Last Day in Beijing

• I'm not ignoring you to be rude, it's because I don't understand you


• Snuck into the science museum and there was no one inside except a sleeping security guard. It was cool except that most things were turned off.


• Pissed that my camera ran out of battery


• Disappointed by the lack of animal cruelty at the Beijing Zoo


• Had dinner with "very handsome" and Don

One Day In Beijing

• girls here look at me and then blatantly look down to my feet and back up, am I dressed funny or something?


• broke my flip flop and limped around a UNESCO site


• gave up on trying to take the subway that hasn't been built yet, even though it's on the maps and ticket machines


• pointing is my main form of communication


• snuck onto a boat


• realized I was lost when I was in a tourist site and no one was around


• grabbed a pine cone for some cute girls


• hopped onto a bus without a clue where it was going, but lots of people were taking it, so it seemed like a good idea

Summer Travel Plans

June:  Hawaii
July:  Winnipeg
August:  China
September:  LA

Leaving tomorrow for Hawaii. Hopefully my gps device works this time...

6 weeks, 14 planes

Here's some of what you missed. I'll do a proper blog later with the rest of the photos.

A monkey riding a hippo!

Bears boxing!

 

The Asian squat!

As seen in a restaurant (Hint: this is not a fish)

Some other restaurant

Yet another restaurant

LEE KUM KEE!!!

Grandma's childhood home with almost all of her grandchildren

Disneyland!

Hong Kong, China, and Australia

Bye! See you in 2009!

Talk amongst yourselves.

Random observations

Actual flight path and door-to-door transportation as recorded by my GPS device
(This is just a screenshot b/c Google Maps couldn't handle that big of a file)

• The taxi driver was giving me career advice. He thought that I should learn Mandarin.


• Cabbie was talking to me in Cantonese. I hadn't heard that much Chinese for a long time.


• It's still harrowing walking through the airport metal detector carrying a cat without a leash or anything.


• Tiki didn't move or make a sound the entire flight. I don't think the woman on the aisle seat knew she was even there.


• During the initial announcement, the flight attendant tried to make a reference to the commercial where the guy thinks he's on a flight to Hawaii, but is actually on a flight to Winnipeg and goes "...going to Winnipeg..." No one laughed.


• When asked who was from Winnipeg, the entire flight went in an uproar. No one goes to Winnipeg at this time of the year unless they are from there.


• The games on the Zune are actually pretty fun.


• Upon arrival, the flight attendant neglected to notify us of the local time (one hour behind)


• When it was announced that the current temperature in Winnipeg was -27, it wasn't a big deal or Earth shattering news.


• While waiting for my luggage, I saw a woman drinking a slurpee. This is why Winnipeg is the slurpee capital of the world.


• I miss the feeling of the cold fresh air in your lungs.


• When driving here, if it's not a big road, you actually drive on top of snow since the roads aren't cleared right to the asphalt and salt doesn't work b/c it's too cold.


• There are 3 cats within arm's reach of me right now as I am sitting on my bed.


• Mi-Mi has reclaimed her spot on my bed and refuses to budge. Tiki is confused. Tiggy is indifferent.


• The fish is big now.


• The dog is big now.

Rediscovering Winnipeg

Strawberry picking

Ballet in the Park

Fringe Festival Improv Show

Ziplining group photo

Ziplining

Video I took while on the zipline

Wind turbines

More ziplining pictures and videos

People always ask me what there is to do in Winnipeg and I usually reply with "not much". That's a lie. On the surface, it's not a very exciting place, but as with every other place, it is just as much fun as you make it out to be. There are always interesting things to be found in your own backyard. My goal each time I'm back in Winnipeg is to do things that I haven't done before, whether it's watching a Manitoba Moose hockey game, seeing (hearing?) the WSO (Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra), going bumper boating, snowboarding in a valley, or going to Folklorama.

This trip has been no different, as you can tell from the pictures above. I've gone strawberry picking (I got two of those boxes and they were quickly demolished by my family), saw Ballet in the Park (had no idea that it's been going on for 30 years), went to the Fringe Festival and saw an improv show starring one of Jill's coworkers (it was hilarious! I haven't laughed so hard in a while), went ziplining in rural Manitoba, and saw the wind power generating farm.

Inefficient travelling

I loved how I was sitting at the gate waiting for my plane almost twice as long as the actual flight. I got to the airport almost 2 hours early because I had Tiki with me. Then, I found out that my flight was delayed by 2.5 hours (the incoming flight from New Brunswick was delayed due to weather). I ended up sitting at the gate for 4+ hours for a flight that was only 2.25 hours. Factor in the 45 min. it took to get to the airport (stalled car on the Gardiner backed up traffic for miles) and then home from the airport and the efficiency of flying is rather low.

Tiki did well on the flight despite being stuck in the carrier for 8 hours. She's only explored the upstairs a bit so far and still hasn't used the litter box or eaten anything. She's pretty calm and relaxed now just lying on my bed. Tiggy has shown interest in her, but is not impressed by her presence. He'll come around just like he did last time. The puppies are rather antsy. I only saw them in their cages. Toby was not impressed and started barking at me. Yoshi was just excited. I shut the lights and they quieted down. I didn't want to wake every one up. I'll play with them tomorrow and maybe introduce Tiki to the dog species.

Sheep for wheat?

Vince to Rob via Irish postcard: Sheep for wheat?

Anyone have ore for trade? I have brick.

Travels for this year

Here's my tentative travel plans for the year (New Year's to New Year's)
Winnipeg -> Toronto -> Banff -> Toronto -> Ireland -> Toronto -> Winnipeg -> Toronto -> New York -> Toronto -> Winnipeg -> Hong Kong

I'm leaving for Ireland with my family in a month. If you've been, let me know if you have any suggestions for where to go or what to see.

I did a carbon footprint thing online and I would be pretty well below average if it wasn't for flying...

I just added the "Cities I've Visited" application on facebook. It's pretty interesting and nice to keep track of where I've been. Apparently I tagged 194 cities in 24 countries, although that's cheating a bit because it includes suburbs within a city. I also pinned places that I only spent a few hours in (airport overnight layovers, cities I've drove through, but used their toilets, etc.)

Day trip to Banff from Toronto

I realized that it's totally possible to make a day trip to Banff to go snowboarding from Toronto! I did half of the day trip yesterday, I just missed out on the part about going back to Toronto :)

Here's the itinerary:

06:45 AM EST - Depart from Toronto airport
09:05 AM MST - Arrive at Calgary airport
10:00 AM MST - Leave Calgary airport in car rental
11:30 AM MST - Arrive in Banff
12:00 PM MST - Snowboarding! (on the slopes for the first run at Sunshine or Norquay)
04:30 PM MST - Leave snow hill (later if you do night skiing as well)
05:00 PM MST - Have brunner (breakfast/lunch/dinner) and relax in Banff
09:30 PM MST - Leave Banff
11:00 PM MST - Arrive at Calgary airport
12:00 AM MST - Depart from Calgary airport (no earlier flights that are possible)
06:00 AM EST - Arrive at Toronto airport

Total cost: ~$550 (including car rental and lift ticket, but not food)

It'd be slightly cheaper per person if there were multiple people to split the car rental. It's a shame that there's no flight at 7pm from Calgary, otherwise you'd be able to make it back to Toronto by 1am.

Happy Singles Appreciation Day!

In celebration of Singles Appreciation Day (SAD), I'm going to Banff to go snowboarding... errr... I mean a conference.

Kitten on a plane!

Tiki in her carrier in the airplane cabin

Tiki's about to go on her first flight!

Tiki is ready for take-off...

...asleep

So about a week and a half ago, I took Tiki onto the plane with me to Winnipeg. She flew in the cabin with me in her carrier under the seat in front of me. Her ticket was $50 each way. We were sitting in a specially designated seat in that if the cabin lost air pressure, there would be an extra oxygen mask (in addition to the 3 for the 3 seats in the row) that come down from the ceiling that reached all the way down to the floor! I think aside from that, the only thing special about our seat (window seat, closer to the back) was that there was enough space for her carrier (as opposed to the middle seat where there is usually a box in the way for the tv screen stuff I think. We flew WestJet b/c Air Canada don't allow pets in the cabin anymore (they stopped last year I think).

Tiki was great during the flight. She didn't make a sound and didn't try and get out of her carrier. She just slept the whole time, curled up in a ball. I think she was just scared, so she went into a defensive position and just kept wishing that the nightmare would end :p. I periodically pet her, but I wasn't allowed to take her out of the carrier and I was told to keep her carrier on the ground after I tried to put her carrier on my lap.

The weirdest thing about the trip was that I had to take her out of the carrier when I went through security since they had to scan the carrier and it would've have been a good idea for her to be in it when that happened :p. It was kinda strange walking through the metal detector holding a kitten! I didn't have her on leash, so I had to just hope that she wouldn't struggle and jump out of my arms. Again, I think she was just scared, so she was basically a stuffed animal and didn't move. Luckily, we didn't beep, so we didn't have to endure any additional scrutiny.

Tiki's doing great here now. She likes the extra space to roam around, but still mostly follows me around. She's made my room her home base, much to Mi-Mi's chagrin, as it was previously her main sleeping quarters while I am here. Tiki and Tiggy get along quite well now, it took a few days, but they're fine together now. No unforced cuddling yet, but they still have another week and a half or so to work that out. Mi-Mi does not like the new addition at all and Tiki growls and hisses at her in return. The girls fight over me :p

Oh, and I'm up at 4am b/c I'm waiting for my laundry to finish since Mi-Mi peed on my bed again, just like old times... Fortunately, my pillow was spared this time.

Why I haven't been blogging

Hint: It starts with "L" and rhymes with "crazy"

I had a backlog of posts that I wanted to post and I didn't want to post new posts until I had posted these posts for fear that if I didn't post them, I'd never get around to posting them and they really needed to be posted, so due to my laziness and this posting mentality, all posting of posts was halted, and now to catch up, I'm posting a single post that summarizes all the posts that I wanted to post, and because of the diversity of topics in this post, I think there are more labels on this post than any other post that I've posted before. Post.

I have however, been keeping my delicious and picasaweb up to date, and those are always good if you want to check up on what I've been up to.

Here are the posts that you missed from the last 3 months or so:

iCat

• iCat backwards is taci, but iKitty, or iKit, for short, backwards is Tiki!


• I got her off of Craig's List and she's much cuter than your cat, dog, hamster, mouse, budgie, fish, snake, chinchilla, emu, baby, etc. :)

I've literally posted hundreds of photos of Tiki (737 as of this posting). I upload new pics as I download them from my camera (about weekly or bi-weekly).

Volleyball

Toronto Warriors 9-man Volleyball (San Francisco tournament pictures: here and here)


Coed Volleyball Intramurals


Men's Volleyball Intramurals

FaceDown

A program I made to download photos from facebook

Tribal Wars

I have a lot more free time since quitting this game

New TV show obsessions

(I didn't find this funny until I realized that Colbert was a fake character, at first, I just thought he was an idiot)




(I liked the video game)

Toilet Training.... my cat

Hint: it ends in a stand-off between a cat refusing to use the toilet and me fearing that she'll use my pillow as her new litter box

I've been tying garbage bags and shoelaces wrong this whole time

I recently discovered that knots are really cool (and useful!) I collected my findings on the most useful knots into a single illustrated document.


Real-life practical uses for the taut-line hitch, timber hitch, clove hitch, buntline hitch, sheet bend, and others

Happy 2nd (Real) Blogoversary!

I totally forgot about this (Oct. 14). Maybe I'll do a special post over the holidays about my blog, not that I've written too much here since the 3rd Blogoversary...