Random sustenance shopping blurbs

44lbs of cat litter that I carried while rollerblading

My brand new shopping cart that I can use instead of being a mule on wheels

Lugging a 44lbs (4 pounds was free!) bag of cat litter while rollerblading is pretty tiring. The people at the pet store looked at me funny as I rolled away carrying the stupidly large bag. The funny thing is that now I know what it feels like to carry 44lbs of stuff while rollerblading and I've definitely carried a lot more than that before.

Side note: I use organic, non-clay based, clumping, flushable cat litter now.

I typically procrastinate grocery shopping and will go only when I have to. This means every 2-3 weeks and I'll spend $100 - $150... and carry it all by hand by myself! I go prepared. I bring a large duffle bag and a backpack! I tell you, that's way heavier than 44lbs. 44lbs is a walk in the park compared to carrying groceries. When I go grocery shopping, the first thing that I think about when I see a product is not the price or it's healthiness, but rather, it's weight and size.

But no more! I finally bought one of those shopping carts from Chinatown! You know, the ones that the old women push, but I got the large, manly size. I've been thinking of getting one for a while, but just have been too lazy to do so. I tell you, it's amazing! Of course, the first thing I do is buy a 18lbs bag of rice and a bunch of groceries from Chinatown. Now, I can go grocery shopping without thinking about whether I can carry it back or not :). People look at you funny when you are rollerblading and pushing a shopping cart though. I had one guy in my apartment building audibly laughing.

In my shopping in Chinatown, I made some interesting observations:

• If you're shopping for a shopping cart, they speak to you in English


• If you randomly stop at a fruit stand and quietly pick mangoes, they speak to you in English to tell you to pay inside


• In the Chinatown TD Canada Trust, despite all their Chinese signs, Chinese tellers, and Chinese customers, they speak to you in English by default. I think the only non-Asian in that building was the security guard.


• If you buy esoteric dried food products, such as 茶魚 (tea fish), from a small shop where they only have signs in Chinese, they speak to you in Cantonese


• If you ask for Chinese vegetables (菜心) from the guy that grabs them and puts them in a bag, they speak to you in Cantonese


• If you're reaching to the top of the shelves for a whole box of instant noodles, and there are 2 boxes above the one that you can reach, they ask you in Cantonese if they can help


• If you're staring at the multitude of options for rice for 5 minutes, they speak to you in some language I don't understand (Mandarin?), and you reply in English

Not so fresh bread

So, I bought some bread online at Freshbread.ca.

I specifically woke up early this morning in anticipation of my fresh bread delivery, but there was nothing outside my door at 7. Nothing at 8. Nothing at 9. I got an email saying that my order was waiting for me downstairs and shortly after I got a phone call from the super that he had bread for me (he was kinda chuckling at it). Apparently, they just left it at the front doors of the building and not with the super or in front of my apartment door, as they advertised that they would (like how I used to get the newspaper right on my doorstep). That's pretty dumb to just leave it out in the open in the lobby.

The bag was a lot bigger than I expected. I got a baguette, a loaf of bread, 2 chocolate croissants, and 4 bagels (which turned out to be 6). Total including delivery was ~$15 (delivery was $1.50, but the items themselves were a little pricey).

Once I got back to my apartment, I eagerly ripped a piece of the baguette off and bit into it. Wow, that was disappointing. It wasn't stale, but it wasn't particularly fresh either and it tasted just like the baguettes you get at regular grocery stores. The croissant was pretty tasty, but I wouldn't say it was baked fresh this morning. The loaf wasn't anything special either. I haven't tried the bagels yet.

I'm not sure if it's b/c I ordered it Friday afternoon after the cutoff time for a Saturday delivery and they made it Saturday and just let it sit around until today to deliver (since they didn't deliver on Sunday), but it sure tasted like it. I was expecting fresh bread, just hours from the oven, as advertised.

I gave it a shot and was hoping for some mind blowing bread orgasmic experience, but ended up with just overpriced typical grocery store products dropped off at the front doors to my building left unattended.

I have to make a trip to Cobs Bread around the corner early in the morning some time and try that out. I'm also gonna try and make my own bread some time.

Are you prepared? I'm not.

Do you have what you need in case of an emergency?
Avez-vous ce dont vous avez besoin en cas d'urgence?

Is your family prepared?
Votre famille est-elle prete?

I heard on an ad on the radio this morning for getprepared.ca and I would totally be screwed in an emergency. 72 hours of food? I don't think so. I wait until the food level in my fridge and cupboards gets really low until I get groceries, then I'll make a big run to Loblaws or Dominion's (or T&T if I have a car) with a backpack and a duffel bag and carry $150 of groceries by myself :p. Summer is easier since rollerblading home from Dominion's is easier and faster than walking while holding a bunch of grocery bags in each hand.

Right now, I don't have nearly enough canned and dry food and I never have bottled water on hand. At least Tiki would be fine. On the other hand, I would be surviving on vitasoy and granola bars...

List of dangers here in Ontario that I'm supposed to be prepared to be self-reliant for at least 3 days immediate after or during:

• Blizzard


• Earthquake


• Flood


• Hazardous material spill


• Industrial accident


• Infectious disease outbreak


• Power failure


• Severe Weather (heat/cold)


• Terrorism


• Tornado


• Transportation accident


• Wildfire

At least they don't have "monster attack" like in SimCity.

Happy Food Freedom Day!

Happy Food Freedom Day! Food, I set you free! Be free food, be free!

The return of the blender!

New blender!!! Classic Oster Beehive Blender

First blend: too much fruit and not enough juice. I add pineapple now and don't add ice. Sometimes I add a little bit of water to lighten it up.

I eventually got it to blend

A few hours later: smoothie #2 :)

Redder b/c of the use of more berries

A little while ago, my blender broke. The knob that controls the speed snapped off a while back, but was still working, but then the plastic started warping and was stuck on "1". I used it once like that by plugging and unplugging it repeatedly, but I couldn't continue.

I returned it to Loblaws, but they didn't have another blender in stock!!! I almost saw it coming and was thinking that with my luck, they wouldn't have one in stock. I thought about it for a bit wondering whether I should actually return it or keep it and use my plugging-unplugging technique and try to return it later. I decided to just return it (2 year warranty) and then try to get another blender later. I wanted to get the same blender, but you can't buy it online and the Superstore locations which are supposed to regularly have them in stock are too far away.

I eventually broke down and decided to buy one online. I splurged a bit because I know that I will literally use it every day. After all, I had been for the past 6 months. I am very much addicted. My new blender is about 3 times as expensive :p

I bought it from Home Outfitters / HBC and it shipped really fast. I ordered it late Thursday and it arrived Monday morning. Fortunately, my suitemate answered the door. I'm a pretty sound sleeper and didn't even hear the knock. I woke up and found the blender on the floor :). It was shipped through Canada Post, so even if I didn't answer, I could have at least picked it up at the Shopper's down the street at the end of the day as opposed to the hassles with the crappy delivery companies.

I'm still getting used to the blender, but I'm liking it. The big difference is that it makes smoother smoothies. It just blends more finely. This actually poses a problem for my "recipes" because with the usual amount of fruit and juice, it doesn't blend very well. The reason is because the fruit is pulverized more finely and then becomes icier (good thing), but it then requires more liquid for it to flow properly and I haven't quite gotten the right mix yet. Another nice thing is that the blender blends the seeds so there is less chewing at the bottom of the glass/mug. At the highest setting, the blender is very loud, vibrates on the counter a little, and blows out air quite viciously, but I have been finding that the lower setting is fine. The construction of the base, especially the switch, is stronger than the PC one, heavier as well. The glass container is slightly smaller, which isn't too much of a concern for a single serving for me (1 litre :)), but limits how much I can blend in the future. It's a good blender, but not 3 times better than the PC one.

I think I'm gonna to be sick

Chunky Soybean Drink

I don't advise getting this brand

I was drinking soybean drink that I had gotten from Chinatown last weekend. It tasted a bit bland. Not sour, but more like just not sweet enough. The expiry date was not for another 3 weeks, so I just thought that it was that brand, though I think I've boughten it before and it was fine. I had drank a few glasses since the weekend.

Today, I'm near the bottom of my glass and I see CHUNKS. I'm like "OMG!!! I'm going to be on the toilet for the next few days!!!" I almost puked. What's worse is that I drank most of the 2L these past few days, so I expect some upcoming unpleasantries. I seem ok right now, aside from the gas....

Chindian fried noodles

I've been asked if I was Chindian before - a mix between Chinese and Indian, though I think she meant Native American. Anyways, this cooking experiment is fusion food with Chinese and "real" Indian.

I got the idea from who I think was the owner of Charisma East Indian Restaurant in Winnipeg. Upon discovering that me and my family was Chinese, he said that in India, a big trend was fusion food with Chinese food. Apparently, using Chinese noodles with Indian spices is big and he was contemplating adding it to his menu.

I completely made this up as I went along. I figured that I still had the jar of Indian curry and I had instant noodles. Why not try and make some fried noodles?

Ingredients: curry and instant noodles

Put some water and oil in the pan. More water required than the fried udon b/c the instant noodles need to be reconstituted. This wasn't enough water as I had to add extra water later.

Add the instant noodles

Cook the noodles until they break apart and is no longer hard

Spoon in some curry

The finished product

It was ok. Not that flavourful. I also put in too much oil as I was afraid of the noodles sticking and I was having problems getting the curry paste mixed in. I probably should've added the curry paste earlier when there was still some water in the pan, though the noodles were crispy, which was nice. The excessive amount of oil combined with the concentrated nature of the paste, it ended up being pretty heavy. It seemed like I needed something else in there. Maybe I should've made it more like real curry by having the noodles in a soup-like base. I don't think the curry paste is supposed to be eaten without adding additional stuff. Maybe I was supposed to use other Indian spices for the fusion dish. I also may have used the wrong type of noodles. Got any ideas?

Naan bread from scratch!

This was from the 14th. Again, I just didn't get around to posting this until now.

I love naan bread and since I can now make some pretty good curry, I figured I'd try making my own naan bread :)

Of course, I looked to the Internet for guidance, and I found this video of how to make naan bread. It called for 200g of flour, which was problematic as I don't have a kitchen scale. Again, looking on the Internet, I figured that 200g flour = 1.25 - 1.5 cups of flour. I used something in between. I found that the dough was really dry and I had to keep adding milk and yogurt to make it work, but maybe I just used too much flour :p.

It didn't turn out quite like naan bread, but it was quite tasty! I really like bread, especially fresh bread :). I don't think I rolled the dough thin enough. I didn't want to roll it too thin b/c the video warned me not to.

Naan bread and curry from scratch!!!

A closer look at the naan bread

Once I perfect the naan bread, I'm opening up my own Indian restaurant.

Fried udon

I made this on the 10th, but kept putting off the blog post. It's not the first time I've made fried udon, but it's the first time I'm documenting my process.

Ingredients: shrimp, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, and udon. I should've chopped up some onions too.

Put a little water and oil in the pan

Add the udon. I only ended up using 2 packages.

Cook until the udon breaks apart

Add the veggies. A spatula is easier at this point rather than chopsticks.

Add some frozen veggies for more colour if you want

The water will evaporate. You may need to add more oil. You can use a bit of sesame oil instead of regular oil. When the veggies are pretty much cooked, add the shrimp, or other meat, or nothing for vegetarian.

Seasoning: sesame seeds, dark soy sauce, white pepper, chives, sesame oil, parsley flakes, and light soy sauce. I just add a bit of everything. I don't know whether to use dark or light soy sauce, so I use both. Dark seems to give it the colour and saltiness and light gives a bit of a sweet taste. If available, use fresh green onions and parsley instead of the jarred chives and flakes I used.

Done

The final product. It was tasty!

iCook Sugar

I am disturbingly full...

First, I went with Jamie, Esther, and Trish to iCook. Hot pot buffet! It blew my mind. You got your own little pot, with whatever soup base you wanted (I just went with the regular chicken stock), then there's an actual buffet line of raw food for the hot pot! Usually with hot pot, you have to keep ordering. I've never seen a buffet line. They had a lot of spices and sauces as well and free fountain drinks :). The execution was quite well done and I ate A LOT. Two massively high piled plates. The food was alright, not amazing though. I was a little disappointed with the fish balls. They weren't very "song". They were also running out of stuff (namely veggies) near the end of the night. I liked the beef, tofu, and mushrooms :). I've been to places with better food (Times I think), but I really like the personalized little pot and the buffet line.

The girls were too full for dessert, but I insisted on going as I have been craving Chinese dessert for a while. I had red bean earlier today at Pho Hung (well, the "3 colour" drink), but wanted more red bean still. I didn't get red bean tonight though. We went to The Sugar to get takeout. I got the "House Special Super Golden Sago Mixed (sea coconut, mixed fruit, and ice cream golden sago mixed)". Ya, I wouldn't know what it was either if you just told me that. It was mango "sei mei lo" (small tapico) with fruit. It was rather tasty. Oh, I just found a picture:


I don't get either of these two things (hot pot in a restaurant and Chinese dessert) in Winnipeg and there are no Chinese dessert places in downtown :(

I'm struggling to fight against the food coma right now. Still SO FULL.

Partied from 5 to 5

Second pan of mango pudding (first one was pretty much finished at the potluck)

First, Yue has his going away party, which started at 5 pm Saturday at the Korean BBQ place on Queen St. I had no idea that that place had an upstairs. Pretty much everyone there I had seen on a volleyball court at some point. We should have just held the party on a volleyball court :p

Then we headed over to the good 'ol Firkin pub right next to my apartment, where we had the back room reserved. I stayed for a beer, and then took off around 9ish to go to Tina's potluck. It was funny when I got there b/c I saw Mike and I was like "I already saw you tonight..." as he was at Korean BBQ, but skipped the pub to presumedly go to the potluck.

I feel that I was responsible for seeding the potluck idea into her head b/c it was obviously not her other friends seeming as how a few of them brought pre-made stuff!!! That goes completely against the whole spirit of a potluck!!! You're supposed to make something!!! Half the fun is poisoning your friends (or strangers) :)

Anyways, after going to the C-Lounge a couple weeks ago with Tina and Donna, we hit Chinatown for some late night food. Donna only wanted the mango pudding from there and I commented that that's my specialty. They asked me to make some, and I said, half jokingly, that if they had a potluck, I'd make it and bring it (if I could find the necessary special ingredient).

Tina hosted a potluck and I was obliged to bring my signature dish. No, it's not made from powder. That is insulting! No, I didn't get the recipe off the internet. No, it's not an old family recipe passed down through the generations. I made the recipe myself! No, you can't have the recipe.

It was quite well received, despite the mango pudding not in its most amazing form, as the coconut milk I used had congealed and left a white film on the top, but it tasted fine. Most of the pan I brought was finished, which is good b/c I wouldn't know what to do with all the leftovers, considering that I had a whole second pan. I've realized that I can pick up girls, or at least greatly impress them, with this dish, and I could open a mango pudding store next to my Indian restaurant.

Anyways, so after my second dinner, wine, dessert, chilling & talking, and charades, it was 5 am. Nice way to kick start my vacation ;)

I should open an Indian restaurant

Secret ingredient

I went to Little India today to get a secret ingredient, which is unrelated to the meal I made today, but the trip led me to buy curry and other ingredients necessary for my dinner. In Winnipeg, I can get mango pulp in Superstore, but I couldn't find it anywhere here and had to go all the way to Little India, where one small grocery store had like 4 or 5 different brands!

Today's dinner menu was inspired by Sarah's curry.

It was the first time I tried making curry and it was AMAZING!!! I swear that the flavour was exactly like chicken jalfrezi from a real Indian restaurant, except without the obscene amount of oil and more veggies.

Onions, broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, chicken, curry paste, coconut milk, and naan-like bread

1. Cooked the onions in some oil in a pan


2. Threw in the chicken and scooped several teaspoons of curry paste in


3. Cooked for a few min. and then added the coconut milk and veggies


4. Simmered for a while, using a lid to help cook the vegetables


5. Wrapped the bread in aluminum foil and warmed it up in the oven


6. Made a fruit smoothie


7. Ate to the brink of food coma

SO GOOD

The only thing I'd change next time is to cook the potatoes separately for a bit b/c they took a while to cook despite being in small chunks and caused me to cooked the whole thing for longer than I needed, but it wasn't over cooked. I used "boiling" potatoes. I'm so confused at all the different potatoes - frying, boiling, baking, batteries, satellites...

Steak and potatoes

Dinner

Made myself a rather tasty dinner tonight :). Red wine marinated steak (as suggested from this site telling me that everything I know about grilling is wrong) and fries made from scratch!

I marinated the steak in Robert Mondavi red wine (it was on sale at the LCBO) and the Keg steak spice. It was the first time I marinated meat. It was definitely more tender, though it had a bit too much wine taste. Maybe I just marinated it too much (overnight). Next time I'll try something else, maybe a little sweeter as it was a little bitter this time from the wine. I actually felt my face getting a little red from the wine :s. I guess I did a good job of sealing the juices in :).

For the fries, I cut up two potatoes, mixed in some chopped onions, oil, steak spice, olive oil, parsley flakes, red chili flakes, cajan spice, and probably some other random spices. Then, I laid it out on parchment paper, which is non-sticky, but absorbs and keeps too much moisture, and put it in the oven for like 30-40 min. I should probably use aluminum foil to make the fries crispier, but I get annoyed when it sticks, esp. with little bits of the foil sticks to the fries.

Addicted to the blender

For the past 2 weeks, I have been completely addicted to my blender. I have used it every day. Many times, 2 or 3 times a day. I have gone through over 7 litres of orange juice and 5 kg of fruit. I love making fruit smoothies. It's a slurpee made from fruit. 100% pure fruit, healthy, and amazingly delicious! I don't have to go to Bubble Tease, No Name Cafe, or Jamba Juice anymore!!!

Here's how I make mine. It takes less than 5 min. and they're amazing!

The set-up.
Blender, banana, frozen fruit, ice, orange juice,
and my oversized mug (~750 mL)

Step 1: Banana
It adds a nice flavour and it's healthy!

Step 2: Frozen fruit
Frozen fruit gives the smoothie a nice icy texture. A variety of frozen fruit are usually available in grocery stores. Use whatever you want. Experiment. Use fresh fruit if you don't have frozen fruit.

Step 3: Ice
Makes it a bit more icy. This step is optional. I've been doing this recently to reduce the amount of frozen fruit needed as I'm running low.

Step 4: Juice
I use orange juice. You can substitute for apple, pineapple, mango, cranberry, or whatever your heart desires. I use enough to mostly cover the ingredients. The juice is needed to make it drink-like and also so that it can blend properly.

Step 5: Pulse
There are a lot of solids in the mixture. The pulse (P on the dial) spins the blades quickly for a short period of time to pulverize the solids and then allow them to settle back down onto the blade so that the blades don't run dry. I pulse for maybe a half dozen times until most of the big chunks have been broken down.

Step 6: Blend
I blend for about 10-15 seconds on the highest setting. The mixture should be sloshing around quite freely. If it gets stuck and the blades seem to be spinning without blending anything and the contents aren't moving around well, it's b/c there's an air bubble and you need more liquid.

The (blurry) result
I make the perfect amount every time :)

Yummy!
It disappears very fast.

When I ran out frozen fruit, I used fresh fruit. When I ran out of fresh fruit, I started making Kool-Aid slushees (Ice Blue Kool-Aid + ice). Fortunately when the Kool-Aid ran out, I had gotten more frozen fruit and orange juice :)


On Elsa's suggestion, I tried making a red bean drink with the blender. Ordinarily, you have to boil the red beans for like 2-3 hours (maybe more) until they become soft, so it's not something you can just do on a whim (like if you want red bean at midnight).

The idea here is to grind up the red beans so they cook faster. I blended the beans with a bit of water and it was kinda weird. Beans were just flying everywhere inside the jar. Then I boiled it in a pot for maybe 10-15 min. and added sugar. Added ice to cool it down (not supposed to put boiling water in the blender, at least my instruction manual said so) and re-blended to make an icy (I prefer red bean cold).

About to blend

It was kinda frothy after blending and not so icy as most of the ice melted

It was decent, not amazing. I prefer red beans in their whole form as opposed to their blended form. Plus, I think I over cooked the red beans a bit, so it was kinda mushy. My next experiment is to make a pot of red bean and blending just the liquid + ice and then adding the beans to the mix. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Got that deja vu feeling

For the report on this weekend, just look at last weekend, but replace "Eaton Centre" with "Yorkdale" and "9 hours" with "5 hours".

Quite windy on the beach today. I felt like a retard b/c I kept missing the ball. I'd like go to where the ball *should* go, but I'd be like 3 feet off :s. It was quite frustrating and I played like crap most of the day. Depressing really.

Made my world famous (everyone that has had it has loved it... all 1 of them) chicken noodle soup today. I tried to make my own noodles this time like I said I was going to, but I failed miserably. They were indeed noodle shaped, but tasted like shit. Just tasted like flour. I'm quite sure the problem was that I made them too thick. Next time I'll roll out the dough much thinner. Ya, so I just tried to cook them longer, which made it just bad. The outside was overcooked, while the inside was still undercooked. I conceded defeat and used fuseli instead.

L-1-VD

It's the magic code that causes people to just appear outside my cubicle. With my lead, the interns I started with quickly started using the Google chat in the internal version of Gmail. By quickly, I mean like the first day. I soon somehow became known as the "food god", as coined by Mark, as I was responsible for organizing people to go for lunch and dinner. As I was the one organizing it and my cubicle was in a rather convenient location, I started telling people to meet me at my cubicle or just outside of it so that we gathered everyone up before heading out to one of the cafeterias.

Organizing everyone for lunch and dinner quickly became difficult and time consuming. I would be messaging like 7 different people and then walking to some nearby ones to talk to other interns. It wasn't scalable.

Then came the era of status messages. In Google chat in Gmail, you can put in a custom status message that appears underneath your name. Michele had the idea of putting "L-1-VD" in my status message and that he'd do it too.

Lunch at 1 pm, meet at Vince's desk.

Once displayed, people will just magically appear outside my cubicle at the right time. Sometimes there is a bit of haggling, because of meetings or other things, but it's been found to be quite an effective means of spreading the word about meals and gathering people together.

The code has stuck now for like two and a half months and is used daily. There are several variations, L-12-VD -> Cafe 150, indicating that we will be going off the main campus to Cafe 150 for lunch, or L-12:45-VD -> Seville, to note that we will grab lunch to go and eat at a talk in Seville. There has been some attempts to change the code to make it more efficient, like removing "VD", as it is pretty much redundant since people always meet outside my cube, even when I'm not there :p. However, tradition is hard to break.

People don't really seem to understand this role that I play at Google and how much time it takes and how much negotiating there is.

One time I had as my status message:

"(On the phone) L-??? Adam is in charge, bug him"

I had like 7 chat windows open and there was a period of half an hour where I couldn't do any work.
  -- Adam after I put him in charge of organizing lunch one time

It's not always that bad, but we were going off the main campus for lunch that time (to one of the 4 cafeterias outside the main 3), so more organizing was required.

I like to think that all my peons have a say in when meals are in our GDemocracy, but sometimes a hard stance has to be taken, resulting in me being the GDictator, which I think is a term coined by the dissenting citizen, Mike Perrow. (I am trying to make it so that when you google "Mike Perrow", you get to that picture :))

It's been more difficult recently to organize everyone b/c several people have moved off the main campus across the street to a new building, plus Mark left, a key member of the original crowd. Today was probably the last of the "classic lunches" as this is my last week and people are leaving tomorrow for weddings and conferences. We even got Heidi out one last time.

D-6:30-VD

Places to eat and things to do in Toronto

This is for you Nusraat. I didn't have much time to do this (Jill is here). The most important section (food) is the most elaborate.

Places to eat:

• Over Easy (amazing breakfasts)
  Map


• Mel's Montreal Deli (good breafast)
  Map


• Richtree Market (used to be called Marche, really, really good food and cool environment, go for dinner)
  Map
  (there are several locations, but be careful, some of them are not the full restaurant, the one at BCE, listed here, is really nice)


• Korean Town (One block west of Bathurst and Bloor). I recommend Seoul Restaurant
  (Not sure if I got the address right or if it's called Seoul Sam Mi, the sign is this big orange sign on the south side of Bloor that says Seoul)
  Map


• Pho Hung (Good Vietnamese)
  Map


• Goldstone Noodle Restaurant (authentic Hong Kong style nooodle house - very good)
  Map


• Nataraj (Good Indian)
  Map


• Greek town


• Little Italy


• Sushi (all over the place, but several locations on Bloor between Bathurst and Spadina, some places in uptown have all you can eat sushi!)


• Caffe Demetre (AMAZING desserts)
  Map


• Greg's Ice Cream (very rich ice cream)
  Map


• Bubble tea
  • Ten Ren Tea
  • Tea Shop 168
  • Bubble Tease (I love the fresh and fruity's, which are like healthy slurpees)

Things to do:

• CN Tower


• Canada's Wonderland


• Science Museum


• Bata Shoe Museum (Jill liked it)


• Centre Island


• University of Toronto (ask Kevin for a tour)


• ROM (Royal Ontario Museum)


• African Lion Safari (Safari Zoo's are the best - take a rental car ;))


• Niagara Falls

Places to shop:

• Eaton Centre


• Yorkdale


• Yorkville (posh shopping)


• Bloor St. between University Ave. and Yonge St. (some flagship and posh stores)


• Queen St. between University Ave. and Spadina Ave. (Much Music is also there)


• Square One (in Mississauga)


• Chinese supermarkets (has good authentic Asian food products in a North American style supermarket! i.e. they're clean, don't smell, and accept credit card)
  • T & T Supermarket (the best supermarket ever!)
  • Big Land Farm Supermarket

Neon Blue-Green

I wake up and do my usual #2 this morning. I always look when I wipe. WHAT THE HELL?!!?!1!ONE!? WHY IS IT BRIGHT BLUE-GREEN?!!!?!? WHAT THE HELL DID I EAT?!?!?!?!!

OH! I had blue linguine for dinner the night before. It tasted perfectly normal. Now we know that there was just a ton of food colouring, which apparently doesn't get digested.

It's all out of my system now. I saw the last of it a couple hours ago in my last expunge.

I hate looking for housing

I find looking for housing to be a very frustrating, time-consuming, and stressful process. Damn it Google, you do search, why can't you do a good job of searching for housing??!?!?!?!?? Hmmm... maybe I should bring that up while I'm over there...

Anyways, here are some good things I got going for me to offset the lack of a place in San Fran:

Submitted my 3rd paper this year!

Started drinking really early this week - in the pub at 3 pm on Monday!!! Brendan took Inmar, Delbert, and I to O'Grady's to celebrate our recent paper submissions. I did however, do intoxicated coding until 10 pm at school :p. Hey, I was being productive and I knew that if I stopped to go home, I wouldn't do any more work. Plus I wasn't hungry b/c of the pub food.

Only 50 billion more papers to write this year.

Found the missing condom!!!

I was SO happy that I found my missing condom! I found it maybe 2 weeks ago (been meaning to blog about it, just kept forgetting). I put a bunch of batteries into one of the pockets on the side of my backpack meant to hold water bottles so that I could bring the batteries to school and put them in the recycling thing. I go to take out the batteries and I'm like, what's this? Who put garbage in here??!?!?! What?... MY CONDOM!!!!!!

The reason I like it so much is because it keeps my umbrella neat when not in use and it's cleaner to put in the side pocket of my backpack and also in my suitcase.

Chicken Noodle Soup... from scratch!

 

I love chicken noodle soup, but not the shit from a can. I mean like the stuff you get in a restaurant. I figured, how hard could it be to make it from scratch? Plus, it should be pretty healthy. Well, the answer is: pretty easy and pretty healthy. My first shot was about 2 weeks ago and I made it again last weekend.

Basically I just throw in 3 chicken breasts, onions, carrots, celery, and a couple black peppercorns into say 4L of water. Cook for like 2+ hours. Cut/rip up the chicken in the pot itself so as to not lose any precious juice. Throw in the noodles and simmer until done.

I cheated the first time and threw in a bouillon cube, though I'm not sure if cheating is the right word b/c I'm not convinced that it made it taste better, just gave it a little more colouring.

The second time, I added in more of the Italian herbs (from a shaker thingy), olive oil (mentioned in most recipes, but I just didn't have it the first time), and potatoes (inspired by my favourite Korean dish). The potatoes were definitely a nice touch. I love that the soup is so hardy. It's totally a meal in itself. More chewing than sipping and I almost needed a fork.

My next goal is to make my own noodles, then it'll be completely from scratch!

On a side note, I think I broke my camera while snowboarding (or should I say, falling while snowboarding). When I look in the view finder, it's always zoomed in, even though the camera's not zoomed in. It takes pictures fine, I just don't know what I'm taking a picture of. When I use the LCD, it looks fine, the problem is that that sucks up a lot of battery life and I can't use that when the batteries are low. My camera is also a couple years old so it sucks up batteries (AAs) pretty bad and my rechargeables aren't very good. I was thinking of getting new rechargeable batteries, but they're a little pricey and I'm likely going to be getting the hand-me-down camera from my family sometime soon (i.e. before I make my money's worth with the new batteries). For now, I have an extra set of batteries that I can keep charging and most of my pictures are just around the house anyways. For longer trips, I can just buy the photo batteries. Anyways, expect worse quality pictures from now on. At least I can now blame my photography on my camera :)

It's gotta be because of my youthful appearance and attractive personality

Not sure why I was chosen to give talks during the engineering high school recruitment. Not like I went to U of T for undergrad....

I guess I am the youngest ECE student in the group (Peter's in CS). I also like to think that I'm one of the most socially functional members as well. Plus, I don't go around barefoot, in slippers, or in sandals with socks.

So, several groups of prospective students came into the lab on Saturday and I gave a short talk and showed some demos. It was weird as I had to think back like 7 years and put myself in the shoes of a high school student. My goal was to convince them that ECE at the University of Toronto was the way to go.

I hit them from two angles. First, job prospects are good, "I myself went to Microsoft last summer and in 2 months I'll be going down to California to work for Google". That's just gold in terms of attracting students. Second, I made their jaws drop when I showed them my cool epitome videos.

Everything was a lie though. My situation isn't that typical and it's not b/c of U of T that I got my internships. It was Brendan's connection for MSR and my own application for Google. Plus, all the stuff I showed, none of them will be doing that even if they go into ECE. These students will never step foot in the labs that were shown to them.

Glad that Sarah was there to entertain me during the down time. She totally played up the part about going to U of T for ECE whereas I just talked about my group and my experience and didn't really say anything specific along the lines of "you should go here b/c of..." I showed her my slides and I can't believe that she hadn't seen my videos before. She's like been to my website and stuff and she was like she's seen images, but never looked at the videos. Afterwards, she was like "shit, epitomes are the best thing ever!" She even said "e-pit-o-me" instead of "epi-tome". She suddenly had much more respect for "e-pit-o-mes" :p

Not sure how many high school students I impressed, but the undergrad tour guides sure were. The tour guides directed the students and had to bring them from lab to lab and 2 tour guides with 2 separate groups asked about doing their thesis in my group next year after watching my presentation!

The best part of course was the free food. I'm all about the free food. I'm surprised that I ate it though b/c I have traditionally not eaten catered food. Not that I'm like above catered food, just that the pre-made sandwiches always have "stuff" in them that I don't like. Though these were pretty plain. I got the ham and all it had was lettuce and some white substance. I didn't ask what it was. Not sure if it was mayo or margarine, though I think it was the later. I ate it and it was good. I usually don't take either (esp. the former) with my sandwich. This is twice now (I had a wrap at the Hart House curling bonspiel). I'm making progress wrt my open mind project.

I need to kick it in gear. I was really gung-ho about it earlier in the year, but lately I haven't been working outside my comfort zone enough. I've just been doing the usual thing. Well, I guess I am going on a spontaneous vacation by myself (flight leaves for Seattle in 10 days). That's definitely something new! Plus I'm opening up more. I was gonna write a post about my new goals for the future (not really new year's resolutions b/c they're not just for this year and they kinda started before new year's), but I never got around to it. I should post it to remind me of my goals. If I recall, one of them is to stop procrastinating..... oops.