Here's my dragon boat team, Storm Warning, of the 2004 season. I hope to join future dboat teams (as I have a nice carbon-fibre paddle coming my way to use) as it's a great way to meet new people and be active! From L -> R, top row 1: mike, jeannie, patti, crystal, lily, jonquil, jason; row 2: tom, barry, haran, jenn, neel, me, ron, sam, khan; row 3: laura, dan h., dan j., paul, catherine; and crouching james 

Friday night: most of the guys on my dragon boat team and myself got 'mohawk' hair cuts - this took a couple of hours - then some of us went to a local 24 hour grocery store to show off our look and pick up food for Saturday's racing. Strangely, the employees didn't seem shocked nor surprised at our hair - have mohawks become accepted hair styles or were they able to restrain their reaction to avoid a confrontation with us punks? probably neither - it was getting late and we all needed to get some rest...

Saturday: woke up before 6am to shower and eat some oatmeal and pack for the day's regatta... 6:30 at SLC - only neel, tom, and lily show up and so we quickly head over to the golden arches to grab b-fast - get back by 7am and we're soon on our way to Laurel Creek. We set up Storm Warning's camp site and from around 8-8:30 it actually rains like a mofo - we're supposed to race at 8:40 but it's delayed - thankfully neel brought his canopy and dan h. his tent... The ground conditions were all muddy and shit but the water was calm and the sun was shining as we raced our heat as planned. We broke off from the open teams and easily finish 1st by nearly a boat length. Our next race came after 'lunch time' and we finished in 4th out of 6th - i think a lot of us expected and feel that we should have finished at least 3rd but wash-riding didn't help us as planned. Unfortunately we just miss the university final division and race in the consolation division. We all hope to win this race and get some hardware... Alas, it was a very close finish as we lose to another UT team by less than half a second for first place - but we beat other teams that destroyed us in the Toronto regatta and have definitely improved since then. Afterwards, we have a potluck/houseparty over at haran's. I bring my DC and we watch a slideshow of the pics i took that day on TV and later play some fun social games like '1up/1down', 'tobasco sauce' (?), and 'mafia'... It was a great learning experience from a padding perspective and produced new friends, memories, and fun times from a social perspective! Hopefully we can get together after this season as most of us won't be in UW anymore...

Sunday: went and saw I, Robot with neel and james at galaxy... the theatre was surprisingly empty when we went in 40 mins early (it was the opening w/e afterall). The film didn't meet our expectations as the plot was weak, the special effects were a little too plentiful/obvious, a lot of elements we've seen in other movies before, Will Smith's character avoids certain death many times, and Will Smith and Bridget Moynahan didn't form an entertaining or interesting duo...

Finally, yes i still have the 'mohawk' and i'll keep it for a week and then shave it off.

Checked out Spider-Man 2 on the (long) weekend and greatly enjoyed the film. Unfortunately, a few obnoxious loud-mouths sitting around us talked throughout the movie and that was annoying - is there any way to handle this situation effectively? If you tell them to politely STFU they'll either do it & hopefully the other patrons will applaud your efforts; or, they'll talk even more and louder; or, this being Scarborough, they'll go crazy and want to start a fight or worse. Next time, I'll watch a must-see movie in a more mature theatre as Morningside has become too much of a high school/teenager hotspot. I blame it on the Wal-Mart that opened there.

I realized that I went to only one class all of last week. That's terrible. Mon - slept in (set my alarm for PM and not AM - argh!); Tues - late poker night on Monday and didn't wake up for morning class, but made my afternoon class; Wed - effortlessly dragged out to another late poker night and slept in again; Thurs - Canada Day!; Fri - c'mon, who'd show up anyway?

I'm down to my last swimming lesson t'row - but I could use a few more I think as I don't have the front stroke down (meaning I still can't swim) and I'm not comfortable to tread water in the deep end yet. Had my last golf lesson last week as well and will play a round of 9 holes next week for the first time! I'm seriously considering buying a set of clubs but hesitant on how much I should spend as a beginner of this great sport. We didn't have any practices for dragon boat last week and that could prove to be our Achilles heel in our training. The team needs more all-around commitment and dedication in order to finish a fine season by winning or placing high at the Waterloo races. We had another fundraiser at the Bomber and only 6 or 7 team members showed up to help out. That was disappointing but the pizza sale was a success as we sold out our 14 allocation and could have sold 5 more I bet. Myself and a few of the other "dedicated" paddlers purchased carbon-fibre (shaft section) paddles and hopefully we'll get them in time for Waterloo. I want to continue dragon boating after school is done and have begun to align my strength-training as a result. If I land a job at one of the banks, that would be sweet as they all have well-supported teams; or I could help start up a new UW alumni crew if enough interest exists...

I've begun planning my Eurotrip and consulted my sis, Sandy, and bro-in-law about their recent 2 week trip and their tips should be valuable. I've got Lonely Planet's Western Europe book and will look at Frommer's resources as well. The budget is still in the air and I will try to contact family friends/relatives who live in Europe to get in touch.

Finally, Restie told me that Thomas wants someone to take over his Mazda6 lease for the remaining 2 years. It would be awesome if I could do that as the monthly payments are reasonable the buy-back price sounds low enough that it could be sold for profit. With only 13K clicks out of 20K allocated for the first year and Thomas going to HK for a month, that is going to be sweet since it has very low mileage. Too bad that it's not a standard transmission and doesn't have a spoiler nor tinted windows...