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.

Many years ago I read in (yet another) one of those “positive thinking” books the following:

Negative thinking yields negative results.
Positive thinking yields … negative results.

I think that is true.

I’ve realized that thinking negative but performing as if you’re thinking positive is the best way to go about doing something. You’re productive, and at the same time don’t have high goals for yourself. As such, if you get negative results, you’re not surprised and you don’t feel particularly let down. At the same time, if you get positive results, you’re delighted because you’ve certainly exceeded your expectations.

On the other hand, if you think positive and perform positively, then you’ve simply met your expectations. However, if you perform negatively then you’ve disappointed yourself and will feel negative the next time around.

Moral of the story?
Think negative. You’re going to fail. You’re going to become a miserable failure with no direction in life, no friends, and no hope. Your life will be worthless and you might as well end it now to save yourself the trouble then.

Believe me, that’s not harsh. You’ll thank me for it later — as you hand me the spare change from your pocket outside a local Tim Hortons.

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