Midterms are done! And you all survived! Good job, now go celebrate! Drink, eat, sleep, but don’t relax too much because finals are in just a month! Sorry to kill the mood. Aside from that, thanks for picking up the third issue of the paper and reading my thoughts. I really want to extend major thanks to everyone this issue. Since it was midterm week, I was worried about articles coming in too late, so I extended the deadline. Most people got their articles in only a little bit afterwards, but top contributor goes to Aaron Propp for submitting all three of his articles before the ORIGINAL due date! Check out his coverage of the Ontario election, his regularly-scheduled prof. personalities, and the US-Canada tariff talks. Extended thanks also go to Gabrielle for providing the comic for this issue. If you’ve read my past editorials, you know I’m really pushing to get more comics in the newspaper, and if you’re reading this, you can always submit them to iwarrior@uwaterloo.ca! Finally, Judy was once again helpful as the advertising manager, and she’s really quick with the communications she does for the paper. I’d also like to make a formal apology for the late delivery of the last issue. We had some miscommunications with the publishing company but things worked out. The papers were all on the racks by Thursday/Friday thanks to some help from Gabrielle again. Thanks to all of you for the amazing teamwork!
Let’s talk about the election quickly. I’m really glad I saw a lot of my friends go out and vote. Be sure to check out Aaron’s article on the coverage, but I’m just going to express my thoughts on the results here. The left wing split really showed in southern Ontario, making it a very blue area. Check out the map from the Globe and Mail (just google “Ontario election results 2018: A map of the results.” The data is really nice to pour over and you can see the change from the last election to this one.
I’ve been on a Gordon Ramsay binge during midterms, specifically Hell’s Kitchen. I was comparing the later seasons with season 1 (Elsie <3), and realized how many effects and dramatizations were added in the later seasons to make it more appealing. It’s very different from the UK versions of Ramsay’s shows as well, and it feels almost fabricated. Later seasons seemed to have more characters with personality as well. If you look at Elise from season 9 and Joseph from season 6, it feels weird sometimes how people this obnoxious are even getting this much screen time. It seems analogous to shows with and without laugh tracks. Personally, I can’t watch Big Bang Theory since it has a laugh track every 0.2 seconds. Need proof? Look up the video “The Big Bang Theory – No Laugh Track” and you’ll see my point. Alternatively, watch “Big Bang Theory’s Laugh Track Replaced With a Vacuum Cleaner” and you’ll change your mind. I always go on some weird binge of shows during midterms. In the fall, Twitch was doing its marathon of the original YuGiOh so I had to try and balance studying with my undying love for the series. I did surprisingly well.
World cup is here! And I’m excited, since these years are always the best to watch sports because we have both the World Cup and Winter Olympics. Fun fact, the 2006 World Cup final was held on my birthday, and I was in Pakistan at the time. We were all watching the game on a big projector screen, and I was rooting for France. I thought we had it sealed until the famous Zidane headbutt. So uh, probably not a good end to my birthday. I also got sick shortly after, so I didn’t feel amazing about that. But it was a great trip and although France didn’t win, I did get my “revenge” four years later when I saw Spain defeat the Netherlands in the 2010 finals. Today, I still cheer for France, but I’ve also been a big fan of the Spanish team. Finals will come pretty close to my birthday, and the Iron Warrior is covering the tournament.
So what’s happened with me over the last two weeks? Well, I thought I failed a quiz but did pretty well (have confidence in yourselves, folks). I also had interviews almost every day during hell week, so that was rough, and Ramadan ended, so I was able to go home and celebrate Eid with my family on Friday. Each Eid, we have a tradition of all meeting up and having breakfast together before going from house to house eating food, meeting with family, and partying. But now I’m back here in the office, writing my articles and getting this paper together, missing some festivities. At least there will be more next week and more food to fill my stomach. I kind of needed the food after a few of my midterms weren’t as good as I wanted them to be, but I guess that’s the way it goes. The one I think I did the worst on was like 35% of my grade so let’s hope I can get above a 60 or a 70 on it.
Luckily, there were positives this week. I had the best interview of my undergraduate career. I answered every technical question correctly, spoke well and joked around with my interviewers, and they even said at the end, “good interview!” It was a great end to the week on a strong note. Hopefully they weren’t bluffing and they’ll offer me the job, which pays pretty decently as well as being a field I really want to get into. The change in mood from last issue’s editorial to this one are now very prevalent; how I was super stressed and saying I would get through it but was still going to have a hard time. But I did it. So yay me. I did sacrifice a little bit though, but I think it was worth it. I had a prelab which required some lengthy (but not difficult) calculations involving complex numbers. So I just wrote down the formulas and didn’t do much actual calculation so that I could study for the midterm instead. I don’t know if I did well on the midterm, but I definitely did better than me in the alternate reality where I spent time perfecting the prelab. This is the first time I’ve actually put half effort into an assignment/evaluation and submitted something incomplete in pretty much all of university, which I guess is something to be proud of. I just hope this isn’t like a gateway to being late on more and more assignments. Who knows; if I get offered a job next week for rankings, maybe I can slack off a little more. Disclaimer: don’t be like me, please follow your own advice because I’m not telling you that you can do this to. It doesn’t always turn out well to not submit evaluations.
Some of you who know me know I’m a big Smash Bros. nerd. I’ve been following Melee for about four years, and keep up with the other smash games as well. And I’m really liking the Smash Ultimate that was shown at E3. Oh my goodness, Ridley was revealed. What was thought to be a big meme actually happened, and he looks like a character I would main because I also love dragons. Back when I played YuGiOh, I had a chaos dragon deck, and as a kid I was in love with Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Kaiba’s deck. I was a young little nerd. Now I just have to start saving coop money for a switch, and hopefully I can get one for Boxing Day 2018. Maybe one day a newer version of Animal Crossing will be released but I guess for now I’ll stick to the 3DS version.
Tim Hortons review time. Over the last month, I was able to try the new chocolate chip iced cappuccinos and the salted caramel one. And I have to say that both are phenomenal. The chocolate chip one helped especially during midterms, since I needed to sugar to stay up and study, and I’m a big chocoholic. The whipped cream on top is always a nice touch, and even when I get regular iced capps, I try to get the supreme with a vanilla bean shot. Once you have special/extra topped iced capps, it’s hard to go back to the regular stuff. The salted caramel tasted exactly how I expected it to taste; like salted caramel. That’s all I wanted, and that’s all I got. My sweet tooth has been activated and for sure I will be ordering this again and again in these hot summer months to quench my body’s heat. I still need to try this new poutine they have on the menu (first I have to figure out if it’s halal) but it honestly doesn’t look too good. I like my poutine to have thin fries, and if the gravy is going to be poured onto wedges, it might not be as good as another poutine store. Nonetheless, I tend to have high expectations but low standards so I’d probably eat it anyway. Tim Hortons has been reeling me in with their products, so I can only say I’m a dedicated customer. If you guys want to send me gift cards for my birthday that would be sublime.
The issue-ly word is obfuscation, which means to make something obscure or unclear. Nothing really prompted this word to be included in the editorial, I just think it’s a cool word and fun to say. Ob-fuhs-kay-shun. Not everything has to have an underlying motive, jeez.
And that wraps up editorial three. Seems incredible that I’m already more than halfway done my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, and only two issues remain once this one is pumped out. Thanks for reading!
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