Residence

Ah, res­i­dence. The first year of uni­ver­si­ty, the first year away from my par­ents, and my first year in Ottawa. Also, the year I was intro­duced to Fear Factory, Dream Theater, and Refused.

I found these old pic­tures while orga­niz­ing my pic­tures fold­er. Boy, do they take me back.

Headbanging

Take a look at this pho­to, for exam­ple, where I strapped a pair of khakis to my head, and start­ed head bang­ing to Deftones — Shove It (My Own Summer). Why did I strap a pair of khakis to my head? Cause I did­n’t have long hair. Why did Pita and I decide to do this one day? I have no idea.

Dying my hair red

Washing my hair after the dye job

Alicia drying my hair

Or how about these ones, where the girls agreed to give me red chunks, back when I was obvi­ous­ly in my Tool phase. Nadine mis-read the instruc­tions, mixed the wrong chem­i­cals, and it came out all sparse.

Highlights include:

  • Failing Calculus 2 with Dave and Jarod. When we wrote the sup­ple­men­tal exam, it was five peo­ple total in the pro­gram who failed, three of whom were us. I guess I had the wrong study bud­dies. In the end, I was the only one who passed.
  • Most of the guys on the floor get­ting sued for sex­u­al harass­ment.
  • Jarod and Jono’s rave room, lit with a black­light and dis­co ball, which was some­what famous around cam­pus.
  • Constant con­flict between neigh­bors, me and Pita includ­ed, over the vol­ume of music.
  • Going to the gym with Dave, and hav­ing him spot me while I benched the bar. As in, the bar with­out weights. Afterwards, I would spot him while he benched 240. I don’t think I could have helped much.

Pita took these pho­tos, got them print­ed, and scanned them. Dated ’99. Sure they aren’t great. They’re dark. They’re grainy, tak­en with a cheap film cam­era. But they’re still unfor­get­table mem­o­ries, and it gives them a cer­tain dat­ed style. Makes me wish I had a tak­en some pic­tures myself.

Pita during Frosh Week.

The group in my room

Dave and Liz

A Halloween night

Jarod without his shirt on.

Jono at his computer

Jeff out of focus

A Halloween night

Me and Nadine

Painting the 15th floor mural.

Tequila party in my room

Pita and Alicia

Pillow fight in Nadine's room

I miss res­i­dence. A lot. As dif­fi­cult as it was to be social, it was fun to be mixed in with so many new and dif­fer­ent peo­ple.

7 comments

  1. Looks like a lot of good times. Never did rez myself. Or social for that mat­ter. A month or so into uni­ver­si­ty, got my hip-joint sur­gi­cal­ly rebarred to he-who-is-now-Hubby.

    Maybe you need a revolv­ing door or board­ers to repro­duce the expe­ri­ence. (kid­ding, kid­ding.…)

  2. These are pre­cious pic­tures. I hope you still keep in touch with these bud­dies of yours. So you actu­al­ly CAN enjoy meet­ing new peo­ple despite claim­ing to be not social. I was nev­er at res­i­dence, too expen­sive for me :)

  3. This is a high­light?

    Most of the guys on the floor get­ting sued for sex­u­al harass­ment.” o_0

  4. @Pearl — I con­sid­ered hav­ing board­ers actually…not just for the expe­ri­ence but for some extra mon­ey as well. But in the end, it’s total­ly not worth it. Having the house to myself is price­less in itself.

    @Uncle Joe — I only keep in touch with Pita now. I’ve tried to stay in touch with Jeff and Jono in the past, but we lost track of each oth­er.

    I do enjoy meet­ing peo­ple, but I think it’s more of the expe­ri­ence itself, than the peo­ple. I’m often filled with hope that I’ll meet some­one whom I’d con­sid­er a friend in the future. It does­n’t hap­pen often (I’d say out of 50 peo­ple I meet, one will become a friend), but the hope and excite­ment is always there.

    @Tiana — Perhaps I should have said “Notable mem­o­ries” instead of “high­lights”. Also, I should have said “charged” instead of “sued” because they had to do sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing, but no cash set­tle­ment was involved. There might also have been some­thing on their records, but I’m not sure.

  5. Yeah that year seemed like a life­time. Crazy too, unlike real life.
    You did take pic­tures. Only prob­lem is that the clerk at the pho­to place fucked it up pret­ty good. I real­ly want­ed the ones you took of us air gui­tar­ing.

  6. I do remem­ber tak­ing a cou­ple shots. After all, you’re in these pic­tures, so I must have been hold­ing the cam­era. I nev­er trust pho­to clerks any­more.

  7. Ah, dorm life. I went by a cou­ple of guys in the gro­cery store yes­ter­day. I had­n’t looked at them but periph­er­al­ly, and over­heard only one sen­tence:
    “But I’m pay­ing for your marsh­mal­lows!”
    and I knew their rela­tion­ship in an instant.

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