Something is up this year, it makes me feel like something is in the air and I can feel it as well.
I have 11 first cousins on my mother’s side and three of them are moving between cities this year. One cousin is uprooting after 10 years, moving one province over with his wife and two kids. It was somewhat inevitable that he would end up in Vancouver since his brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew live here. One cousin is moving from “out east” to Vancouver temporarily for a training …

I went through a cleaning fit on July 5 and dug up my Expo 86 passport (which I still don’t know where to stash) and had a tingly feeling that I might be finding this little souvenir exactly 25 years after I wielded it dashing from one exhibit to the next. Not exactly. It seems that my expo visit was on the three days June 30-July 2, 1986.
My mother, younger sister, and I were in Vancouver en route to spending the summer in Hong Kong. We would have gone to …

I don’t know which season it was, but in the past, NPY told me that if the Canucks won the Stanley Cup, he would move to Toronto, the Canadian city he has grown up to hate.
Then the Canucks’ 40th season kicked off in October 2010 and a couple months later, my huge pangs of regret/remorse/”what if” started to kick in. I can see myself living either in Toronto or Vancouver for the next 5/10/forever years and do not know how to decide what move to make next. The cities are …

Once upon a time, I loved the rugby stripe look. At my most ardent, I had two rugby shirts and I was also in the market to buy flip-flops and bought blue-and-green rugby stripe ones from Old Navy. I did not know at the time how well they would work out for me: the fabric straps are a touch dressier from rubber straps and never rub and blister the top of my feet; the shoe surface is “felted”, smooth to the touch. The flip-flops have long been cracked where the …

Since leaving the University of Waterloo in 1999, I’ve had no reason to venture into KW (Kitchener-Waterloo) and visit old haunts. Every now and then my Toronto friends, who also spent some time in KW, venture to the Etobicoke William’s and tell me and a flood of memories hit me.
With gas prices surging, lack of fast (enough) transit to Etobicoke, and time constraints, I had to visit the new Queen’s Quay location that Leo warned was really small.
No kidding. The coffee shop shares a space with some really quiet pet …

I’d be a skinny b**** right now. :) Following up from my remarks on Bethenny Frankel’s Naturally Thin, I thought I would share my favourite sayings to psych out and not eat as much as I want. I obviously need them tattooed to my hands because I do not consciously think of them every day, yet over the years they have risen to the top like cream and remain my favourite, resonating the most. (Mmmm, cream….)
Eat to live, don’t live to eat.
- I really believe this, that food should just …

My one-time personal trainer–two sessions came with my gym membership–told me that losing weight is 80% diet changes. That 20% from lifestyle change sounds so minimal it was quite a disincentive for me to go hardcore and hit the gym often. (Yes, I know, physical activity confers bountiful benefits beyond shedding pounds.) I know that something in my brain is wrong that allows me, nay, urges me to eat as much as I can some days. And I’ve never been a dieter or calorie counter: “being on a diet would …

Can you tell which is City 1 and City A?? Life is a lot simpler when you’ve only ever called one city home.
I can see the charm of my hometown. In the past ten years, it has grown to acquire all the “basics” (read: shopping) of an average North American city. It is so affordable (read: houses) and the people are by far the friendliest.
I also hacked whole summers in a tropical Asian supercity that makes any other contender home city for me very pokey. But it was just summer …

First, Cari and I have a recurring volunteering obligation at 9:30 at an assisted living home in East Vancouver. I spotted the volunteer post a long time ago in govolunteer.ca because it asked for Cantonese language skills and I wanted to roll practicing Chinese with volunteering. For an hour each week, I visit several residents who have been identified as suitable to be visited and I’ve come to really look forward to checking in with them every week to see how they are doing. Some of my charges are less …

Back in 2003 I was going through a funny part of my life, associating with entirely the wrong boys for me, until I came across this iVillage.com article, already one year old by the time I saw it.
Of course, it took me one more flawed relationship for the principles to sink in, but Dr. Brenda Shoshanna’s short article with excerpts from her book, Zen Miracles: Finding Peace in an Insane World, set me going the right way and put a name to the pitfall that plagued my relationships: counterfeit love …