Marcus Troiano

To my family, friends and colleagues,

Wishing you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – filled with the best of everything!

As this year comes to a close, I can’t help but notice how fast it went by! It seems to me as if it were only a few months ago that I was writing a similar Christmas greeting – and yet it has been exactly 12 months! 2007 has been a great year! I’ve been in contact with many of you much less than I would have liked – life has been busy. I’ll try and provide you all with a quick re-cap of my year below:

In May I completed my 2nd year at Ryerson University in Toronto (I’m taking a Bachelor of Commerce, specializing in Information Technology). As soon as exams were done, I started a four month co-op term (kind of like an internship), working for CIBC (one of Canada’s top five banks) in their Telecom Services department. I was a part of their Real Time Communications project – which involved the migration of the Bank’s voice networks to a Voice-over -IP infrastructure.

When my term at CIBC came to a close, I took a quick breather – in Jamaica! After a week of fun and sun – I returned home and began my second co-op term, this time with ExxonMobil (the biggest of the six oil ’supermajors’ – and world’s largest company by revenue, to those Canadian folks that aren’t familiar, they own Esso/Imperial Oil), in their Voice Services – Controls department. As a member of Controls, I was part of an international team responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate controls of the company’s voice networks, assets and related management processes. I had an amazing time with Exxon, learning so much in the process!

Well, having finished my term with Exxon this past week, I now have a few weeks holiday, before going back to school in January. I hope you all had a great year as well!

Take care and keep in touch!

Warmest Regards,
Marcus

written by Marcus

I got back from my one week holiday to Mexico last Sunday, and it was great! My dad took me down as a “finished first year of University” present, which was so nice of him!

The flight took around 3.5 hours (to get from Toronto to Cancun) and it went by quickly. The movie they played was King Kong, which I saw already, but ended up watching again. It’s a good movie, but I don’t think it lived up to all the hype, at least not for me. then we met up with the bus that was to take us to our resort, the Gran Bahia Principe. The drive took around 1.5 hours, and we couldn’t really see much because by that time it was dark outside.

We stopped off at the Gran Palladium Resort first, as some of the people on our bus were staying there. It looked like a nice place as well, though it was too dark to see much of it at the time. A few minutes later we arrived at the Gran Bahia Principe resort, the one we were staying at. The resort is partitioned into four different sections, each with their own lobby and respective facilities; the Tulum, Akumal, Premiere and Coba. Ours was the Tulum.

The Gran Bahia Principe Tulum was in one word, great! It’s an all-inclusive package, so you get all the food and drink you could wish for, plus access to all their facilities. Our room was on the ground floor of one of the many (there must be enough to house several thousand guests) villas, had two double beds and all the rest you’d expect. One of the many, many pools in the resort was just a minute walk away from our room, though I actually never went swimming in one of them, as I much prefer the Ocean. The beach was just a little further than the pool, and the water was great! It’s the Caribbean sea, so you really can’t get much better. In our area it was a little rocky, though just a short treck down the beach it was perfect. The temperature was also perfect, so nothing to complain about at all, I went in the water every day!
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written by Marcus

Well, I am finished my first year of University, and I must say it went very well and was both interesting and enjoyable! My final exams for the year finished last week, and I walked out of each feeling like had done a great job! So yeah…1st year of University is officially over, oh yeah!

This past week I’ve just been relaxing and hanging out for friends. I finally got to see a movie, after I don’t know how many months, and it was “The Sentinel“. I hadn’t heard of it before, and only decided to watch it because of the time it was playing and because the actors were all quite famous. I walked in expecting a cookie cutter action flick, but I left feeling very satisfied. Great movie, I’d recommend you go see it .

I’m planning on travelling/working most of the summer, as it will be my last before co-op begins (and I’ll be left with no summers….). I’m leaving for my first trip of the summer tomorrow, the destination being Mexico! It will be a 7-day all-inclusive resort on the Mayan Riviera, so plenty to do and see! Should be tons of fun, I can’t wait!

For the past week or so, I’ve been looking into a digital camera to buy (I’ve been happy with my Fuji A310, but it’s getting old now). I settled on either the Canon SD700 IS or the Sony DSC-T30. They are both full- featured ultra-compacts, with all of the latest and greatest bells and wistles: huge LCD’s, OIS, 6-7MP’s, etc, etc. I was going crazy trying to decide which one was the best. They both had their strengths and weaknesses, and they both took amazing pictures! So….I finally decided on the Canon SD700 IS, and I think it was a great choice! The battery is still charging (just bought it), but I’m already very pleased with the size, look and build quality of this camera. I’ll be testing it out over the next week, and I’ll write up a review on it when I get back.

Speaking of writing, now that school is over for the year, I’ll start getting caught up on posting, I’ve just been too busy.

Anyways, all the best and see you all soon.
Marcus

written by Marcus

Well it’s been a long while since I posted on my site, and I would like to apologize for that. The reason is that I’ve been really busy over the past few weeks. First I had server issues which wiped out a good 15 articles I had written, then I was off to NYC for a weeks holiday, and for the past two and a half weeks I’ve been busy with University.

Yes, I started University at Ryerson University, which is located in the heart of Toronto. I’m really enjoying it so far, its so great! I’m taking Information Technology Management, which is basically a mix of Business and IT (Information Technology). Five years down the road I’ll graduate (I’m taking co-op which adds a year, but also adds a lot of great experience) with a Bachelor of Commerce in IT. It’s a great program, in fact the best in Canada at the moment, so I’m very privileged to take part in it. You can read more about it here.

University is awesome. My classes which are as follow for this semester: Organizational Behaviour & Interpersonal Skills (Human Resources), Introduction to Financial Accounting, Written Communications (targeted towards business and technology), Business & Information Systems (my IT course this semester) and finally History Of Science and Technology I (a very interesting history course, we study science and technology from BC to 1700 AD). All of these courses are taught by great professors, and are shaping up to be enjoyable.

The location of the University is also great, being right in the middle of the busiest part of Toronto. You can walk, shop, talk and eat to your hearts content and find plenty of things to do. It takes me around one hour to get to Ryerson from my house in Richmond Hill, which really isn’t bad at all. I take the new bus system in my area, VIVA York. It’s an awesome bus system, a huge improvement. It’s rapid transit, so fewer stops equate to a shorter trip. And its very comfortable and advanced. It’s been in the news a lot lately, so I won’t go into too much detail, but how does TV, Wi-fi and much more sound? All for the same price as regular buses? Great! You can read more about it here. Viva la VIVA . VIVA takes me from the stop nearest my house (Weldrick Rd.) to Finch station, where I take the TTC, Toronto’s subway system to either Dundas Station or College Station (Ryerson is located between both stops).

Well as you have read above University is really going quite well, great in fact. I’m sure it will just continue to get better. Of course there’s a lot of reading and homework to be done, but isn’t that expected? Another thing is that University is definitely really fast paced, but thats cool with me. My schedule is awesome too, no classes start before 10am and I have Wednesday off, and on Friday just one hour of school . Another thing thats really nice is that there are tons of really nice people, I can easily name a dozen or so who I’ve gotten to know in just a week or so…

Anyways…that’s just to update you all on what’s been happening…and yes, I will start updating the site again . Man I’m far behind in that…

written by Marcus