Friday, April 25, 2008

Vietnamese Drip Coffee

I went out for lunch with my mom today at Pho88 on Spadina. Before we ordered real food, I asked for two drip coffees, one hot and one cold, because i know they take forever to drip. The hot one comes in a small cappuccino coffee cup with a bit of condensed/evaporated milk at the bottom and the cold one is the same but with a lot more milk and comes in a glass. What happens with the cold is that they give you a bucket of ice to make the coffee cold.

This isn't my first time drinking Viet coffee but every time I order it, I'm always a little dumbfounded. No one has ever told me whether the ice goes into the coffee after it's done dripping or before. The problem with the drip coffee is that by the time the coffee is done dripping, it gets cold (which is what happened with the hot one I ordered).

Last time I ordered the cold, I added the ice in after, but it took FOREVER for the ice to actually melt so this time i added the ice in while it was dripping. The problem now is that even though the ice was melting right away, the condensed milk was having trouble dissolving.

So the iced coffee ended up being half dissolved and the hot coffee ended up cold and so i added ice to the luke warm coffee to make it slightly better. The only reason why I still order it every time is because it tastes so damn good.

I seriously think Pho88 should consider doing what they do in Taiwan. In coffee shops in taiwan that offer this type of drip coffee, they have these HUGE dripping machines that like sits in the centre of the store, and you can watch it drip while you sit there. The mechanism actually traps heat though, so when you ordered the coffee, they give it to you pre-dripped and the waiting time is completely eliminated. If you want it iced, they have ways to ice it for you.

There are a lot of things North Americans can learn from Asians...

Monday, April 21, 2008

Almost done for term #1

One more 20pg research paper that's been eating up all my time attention and then i can:
1. go back to toronto for work on fri
2. pick up furniture and move on sat and/or sun
3. go to boston on monday

nts: also, call hydro and tax

Sunday, April 20, 2008

AsianAvenue

I found the old layout codes in my external and fixed all the links and put it on my website.
I bet some of you will remember this:

http://www.lynnchien.com/AA

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Define: Home

In January, I moved downtown. I found a beautiful unit in the condos 5 minute walk from my work, across from the distillery. The place is beautifully furnished, I have the master bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, the apartment has an ensuite washer and dryer, and the rent is $850 all inclusive (internet and cable). I can't tell you how much i love the place...but now I'm moving again.

With my part-time schedule and me being at waterloo everyday, there's really no reason for me to spend $850/month; I'm only there about one or two days a week, a wknd at most. I recently signed a lease in Waterloo, at the Westcourt Estates. It's an unfurnished townhouse and I'll be sharing the place with a 2-3 other people I know, depending on the term.

It's a bit scary to know that i'll be spending the next 12 months in this dumpy town that i've always hated. In the past, the most i've ever spent in Waterloo was 8 months consecutively, most of the time it was 4 months due to coop, but I'd be back in Toronto every weekend and it never feels like Waterloo was "my home". home was in Toronto, with the fam. But when I moved out in January, home for me was my apartment downtown and now Waterloo will be my "home", at least for the next year. I'll be back in Toronto at least once a week to be in the office, and i'll probably stay in the GTA with my family on most wknds if school work permits, but the feeling is still the same. As much as I hate the thought, home will be Waterloo because it will be my own place with all my clothes and whatnot there.

No, I probably won't relocate to Waterloo permanently after I graduate, but where will i be? I have no idea. That's probably the even scarier thought.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Did anyone actually need to see this?



Really, does anyone need to see anything i've posted lately?!

The dumb thing in this case is the fact that I wore these very pretty boots and walked myself from my apartment all the way to the toronto reference libaray (think distillery to yorkville)...and then back. By the time we were on church and front, we hailed a taxi.
result: 4 blisters on the left, disgustingly big blister and a little one on the right

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Patience is a virtue

Adam and I had this conversation a few weeks ago about whether patience is something that can be built or if it's something you need to be born with; if you are impatient about something, but you are suppressing your impatience, would that be called patience? It shouldn't be right? So then if you can never get rid of impatience, but you've worked really hard at suppressing your impatience, then do you become patient? Or maybe you can't ever be patient unless you are born patient?

To me, efficiency is way more important than detail; it's my strength but also my tragic flaw. I have always been docked on stupid little mistakes since I was young. I may write a math test that would have gotten 100% but because i accidentally added 2+3 instead of multiply, i'll get 98%. I almost never get 100% on anything. Even with checking for grammar errors on my papers, i just dont have the patience for it. Double-checking my work has always been my downfall. Even now at work, I am always getting flak for my grammatical errors on my technical writing work. It's pretty bad.

So my resolution is working on my patience. I really need to just slow down and breathe and be more careful with anything and everything. Unfortunately, that's really the only thing I can think of to build my patience. I even googled "building patience" and i just got a bunch of blog sites that tells you about the need to build patience. But I know that even if it is impossible to build patience, I should still learn to suppress my impatience.

Wish me luck.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Blacklisting

I have a problem. If I order something and it does not come as I expected, I get very very angry. The whole point of paying for something is so you can enjoy it. Why would I pay for something I don't enjoy???

Today, I was at DQ on university and weber with Tina to get Adam a strawberry shortcake. After I paid nearly $6 for it (yes I am poor, therefore six bucks is a lot of money), I was told by the girl making the dessert that there were no shortcake left. The guy who took my money and seemed to have seniority over her told her to just make me a "strawberry cheesequake" with extra ice cream (Without asking me whether it was okay). Although i have no idea what that is, she ended up bringing me a strawberry sundae. I stared at the ice cream incredulously and told her i don't want that. The guy heard me and told her to just add some cheesecake on it. After a mishmash of strawberry jam, ice cream and some "cheesecake", she attempted to shove the lid on it while making a great mess of the container. My jaw just kinda dropped. But being the pushover that I am, I didn't say anything and told her I want a bag for that (there was no way i was going to hold that nasty sticky container in my hand).

Usually I give places two chances before they get mentally blacklisted . I understand that usually it's only the dumb employee's fault but I feel that the bad management is the source so they deserve to be banned. Same goes for food, if the food tastes bad the first time, I'll let it go; but if i go back and it's just as bad, then it gets on the lynn blacklist.

I don't remember most of the places I've blacklisted unless someone suggest that I go there or use the service, but here are some that I remember:

  • Second Cup @ STC: I wanted iced coffee, which they didn't have, so i asked if they can pour the coffee into a cup of ice for me. She charged me for the cup of ice then added the entire cup with ice and adding like half a cup of coffee. Needless to say, the coffee tasted like water. I asked if they had liquefied sugar and she said no. i asked her for honey, she gave a bottle of crusted honey and nothing came out. GROSS.

  • A Taste of Taiwan: the place closed down, for good reason (someone got shot and died there). I went there three times and their bbtea tasted like water and when i told them, they said that's the recipe. Yeah right.

  • Starbucks @ Front and Frederick: I asked for a grande americano, they gave me a latte. I told the barista that i asked for an americano and she looked at me blankly and said "yes, an americano". this went on for two minutes before she realized it was a latte. The second time, I asked for the same thing and while she was making a tall she realized her error and poured it in the grande cup and added hot water. The drink tasted like water. I think that that barista got fired now though, so the place is unbanned.

  • Tim Horton's all over campus (except for SLC): every time i ask for a DD, they give me quadruple cream and the coffee is literally white. So I usually get an XL from SLC and share it with Adam because it's not that bad when it's XL. But once i went to SCH and ask for a XL DD, they still gave me a QQ. I was so mad I took it to the TH at ML and they poured out a quarter of it and added coffee. Interestingly, after all that, the coffee still looked like it was a triple triple. I have boycotted Timmie's in Waterloo now.

  • Bomber: Every time I go there, we wait like two hours for service. Once I watched our waitress chat with her friends for 30 min before she went to get our food that's been sitting on the counter for 20 min. Another time I ordered a takeout pizza for Adam and I waited 30 min for a slice of bread with tomato sauce and cheese. Saturday night, every person we grabbed told us he/she is not the server and the bar refused to serve us. The food isn't even good there. CUT.

  • Bubble Tease: The food there is disgustingly expensive and the quantity is small. Every time I order a dish there that costs $10 (and would only cost $5 in toronto), there would be three bowls of rice and a tiny bit of the dish on the top. Every time i pass by, it's pretty empty now. I miss the days when it used to be Timeless.

  • China Garden: that taiwanese place in the uw plaza. Same problem as bb tease, but less rice.

    Who am I kidding, I have boycotted half of the restaurants in Waterloo.


  • Fairweather: i tried to return a dress after 7 days because i found another dress i liked and they told me i couldn't. I pleaded very nicely with them (not really expecting they would let me, but it was worth a try) and the woman told me that she will call tip top (i was wearing my nametag) to get me fired. ERRRR...i told my manager when i went back and she pursued the issue with FW's headoffice cuz they threatened me. I didn't think it would get so complicated but it did. their head office was awful to my manager but in the end i got a credit note as an apology. but after the way they treated me and my manager, i boycotted them too.

  • LCBO across from Conestoga: See Story

  • Rogers: I have a ton of horrifying customer service stories from Rogers. I will never use their "wireless" service. Sometimes I don't have a choice when it comes to internet cable (damn that monopoly) but i usually try to get someone else to deal with it.


Ok, fine, the list goes on. That's not to say i don't have places i really love, a lot more than the places i boycotted. but this has been a long enough rant. maybe i'll be listing my blacklist somewhere one day.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

one eyed turtle

E: you shouldn't get anymore fish
L: but adam and i are thinking about getting them. hmm..maybe a turtle...
E: you shouldn't get a turtle either
L: why not?
E: cuz they're harder to flush down the toilette

Friday, April 4, 2008

Blogspot

Lynn says (1:54 PM):
i decided to jump on the bandwagon
lynnism.blogspot.com
lol
Colonel Sweeto (Matt) says (1:55 PM):
you already had a blog on ur main site
Lynn says (1:55 PM):
i know but i only want to put quality posts on there lol
Colonel Sweeto (Matt) says (1:56 PM):
lol blogspot is for ur crap?
Lynn says (1:56 PM):
yuppers like how i have pms and it hurts
Colonel Sweeto (Matt) says (1:56 PM):
...
lol when I glanced at that message I could've sworn u said "like how I have penis and it hurts"
Lynn says (1:57 PM):
well surgeries are costly and painful
Colonel Sweeto (Matt) says (1:57 PM):
I think u might have cancer ^_^ u need to have a prostate exam. do u pee a lot? and does it burn?
Lynn says (2:01 PM):
that can also be a urinary tract infection!
Colonel Sweeto (Matt) says (2:02 PM):
lol god u should stop infecting ur urinary tract
Lynn says (2:04 PM):
lol im posting this
Colonel Sweeto (Matt) says (2:05 PM):
ahaha on ur quality site right? I mean, clearly it belongs there

Lesson from the guru of all things

HTY @ Work says (11:56 AM): bottom line is that snapping or yelling at your significant other is ALWAYS wrong. it has no place in a relationship of any sort, but the key point to understand is that we all know we WILL snap sometimes (being human and all). so after you're both calm and sound again, talk about it rationally. sometimes you can apologize without actually apologizing ;)

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

How old are you?

1. i went to the lcbo with adam and his roommates and they wouldn't sell them alcohol cuz i didnt have my id. i had to go back home and get it so they can walk out with alcohol. the irony is that im the oldest out of all of them. the woman there was such a bitch, when we were paying, she walked up to the front and said "ID all of them, they can't buy anything unless they're all id'ed" in a very rude manner. wtf.
2. in line with the above point, i went to visit my mom at work, she got another new parttime job at hero burgers :S, and her coworker asked her if i was 15 or 16.