My worthless two-cents

I don't know a lot about U.S. Politics.
The little I do know comes from Harv's passionate speeches on his love for Obama and how he plans on marrying him (i added the latter in myself) and sitting in front of the TV at lunch when the only programs that won't make me rip my hair out is CNN. Sometimes when I see something interesting, I'd go and google it and read about the stuff.

At any rate, I have no problems with Palin's candidacy as VP. At first I believed it was a smart move on the republicans to choose a woman to run with McCain now that Clinton's out of the picture. And as much as I like Obama > McCain, McCain really isn't so bad (too bad you can't make voice changes).

However, it suddenly came across me today when someone mentioned McCain's age (which I previously knew about already but didn't pay much attention) that if McCain happens to die on the job, Palin would act as the President. I can't really judge whether she would be a good VP, but I do know that she is not qualified to be the president.

At a time like this, with the war and the financial crises and God knows what the U.S. has been getting themselves into, they simply can't afford to let that happen.

Let's be pragmatic here. I hope when people are voting, they realize the age+Palin combination problem...

Beautiful inside and out

A lot of guys assert that they like girls who "take care of themselves," meaning that they dress nice, put on make up, and accessorize. And come on, honestly, who hasn't seen a girl change 180 degrees with and without makeup on? There's a Chinese saying that goes "世上只有懶女人沒有醜女人," which translates to "in this world, there are only lazy women, there are no ugly women." In other words, you are only unattractive if you are too lazy to take care of your looks. As far as cliches go, I'm going to have to say that it is WRONG. Here's another cliche, "if you don't cultivate your inner beauty, no matter how much time you spend on your looks, you are still ugly." As far as this cliche goes, i'm going to completely agree.

Case-in-point. There is this girl I know who does not leave the house without make up. She has a lot of nice clothes and she is always dressed up. Lots of shoes, lots of makeup, lots of clothes. She can be attractive when she's all made up but a lot of guys make fun of her and call her fat. I used to defend her because she is just bigger than your average chubby Asian girl, there's a long way to go before you get to fat. But after I got to know her better, she became more and more unattractive to me. I'm at the point where I have begun to describe her inner and outer appearance with all kinds of things that should not be said out loud.

You know, no matter how unattractive you are, if you are a good person with all kinds of inner beauty, no one will insult you out loud because they will respect you. Please take some time to at least TRY to do some introspection and develop some inner beauty. All those cakes of makeup on your face isn't doing it for anyone. I'm sure we've all got some work to do with our own personality, I admit myself that I still have a long way to go; but if you continue to spend all your time on attempting to make yourself look nice, you are just a waste of space because there are people out there who, despite do not have wonderful personalities, at least undeniably provide occasional eye candy for people naturally. If people are still making fun of you when you are made up all the time, you have a lot of work to do.

They should invent a thing called human compost so that the people who are wasting our precious resource in the environment with no contribution to society whatsoever at least have a purpose in life. Just lie there until you become fertilizer. Thank you.

</rant>

Oh, That Yellow Bag!

I brought my lovely yellow bag on this trip but wherever we went, the bag kept stealing the thunder. It wasn't until half way through the trip when we went through the pics did we realize that the bag is EVERYWHERE. We had to exclude it from most pictures thereon after, though sometimes it manages to still steal a scene or two.

AYCW Sushi Buffet

Some time in the last year or so I learned a new acronym called AYCE, standing for All You Can Eat, most of the time referring to Sushi Buffet while sometimes it can be applied to Korean BBQ.

Normally AYCE sushi charges around $15 for lunch and $20 for dinner, give and take a few dollars. Obviously, for the most part, it's never really "worth it" to go to AYCE or else these places would not be making money.

In order to cut down waste, since when things are free people tend to take more than they can finish, AYCE restaurants will threaten to charge you if you have too much leftover at your table. However, in a relatively busy but unorganized restaurant as such Ye's Sushi in Waterloo, where they have almost no competition, wasting seems to be almost inevitable.

For most people, you don't go to AYCE unless you are really hungry. If you are really hungry, you want to eat right away. You start with ordering a lot of food and a lot of the time, the food will take a long time to come or it will not come at all - but you are never really sure which is which.

So, for example, you order the first round and it takes about 20 minutes for about half of the food to get to your table. Realizing how long the service takes and how hungry you are, you decide that you should order the second round before your first round is even served. By the time half of the food from the second round is served, you realize that some of the stuff you ordered in the first round isn't here yet. Are they just really late or should we order again? If you ask the servers, they won't know and if you really want the food and you are still feeling hungry (in spite of the vast amount of food still sitting at your table from first and second round), you will order again. Sometimes the food will come twice. Sometimes by the time the food does come, you are already full.

Last week, when we went to Ye's sushi with Adam's sister and cousin, I ordered a dish of squid towards the end of our meal because I still had room to eat. It came after we finished eating our ice cream, resulting in us cramming the food down so we dont get charged.

Today was even more ridiculous. Thirteen really hungry students ordering mass amount of food that came really slowly and half of the food didn't come at all for the first three rounds. At one point, one of Adam's friends got really fed up and ordered 20 tempura shrimps and like 5 rolls because he didnt get to eat half of the stuff he wanted to eat. However, when you order in that quantity, the order gets backlogged. Our side of the big table was also ordering tempura in smaller amounts, like 5-8, so it kept coming and we kept passing it to their side of the table. At the end of the meal, when the restaurant was not as busy, all the rolls and tempuras arrived. Needless to say, we were beyond full. A lot of the food was crammed and split open on plates and inside sauces to make it look like we finished the food. On top of which, lunch buffets don't serve sashimi so to eat salmon sashimi, you have to order to salmon sushi (fish on top of rice) and the guys would just eat whats on the top and leave the rice around.

Watching that much food get wasted is really really frustrating. All You Can Eat suddenly turned to All You Can Waste. I don't approve of the way Adam's friend ordered all that food, but it is not soley his fault. AYCE sushi restaurants really should

1. Organize their system better so that people know whether or not the food is coming (they have machines in Vancouver and Japan to keep these things in order).
2. Find a way to cut cost without using rice as a means to keep people from eating sashimi. Just because rice is cheaper than other types of food does not mean it should be wasted in this manner.

And lesson learned

• Don't order in bulks when the restaurant is busy. It's hard when you have a big table and everyone is hungry; but perhaps the alternative is to give them a bunch of orders consecutively in smaller amounts so that the food will (hopefully) come faster.

I think I'm done with AYCE sushis after today anyway, cramming all the food made me feel really really sick. And I'm going to avoid eating at Ye's from now on, just because the restaurant's system causes so much waste.

Red and white

I'm so beyond annoyed at the moment, I am on the verge of crying.
Three years ago, I received in the mail a brand new red Sony Vaio. The first red computer I have ever seen. The colour, known as raspberry, is one of the pretties colours possible for any gadget.

Over the last three years, I have kept the laptop in pristine condition. I don't think I've ever kept anything with so much care in my life. Those who know me know that I am really careless with all my stuff, but with my computer, three years without a single scratch.

Just now, I came upstairs, I found five huge scratches on it.
I honestly have no idea what gave it the scratches.

To think of it, the computer really means a lot to me, on so many different levels..
For one, it's one fo the most expensive presents I have ever received. When is there going to be a time when I get to receive a two thousand dollar surprise out of nowhere?
For two, it's my first brand new laptop. Even though for itss price, the specs arent the greatest and now the batteries broken, it was still mine.
For three, for what its worth, if anything was good about the computer, it is its looks. Never have I seen another computer that's comparable to its looks. I have looked at a ton of other laptops out there since, but I have yet seen one that looks as good as this one.
And last, its the first item that i have kept in such good condition for so long.

Now it's marked.
i don't even know how.
one of the scratches stands out so much you can't ignore it.
The white contrasting against the red.
When I complain about my computer from now on, I can longer say that at least it's pretty.
yeah
there you go

Resurfacing my vampire love

During my frosh year in Waterloo, I was in the Buffy Club. Every Monday night, I would trek across the campus to the Engineering lounge to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on big screen.

Throughout the whole seven seasons of Buffy, it never occurred to me how unlikely that a hundred year-old vampire would fall in love with a 17 year-old high school girl; it wasn't until I read Twilight this weekend did I begin to wonder how it is likely that a person who is experienced and wise with the world after hundreds of years would want to spend their time with teenage girls who think the world revolves around them and that life is black and white.

The crux of the difference between BtVS and Twilight is that BtVS is an insanely clever and well-scripted show. The conversations and the maturity shown by Buffy was well beyond her on-screen age and the possible maturity difference between Buffy and Angel fades to the background. On the other hand, Bella, the heroine in Twilight is so childishly empty that it makes the whole premise of the book fall apart--the premise being that a 90 year-old vampire who looks seventeen who has never met anyway special enough for him, falls hopelessly in love with the new girl in town.

Nevertheless, what makes this relationship actually believable is that ALL the characters in Twilight are so underdeveloped that The Da Vinci Code reads like Shakespeare--and to think I thought Dan Brown has reached the epitome of utilizing archetypal characters. Seriously, I think the girls from Sweet Valley High probably had more complex minds.

But literary values aside, as it contains none, I must admit that as amateur as the novel reads, it does possess high entertainment value. If you are a girl who likes to see yourself as the heroine of the story, then you have the perfect tale of a girl who thinks she's not special but catches the eye of the perfect, blonde, all-capable man who has never loved anyone to be unable to pull himself away from you in spite of all the obstacles and also be your knight in shiny amour, saving your life multiple times. If you love vampire stories, then there are a lot of fantastic new qualities Stephanie Meyer create for the vampires, full of invention and imaginative and fantastic details. The plot is not too bad either.

Let me know if you want to borrow my copy, since I know I definitely won't be revisiting the book the way I do with the Harry Potter series. At the moment, I am trying to figure out how to read the rest of the saga without wasting my money on purchasing them.

Testing the Water

I decided that rather than taking a day by day recount of my trip around Canada West, I'm just going to update random things in various themes however and whenever I feel like it. I am going to pretend that this is because a day by day recount of the trip is too boring and not worthwhile, but the real reason is because I have been spending the last couple of weeks being sick and getting the house ready with Adam, and i think updating by pic is a lot easier. Will update the pics of house later too.

Today's theme is me taking off my shoes and going into the icy water at almost any lake possible.

Two wrongs can make a right

Adam and I went to the Pho 88 by my house tonight and I witnessed a series of event that would have rendered me speechless if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't stop laughing and had to tell Adam why.

So the couple next to us, CBC guy (so CBC that he looks like he eats there everyday) and girl around their late teens to early twenties was taking a long time reading over the menu and deciding on what they should eat. When their order came, I saw that the girl ended up ordering a vermincelli while the dude ordered the special spicy 88 noodle soup that I always get. At first I was impressed cuz I thought they really knew their stuff, but 10 min later, the dude's bowl was still full and he asked the owner to come over to tell him that his beef was still rare. The owner told him that it was supposed to be rare (it was slightly pink) and said he should put it in the soup if he wants it more cooked. The boy told the guy that the meat has been in the soup for a long time already which made me take back the n00b comment in my head and thought, ew! The soup wasn't hot enough (though I later realized judging from big bowl of soup and him picking at it that he never put the meat underneath the noodle..fail! -.-).

As I was watching the event unfold, I waited to see what the solution would be for his beef when he asked for some more soup. Given that his soup is a special type of soup and his bowl is still really full, i wondered how that was going to work. The owner was baffled too and didn't know what to say to them either. BUT THEN (!) his girlfriend cleverly interjected and asked for a small bowl of hot soup. I gave the girl kudos for fast thinking and returned to my daily routine of making fun of adam over dinner.

As Adam went to the front to pay for our meal in debit card (2 x n00bs at Pho 88 in the same night!), the waitress brought over the lil bowl of normal beef broth. The dude was about to scoop his meat into the bowl when SUDDENLY (!) his girlfriend picks up the bowl and looked like she was about to pour the tiny bowl of broth into his large bowl of coconut milk peanut spicy soup. The dude stopped her and asked her what she was doing and she brushed his hand away and began pouring...
...
..
.
Thankfully he stopped her half way before she wasted all the hot broth and overfilled his bowl so he can use the rest of the soup to cook his meat.

So that only goes to show you that sometimes two dumbs CAN make a smart.

Both me and adam are

sick.

Things should change soon.
Stay tuned.

Boot Camp Canadian West

It's been a while since I updated, mainly because there was nothing for me to do while I was in Seattle and when I went down to Vancouver, I had zero time to do any updating. As a matter of fact, now that I'm back in Toronto, my time is still running short so I'm just going to have to explain what happened in the last week that cause my lack of updates and I'll do the details later!

Erm, so..On Friday, August 22nd, 2008, marked the last day of Adam's internship at Microsoft. His family drove up from Vancouver on Friday night and we spent the next day wrapping adam's life in Seattle up. We drove back down to Vancouver in the evening and woke up on Sunday at 6am to tour around Vancouver. Monday began the journey towards Rockies and it mainly consisted of x waking up every morning between 5-6am with time changes between PST and MST, sitting in the tour bus for at least 6 hours a day with intermittent bathroom breaks, site breaks and meal breaks. We did not get to choose what time we get to eat so we'd sometimes have lunch at 10am, sometimes at 2pm, and similarly, dinner can be between 4pm and 8pm. Sometimes there would be only 3 hours between meals, sometimes 6.

Our meals were eaten with the group of 54 people in the tour and was mainly Chinese food, even in small in the middle of nowhere bfn towns the tour somehow manages to find that single chinese restaurant with white waitresses to serve us the same dishes over and over again. By the end of the trip, we were pretty scared of eating nasty cooked lettuce, sweet and sour pork, broccoli stirfry, and celery stirfry.

We visited 5-6 sites a day, but usually we get 15 minutes at each site and people would run down the bus and try to take as many pictures as time would allow. The maximum time we were able to stay off the bus was about an hour. By the time we reach the hotel at night, we dont have much time after dinner because we had to sleep as early as we can to wake up early. Needless to say, the week was a blur to all of us, as we would sleep on the bus only to be awaken by the tour guide telling us to get off the bus for bathroom, food, or picture taking at some site for 15 minutes.

Nevertheless, there are some very beautiful places that we visited and lots of nice pictures. Will post later :D

Here's a sneak preview: