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 …

The fanciest way to describe what I did at my first job was work in a production environment. My InDesign instructor, who is a real production manager at ICBC,  emphasized how good it looks on a resume to say you worked in “production” if your job had some aspect of it. At my first workplace, we killed so many trees but we were surrounded by cool and fast printers and copiers, a clattering paper-folding machine, punching and binding machines, and an impressive shelf array of paper types, sizes, and other …

(I wrote this in the early morning of Sunday, January 4, 2009, but edited it now for clarity.)
I’m sitting in Vinnie’s 30-something floor apartment living room with a clear view of partially frozen Lake Ontario, CN Tower poking into the fog, and the various satellites atop communications hub CBC. I am in a slice of sky, amongst downtown skyscrapers and condos. We were out and up late last night and, natually, I’m the first one to be awake and rather than twiddling my thumbs, I BLOG.
I had the spectacular kind …

I missed the first Fitness World Groupon, thinking my local Fitness World had not gone Steve Nash, but got onto the second one that was even cheaper! The gym got the last laugh, of course, because I got convinced to sign on for 15 more months with an attractive back-to-school/corporate rate.
It just goes to show that my life goes in cycles. I’m back to haunting a gym and now reminisce that I’ve been a gym rat at two other periods of my life.
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Back in 1999, I joined the YMCA in …

I finally gave in and got a Blip.fm account. I sincerely hate how in that community “Blip” became a verb synonymous with “playing a song”. But then I’m quite guilty of saying I “Foursquared” someplace.
Anyways, it’s been a fantastic evening searching for one 90s song that leads to Wikipedia-ing for more songs and thinking about more songs to, er, Blip.
I never claim to have good taste in music, my lingering backlash to snooty high school classmates who sniffed at pop radio (680 on the AM dial) and exalted in the …

(I originally wrote this around and after December 23, 2007. It has been edited a little for clarity. It’s been really nice to finally publish some stuff that’s been languishing in my drafts and unbeatable to take a walk down memory lane.)
When I arrived at the big (new-ish) terminal at Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson Airport on Sunday morning with very little sleep and much stimulation from the night before, I had a little cry. I was leaving again and I was flooded by all the decisions that once took …

Apparently I wrote this in June 4, 2009. It is still quite relevant especially for some upcoming events….
Yesterday, I met up with two others in our group who are free, uninhibited, and fun- and sun-loving enough to kill off the night at a chill patio in downtown Vancouver. We talked about fun summer plans and infeasible-but-fun living arrangements. We ate and drank in such a way that is entirely unsustainable (so we won’t do it again for at least a week). We were self-congratulating about our current obligation-free lifestyles and …