Life In Twenty-Eleven

A summary of my life in 2011...

A year ago, I started this blog. One of my first main pieces of writing was Life in Twenty-Ten. This post is similar, a flashback of the events of the year that is almost over now...

Walking on the frozen lake...

January: Started the year with a visit to Toronto. It was a pretty overcast day, but nevertheless, got some good photos.

Despite having a snow-less New Year's Eve, my return to Waterloo was followed by a fresh bout of snowfall. Spent some time of my first weekend at Columbia Lake, which is at the north side of UW.

Started off the term with Calculus II, Linear Algebra I, Macroeconomics, Computer Science and Probability, along with the accursed PD2. Sometime by the middle of this month, I initiated my efforts to find work for the upcoming work term...

February: The job hunt continued. Despite a fair number of applications, I was only called for a couple of interviews, neither of which had any fruitful results. The academic workload increased steadily, nothing out of the ordinary...

Had the Reading Week at the end of this month, just after a midterm. Did nothing much over my week off, except relaxing a bit and trying to take some creative shots...

Toonie © Osama Sidat

My Old Sunglasses © Osama Sidat

March: This month brought along more job applications, and subsequently, more rejections. Along with a whole bunch-load of midterms. Not fun.

The US side of the Niagara Falls © Osama Sidat

April: Along came the final exams for Winter 2011. My anxiety levels about getting a co-op job took an exponential rise. At this point, I started looking at all available options that I could consider to rescue my summer work term.

Exams weren't too bad. As soon as they were done with I packed up my stuff and abandoned my abode at the time (since I had absolutely no idea where I would be based in the summer term). Job hopes were kept barely alive by daily newcomer postings on JobMine...

In the last week of April, I visited Niagara Falls for the first time... Awesome Experience!

May: Had my first birthday away from home. Thankfully, I was with family at Brampton... had an awesome barbecue dinner!

My Birthday Cake!

Since CECS allowed a minimum of 12 weeks of co-op work, I waited out the majority of this month, applying here and there, attending interviews and visiting job fairs. It was rather frustrating. In the end, I called up the career advisor, and asked her if I could put my backup plan into effect (going back home for an internship). She agreed, since I was running out of time...

After a couple of days running around town, getting stuff for loved ones back home, I embarked on a 14-hour long flight... to home...

June & July: The feeling of seeing family again after almost 9 months is indescribable... Looking back now, not getting a job in Canada and coming back home for the summer was all worth it...

Can't believe how much I missed bothering this guy...

My Lil Bro!

Had a haircut the very next day of my arrival... 'Twas the longest I had ever kept it... Couldn't bear it in the Karachi heat!

A large majority of these months consisted of spending time with family, experimenting with new tricks at work, and preparing for the Actuarial Science Probability Exam (which was thankfully successful in the very first try).

August: Ramadan and preparation for the trip back to Canada started almost simultaneously... Successfully ended my co-op term and sent the evaluation to CECS...

My room in Fall 2011

September: Spent Eid with family. Almost immediately after, for the second time, left my home and family behind...

I was rather lucky to get a room at my old residence, after making more than a dozen calls... Commenced Fall 2011...

This term, I had Calculus III, Financial Mathematics, Statistics, Financial Accounting and Computer Science...

October: By now, it was apparent that the 2A term would be quite different, and a lot more tough compared to previous terms. Every day brought along new challenges. The problems were compounded by the less-than-adept profs for Stats and ACTSC.

Cooking Experiment: Egg-in-a-Basket

I had also started applying for jobs for the Winter 2012 co-op term, this time a lot more aggressively. Got my first interview with ManuLife Financial; rejected...

November: After 102 applications, and 3 interviews, I was finally employed for my next co-op term: Organizational Change Management Co-op at Loblaw.

December: Classes ended in the first week, closely followed by the final exams... most of which were a nightmare, with the exception of Financial Accounting. The worst was ACTSC 231, which was a real killer... In any case, I was really glad to get over with the exams...

Results came out just around December 23-25... Not pretty at all, making it a really bad term as far as academics were concerned...

Enough about the exams...

Got a chance to photograph the CN Tower while out with family at Toronto earlier this week...

The CN Tower, Toronto ON © Osama Sidat

Coincidence: Just like the first day of the year, visited Toronto (once again, twice in this past week) on the last day of this year...

The GO Terminal at Union Station, Toronto © Osama Sidat