Welcoming package

I unexpectedly had to go to Montreal for the past four days for work. The Doctor who's taking over the program I'm working for asked for my help on some paperwork. I was asked on Tuesday and by Thursday I was in Montreal. I asked him for a couple of hotel recommendations and ended up booking a room at Le Roberval.

On my first night there, I crashed relatively early because I was exhausted. (Getting up for a 9am flight will do that to you.) At midnight though, I woke up for no apparent reason. Then I realized I was woken up by the sound of someone knocking on my door. I wasn't about to get out of bed and see who it was, so I ignored it and heard them leave.

Just as I was falling asleep again, the phone rang. It was the front desk. The woman on the phone asks me, "Hi there, did you hire an escort?" [Read: Prostitute - my hotel was close to the red light district.]

I'm like, "What? No."

The woman replies, "Oh, sorry." And then before she hangs up, I hear her saying to someone else, "A woman answered. You have the wrong room."

I managed to fall back asleep, but the next day I joked with the Doctor, thanking him for arranging the welcoming package to Montreal. :)

Truly an international city

I cannot believe how small this world can be. I was walking around Toronto's Eaton Centre a couple of weeks ago when I thought I recognized someone from my time in Hong Kong. I wasn't sure it was her though, so I called out, "Vris?" Lo and behold, the girl turns around and it IS Vris!

I met Vris through my friend Minnie when I was in HK. We didn't hang out all that much, but we did spend Chinese New Year's together with a bunch of other people while renting an apartment on Lantau island for a few days. She was super nice and fun to hang out with.

Prior to moving to Toronto, Minnie told me through Facebook that Vris was coming to Canada, to the University of Waterloo (where I studied!) for an exchange! The day that I saw her, she was in Toronto shopping with another former exchange student who apparently arrived in HK right after I left.

I just couldn't believe that I could run into someone from Hong Kong in the largest city in Canada! It's crazy!

Morning calm

The one thing I look forward to about going to work every is walking by Alexandra Park. There's nothing special about the place - it's just a regular city part.

What I enjoy about it is the people. It's close to Chinatown, so every morning there are little old Chinese men and women there doing their morning exercises. My absolute favourite moment though is watching the group doing Tai Chi on the baseball diamond. They look so serene going through their movements with the sun shining on them.

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.

Life changes

Wow! After nearly a two month drought, I'm back! With lots of news!

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I've been job hunting. Well, two weeks ago, I sent my resume to the University Health Network in Toronto at 4:17PM. 8 minutes later, I got an email asking me to come for the first round of interviews. Wow!

Later that night, I found out that my father had the day off, and he was kind enough to offer me a ride to Toronto. So off we rode so I could have an interview for an Administrative Coordinator position.

I wasn't quite sure how the interview went. Some questions went well, but the girl who was interviewing me (and whom I would be replacing) had the greatest poker face in the world, so I was never sure where my answers sat with her. She also told me more about the position itself. Essentially the Admin Coordinator role is responsible for running the National Canadian Research Training Program in Hepatitis C. That includes coordinating weekly web conferences, planning the annual meeting in Banff, and bookkeeping. Yikes!

The interview was on a Wednesday. On Thursday I got the call back to come in on Friday. This time the interview included the same girl as Wednesday as well as the current director of the program, a Dr. Heathcote. The interview was much more a "getting to know the personal side of you" kind of interview. I yammered on and on, all the while thinking, "Shut me up!"

Well, apparently my yammering worked. By the time I arrived home that night, there was an email offering me the job and could I please start on Tuesday? First interview Wednesday, second interview Friday, starting on Tuesday?! They apparently took me a little too literally when I said I could start immediately. Can we say slight panic? I had to pack, buy new clothes, etc. (The clothes were especially important since 3 of my last 4 workplaces were casual environments, so I had nothing to wear that was business casual!)

I kept joking that the planets were aligning with regards to this job. I sent the resume, got the interview within mere minutes, my dad could give me a ride (thus negating a 4 hour bus ride), I got the second interview, and then I got the offer! Yes, the planets aligned indeed!

Oh yeah, one other small problem with starting work on Tuesday. I have no place to live in Toronto. Hrm. This is when I called in favours. My friend from university, Stacy, was kind enough to offer me a place to crash for the first two nights, and my high school friend, Michelle, was nice enough to give up her bed too. (And I literally mean her bed: She doesn't go to bed till 3am whereas I have to be up and at work by 8:30am, so she chose to sleep on the living couch so she could continue to stay up late.)

So essentially I arrived in Toronto on Monday, got my transit passes, found my way to work, etc., and then I started the next day! I can't really tell you what my first week has been like - it has been crazy information overload! I was in training all week and so on. There's so much more to this job than I anticipated. I guess I'll just have to rise to the challenge!

Also, when I applied to this job, I didn't realize just how quite well known the program, or my boss, was! My supervisor (Dr. Heathcote) threw an annual socializing bash at her house on Thursday, and while I was going there with some of my coworkers, I found out that Dr. Heathcote is one of the top three, if not the most well known doctor in her field! Also, the liver clinic where the course is kind of based out of (I say "Kind of" because this is a national program) is also one of the foremost in its field. Yikes! Can we say intimidation factor???

Anyways, as I was saying, I spent my first week going to work and stressing. It probably wouldn't have been too bad, but then I'd come back to my friends' apartments and stress about housing too! I didn't realize how expensive Toronto housing was, and how difficult it would be to find a place! I called and saw a few, but they weren't the greatest, or they had already been rented!

But hooray for me, the planets aligned one more time! On Friday I was looking at apartments online. I half heartedly phoned a bunch to find out more information. I was generally in one of those, "Woe is me" moods - sad, intimidated, etc... The next morning I went to go see one of the apartments that I had made an appointment with.

PRETTY! I was salivating on the floor looking at the place! It's a basement apartment with only two windows but it's newly renovated (heck, they haven't even finished the place!) with its own set of laundry machines! It's so big compared to some of the other places I've seen! I left with the rental application and came back within an hour. I pretty much bullied the landlord into signing the lease (he wasn't going to sign anything till tomorrow) but we worked it out. So tomorrow, assuming the credit he runs on me goes well, I'll move into my new place! (Ignore the fact that it's unfurnished for now - I have a sleeping bag and I went home last night and gathered a plate, frying pan, etc.)

So that's my life in a nutshell. Tomorrow I have an orientation session and then the real work begins! I shall endeavor to update more often now that I have a job and am living in the big city again. :)

I see dead people

My cat totally creeped me out last night. We were sitting on the couch, me watching a movie, her being petted by me, totally content and relaxed with each other. Suddenly, she launches upwards on point, growls deep down in her chest, and stares at something just over my left shoulder.

I'm at home by myself, it's night, and my back is to the empty hallway. I was almost afraid to turn around because I half way expected some burglar to be standing there. But there wasn't. There was nothing at all behind me, but the cat was still staring fixedly on nothing.

Makes you wonder if animals can sense spirits after all...

50 Facts that Should Change the World

Found this interesting link on the web today: 50 Facts That Should Change The World. Some were scary, some were sad.

The only facts that I urge you not to take too seriously are the ones that are criminal in nature (especially the ones that mention the developing world). E.g. the child soldiers fact - no one can truly know how many child soldiers there are. The number, 300000, appeared in literature somewhere and no one has been able to figure out its origins. So the numbers could be higher or lower.

Ghost busters

Several weeks ago the doorbell to our apartment rang. I answered the door to find two young guys around my age standing there. They introduced themselves, saying they were from Pennsylvania and were from the TV show, "Ghostly Encounters." (I had never heard of it.) The one fellow explained that my home town was apparently as a "hot spot" for ghost stories and they wanted to know if I, or anyone I knew, had ever experienced an encounter from a non-earthly being.

Throughout this whole spiel, I was nodding like an idiot. Sure I don't really believe in ghosts, but a TV show (which I have heard of) actually did recently come to Owen Sound to do a feature on an older building in our town, the Billy Bishop Museum. So I didn't really question that these guys were who they said they were.

After they asked me about any potential "encounters," the dude doing all the talking started laughing. It turns out that they were actually representing Foster Parents Plan and were looking for people to sponsor needy children. They laughed when I explained why I didn't question their cover story.

But still, that conversation was beyond strange. Their whole joke about being ghost hunters took about 3-4 minutes to get through. So what was the point? It was so random.

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?

Please stand by: We are suffering technical difficulties

Bwahahahaaa. I'm sitting here watching CBC news right now. The commercials just ended and the weather forecast came on with a woman explaining everything... But there was no sound. She's standing there yapping away, pointing out the temperatures and everything... And then I guess someone realized there was no sound.

She starts twisting around to check her microphone, pauses, turns back to the camera, smiles and makes the "One second" gesture and says it (silently), and then the channel cut back to commercials.

I'm still waiting for the forecast...

Important words

I seem to be in a poetry mood lately, and so I thought I'd toss out a few of my favourite poems.

First I'd like to relink to this post. Because it still presents an beautiful but sad image.

Recently I was reading a short story and the story referenced a poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller who lived in Germany during the Nazi occupation. I've heard the poem before, but never really knew its origins. According to Wikipedia, this poem was Niemöller's response to the German intellectuals' response during the Nazi rise to power. Here you have it:

First They Came...

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.

Suddenly I've been beset by a fit of laziness. So I shall instead merely link to other famous poems that are either really powerful for me, or just really pretty.

"If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda. I actually just found this poem while looking for a poem website. I liked the pretty imagery in it.

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Let's face it, we've all read this poem before, but it's so powerfully symbolic that I had to include it here.

"Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I have always loved this poem since I first read it in grade 10 English. I love how the author shows how fleeting life can truly be. Imagine what our lands will look like in hundreds of years.

"The Listeners" by Walter De La Mare. This poem has always intrigued me. It's a creepy but good snapshot. I'm always left wondering what the traveller was doing and why. The poem's cadence is among the best I've read.

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. Okay, so this poem isn't exactly profound (at least in my opinion) but I love the imagery in it. You can imagine yourself in the rider's place.

"Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Once again here's a poem I first heard in grade 10 English. The thing that draws me to it is the rhythm - meant to sound like galloping horses.

Those are a few of my fave poems that I can think of off the top of my head.

Can't teach an old dog new tricks

SHE DID IT AGAIN!

Walking the line

My mother's union went on strike last Thursday. Since I'm unemployed (and believe in their cause of course), I've joined them on the picket lines outside their workplace.

This isn't the first time I've been on a picket line. Back in 1996, my father's union went on strike for 7 weeks. I was about 13 or 14 years old then and he took me on the picket lines with him. We even traveled to Toronto to take part in the massive demonstrations in front of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. I don't have many memories of the strike, but now that I'm older, I realize that my view of unions is very different from others.

I've met a lot of people over the years who are vehemently anti-union, and to be honest, I just can't understand why! My father has been a union member for my entire life. My mom has been a union member since 2004. To me, unions are a Good Thing. My History courses have shown how hard people have fought for the right to have unions. They're meant to help protect employees from their own companies and whatnot. The fact that they still serve the same purpose today makes me rather proud.

My mother's coworkers went on strike because they feel they aren't getting paid enough. The union conducted a survey and discovered that their salaries are in the bottom third for similar positions in the province. Then they found out that their managers are in the top third salary-wise. The union was demanding a pay raise - not even to be brought up to the absolute middle of the scale - no, they just want a raise to the lower middle area of the salary scale. Management told them that there simply wasn't any money to give them the raise. The big controversy now is due to the fact that the company recently built a brand new building that costs around $20 million! There's a lot of superfluous spending and needless additions (e.g. an exercise room that has no exercise equipment, a drive-thru window that's doomed to be environmentally-unfriendly, etc.). So when Management has the money to spend on this garish ugly building (nicknamed by the public as the "Taj Mahal", or the "Copper Kettle") but not the money to spend on their employees, it looks bad. Also, the Board of Directors has told Management that the pickets SHOULD be brought up to a fair wage.

Given the fact that unions are legally recognized, and they have certain rights, it's amazing how people have been reacting to the picketers. Employees on strike have the right to hold traffic up for 10 minutes. Apparently, no one told this to Management. I saw one manager actually bump 3 women with her car because she refused to be held up (which we have the LEGAL RIGHT TO DO). Another picketer got hit immediately after, and even had to be taken to the hospital because of minor injuries. She's probably going to end up pressing charges.

While walking along the picket line, we've received an amazing amount of support. People honk their horns as they pass by (much to the annoyance of Management who can hear all of this and are getting complaints from the neighbors about the noise - but the neighbors are deliberately complaining because the more they bug Management, the more Management will need to give into the union's demands). We've been receiving coffee and treats from members of the public and even from people who are still working in the workplace. Not everyone has been pleasant though. Some people have driven or walked by and yelled at the pickets for being greedy and whatnot. People don't seem to understand that a union won't go on strike unless they feel really strongly about the issue! They don't get paid while they're on strike, or if they do, it's usually only $25 A DAY. Obviously they'd much rather be at work than on the line. One or two people have made rude gestures, and one fellow went on a 5 minute temper tantrum. Overall though, the good has outweighed the bad by a long shot.

What's also surprising me is how personal people are letting things become. Some situations are understandable. For example, one union member was offered a full-time non-union job about 2 days before the strike, so she's been crossing the picket lines and according to inside gossip, she's been taking on some of the picketers work, making her a Scab. But even the reaction from Management is surprising. After the strike is over, both Management and the picketers are going to have to work together - but there's going to be A LOT of bad blood between the two groups. I don't get why Management can't be pleasant and just wait for the 10 minutes while we hold them up and so on. Instead, it's rather childish, they completely ignore us on their ways in and out. Also, amusingly, they have a small web camera pointed out the window and are watching us with it the ENTIRE time!

Luckily the other employees inside the building are being very supportive. ONA, the union for the nurses and public health inspectors, have encouraged their members to join us on their breaks and lunch hours. They've also been instructed to try to avoid taking on the work of the union members (within reason), and so on. Other unions from around the city have stopped by to help and disrupt the work inside the building. On Friday, some correctional services workers (aka jail guards) came to join us on the picket line. Canada Post and a bunch of the courier companies refuse to cross the picket lines too.

All in all, it has been a very interesting experience being on the picket line now that I'm old enough to appreciate the intricacies of the situation. I have a lot more appreciation for unions and the laws that help govern their relations with the workplace. So if you see a group of employees on strike sometime, give them a honk or a wave or anything to let them know that you support, or at least acknowledge their complaints! Go OPSEU!

Square peg, round hole

I've been cooking dinner for my parents quite often since I've been home. Since I do the cooking, they wash the dishes afterwards. This is a quick recap of last night's conversation/events in the kitchen.

> Mau pulls out the ingredients for dinner.
> Mau fetches her favourite sharp knife that comes with its own sharpening sheath.
> Mau looks at the knife and does a double-take.
> Mau yells at her mother, "You IDIOT! You put the knife in the sharpener UPSIDE DOWN!"
> Mau's mother starts laughing and comments, "I was wondering why it was so difficult to put in the sheath!"
> Mau's father covers his face with shame.

The whole situation was hilarious because I didn't even think before I bellowed out at my mom. I thought most people realized that if something wasn't moving easily, you shouldn't force it! LOL. I was completely dumbfounded that she managed to shove the knife into the plastic sheath. Unfortunately it seems like the sharpener is broken - I need to get a screw driver to pry it out this evening.

Car Karma

Oh Cathy, you and your car amuse me to no end.

This afternoon I arranged to meet Cathy for a lunch date. She ended up driving us to this little bagel restaurant near Bank and Holmwood. When we arrived, I hopped out of the car, locked my door, and started toward the restaurant door. That's when I heard, "Uh oh," behind me.

I turn around and see Cathy looking wide-eyed, trying my door handle. All she says is, "Maureen, I think I just locked my keys in my car!" Sure enough, she has done just that. And to top it all off, somehow she exited her vehicle while it was still running. She surmises that she must have opened her car door to see how close to the parking lines she was, and then instead of pulling out her keys, she just stepped out of the vehicle and locked it with the button like normal.

Luckily, or I guess I should say unluckily, she had had car problems earlier in the week and ended up signing up for a CAA membership. She was able to pull out her brand new membership card and call for some help.

It was interesting to watch her reactions to the whole situation though. Most people would have started panicking or gotten all irritated and angry at themselves. Except for her shock of doing something as silly as locking her keys in her car, Cathy was cool about the whole situation. She just pulled out her membership and made the call. Yes, she's quite the person to have by your side in an emergency.

Also, another bonus to the afternoon is that while we were waiting for CAA to appear, we stood outside by her car chatting. After about 20 minutes, one of the employees from Kettleman's restaurant came outside and gave us two free bagels, fresh from the oven for free! That was so kind of them! And I'll have you know that when CAA finally arrived and we were able to go in and enjoy our lunch, the bagel sandwiches from Kettleman's were delicious.

Spam

It amuses me that I get email spam in both Chinese and English.

Prison break

Ugh. I can't wait to escape my roommate

Strange habits

Everyone has little habits or ways of doing things that really make no sense but they believe that their actions make a difference. I know myself that I have certain foibles and ways of doing things that probably don't have any scientific backing to them (not that I can think of any examples right now).

I must share with you one of my roommate's actions today that actually made me laugh out loud.

This afternoon when I exited my bedroom I saw that my roomie was cooking her lunch. The strange thing though was that she had a tea towel draped over her head. It wasn't wrapped around, it wasn't tucked in or anything. It was like she had laid a newspaper on her head. I paused and stared at her and she saw that I was looking, but I just shook my head and said, "I'm not going to ask."

She then proceeded to explain to me that the tea towel was to protect her hair from absorbing the smell of her food. She had had a shower in the morning and didn't want the smell to permeate her hair.

I'd like to remind you that this woman has a degree in Biology and is getting a second degree in Environmental Engineering. On what planet could you believe that laying a tea towel on your head while standing over your pot would stop the smell from getting into your hair? Nevermind the hair, she was wearing her clothes for the day, her skin was exposed, etc. But this single thin piece of fabric, which covered maybe a quart of her hair (which is long and hangs to the top of her shoulders) was supposed to stop the smell?

I should probably mention that the towel had been nicely folded earlier, and thus the creases in the fabric created a little peak that seemed to act more like a chimney, drawing the steam into it rather than blocking it.

I can't wait to move out.