Pardon me for buzzing a bit but I’m a wee bit excited. See I never win anything and tonight I did.
Tonight was my school’s Chinese New Year banquet and there were a series of door prizes. They early roudns ranged from hand towels to cooking wear even to travel vouchers. But I won the grand prize…and I’ve named it Phil.
At the grand finale of the evening they drew one last name for a prize, and I won. I never win anything, except for tonight. I won a Philips 32 Inch LCD TV.
I was so excited that I ran up and gave my head of school a hug, then I lifted her up a good 3 feet into the air. Then I picked up Phil and gave him a kiss (he’s in a box, so there’s protection). I was so excited that my hand slipped, and I felt him start to tumble from my grasp.
Thankfully I was able to reach my hand back and nab him just before he hit the ground. That would have been embarassing.
I have nothing else to add right now, I’m more excited that anything. Here’s a Google image result of Phil.
Tropical Paradise Not Included
To make things even funnier, I was a few hours late to the dinner, as I was coaching Middle School Floor Hockey, so I had to give my ticket to Elvina to put it into the raffle. To make it even funnier, last year she won plane tickets to Qingdao. Luckily she took me with her. I figure it’s fair now, I’ll let her watch my TV. To make things even funnier still, I found out that my head of school (remember the one that I lifted into the air) has a hurt ankle..oops. If she’s hurt, she can always come over and watch my TV.
Well after exactly three years at Getting Glenergized and a few short, neglected months at Backpackers Soul, the time has come to bid adieu. As of this post both sites are officially closed. Before you start to plan their respective eulogies, know that their hearts will go on in a new cyber-location. As of right now I’d like to officially announce the formation of my new on-line opinion platform, the easy to remember Glen Thoughts.
Well it has come to be that time once again. Yet again I am ready to take the summer off of blogging. Although, I suppose I don’t have a lot to take a holiday from here lately.
On Sunday I return to Canada for an all too brief time back in my country of birth. I will be there for just over three weeks (with a quick but exciting sojourn to New York City) before coming back to the Far East, where I’ll be traveling for a while before getting ready for my sophomore year in the Middle Kingdom.
This year has been simply fantastic for me. It certainly had some ups and some downs, but all in all China gave me more good days than bad days, and what more can you really ask for than that? Well great friends, fantastic students, career challenges, and new and exciting experiences sure don’t hurt.
So China, I’ll miss you. Canada, I can’t wait to see you, and New York, I can’t wait to meet you!!!
I’m coming home!!!!
In my tradition, I’ll leave you with some musak to keep you company over the next little while…
They say that breaking up is hard to do, and well they sure are right.
With a heavy heart, I would like to inform you that this blog is breaking up. I know that this may come as a surprise to a lot of you on the outside, but trust me, it has been a long time coming. The differences between this blog’s rant and rave, nerdy opinions style, and the more personalized travel focus and description of my adventures, has just become too much to bear. As such, from here on out, those two sides shall never meet again.
The opinionated side of the blog won the real estate in the settlement, as such Getting Glenergized will remain focused on my personalized opinions and pursuit of life’s nerdy passions, with particular focus on politics, music, sports, and wrestling. While my travel adventures have fittingly moved to a new location, called Reflections of a Backpacker’s Soul. The new site has already imported any old travel stories, and has been setting up a nice bit of space. Both sides agree to stay friends, and are going to provide links and feeds to one another, to show no ill will.
More than anything, neither side wants to put you, our readers, in the middle, so please try to make time for both blogs. We understand that you may have less time for either of us, and we don’t want to get too needy, but we do love keeping you around, so please stick stay in touch, we’d hate to loose you.
Well it’s that time of year again, where I say goodbye for a little while. I head back up to Kodiak for a 6th summer tomorrow (I know, I know, I said that I wouldn’t, but here we are…), where I will stay for all of July. After that, my August is mostly going to be devoted to my family and packing up to move to China. So I doubt that I will be posting for a while.
I may make a post or two in August, but don’t hold out too much for it, just keep me on your RSS feed and something will pop back up when I arrive on the far side of the world. Until then, be sure to enjoy your summer, if you feel like dropping me a line I can be reached at this e-mail address for all of July.
Hey all, sorry I haven’t been posting much this week, but you know, such is life…
I just wanted to make a quick update for anyone out there who is curious. I spent this past weekend at an International School Job Fair, and needless to say it was a crazy, crazy time. I went overboard and signed up for 9 interviews, for schools in Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, U.A.E., and Turkey.
It was a crazy time, as I ended up running all over the place, and talking about myself for hours, and hours on end. After it all ended, I found myself getting offers for 4 different positions. I weighted my options carefully, and I ended up deciding on a school in Suzhou, China! I am super-dee-duper excited about this, right now. I have committed to a two year contract, so needless to say I plan on doing a fair amount of traveling in the next few years. So for next year, I expect this blog to be a bit more travel focused next year, as I try and share my adventures through this wonderful medium.
In the mean time, I am going to post a few pictures from my day trip to Suzhou that I made when I was in China back in the spring. Hopefully, this will make you all jealous enough to want to come and visit
So…should I be making room on my couch for anyone?
In recent months, I have tried to steer away from any personal stories here on the ol’ blogeroo. But in the past week or so I have found two exciting personal stories about upcoming travels of mine.
Over the Christmas Break I will be heading down to St. Maarten to visit my good friend/arch-hockey-nemesis Troy, who is working as a pilot down there. We could potentially do an edition of “The Puck Stop” live from a beach…something wrong about that one…
And in other exciting news. I just found out that I was selected to take a group of students on an international service project to Laos over the March Break. How cool is that? We are going to be going to Luang Prabang to help teach Buddhist Monks English. Best of all, the school is paying for everything!!! How freakin’ cool is that?
As luck would have it, my super-friend/Shanghai-Hostess-with-the-Mostest Carrie went to Luang Prabang earlier in the year. So I took the liberty to take a few of the pictures she posted on Crackbook and felt the need to share it with you all…really just to make you a bit more jealous…
“Friday, October 27, 2006…a day which will live in infamy. I have officially joined the blogosphere. I don’t so much have a concept, theme, or general idea as to what to have here but rest assured it should be filled with awesomness.
Tune in to find out!!!“
So here I sit, in front of a computer, typing away once more, and my opening post still rings true. I have no idea what the “concept, theme, or general idea” for this blog will be. I began posting quite a bit about myself and any of my adventures, but since then it has changed, as I have tried to make as many posts about politics, sports, the environment, wrestling, or (like the banner says), whatever the heck else I feel like.
Since I can’t make a vegan cake for a website, I have decided that in honour of my Blogiversary, I went through each of my categories here on this site and found what I consider to be the best post in each of them. This way, if you are new to me or my blog and want to get a sense of what/who I am then this is your chance, but if you are someone who has been checking this out for a while, you can go on a little trip down memory lane.
About G:We kick of with my most narcissistic category, the one devoted solely to me, and things about my life. I started this one out when I was posting my “Random Acts of Glenness” posts, but it has changed to be a tag for anything where I divulge any insight into my own past/personality. My favourite post in this category was definetly “My 2006 (12/19/06)“, where I described the details of a pretty tumultuous year. It probably was the last post where I focused on myself so much, having got all that I needed to say out of my system.
Cruising on the Information Superhighway: Now this is an odd categot, that I don’t really post in too much. It’s essentially just anything related to this wonderful thing called the internet. My post of choice would be “My Life is Now Over, and I Couldn’t Be Happier (12/6/06)“, where I cave into the great temptation that is Facebook. I was right all along, it certainly did take over my life…uggh…
Glen News: Yet another egotistical category of mine. This one about news in my own life, such as graduation, getting a job, or some of the details of my trip to China, including the post “Culture Shock (5/30/07)“, where I talk about going through a brief period of reverse culture shock after I get home.
Happy [Insert Holiday Here]: Instead of focusing just on me, these are the posts where I pass on some holiday wishes. Of course the usual suspects like Christmas and Hallowe’en are there, but I also try to include less celebrated days such as Guy Fawkes Night, Holocaust Memorial Day, or my Martin Luther King Day post, “What Would He Say Now? (1/15/07)“.
Hockey and Other Sports: In attempt to assert some masculinity I discuss sports here on a semi-regular basis, with the vast majority of the focus being on hockey, including my Fantasy Pool, mine and Troy’s Predictaculars, or my personal favourite the newly debuted feature, “The Puck Stop – Episode I (10/15/07)“.
Muzzak: And yet another of my nerdy passions comes through. My music posts are generally talkign about how great The Arcade Fire, and Broken Social Scene are. I have made a few attempts at creating solid playlists, with “Music to Break-Up To (12/7/06)“, being one of my proudest achievements. Oddly, this has been my most visited post since I started blogging. I guess there are always sad people out there.
Random Tales: This is a big category, where really, I just fill in some random story of my own that may be either entertaining or enlightening. In the past year I don’t think that there was any story more personally meaningful than “The Universality of Kindness (4/15/07)“.
Rants: The biggest category here, were essentially I just get on my high horse and rant about something bothering me. I have taken many posts out of this category by creating a few more, but these are the ones that slip through the crack. My first official rant, “Hallowe’en – The Critical Analysis (11/1/06)“, holds a special place in my heart.
Rasslin’: I originally started hiding my most nerdy of passions from this blog, but then Travis had the idea for a joint post where we discuss wrestling (originally for his blog, which hasn’t really been updated…), and hten I just began letting loose with many wrestling related posts. If I had to make one pick it would be “Heel Heat – Episode 3 (9/15/07)“, mainly because I’m proud of my Photoshop work on the logo.
Real Politiking: The first splinter from the “Rants” category, and a nerdy historical homage to Otto Von Bismark. I usually stick to Canadian politics in here, but “The Death of a President (6/21/07)“, is probably my post of choice in this category.
Remixes and Collaborations: So this one isn’t really a category in and of itself, it is just a tag I put on any posts that feature some outside input. The contributors thus far have been McNutt, Travis, Kory and Troy, who have done a great job of stopping me from having to think up original content. I have a soft spot in my heart for “Shades of Wrestlemania – Part I (3/23/07)“, because it had three special guests coming together in a pretty great post.
Travelling Tales: A blanket post for anything about travelling, either while I was in China or looking back at any travels in Europe or Asia. A few days after I returned from China and wrote “Why I Love China (6/1/07)“, which still rings true to me.
Tree Hugging Hippie Crap: Just last week, after realizign just how many of my rants were about the environment, I realized that I needed a seperate category and here we are. I am a big fan of “And the Counter Attack Begins…(2/01/07)“, just because it uses Stephen Harper’s own words to show just how little he cares about the environment.
Vegan Talk: Another new addition to the fold. I had made a few posts about animal rights, but they were pretty few and far between. About a month ago, I decided to start a feature explaining why I am a vegan, with “It Ain’t Easy Being Green – Take 2 – The Environment (9/26/07)” being something I’m expecially proud of.
Videos: Ok, so this is actually the biggest tab I have, but it just comes up every time I make a post with a video in it. I’m not going to look through all of them, I’m just going to make a post of the greatest gift YouTube has ever given us…
Why I Love…: This is the only recurring feature that merits its own category, because it really just fits in everywhere, “Why I Love Bloggin’ (4/16/07)“, my special 100th post holds a special spot and is probably the best insight into why I keep at this blog thing.
Well that concludes this special birthday post, I hope that you’ve all enjoyed the past year in cyber-space as much as I have!!!
October 1st marks an important day on the Glen-Calender (..Glalender?). On this day, 4 years ago I made a really important and influential decision. That’s right, on this day back in 2003 I decided to become a vegetarian. I officially gave myself one calender year to switch to a full-scale vegan, setting myself dates and targets (i.e. After this day, I will no longer eat _______).
When I first made this decision I got a lot of flak, including McNutt’s infamous “Go back to your room and think about what you’ve done” rant at me when I first told him and my father asking “what’s her name?”, thinking that I was doing it for a girl. Many, many, people said that I wouldn’t last a month and well here I am four years later.
In looking back I think that this is one of the best decisions I have ever made, I feel so much healthier, I am in better shape, and more importantly, I feel like a stronger person as a result of that day back in 2003.
That’s about all I have to say, I apologize for a lack of original content, I just wanted to wish myself a Happy Veggiversary, and to any other members of the Green Mafia out there, keep on fighting the good fight…in a non-violent way of course…
Hey there, just a quick little personal note from me. I just wanted to let anyone interested know that today, I finished teaching my first class as a real, big boy teacher!!! And it went super dee duper well.
Since my primary responsibility is that of a Residential Don, I only teach part-time. So I only had one class to teach today, Grade 8 math. The class went by really well, as we went over some rules/regulations and then I gave them some light work, and I asked them an important question for their math journals “If math were a food to me, it would be…”. For the record, I told them it would be soy for me, since it’s in everything I do, but is often hidden.
I don’t have much else to say to be honest, other than a big thank you to everyone who has supported me over the past couple of year to have helped get me where I am right now. I’d like to thank you all personally, but unfortunately this impersonal blog posting is all that I can do for now.
I hope that you know who you are, because I sure do…
