A Walk to Remember

I've mentioned before that I love working in a hotel because of all the interesting people that I get to meet on a daily basis. My feelings on this proved true Sunday morning while I was working front desk and breakfast duty.

I noticed a few guys wearing the same jackets with a picture of Oprah on them that looked like this:

The story that came from asking a simple question was amazing! These six university/college students from the southwestern Ontario area are walking from Toronto to Chicago to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. As many of you may know, there has been a civil war going on in Sri Lanka since July 1983 and many innocent people of both sides have been killed or severely injured in the process. I talked with one of the members, Veejay (photo below), and he filled me in on their mission.

He assured me that there was no political agenda to their walk. They want to bring awareness to the plight of the innocent Tamil civilians who have been suffering throughout this war/conflict. I find it especially admirable that they would walk such a long distance to ask for help for their people.

Hopefully Oprah will let them on the show and give them a voice. That is their main goal. Veejay remarked that they it would take about two and a half months to reach Harpo Studios in Chicago. They walk between 20 and 40 kilometers a day. That's such an unbelievable thing to me. I can't help but be impressed the the resilience of these young men and the strength they all must have for taking action for a cause they so deeply believe in.

If you would like their voices to be heard too, please go to Oprah's website and send her a message: Oprah Show

Similarly if you would like to see the progress the guys are making or if you would like further information, please visit Oprahgiveusavoice.com

When Friends Turn Out to be Sociopaths

It's inevitable that most of us will run into at least one sociopath in our lifetimes. It is estimated that 3% of the US population are sociopaths. Therefore, an American can run into 3.3 sociopaths, figure-wise, in their lifetime. Sad to say, I've had about three boyfriends who were sociopaths and dated another one briefly. The last one I had contact with when I was 20. So you can imagine my surprise to learn that someone I considered my good friend turned out to be a complete sociopath today.

So why do I say he turned out to be a sociopath? Well by definition from dictionary.com, a sociopath is "–noun Psychiatry.
a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."

This all started out when my former friend hung up on me last night for no reason. He took a joke I made, twisted it beyond definition into something cruel, and yelled at me for something I didn't say. I had a disgusting voicemail last night from him but I shrugged it off and went to bed. This morning I had a note from him on facebook calling me all sorts of names and saying all sorts of cruel things that played on my insecurities. So I wrote him back, wishing him a good life, but saying I didn't want anything to do with someone who'd treat me with such disrespect.

All this created a barrage of text messages sent to me since 10am this morning until 6:36pm tonight. Like an idiot I responded back to him until I just stopped reading and deleted all incoming messages. At one point I asked him why he was trying to hurt me so badly. His response was "I'm sorry, I was venting, and I feel really good right now." This is when I knew he was a sociopath because he kept sending more cruel text messages which made him feel good. That is the epitome of a sociopath: getting pleasure out of my emotional pain.

My cell phone company couldn't block him and he was sending me multimedia texts which cost me lots of money to receive. He sent me fifteen multimedia texts within one hour, so I phoned the non-emergency police number and made a report. All they had to do was phone him and they stopped. I took control and stopped the situation. I let the boyfriends and the date emotionally and mentally abuse me to the point that I developed such a bad anxiety disorder that I was having panic attacks every couple of days. I'm sorry, but not anymore.

Happy St. Patty's Day!!

So here it is finally.....the big green holiday.....St. Patty's Day! How do you properly celebrate this great holiday at the University of Western Ontario?


Simple: Wake up, drink a beer, stand outside on Richmond or Huron street at 8:30am with a beer while wearing green, drink more beer, walk around to other drunk people's houses, drink a beer, hang around to 2:30pm and strip off some of your clothes to get ready to go to the bar, appear half naked, drink a beer, walk to the bus stop half naked, get off at Jack's or Barney's or Molly's, or your bar of choice, drink a beer, try to pick up a guy/girl, dance, drink another beer, trip over a chair, drink ten beers, hang out til 11:30pm, hail a cab while drinking a beer or try stumbling home while hiding the beer you're drinking, open your door, fall on the floor while trying to drink a beer, sleep.

End of the School Year Checklist

I think that everyone around this time of year who is in university/college should have an end of the year checklist. It's not that I consider students to be disorganized (although this is mostly true), but it helps relieve the stress of getting stuff done; you actually see the accomplishments you're completing.

Here's my End of the School Year Checklist:
(X) Complete American Studies Essay (6-8pgs)
(X) Complete Tech. Writing Proposal
(X) Complete Tech. Writing White Paper
(X) Complete Tech. Writing Manual
(X) Hand in Killer Culture 5 Logs
(X) Complete Killer Culture Essay (1000 words)
() Complete Group Project for Blogging Class
() Complete Sexuality in the Media Essay (6-8pgs)
(X) Complete last 4 journal log for Sexuality in the Media

Turnitin.com = Crap

Thankfully I haven't had to use Turnitin.com since first year, but I did decide to take an first year American Studies class this year. And guess what? I had to use it again. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this site, you submit an essay or term paper onto its online database which checks it against other essays on its database to see if you've plaigarised. Why this is stupid is because when I checked the results of my essay, apparently I have stuff in common with 11% of the other essays on the site. I checked what parts I had in common and it was stuff I had quoted from sources. Utterly ridiculous.

The majority of my professors hate this site and refuse to use it because it stores your essay, which is your own personal work. After you submit to the site though, it is available for the world to see....basically stealing your work. That is the argument that my professors have made. It's plaigarising your own work so it can catch plaigarism. Quite a paradox of stupidity if you ask me.