My brain shouldn’t be but it was in overdrive!!

It was a wild and crazy weekend starting with the Mad Dash to Pearson after work. The flight looks so promising and feasible at 7:20pm but insert a most tardy and unhurried Airport Express bus fighting Friday rush hour traffic downtown and I was totally on edge until I got to the airport.

There wasn’t a moment to spare and I went to security where the officer guarding the entrance to the roped area was actively avoiding doing work and sending people downstairs to a smaller security checkpoint via stairs not meant for travellers with luggage. That is, no downwards escalators but only stairs and a girl ahead of me with her carry-on luggage tumbled down the stairs! The upstairs guard said the downstairs checkpoint was smaller but empty–a lie–and I was the last person to enter the frustrating queue before they turned people coming downstairs around to go back upstairs.

My carefully preserved Prairie Girl cupcake for Lil Sis was knocked over while exiting the security scanner and peppermint frosting smeared off the chocolate cupcake and onto the box. :(

And the flight was delayed by over and hour. Add that to a most frustrating queue with NPY a few weeks ago when his baggage receipt printed but not the baggage tag and we waited so long in the full-service check-in line just about to boil over because of lackadaisical union labour ethics. I am about to join the chorus of people who swear off Air Canada. But the more corporate and international Air Can brand draws me more than casual and joking Westjet so AC hasn’t lost a customer in my quite yet.

A couple of months ago, on her way back to Halifax, Mum left her cell phone charger with the Toronto airport security people and it was good excuse for her to get a new phone. I think the Korean soaps give her ideas and she wanted a big bright screen and “text messaging” and not a $0 flip phone. And when she saw the “large print” and large on-screen keyboard of the Galaxy Note, she could not be turned.

Instead of working on Saturday night, I set up mum’s new phone and wrote instructions and played many Scramble with Friends games with Lil Sis who is regularly shut out because she has a Blackberry (but is now convinced to go Android/Samsung in 18 months since she’s also anti-Apple for inexplicable reasons). She thinks I’m biased but I don’t think I am to believe that mum would learn to use an iPhone just a bit easier than Android. But mum thinks the iPhone is too small!!

On Sunday when the biggest event of the day is managing the onslaught of Mother’s Day orders, mum and I made another trip to Bell Aliant. Having played with the Galaxy Note overnight, she realized the device is too large and her old, stiff fingers cannot grip the device securely, she feels it’s not private with such a large screen, and her brothers who are a tad more computer/Internet savvy than she is wield simple phones and will have a field day ridiculing her with her Galaxy Note. So we were back to find the next largest Samsung and it would be the Galaxy IIS HD and LTE phone. So I had to set up another phone!

All while fielding the calls from customers to order take out. And calling Bell ExpressVu support to order new remote controls for the PVRs. And calling Bell Mobility to unlock mum’s account to manage her bills online. And fielding some panicky calls from my grandmother in Toronto who was overreacting to something.

And then we worked worked worked from 4pm until 8pm. I love having the cleanest job just answering the phone and handling cash but it gets awkward just standing at the counter and people are waiting for orders not yet completed.

Tying up loose ends and having the “serious talk” with mum that needs to happen every trip otherwise it’s not typical of our rapport… brings me to 2am this morning.

There’s still a list of errands for Lil Sis to help out with since she’s staying a day longer and I’m stressed out about it because I want it done and for some of my parents’ large utilities bills to get adjusted.

I say it with the best of intentions and need to mean it this time. From now until the end of June my life can consist of not much more than work, study, and running.  No room for error for seven weeks.

Except, I’ve got big plans for the rest of the year that requires planning this far out. Crazy, but I wouldn’t really have my life any other way.

Then two days later, I made an update. Then another one a day after that. I was… weblogging! I changed the font colour every day and put a horizontal bar (<hr>) to divide the days. Here are the first three days, reversed from the reverse chronological order how it appeared in the HTML file, complete with formatting. (Note: the font was Arial but I think my Typominima theme CSS template is overwriting that tag.)

April 23, 2002

I have been inspired by this site to do something along the same line. But do you think there is quite enough content going on in my life to post??

These days, it’s nothing but study-study-study. Four more finals to go and my senior year is a closed book! My favourite show, after Star Trek, just started up its final season yesterday and the title character, Felicity, is mulling the implications of her senior year starting. I didn’t see the episode but that’s because I’m saving it as a treat for < 1 week from now!!

April 25, 2002

I saw that Felicity episode today because I took the afternoon and evening off. < WoW > I wish I had seen the episode much earlier this year, like in September when it was supposed to have aired. She is one confused girl and I can really identify with her! There is something iminently scary about having to start my future and that whatever path I take has to be my decision. You know what? I sat there hoping that her parents would just swoop in and enrol her in premed and pay for her fourth year. Even if I don’t agree with a university student having to rack up a student loan (a Chinese thing), I do have to agree with the incomparable feeling of declaring your independence, of asserting your self-sufficiency.

DL recommended me to this site: guicookies. Apparently it’s really new because there only 347 users and I could actually get my own name as my username! *Almost* renders my links page obsolete, which is exactly why Dung recommended it to me because my links page so sucks! :p

April 26, 2002

Today’s font colour is in honour of my extinct “random links” page. Apparently I overwrote it when I was shuffling files on my borg (CS) and is2 (general) accounts and now my carefully cultivated list of links is just a copy of my index file!!

Oh, Berryhill, my choice of graduation photographer, called saying my preview prints are in. I really want to pick them up today! But it can definitely wait until Monday. Three more days to go and that is how much time is left when I start my countdown. My chemistry classmates have been counting down since the beginning of term!

You might not want to join me but I went on a little walk down memory lane and posted from my back-up other posts from around my blogiversary over the years

• 2003: April 22, April 24 - I tend to forget that there were stretches when I went clubbing a lot and I thought I was so intelligent about life decisions
• 2004: April 22, my sister and I went for Indian food in Halifax
• 2005: April 23, marked 3-year blogiversary
• 2006: April 23, a delicious tofu recipe; I also found an April 23 post I wrote for Vancouver Metblogs about the Sun Run
• 2007: April 23, my “I hate cilantro!” post
• 2008: April 21, Sun Run post
• 2009: April 23, marking 7 years
• 2010: April 17, running merchandise for girls
• 2011: April 28, super-fun round-up of places I went to eat during my Easter Toronto trip

Frankly, only the first few years’ posts were fun. Back when I was so blissfully ignorant and young and wrote about everything!

1. Running: Instead of online shopping for books (like I used to) or clothing (which I never got the hang of), I went “shopping” for 2012 road races and filled up my social (er, running) calendar up to December by April 5. Several races were already on my radar and I registered for them early on. The Yonge Street 10K in April is the Toronto 10K to run and I need to do it to “compare and contrast” with the Vancouver Sun Run. The crazy Quebec City Staircase Challenge in June came on my radar a few years ago and now I’m fulfilling that “dream”. I registered for two run-of-the-mill half-marathons ambitiously four weeks apart in September and October. My body should be able to handle it, but they are both away races and I have to plan the trips. Registering for the Las Vegas half-marathon in December was “only logical” to get the minimum number of two Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathons in the same calendar year to get a Heavy Medal. And it was by pure luck I learned about the Toronto Pearson Runway run in June from BlogTO.com and I had to register for that, too. And that’s it. Because I have this scary feeling that I have over-committed.

   In other running news, the training is going well in no small part because I love my condo gym. It is large with five treadmills that aren’t free until 9 or 10pm. I fell into the questionable habit of working out around 11pm when I’m guaranteed the machines I desire to use. At first, I was all too happy to catch primetime shows since the treadmills are LifeFitness machines but I couldn’t be guaranteed not to have to wait for a treadmill during primetime while at 11pm, I get my pick. My go-to television show is re-runs of Star Trek: Voyager on the sci-fi channel but many episodes really exacerbate the feeling of absolutely wasting my time and mental capacity. I started listening to audiobooks and happily knock off a workout and “reading”.

2. School: I goofed up a little and did not initiate necessary paperwork in time and have to pare back my plan from four courses to three this year. I had also given the historically crazy-busy month of March the respect and space it was due and extended a course since it wasn’t getting done on time and I had nothing else to take due to paperwork mix-up above. Although drawn out, the past six months of this one blessed course is hopefully the hardest thing I have to slog through.
3. Work: I never would have dreamed how crazy and satisfying working can be. I couldn’t be more pleased that I’m finally getting the Big City (on Bay Street, no less), Big Co. experience without which my life would feel incomplete.
4. Travel with Lil Sis in April: Couldn’t. Unofficially I can’t take vacation in April. Other than small weekend trips for the races, the autumn looks unlikely, too.
5. Relationship: Living on my own has helped me and NPY stay connected much better than when I had a “roomate” in the fall. Skype and national My5 are a boon.
6. Travel with/to/of NPY: NPY visits me for a week starting today and I’ve booked my week off to visit him in August. After he’s safely back in Vancouver and in a couple weeks’ time, I start planning Hawaii in late October. It’s like the only place he wants to go so I want to make it happen this year.

Bonus Resolution #1

On top of these resolutions, on Shrove/Fat Tuesday (February 21), I resolved to give up chocolate for Lent. Although I crave salty food far more than I do chocolate, when it comes to buying a snack when at work, I will go for chocolate as opposed to a rustling bag of chips. Theoretically, chocolate can last over a couple of days. Theoretically, there is some value to (dark) chocolate and none whatsoever for Cheetos. Further, I can indulge in hot chocolate at any time at work, all leading to novel chocolate cravings that needed to be nipped in the bud with a moratorium.

Although I gave up chocolate, I seriously sinned a few times eating cinnamon buns and who knows if I unwittingly had chocolate in Tim Hortons’ “French Vanilla” cappuccino. Otherwise, I made it through the 40 (+6) days of Lent plus a few days after because I didn’t know Lent was over. My first taste of chocolate after that (Birthday Cake Oreos) wasn’t even so satisfying. Nothing against the Oreos which are actually delicious, but I really nipped that craving in the bud.

Bonus Resolution #2

While contemplating what to give up for Lent, I considered my largest food weakness: potato chips. It is such a big addiction of mine I can’t merely give it up for 40 (+6) days. Instead, I reclassified it as a poison for me. I’m addicted to that stuff and cannot have so much as a single piece similar to how a recovering alcoholic can’t have a single drop. Other than ill-advised and heavily regretted rice chips snacks and corn chips in a Frito Lay pie, I have stuck to this resolution.

Bonus Resolution #3

Also on Shrove/Fat Tuesday, I wildly resolved, and told NPY that when I see him in person next (two months from that time), I would weigh the same as when he met me six-years-less-two-months. He’s so sweet to say it’s not necessary and I look fine but that’s the trap–I feel fine and generally look healthy even if I’m 10 pounds above and below where I am right now. It’s sad to sign off this blog post with a “fail” but this was a bonus resolution! The clean, lean living of above did get me closer to my goal but only 2/3 of the way. I’ll share at a later time a tool at work that has really helped my progress and enabled me to lose 10 pounds in four months. This resolution required me to lose about 10 pounds in two months which is impossible because I will not/cannot severely restrict intake. My new goal, for when I next see NPY in August, four months away, (sniff, not sooner), is my 1999 weight which is 10 pounds less than right now. That’s reasonable, right?

Now that My First Accounting Course is in the books, closed–whew!–I’m onto the next one. I registered in October but didn’t started it until December and since I purchased a course extension, I have to finish it by the end of May in order to start another course in June. It doesn’t end! But my brain is exercised and happy for it.

At first, the idea of a law course sounded great. Like accounting, I’ve never before made a foray into the discipline but my interest quickly waned as the details bog me down. I’m all for reading (and highlighting!) but just by being a law text, even geared towards business students, the language immediately becomes untenable to me. And there are all the footnotes on each page that are adding a lot of detail and information to the main text. It’s overwhelming.

As comfortable and inviting as my couch is, this is where I have to plant myself for the good part of every evening while I get my course and progress under control. Do I need both computers? Yes! Part security blanket, part containing the tools (MS Word and Excel) that I need to use to draft my assignments. NPY needs to crack open his books and study, too. We sorely rue that we cannot study together and I suggested to him Skype Studying (like Skype sleeping), but he won’t go for it… yet!

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I’m resigned that in the future, I have to live in the “‘burbs” and drive or (shudder) take transit to get to work. One day, I will have a live-in partner and we decide together where to live. Until then, I continue to be loathed to have more than a 10-minute walk to work, hah!

At first, I thought I’d get a Concord CityPlace apartment, perhaps even in LV’s building. But Lil Sis and I noticed the Pinnacle development and particularly their amenities. During a whirlwind tour of apartments available for rent, we saw older (2-5yo) units and new units (a few months old), the latter with an address the same street as my workplace.

Living so close to work in Vancouver was something of a coincidence. I did chose my apartment on the west side because I thought I might (and did) end up at the cancer research facility 490 meters away. But it was not for forever and I spent a year commuting to North Vancouver and did not know that I would really luck out and get an offsite UBC job located just 253 meters away from my doorstep. This time around in Toronto, I got the job first, then looked for a place to stay. Work is a whole 651 meters away and it works out I can say that I work and live on Bay Street.

Others: “Who wants to see their office from their apartment?! What if you have a bad day at work?”

Me: “If I have a bad day at work, or if I’m quite loathed to go in (because I’m tired or cranky), I’d rather just get home or get into work after an 8-minute walk instead of dragging it out!”

My little apartment hit all that I wanted (and I pay dearly for it): new one-bedroom, first tenant in, high-30s floor (of 52 floors in total), good view (mostly north and east facing), undermounted sinks, ensuite laundry, laminate floors, 24-hour concierge, the “Club” amenities that include a state-of-the-art gym, pool, hot tubs, saunas, tennis court, squash courts, outdoor running track , and basketball court.

But… aside from being right next to the Air Canada Centre (ACC) with an event or game very second night on average, it’s super-quiet and dead after business hours thanks to the nearby Financial District and all the businesses existing to serve it shutting down at 6 p.m. My daily commute takes me through the grubbiest of grubby Toronto, under some overpasses that is the Gardiner and Union Station train platforms, and through the god-awful messy headache that is Front Street so-called revitalization. A view of the CN Tower would be the cherry on top but I don’t have it and only see corroded train station roof, a maze of train tracks and industrial Port Lands. My building is so fancy and new there’s no visitor parking, event rates apply nearly every evening at the public lots, and it took two weeks at gouging rates to get to know some parking attendants and get down to $10/day parking at a public lot.

My favourite Canadian/Toronto series from 1999 was the short-lived show The City and I remember one line in particular said about city Councillor Katharine Strachan by her lover, played by chiseled James Gallanders, “She gets a nosebleed if she goes north of Rosedale.” Heh. Rosedale is darned close compared Richmond Hill and Scarborough where I have to go every now and then!

When I do have to leave the core and foot power will not take me there, being just 400 meters from Union Station is a boon. The Union stations house the subway to get elsewhere in the city, GO trains to get around GTA, and VIA rail should I really need to bust this joint. The Gardiner Expressway is at my doorstep which means arriving and leaving by car is efficient, more so than living deeper in the core. All this access and I’m happy as a clam just spending time at home. I haven’t even visited LV yet who is a mere 20-minute walk towards the Entertainment District but we’ll blame it on the weather and not my laziness. ;)

Right now, I’m totally satisfied tripping down to the condo gym that with Life Fitness treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes equipped with television screens, I’ve been timing my workout with the televisions shows I want to catch since I’ve cut the cord and don’t have a television. At some point, I will need to train outdoors (booo…) and the Running Room is 800 meters away and we will probably often connect with the Waterfront Trail and head out to Humber Park and The Beaches ad nauseum.

Finally, supermarkets are more important to me right now than restaurants in the vicinity and I thought I couldn’t have it better than before with four to chose from within a 10-minute walk. It’s close. Going to to Longo’s (300 meters away) involves stepping into the shiny and bright ACC/Maple Leaf Square area and Longo’s has a great high-end market feel like Whole Foods. It’s a bit like an Urban Fare, actually, in that it also carries the the Western Family house brand. The 24-hour Loblaws where Top Chef candidates are taken to to shop is 800 meters away but a bit of a sketchy trek past the Redpath refinery. I would never have to visit the Sobey’s 600 meters away–they are so expensive–except it houses a Wine Rack and Wine Racks carry the Inniskillin East West series wine that I’ve adopted as “my” wine (more on that later).

There, that’s my world outside of my apartment. It’s pretty complete with the large and glaring exception of NPY’s absence. :( Next up, an apartment tour!

if i ate in the caf, which i don't usually,i can look at my apartment.

******** This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.

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January I went to Toronto twice, once on the way back to Vancouver from spending Christmas in Halifax and once for Lil Sis’ graduation ceremony. I was in month 3 of being really restless about my future and over breakfast that Leo cooked and at the dining table in his condo overlooking Toronto’s financial district and CN Tower, he encouraged me and told me that “when you come to Toronto, things will happen.” In 2011, I was able to DineOut Vancouver and Winterlicious.

February We went on a small three “couples” road trip to Seattle. It doesn’t happen often so it was really nice because we were out of town and the three of us girls could go out for a drink while the guys stayed in the hotel playing video games and watching TV of course. I also discovered Zumba and the updated dance-inspired fitness classes work very well for me.

April We did not train well at all but since I paid for it, we were doing the Sun Run, damnit! We slid in just a little bit over an hour and I completely tanked half way through. NPY beat me by less than a minute and completed his longest race to date, a 10K. We started learning how to play guitar and that expanded my horizons. I also made my third trip to Toronto of the year over an extended Easter holiday.

May After 26 months working at UBC, my contract ended without further renewal and change was inevitable. Unemployment was nice for two weeks only. BiNK’s wedding was at the end of the month and I can safely say it was the party of the year–it has the funny effect of forever ingraining in my memory the association of 2011 songs (like Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”, “No Speak Americano”, and DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win”) with that evening and summer.

June NPY and I started looking for somewhere to live together. NPY not being a proponent of renting, we looked at condos for sale and figured out quickly after one big condo-touring day what we wanted (none of what we saw). NPY and I celebrated five years together. In one particularly “cultured” week, we saw the traveling Broadway production of Wicked and a Rihanna concert. ;)

July We went on a “double date” roadtrip to Bellevue. Shopping was not the focus but eating still was! It was really blissful although I didn’t have that much stress to run away from.

August After a whole summer of deliberation and discussion, I/we decided that I would go to Toronto for a while. Reason: I really miss my sister and it doesn’t make a difference where I am if I’m just studying. We went back to Victoria to visit for the first time in five years. At the end of the month, I brought Daddy to visit his family in Vancouver for the first time in 11 years and I had packed up, given up my apartment (my first apartment) of six years, and relocated to Toronto.

September I made sure to stay busy during my first month hanging out with Vanna, checking out The Ex at CNE and TIFF. Lil Sis and I did a wine region tour of Niagara-on-the-Lake but according to my cousin Alan, we missed all the good (small) wineries.

October In a “birthday trip”, Lil Sis and I went to Detroit… and Ann Arbor. I can now cross Detroit off my list.

November NPY’s Toronto visit at the end of October rolled right into our NYC trip, second time in three years and now we have to move on to somewhere else! I started doing NaNoWriMo, a romance, but then I couldn’t face it any longer. I got a job at a really good company and started my new job at the end of the month. It was a stressful month of getting everything together after six months of under-employment!

December Settling into working downtown and a routine which was really welcome after so long. I leased my first grown-up apartment and jumped through all the hoops of a real, fancy downtown apartment. I went was back in Vancouver at the beginning of the month for a whirlwind trip and back again for an extended long weekend to celebrate Christmas. I’ve never spent Christmas away from my family but isn’t NPY my family by now? Then back to Toronto for a couple of days and Halifax for New Years!

I don’t go seeking my horoscope forecast for the year but sometimes it comes through to me anyhow. I think Lil Sis found my Chinese Zodiac for the lunar year that started 3 February 2011 and it was just an awful year for me in the work realm. I don’t have the link because you just don’t think about documenting that, you know? It may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy (e.g., not getting a new job so I was working without a break) but my contract not being renewed wasn’t my doing. And after the prophesized bad time for half the year, things seemed to fall in place again after some effort of my own. After this year, I really don’t want to hear next year’s forecast!

NYR

1. knock off some of those races: Toronto Yonge Street 10K (April 22), WWF CN Tower Climb (April ~14), Ottawa Marathon (May 27), Manitoba Marathon (June 27), Quebec City Staircase Challenge (June ~26), Marathon de Montreal (September 23), Detroit Free Press Marathon (October 21)
2. complete four courses and the second Level towards my designation
3. work work work (but that’s a given)
4. travel with MY in April (Europe)
5. be a super-duper long-distance girlfriend
6. travel with NPY in the fall (Asia, or Hawaii)

Some of this is really (really) ambitious, but — however inaccurate it is — you know what they say about setting your sights on the moon….

I thought I would save time writing out this blog entry in my notebook in the odd downtime but–what do you know?–on a bleary red-eye flight on Tuesday-Wednesday, I left it on the airplane! Oh well, I needed to move on and start using a new notebook anyway.

My mini-holiday to Vancouver over Christmas could be described as perfectly splendid. I want to do it all over again but in fairness, I think next year will be in Halifax and it will be 180^o different. Sniff, sad already.

Friday. As I last blogged, I made it to the airport in the nick of time despite having a departure time very close to when I got off work. Traffic not being crazy and a last-minute half-hour delay of my flight gave me time to queue in the longest YYZ Tim Hortons line ever and get dinner for the flight. We were further delayed another hour for take-off with having to remove checked baggage of passengers who failed to show up at the gate (I don’t know how that happens) and let on stand-by passengers. Knowing that flying west takes longer than flying east, and having gotten myself onto the flight, I was rather impatient and for once flying wasn’t a pure joy. Perhaps I was also not accustomed to sitting on the right side of the plane which is where I had to sit based on checking in “late”. My flight was so late NPY got to watch his entire Canucks game before picking me up and we did a little shopping on the way downtown. I was adamant about having Japanese ramen this trip but nothing was open in Coal Harbour on a Friday after 11 p.m. We ended up at our old stand-by, Congee Noodle House, which was acceptable to me on the grounds that we were ordering different dishes from “the usual.” Using FourSquare, I checked in which was fortunate because Ed and Olive saw the notification and joined us and it is super fun and energetic whenever they are around!

Saturday/Christmas Eve. Since I passed out so hard the night before, we successfully managed to meet up with my paternal grandmother and uncle at 12 for lunch. I selected Duotian where you design your own noodles and design your own claypot rice. It’s a bit new-fangled for my relatives but then I don’t mind taking the reins because I get what I want! Then I met up with Kitty for coffee and a short turn around the mall. When I saw her last in the beginning of December, we also met up with Cari and Cari and I really dominated with our fresh and exciting news (all about jobs) so it was nice to just get caught up with Kitty. Then we were scheduled to join NPY’s parents and his paternal grandmother for a gut-busting four-entree Chinese dinner at Congee Noodle King, another favourite of ours. I was too full of food somehow already and ate only vegetables and egg tofu. And two shrimp and a few bites of rice forced upon me. I cannot pass up the fried egg tofu in the Buddha’s Feast dish there.

Sunday/Christmas Day. I wondered if I would dread Christmas Day and opening presents at NPY’s as I do at home with my family. Although Christmas Day usually turns out alright, there’s a fragility to the merriment in my household that comes from the family dynamics, the overbearing sense of broken dreams, and whatever else. I’ve griped to NPY about how he couldn’t understand where I come from, his family being so normal… but is it his fault? With three “kids” and parents who are young and young at heart, there is a lot of levity in his house on Christmas Day. They bought presents in pairs like the same Bench jacket for me and his sister, the same North Face jacket for brothers, and magenta Hunter boots for mother and daughter. Of course we took pictures wearing our matching gear! Then we had to scatter and hustle to prepare for being out the rest of the day. NPY and I stopped by my aunt’s house in Point Grey. We were there before dinner to spend time with the family before their rush. I enjoyed getting caught up with cousin Meg who was studying abroad for a year and when her sister Karin speaks up, we pepper her with questions because she often takes part in some really unique activities… like recently being a wine fairy through her circus school…. We stayed long enough for my Toronto cousin Alan to come by for dinner and NPY could meet one more of my cousins to get the complete(ish) picture of my family. Then we were off to NPY’s Uncle Andy’s for their buffet-style meal in their house that’s kind of like a playhouse with Fußball, table tennis, movies, gaming devices, and poker and mahjong table set up! The house was full to the seams with each of four siblings on this mother’s side having two or three children apiece amounting to a large number of cousins and significant others. NPY and I are the oldest cousins but we don’t really notice with the parents’ generation being so active.

Monday/Boxing Day. I wasn’t sure I could last much longer with the abundance of food and waking up “early”. We met up with Ed and Olive (again) and Bonny for afternoon tea. Thankfully where I had chosen for us to have proper French afternoon tea on Boxing Day was a winner. Faubourg is a bit of Paris (they say, I haven’t been) in Kerrisdale and we had Pink Tea sets augmented with some bowls of cream of mushroom soup. We might have been feeling burned out and went over to Andy’s where rules and propriety don’t really exist and just hung out. I love when he gives a tour of his PH and friends are just floored by his new digs on the west side. I still hadn’t gotten my Japanese ramen and my craving was strong so we brought Ed and Olive along to Kintaro for the most unfabulous dinner with the 20-minute wait, not sitting together, and very hole-in-the-wall venue. Still, I got my ramen and finally got to try out Kintaro! Then we were back to Andy’s and fatigue just overtook me. Alas!

Tuesday. Originally, we had plans to meet up with Frank and I had selected Yagger’s where one could get from a light to real meal. But, like us all, the holiday burn out caught up with him and we’ll have to catch him the next time. Eventually, NPY and I made it out the door and to Thierry where I originally wanted to meet Kitty. Another new patisserie, this time in the heart of downtown. We couldn’t try nearly as much as I wanted to which just means there’s a reason to return next time! We hit a couple of malls to get out of the soggy outdoors–it rained every day I was there prompting NPY to say I brought the rain with me, ha!–before joining his family for a birthday dinner at Fatty Cow for hot pot. Hot pot is a fun way to get together for an informal good-value group dinner and seems to be a “traditional” ever since it was so funny (not) that time Lil Sis and I had hot pot before a flight and I was just miserable in discomfort. These days, I’ve learned to wear leggings for the dinner and going into the flight! NPY saw me off to the airport and… we’ll just skip ahead to the part where I got onto my flight! ;)

96 hours in Vancouver. 37 hours in Toronto. 60 hours in Halifax. Then back in Toronto. That was the last week and the week to come!

******** This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.

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Grad Student Etiquette from PhD Comics

Yikes, so we closed November 2011 and my NaNoWriMo word count is 27,638, half of a fairly short 50K-word novel. I outlined quite a bit ahead but life happened. For full disclosure, I actually wrote seven days’ worth in October (!) because I knew I would be in New York 1-7 November and only wrote 8 days in November proper. :o

My very first gap in writing started on 11/11/11, the day I went from unemployed with no prospects to unemployed with future employment. Then there was the scramble to get everything in order while I still had whole days free. Mum came to town because there was a funeral and the whole family gathered together for a weekend. Then I took a look at my study schedule and realized I must finish a course by 1 December! These are legitimate reasons, no? :)

I also hit a wall in writing. It came to a point where I could not face the subject material and not so much because I had spent too long on it. You see, I was writing a “romance novel”, fictionalizing a relationship that preceded NPY. It was a bit of a metaphor for taking chances and the story became a bit Eat, Pray, Love-like which was fine for a while but then I didn’t believe EPL is so great after all and I no longer had the same steam to write about events that are temporally so close. So maybe there will be enough distance, enough answers come through, that I can continue when I’m off for Christmas….

On Monday, as we were watching the latest episode of Being Erica, I noticed the ad spot inviting watchers to submit a 15-second video of themselves enjoying McCain Ultra Thin Crust Pizza for a chance to win a cameo spot in an episode in the final season of the show. The final 10 videos will be chosen by the judges then voting is open to the public.

Me, shoot video? Expose myself like so? But somehow the idea stuck with me because as opposed to gratuitous and uninvited video, there was a purpose to this self-promotion.

I love pizza. I love Being Erica. Humiliating myself is confined to how I take a bite out of pizza (which is challenging) and not due to having said something stupid or wrong. There is so much noise on the Internet, really, I’m barely registering as a blip. This is the kind of thing Scare Yourself EveryDay Greg Tung would do and he’s been doing it over over 200 days! If I didn’t try, I would always wonder…. And it’s just like me: Sometimes if I get an idea into my head, I just have to pursue it!

The “script” simply reads,

“YOU EAT MCCAIN ULTRA THIN CRUST PIZZA
(Take a bite and enjoy thoroughly)

End Scene.”

Thus began the planning and analysis phase which was really fun to do with Lil Sis who has ideas but wouldn’t do this herself. She only merely likes pizza and only merely likes Being Erica. What should I wear? What small touches to add? Do I make any sounds? What happens in my “scene”? How to convey delight without words and how to smile with my mouth full?

As with most things, the process was more fun than my conservative result. I wanted to produce something that I wouldn’t regret later…!

So… here’s the video: 15 Seconds of FAME

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This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.

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I recently learned Big Uncle and Second Uncle (my mother’s brothers) are working on the family tree and some documents have been circulating between them. Although I attended a one-night Chinese geneology seminar at the VPL over the summer, I have no idea what Chinese family tree and history documents are like. There was the family tree page, of course, with the names of all my male ancestors dating back six generations. There were also pages and pages of a poem or story that Second Uncle, a retired researcher who can read Chinese, couldn’t make heads or tails of. I hoped it might be our “name poem” containing my mother and her siblings’ names, but it wasn’t. Of course, the pages that caught my attention–although I don’t understand them any more than the others–had diagrams like this. Is it our village? Where different generations have lived? The diagram is so… Chinese in nature.

Even though I am holding a copy of a copy of a copy (etc.), I still felt the weight of importance of holding something really personal and historical with these diagrams. I just don’t know if I’ll ever know what it means.

********

This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.

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