Would you rather

burn your bridges down
or
burn your britches down

Dim Sum

An ancient chinese tradition, originating long ago when the shopkeepers would add up their income for the week by flickering candlelight or smokey lanterns on saturday night. On sunday, with their meal they'd review the previous night's calculations, and correct any mistake that had been made, known as a dim sum.

I still remember that spontaneous response given by David Ip a few years ago when someone asked about dim sum. This guy's definitely done some improv in his past.

Today was my second time ever. That's right, only twice, amazing as that may seem. And both times have been with people from the temple after chanting.

Simply from being in chinatown today for a bit on chinese new years, ran into several familiar faces from years gone by, it was kindof nice, a little sad.

Bamboo troubles

I have a bamboo stalk in a soda bottle 2/3 full of sandy stuff. Val gave it to me a few years ago, and I've had it in my grad office, and now my work office, ,ever since. Hasn't grown a lot, I think the sand isn't such a good base. But just a week ago, a new leaf, possibly branch/stem, appeared at the side of the bottle, popping up out of the sand. And it's been consistently growing. I don't know what to do, cause it's gonna run out of space in there, there's no way it'll be able to come up through the bottleneck. At the same time, I don't want to try to stop it's growth. And I can't really break the bottle to make a bigger opening.

Daylight

It was still light outside when I left work today, I'm so excited! It was still dark before I got home, but at least it's going in the right direction.

Another great thing: Skirts! Girls are out wearing skirts! Always a good thing.

Shouldn't have gotten a job

Been thinking about China lately (cause CBC keeps advertising their documentary on it). Andrew's there right now, has been for a few weeks, will be for two more months. Already I've been wishing I had gone. Shoulda just quit my job, or not have gotten a job in the first place. This was a great and unique opportunity. I guess the biggest thing stopping me from having gone (or still packing up and going now) is the JET interview and opportunity. And sometimes it's debatable whether it was worth it.

Oh well life's all about decisions, learn from your mistakes but don't dwell on regrets.

Vancouver

I was listening to the radio talking about the need for transit patrol officers to be armed in Vancouver, and I was thinking how much I want to go live in Vancouver. Seems kindof strange that negative talk made me think of how much I want to go back. That in turn reminded me of how I ended up in Vancouver this past summer... on the Explore application, I had written down my top two choices of Montreal and Ottawa, and was debating about what to put for my third choice, and then the news showed coverage of flooding and landslides taking place in Vancouver, and somehow that made up my mind to put down Vancouver as my third choice. And that's what I ended up getting.

The thought that only just occurred to me now, is that flooding in Vancouver made me go there, and then it was during my time there that Calgary had the worst flooding ever. (insert spooky mysterious music here)

work dream

Dream involved people at work. Though it's pretty sketchy in my mind now. I think we were at a picnic barbequeue type of thing, sitting at a long table. First, some impulse response plots I made (but don't really know anything about) were presented to the VP guy, and he was asking whether the peak reached 0 or just got close. I didn't know, told him to ask Ming. Ming seemed to think they did. Somehow somepoint after that, the slides became about the nutrition content of the food we were eating at this barbequeue. At some point I went for more food, offering to get other people more stuff. I remember Tom leaving, and he didn't eat all his grated cheese and I bugged him about it. That's about it.

what did I learn today?

I found out about the manual override on the auto-detect-and-flush toilets! Yay, now if they fail to detect me, I don't have to stand there with my hand in front of the sensor for however long it takes anymore. What I wonder is why it was so well camoflauged, blending in with the pipes.

Footsteps 2

Thinking of creating the sole footsteps in the snow, I'm reminded of being a grad student in CCIT, and sometimes after a major snowfall I'd usually be the first one around, at least the first one to leave by the unalarmed fire exit that everyone uses since it's closest to mac hall, and I'd be the first to walk through the snow from the door to the parking lot. And from that point onwards, every single person to leave the building that way would follow in my exact footsteps. I had such power! If I had chosen to walk 30 cm to the right of where I did, dozens of other people on dozens of trips would all also walk 30 cm to the right!

Maybe that's why when they finally installed some stairs there, stripping me of my power, I resented it and proceded to continue using the hill beside them instead. Stupid stairs.

Footsteps

On the way to the temple sunday mornings, I walk diagonally across a schoolyard. I always like it when there's a big fresh dump of snow, and my footprints are the only ones to mark the blank slate. Sometimes if I go back and forth a few times in a day or weekend, there ends up being several parallel paths of footprints, while noone else has even touched the canvas. Somehow I just like it. Sometimes I get a little humour out of it, when I return home and see the path I trod on the way there, discovering that even perfectly sober, I don't walk in anything resembling a straight line.

TMNT

While I was writing that last post, I discovered the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie on TV!!! Just had to watch! I saw it the first time many many years ago, with Tim Murphy, at Market Mall. Amazing that I can remember something like that. Or like thursday after Jan drove me home, I realised that she has seen my house before, around 7 or 8 years ago, we were at the university in the evening during exams I think, and Greg gave me a ride home and it either was raining or had just rained and there was white stuff on crowchild and Greg didn't like it whatever it was (and I didn't either), and after dropping me off somehow Jan moved from the back seat to the front without even exiting the vehicle. How can I remember those sorts of things when there are so many more important things that I've forgotten?

Yokaline!

Ordinary people don't order stuff that they've never heard of, or that everyone they're with have never heard of, or that the waitress has never heard of. But I guess I'm no ordinary guy :)

Went to Dessert House, people had chosen what bubble teas and fruit juices etc they wanted, but I hadn't really looked yet. I wanted something hot, and in the tea section I saw "Yokaline Milk Tea". I said "what the heck is that?!" and Jan said "Why don't you order it?" To many people's surprise, I said "Ok, I will." It was sometime after that that Hua told me one of the chinese characters was "egg".

When the waitress came, I told her I wanted the Yokaline milk tea. She stared blankly. I grabbed a menu and pointed it out to her, and she said "Uhhh, ok." Someone asked her what it was, and she said she'd never heard of it before. Does that mean I'm the first to order it? Do they store this one at the far back of the cupboards? Did the preparer have to just make it up on the spot?

Anyways, my adventurousness was rewarded, I'll probably order it again sometime.

Graph

I made a graph today that looked exactly like a tire tread! It was cool!

Is it sad that that's the highlight of my day?

Political

Time to risk some controversial opinions.

Was reading something where people were feeling it's unfair that women are "underrepresented" in the house of commons. As if it's some big male conspiracy to supress women. What a load of crap. Maybe things just are that way! Any attempt to artificially inflate the number of women in a particular job, offering scholarships and other incentives for women to enter particular fields, posting jobs for which only women may apply, these acts are the exact opposite of equality. Meanwhile, consider other "traditionally male" jobs in which women are underrepresented, like garbage collection. Where are the rallies saying "we should have more women picking up other people's trash, after all, they deserve it!" Just another idiocy of feminism in action (as usual failing the positive ideals of theoretical feminism), equality but only when it's beneficial.

Stories

Lets see, what to talk about.... Got the whole family out to see the Wallace and Gromit movie last weekend. It was great, we've all been Wallace and Gromit fans for like a decade or more... long enough that I start to forget the old shows... though the scene that stands out best in my mind is from the wrong trousers, when Gromit is on the model train, chasing down the penguin, laying track down one piece at a time in front of the train he's on. Hahaha it was awesome! As for movies, I think this is the first time my parents have been in a movie theatre in probably 15 years or more. Anyways, on the way to see the movie, we were going to eat at a restaurant. But, being new years day, a sunday, it was closed. And so was the backup plan restaurant. And then so was pretty much every other restaurant. Eventually we found one that was open. It was called "Bill's Peking House." But lo and behold, the place was completely full, and the only way we'd be able to eat there is if we had a reservation! It was rediculous! Who would even eat at a chinese restaurant called "Bill's" anyways, other than out of desperation (as was our case). We continued in our search, even the "Edo" we found was closed. Eventually got stuck with McDonalds. Though I'm sure it'll be debated whether that's "better than nothing". Ok, I guess that's my story for today.

Postal

An undelivered letter arrived back home today. The funny part is that I sent it over 3 months ago! I thought it was long gone! It's probably been sitting around in a post office in UAE for a couple months.