Actually 85%

Yeah, so I actually got 85% on my Psychology quiz. The automatic grading thing screwed up and gave the wrong answer for one of the questions, so we're being regraded, and since I was one of the people who got the actual right answer, I get an extra point.

They stopped selling large sandwiches at Tim Hortons.  Not that it matters, though.  After witnessing two people getting trained at making sandwiches, I saw that, for the regular size chicken salad, they're trained to put two scoops, whereas for a large (double-size bun), they're trained to put three scoops.  It should be four scoops!!! So that extra few cents you save by getting large goes to that missing scoop, and I don't think it was worth it.

Tomorrow's my birthday.  I get to celebrate it with my first math quiz.  This one should be okay, I never had difficulty with the introductory  stuff.  I'm a little bit worried next week's fractions test, though.  I'm going home for the weekend, though, so I'll get Mom to help me figure it out.  That's kind of her field.

Hey, so if you've been to my gallery blog, you may have seen these critters.

Only just today did I figure out exactly what they are.  They're called Guinea fowl.  I knew that they served a similar function to chickens, but I wasn't sure what the advantage was to having both chickens and these guys.

Well, turns out, they fight off snakes and predatory birds, effectively protecting the other animals, and they somehow kill ticks. Weird to think of them as guard animals.  They were so skittish, I could never so much as reach for my camera without them running away.  My family thought it was hilarious how badly I wanted a photo of them.  I had to get really lucky with this shot.  My camera was already on and poised to take the shot when they coincidentally came by.  Took me basically the entire trip.  But apparently they fight off hawks and giant snakes, to the point where they're considered valuable as guard animals, and it's worth putting up with their obnoxious hooting and general stupidity.

Oh, by the way, do you remember me talking about a spooky kid that I apprenticed, who held my hand as I cried when I left the village?  One of the people I complained I didn't get a photo of.  Well, I found one!

He's the one in the back, with his tongue  half stuck out.

If I'm going home, I have the opportunity to buy a hole punch and a milk jug.  I think I saw both those things at the dollar store.  Our malls have a greater diversity of goods than the malls around here.  I think those are the last two things I need to be fully equipped.

Cleaning Person

Yeah, so my AMA flopped.  I only got one on-topic question (which I answered BRILLIANTLY).  Even the guy who went to Ghana for one month and who didn't respond to anything got four questions!

What the fuck. Just the other day, there were people commenting on photos that I'd posted,  saying things like "Why did you go to Mali? What were you doing? Did you keep a journal? What was the religious makeup of the community? Did the Muslims perform a jumma prayer? Sorry I keep asking so many questions, this is just so interesting. I'm going through your post history to see your other submissions."

And two people said they were gonna show and they didn't.

Apparently it's my birthday this Friday.  I'm planning on going back home to Guelph for it.

Some cleaning person came into our apartment today.  Our room gets cleaned every two weeks, but it's a pretty brief and not very thorough job.  According to the Residence handbook, they don't move any objects, they don't clean the floors, and they don't go in your room.  We don't get notified before they come over, either, and the service is not optional.

Sounds like all they do is come in and wipe down any open space on the table or counter. I figure this "service" is just a way of checking up on us to makesure we haven't wrecked the place too bad.

I found out that the reason I have a full size fridge and a separate room is because I'm living in the Private Suite.  I didn't make the connection that this place matched up to the description of the better room perfectly.  Thing is, on the application form, I said that I was not interested in a Private Suite, and when I paid for my dorm room, I only paid the price of the Traditional (like $2000 less).  Huh.  I hope they're not planning on me paying them for Private Suite down the road...

Casual Ask Me Anything!

Remember how I said I would never do an Ask Me Anything?  I was wrong! I'm doing one on my Mali experience right now.  HOP ON OVER!

http://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/101fqp/iama_guy_who_lived_in_rural_west_africa_for_3/

First Graded Assignments

I put in my first graded assignment and did my first graded quiz.  Both were for my Psychology class.  Because of new technology, it's possible to make things due and hold quizzes on weekends. I don't know what my grade for the assignment was, since the prof will have to grade that herself, but the quiz was graded automatically.  I got 80%.  Don't know if that's a good mark or not.

Sure would be easy to cheat, if you knew someone better-versed, or you knew someone who'd already done the quiz and got the answers.  You could just hand the controls over to them and none would be the wiser.  I don't have a resource like that, though.

The assignment was worth 5% of the final grade.  It was just a contract that me and the group I'm working in wrote out.  Hard to imagine we screwed up.

Now I have to finish chapters 2 and 9 of my Preparing for College textbook and answer the questions at the end.  I'm already done chapter 2.  Assignment's due tomorrow.  Things are speeding up!  Next day, I think I've got a math quiz, and I have to buy a calculator for that which can do fractions.  The scientific calculator I bought doesn't do fractions, and Walmart was sold out of scientific calculators.  Hopefully they have some at the college bookstore.

Finally got out on the local transit.  Went down to the Fairview Park area.  Finally found an LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario, only place you can buy booze that's not a Beer Store).  I can't believe there isn't an LCBO in my neighbourhood. In Guelph, it's a 15-30 minute walk at any given place to reach one.  In Thunder Bay, I wanted to  find one but didn't know which direction to take, so I walked in a random direction until I crossed one. I followed my "Three Tim Hortons' for every LCBO" rule.  You can usually depend on finding an LCBO every third Tim Hortons.

I feel like I need alcohol to successfully integrate into this specific community, but it didn't matter because I spent the whole night studying!  I had no choice.  It was either that or bomb the test. Because of mechanical exactitude, your ability to take the quiz stops after 5:00. I was studying up to the hour of the quiz, and that was exactly enough time to get through the reading material.

I got a blanket!  A nice warm one to bury myself in during these frigid, air conditioned nights.  They finally stopped blasting the air conditioner non-stop, but it still vomits out a gust every once in a while.  It's more distracting this way, too.  Before, I could tune the sound out as background noise, but it actually draws more attention when it's always starting and stopping.

Jeez, if anything, it should be heated in here.  I've got a bad head cold, and I'm wondering if it's the fault of the air conditioner.  Can you actually catch a cold from the cold?  I feel like I did.

The only blanket I'd brought with me was a sleeping bag that I used as a comforter.  It's the same one I brought to CWY, the one that cost $8.  I found out why it only cost $8!  I only used it in the Canadian phase at a couple of camps, and then here for a couple of weeks.  I didn't do anything rough with it, but it's already bursting it's seems!  And it's plasticky material really doesn't keep the warm in.  This new blankets on a whole different level.

Sorry I haven't updated the past few days.  This time, it's not that I have nothing to say, it's that I'm too busy!

I managed to talk to the chief's son the other day.  It was a really confused conversation over a bad connection, same as with my counterpart.  But at least I know he managed to identify me.  I asked him if my family was well and if my photos arrived.  He said they were and they had, but I wasn't confident he understood my question.  I called on a payphone.  Any eavesdroppers (or people within screaming distance, since I had to speak up to be heard) must have been confused.

"Est le Elephant!  ELEPHANT!  ELEPHANT!"

The guy I called, Mozo, was the one who gave me the "Elephant" nickname, and I wasn't confident he remembered me by any other name.

But yeah, I was screaming into a pay phone in a combination of French, English and Bambara.  Might've weirded someone out.

Bus Routes

I think that everything I need is at a place called Fairview Park Mall, the biggest mall in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.  According to these bus route maps, it's a fairly simple trip.  It looks like there's a loop that has Conestoga on one end and Fairview Park on the other.  You can discern which bus stop to use because the route number is printed directly on the bus sign, along with arrival times.

Jeez, this is different.  In Guelph, we don't have this series of small individual loops, and we don't have the route number or arrival times printed on the bus signs.  Our bus routes and arrival times change too frequently to make such a committed posting.  Also, we have bus routes that overlap each other.  Having more than one bus go by a given sign discourages posting a singular route number.

But I think that different buses do go by bus stops that aren't there's... They just don't stop at them.  In Guelph, any bus stops at any bus stop.  I guess these buses would move faster, since they don't make as many stops.  Also, there aren't as many bus stops in general, out here.  And while Guelph has only one terminal, this place seems to have dozens of mini-terminals

The buses come at roughly 30 minute intervals.  The bus stop at Residence only operates after 6:00 PM, and according to my bus map, it also goes there all day on weekends.  The one directly at the college goes all day, looks like.

These bus route maps are weird, too.   I was expecting, like, a full map, with all the bus routes and a legend, but instead I got a bunch of different maps, each detailing their own individual route and covering only the part of the city that they travel.  It's like each is a piece in a much larger puzzle.  It's actually not even as straightforward as that, because they overlap each other.

Oh well, the route I'm planning looks straigthforward enough.  If I survive this journey, my next goal will be to locate the Greyhound. I wonder if you take a transfer to go from loop to loop, or if you have to pay each time.  That has the potential to be a real ripoff.

When I went to the bookstore to buy a bus map, they said they didn't have them (The bus website said that they sold them at the bookstore, and none of the local stores I checked had them) but they directed me to a place where they hang up free pamphlets, and that's where I got my maps.  I notice they have them hanging in the same format here in Residence, too.   I guess I glossed over them, because that type of thing oesn't  usually have information that interests me.  I should inform some of the people around here that were looking for maps.

Did I tell you guys that my calling card changed it's policy on overseas charges?  It used to charge as much for an overseas phone call as it did for a local one.  I discovered this by sheer coincidence, most calling cards will severely reduce the amount of time you get if it's an overseas call.  And even though every calling card company sells international phone cards, not a single one of them covers anywhere in Africa.

I learned about the usefulness of my card when I let my counterpart use it to call home, and he got 600 minutes vs everyone else's 20 minutes.  That was on a $20 and since then, I've bought and used a card in the same format, with the same results.  After that, I bought a $5 card, which you  would think would be like, 150-200 minutes, but it was 15 minutes.  Made a local call with the same card, 200 minutes.

So you'd think their policy changed.  It still seems to be the best deal, sadly, so I bought a $10 card for a half-hour call with the chief's son, and that's what I got.  Then I tried calling another Malian.  It was something like 400 minutes!  Why is there such a fluctuation of in-Mali calling?  Reflecting on it, only phone calls to the village have a reduced time.   All the city Malians have local charges.

Anyway, weirdest thing happened when I called the chief's son.  African music started playing.  It was pretty good, so I listened to it for four minutes.  I was wondering if it was a weird ring tone or something, but really, it should only ring like that on his side, right?  If he changed his ringtone, from my side, shouldn't it still sound like a uniform ringtone?

Well, it charged me for the four minutes, which it doesn't do unless someone picks up the phone or I get put through to the machine.  I wondered if maybe it was his machine message, but it isn't supposed to charge me until it starts recording my message.

For it to charge me, and so me to have heard sound from the other side, the only available scenario I can see is that somebody picked up the phone.  It's like he picked it up and stuck it next to the Karadie boombox.

Mali remains as mysterious and surprising as ever.  Can't even phone there without a mystery like this unfolding, causing one to question one's own sanity.

Three Highlights

Today's a good day.  I found out that another one of my old friends from high school is going to my college, I found free bus maps, and I got the phone number to the chief of Karadie!

Me and my two old friends are going to be getting together sometime soon to catch  up on what we've been doing since high school.

The new Karadie phone # is proven to work, both by a past participant, and by one that took the program with me.

Today, when I was walking with a classmate, I got mistaken for a bodyguard.  Apparently, our school offers bodyguarding services.  If you feel vulnerable, you can request one to walk with you, and they're usually students.  To be fair, I was considering signing up for a position like that.  I wonder why there's such a demand for bodyguards at the college.  Doesn't feel like there should be.

Left-Handed Fridge

Today I found out that an old friend from high school, one that I used to hang out with every day, is going to the same college as me.  We ran into each other at the Tim Hortons.  He must've thought I was soooo bald.

As of today, I have done a day of school for every day of the week.  I'm actually looking forward to doing an assignment.  I won't feel like a college student until I've written a paper.  after my first one, though, I'll probably lose my enthusiasm.

Even having gone to my first day of college, my credentials have risen.  I can now write on a job application that I've done "Some college" and on the job bank, I'm on a new level in terms of educational requirements.  Their advertisements are generally separated into "No education required", "High school", "Some college or university" or "College diploma or university degree".  Of course, there are certain jobs that require a specific certification, diploma or degree.  I've officially moved from "High school" to "Some college".

I got my student card's library function activated, so now I can use the library and it's resources.  I was thinking that I would use it to print out my stuff, but now I'm realizing that my computer doesn't make things in the standard .pdf format.  I used to email my resume to my grandfather and have him convert it to .pdf, but I don't want to make him do that for every paper I write moving forward.

Our refrigerator is a left-handed refrigerator, I think. It's handle is on the right.  I think with a normal refrigerator, the handle is on the left, so that when you open it, it opens out in front of you. Since this
refrigerator's handle is on the right, if you stand in front of it and grab the handle, you either twist your arm or hit yourself, depending on how close you are to it.  It's not rocket science to open it, it's maybe the equivalent of a door that has a push bar that you pull to open.   Maybe rich left-handed people can afford to specify what type of room they rent out, and this deluxe apartment was constructed for the rich left-handed.  Yeah, I'm going with that.

This refrigerator keeps tripping me up, but with a little luck, I'll be ambidextrous by the end of the term (at least to the extent of opening left-handed fridge doors).