spoiled chinese girl

For those of you who are going to TL;DR: The Apple store is a nightmare to people with my shopping personality/mentality.  I couldn’t stand it, and I would much rather to never walk into there again.

I don’t like shopping. I don’t like talking to people. I don’t like crowded places.  I do most of my shopping online, and when needed to be in a B&M store, I would like to find/pick up my item, get cashed out and leave in under a minute.  I’d never been in an Apple store before.

Camera Guy had been talking for weeks now about wanting to buy a “Magic Mouse” for his iMac.  I was downtown while he was working so I thought I’d do him… what do kids say these days… “a solid”? (Which just sounds disgusting in my opinion, but whatever. Kids these days!)

Walking three feet into the store I became overwhelmed with the sense of “Must… kill… someone…”  Overstimulated does not begin to express my dislike for what I had just walked into.  I’m definitely in a complainey mood, I’m not really trying to complain about anything in particular.  The store was clean & bright & engaging, the staff were all very hapy and helpful.  I just couldn’t handle so much… of everything.

Walked along the first wall, didn’t see it, tried to find someone to ask, but all the staff was (understandably) busy, found what I wanted along the other wall, and my friend told me “Don’t bother waiting in line at the back, just find someone with a hand held POS (point of sale) thing to check you out.”

Person # 1 – Her POS system’s battery JUST died.  She brought me to someone with a wireless system who looked nearing done his transaction.
Person # 2 – He realized he would be longer than a minute, and flagged down a manager-like person to find someone to help me.
Person # 3 – She looked all over the store for an available sales rep with a wireless POS device, and finally lead me to the back wall to wait in line.
Person # 4 – Came out with a group of other staff (just off their break?) and started going up the line asking everyone if they were paying by credit card, he could check them out immediately.  I got to be one of those people.

I feel bad though now that I think about it.  The guy was very nice & friendly but I’d been overwhelmed for so long I was pretty cranky & no longer in a happy mood that this store seems to require.  Small-talk didn’t work out so well this time around.
“Are you all happy and excited about your new magic mouse”
“No… it’s not actually for me.”
“Oh. Well. Uh are you happy to be purchasing this today?”
“I was kind of hoping to have been out of here 10 minutes ago.”
“Oh… well…”

At that point I apologized because it wasn’t him, or the staff, or the store… just the whole environment I couldn’t handle.  I think he could tell anyways that I’m just not the type to yap mindlessly & just wanted out… but I didn’t want him to feel like it was his fault, and if he did… I’m really really sorry!

Item scanned, credit card swiped (no signature{?}), e-mail asked for (digital receipt), then “Have a nice day!” No signature makes me wonder about stolen credit cards/credit card fraud.  No hard-copy receipt made me think of how possible would it be to grab something off the shelf and if caught, say “Oh I paid for it already, my receipt was e-mailed to me” although I guess that would be easy enough to verify. If.

But really.  In the end it wasn’t the store that drove me bonkers.  It wasn’t the products they sell.  It definitely wasn’t the staff.  *Shrug* Is it the whole Apple culture I can’t stand?

So this was an odd one. He’s on okC, and he’s a photographer. And a computer geek. Anyone who knows me knows I’ll <3 anyone who knows their way around a camera, especially anyone who knows more than me, because I <3 picking at photography brains.

One problem. He shoots Canon. I shoot Nikon. It’d never work. Right?

I kid. I don’t care THAT much, although it’s weird picking up a Canon when I’m used to Nikon, and there’s ALWAYS this sort of rilvary between users of the two brands. Most of us are adult enough to make jokes about it, but there’s just SOMETHING about it that does hold true.

Anyways, we yap about general computer geekery, and we yap about general camera geekery online. The conversations head to more general topics, generally going out for wings and beer, at one point he invited me out or challenged me (not sure which) to 100 wings at one of his favourite wing & beer haunts. The stories he can talk about regarding wings & beer are pretty epic.

Finally one Saturday after his long day of work (and my long day of trying to sleep and failing miserably) we discussed hanging out & going out for… wings & beer. He had an outing planned with former co-workers at midnight for wings & beer at the pub (on a UFC fight night no less) and my mom was throwing a maj-jong party right below my bedroom so sleep wasn’t going to happen either way.

Agreed to go over to his, start an NCIS marathon running off my netbook until it was time to head out with the possibility of me taking a nap. Nap didn’t happen since… NCIS is pretty freaking awesome. But we hung out, talked about various forms of geekery, NCIS’ed until it was time to go to the pub.

Pub’bed it, while I don’t follow UFC a whole lot, it was exciting to be able to get in to watch the title match (which was a complete robbery in my opinion, the dude I predicted to win did end up winning… but me and everyone else in the pub and at the stadium couldn’t believe it.) where I got to meet a bunch of pretty chill guys while we all chowed down on… in total 8 pounds of wings & 4 or 5 pitchers of beer? The boys eyes were all bigger than our stomachs because they all tapped out so I guess the wings won that round.

NCIS in the morning & I finally went home for what would hopefully be sleep. Sleep STILL didn’t happen. (That’s a story for another day… wait, that story already happened. I ended up in a Futurama marathon.)

We need to find a day to go shooting (photos!) in Toronto. He wants to work on his night photography and I find it kind of boring taking pictures in the day time. And he wants to play with my Nikon set up, and I’ll try to not break his Canon. So it’ll be awesome running Toronto when it’s dark. Probably during the Xmas season I figure (even though it’ll be a bitch of coldness) since there will be lots of neat light displays.

WIN!

This one I may kick myself for writing… since I know that he knows I run a few blogs and I’m sure the address for this one has slipped up on occasion… and he knows I refer to him as Guitar Hero boy so… *waves* hey

(Edit: Not only does he know about this blog, he’s already (proof)read this post… and corrected my grammar, which reminds me, I need to change my password for my blog, my e-mail, and my bank account)

I found his profile on okC, he lived close and his profile (at the time) stated that he played guitar hero on expert and was really good at it. He’s since changed that, apparently thinking his claim of an expert GH player made him sound arrogant. (However, I’ve admitted to him that was the only reason I contacted him!) Challenged him to a game, and that was that.

We agreed to meet Thanksgiving Monday, in the afternoon since we both had dinner plans. I wore my thinkgeek shirt with some kind of unix code that I don’t really understand. Apparently he was super excited I was wearing the shirt… until I dashed his hopes of a total geek-girl by then asking him what it meant.

Meh, whatever, it was all about guitar hero. To make things fun (for me anyways) I insisted on playing games I didn’t already own/finish. (I own Guitar hero 1, 2, Rock the 80’s, 3 and Rockband 1 for PS2.) To make an even playing field I insisted we play pro-face off (forced same level & same notes played.) I also said loser pays the bar tab when we go out later but he recommended against it.

He wasn’t kidding when he had said he’s really good on expert. I think he was half-surprised I was able to at least keep up on the same level. Don’t get me wrong, I had my ass handed to me every song we played. And he started going easy on me by not using the star-power he very obviously had access to. (Yes, I noticed )

After a few hours we ended the GH extravaganza to go for some beer & wings & chat. He wouldn’t let me pay the bill even though I obviously lost the challenge, and ended up letting him drive my car to his friends for Thanksgiving dinner since I kept him too long. Which was hilarious in and of itself when he showed up.

He’s definitely fun to hang out with. I made him drive my car the first day we met, and he drove my car everywhere we went for a good long while. I’ve met his friends who also play guitar hero & rock band excessively (he wanted to show me off apparently) and we’re right now working through a Futurama marathon. Oh, and he has a twitter. *swoon*

Ooh, side-story. One night after having driven my car everywhere, we’re hanging out at his, both of us near asleep… and he goes “Are you tired? I can drive you back to your house if you want.”… I giggle & remind him it’s my car & I’d be fine driving myself. I should have just let him drive me home, to see if he ended up walking back to his place, or absentmindedly taking my car back with him. He admitted he very well could have driven back before realizing it wasn’t his car. Too cute

Extra note… I’m not so sure about him anymore, while he can Welp, LOL and OMG with the best of them, his FTW’s stand for “For the win” instead of “F*ck the world” which is the proper old-skool TLA.  You thought I wouldn’t write about that huh?

Oh, and SOMEONE insisted on being able to comment on this entry, so there you go.  Comments have been enabled.

Dude’s from Texas. Moved to Toronto less than a year ago & apparently wants to hang out & meet people & see the sights. I’ve never really done the tourist-traps of Toronto so I offered if he was interested. I made the boo-boo of never realizing I didn’t tell him what my name was… until the day we were supposed to meet when I finally texted him. I giggled at the idea of him not knowing my name when we met face to face… but he told me he’d have canceled if I didn’t let him in on the secret.

Somehow he picked Bowling as a “first date” scenario. I don’t bowl, and thought it was odd to pick it… but bowling it was. It was Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend, he had to work the morning and I’d meet him in the afternoon. Finally during my first text message to him to check up on plans, I let him in on the big secret that was my name. Flurry of text messages later, he ended up not being able to leave work until well into the early evening, and desperately needed a drink. So we scrapped the bowling for dinner at the pub & get-to-know-you conversation.

Did the get-to-know-you at the pub, then in my car, yapping away & stuff. Was fun. Spent a few minutes wrestling in the middle of his street as well. Both of us felt like meeting up again for a lazy Sunday of movies so it was off to go home for me to meet up again the next day.

Sunday he told me to bring movies, I brought Futurama. He <3’s futurama. (Didn’t actually know this so that was a plus) so we watched Futurama, drank, talked, wrestled (it’s a guy thing… and I often act like one of the guys, it’s fun!) & both passed out & fell asleep during a movie.

It was fun. I was quite swoony over his computer geekery, his musical geekery, his interest in tattoos & piercings, his Texan accent (*MAJOR SWOON*) and the fact he could, and did drive my car. (I drive manual transmission) Sadly I haven’t seen him, and barely heard from him since. *shrug*

This one… OMG.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone complain SO MUCH about how life has short-changed them in every way possible.  How Dad did this to ruin his life.  Mom did that. Brother did this, and Sister did that. How it’s the dog’s fault his life is crap. His friends messed him about.  His cousins, aunts, uncles… I’m sure there are relatives long-dead he’s complained about too.

They’re all excuses.  Every last one of them.  Always looking towards the negative in order to gain pity and sympathy from everywhere, all the time. I wish I knew the term “Calling you a Waahmbulance” at the time because I probably would have said that to him three times a day.

It’s very strange, if anything, to be with someone who blames the world for everything that’s wrong with it.

How do you blame 100+ teenagers being the reason that you don’t have a job… when you didn’t bother to line up and apply for one?  And how do you blame your parents for the reason you have no money, when you spend the remainder of your pay cheque (assuming you paid your parents anything) on junk food and over-priced video games? And how do you blame your kid brother’s friends for eating all the dinner, when you didn’t come to the kitchen when dinner was called, but rather stayed in your room playing your video game for an extra hour before coming down the stairs? And… how do you blame school administrators for you choosing classes you didn’t want to take? They encourage you… but ultimately it’s his decision.

It gets worse! How do you blame top-selling recording artists for the fact that very little people listen to and appreciate your music… when you don’t bother uploading your original music on the internet for the world to hear?  And how do you blame college-educated people (myself included) for having well-paying need-college-education type jobs… when you still don’t even have a high school diploma?

I think the absolute, funniest, is his excuses regarding what he claimed to be his lack of employment due to affirmative action.  Because he’s white, and male, he was losing jobs non-whites, and non-males.  Completely ignoring the fact that he lives in pretty much a 99% white town… where I’m sure on average, about 50% of the population will be male… he’s the only one who is getting singled out and saying “No, we’re not hiring you, rather we’re going to hire your non-existent black counterpart instead.”

It was sad. He blamed quite literally EVERYONE for his misfortunes.  And was either too blind, or too stupid to see that 99% of the time he had no one to blame but himself.