Yaser challenged me to draw up this list. So I did. While it’s hardly all-encompassing, it’s a start:

• Music.
• Comics of all kinds. Reading, writing, drawing, making comics.
• Spider-Man.
• Action figures.
• Rainy but warm days. Walking in the rain, getting drenched in the rain, running in the rain.
• One-day international cricket matches between India and Pakistan. And Pakistan wins.
• Humour. Joking and laughing. Laughing laughing laughing. And high fives.
• Drawing. Doodling. Countless Spider-Man doodles in the margins of my notes.
• Writing.
• Creating.
• Good rap.
• Reading. Good books, Wikipedia, comics, news, articles.
• Book stores.
• Walking. Running, even if I don’t run much.
• Being the centre of attention. Public speaking.
• Children. Working and playing with them. Summer camp.
• Acting. Performing.
• Dancing and singing though I don’t know how.
• Karaoke.
• Girls. Flirting, chasing, lamenting.
• Smallville.
• Movies.
• Pizza from Cora’s.
• Good food. Mom’s cooking.
• The TTC. Subways, streetcars, buses and the RT.
• Old fashioned love songs, playing on the radio.
• Obscure songs no one else knows about.
• Helping people.
• Sweet Tarts. Caramilk. Juicy Fruit.
• Spontaneity.
• Talking. Discussing. Exchanging ideas.
• When my family’s together and talks about all kinds of things.
• Visiting family, where ever they are.
• India. Pakistan.
• My niece.
• Imparting what I’ve learned.
• Sleeping.
• Not sleeping.
• Long nights and short days.
• Long days and short nights.
• Getting lost so I can find my way again.
• Discovering.
• Learning, for the sake of learning.
• Hugs.
• Reminiscing.
• Snow. Making snowmen.
• Cinnabon and Krispy Kreme. In moderation.
• Pranks.
• Jumping around.

You swear you’ve heard it before as it slowly rambles on and on and
No need in bringin’ ’em back ’cause they’re never really gone
Just an old fashioned love song
Coming down in three-part harmony
Just an old fashioned love song
One I’m sure they wrote for you and me

What makes you happy?

I was able to salvage some more archives (April, May, June 2003) from the waybackmachine. I don’t think there’s too much of a continuity gap (except what’s missing between February and April) as I wasn’t posting too much after June (at least, I don’t think I was). But there is some particularly interesting stuff missing from the February part, including my confrontation with a federal MP. Ah well.

With the help of Yaser, I recovered most of my archives from when I started blogging in February 2002 up until now. There is a gap in “the blog record” between February 2003 and September 2003, but I wasn’t actively blogging for most of the summer of 2003 anyway.

Unfortunately a lot of that stuff is probably lost for good.

Most of it is crap. Some of it is decent. Mostly, it’s crap. You can, if you’re interested, find the archives underneath my “Recently Read…” list. (For information’s sake, this incarnation of the blog started in September of 2003 — when I began university.)

It’s interesting to note how much I’ve changed in three years. I used to blog a lot, several posts a day; now I sometimes don’t post for months. I used to sit by the sidelines and criticize things, but starting from May 2003 (and I’m disappointed that period of time isn’t retrievable) I actually turned to activism rather than simple criticism. There’s a lot more to notice, subtle differences in style and whatnot.

Now, I’m going to try out typing in full sentences with proper punctuation. I may revert to my usual style later, maybe not.

At any rate, I’ve got exams to study for (that much hasn’t changed in three years).

adobe acrobat reader 7 is definitely much better than acrobat 6

– dean does not come to class to apologize for administration boondoggle
– get a parking ticket despite having paid for parking and displaying the permit on your dashboard (and which you will now have to dispute)
– the varsity runs your article but leaves out the most important paragraph (like submitting an essay without a thesis)
– having an essay worth 30% of your mark due the next day (and not having started)

i fixed it

it doesn’t look like roadkill anymore (unless, of course, you think it looked like roadkill in the first place)

no redesign then

my web site looks like roadkill in mozilla’s firefox browser

i suppose that means it’s time for a re-design

hah … yeah right

so adam recently asked me why i don’t update my blog more often

it’s a good question

i think it’s a combination of the fact that few people read it, there’s too much spam on it, and that i don’t know what to say

of course, most people who know me know that i have plenty to say

i suppose when i started the blog it was because it was a cool thing to do and because i needed a place to rant

the latter role has been taken up more and more by friends, with whom i engage in discussion and to whom i make long-winded rants (mostly on msn)

that is, just a couple of people, mostly sanjeyan (when he’s on this plane of existence) and yaser

having said that, i will copy here a post i made on a message board about the loss of suprnova.org:

i am shocked and dismayed at the news of suprnova going down

there is really little any of us can say that could sum up this loss

it was suprnova that gave us the bittorrent outlet — it took us in after kazaa and p2p became slow and onerous

it was suprnova that gave us our first comics and introduced us to z-cult

it was suprnova that embodied many of our hopes and dreams of a free planet ruled by the people and not the corporations

alas, another blow, but “we must go forward, not backward, upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom” (simpsons)

amen

(z-cult is a comics bittorrent community)

the mpaa and riaa have been going after bittorrent sites now that they’ve taken care of kazaa and other p2p networks

they simply don’t understand that they can’t stop the revolution

something funny that the mpaa’s director of “antipiracy” operations, john malcolm, said:

These people are parasites, leeching off the creative activity of others…

for a second there i thought he was talking about the bloated corporations that garner insane profits from motion pictures and record sales, the ones that stunt creativity and undermine independent creators

i guess he didn’t see the irony of his statement

yaser took some great photos of ASSU‘s trip to collingwood

nice place, kind of culturally homogeneous
when we walked into a restaurant (two brown folks, one latina, three white folks), we got some stares from the largely, well all white folk

though there was a brown family in there, they seemed local (so the other locals had time to acclimatize to their brownness)

it can be great to get away from the city and its trappings to a place where the religiously discriminatory christian heritage party is actually running a candidate

just a note to anyone who’s actually following this “guy who hates ali” dude, his ip is 66.185.84.68

now in the previous post there are two comments that are ads — one supposedly for a gay web site and the other for viagra

funniest thing, the ip for the “posters” of those messages — 66.185.84.68

yes, that’s right — exactly the same

for that matter, that “Farhan” guy who posted a comment a couple of posts down, exactly same ip — 66.185.84.68

whoever wants to connect the dots, go ahead