Colloquium + God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Last night, I braved through the snowstorm to get to Colloquium 2008, an event hosted by the GCM department at Ryerson. I also attended this because I would automatically receive a 5% bonus mark on my next instrumentation report in my quality control class.

I dressed semi-formally and arrived a few minutes late. The night had three guest speakers from the printing and packaging industry. The constant theme in their speeches revolved around the introduction of environmental sustainability within the industry. I was quite suprised to learn that Wal-Mart is on a leading initiative that will be demanding their suppliers to cut-down on packaging and their overall environmental footprint. I think it's great that this company is going in this direction, but I still refuse to buy anything from their stores.



I spent my entire afternoon being a dental patient for a friend that is in a dental hygiene program. This involved 5 hours of TTC travel, most notably taking the subway from the most western station on the map, Kipling, all the way to the most eastern one, McCowan. In that travel time, I had the chance to finally finish a book a friend recommended that I've been reading off & on for the past few weeks. I had read Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle back in high school, but the only thing I recall from those is the character by the name of Kilgore Trout. Yet again, he made an appearance in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I was a little disappointed with the ending but I really enjoyed the altruistic traits that Eliot Rosewater possessed and the author's description of the "American Dream". Overall, this gets a 7/10 rating.

I've got a few other books lined up, all of which I had already began to read last Fall, but stopped doing so for stupid reasons. Brave New World, 1984, and The Grapes of Wrath are the next three titles on my list, but which should I choose first?