My Future

Car
For the first time this summer I'm going to be taking a course at Trinity as a commuter. Ah, commuting with the great Transportation company known as Translink. I cannot say anything of the quality of the England, California, Northern Ireland or Australia versions of Translink - all of which are separate companies - but the Vancouver episode is... quite the frustration. This of course may be due to my upbringing in Japan, the land of railroads reaching every corner of the entire nation. However, many local residents also complain about the service as well. On the third side of the coin, people tend to complain here a lot in general...

Hopefully the picture I have painted is bleak enough to make my salvation shine gloriously. I have come across an opportunity to acquire my own car. I might as well be vague until it happens but I want to share the news of this opportunity because of a couple of cool things.

For one, I'll be able to transit to TWU during the final semester of my Game Design course instead of having to ride a bus for an hour and a half. I concede that the bus ride has improved improved from last year - it used to be 2 hours - but it's a 30 minute drive by car...

Also, I will be able to get to church at odd times instead of having to depend on a ride. My involvement in ministry at the church is limited because the buses don't start early enough for me to get there by 10am for the normal worship service time, let alone for a worship practice beforehand. This is mainly because it's a 2 hour bus ride which is a 30 minute car ride. I'm hopefully getting my license on February 26th (provided I pass the road test on that day), so it will be awesome to put that license to some good use.

If all goes well, I'll get to pick up my parent(s) at the airport when they come over in April. If all doesn't go well, I'll fail my road test and my Learners license will expire in March.

House
So far I've been an on-campus resident student since my first year here at TWU. As a young student at first you don't really realize how your living and food expenses compare to market prices, especially coming from an entirely different economy. Slowly however I've come to realize that though the price of convenience for living on-campus is cheap for the market, it is still a big expense which can be done away with.

A friend of mine just recently moved out of a house right across the street from TWU. I asked him to speak with his landlord on my behalf so that I might have preference as a potential tenant for this coming September. If I share the house with Jonny I slash my monthly housing cost by $200, yet still maintain the convenience of being in walking distance of my classes. I'm really excited about this opportunity of frugality, and hope that everything goes down well. I just need to keep persisting with getting through to my friend's landlord.

Minor
For the past year or so I have frequently described myself as taking a Music Minor. It was not until 2 days ago in face that I finally filled out and submitted the paperwork to do so. I'm really glad I made that step and look forward to entering dialogue with my Music professors to seek advice on my academic pursuits.

Google Reader
And finally, a little bit of advertising. I recently started using a tool called Google Reader. What it does is subscribes to webzines (online magazines), articles, blogs and anything that uses an rss feed. It then organizes it for you and keeps track of what you've read and even keeps your reading stats for you. Essentially it serves as your digital newspaper except is especially tailored to your tastes, so it's way more interesting.

I've subscribed on my family's blog so I can keep up to date on what they're up to. I also get some sermon audio from Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Mars Hill Paper (TWU's student newspaper), NPR and BBC news, as well as some project management blogs since I am doing that with the digital game design project.

If you find yourself spending your leisure surfing time looking up things in a very scattered and inconsistent manner, this may be the tool for you. If you already have a Google account, you're already half way there. It's very simple to use, and will either save you a bunch of time or take up all of your leisure time. Whichever it does for you, it's going to do it really well.