We played our fifth match last night. It was against Free Agents, an team made of individuals. I arrived late, just around kick off time. We were disorganized. Kela ran in to get pinnies. They gave him black and too few.

I said we should exchange them because the referees were wearing black. There should be five different types of jerseies on the field for the five different roles: referees, two goalies. and two teams of outfield players.

We started one man short and they had two men short. They soon got another player and laters filled their squad. Christian arrived at half-time as our eleventh man.

In the first half Erik scored off a short corner from Scott.

Later in the half they were in our box. We couldn’t clear it and they yelled at what they thought were handballs. Then one of them pushed Marek’s hand into the ball and the ref called a penalty. The shooter missed wide.

We defended our lead and missed several other chances. I missed a volley just in front of the net, More practice and focus would have helped me there.

Steve got his fourth shutout. We clinched first place.

Several players on their team had a bad attitude. One dude got angry with me. He told the referee to watch my f elbow. Yes it is very nice; everyone should watch it. He also threatened me, so when I received the bnall I held on to it for a bit so he could make good on committing a foul. Free kick for us and perhaps some petty satisfaction for him. I was dismayed when the referees didn’t make a call when they cursed, especially since the CRec website says:

• INSULTING, OFFENSIVE OR ABUSIVE LANGUAGE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!! Guilty player will be sent-off, and reported to the league

I can endure a lot, but I don’t like swearing and I would rather not hear fy, fo, and mf, while I am playing a game of gentlemen. The apparent hypocrisy is also a major concern. Not only is it against CRec rules, in writing if not in practice, it is against the laws of the game which say:

Sending-Off Offences

A player, substitute or substituted player is sent off and shown the red card if he commits any of the following seven offences:

[...]

6. uses offensive or insulting or abusive language and/or gestures

Also calling the referee’s names, albeit in a foreign language, doesn’t make you any cooler.

Jurek took this great photo of a cat and mouse. It is Tigger and an unknown mouse of no fixed address.

The Grad House is going to only serve microbrewed beer, except for Guinness stout — I read, and wrote, on uws.

Grad House moving to only microbrewery beer uwstudent.org 26 June 2006

We planted a garden on Sunday.

She called me in the afternoon coming back from Mannheim. We went to BooJu on the way to CanTire. I got a sunshine strawberry. I think she got a berry banana.

We got gloves and facial tissues — the former for the dirt the latter for the sneezing.

We planted tomatoes, golden and cherry, rosemary, peppermint, spearmint, thyme, and chives.

Then we drank mint tea and ate strawberries.

When I was young my mom would pick strawberries and freeze them. In the winter I could go downstairs to the deep freeze pull out a bag of strawberries and blenderize them with some milk. It was like an instant strawberry ice cream milkshake.
I picked some strawberries this weekend. I will hull them and freeze them today to be enjoyed in the future. Sweet.

Hing sun yat fai lok!

I recently searched Google Trends for “University of Waterloo.” The results showed that that Iran was the second top sources for searchers for the school.

Since it only shows the top nine and shows bars and not numbers, it isn’t possible to calculate percentages. I measured the length of the bars and and divided them by the Canada bar, the longest one.

That shows the searches in comparison to Canadian searches. So, 1 Iranian search for every 7 Canadian searches; 1 Hong Kong search for every 7; and 1 Indian search for every 11 Canadian searches.

How does this compare to the population. Taking population figures from CIAWFB gives us relative figures for searches in compared to population. I multiplied the result by, like, 100 million, to pull them out of being miniscule fractions.

So, per population Hong Kong is in second. Of course this does not account for a tiny country that in tenth or worse in searches, but higher search per population. Also, given that so many students come from mainland China (1240 intl and pr in Jan 2006) some of the HK searches could be people from PRC .

We garnered two-more points, two more goals, another shutout, and added a player to our scoring roster in Campus Rec soccer action on Wednesday. We met ‘Green Eggs and RAM.’ It is Hans’ and Travis’s team. They had some holes in terms of talent, but had a good attitude.

They had tight marking, but also swarmed the ball. We were able to switch the ball or move it wide some of the time, but when we didn’t open up the play, it got frustrating.

Luke opened the scoring from a header off a corner. He was the eighth man on the score sheet. That is, he, with one goal, was tied with seven other guys for our team’s leading scorer.

In the second half Jorbo kicked one in inside the box. The keeper slid into him feet first and knocked him over. That probably hurt and he took a break. Scott, who was about to leave, stepped back on .

The team has been doing well this season. Almost all our players are returning from a previous season with the team and we have good talent everywhere. We have a good keeper, strong defence, good mid and speed up front. We just need to stay focused for the end of the regular schedule and keep strong for the play-offs.

With this win we are still in first and are in a good position to keep that spot.

Back in March at Mark and Lesley’s party, Bethany told me how she was showing her wedding photos from last August to her officemate. When they came to a photo in which I appeared, her officemate, who happens to be Irish, said something like, “Who is that? I see him everywhere on campus.”

So, this past Friday, I was hanging out at the Grad House with Christian and we were talking to French Robin. This girl walked up and talked to Robin for a bit and then turned to me and said, “You must be Ryan. I see you everywhere on campus.” I thought for a bit and replied, “You must be Irish.” She confirmed the connection through Bethany. She sat down with us.

I asked her where she was from in Ireland. She said the northeast. I asked where she was really from and she answered what I was hoping. Ballymena, I’ve been there. Ha.

Strangely I ran into her at Valumart the next morning.

The Guelph Tribune featured Norfolk Pharmacy and CanadaHomeHealth.com last week.

There are pictures of Ali and his dad.

There is a graphic of the website.

And the article.

Norfolk Pharmacy … great service in store and now online
The people at Norfolk Pharmacy are taking the same great service from their store in downtown Guelph to your computer and your front door. Now, with its new home health shopping website — CanadaHomeHealth.com — Norfolk Pharmacy has opened its doors to the world.

The pharmacy, which has been an important part of downtown Guelph for 24 years, launched its Internet site in January of this year. Since then, it has helped customers in Guelph and across Canada with their home health shopping needs – from the comfort of their own homes.

Owner and pharmacist Sultan Asaria said he had been thinking about an online health-care store for several years.

He really wanted to reach out to people who might not be able to come to the store on Norfolk Street; and to make shopping more convenient for his existing customers. The opportunity arrived once Sultan’s son, managing director Ali Asaria, was available to partner with him.

Ali, a computer engineer, graduated from University of Waterloo and then went on to work for Microsoft and later Research in Motion.

“My dad really cares about people,” Ali says. “He really worries about people and he really wants to help them. The question was: How do you take that community attitude of caring about people to the website.”

With Ali’s computer software experience and Sultan’s commitment to his customers, CanadaHomeHealth.com has achieved that goal of making sure people know how important they are to Norfolk Pharmacy.

“We go out of our way to talk to our customers,” Ali says. “We make sure we write notes to our customers in every box we send out. People feel comfortable with us.”

The staff are always willing to talk to customers, whether through the website’s e-mail address or the toll-free number. Ali said people often call or e-mail to ask for advice. Even if those customers aren’t shopping, pharmacy staff will answer their questions and help them out with whatever they need.

“We will help them,” Ali said. “All of our staff are ready to help. We only hire people who really care about helping others. This is a neat opportunity for us because we’re meeting people all over the world. We were confined to Guelph, but now even people in rural communities have direct access. The website is just one of the pieces of the whole puzzle. It’s really ideal for our customers.”

CanadaHomeHealth.com offers an extensive selection of items for sale, including – but certainly not limited to – allergy care, cold and flu, products for diabetics, first aid, vitamins, athletic braces, a full line of hard-to-find ostomy products and much more.

The website also offers informative articles in a monthly newsletter, which can be read on-line or received, by request, over e-mail. Those who request the newsletter will receive a discount coupon with each issue. The articles, often with a seasonal theme are written by a pharmacy employee who has a science degree. All articles are reviewed by Sultan, so he can provide a pharmacist’s point of view and suggestions of suitable products to manage the subject being discussed.

The website offers many products – yet remains easy to navigate. Norfolk Pharmacy also has its certificate of accreditation by the Ontario College of Pharmacists, which is crucial for a responsible and reliable organization. The on-line store does not sell prescription medication.

“We have thousands of products online and we made sure we have pictures of everything,” Ali says. “We designed the website to be friendly and we want to make sure people know we’re not a warehouse. We’re real people.”

Norfolk Pharmacy is the largest independent pharmacy and home health-care store in Guelph. Already, the new website is following suit. CanadaHomeHealth.com has already become the country’s largest home health store on the Internet.

With continuing efforts to meet the specific needs of customers, the website will soon be launching a line of compression stockings.

“We’ll be the only people in Canada to sell them online,” Ali says. “There are not a lot of options in Canada, so the Internet is a really good way for us to reach a large market in need.”

For more information, visit http://canadahomehealth.com, e-mail info@canadahomehealth.com, or call (519) 837-3800 toll-free 1-866-640-3800.

You can still visit the store Norfolk Pharmacy at 85 Norfolk St., Suite 100, or call 837-1820.