Not like I’m dreaming of going to California… I mean, I would… like, some aspect of the past weekend was like driving around in California… ugh, I think I left my brain in Osoyoos!
I took a day off to spend a long weekend in Osoyoos (southern part of B.C.’s famed Okanagan wine-rich region, and Canada’s only desert) with NPY and 8 other friends.
The weekend consisted of many activities in which I blew by a lot of firsts (you’d think I wasn’t quite 29 for all these things I …

In the deepest throes of heartbreak (nearly three years ago), I posted the lyrics to two of Moulann Chang’s songs, “When you turn away” and “Where did forever go?”.
NPY says they are somewhat generic ballads but when they struck a chord so long ago, the emotion of the songs never leave me because they had fit my situation so well.
Why do I, years later, still love the songs? Because of her wistfully yearning voice? Because of the fantastic arrangement? Because of latent insecurities about my current happiness? I think that …

I had this niggling feeling that I was running more last year than I have been this year. So I went through my logs and dug up the first half of last June and I was right: 10 runs in the first 17 days of last June and a mere 8 in the same time this year. =S
My interpretation: I was so nervous about doing marathon clinic for the first time, I took to heart pre-training in order to be “hitting the ground running” on Week 1 of official training. …

A friend once likened his endearing black Lab to a child with diminished mental capacity. (He used more colourful terms, I’ll let you imagine it.) That is to say, Churchill, like many dogs, is very dependent and will not improve significantly with the years. I admired whole-heartedly his ability to balance school, a social life, and raising an energetic and needy puppy.
Once upon a time, I was a cat-person. That’s when I was dating a cat-person. Then it seemed to me that cat-people fell short on affability compared to dog-people. …

Did you know that once upon a time I did something called synchronized skating? I didn’t either until recently, in fact, because I didn’t call it by that name. It was merely known as that “embarassing blip” where twenty awkward and pre-pubescent girls uniformly, obliviously, and giddily clad in unflattering head-to-toe skin-skimming red polyester jumpsuits, claw-shaped mittens, and red hairbands. We performed a routine often involving us shimmying, forming chains and high-kicking like bad showgirls or gliding across the ice lined up a la Locomotion, all to that “Under the …

It’s been a while since I’ve been in a normal, healthy, growing relationship that I had forgotten/ never reached this funny and frightening stage, er, two stages….
One: We can’t stop calling each other names, to the point of constantly trying to out-do each other. There are some endearing ones, but mostly they are sassy and cheekily insulting ones. Uhm, it’s an exercise in creativity….
Two: You notice the striking similarity between your partner and some pop-culture icon and henceforth cannot shake the image from your mind.
At least, I think we are …

Though everyone’s blogged about it, I couldn’t let this year’s Valentine’s Day just go by without observation. Come to think of it, it has been at least four years since I’ve celebrated it. (All those years, of course, having the biggest Anti-Valentine’s Day, haha.)
NPY thoroughly mortified me by having flowers sent at work but it is a gorgeous arrangement that does him (and his florist) justice consisting of pink gerbera daisies, calla lilies, red roses, and daisies set against baby’s breath and purple leaves.
Like the cliche, we went dancing (the …

I’ve added a new subscription to my feed reader that is Schema blog, the blog associated with the yet-to-be-launched Schema magazine. It keeps you up-to-date with cultural activities taking place in Vancouver – and since it’s Vancouver, that means more than half of it is Asian.
There is something I’ve missed/never found all along that is someone who will also go to the Chinese-labeled events just because. I’m not only talking about big events like the Chinese New Year parade in Chinatown but, for example, going to see an indie Vancouver-made …

(I’m off to Germany/Sweden for 13 days so I will leave you this little story….)
In my desire for the perfect story of “how we met” I scoffed at new-fangled methods of meeting people like dating sites and speed dating. However, when you’re single for the better part of 18 months, you end up trying and considering everything: online dating, speed dating, co-workers, strangers in away cities, exes, your own friends, relatives of relatives (no blood relation, I swear)… have I forgotten anything here?
If you could read between the lines, perhaps …

We are having a spate of good weather here and you could almost forget that r*** actually exists. (It is certain to reappear with a vengeance once The Sister arrives for her fun. =S)
Tuesday was a pleasant theater/dinner evening of attending an uplifting and inspiring play followed by a twilit alfresco dinner at a waterfront restaurant.
It felt good and so freakin’ luxurious for a weeknight that I could easily get carried off by The Good Life. I can walk the walk and enrich the company I am in – so, …