’s more than just a few cards short of a deck. The way she lets fragments of lucidity pepper through a storm of (not so) incoherent rambling is just amazing to see and hear. Running at an hour and forty minutes without intermission, you’re sure to be entertained. Support local talents today. -On a spaceship somewhere sailing across an empty sea.
2月9日 Here we areIt’s finally up there! They’ve uploaded my application video to the official server; now’s your chance to go vote for it (preferably higher than lower). Now as my understating of the entire selection process goes, this voting period has nothing to do with the Wildcard selection right now. It’s mainly to give the video some visibility. In about two weeks, they’ll cut it from 14000 applications (and climbing) to a mere 50! It’s at THAT point that voting will be important. So if all goes according to plan, expect a call for help on my behalf in a fortnight. But for now just go and enjoy 60 seconds of pure movie magic GOLD. -You keep playing me like a fruit machine, Puttin' in change systematically
2月6日 Reviews call it "Mediocre"About 7 years ago (yikes!) I worked on this Xbox game creatively titled “Apprentice Knight: Memorick’s Adventures”. Besides the long name with way too many K’s and T’s to make it sound more medieval, this game had a cool world filled with fantastic creatures that were a blast to animate. It was my first foray into cartoony animations and I really had a good time making all these beasts and monsters move around in their own intricate ways.
Microïds Canada was many things; a creative place to work, an environment filled with fun and helpful colleagues and a good place to learn the trade. But one thing the company was not, is very tolerant with its employees going to work for other companies. Therefore, I was denied a complimentary copy of the game I had worked on after mentioning I was moving back to Sherbrooke. Flash forward 7 years to last week when I finally bought a copy of Memorick’s zany adventures in a bargain bin at the mall and was lucky enough to have a friend who kindly lent me his Xbox so that I could finally be reunited with my young apprentice swordsmith. Together, we will lead the rebellion against the dark forces invading the floating isles of Avalon and banish evil from the land! Exciting! However, I’m getting near the end of chapter one and I have yet to see a single of my animated characters (besides the main protagonist). It’s like they cut them out of the game entirely out of spite or something… Oh, and whoever said 15 years ago that compact disks were the way of the future and that they had an average lifetime of twenty to A HUNDRED YEARS clearly did not take into account the fact that the thin plastic undercoating of the readable surface of said disk is prone to extreme scratching when not contained in its original sealed packaging and floating in the perfect vacuum of space. I keep getting reading errors and I might not see the ending of my precious game… Or any of the characters I’ve worked on. Also, I think this may be a sign that I go to the bakery too often because this morning the lady there asked me to pay her parking meter fees in exchange for muffins... - I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies. I saw boys, toys electric irons and TVs  2月4日 Glowing with BacteriaLast year in Hawaii, our roommate had brought along with him the DVD version of the spectacular television series called Planet Earth produced by the BBC. In all, 11 episodes of pure television magic containing anything ranging from curious geological phenomenons to weird animal behavior. And every 5 minutes or so, you are sure to hear David Attenborough say: “This is the first time that this creature is captured on film”or “Until now, we weren’t even sure that this animal even existed”. It is truly an amazing program (or as the Brits would say, “programme”). The visuals are phenomenal and every scene is breathtaking. Now I cannot stress this enough, you absolutely NEED to see this. For our part, we crunched the 11 hours of footage in just a handful of days.
Yesterday, I got my hand on the show’s predecessor called The Blue Planet. It’s basically the same thing, but focusing on the world’s oceans and waterways. We’ve already watched the first two episodes and it promises to amaze and dazzle just as much as it’s earthly companion. After having finished the episode focusing on the Deep Seas, just one thing can be said. Bioluminescence is the bomb; camouflage, attraction, repulsion, communication and illumination, it does it all. Apparently, some species of shrimp even use it to spray a sticky, glowing ooze unto attacking predators so that THEY might become more visible to even bigger fish. Nature is so awesome. -Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
2月2日 Video Sent, Awaiting ReplyWell it’s finally done. It’s kinda weird, it seems like my entire focus during the past 2 weeks have been to produce my application video for the Hamilton Island caretaker position, and now it’s done. I feel empty and in need of another creative outlet. I did most of the filming on Friday night and cutting the reel took most of Saturday. I’m pretty proud of the end result. It might not be exactly what they’re looking for, but then again, it might just make the video stand out from the (overwhelming) crowd of applications. One note of advice to all of you wanting to take the plunge: If you plan to work with animals, always ensure that you have at your disposition at LEAST twice the planned time to film. Unlike (most) people, they will not cooperate with your schedule and will prefer getting chased around the room than sitting still on a couch for the 5 seconds necessary to make the shot. But then again, they also bring an awesome spontaneity to the filming process, which might give you some great ideas. Such was the case with Leeloo over the weekend. I’ll link up the URL for my film as soon as it’s up so that you can go rate it a million stars out of 5.
In other news, I won two tickets to see the dance show at Centennial this coming Wednesday. I love it when they have these contests that you don’t even know exist, enter it about an hour before the contest closes, they pull out ONE name and it’s you. Double pleasure comes when it’s a show that your girlfriend really wanted to see but thought it was a bit too expensive.
-Typewriter tip tip tip tip karta hai
 1月30日 The Best Winter Tires are BootsAbout 12 inches of snow fell on Sherbrooke in the past 48h as the temperature rose to just below the freezing point. To most of you misguided souls, that meant a long commute back home, getting stuck in snow banks and wearing down tires on the iced-up hill of King street. For those of us lucky enough to live close enough to actually WALK to work, it was a lot more enjoyable. We actually ended up getting the cross country skis out and we went out for a stroll on the streets and around the lake. Along the way, we stopped and helped to push out two cars that had gotten stuck, hopped back on our skis and continued our journey northward, leaving behind people with puzzled looks but gratified smiles. Magic.
- There's no combination of words I could put on the back of a postcard
1月28日 Cameras and CinemasDifferent things are in gear in Sherbrooke. Shopping for a digital camcorder is now in full swing. I haven’t settled on which camera to buy yet, but one thing I’ve decided is, I WILL spend the extra couple of hundred golden coins and go all out on a High Definition one. It seems like the way to go, and you never know when the next big movie idea will come in. I feel like I need to be prepared. The big two contenders right now are Canon and Sony. As of today, I’m leaning towards the Canon one since I’ve been so impressed with all their photography equipment. It’s not a direct no brainer, but it feels right. And as they say, intuition is the mother of all action. Ok, maybe nobody says that, but it sounds like something the forward thinkers of yonder like Socrates or Aristotle might have said way back then…
I’m also very excited about Bishop’s University’s Modern Language Week Movie Festival that’s happening this week in Lennoxville.
-The 3rd planet is sure that theyre being watched by an Eye in the sky that cant be stopped.
1月26日 The Life and Times of a Great Canadian HeroSo here we are AGAIN. Some would call this version 3.0; I prefer to label this new Blog start: “The Life and Times of a Great Canadian Hero”. Some would call me narcissistic and I won’t correct them. Notice the major change in format, this blog is now in English. I will not renounce my great French-Canadian heritage, but I will suspend it for a greater purpose. See below.
So here are the BIG things going on right now: 1-I sprained my elbow AND my wrist while snowboarding this week-end. Conditions were atrocious and we were gliding on ice, getting pelted by strong northern winds that brought the already freezer burn inducing -22 Celsius down an extra 8 degrees to a bone chilling, arm breaking -30 degrees. Not a good day to be on the slopes. Why were we there then you might ask? With hindsight, I can safely say that I’m still not exactly sure… Good fun though, until I fell and mangled my arm.
2-If you have been living under a rock for the past two weeks, you might not have heard of The Best Job in the World (to be read with echo and reverb for maximum effect), the main reason why this blog is back online and I’m writing all of this instead of calling you all one by one to tell you about my life. This seems like an incredible opportunity that falls exactly in my Life’s Master Plan (more on the master plan in the next couple of days) Stay tuned as my job application subscription video gets online soon. I need to buy a camera first.
3-I might have won $43,000,000 during the weekend, but I haven’t checked yet. If I don’t mention it again, then I probably haven’t won.
-You talk like Marlene Dietrich; and you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire
 6月20日 On the (way to the) road againQuoi ?? Une mise à jour ? Mais bien sûr ! Ce long hiatus prend enfin fin, et les nouvelles sherbrookoises vous seront dorénavant de nouveau disponible. Aujourd'hui, elles sont peu nombreuses et cryptiques, mais rassurez vous, elles deviendront sous peu beaucoup plus intéressantes à lire et avec un peu de chance, ce blog servira de moyen primaire de transfert d'informations (bilatéral j'espère) avec seulement 6h de décalage, du beau milieu du Pacifique.
Il ne reste que 6 semaines, bienvenu chez nous.
-we are the earth intruders, we are the sharp shooters 3月21日 80,000Est la distance parcourue par ma petite Ford Focus en date de ce matin.
80000 km c'est:
- un peu plus de 8 allez retours de Montréal à Vancouver
- tout près de 1/5 du parcours de la Terre à la Lune - 4/5 du chemin entre ici et Hawaii Voici donc où nous en sommes. Profitez de cette première journée du printemps pour admirer mes photos de San Francisco, où l'air est pur et les repas gastronomiques sont nombreux. --->
---------
Allez faire un tour sur le blog de notre club photo pour les dernières photos et le prochain thème
-I came as ice, i came as a whore, i came as advice that came too short |
|
|
