Happy Hallowe'en!

It's been a while since I celebrated Hallowe'en the traditional way...and I'm not even sure dressing up in a costume before going to a club/party really counts as traditional. I haven't gone trick-or-treating since I was in grade 9 or 10 or something (I know, my size allows me to persist) and I haven't pumpkin carved since I was in grade 3! When Adam suggested that we pumpkin carve, I looked at him with a mild expression and let him continue talking. In my head, I was wondering when will we have time to go buy pumpkins, let alone carve it. But Tuesday night, he dragged Elvin and I out of the house in the name of getting groceries and we bought four pumpkins. Wednesday night, he made sure all the roommates knew we were doing this, and invited some others. Last night, after his night class, he gathered everyone and with two pumpkins bought by Trisha, we began a 5+2 man and 6 pumpkins carving marathon. The +2 being Elvin (who went clubbing after carving out the top opening part) and Harris (who came in and out to help as needed..haha)

The left is Adam trying to take a picture of me with the pumpkins. You can see I'm not so happy cuz he keeps telling me to hold it in different ways. Right is Trisha looking mighty excited with her hello kitty pumpkin.



Adam told us we had to design first. I'm working on my first pumpkin and Justin and Trisha are designing batman one.

I love scooping out the slimy gut!! My mom never lets me play with food like that!

Cheng is scooping the gut of the pumpkin out and all I was ready to stab stab stab!!!

Our finished products!

Pumpkins from left to right:

1. Trisha primarily worked on the Hello Kitty one that glows pink for some reason.
   
2. Justin made a "Jewish Boy" in five minutes.
   
3. Trisha drew and carved out the batman symbol and adam skinned the outer side.
   
4. I designed and cut out the ghost while Adam cleaned it up for me.
   
5. Cheng spent a long time working on his teethy pumpkin that turned out really good.
   
6. The very right is my first pumpkin I've ever made. Adam and I wanted a evil wide smile!

Some shots of them. Cheng looking mighty scary.

We lined them up outside our steps.

Happy Hallowe'en!!!

My first ever hockey game!

I've always said that one of my goals in life is to attend a hockey game (as a joke since they are so hard to get in Toronto) but it worked out that I finally go to go to my first hockey game ever while I was in Columbus.


The Columbus Blue Jackets were playing against the Vancouver Canucks last Tuesday and the Nationwide Arena was just across the street from our hotel. My co-worker and I decided to go to the game after the conference reception and we got so lucky!While we were buying tickets, the ushers called me over and gave me a free $57 dollar ticket (lower bowl!!) so we ended up buying another $57 ticket and split the cost.

The game was really really good. We got in the arena in the middle of 2nd period and canucks were losing to the blue jackets 2:1 and the bluejackets scored another goal before 2nd period ended. Although the seats did not fully sell out, it looked about 80% filled and the crowd were really good fans. Yhey were very enthusiastic which makes everything a lot of fun. Interestingly, we were sitting next to a big group of Canuck fans holding a huge flag so we were cheering with them!
The last period was the best part, the canucks came back strong scoring a goal in the first few minutes! Towards the end of the game, they were on power play and they handled the puck extremely well. For a long time they were passing it to each other in the offensive zone and taking shots continuously. Unfortunately, the goalie was too good and they never scored.
Last two minutes of the game, the canucks coach actually took the goalie off the game and added an extra player in hopes of pulling the score even. but last 30 seconds, the blue jackets scored on their empty net.
exciting, huh?

Funniest thing, however, was the road closure.

I didn't know whether going to this hockey game would satiate me for good but it looks like it definitely didn't. I would love it if I can go to a hockey game one day.

Declaration of love

This will be a post declaring my love....for Starbucks.

I'm very particular about my consumption in general, I tend not to eat, drink, purchase goods that I don't like. If I'm in a restaurant with others and I don't like the food, I'll end up not eating very much. I explain it like this: A girl has a quota for the food she consumes--she can only eat so much. So I gotta use up the quota carefully, especially since I'm such a foodie!

I'm also very picky with my coffee and my usual drink at Starbucks is a Grande Caramel Americano (*HINT HINT*) and I hate it when they add too much water and dilutes the flavour. (Remember my post about the relations between size and shots of espresso?). So every time I go to Starbucks I always tell them this in different ways but they almost always mess up my order no matter which location I'm at.

• First time I asked for it "with room...err..not too much water," I got the response, "you mean less water." And I still got too much water.
• Second time I said it with "less water" and I got the response, "you mean with room." And I still got too much water.
• Another time I decided to try it with "can you put it in a tall cup for me?" and I was told that i wanted a "Triple tall Caramel Americano BUT that will cost more so I'll just charge you Grande Caramel"
• Another time I tried "easy on the water" and I got the response "you mean light on the water."

There was maybe one time or two times when I the barista actually asked me as they added water to tell them when to stop (i think both at the King and University location <3).

The best, or worst, time was when I was at the John and Woodbine location and the girl gave me actual gooey caramel that doesn't dissolve when i asked for it with "easy on the water". Adam was smart enough to coerce me to go back and ask for a proper one (since normally I just sit in the car and bitch for 30 minutes and then pawn the coffee off for him to drink instead). The Asian guy who was so amazing and so cute not only fixed it for me but, totally getting why i ask for less water, asked me if I wanted an extra shot. When I said no, he said "are you sure?" with a mischievous grin (I swear I thought I saw a wink) and I couldn't help but say yes (not to say that I didn't like the fourth shot of espresso and drink the whole thing down ecstatically euphorically).

So yes, despite all the wrong orders, my love for Starbucks continues to be undying. Although not all the store is consistent, for the most part, they have really good service. Mike Tran's girlfriend Janet recently started working at the Chapters on King location and loves it there. But we all know now that the best location is the one on Woodbine and John..heheheheh.

Politics in the Swing State

If there was one thing that I could not stay away from during this trip to the States was the election. Everywhere we went, there were TVs showing news about the election. When we were in the hotel, there were TVs in the lobby and TVs by the elevators that talked about the election all the time. The airport was the same and even at the foodcourt, there would be a TV at the centre showing the news while all the vendors would have their TV tuned to the same channel. When we get into our hotel rooms, out of about 10 channels we can receive, half of them were news about the election.

You would think that with all of this publicity, everyone would be talking about it, but apparently the answer is no. While we were around the city, we saw a few Obama stickers in cabs and what not, but we didn't see much advertisement signs in people's front lawns. It almost feel like the election is really outside of their concerns. I figured since Ohio is a swing state, there would be much more action going on! Maybe we were just outside the range of the talk, which was right smack in the middle of downtown of the state capital. The dichotomy was quite strange.

However, the question seemed to be answered when we were at the Conference and all the Americans we met told us that all the non-Americans they've met know more about American politics than they do. Dr. George Grinstein, who organizes the conference, told us that you never hear students in his school talk about politics because people just dont think it's something to talk about.

He also believes that a part of this reason is because as American citizens, they are censored. He tells us that if you were to watch the news on TV, a lot of the stuff that's bad for the government gets censored it. Case-in-point: he says that Kennedy had ordered the assassination of Fidel Castro at least three times and everyone around the world knew about it, but this information was censored for Americans. Apparently, if you want real news about America, you gotta go read BBC online.

Since Dr. Grinstein's field is visualizing data, he calculated and visualized the American economy based on the GDP and told everyone at lunch that 8 months ago, they each owed a couple thousand dollars (8?), now they each owe something like eighty thirty-two thousand dollars. He believes that the last eight years, America and its reputation was destroyed. He is set that McCain gets elected, he's going to take his family and his research grants with him and move to either France, Montreal, Toronto, or BC. It's really crazy to listen to someone like him talk about American politics. He seems to think that America is on the verge of its demise--even DoD is starting to worry about the mass emmigration out of the States into Canada will cause severe brain drain in the event that the Republicans win again. Is it really that bad?

Here's one for kicks:

Population of Columbus: 0

I'm not gonna lie, despite it's tiring and a lot of work, I really like going on business trips.
Having an entire hotel room all to yourself is better than awesome (is there a word for it?)
I come home and I throw my stuff anywhere, take off my clothes as I walk to the bed and flop down. I don't have to be considerate and keep my makeup and stuff in my bag, i can just leave everything around however i feel like it.
I can get room service should I choose, I eat on my own time, with new people i meet and go bar hopping every night.

It's unfortunate the city seems as though it has a population of 0.
They had to close the road due to a Blue Jackets Hockey game last night. Their roads are twice the size of toronto and the number of ppl leaving the arena were less than toronto on any given time of the day. geez.

I did, however, attend that game. First live hockey game EVER. Will update about that later.

Presentation tomorrow! Wish me luck!