Backsliding

I am carnivore! Hear me roar! MEOW! Okay, so maybe I’m not a raging meat-eater. I’m more of a fledging carnivore now. You can say that I ate my “flexitarian” ideals this week.

Hang on a second… What the hell is a flexitarian? That my dear friends, is a “flexible vegetarian.” You know, that thing that I’ve been since July.

Last summer my niece decided to become vegetarian. I was inspired to do the same. My last vegetarian experience was in high school. I went for 6 weeks without meat. I finally quit because I was tired of making my own meals.

I figured that now that I was older, and that I cooked for myself all the time anyways, that I could probably handle doing the veggie thing. I posted that I was going to become a veggiesaurus on Facebook and was immediately mocked by everyone I knew, but I was determined to prove them all wrong.

My vegetarian resolution lasted 12 hours.

The very next day I was invited to a group lunch at work. I was eager to meet my colleagues and agreed. Except that our meal was being ordered from St-Hubert’s… Which had no vegetarian options available. I certainly didn’t want to make a fuss, so I just shut my mouth and gnawed away on my chicken bones.

Later that night I did some research on vegetarianism, etc. and I came across the term, “Flexitarian” which meant that you consciously made the attempt to eat mainly vegetarian dishes, but could eat meat too. My personal stance became, “I shall eat only vegetarian in my apartment but will eat meat when I go to restaurants, etc.”

Honestly, this method worked really well. I’ve bought probably less than $50 worth of meat in the past 6 months and I’ve learned how to cook a wide variety of other veggie dishes.

However, there comes a point when you just can’t face another bowl of lentils! You can only cook beans in so many ways! You just cannot endure any more cheese! (Surprisingly, I didn’t eat that much tofu – although I did find an amazing tofu parmigana recipe!)

This past week I finally gave up and started buying meat. I have missed the variety of textures and flavours that meat has to offer. I also have missed using my recipe books, most of which are focused on meat.

That being said, I vow to make an effort to cook vegetarian once a week. (And no, this declaration is not spurred on by the fact that I still have bags of dried beans and lentils in my cupboard. Really.)

Breakfast of blah

Ugh. I've tried eating oatmeal before and never liked it. This week because of the cold, I was inspired to try it again. It was another uber-fail. How can people consume the stuff? The taste isn't bad, but the texture is grotesque! It's like eating runny eggs mixed with snot. Normally I find the taste also unappealing, but I mixed my bowl with a tablespoon of peanut butter and that alleviated its grossness, but not enough to finish the entire bowl. So dear readers, I ask you what you'd suggest as a way of trying to improve a bowl of oatmeal? Besides you know, erasing it from existence in the first place.

Convenience food shocker

I'm embarassed and mildly revolted to have to admit that I'm eating, and even enjoying one of those Uncle Ben's Expressions dinners. (You know, the rice and meat in a bag?) Except for the fact that it's a bit salty, I'm enjoying it a great deal.

The only reason I bought it is because I still don't have a microwave in my new apartment, so I needed something I could heat up on a stove without too much effort.

Taking them all with me!

I think I tried to poison my parents and I last night. I made a kickass wonderful meal of chicken drumsticks, mashed potatoes, corn, carrots, and homemade bread. It was delicious! The only pain in the butt thing about it was that the chicken took a lot longer to cook than anticipated. We ended up microwaving the chicken just so it would cook faster.

Well, something must have gone wrong with the food. This morning I woke up feeling very ill. When my dad phoned later, apparently he had been feeling sick too. My mom just came home and admitted that she had suffered the same symptoms... We don't seem to have food poisoning since the symptoms passed very quickly, but given the evidence, I believe I shall throw out the leftover chicken.

I dub myself, "The Assassin Chef!"

Death of my tastebuds

Tonight, my mother made a cake. She decided to use a pre-made cake mix and packaged icing. The cake was delicious, but something went terrible wrong with the icing.

She used "Added Touch" vanilla flavoured icing. I could hear her in the kitchen griping about the icing being kind of weird - it wasn't whipping the way it should. She actually had to get a fork out and break apart the dry lumps.

When she went to get the cake from the cooling rack, I sneaked into the kitchen and swiped my finger in the icing bowl to get a quick treat. I started to run away from the scene of the crime, but that's when the taste in my mouth hit me.

Oh boy, something went wrong with that icing. Terribly wrong. With each step I took, the taste in my mouth got worse. It was like eating sour paint. I wasn't sure if it was just me, so I stopped my mom from putting the icing on the cake and took the icing out to my father to try. (I'd have offered it to my mom, but she has no sense of taste.) My dad was so revolted by the icing's taste that he actually spat it back into the bowl.

We suspect that the packaged icing had gone bad. I opened the second (unopened) package that my had left out, and it too had a terrible odor. Needless to say, the icing got thrown out (in the outside garbage - I couldn't stand the idea of having it sit in our kitchen garbage), and my mom ran out to buy some new icing.

The worst thing is that the taste lingered! Both my dad and I had to find something else to eat to get rid of the god awful flavour!

Taro soup sadness

One of my fave things to eat in Hong Kong was Taro/Sago soup. It's a soupy mixture of sago (tapioca pearls), taro root, and coconut milk. I remember watching Peggy making it once and it seemed really easy. I finally decided to make my own soup but couldn't remember how to make it, so I decided to frankenstein a pot of it by mixing a couple of recipes I found off the internet.

To make the soup, I had to search far and wide for the ingredients. I literally travelled to a small town about 1.5 hours away from Owen Sound to get the sago. Then this weekend while I was in Kitchener, I popped into an Asian grocery store to buy taro root. (Of course, it wasn't till I got into the store before I realized that I didn't even know what taro root looked like! I had to ask a random customer to point it out to me.)

Making the soup was a painful process.

Cooking the taro wasn't difficult, but chopping it up was. That damned root was hard! The sago turned obtained a glue-like consistency when I started cooking it. It took FOREVER to cook through. One of the recipes I was using also said that I had to drain and rinse the sago in cold water. When I did so, I promptly clogged my colander with the starchy glue stuff floating at the top of the pot. It took two colanders with multiple cleanings in between before I could finally rinse the sago properly.

Adding the taro and sago to the coconut soup base was easy. Now I have a large pot full of coconut milk, taro, and sago and it looks exactly the way I remember it! Unfortunately, it kinda tastes like crap. :( I added some honey to my current bowl, but now it tastes like bland chunky soup with a dash of honey.

I wish I knew how the Zhongsan Fishing Village restaurant made their sago soup - there was grapefruit in theirs and it was delicious!

So now I'm sitting here, trying to choke down my bowl of soup, simply because I refuse to throw it out. Next bowl, I'll try using regular white or brown sugar instead of honey.

If anyone else has made taro/sago soup before, can they offer their own recipe or suggestions on how to make it?

Sinification of my life

I've been totally geeking out on Asia for the past week or so. As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I've found a way to download Asian dramas on my laptop, so I've been devouring episodes of Taiwanese TV shows. I'm totally enthralled by them.

It's nice to be able to watch them and catch the various words I know in Chinese. I won't claim that I'm learning any new words, but I am learning different ways of using the words I've learned before. (e.g. This summer I learned the word "shi" which means "news/affairs". When watching my TV shows, I realized I can say something like "no affairs" and it'll roughly translate into "Nothing's the matter". So no one can claim that I'm not learning anything by watching TV. :))

By watching these TV shows, I'm also able to find their soundtracks on the web, so I've been listening to a lot of mandarin music too. It's a nice change from Western music and I find I can hear familiar vocabulary in the songs too.

Finally, all this Asian influence forced me to seek out a Chinese grocery store in Ottawa. My friend Cathy (who's originally from Hong Kong) took me to Unimart. It was just like shopping back in Hong Kong! I was so excited to be able to buy steamed buns and BBQ pork! I was like a little kid in the candy store. We're going to try to make these grocery trips into weekly outings.

Anyways, that's how I'm sinifying my life right now.

Expensive bread

Last night I dragged Mel out for bubble tea at Sweet Dreams. On their menu they have a "Taiwanese sponge toast" dessert thing. It described it as Taiwanese sponge toast - crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. It could be covered with a variety of toppings. I ended up ordering a portion with peanut butter on top.

The result? I paid $2.99 for an extra-thick slice of regular bread with melted peanut butter on top. Seriously - except for its size, there was no difference between the so-called "toast" that I ordered and regular white bread. I was bitter.

A pleasant day indeed

Hoorah! I managed to guilt my mom and dad into coming to visit me this Saturday. ("I miss you guys!") Suckers. Little did they know, I did it all for free lunch and help with Christmas shopping. LOL. Just joking.

We had a terrific time together. My dad was dropped off at Chapters as usual. My mom felt guilty about leaving him there all day, but Melanie pointed out, "John? Bored by being at Chapters all day? Hell, he's probably so happy he's doing snow angels!" This was greatly amusing.

We girls ended up tromping down to Fairview Mall do try to get all of our shopping for the people living up North done. Since Mel had hurt her knee and was on crutches, mom and I got her a wheelchair for our shopping expedition. Wow! I think I need to go shopping with people in wheelchairs more often. I was pushing Mel around and we had people constantly leaping out of the way in the aisles. It was fantastic! This was espcially amazing since it's Christmas time and a Saturday - the mall was busier than normal and we still had great luck.

There were only two times when we had issues. Once, a couple of teenie-boppers accidentally hit Mel's leg causing her to yelp and her leg to spasm. You could tell the girls felt bad, but what could they do? The second time was my own fault. I wheeled Mel into the elevator and while I was trying to manoeuvre her inside it, I accidentally knocked her foot on the wall. Whoops. She forgave me though, so life was good.

Possibly the most shocking part of the day was dinner. My mom actually suggested we go to Cameron's Seafood Restaurant again! My mom did! My mom! Holy crap! I swear my jaw nearly hit the ground. Despite my surprise, I jumped on the chance. We met up with Scott at the restaurant and had another amazing meal. (My sibling wasn't too keen on the chinese brocoli though.) I had a great conversation with our waitress - I had ordered our rice in Cantonese (at my dad's badgering), only to find out our waitress spoke Mandarin. So we chatted for a few minutes. She was very impressed, and I was very pleased with her being impressed. :)

Afterwards my parents took me grocery shopping quickly and then we returned to my house. I had been excited to go back home, because Bryan had been gone the night before and I assumed he was gone all weekend. Alas, twas not meant to be. In fact, not only was he home, but his friend had moved in too. Damn. So now I'm crabbed out and keep catching myself deliberately finding reasons to be annoyed with them. Not that they've done anything (well, Bryan did blast his music for awhile, but that's nothing new). In fact, the house is a lot prettier now that the new guy had moved in. He's got all kinds of shiny cookware, garbage can, etc. I'm a little shocked - first of all, I can't believe Bryan has a friend who's so tidy, and secondly, how the hell can a student afford all this stuff? Dad? Never complain about moving me around ever again - this guy brought a huge TV, a couch, microwave, plates, etc, etc, etc. Egads!

Anyways, Agnes returned home and she brought me a gift! The recipe for her mom's apple cake! It's funny to read the recipe because it's translated from Polish, and her mom makes it from memory without measuring stuff. So when I read "1 cup of flour," she means 1 coffee mug of flour. :) (She even included that little explanation on the side of the recipe. LOL) I can't wait to try to make this baby! I seemed to be anxious to bake anything, because I ended up also baking a quick batch of shortbread cookies. They are very tasty.

The name is Bond, James Bond.

I'm pleased with myself. I made homemade tea biscuits for the first time yesterday. Err, I guess I should say that I made the tea biscuits correctly for the first time. (The first time I tried making them, I accidentally used baking soda instead of baking powder... They were inedible.) I didn't know how much/little the dough would rise though, so my biscuits ended up being ridiculously tiny. (They look like little discs.) Oh well, now I know for next time.

I've had a pleasant few last days. Most of my classes are done now. I have two on Monday and then I'm done for the term. My final History seminar was especially fun. I was in charge of leading the discussion... Well, procrastination ended up striking and I didn't finish doing the readings for it till about an hour before the class began. :) We ended up having a good conversation though - we got on to a lot of tangents but that was good because it meant I didn't have to talk as much. :)

Yesterday Stacy and I went for some more apartment hunting. The one apartment seemed nice, but the roommates were totally not a good match for us. They were kind of ditzy and you could tell they'd party a lot. The second place was an absolute ghetto. I have low standards, but not THAT low! The first thing we saw upon walking into the apartment was a mountain of empty old pop cans (at least 100). Next! The final place we saw yesterday was really nice but too too expensive. Oh well.

Our plan had been to go see Casino Royale last night. Unfortunately the bus was about 15 minutes slow, so by the time we arrived at the theatre, the movie was sold out. We ended up bumming around the mall which was nice - neither of us get off campus as much as we should. I ended up phoning my pal Victoria and seeing if she wanted to come and see the 10 o'clock show with us. She agreed and then we went!

Casino Royale (the new James Bond flick) was so much better than I anticipated. I heard lots of good things about it, but I honestly did not expect it to be THAT good! There were NO gadgets in the movie, the dialogue was witty without wanting to roll your eyes, and the action sequences were (as one newspaper put it) "gritty!" Can you tell that I loved it?

I was especially amused by Victoria's reactions to the movie - she hadn't seen a James Bond movie before, and she has become a total convert to them. LOL. She was freaking out the entire time. But it was totally warranted. The film kicked ass!

Tonight's the "RAGNES Bash" - a bunch of us are headed out to Mongolian Grill for dinner and drinks to celebrate Agnes', Rana's, and my birthdays. (Our b-days were Nov 22, 29, and 24 respectively.) I intend to have a good time. :)

Papers = done!

Woot! I just finished the last of my papers! It was technically due this morning at 10:30 in class, but the prof hangs around the school until 10pm, so that's the real deadline. I should probably mention this paper was a book review... And that I finished the book this morning at 8:30am. And that I wrote the entire paper today.

It was harder writing about this book in comparison to my last one. This book was about global modern slavery whereas my last one was about genocide. My biggest problem with this current book is that it inspired no passion in me. I didn't have the sudden urge to get up and fight for the rights of slaves. The book I read on genocide though - that one actually made me cry and feel angry, etc. etc.

Anyways... Now I have to cram down a bunch of readings for my history seminar on Wednesday (err, the one that I'm leading), then I'll be finished for the term! YAY!

On to other news... I'm a HAG! I turned 23 years old on Friday! LOL. I actually don't care about my age - heck, I didn't even realize that I was going to be 23 until my mom mentioned it. I mean, I knew it was my birthday, but I never really associated myself with a new age.

To celebrate my birthday, my parents came down to Waterloo (actually they came down because my dad had an optometrist appointment, but I'm sure they would have come down on the weekend anyways). We had lunch and then I dragged my father off to a public seminar on Canada-Taiwan relations. The seminar wasn't what I was expecting - it was mainly a lot of statistics, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Afterwards, we met up with my mother and sibling. Melanie managed to tear something in her knee so that she has to wear a brace and hobble around on crutches. I accused her of trying to steal my birthday thunder. Tee hee.

Anyways, after a short argument, and an attempt by myself to strangle my mother with my scarf, we all went to Cameron's Seafood Restaurant in Kitchener. SO FREAKING DELICIOUS! They had REAL Hong Kong style BBQ Pork!!! I honestly nearly wept with happiness. It was so delicious! Mel, dad, and I shared a variety of dishes while mom kept to her bland-Canadian-style Chinese food. So sad. Amusingly, Mel badgered me into ordering a veggie dish... But to her dismay, it came with deep-fried tofu that I absolutely adore... But she did not. However, I also experienced some dismay in that the dish also came with chinese mushrooms and various other fungi. I'm not too into mold thanks very much.

The rest of my weekend passed relatively quietly. I spent all of Saturday doing laundry and procrastinating on my paper, and the procrastination continued on Sunday as well.

Anyways, I'm starving and am going to go die now. Bye!

Gourmet feast

Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! I finally subletted my room! Yay! That's right! This weekend I showed the house to two groups and within 3 hours, one of the groups had returned and we haggled out a price and signed stuff and now I'm free of this hell hole! If you can't guess, I'm rather ecstatic by this turn of events.

Not much to report lately. My cold knocked me on my ass again - I keep having relapses. On November 5th, some students vandalized the school. I've never seen the movie, but it was a reference to something from the movie, "V for Vendetta." I have NO idea how the students accomplished this, but I thought it was pretty damned impressive. :)

On Saturday evening, I ventured out to Melanie's to sleep there overnight. In exchange, I had to cook Mel and Scott an authentic chinese meal. Well boy did I go crazy! I made not only Chinese, but Korean, and Thai as well! Check out my gourmet meal! In the picture you can see my attempt at making Mapo Dofu (a recipe Peggy taught me but that I haven't tried to make until now... It turned out okay - it wasn't as "wet" as it should have been... And I don't think I used the right sauce on it), Fried Chicken with Almonds (one of my fave Thai dishes), HOMEMADE springrolls (see below for a story about THOSE), and Sesame Asparagus. Frickin' AMAZING man! Mel was my grunt worker (aka chopping girl) and I did all the cooking.

As for the spring rolls... It's been awhile since I deep fried anything... And when I was in Hong Kong, I used chopsticks to do all my stir frying. Well. I goofed. I had the oil too hot, so when I put my first spring roll in, it immediately began to burned - oil was flying all over the place. I had to yank the pot off the stove, but with the spring roll still in it, the oil continued to sputter all over my arm. I was freaking out from the pain, and because the spring roll was turning from pasty white, to tan, to charcoal. I finally got a fork and managed to toss the damned thing out of the pot. The end result of it is below...



Mel and Scott could not stop laughing at this poor pathetic excuse for food. It honestly looked like a turd sitting on the counter. LOL.

Except for the spring roll incident, the meal was excellent. Scott also finally used his spicy peanut oil that I recommended to him. It was funny because before he had tested it, he got some on his finger and without thinking, licked it off. He immediately turned red and began coughing. Hee hee. He can't say I didn't warn him!

Anyways, that's about it. Agnes and I rented The Lakehouse tonight (Keanu? Can I have your babies?) Prior to watching it though, I decided to try a recipe from my health magazine. It was supposed to be this icy banana/chocolate smoothee thingie (consisting of chocolate soy milk, cocoa, and bananas, mixed in a blender). Well. It was banana-y. That's about all I can say. LOL. Agnes took a bite and then stopped and watched as I ate it. It's kind of indescribable.... But I ate mine anyways - it was healthy. Not bad... But no flavour beyond the bananas. LOL

Finally alone!

I had a good weekend. Nothing terribly exciting ocurred, but it was enjoyable. I think the thing thing I enjoyed the most was having the house to myself - my dad had to work and my mom went with him so she could work on her van. This has been my first time since I've returned to Canada that I've had the house to myself.

So how did I take advantage of this time? I cleaned. And cooked. Does that seem as backwards to you as it does to me??? Despite what this sounds like, I enjoyed doing this. (Maybe I enjoyed the fact that I knew my parents wouldn't be home to mess it up within 5 minutes. Hee hee.) I operated for most of the morning on a couple of donuts my mom had bought, and by 2pm, I realized I was starving, so I ran over to A&W to buy some fast food.

For dinner I made the executive decision to have kebobs for dinner. I cannot recall ever seeing my family make kebobs, so I thought I'd rectify the situation. By the time my parents came home, I had all of the meat cut up (beef, chicken, and pork) as well as our veggies. (Green/orange pepper, zuchinni, and onions. I forgot the stupid cherry tomatoes in the fridge!) Dinner went very well! There were some good lessons learned:

• Don't bother including dad in the kebob eating experience - he ended up snagging an uncut piece of pork chop and tossing it on the BBQ. Buttmunch!


• Soak your skewers for longer than 2 hours. I've heard 24 hours mentioned before...


• Make sure you create some kind of system so you'll remember who's kebobs are who's. Mom and I could only tell after we bit into them - hers were honey garlic and mine were hot and spicy.

I've discovered that I've become obsessive compulsive about going to Blockbuster on the weekends. Even if I'm not in the mood to see a film, I ALWAYS go there! And I never come out empty handed! I ended up renting Evolution, and Legally Blonde.

I don't recall what I did on Sunday, but it was more of the same. I played on the computer a lot... I remember that much. Oh yeah, and I went grocery shopping. I'm attempting to plan my dinners each week. Fridge space in my new apartment is at a premium! (As a matter of fact, I'll be bringing in ANOTHER mini-fridge in order to alleviate some of the problems.) Tonight my plan is to make pad thai... Hopefully it won't be soggy like the past few times.

Anyways, as usual I'm at work, so I'm gonna skidaddle!

Great office!

Greets y'all!

I had a fabulous weekend. I'm enjoying my summer - it's not nearly as exciting as Hong Kong was, but I have no reason to complain. I'm often relaxed, and I enjoy my weekends even if I didn't do anything on them.

Case in point: This Friday I met with my Academic advisor. As you may recall, I had been freaking out because I thought I might not have the necessary courses to graduate university. I finally managed to get my advisor on the phone and was trying to negotiate a later meeting time on a Thursday to come meet her when she suddenly asked me Where I was working for the summer. I told her that I was at Port Elgin, and suddenly she claims, "I'm from Port Elgin!" It turns out that she works in Waterloo Tuesdays to Thursdays, and from Friday to Monday, she works in Port Elgin. How cool is that? We decided to meet at the Tim Horton's after work so I could discuss my courses.

I had a really good talk with her. She figured out all the courses I needed to graduate, and gave me suggestions on which ones I should or shouldn't take. (For example, I wanted to take a 3rd year history course on Canada in World Affairs, and she suggested I avoid it because she knows I have trouble managing work loads.) So she was very helpful that respect.

I also asked her advice on getting my Masters degree. She named a few places to help me get my search started. Amusingly, she started by recommending the London School of Economics in downtown London, England. She described it as, "A not inexpensive school." The moment I heard London, I then asked, "Do you have any other recommendations for schools in Canada?" (I later searched the LSE and found out that it's tuition was $24,000 CANADIAN dollars! That's only tuition! Nevermind living expenses etcetera. I just about choked.)

On the way to Owen Sound, I told my mom that I would drive the van. As most of you know, I loathe driving. I'm a terrible driver and am extremely paranoid. But I have to admit that it would be nice to not be at the mercy of my parents any more. I just mainly need to practice in order to gain more confidence. My mother later told me that she had been slightly nervous the entire way. (With one or two exceptions, I had done a damn good job thanks very much!)

The next day we all headed down to Waterloo again so I could sign my lease. I got to see Agnes again. That was cool. Turns out the lucky wench gets to go back to France! Our reunion was short and sweet, and the best part was that we've already chosen which rooms we get.

One room is much larger than the other, but the small room is a lot brighter instead. Agnes asked which one I wanted, and I mumbled something to the effect of, "Well of course I want the bigger one," to which she replied, "Good! Because I want the bright one!" I think that's when I had to pick my jaw up off the ground and laugh. That was a lot easier than anticipated. I'll now have a dark blue room that's fairly large and has a HUGE closet. (Peggy - it's bigger than the closet we shared in Hong Kong!)

After signing the lease, my mom, dad an I left again. Mom and I went for a shopping spree during which I spent a stupid amount of money. I feel bad about it in retrospect - I should have waited for a sale, because god knows the stores I shop at have sales every month practically. But I'm afraid that if I take my stuff back, I won't be able to find it again - and I got some niiiiice stuff to wear. I'll have to inspect my clothes again - maybe I will end up returning some stuff after all.

After a not-so-quick stop at the Crossroads Restaurant buffet, we returned home. I stayed up late surfing the net and reading.

The next day was uneventful like normal. I baked some "Maple Pecan Butter Balls" and had a nap before going grocery shopping and returning to Port Elgin. We finished the day off by going for a walk along the water in Port Elgin. I pretended to be a photographer and snapped a bunch of photos. The one displayed it my favourite - it's my mom and dad walking into the sun.

I also finally snapped some photos of the students who work in my building. You can check them out here.

Mmm, wings!

On Wednesday several co-ops organized a trip to Kincardine to go to a pub for chicken wings. Check out the photos here. It was a lot of fun. The best part was getting to meet students from other parts of the Bruce Site. Unfortunately the way we ended up sitting down made it so that I was sitting with the people I normally talk to, but I got to chat with some new students too.

Tao and I ended up ordering 30 wings and sharing them (we just wanted the different types of sauces). I caught the bill this time, so we're even from our first wing night out. We ended up giving Azza, a co-op student from Halifax a ride home.

Oh. I don't remember if I've mentioned it or not, but my new roommate has also finally arrived. Her name is Lauda and she's from Costa Rica. She's currently a volunteer at the Southhampton Museum. She seems super nice and friendly. She chats a lot. And her favourite word is "sick" (e.g. "That's so sick!" - meaning "cool")

I don't really know what else to say about her. She likes spicy food. And eating tripe. (I actually got to try some of her tripe last night - it was kind of bland and reminded me of some of the mushrooms I ate while in Asia.) Is it true that tripe is cow stomach lining? Whatever. It was neither bad nor world changing.

The co-ops at work have been harassing me. I get up at 5:40am everyday and am at work by about 6:50am. Well, every Thursday night, one of the restaurants in Port Elgin gets transformed into a bar/club. Well, this "transformation" doesn't happen until 10pm! Rishi and Sunny have been harassing me to go with them to the club. Don't get me wrong, I totally want to go, but I'm usually in bed by 10! I can't go out until 2am (like Rishi - and he has an hour drive to get home afterwards too!) and get up at work at the regular time. I feel bad about constantly saying no, but at least I'm sticking to my guns and not giving in. (Peer pressure is a pain.)

Waste of time

For the weekend I ventured home. It was fun, but unfortunately I felt stressed out because I still had final essays from Hong Kong due. I therefore spent the weekend procrastinating on them but enjoying myself otherwise. I don't recall exactly what I did, but I do recall watching several movies.

We also went to a breakfast buffet that sucked. There was very little food available, it was mostly cold and everytime something tasty did come out, everyone rushed for it and they'd run out! The only good thing about the restaurant was it's location. It was in a beautiful area called Walter's Falls. As you can see from the picture, it's in the middle of the countryside and is very picturesque.

The next week at work was the beginning of the grind. I can't tell you what I did on each day because they all blurred together. In other words, I'm being a total office grunt worker. I do all the jobs no one has the time/will to do. For example, for the past 2 weeks I've been organizing binders.

I do have one other task, and that's to update a Process Manual for my section. Essentially the task is to get all the information that's in my coworkers' heads on to paper. This sounds easy, but my coworkers are forever busy and thus difficult to tackle.

Other bonuses to working at the Bruce is the large number of students. There are a crazy number of co-op and summer students here on site. Only 3 of them are in my building, but we still have a blast. Right now the students in my building and I are having email wars and teasing each other. Right now we've lowered ourselves to composing poems making fun of each others' towns. Yeah. In my defence: this is a horribly boring job.

We haven't done much as a group yet. On Thursday Tao and I tried inviting everyone out for wings at a restaurant in Port Elgin. He and I were the only ones to show up. Apparently everyone else went to the restaurant later that night (at 10pm it turns into a bar). I didn't go because hell! I'm in bed by 10pm!

On Friday we did manage to get together for pizza. Apparently at one of the main buildings on site, the students there order pizza every Friday. Therefore we decided to partake in the bounty. Sadly when we got there, the cafeteria was so full that we had to get separate tables, so I ended up sitting with the friends I normally do. Oh well. Unfortunately lunch took twice as long as it should have. I ended up being half an hour late getting back to work.

This past weekend was Victoria Day Weekend, meaning we got an extra day off. This holiday is typically celebrated by drinking large amounts of alcohol and going to the beach to party. This is because this time of year usually has beautiful and warm weather. This was not the case this year. Instead it was raining, cold, and miserable. It actually snowed in a few places!

The happiest thing about this weekend was Friday night. I logged on the internet and there was Peggy, my roommate from Taiwan! I finally got to use my digital camera. I don't know how long we chatted for because I was tired, but I had a lot of fun. She told me about her trip to Yunnan - apparently I missed some of the scariest toilets in all of Asia. :)

Luckily the bad weather didn't bother me (ignore the fact that I had to turn on the heat in my house to stay warm). Instead I relaxed and did NOTHING all weekend. Well, not nothing. On Saturday my parents and I went down to Waterloo so I could go check out an apartment. The trip was a bit of a waste because we only looked at the one apartment. I did however get a haircut though. And finally buy a copy of the magazine The Economist, and buy a map of the world. (It was ridiculously hard finding the latter two objects.) We ended up meeting my sister and her fiancee for dinner before going home. (FYI: Seafood and spaghetti sauce don't go well together.)

On Sunday I felt the strange need to bake. Oh my gosh. I ended up being in the kitchen for over 4 hours! I baked three kinds of cookies (including some chocolate coconut drops) and made some evil peanut butter chocolate bar thingie. (Honestly, if you ate more than 3 centimeters of the peanut butter thing, you'd feel sick from the amount of sugar in it... Of course, this didn't stop me from eating it. :))

On top of the baking, I also cooked dinner for my parents. I had bought a jar of BBQ pork sauce. I had been hoping it would taste like Hong Kong BBQ pork, but sadly it didn't. :( It was edible, but very disappointing when you had been hoping for something else. My parents were likewise unimpressed.

Since Monday was the actual Holiday, there was nothing to do but laze around. My mom and I ended up watching a movie. I spent the rest of the day watching a TV series I've started downloading, Veronica Mars.

When my parents finally drove me back to my apartment in Port Elgin, I got to meet my landlady's boyfriend as well as my new roommate/flatmate. The flatmate's name is Lauda, she's from Costa Rica. I've only had the one night to get to know her, but so far I'm pretty pleased. She's super friendly and seems pretty funny. She's a Masters student doing an internship at a museum in the town next to Port Elgin.

Unfortunately because there were so many people in the apartment when my parents dropped me off, they fled pretty quickly... And it was about 5-10 minutes after they left that I realized I had forgotten my laptop in the van. I tried phoning their cell phones but they didn't have them turned on. What's the point of a cell if it's never on? Luckily for me, when they returned home, they got my message and were kind enough to turn around and drive it back. (It's a 40 minute drive one way.)

The plan for tonight is to go home, drop my stuff off quickly, and then go over to the town of Kincardine for wings with some students. I'm pretty exhausted though because I stayed up late last night reading a book. I hope I can survive the day at work because I'm falling asleep already.

Return to Canada

It's been exactly 20 days since I left Hong Kong. I can't believe how little time has passed. It feels like so long ago since I was there. Once in awhile, while sitting at my desk, or doing a random task, I suddenly have a flashback to Hong Kong. The sensation is both weird and oddly reassuring.

A lot has happened since I've returned, so I'll try to cover it all in one big post. :)

My idea of flying from Hong Kong to Korea to the United States to Canada was a bad one. The flight from Korea to America wasn't bad because there was no one in the seat beside me. People were very well behaved, and the crying children were far enough away not to bother me. The food was awesome on the flight as well. I ate lots of Korean spicy stuff that was wonderful.

Amusing anecdote: While on the plane, I saw an American a few seats in front of me trying to eat a noodle dish with chopsticks. Instead of slurping them up like normal Asians, he was lifting up an entire mess of them into the air and trying to dangle them down into his mouth. I had to force myself not to laugh.

Customs and immigration upon arrival in North America were relievingly boring. After that was complete, I was back in Canada, with my parents waiting eagerly at the arrivals gate. I was happy to see them. I think I was a little weirded out by seeing them. It felt like just yesterday I had been saying goodbye to them, and suddenly here I was again, saying hello.

Despite the fact that I was greasy from having travelled for over 24 hours, and jetlagged, we decided to grab dinner at the Bifteque. (A fancier restaurant in North America.) I spent the entire meal yapping about Hong Kong, and also trying to restrain myself from talking too much. I'm always afraid that I'll annoy people by talking about HK too much.

Amusing anecdote: While at the Bifteque, after deciding what we wanted to order, I nearly nearly nearly yelled out for a waiter in Cantonese. That was the freakiest feeling. I think that's when I realized I was really back in Canada - I had become so engrained with the culture in HK, I didn't realize what had become second nature to me.

After dinner we returned home to Owen Sound. I passed out in the back seat because I still had my cold, and I hadn't slept very well on the plane. I didn't wake up until we got home. I wish I could say something exciting happened, but nothing did. I tossed my bags into my room and attempted to sort through all the crap I collected during my travels.

The next day I just walked around Owen Sound getting reaquainted with the city. It was neat to walk around with a different viewpoint. There's one retirement home in the downtown area - I used to think it was so tall and neat... Now I look at it with derision. Tall? It's only 5 floors! That's so tiny! The town was amusing, but rather dreary to look at. None of the leaves on the trees had bloomed, so it was depressing a bit.

That evening I went to the town of Port Elgin. My mom had found me an apartment there for the summer, so I went to check it out. Within about 15 minutes of seeing the place I had given the guy his cheques.

The next day I went to Kitchener. The purpose of the visit was to go clothes shopping, since most of my clothes didn't fit well after being worn so much, stretched, and whatnot during my 8 months in HK. I had a good time despite being exhausted and sick the entire trip.

On the first night my mom and I decided we wanted to go have Chinese food. My sister took us to a Chinese buffet... This was my first time having "Chinese" food since I had come back from HOng Kong. Oh my God. It was hilarious. I kept laughing hysterically - there were only 2 dishes out of 20 that remotely resembled REAL Chinese food. Mom and Mel kept chuckling at my reactions.

Amusing anecdote: While sitting at the restaurant, I suddenly got all excited because I saw a guy coming in wearing a shirt with a Canadian flag on it. I was thinking, "Oooh! Look! Another Canadian!"... Then I remembered, "Oh yeah, I AM in Canada. Dumbass." I was so used to getting excited by seeing other Canadians during my travels that it was habit to keep an eye out for them.


After dinner, my sister took my mom and I over to her massage school. Then we walked downtown Kitchener. We stopped by a Chinese grocery store and I was all happy because I realized I could buy all kinds of dumplings and stuff when I go back to school. (They even have Barbeque Pork buns!!!) My mom was horrified by the foods I had to eat. Silly mom. We then stopped by the "Hong Kong Plaza" and as you can see, I had to snap a few photos.

After dinner, my mom and sister decided to go to the nearby casino. I didn't feel like going but they weren't about to drop me off first. Instead they drive to the Casino (getting lost in the process), and then LEAVE ME IN THE CAR while they went gambling! I was so frickin' tired I ended up sleeping (and it's a good thing too because it was cold cold cold. I used all their jackets/sweaters as blankets and slept while they were gone.

The next day was the shopping spree. I bought lots of stuff. It was so much fun being able to clothes shop! I wasn't able to buy anything while I was in HK because the clothes there are built for tiny little stick people who are half my height. So new clothes make me happy. Not much else happened that I can remember - we went out for breakfast and dinner, and then returned back to Owen Sound.