Nizetti and idle thought

Installing a Deck?

2011-05-30T18:03:00.000-04:00

Kathy's been thinking of putting a deck in the back yard. (that is, getting me to put a deck in the back yard.)

The past weekend, we got our air conditioner condenser moved from the back yard into an ideal sheltered spot in the front, so we've freed up a good size chunk of space in the back. The backyard is a nice, regular shape that would easily fit a nice deck. I wonder how much of the yard I should cover with the deck?

The only thing that worries me a bit is how stable the ground is in the backyard. It tends to be a bit on the muddy side, to be honest, the drainage there isn't that great. Our patio stones there shift pretty drastically in the winter time and spring time. I've been wondering about how I can improve the way the water drains away from our backyard, and it looks like we will probably have to cut away part of the widened driveway to do it, since that's the direction the water wants to go in. We never really had any problem with the drainage until we widened the driveway, and it looks like that is the culprit. I wonder if it's something I can do myself, or if I'll have to hire someone to do it.

Childproofing our stove

2011-03-09T20:36:00.004-05:00

Connor's been a bad boy. Well, a curious one anyways. Recently he's getting curious about the dials on our gas stove, and he's tall enough to reach them and twist them. The existing safety mechanism is a function where you press the knob in a tad before you twist it, but Connor's already able to defeat that by default, the way he reaches up for the dial presses it in already.

So I went online to check out what sort of babyproofing is available for stoves with the controls on the front. I'm surprised by the number of products that only prevent kids from reaching the range top, and not the front dials, happily displaying on their packaging how the kid is prevented from grabbing a pot, where they are totally ignoring the dials right next to their hands. Hmph.

I ended up picking up one of these from ToysRUs, with the intention of mounting it in front of the knobs, but there wasn't enough space to mount it in any spot.

It's probably better to just fence off the whole kitchen area. While I love the open concept kitchen we have, I'm always seeing more reasons why a kitchen cooking area should be a separate room unto itself.

It keep out:

Curious troublemakers like kids and pets
Backseat driver types who keep picking at your cooking techniques

It keeps in:

oily smoke, fumes, and odours - especially when you fry fish.
noise from the ventilation fans (plus I'm pretty sure an enclosed space makes the ventilation process a lot more efficient)
excess heat from baking or making soup/stews

In the meantime, we've just detached all the knobs, but its a bit of a pain to have to plug them in each time we want to use the range.

edit - Its March 30th and the knobs are still all detached. We've figured out how to unlock and twist the posts to different positions, so we don't even put the knobs back on all the time. :D

Allen.

Kitchen Backsplash

2010-12-14T13:38:00.009-05:00

This weekend past, we decided to put up a kitchen backsplash. I went to the local Home Depot and picked out some tiles and supplies, which cost less than I'd thought, and started working on it on Sunday morning.

This is how it started off - I moved things out of the way, laid down some newspaper, and sandpapered the wall a bit to let the wall give a bit more grip for the mortar adhesive backing.

I have a cement mixer attachment for my drill, that I'd originally bought to mix tar for my driveway. It made short work of mixing the mortar, and the actual process of attaching everything to the wall went pretty smoothly.

Here's the tile cutter - I had to get pretty handy with it to cut 3/16th inch strips of tile for the top edge of the backsplash. I had hoped that the tile would fit exactly after allowing for the spacing, but no such luck.

I had to clip a few tiles so that it would fit around the power sockets and phone socket. This nipper tool was actually more difficult to get the hang of than the tile cutter. I ended up cheating a bit - instead of cutting L-shaped pieces, I cut 2 rectangles instead. Not really too noticeable.

All the tiles are up at this point - I used the extras to extend the backsplash down a bit on the back of the stove - I didn't go all the way down since, well, it's not a part of the wall that we ever see.

After the tiles had some time to set, I mixed up the grout and applied it. These pictures are after it's been applied and the excess had been wiped off with a wet sponge. The lighting is a little bad, it was late and I had forgotten to turn the flash on.

Once the grout had some time to start drying, I applied caulk to the outside edges at the right end and the area behind the stove.

Here is the finished result, as per the top of the post. :D

It was kind of a tiring job, especially since the space I could work in was rather limited. I whacked my head on the range hood a couple of times pretty hard as well, but oh well. The results are pretty decent for something we suddenly decided on, on the weekend. 4 hours for the tile cutting and setting in the daytime, and an hour for the grouting in the evening, and a little more time for caulking and putting everything back together before the day was over. The only part I'd not thought of was the power sockets becoming inset on the wall after the tile was added, but all I had to do was remount the sockets and it turned out all right.

Only thing left to do is to put a sealant on the grout in a few days, and it'll be complete.

Cheers,

Allen.

New Car Stereo

2010-11-09T17:30:00.000-05:00

I picked up a new car stereo - a JVC KD-R810. It was on sale at Best Buy, $250 marked down to $200 in one of their weekly specials. They always have some model or another on sale.

It's the first aftermarket one I've ever bought. Mainly, I bought it to get a USB port so I can listen to music on USB. This should replace the pile of unlabelled CDs in the car with a a single USB stick! (though it's likely that I will wind up with a pile of unlabelled USB sticks later.)

The secondary thing (which interestingly enough, is probably the most expensive component of the stereo) is a Bluetooth audio setup, so I can use my Blackberry in the car hands free.

I've never done any sort of installation like this myself, and I didn't like that I had to disconnect/reconnect the car battery. The last time I did something with the battery, I got some nasty sparks flying. I figured I'd let the Best Buy do the install. They finished the job in about an hour's time and showed me that all the speakers were hooked up correctly using the fade and balance controls. They demonstrated how it plays mp3s off of a USB stick. The tech couldn't figure out how to do radio presets so I guess Ill have to figure it out later. The rear USB cable sits in the glove compartment, and the microphone is sussed in the top middle of the windshield. It's pretty nice work I think.

They also said they can undo the install to put the factory radio back in for free, if I wanted to, such as if I was selling my car etc.

The install cost $70, the price of their USB/microphone deck install, and the only additional item I needed was some Corolla-specific wiring. So all told, about $300.

Anyways, looking at the unit in the dash now...

The unit sticks out of the dash a bit which I'm not used to - the old unit fit flush in the DIN slot. I'm also supposed to be able to change the colour of the displays and dials seperately... however a 2002 Corolla doesn't have a coloured lighting scheme unless you consider white lights on plain analog dials and plain liquid crystal displays some sort of theme. Maybe I'll just set the colour to white. :P

I can't seem to see the display when I'm wearing my sunglasses, what's the deal with that? Why is the protective cover polarized?

The bluetooth setup went pretty smoothly, you set a PIN and off it goes to sync with your phone. The voice dialling works very nicely. I hope the calls are clear too, but I'll have to find out later.

Its time to go root through my music collection. :D

Allen.

Banana Bread

2010-09-04T13:05:00.004-04:00

Somehow the entire summer's slipped away, and I haven't blogged anything... or baked anything either! So I decided to bake a banana bread cause we had some bananas that were starting to hang around a little too long. I was intending to use the last 2 very ripe bananas, but Kathy decided to eat one, not realizing I was going to bake them. I was left with just one banana.

Anyways, I looked around the internet looking for a quick banana bread recipe, and generally they are like this:

350 degree preheated oven

dry stuff:

2 cups of flour
1 cup sugar
a teaspoon each of baking power, baking soda, cinnamon
half a teaspoon of nutmeg.

wet stuff:

2 eggs
teaspoon of vanilla to make the eggs more pleasant
half cup of butter (I used veg oil instead of butter)
2-3 very ripe bananas on the verge of fermenting into banana liquor.

Mix all the dry stuff in one bowl, mix all the wet stuff in a second bowl, then add the dry to the wet, and mix them all. I have this vague recollection that I'm not supposed to over-mix it or it becomes like chewing rubber. Put this in an oiled baking pan in the oven and let it bake. Typical time is about 45 minutes. Check with a toothpick or a chopstick lanced through it's heart, if anything sticks to your stick, it's not ready, bake for another 5-10 minutes.

Since I was short a couple of bananas, I just added a little extra oil and some water to shore up the moisture content, I didn't really measure. I probably didn't add enough.

Here's some pics of the end result:

after baking for an HOUR

Shiny...

I think I need a smaller pan or a bigger recipe, stuff always looks kind of flat coming out of it.

Looks good, tastes good, but a little bit on the dry side cause of the missing banana. Blah!

New Computer

2010-05-10T17:39:00.002-04:00

Instead of crossposting from my games blog, I'll just point you there.

Allen.

Thinking about Computer Upgrades

2010-04-26T18:00:00.001-04:00

(crosspost from my games blog)

My computer had been acting a bit sluggish recently so I figured it was time to wipe the OS and reinstall it. However, the system kept bluescreening my Vista install. I couldn't get around it with whatever BIOs setting changes I had available, so I decided maybe it was time for this hardware to retire. I mean, I'd run it since about 2005. I figured I could at least save the CPU, which was a decent dual core AMD Athlon II 64 x2 4800+, which was a Socket 939 like my wife's single core computer. But when I installed the CPU on her system, it started crashing too. Also, putting her CPU in my system revived it.

It looks like my CPU had decided to go loony.

So, it was time to start thinking seriously about upgrades.

My system is at the point where if I buy a new CPU, it would start an avalanche of upgrades:

Another motherboard with a modern socket to fit the CPU, since Socket 939 is obsolete.
New RAM memory as well since my old DDR 400 is not viable for the new CPU/mobo.
New power supply to match the sockets on the mobo and video card (why are they 6pin and 8 pin now instead of 4pin and 6pin? sigh)

The only things that I would be able to salvage would be my video cards, hard drives, case, and fans.

Each of the 4 new components - mobo, CPU, memory, and power, would mean $100 for a base model or a $200 for a future proof economical model, or even more for a hobbyist model. (Hello $400 motherboards and $700 CPUs) So I would be spending somewhere between $400 to $800 for the parts.

Those prices are fairly reasonable, however the problem is - what should I get? Or more accurately, which motherboard should I get? Everything hinges on the motherboard.

I want to have full bandwidth for my 2 video cards. SLI or not, I want it to have 16x1 PCIe for EACH card. Often, the data path is one 16x1 that they break down into 8x1 for each card. Thus you get reduced performance for each of the cards. I mean, you get more performance than a single card, but probably nothing like if you have 2 cards each with a dedicated full PCIe path. However, there isn't really a lot of data that I've found that tells me just HOW much bandwidth my video cards use, so I'm not sure if I REALLY need this or if I'm just being a hypochondriac when I think that 2 card SLI isn't running much faster than 1 card.

As a side note, I do want to run a 3 or 4 monitor setup someday. Probably not tomorrow though. The price of an ideal minimum bezel 3x1 monitor setup seems to be just under $2000 right now. I could get some regular widescreens and plug them in but I dunno how that will be. Plus, gaming - 3d games performance is geared for 1680x1050 or 1900x1200 screens, not... 3600x1900 or 4800x1900 screens. I would probably have to turn every detail off and it would probably still bring my video cards to their knees. Sigh. eyefinity gaming, which would handle it, would cost another $550.

I want it to support 3 Gb/s SATA, or even that new 6 Gb/s SATA and USB 3.0 However, I don't have any devices that go anywhere close to that sort of speed. I've always bought the best bang for the buck kind of drives usually. These still rate way higher than my bottleneck CPU and RAM though, so I'm not too concerned about that part of it. I definitely want it to have eSATA since I have an eSATA/USB2.0 HD dock. Especially since 1.5 Terabyte drives cost like $100 now. Currently I plug it in through USB2.0 and it's pretty slow - workable but.... slow.

I want the SATA jacks to NOT get covered by my video cards. My current mobo has 4 SATA jacks - and half of them are covered when I put in the primary video card. Is that on purpose? I mean I could understand if it was the 2nd card that covers the jacks, meaning you should either run the 2nd card OR 2 extra SATA devices due to bandwidth restrictions, but why is it under the FIRST graphics card?

Anyways, this means I am still looking for a good motherboard. Nothing really fits my criteria right now except maybe a 790FX or a 780n board, but those are like a year old now, shouldn't there be something newer/better?

Here's my two best bets right now (with google links):

GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (crossfire)
ASUS M3N-HT (sli)

In the meantime, I bought a used Athlon 64 x2 3800+ CPU for $35, my mobo claims it peaks up at about 100 degrees Celsius when running. :P I don't know if the CPU is bad or if my mobo sensor is bad, haha. It's still working, I mean, but I dont really have much hopes for it's longevity.

Allen.

btw, ebay is selling my old dead Athlon x2 4800+ CPU for like $200! That's crazy!

Shouldn't eggs be refrigerated?

2010-03-10T21:23:00.000-05:00

This is at the local Chinese supermarket.

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Sent using BlackBerry

Baby Explosive Bowel Movements

2010-03-08T22:25:00.017-05:00

If a crib was an aircraft carrier, and Connor was an F-14, I guess I could say that we have been having some surprising and powerful liquid jet blast accidents. I mean, the jet wash sweeps right over the deck to places we prefer to be untouched by jet wash. It even jets uh, things, right off into the ocean sometimes. Rescue and recovery efforts are a difficulty we don't like to deal with on a regular basis.

Yes, I know these are F-18s

So we jury-rigged a Jet Blast Deflector on the deck, in the form of a rectangular plastic tub, placed on its side, and aft of the engines. It's done the trick, preventing an accident just last scheduled maintenance even.

These F-14s can be tricky to maintain. :P

Allen.

Edit:

Click the button if you want to see sprayed poop below:

Salt & Pepper Shakers

2010-03-01T16:36:00.001-05:00

These are on every table in the cafeteria at work, and are absolutely cute.

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry.

Bottle Warmer

2010-02-19T17:46:00.006-05:00

This is a pretty effective bottle warmer, though it has a totally inconvenient filling system.

What is with this weird precision water measuring test tube? (its like it came out of a science lab or something) What is with this completely arbitrary 1 - 10 numbering scheme? Why not use millilitres, cc, teaspoons, or seconds' worth of steam?

Trying to put in exactly 4 units of water in the tube is so annoying. It is so easy to go over the limit.

Sometimes, if I'm not heating the exact amount I've measured out for the bottle warmer, I just use a bit of boiling water in a mug instead. Its faster than trying to figure out how many units of water I'll need for various amounts of milk.

Allen.

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry.

Peeling a Kiwi

2010-02-11T16:21:00.006-05:00

Where the spoon fits

Given that peeling Kiwis is not something I commonly do, I didn't know exactly how to do it. I always knew it was with a spoon, but I didn't know what else was involved. So I cut the Kiwi lengthwise in half, and then the ends off. I wedged the spoon between the skin and the flesh and scraped the flesh out, worked out okay. I guess I should have checked the hundreds of how-to instructions that are available on the net, but when you're already up to your elbows with kitchen stuff, its hard to clean up and then go look it up. :P

What a curvaceous beauty!

Kiwis and more kiwis

P.s. the white stem part in the middle is hard to eat. :P

Baby Connor

2010-02-07T16:11:00.004-05:00

Maybe I should get Photoshop...

Here's a pic of Connor. Just a few things to say for now, since it's only been a week or so:

there is a lot of food and bottle preparation involved
there is a lot of diaper changing involved
there is very little sleep involved

One interesting thing I didn't know is that babies can drink from cups. During the first few days when Kathy was still in the low output colostrum stage, we supplemented Connor with formula from a medicine cup. The cup was a suggestion from the nurse at the hospital. The amount was so small (and frequent) that bottles would have been a pain to use. We're talking teaspoons (like 10-20cc) at a roughly hourly feeding

Cup feeding without spilling takes a bit of skill and practice for both you and the baby. The trick seems to be touching the liquid level to the baby's upper lip, while keeping the bottom curve of the cup pressed closely enough to bottom lip and tongue to prevent spillage, without pressing so hard that baby can't sip. It's what we do when we drink, if you have ever had to hold a cup to someone else's mouth so they can have a drink, you'll sort of know what I mean. The only difference is that the baby doesn't know to keep his lower lip touching the cup, so you have to do that.

The same trick seems to apply to bottle feeding too - if you keep the bottom round of the nipple touching his lower lip, you get a seal and don't get any spill. (unless you feed him so fast that he regurgitates something) The last day or two, I haven't even needed to tuck a napkin under his chin.

Anyways, I'm using up precious sleep time so I'm off.

Allen.

Test from Blackberry

2010-01-29T11:04:00.002-05:00

Is this centered?

Allen.
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Sent using BlackBerry

edit -
Well it looks like this blackberry camera is not going to be replacing my 8 megapixel any time soon, blech. Maybe there are some settings I haven't found, but my hopes aren't high for it.

2010-01-29T11:01:00.001-05:00

Let's see if I can modify picture upload centering with an uploaded pic? :P

Blackberry camera

2010-01-29T10:43:00.002-05:00

Just checking out the quality of the picture and if its convenient for blogging or not.

Allen.
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Sent using BlackBerry

How much sugar is in a can of Canada Dry?

2010-01-16T16:33:00.004-05:00

I bought a case of ginger ale on sale today, and while drinking one just now, I read the label on the side. It said it has 34 grams of sugar in it. It occurred to me that I didn't really know how much "34 grams of sugar" actually was, so I measured it out on a scale. Amazing.

That's a heck of a lot of sugar isn't it?

For you coffee and tea drinkers, that's roughly 8.5 packets of sugar, assuming an average 4 gram sugar packet.

That's actually lower than a Coke at about 40g (10 packets of sugar) as googled on the net.

There's blogs out there that have lots of pictures showing how much sugar is in food, such as this one:
http://www.sugarstacks.com

Check it out and shock yourselves. :D

Allen.

Private Numbers / Unknown Callers / Phone Scams

2010-01-15T12:38:00.003-05:00

One of my pet peeves is when people call you but the call display says "Private Number". I mean, they are calling you, but they don't want anyone to call them. Hypocrisy, isn't it?

Usually, I just ignore the these calls, but this morning, some private number called my home number, and hung up before we could even look to see who called. Then my cell rang with a private number. I ignored it and went back to sleep, they can leave a message. Then it rang again, private caller, and I got kind of irritated by it. So I answered it.

The woman on the line claimed she was calling from the hospital and had some sort of appointment change. I told her that if she is really calling from a hospital, that her caller id should identify her as from the hospital, not "Private Number".

I mean, any yahoo can pretend to be calling from the hospital and reschedule our appointment, esp if its some other patient trying to score our time slot. These things are pretty easily overheard when booking the appointment after all.

Anyways, this person told me that this is how the hospital works, that it should be "Unknown Caller". I think that is terribly unprofessional of the hospital. It should display their hospital main line number if they dont want people calling their extension, right?

Jeez.

Anyways, the appropriate thing to do here is to confirm the appointment myself by calling the hospital and checking if anything has changed.

Never accept what someone tells you over the phone if they call you. Always say you will call their company/organization back to confirm what they are claiming, and source out the company phone number yourself, don't take any phone numbers they offer you.

Here's the classic scam - someone calls you and says they are your bank/credit card company calling to verify a purchase, say $4000 at some website. Since you haven't bought some $4000 item from soandso.onlineshopp.com, you want to know more and get this sorted out. They need your card# and/or PIN number etc to confirm. Once you give them the info, they clean out you account cause you have given them all the keys to access your account, basically.

This is why you can't trust incoming calls telling you to trust them. Always confirm it yourself, independent of the incoming call.

I should just see if I can make my phones not ring on private number calls.

Allen.

Tai Chi's over now

2010-01-08T15:07:00.003-05:00

The old year has ended and so have the Tai Chi lessons I've been going to since the fall of 2008. I've learned a lot, though I wish I could have learned more in the time I'd spent there.

The 3 basic Chen courses were really enjoyable I learned a lot and it was fun.

The advanced level was a bit difficult for me though. Not so much because it was difficult physically, it was cause of a language barrier. It was taught in Cantonese, with various students picked to translate the lessons into English for the benefit of us non-Cantonese speaking students. (with varying degrees of success, depending on who was available to do the translation) So I feel that I've missed out on a lot of the context and nuances of the lesson. Sure I asked questions when I didn't understand something, but often, I get the feeling that I've missed hearing or learning something, and I don't even know what.

Anyways, I plan to continue to practice it whenever I have a bit of time. The tricky part is where do I practice? The routine actually covers a considerable bit of space if we're talking about a living room or an office cubicle, which is why I guess so many people will go to the open spaces like the park, and practice there. I'll figure something out.

Allen.

Gingerbread Cookies

2010-01-07T15:59:00.000-05:00

Did you know that savoury spicy taste in gingerbread is not ginger? it's the ground cloves that give it that distinctly sharp taste.

How do I know? I am guessing this because I made a batch of gingerbread cookies without the cloves and the distinct taste is missing. :P

I'll have to make another batch when I have ground cloves, to confirm this guess.

Allen.

"Duel Action" Lightsaber

2009-12-12T09:12:00.006-05:00

I was watching some Saturday Morning cartoons when I saw this commercial for a "Duel Action Lightsaber", basically a lightsaber with a hidden smaller lightsaber hidden in the hilt. The second saber can be attached to the main one to make it a double-ended lightsaber, reminiscent of the one that Darth Maul uses in The Phantom Menace.

The product itself is pretty cool, but the name sends waves of irritation through me, as "Duel Wielding" is a common mistake when people are trying to type out "Dual Wielding" To have a product that is called "Duel Action" featuring 2 sabers is just terrible.

Sure the lightsabers are meant for duelling, but "Duel Action" with 2 blades, what the hell were they thinking? Way to perpetuate the mispelling of Dual as Duel.

You can see in the commercial that later on, someone tried to deflect the mistake by printing out "Dual Bladed" onscreen for the 2-bladed mode, but more likely than not, someone up higher thought that Duel Action was the correct version and wanted to keep it, regardless of the implication that no one in the company can spell.

Bunch of corporate yahoos.

Allen.

Blog-Slacking

2009-09-30T10:08:00.003-04:00

Just doing the usual routine of going to work, going home, and hitting the computer a bit.

We planted a bunch of tulip bulbs in the front garden so we'll see what the results look like in the spring. This is kind of a reminder to myself to take some pictures of them when the time comes.

I haven't fixed the car yet, but one of our neighbours is a mechanic and kindly offered to look up the cost of a couple of parts for me, which I accepted. He said that bending out a couple of panels would be easy enough too. Hopefully we'll clean it up before the winter.

I was thinking that getting a bigger car would be a good change, maybe with all-wheel drive. Nothing as big as the Jeep we used to have, but I'd probably feel better if we got rid of one of our little cars, after all we have the baby on the way and it'd be reassuring to have a vehicle that won't be crumpled like a napkin in a serious crash.

Smash

2009-08-31T21:51:00.013-04:00

COROLLA SMASH!

Had a bit of a car accident last week. I was coming home from a corporate class downtown, and I tail ended someone in the rush hour highway stop-and-go. Just after I changed lanes, the row ahead suddenly slammed on the brakes, and I was "too close" during the lane change to stop in time. I slammed on my brakes but I skidded (no ABS) into the car ahead. The damage looks about the same on both cars. A cop came by after and helped us straighten out the info for the collision reporting centre, and said the damage was probably in the neighbourhood of $2000 per car. The auto shops agreed with him when I got a repair appraisal done.

I didn't want to bother fixing it. (3rd party liability insurance) The car is probably worth less than $5000 already. All the electrical components still worked, so I set about replacing the missing plastic signal cowl masterfully with a plastic CD cover, speaker wire and some duct tape.

I wonder how much the insurance rates are going to go up by at the next renewal.

I notice that I'm leaving much more space in front as I drive now, and that I get stressed more easily if I have to drive during rush hour.

NO I HAVE NOT CRACKED OPEN THE DUTY FREE ALCOHOL YET.

Allen.

New York Sunday

2009-08-10T23:00:00.005-04:00

Well we spent the rest of the weekend driving ourselves around New York City, we got tired of the whole taxi/shuttle business. It was an adventure of a different sort, related to parking tickets and a GPS that didn't know how to plot the way to the new Yankee Stadium.

Times Square in the daytime

We headed off in the morning to Manhattan Island again with a few destinations in mind. Gray's Papaya to break fast, the Carnegie Deli for lunch, a visit to Central Park, some shopping at B&H Electronics. (and of course, the Yankees game we'd gone to NY for in the first place)

The hot dogs in New York definitely taste a lot better than the hot dogs we get from the street vendors around here in Toronto. They remind me of smokies or bratwursts. Also they are not the jumbo things we get here, they actually are small enough to fit into a regular small hot dog bun. I'm told that getting a hot dog and a papaya juice is a classic new york meal. Gray's Papaya was the place we tried. They had a really tasty sauteed onion topping.

Gray's Papaya

Here's their juice selection - tasted pretty decent

These were really tasty hot dogs. They were so good, we went back for more a second day

We walked all over the area south of Central park, there was a lot of shopping and a lot of people. By the time we wound our way up to the Carnegie Deli, we had worked up a bit of an appetite. However we were not prepared at all for the serious amounts of mouthwatering deli that awaited us.

The Carnegie Deli - half the people in the photo are in line to go in

It took a while to get seating, but it was worth it

This was a serious hot pastrami sandwich.
This is also why there is no dinner restaurant commentary.

I ordered a hot pastrami sandwich, and it was absolutely mountainous. Every bite was melt-in-your-mouth greasy goodness. Neither E or I could finish our sandwiches, running out of steam on the last quarter. F didn't even try to start the 2nd half.

Ordering a plate of onion rings and potato latkes on top of the 3 sandwiches was a bit of a mistake, but we couldn't pass them up. They were both excellent though - the rings were freshly battered and fried, and the latkes have put every other latke I've ever had to shame. (though admittedly I haven't had too many latkes before)

Afterwards we walked around Central Park to work off some of our lunch. We saw the John Lennon memorial mosaic, which was pretty nice:

Women would sit at the memorial with a cheerful smile and pose for a picture (?!)

After walking around Central Park for a good while, we decided to head to the B&H Electronics store was. F decided to take the transit to get there earlier. E and I walked, to get some more sights in on the way down, while F did his shopping.

We had some really bad smoothies at a Jamba Juice while taking a small break. I had a peach and E had a mango, and both of them tasted like ground-up cheap pez candy slush, with no real juice at all. Don't go there. Especially since the stuff costs more than the 2-hotdog and juice combo at Gray's Papaya. Something blew up in their preparation area and flooded the store with water (water, not juice) while we were there. I figured it was karma for selling us these gross drinks, I had to throw mine out before I finished a quarter of it. They also didn't have a washroom for customers. What the heck, Jamba people?!

Seriously, I thought the smoothies here were disgusting

Anyways we eventually got down to the B&H Electronics. They have a really cool system for delivering stock from the different departments over to the checkout - there was a motorized conveyor belt system overhead delivering green bins.

At first E thought he was hearing toy remote-controlled cars

Did I mention they had a ton of everything there? It was incredible how much selection was available from TVs to professional mixing equipment, to astronomy telescopes. The only thing a little weird was the store hours - a huge electronics store that isn't open on Friday afternoon/evening or Saturday? I later heard that it was to observe the Jewish Sabbath though. I didn't know that religion played that much a role in running businesses these days.

After we wrapped up at the electronics store, we headed out to the Yankees game at the new stadium. It took a bit of trial and error since the GPS kept trying to direct us to the old stadium. While they are literally next door to each other, the available routes seems to have changed.

The inside of the new Yankee Stadium.

Almost every ad was: "Official so-and-so of the Yankees".
Official mustard, official bank, official hot dog, credit card, automotive buy-n-sell magazine, everything.

It was a pretty good game - The Red Sox were on top for a bit, and the Yankees took the lead in the end. Everyone was actually up out of their seats for the whole last inning and a half. Btw, we all got carded again for the beer we bought, each one of us at a separate area in the stadium.

Monday - we spent it driving back, basically. We stopped back in Manhattan to pick up some a custom order jersey for E, and I wanted another pastrami sandwich to bring back to Toronto. (it was that good and I wanted Kathy to try some, haha) Things were pretty uneventful, but we were happy that it was so, we were all pretty tired out from that crazy Sunday. We hit the highways - a couple of Timmies coffee breaks in between the driving, and we were back in Toronto.

Allen.

P.s. - Duty free alcohol is such a great deal. And they didn't card us either. :D

More NY

2009-08-09T01:02:00.003-04:00

We got to New York in the evening - our hotel is just outside of Manhattan, so we took a shuttle bus over to check out Times Square. People there drive as if crazy, 4 rows of cars in 3 lanes of traffic. Driving in left turn lanes to cut back into the regular lanes at the front. It was never this road-rage aggressive and uncivilized even in the asian cities I've been in, they are absolutely barbaric here.

Times Square at night

Anyways, we walked around the Times Square area and it was pretty cool. We saw some famous eats and sights, although the restaurant we stopped at, one of a number of Tad's Steak places, was not that good. I wouldn't recommend the gristly steaks they serve there or their rare-cooked 'chopped steak' burgers. We also got carded for the beer we had. I guess we look under 21 even though E is going to be FORTY in a few more years.

Really, Tim Horton's everywhere. There's the Tad's we went to, ugh.

I also tried some of the chicken skewers/kebabs they have at the street vendors, and while it was tasty (better than the restaurant, in fact) it did not settle very well. So I downed a bottle of coke, reasoning that it would dissolve it, and it seems to be working.

After we got back to the hotel, the three of us flipped coins to see who got beds and who got the folding cot - I'm the unlucky one who gets the cot. Oh well. >_<

Tomorrow we will hit a deli for lunch and then catch the baseball game.

Allen.

On the road to New York

2009-08-08T15:15:00.004-04:00

This weekend, E and F and I are heading down to NY,NY to catch a Yankees game and bum around.

We rented a full size car for the smoother ride, and left this morning.

The border crossing was packed when we arrived, and took almost an hour of queuing to get through. We burned as much gas waiting as we did getting to the border.

I didn't realize how many Tim Hortons there are on the route. There is a Timmys every highway rest stop. We stopped at one at lunch. The medium coffee here is the large one back home.

Cheers eh,
Allen.

This was a long drive.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Street Fighter - The Legend of Chun Li

2009-07-31T21:15:00.003-04:00

This title represents the quality of the movie.

Why do I always waste my time trying to watch these horrible, horrible movies?

Why do so many video game movies suck so badly?

Allen.

Free Stuff on your Birthday

2009-07-30T08:34:00.001-04:00

My birthday is coming up and I was looking up places that offer free stuff around Toronto.

What-a-Bagel apparently will give you a dozen bagels free on your birthday.

Tucker's Marketplace offers a free buffet dinner on your birthday even if you go by yourself. I don't really understand the business reasons for doing that, but okay. Tucker's isn't that great of a buffet. (Frankie Tomatto's is a bit better, though they don't offer a free birthday meal any more)

Benihana's in the US will give you a free dinner (up to $30US) during your birthday month, if you sign up on their website. I used my spam-mail address. Its not in Toronto, but I'm going down to New York during my birthday month. :D

Baskin Robbins gives a free scoop of ice cream. There are separate US and Canadian mailing list sites, so be sure you're on the Canadian one.

Tony Roma's (2 of them, one near the Airport and the other in Mississauga) give a free dinner as well, up to 18.99, as well as a fried? onion loaf. It doesn't have to be on the birth day itself, it gives a leeway of about 2 weeks it seems. However, it asked me to specify which one, and I listed the Mississauga one for some reason - and the email coupon they sent specified Mississauga only. Doh.

Casey's seems to have a free entree up to $15.99. However there seems to be a lot of posting about how some do, and some don't, so I dont think I'll bother, I'm not too fond of Casey's food anyways.

Denny's is in the same case as Casey's - apparently some do and some don't. I actually like greasy spoons like Denny's, so I called the ones in Mississauga and Brampton. The Mississauga one says they offer a free meal for the birthday person, and the Brampton one says they offer a free dessert, if you buy 2 meals and 2 drinks.

Allen.

Tai Chi 3rd term is coming to a close

2009-07-29T19:37:00.000-04:00

Last week our tai chi class finished teaching all the moves for Chen style 1st form. There are enough moves and repeated sections that I'm somewhat confused about which section follows which. It would probably help if the course taught the names of the moves, so we can join moves together by their names, not just by rote action.

The names are available on their website, which is pretty decent. I don't know why they didn't translate Jingang as "Guardian" or "Sentinel", but left it with a Cantonese phonetic "King-Kong". What are we, giant apes and gorillas?

They also have a book that I purchased, that shows the moves along with the name, but the pictures don't really do justice to the maneuvers, sometimes its hard to match up the pictures to them.

I probably should practice more as well. I've been bad about it lately, and have been only doing tai chi while in the class.

This weekend there is a review, then a few weeks off. The Chen Refinement class starts in the fall, where we'll start focusing on fa jing, the characteristic bursts of energy associated with Chen style.

Allen.

Writing Chinese on the PC

2009-07-17T22:46:00.009-04:00

Mom was asking about Chinese input on the PC so I promised I'd look up one of those writing pad systems for her. I knew that Pacific Mall usually has them for sale at some store or another, and sure enough, I wasn't disappointed. I picked up one of these USB pads for $50+tax:

蒙恬科技 Penpower 晶鑽小蒙恬

It supports Simplified Chinese, HK Chinese, Traditional Chinese and even some Japanese. It will voice what you write in your choice of Cantonese or Mandarin. Seems to be a pretty friendly device and even recognises my chicken-scratches as appropriate Chinese characters. Software installation was as simple as popping in a CD and a reboot, then plugging in the pad.

Anyways, I am done playing with it and hopefully Mom will be able to make use of it.

Allen.

Moto Guzzi

2009-07-08T12:02:00.004-04:00

This is the sort of motorcycle I like:

2009 Moto Guzzi V7 Classic

Its not a cruiser or a sport bike - it's a standard model. But funny enough, there are hardly any bikes around like this any more. This one is "new" for 2009 I think, and it comes in 2 colours I know of - white or black. Attach a nice sidecar to this and I would be totally happy. :D

Allen.

The Crayfish Died

2009-06-30T18:00:00.001-04:00

Our crayfish flipped upside down and died. It was sort of a sad thing.

The worst part of it was the smell - it managed to pollute the whole fish tank with a nasty fishy stink and half our house by the time I'd found it dead. So it necessitated a major water change for the remaining fish and a ahead-of-schedule fish tank/pump cleaning.

I'm wondering how it happened. Maybe it was just near the end of it's lifespan? They are supposed to live about 2 years and ours was about that age. Maybe I put in too much fish food? I'd dropped a bunch of watercress at the top of the tank for the fish like usual, except perhaps in a slightly larger volume. The fish were really making short work of it, and putting out a ton of poop, which could have overwhelmed the crayfish.

Anyways, it was sort of gross, but we dealt with it and now we just have the surviving 5 fish that were originally meant for a crayfish snack.

Allen.

Scooter and Riding

2009-06-17T13:16:00.013-04:00

Brrpt, putt-putt-putt

I've started to ride my Vino 125 to work again, when the weather is nice. I could say a thing or two about the gas prices which are currently up at $1.03 Canadian per litre, but its more about the amusement factor than the gas savings.

The battery died over the course of the winter and I haven't been able to revive it. I've been kickstarting until I replaced the battery yesterday. The replacement process wasn't too difficult, everything was located in a pretty easy to reach location under the foot panelling. All I needed was a Phillips screwdriver.

Maybe I should trade it in for something a little heavier, since 125cc doesn't meet the 400-series highway requirement of 250cc. I'm not quite sure where I read that any more, but 125cc only gets me up to about 80 kmph anyway, which is not good enough for the highway. I wonder what the trade in value would be, or if it's better to just sell it privately. I'm probably better off with the latter.

Allen.

Wheel rims

2009-06-16T19:06:00.003-04:00

...or more specifically, the lack thereof.

Here's a bit of an annoyance - In mid-May, I ordered a set of 4 steel rims from Canadian Tire. I paid $300, and they said they would let me know when it comes in.

About a month goes by with me inquiring every so often, and eventually, someone admits that they are typically not available until the end of fall. You know, when the winter tire rush starts coming in. They apologized and said they would order it directly from a manufacturer, and it should arrive on Monday or Tuesday, given that it was Friday morning when I called them. So I dropped by the store on Tuesday, and there was still nothing there.

At least I could cancel the order and get a refund.

Allen.

Copacabana!

2009-06-14T23:03:00.009-04:00

D called up the other day and asked me if I wanted to try out this Brazillian BBQ restaurant in Toronto with some of the guys. Now I have some pretty good memories of the time I went to the Pampas in Las Vegas, so I said I'd go.

At a Brazillian BBQ, they bring skewers of all sorts of BBQ out to your table, and you tell the server if you want something or not. Then they carve pieces off the skewer for you right to your plate. Usually they have some sort of signalling system in place if you want a break from being offered all sorts of BBQed goodness. Eat till you are full, cause it is all you can eat.

I got there there a bit early for the reservation so I sat down at the bar and started on a Stella. It was a cool looking place, sort of the happening-spot type of place you'd find in a restaurant geared for people in their early 30s. The music was loud but not so loud that you can't talk to other people, cause K and T found me at the bar and we talked and joked about this and that until Don and a few others showed up.

Once everyone was there, we ordered some drinks and started on their salad & buffet. It wasn't really a huge selection but what they had was fresh. It wasn't really the main attraction after all. The rosemary bread was nice. The smoked salmon seemed like it was out for a while. There was a good creamy turkey stroganoff dish meant to go with rice. I enjoyed that, though I'm not sure how, er, Brazillian it is.

There was a bad spot where the willowy waiter taking care of our table's drinks spilled half a tray of drinks on a couple of people at our table. They were the easygoing sort though, and they just laughed it off. The manager came out and apologized for the incident. In the end we were given complimentary desserts, but we were way too full of bbq by then. So we passed on it.

Speaking of the barbecue, it came nice and full of flavour. Bacon wrapped filet mignon or turkey, rib eye steak, sirloin, prime rib. I think they need to have more pineapple coming around, that always was in demand and we didn't actually get any for the first 3/4ths of our meal. I had to ask for some lamb too cause all we saw was beef, but they were prompt in getting some lamb chops out right away so I have no complaints. I think they could have done with some sausages or something but I was quite satisfied with the food.

The bbq servers were a bit on the rough side, all spartan macho guys with tattoos and muscles. They didn't have a deferential, polite waiter approach to serving food - no "would you care for some prime rib" or "here you go sirs" here, they were all a laconic "This is Sirloin." (imagine Rambo saying it while spearing a skewer into your table top) or "Is there anything else you're looking for." It was kind of weird, but they were efficient.

I imagine that this would be a hard restaurant to rob, with all these tough guy servers stalking around the restaurant with skewers and carving knives.

Oh they had live music too. I'd read that they have dancing and capoiera performances sometimes, but on Sunday we were treated to jazzifed 80s pop. Not my thing, but people were enjoying it.

All in all it was enjoyable, but I'm not sure I'd go back. My share cost $55 for the food and drink, which is actually more than I paid in Vegas.

Allen.

Anti-wasp measures

2009-05-24T19:12:00.006-04:00

Wasps started building a nest on our back door again.

A couple years ago I figured out a decent solution for keeping them from doing it, after checking out what other people on the web do. We just hadn't gotten around to putting one up this year. They build every year otherwise. This time they'd just started and I pinched it off while it was still just 2 empty cells. Sort of wish I'd taken a picture, oh well. I don't know why they like our door so much, none of the other townhouses in the row seem to have this problem.

Anyways, what I do is stuff a paper lunch bag with other scrunched up plastic and paper bags, and shape it into a cone. Then I tie off the top with a couple of twist ties, and stick it up on the wall by the door.

Scouting wasps think that the bag is some other wasp's nest, and they don't consider it a valid building site. They don't build new nests in other wasps' territories.

This has worked for the past two years without any problems. Here's some pictures, its neither stylish nor glamourous, but it keeps the wasps away.

Allen.

Fake wasp nest in place

A closeup - this year I put a label on it in case the neighbours wonder.

Here's how it's hooked on, lets see if it lasts thru the rain.

Bagels Nom Nom Nom

2009-05-17T20:25:00.000-04:00

We went to the supermarket in the afternoon today, but we'd neglected to get a bag of bagels. Since I didn't feel like going out to another market, I decided to make some at home.

I dug up a nice recipe at The Hub that didn't require anything particularly special. Just 6 common ingredients, no milk or eggs or anything fancy. It was interesting cause I'd never made bagels before, and the whole idea of boiling the dough first before baking was weird to say the least.

I didn't measure exactly according to recipe - I added a cup of oat bran since we had some around, and went up to ~ 2 cups of water to compensate. I also added a sprinkling of sesame seeds as well.

Here's the basic recipe:

4 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
2 tsp instant yeast
1.5 cups warm water.

Put all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Poke a dent in the middle and put the oil in there.
Then add the water a bit at a time, making the dough in the middle of your dry ingredients, adding more water to soak up more flour from the sides into your dough. Once most of the flour in in your dough, turn it out onto your clean countertop. Knead till you're happy with it, about ten minutes or so. Let it relax for about 20 minutes after.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll them into cylinders about twice the width of your hand. Loop each piece around and press the ends together in a doughnut shape. Or you can roll it into a long snake and cut off pieces as needed for the bagel loops. Let them rise for a bit, maybe 15 minutes. For me, by the time I had done the last one, the first one was ready to be boiled.

Boil some water in a pot and drop in your bagels, a few at a time, don't crowd them. I did them 3 at once. I left them in the boiling water for about a minute and a half, then flipped them over to boil for the same. I scooped them out and dropped them on an oiled baking sheet to wait for the the next batch to be boiled.
Once all that is done, put them in an oven preheated to 425 Fahrenheit till they're a colour you're happy with. For me it was about 25 minutes uninterrupted baking time.

Anyways, here are the results, they turned out pretty nicely!

All the dry ingredients plus oil in the middle.

The dough divided into 8 pieces, you can see the oat bran specks

I tried several ways - punched down and not punched down, poked-hole (left) and looped snakes (right)

Rising in the warm oven

Boiling the bagels! So weird.

The bagels, all wrinkly after they'd been boiled

Back into the oven at 425 - with sesame on top

After 25 minutes of baking - wrinkly no longer

On the cooling rack - all done!

End notes: I like the way the looped-snake style bagels look nicer than the poked-hole ones. (You can see the poked-hole ones in the upper left, and second from the left in the bottom row) They have the same nice and chewy texture when eaten though. The punched down bagels dont have big air bubbles inside.

Allen.

Living Room Changes

2009-05-13T18:16:00.000-04:00

I picked up a wall mounting system for my LCD television. I'd always meant to, ever since we got the LCD, but I've always balked at the $300-$400 price tag on the nice swingarm mounting systems from Future Shop or Best Buy. However recently I picked up a Costco membership, and I saw the swingarms on sale there for less than $150. I snapped one up the instant I saw it.

There were a ton of parts that I didn't need in the kit, meant for every TV mount under the sun - I lucked out and ended up only needing the basic parts, none of the extensions were required. It was pretty straightforward, the parts were easy to assemble, and I have a ultrasonic stud finder to locate the wooden sections of the wall I had to drill into. There were plastic tubes that could stick to the wall to hold the cables running to the TV, which was very convenient. The only challenge was measuring out how high on the wall to mount the bracket, to make it the same height as before.

This wall bracket freed up an incredible amount of space in our living room. During the time Kathy was away in China, I had replaced the old TV stand with a full sized table for convenience. I used it to hold both the TV and a computer setup. Having the table space meant I used it as a table, so it was always a bit of a mess. And the space under the table was often used as storage, which was also not very pleasing to the eye. The TV was also offset to the right of centre compared to the couch. The worst part of this temporary arrangement was that it became temporarily permanent, and stayed that way for over a year and a half since the time I put it in.

You can see it in the picture below.

Functionality: Good - Asthetics and Space: Bad

So after I had the wall mount in place, a whole bunch of things had to go. First the big table. Then all the bits of stuff that had been stored under the desk. Even the small computer monitor went, since I rarely use both the computer and the TV at the same time.

Now my oil-PC computer is in a spot where it can be showed off a little, rather than hidden away behind all the monitors. It's great for some light websurfing or Youtube. I rearranged the shelves on the cabinet unit for the electronics and moved it to the right side where it was much less in the way - I'm still a little surprised at how I managed to fit all of the wiring and a UPS behind the cabinet. I can now finally reach the couple of light switches on the wall without having to reach around behind the cabinet. The staircase is much less blocked away now too.

This is looking a heck of a lot better.

Another angle - you can see the bracket behind the TV.

So this should probably be the way things are for a while. I've thought about trying to put the electronics cabinet into the wall to free up even more space, but it would be a much larger project to consider at a later date.

The only problem with this setup is - where the heck am I going to sit when I want to play some games on the computer?

Allen.

Crayfish Moulting / Molting

2009-05-12T17:52:00.000-04:00

Kathy discovered that our crayfish had shed it's shell the other day - we didn't see the actual moult but we took some pictures of the discarded shell. It freaked us out at first, seeing the ripped open carapace. I mean, we've heard of it before but this is the first time seeing it. I wonder how it gets its claws to pull out of the skinny little arm sections?

Did the fish eat him?

It looks like he's come out of his shell!

The crayfish is supposed to eat it's old shell - this one seems to be doing it over a period of a week or more, not all at once. Right now, it's eaten everything except the old claw shells and about half of the carapace.

After a week, only the old claws and a bit of carapace are left.

Allen.

Front yard fixup

2009-05-06T17:28:00.000-04:00

More of a a shabby bit of dirt than an actual yard, we've neglected the front yard of our house for years. I mean, we mow it when it gets too long, and but we don't water it, and haven't really watered it since we started having watering restrictions a few years ago - the lawn mostly withered from lack of water and we stopped caring about it at that point. Looking out at it last week, it just looked really sorry, so Kathy and I decided to do something about it. We scraped away the mostly dead grass with a rake, and removed what was left of the back third to make a flower bed.

I went by one of those places that sell patio stones and various other concrete bits, and picked up about $70 worth of driveway curbing to use as the edge around the flower bed. It took 2 trips to pick it all up with our little car, but it wasn't too far away so it was all right I suppose.

After we laid down the concrete, we filled the flower bed with soil. We have a giant cube of soil in the back yard that we used while reseeding the back lawn, so I carted the soil over to the front with a hand truck and a garbage can. Since the distance was around the whole townhouse block, about 10 homes, it worked better than a wheelbarrow with a single wheel.

We also put a good amount of soil down on the remaining grass as well and reseeded the area. Kathy says she wants to plant some shrubs, and I think it should look pretty decent once it's all done.

Edit May 13 - a week later the grass is starting to grow back through the soil, and we planted some perennial plants:

Allen.

Hamburgers

2009-04-14T21:02:00.000-04:00

I whipped these up pretty quickly while I was watching TV from the kitchen. We had some ground beef and I felt like having hamburgers, so I minced up a couple of onions and mixed it with the beef, plus some cornstarch and soy sauce that was around. I added some ginger powder - it takes the gross smell from the beef away without having bits of ginger in the meat (I dont like biting into pieces of ginger in food). I heard there is a trick to mixing ground meat - you have to stir it in ONE direction, it helps make it stickier faster instead of crumbling. I don't really know but it's what I hear.

The buns were the first googled recipe I clicked on that didn't require milk (cause I didn't have any milk at the time), and I didn't make exact measurements of the ingredients. I didn't expect them to look so nice. I wonder which recipe it was? I suppose I can find it again if I needed it.

The recipe needed one egg and one egg yolk for the egg wash, so I took out two eggs. I separated one yolk into a bowl, and added the extra egg white to the recipe.

I think I've figured out how to make a proper egg wash now. (dont laugh) After I had the whole yolk by itself in a bowl, I popped it and pulled out the skin that covered it. The remaining yolk was just the nice and smooth liquid portion inside, and once mixed with about a tablespoonful of water, looked proper at last, and worked beautifully when brushed onto the risen dough. How come recipes never tell you this stuff? Maybe I am just reading the wrong recipes.

Likewise with the sesame seeds - the recipes I've seen all say to roll your bun in the seeds, but they are not that easy to handle and lift. I experimented by sprinkling sesame on some, and spreading it on with a rub of my hand with others - I think I got better results from rubbing than sprinkling.

Anyway after I grilled the hamburgers and sliced the buns, the end result was really nice. It's too bad we didnt have any lettuce around, it would have been picture-perfect if I added some lettuce and a couple slices of tomato. Kathy and I gobbled these burgers up right quick, stopping only to take a quick snapshot first on her suggestion. We ate these with ketchup, mustard, and pickles. There is a plate of broccoli that you see the corner of, slightly off to the side. Yes, really, it's there, honest.

Maybe I should have cleaned up the crumbs first, but I was too anxious to start eating

Here are the others staying warm in the oven

Dinner Banquet Speech Ettiquette

2009-02-16T12:25:00.003-05:00

Last week I was at one of those fancy dinner parties for a friend's association event. It was held at a nice Chinese restaurant, with a 10 course meal. I was rather looking forward to the dinner and the events they had scheduled.

However, before the dinner and events actually started, the various VIPs of course had to give their speeches and greetings. None of them kept it simple - everyone had something to say about everything apparently.

Dinner was supposed to start at 6pm but by 8:30pm, there was no food other than a couple of tangerines and soda pop that were on the tables already. So everyone was drinking the pop on an empty stomach, getting hyper on sugar and caffeine, and generally not hearing what the speeches were about. I didn't understand much of what was said, but I was told that the speeches were about the Chinese New Year, and that each section was being repeated in both English and Cantonese for everyone's benefit. The bass level on the microphone was way too high, but no one really cared cause we were all so hungry.

Eventually the restaurant got tired of the speeches and just started serving the first appetizer course to all the tables, to the cheers of all present. They followed up very quickly with 4 more courses, so quickly that we hardly had time to finish each new platter (despite the fact that we were polishing them off at a swift, famished pace.) I guess the food was starting to pile up in the kitchens and they had to be served before they got cold.

Anyways, if you are holding a dinner banquet, dont let the old codgers talk until a little food has been served, people will be much more receptive to listening to them speak BETWEEN courses rather than when starving at the beginning of dinner.

Allen.

P.s. One dinner guest at our table ate before he came to the dinner, because HE EXPECTED THIS TO HAPPEN. Apparently this is a common occurence. Sigh.

Chen Style Tai Chi (太極拳) term 2

2009-01-16T13:34:00.002-05:00

This Sunday, our 2nd term starts for Chen Tai Chi. Hopefully we will learn some of the names of the moves we are doing - I like the class taught by Sifu May, but I wish we knew what the steps were called so we could refer to them properly.

Ji Hong Tai Chi had an open house last week. Kathy and I were part of the demonstration routine for the Chen 1 class, to show what you could accomplish in just 1 term. There were also demonstrations for the Yang style beginner class, and advanced demonstrations for Chen and Yang - they looked very nice and we were very encouraged about what we can accomplish in the future.

At first we were wondering if people were going to show up on such a cold day, but they did, in surprisingly large numbers. There were so many people that the benches and chairs were not enough to seat them all. It's nice for the school but I wonder how they are going to manage all the potential signups.

One nice thing about Ji Hong is that the people taking the classes are all relatively young for tai chi people, average age is about 35 I think. Compared to some places where the average age is perhaps 70, Ji Hong feels like a pretty energetic Tai Chi place. (My opinion of course)

Allen.

Bread FAIL

2009-01-13T20:57:00.010-05:00

I made a batch of standard french roll dough and brought it over to my mother's place to bake, figuring I'd show her how I can bake bread. Wow, it went badly. First, the dough sitting in the car for the 2nd rise did so over 4 hours in cold temperatures, and I didn't let it warm up to room temperature. I just cut it like usual and formed the baugette shapes. The oven at my mom's seems to be hotter, so I over baked it too. The end result were some weird twisted burnt shapes that exploded along the side. I was pretty annoyed about it. The end result is - don't change variables and expect the end result not to change too.

Allen.

what the heck happened?

eeeewwwwww =(

Kill me now... oh, you did, thank you

Even my yeast starter experiments looked better than that - here is the latest one for comparison:

Our crayfish thinks he's a monkey.

2008-12-31T08:34:00.004-05:00

From on high I survey mine domain.

Well he seems to like to climb the vegetation in the tank, anyways.

Btw the vegetation in the tank is just some watercress we stuck into the gravel, and it seems to be taking root.

Shaping a Baguette

2008-12-21T09:54:00.013-05:00

I had to look this up on the net... it seems that what you do is basically punch down your risen dough, fold it into a big square and cut it into 3 strips. Then fold them over a few times, and hide the cut areas' seams on the bottom.

Forming them wasn't as easy as I expected... Here's a couple of pictures - first a good one, and then another where you'll see where I didn't get one of the seams on the bottom properly.

Allen.

Looks pretty decent, though the recipe is a bit fluffy for a baguette.
That cut portion on top is toasted and became my breakfast, haha.

Flip it around though, and you'll see the baguette in the front is not right at all, the seam was supposed to be on the bottom to avoid this. The other ones are fine though.

Burst seam, oh noes!

How do I cook these?!

2008-12-16T22:26:00.010-05:00

Well, I do know I am supposed to stir fry these rice cake slices, probably with some julienned pork and some napa, but I don't know if any preparation work goes into them before they hit the wok.

We bought them from a Korean supermarket from their fresh section - they are rubbery and not soft, so I'm wondering if they are meant to be cooked as is, or if we have to do something else, like soak them, or boil them.

Going to have to experiment a bit.

Allen.

edit - okay, Kathy said they boiled nicely in soup and softened right up. That's a relief!

Baking with the starter

2008-12-11T12:10:00.008-05:00

I did another batch of those French rolls - this time I tried used the starter that I'd made instead of dry packaged yeast. The starter displaces some of the flour and some of the water, and I had to figure out just how much I was replacing, involving some guess work.

So I added 2 cups of the starter, and took out 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water. It kneaded pretty wet, and I ended adding the excluded cup of flour back in. If I were to do this again, I would take out all 1.5 cups of the water and just use the liquid from the starter.

The kneaded dough took twice as long to rise at both stages - I don't know if I should attribute that to the excess water or the quality of the starter. I didn't take any pictures during the process but I did take a shot of the end result.

not as pretty this time, oh well

The bread had a hint of sourness, but I guess that's to be expected since I used sourdough starter instructions. Kathy says she doesn't notice any sour flavour at all.

It's probably because I've been re-mixing in the clear alcohol-smelling liquid that comes out on top of the starter as instructed. (The liquid is called hooch.) I wonder if I can minimize that sour taste if I get rid of the hooch instead of mixing it back in.

I was a little worried at first about if it was just plain "gone bad" but I ate half a bun last night, and I didn't end up in the hospital. I ate another one in the morning after toasting and it was not too bad either... Toasted and buttered it was actually pretty good.

Allen.

Baking misadventure on the weekend.

2008-12-08T10:48:00.011-05:00

We have this old 5lb sack of cake & pastry flour in the pantry that has been there forever. I think we bought it by mistake one day. Anyways, we tried making some bread rolls out of it this weekend and the results were pretty bad - the flour wouldn't knead nicely and wouldn't rise properly, and then after baking they were dense, crumbling little bricks. Actually it reminded me a little bit of biscuits, so maybe I'll try a biscuit recipe on them instead tonight when I get home. Biscuits are supposed to be crumbly right?

Where are the bubbles?

I also tried making a yeast starter out of the cake flour and an old mostly-used jar of dry yeast - old as in years past it's stamped date, but it is just yeast after all. The only thing that would mean is that there is less live yeast and you won't get the expected amount of rising activity from it. But drop it in a starter and maintain it for a few days, it should become a viable yeast culture again right? There were a lot of recipes on the net about yeast starters, they basically all said the same thing - once started, they are virtually unkillable. Every so often, get rid of some of it somehow (bake with it or toss it out), and feed the remainder with some water and flour to make it it's original size again. Once a day if you leave it out, once a week if you refrigerate it. I will find out how it goes soon enough, if it works I wont need to buy yeast any more, haha.

We did pick up some unbleached all purpose flour so we could do some actual, successful baking as well: I made a batch of nice looking rolls, using the same recipe that the cake flour failed miserably with. What a difference the right flour makes. I used the recipe from here. The best part of this recipe is that there is no milk or eggs in it, cause we are always missing either eggs or milk.

Allen.

French Bread Rolls to Die For

Here it is in the oven
Here they're starting to brown
Here they are shortly before devouring

edit - the biscuit idea was edible but did not look too pretty - white as a sheet of paper even though fully cooked. I tried browning the top with the broil mode but it browned skipping the 'golden' part entirely.

This photo somehow looks better than the actual biscuits on the counter

Lets try those tires again...

2008-12-06T12:54:00.004-05:00

We lucked out and the Canadian Tire near my workplace had a new shipment of Goodyear Nordic winter tires about 2 weeks ago, and I got them installed, balanced and aligned. However, they have been giving us a rougher and rougher ride as time passed by - there was a decided rolling motion at low speeds, and a vibration at high speeds.

So we kept planning to go to Canadian Tire to get it checked, but things kept coming up and I didn't have either time or the car at my disposal. Anyways, on Thursday this week I finally had both, so I dropped by the Canadian Tire and told them I was having trouble with the new tires and wheels. It took a while before they could look at it, but when they did, they said that both rear tires have some sort of manufacturing defect, and their manager could authorize a replacement.

The tricky part was that the manager was not on duty in the evening, and would be in the morning, so I had to bring the car in again if I wanted the warranty work done. They gave me a card with a number to call. Of course, it was going to be a bit difficult since work was extra busy and Friday is one of Kathy's downtown work days.

So on Friday morning, I called the manager up and asked him about my case. He was already aware of it when I called, which was a pleasant surprise, and said I just had to drop the car off. So I got Kathy to drop me off at work, then take the car over to the Canadian Tire cause it is right next to the Leslie Subway stop on the Sheppard line. They called in the early afternoon to say that they have checked and replaced the 2 tires and all 4 of the steel rims too. That's a lot of replacement parts - how come it was done so badly the first time around?

Anyways, I told Kathy and she picked up the car after work. The cashier gave her a bit of a hassle and tried to charge us $340 for the rims, but thank goodness I had given Kathy all the receipts, and it listed the rim purchase. Its funny how they reassure us we don't need the old receipts cause all the data is on file, and then stuff like this still happens. So we got all of this fixed via the warranty, and the car is riding smoothly again, as it should be.

Allen.

Winter Tires

2008-11-25T15:59:00.003-05:00

Well its starting to get a bit slushy and slippery on the roads these days, so I decided I wanted to get a set of winter tires this year.

The problem is that all the tires in my size are sold out everywhere. Its funny cause usually it's the other way around for my old Corolla - parts are cheap and plentiful and you can shop around for a good deal.

The stores say that in Quebec they've enacted a safety law which requires all drivers to use winter tires from Dec 15th to March 15th this winter, and that the demand for tires is so great that they are buying tires here. I've even seen a few articles on CBC saying there is a thriving black market coming up around snow tire theft.

Anyways, whatever the reason, I'm having some real trouble finding snow tires, unless I'm willing to spend about $150 a tire on some premium stuff... and that doesn't include the price of a set of metal rims, which is another item that is in low supply at all the stores near home and work. Sigh.

Allen.

Joseki and Go problems.

2008-11-18T14:00:00.006-05:00

This is what I currently think - Joseki are sets of ideal moves. It's basically a combo sequence of play, encompassing best choices for your moves and your opponent's moves. Ideally you want to play a joseki that puts you ahead and gives you initiative, without your opponent realizing that they are playing into the losing side of the joseki pattern. (or maybe they do realize it but they can only play as recommended because it would minimize their losses.)

There was a quote somewhere I saw that said something about "learn your joseki and then forget it." Another one said "learning joseki reduces your playing level by 2 ranks". Both of them refer to the fact that rote learning is bad - you will not learn overall strategy as well, I suppose, and it can make you predictable, for sure. I think that we are just supposed to be able to recognize when joseki is possible instead, and regard it in terms of a strategic advantage instead of playing out the whole thing on a tactical level.

--
Do as much as you can with as few actual moves as possible seems to be the order of the day in go.

I've been doing go problems on a website called Go Problems. (what a straightforward name) It looks like they have a lot of material - I'm just looking at the lower level problems at the moment. I like how I can choose what difficulty of problem I want to look at. I also like that there are commentaries on the problems. Also, I can continue playing out the problem past it's ending point in order to see for myself just WHY something is good or not good (because I am a noob). Very helpful, and doesn't cost anything :D

Allen.

Go is not easy

2008-11-11T16:27:00.006-05:00

I used the Interactive Way to Go as my introduction to the rules. It looked pretty informative with clickable java programs showing each rule, and I was done with it soon enough. I thought to myself - Okay, now I'm ready to give this a shot! What do I have to lose?

Apparently my dignity, pride, cockiness, and any form of hubris you can think of. It was very humbling.

The past week or so, I have been playing some computer go at home. I have been losing nonstop. This has been really frustrating, especially when I'm given a huge 9 stone lead on a small beginner board that's 13x13 in size. No matter what I put down the computer had a counter for it instantly.

Totally massacred each time.

So I set out to read more about Go. Maybe find something about overall strategy on the internet. I dug into a few go related sites I'd found:

The Sensei's Library
Tel's Go Notes
Wikipedia's entries on Go, and Go Strategy/Tactics
and oddly enough,
Hitachi's Life and Death Problems of Go which is too advanced for me but they give good descriptions of what is going on.
(what's an electronics company have to do with Go theory?)

Even the online game store I bought my Go set at has a pdf that describes how to play.

Anyways, spending this time in front of a computer seems to be more productive than spending in from of a go game at this point, though I wouldn't actually stop playing - I have to try out what I'm reading about after all.

So my splatter movie grade deaths are getting a little less spectacular now, and I get to throw a few punches as I'm sinking.

Sometimes a punch actually connects and I win, though it's more luck than anything else.

Allen.

* The version I've been trying is the open source GnuGo, compiled to run on my Windows PC. (Using a Drago interface)

Cleaned the go stones

2008-11-11T08:37:00.006-05:00

As a quick edit, I washed the go stones last night with some dishwashing detergent. After drying, I applied some baby oil by hand and rubbed them clean with some clean kitchen towels. They kept their nice matte look and now smell a little bit like baby oil. (Basically they look the same but don't smell weird any more)

Also, I can run my hands through them in the bowl now without the blackboard-scratching feeling. I guess they just needed a bit of oil to get rid of the scratchiness.

It took an hour and a half of oiling and polishing to get the black stones done. I was doing them one or two at a time until I figured that just rubbing handfuls of oily stones in the towel worked just as well, (just enough so that the stones didn't scratch and rub each other) else it would have taken over 2 hours. In comparison, I oiled and polished the white stones in about 15 or 20 minutes.

Allen.

Go (the game)

2008-11-10T15:09:00.024-05:00

I bought a go board recently. Learning to play go is one of those things that I have thought about for a pretty long time, but never really gotten around to doing.

I remember seeing my dad play Go with Uncle Kao here in Canada when I was little, a long, long time ago. They had taken a big square cardboard box and drawn an uneven looking grid on the back, using a ballpoint pen and a piece of cardboard as a ruler. On top of this box, they started playing the stones, deep in thought as I watched them. I had no idea how the game worked, but they were putting the stones on the intersections of the lines, which I had never seen before. Games always had their playing pieces played in the squares didn't they? Checkers, chess, board games of all sizes and shapes, never had I seen one where you play on the intersecting lines. (though I guess Xianqi does it as well)

I thought it was fascinating. I'd only seen them play that one time, but it was quite a vivid memory.

Anyways, I want to talk about the purchase! I picked up the set from the Go Game Store after searching a number of sites, as it looked like they had some of the nicest solid boards. An even better point was that they were located in Canada (Brampton!) so I could avoid having to pay any customs fees as I would generally have to do when purchasing from the US. I contacted the store and got some Canadian pricing for their sets - I ended up getting this set from them.

The board is made from 3 pieces of spruce wood attached together, and is an inch thick. Its roughly about 17 inches by 18 inches, which is the Japanese standard size. I'm really happy with the colour of the board. Its very soothing to look at.

The stones are rounded on both sides, and have a beautiful matte finish to them. They're called Yunzi, named for their original production in Yunnan. They are a special formulation of glass made especially for go stones. The formula was lost at some point in the past, making these tiles a rarity. It was reverse engineered in the last 50 years or so, and are being mass produced now. (with changes in the formulation to remove the now-unacceptable lead content.) The only part of it I don't like is that if you run your hands through the stones it feels like you're scratching a blackboard. Just thinking about it is making my skin crawl. I guess its not a big deal, since we're not supposed to do that anyways.

The stones do smell a bit funny - I think I'm supposed to wash and then oil them, which I haven't gotten around to doing. Info on the internet says to use sewing machine oil, but since I don't have any around, I will probably have to find an alternative. For all I know, the funny smell might even be sewing machine oil already.

Before anyone asks, I did watch the Hikaru no Go anime. All of it. In 2007. Yes it influenced me to pick up a Japanese style set instead of a Chinese style set.*

Allen.

* Japanese style sets use bi-convex stones and Chinese style sets use single convex stones. Like my MS Paint picture? :P

Sony Cybershot DSCW120

2008-11-05T11:32:00.007-05:00

Well today I'm going to go pick up that Sony digital camera. Hope it's in stock!

Sony Cybershot DSCW120

Also it turned out that the old camera we used to have was not a Canon, it was a Kodak. A Kodak LS443, 4 megapixel in the 1-2 megapixel days. It had a Schneider-Kreuznach German lens.

The Sony I'm looking at has a Carl Zeiss lens - it's the primary reason I'm going for it - hopefully the quality will live up the brand name.

Allen.

edit - got it now, it is very nice :D

Pic of the hair

2008-11-04T22:04:00.013-05:00

I guess I should adjust the webcam but oh well.
Here's what my hair looks like right now (taken earlier tonight) - I'm the short red hair in the centre and K is to my side looking on. You can get an idea of how red is is this way. :D

Camera 2

2008-11-04T16:53:00.003-05:00

I really want a nice camera. Argh. Well I guess nice-for-the-price, good bang for the buck, whatever you want to call it.

I looked at the Sony Cybershot DSCW120, it's on sale at the Best Buy - I might go pick up one of those. K says she likes the shutter sound it makes when you take a picture with it. :D

Allen.

Allen the Red

2008-11-03T16:07:00.005-05:00

Oh, I should also mention, I dyed my hair red over the weekend. :D BRIGHT RED.

I managed to dye my scalp red too in the process. Now that merits a bit of typing.

I bought the dye at one of those hair product specialty shops in Pacific Mall. The salesgirl basically asked what colour I wanted. She showed me a colour chart with sample "hair" in it that was supposed to be the right colour after dyeing. I wanted something really red. (Red is my favourite colour) The salesgirl was sort of shocked and asked a couple times if I was sure I wanted something so red, to which I replied, definitely, yes. Kathy, who had shown me the shop, just chuckled to herself. Anyways, she told me about what I needed to get the hair to the shade of red in the sample - the actual dye plus a peroxide goop that was rated at 40% something, in order to bleach my hair white first before the colour would take. Kathy got her to write down the instructions, and we paid about $20 for the two items.

When I got around to dyeing my hair, I checked the package instructions, and they were all in French. I decided my French wasn't good enough to read hair dyeing instructions, and I looked up some additional information on the net about it. What I found was a contradictory mess:

Hair should be washed before dyeing to get rid of excess oils.
Hair should NOT be washed before dyeing so you retain the oils.
Apply peroxide straight to hair.
Apply peroxide:water in a 1:1 ratio to hair.
Peroxide works only if you sun your hair.
You should not feel any burning sensation on your scalp.
Some burning sensations on your scalp are normal.

Anyways, after reading all that stuff off the web, I ended up thinking of dyeing as a 2 step process, uh oh. This is what I did:

I washed my hair and dried it with a blow dryer.
I put on some plastic gloves and took a liberal handful of the peroxide goop, and started spreading it on my hair.
I expected to see it start to lighten after a while, but 20 minutes passed with no result except that my scalp was a bit irritated.
So I mentioned it to Kathy who said - didn't you read the instructions??
I dug up the instructions which said I had to MIX the peroxide and the dye in 1:1 proportions, and then put that on my hair, in a one step bleach+dye process. DOH!
I washed my hair clean of the peroxide, and dried it again.
I mixed some of the dye and peroxide together in a ceramic bowl and started applying it to my hair by hand. It was somewhat irritating and I wondered if I had "opened my pores" too much from all the prior manipulation according to some of the web sites.
I dug up a toothbrush from under the sink to help with the root parts.
I gave up on the toothbrush and just started rubbing the stuff onto my head. I look like I'm a bloodied car crash survivor or something.

This is where it started going kind of wrong. I dyed my scalp red. I dyed part of my forehead red. I recalled that some web pages suggested that I put vaseline on my forehead just in case of specifically that but it was kind of too late for that... and how was I supposed to prevent that from happening to my scalp? Let the natural oils build up on my scalp for half a day after washing my hair?

I was supposed to wait for 45 minutes to let the dye set in, but I couldn't help but play with my hair during the time. I probably should have let it be, peacefully, but I was all hmm, I should rub here and make sure I get more dye there. So for about 30 minutes, I have been basically massaging my scalp with dye. I decide that that was enough, since my scalp was getting a bit itchy, and my hair was starting to look seriously red instead of black. Maybe it was cause I had marinated my scalp with peroxide for 20 minutes before I did the dyeing.

I pop into the shower and rinse off the stuff... shampoo, etc - a lot of dye goes down the drain but hey, my scalp is still red, I can see in the medicine cabinet from where I am in the shower. Even part of my forehead is still bright red. I continue showering for a while, the dye still making the water all bloody. After about 15 or 20 minutes, my forehead stopped looking like it'd been split open, and became a bit more normal. My scalp was still really red though. I guess all the manipulation did do something about opening the pores, and the dye on my scalp really settled in. Anyways, I washed as best as I could considered I had to get over to F's place soon. I figured that after a while the oils from my scalp should counter the dyes and the topmost layer should wear down eventually. What's done is done - next time though, I gotta look up how to dye short hair without dying my scalp even redder than the hair in the process.

So anyways, the second day after another wash, my scalp looks much more normal... now on the third day, it's a bit better again, but not normal enough - someone at work today commented "hey part of your scalp is red!" I was like - Yeah I know and it kinda sucks. (Argh) Hopefully it will be better soon, haha.

Other than the scalp stuff, I really like the redness of the hair. :D I'd take a picture but I still haven't looked around for a camera right now... maybe I'll dig up my webcam or something.

Allen.

The Chako Izakaya

2008-11-03T14:33:00.010-05:00

This weekend Kathy and I went over to F's to see his newborn baby girl. Such a little sweetie. Sleeps like 22 hours a day according to F's wife, which was a huge difference from their first one. Anyways, after being there for a bit, we ended up going out for dinner.

I felt like something seafood, maybe at a Red Lobster or something, but having only thought of it in the car, we didn't check to see where the closest locations were - we decided to check out the Marlowe or the Alice Fazooli's in a restaurant area around Hwy 7 and 404. Turns out that the Marlowe was a bit more upscale than we felt like, and the Alice Fazooli's didn't have much of a seafood menu. (didn't Alice used to be a Italian seafood place?) Anyway, after hmming and hawing a while, we ended up at the Chako Restaurant Izakaya that was in the same area, the others looked like they wanted to try it out, and I figured I could get my seafood fix from grilling some salmon or something.

Chako is a Korean BBQ. Looked pretty nice and we'd passed by it a few times before and wondered if it was any good. We arrived pretty early, just shy of 6pm like a bunch of senior citizens, and were seated immediately. It was a nice table with 2 grills on it, which was nice cause there were 4 of us. We looked at the menus and there was quite a bit of stuff to look at. The waiter asked us what we wanted and had a little notepad out, but being sort of hungry and since it was all-you-can-eat, we just asked him to bring some of everything. Also we ordered some Sapporo beer. In the amount we wanted, it was being sold in 2, 3, or 4 litre sizes, and we figured 3L would be plenty to get us happy. He bowed and left, and someone came to light the grills.

A few minutes later, he came back with some of those Korean appetizer plates - some tofu, some kelp, kimchee etc. Then another waiter showed up with a plate of sushi and maki roll on it. Miso Soup too. Then somehow, everything appeared at once in a hubbub of serving staff and trays - little stackable black-and-red trays of meats and veggies. (well I guess we did say some of everything) So we set to grilling. It was pretty good stuff! The meats were well marinated and the vegetables nice and fresh. Course F and E didn't really want to have anything to do with the veggies so it fell to Kathy and I to finish off most of it. We were good with all of the dishes except for maybe this whitefish that seemed to have been defrosted from a frozen package and not fresh like the salmon.

They brought the beer over at some point too, I dont recall if it was before or after the food stampede. It came with these little juice glasses from Ikea. The beer came in a little wooden barrel - that was kind of cool. It had a tap on the front and the top was removable so we could see how much beer we had left... though after a few glasses, F kept telling us there were 3 glasses left, even though we must have gotten at least 12 more out of it.

We stared ordering more of some of the dishes as we grilled - there was an especially good lamb, and the bulgogi beef was nice and marblized. I think we ordered like 4 sets of short ribs as well. By the end of it we had eaten quite a bit. Not half as much as we did when we were in our teens, but we put in a pretty good show I thought. I know that on the last two little trays of beef, they started doing the usual Korean BBQ thing where they hint that you shouldn't eat any more by serving you semi-frozen unseasoned meat. It was a bit funny too, when we were at the end we figured we could do 1 tray of short rib and 1 tray of bulgogi - we stressed to the waiter that we just wanted these last 2... and he misinterpreted it as we wanted 2 of each, so we got double the portion we wanted. So we went from the 100% full we thought we'd end up at, to a solid 120% of food induced discomfort. I think E went way past that, he somehow managed to fit in 2 bowls of rice on top of everything else.

We ended up sticking around a bit longer cause we thought maybe some ice cream might help smooth things out. They also appeared to have some oriental style mango pudding, and we had a bit of a discussion on how "mango" flavour is never mango-like, sort of how "grape" flavour is not the same thing as grape. So we got some of one and some of the other - some mango ice cream, some mango pudding, and some green tea ice cream. The two mango desserts tasted completely different from each other and neither one tasted like mango. E said that the pudding was more of a lychee flavour, and the ice cream was more of the usual artifical mango flavor. I has some of the green tea ice cream which was pretty normal.

Oh if you are in their washrooms (a bunch of nice little individual rooms) make sure you don't turn on the faucet all the way - it's a fancy looking affair but designed in such a way that water will bounce right out of the sink and into your lap if you turn it too high.

So anyways we did have a good time, the food was of pretty good quality, and the service was REALLY good compared the the standard service at a chinese-korean restaurant. It was really good enough that I'm actually spending time writing about how I like it instead of how I don't like it. :D I would definitely consider eating there again. Btw, it looks like it's owned by the people who run the Destiny tea shop. (link)

We rounded off the night with a bit of Rock Band, which none of us had played for a while, so we were pretty rusty. I think I sang like 4 songs before my throat started giving out. Okay, maybe about 1/2 way through the 2nd song, I had a coughing fit and had to go down an octave, which was a bit on the low side. Dammit why are so many songs either too high or too low for me? Oh well, it was still fun. Before one of the songs I was playing guitar on, Kathy was poking a drum stick into my ear to bug me, so I played badly on on purpose. I meant to keep it near the fail mark of the 3rd life, but I sucked enough that I actually died, doh! Sorry E who was trying to sing Oasis.

Allen.

First Snow of the Season & Global Warming Experts

2008-10-29T12:32:00.006-04:00

Well it snowed last night while we were all asleep. It came early compared to the last several years - it used to be that we'd wonder if there would be snow or not by Christmas time.

Someone at work mentioned that some global warming expert was saying how this is an indicator that global warming is happening. I was stunned for a bit, wondering what sort of reasoning could possibly have deducted a global warming trend from a colder winter. Apparently, someone somewhere is saying that just before it gets REALLY warm, it will suddenly get really cold... as if the mercury or alcohol in a thermometer was crouching down to get ready to jump for an all new height. I haven't tried looking up where this comes from but it really just makes me want to close my eyes and forget I ever heard it. Sure, modifying the atmosphere with pollution is not a good thing, but this sort of weird interpretation says scare-mongering to me.

I really hope it was just the "telephone effect", where too many retellings of the same story had warped it beyond recognition.

Allen.

Chen Style Tai Chi (太極拳)

2008-10-28T12:49:00.013-04:00

About a month or so ago, the wife and I started taking some tai chi classes at a dojo in Richmond Hill. Ji Hong Tai Chi. They teach Chen, Yang, and Wu style tai chi at that location and it feels like the instructors there know what they are doing. The version I am taking right now is the Chen style tai chi, its the one that appeals to me the most, with it's energetic bursts of motion, as opposed the more stately Yang style.

The class is only for an hour a week, one morning class every Sunday. I think I can handle a bit faster a pace than we're going right now, maybe 2 classes a week would be nice. The school has divided the form into 3 parts and listed them as Chen 1, 2 and 3. I think it might be a good idea to take Chen 2 and 3 at the same time after I'm done with Chen 1. Plus the per-course cost is cheaper for 2 classes in one term, than 1 class per term. Right now we're probably about just under half way through Chen 1.

The instructor we have is a kind of a petite woman originally from Singapore. Master May or Sifu May, everyone calls her. In the class when she is doing the moves, you can see an aura of energy and concentration radiating from her, much bigger than her diminutive frame, and is quite impressive. She is teaching the course in a combination of English and Cantonese. English for the main part, and Cantonese to drive home some points if certain people are not getting things right. On the first day she asked us which language we'd prefer to have the course taught in, English, Mandarin, or Cantonese. We settled on English only, since some people didn't speak Mandarin and some people didn't speak Cantonese... but I guess some of the students need a bit more help in their own language.

Speaking of the students in the class, some of them seem fairly advanced. They nail down the motions beautifully without too much effort or correction from the instructor. I'll guess they've taken another tai chi form before. I feel like I'm learning a bit more by watching them interpret the instructor's moves. On the other hand, there are also students that are absolutely atrocious - stiff armed and stiff legged, doing half or less of each move as it is presented. You can call me elitist if you want, but if we spent any more time on them, we would be learning the form as 6 parts rather than 3 parts. I can appreciate their dedication to learning it though, if not their form.

I'd say I'm sort of in the middle of these two groups. A few problems here and there with width of stance and footing, but nothing glaringly wrong. My body is usually in the right posture and my hands are generally in the right positions. I have taken a Yang style course before a long time ago, and I've always had a passing interest in martial arts, so I think that helps somewhat.

Allen.

Camera, hmm

2008-10-27T16:41:00.005-04:00

I really should get a digital camera again. The last one that Kathy and I had broke while she was on her trip in China last year, and was left behind. I guess it's all right, it had lasted us quite a while. Heck, I'd gotten it for her before we'd even gotten married, and we've been together now for longer than I can remember. (since 2003 in regular terms)

It was a Cannon 8 megapixel auto of some type that I don't recall, back from when it was more common to have a 2 or 4 megapixel camera. What I do recall was that it did have a decent battery life and good quality output. I remember Kathy showing me pictures from the Cannon, and pictures that her sister had taken with a 2007 cheapo 8 megapixel camera. Compared side by side, the picture quality was very noticeable. Probably had to do with the nice lens or something that the Cannon had.