KuKuKawaii

I survived the T&T Grand Opening in Richmond Hill

2011-06-10T13:19:00.001-07:00

That day has finally arrived! I had known about a new T&T supermarket opening near us since the beginning of the year. With each passing month, the anticipation became more and more pronounced. After 2 delayed starts, The first T&T officially opened its doors in Richmond Hill at 10:30 am on a beautiful Friday morning.

Now, I had no intention of battling all the other stay-at-home parents, early retirees and senior citizens to grab at the chance to receive a $10 giftcard for being one of the first 100 patrons to step through the doors, but I was excited to check out the opening day experience anyways. Yes, I wanted to revel in the madness this opening day may bring. I guess I just have a little bit too much free time on my hands?

I admit, I had some mixed feelings about how this adventure might unfold, but I was up for it. My hubby was kind enough to give me a ride to the new T&T but when he saw how slow moving the traffic was along Yonge Street, he may have started having some regrets. There obviously wasn't going to be any parking available, so I asked to be dropped off at a nearby street to brave the crowd on my own and wished him luck in getting back home.

When I first made it into the parking lot, there was already a big crowd milling outside the entrance. As there were still 5 minutes before opening time, I thought I'd join the crowd and wait for the mad rush to begin. At 10:30 am, a few security guards came out and started to let a line of people through but it wasn't clear whether the crowd in front of me was allowed in or not. After 10 minutes of no movement in front of me, it dawned on me that the only way to get in was to join the line which snaked its way around the plaza. Since I got this far, I may as well join the line.

So I made my way to the back of the line. The line was moving at a pretty good clip until about 20 minutes in. At that point, the store must have reached its capacity and we had to wait for people to leave before more people were allowed in. So, about an hour later, I made it in!

Was I impressed? Somewhat. The crowd control was well handled and the store was well laid out. I didn't have to fight too much for the salmon steaks which were advertised for $3.99/lb. I hadn't seen that price in years!!!! It seemed that the longer line up was for the canner lobsters being sold for $3.99 each. Since I have no clue as to how to cook live lobster, I bypassed that line.

Knowing that I had to make my way back home without the use of a car, I knew I can only buy as much as I can carry back with my own 2 arms. So I picked up a few veggies along with my 4 salmon steak and off to the checkout I went. I spotted one checkout with a short line-up and figured it must be the express line even though there was no sign posted saying so. I took a chance and luckily for me the cashier said she'll take my items but she was suppose to only check out hot prepared food items. I knew she wouldn't turn me away because the person ahead of me had both hot food items and a stash of grocery items hidden in her old lady cart!

All in all, it was a good experience. Of course I was nowhere close to getting the $10 giftcard. I must have been more like the 1000th person in line! With 2 bags in hand, I made my way back home. It was a very doable walk of about 30 minutes or so. Probably faster than going by car because of the traffic jams. Will I go back again after spending 2-1/2 hours shopping on opening day? You bet I will! But maybe I'll wait until all the excitement has died down before venturing there again.

Yay, it's opening day at T&T in Richmond Hill. My life as I know it will forever change.

The traffic is moving awfully slow for this time of day. I'm pretty sure every single car ahead of us is headed for T&T.

Oh look, we must be getting close. A T&T delivery truck just passed us going the other way.

Yikes!!! Some cars are trying their luck getting in while others are lined up trying to leave!!!!

I was on the wrong side of the red tape :( However, I did notice a little chinese old lady had snuck underneath the red tape and made it in with no problems. Yes, being a l'il old lady does have its advantages.

See that crowd gathered just outside the doors. They ain't getting in that way. Nosiree.

If you want in, you're gonna have to go to end of the line disappearing around the corner of the plaza.

Here I am, stuck behind a long queue. Ordinally, I don't do this sort of thing. In fact, most times I try to avoid line-ups and unruly crowds. But what the heck, it was a beautiful day and I had nothing else better to do and hey, it's T&T!!!

The line was moving fairly briskly at this point...

but by the time I reached Friends, a Persian restaurant right next door to T&T, the line had come to a standstill. While stuck standing there, just mere steps away from the supermarket, a friendly lady started passing out flyers for her diner. She must be thinking, this is my lucky day.

Check out the back of the flyer. Billy Dancing???? maybe they mean Belly Dancing??? And what's with the Weston Produce Plaza. Shouldn't it be the T&T Plaza now? Well, looks like someone's gonna have to make a trip back to the printers to make some changes.

Inside at last! Here's a nice display at the fish section.

The bakery section looks sooooooo yummy, but I wasn't allowed to take any more pictures. You'd think that T&T would be happy that people are freely advsertising for them. Well, I'll be back!!!

Dogwood Bunny

2011-05-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

Yay!!! We're in the middle of spring now. In another week, I can finally transplant my tomato seedlings outdoors without fear of overnight frost. In the meantime, here are some signs that spring is in full swing.

Spring showers bring May flowers...

... and lots of lots of those dreaded dandelions. Although they do look rather pretty, all sprinkled across the lawn, they do tend to take over unless we pluck a whole bunch of them out in these early days.

There. Got rid of the whole lot, using the old-fashioned method of digging them out with weeding tools. Nothing toxic touches my lawn, if I can help it.

Hey, what's that hiding under the dogwood bush????

Why, it's a cute cuddly bunny!!!!!

It's hopping off to look for something yummy to eat.

Looks like it has settled on a fine patch of dandelions to dine on.

Mmmmm... dandelions. Nom, nom, nom. I sure could use a hundred more of these bunnies. They're the perfect organic weed killers.

Ahhhh. Time to lay back and stretch.

Enjoy your afternoon nap, bunny.

Sushi Easter Eggs and other Sushi Rice Treats

2011-04-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with sushi rice for the past little while now, making fun-to-eat creations. Sushi rice is simply rice that has been seasoned with rice wine vinegar, sugar, salt and assorted flavourings. Ideally, short grain rice should be used for making sushi rice. But, if you have a lot of regular long grain rice lying about, that will work just as well.

During this Easter long weekend, I happened to have the opportunity to have some fun with sushi rice creations. On Saturday, we celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday with a huge dinner of prime rib roast and ham. After this feast, we had a lot of rice leftover. I was thinking that we could always eat up the rice the next day with all the leftover meats, but why not make Easter sushi eggs instead to bring to my mom?

So on Sunday morning, we gathered all the ingredients we needed and proceeded to make a whole batch of sushi Easter eggs. It was a lot of fun and it tasted really good too. I think this may become an Easter tradition for us. Hmmmm.... what other holiday sushi rice creation can we work on next? Victoria Day sushi????? Gee, that gonna be a tough one.

I also posted some pictures of earlier attempts at making sushi rice treats.

I bought this book a long long time ago and now I'm finally using it. It presents many ways to have fun with sushi rice.

Here's the brand of short grain rice we use for making sushi rice. "Botan" and "Calrose" are other popular brands. Purists will use only short grain rice for sushi rice making because it is a stickier rice. But I've had no problems using regular long grain rice because I tend to use more water when cooking rice and the addition of rice wine vinegar will also add moisture, thus making it sticky enough for forming shapes.

Short grain rice vs long grain rice.

I use brown rice vinegar for flavouring as well as for making the rice stick together better for forming shapes. White rice vinegar can be used as well.

To flavour and colour the sushi rice, we used these flavouring packets. Salmon (pink), egg (yellow) and plum (purple).

To make orange coloured sushi rice, we used masago (flying fish eggs). These are really fun to eat because you can pop each of the little flying fish eggs in your mouth. Pop, pop, pop!!!

Here are 2 sample ones we made. To minimize overhandling of the sushi rice, we use clear plastic food wrap (Saran Wrap) to shape the eggs.

Dick wanted to put faces on them. They look like mummies. More suitable for halloween than for Easter, don't you think?

Here's the batch of Easter eggs we made from the leftover rice.

Dick used some seaweed strips to put funny faces on some of the eggs.

To make it more interesting, we hid some goodies inside the eggs. The eggs were filled with an assortment of cucumber, crabmeat and ham.

My mom is looking a little bit leery, wondering what kind of food I'm foisting on her.

I think she had a good time with us. I'm laughing so hard because Dick is pretending to be a bunny when trying to show my mom that one of the Easter eggs is a "bunny" egg. Then afterwards, he tried to indicate an egg by trying to lay one from his behind. So funny.....

Here are some other sushi rice creations I made previously.

The yin-yang symbol was my own idea. The white portion is just white unflavoured sushi rice. The black portion was made of sushi rice mixed with black toasted seseame seeds and the dots were made with steamed green beans. Seaweed sheets were used for separating the black and white rice portions.

The flower maki rolls were my first attempts at making fancy maki rolls following one of the book's ideas.

Here's the book's version of the flower blossom maki rolls.

These are kitty cat rice balls from the Hana Sushi book.

Our version of the kitty cat rice balls. They look cute but tasted too ricey. It was like eating a small bowl of rice with a few tiny pieces of meat.

So we made our own bunny and turtle rice balls filled with canned sardines to make for a heartier snack.

I used raw soba noodles for the whiskers. They are a bit crunchy, but edible. It's like eating raw "Mr Noodles". I used seaweed sheets to cut out the facial features.

These are tiny rice balls covered with a layer of seaweed and strips of seaweed. The eyes are made from circle cutouts of mozarella cheese and black sesame seeds. These are the cute dust balls from the "Totoro" movie. The idea came from this Annathered's blog post.

Totoro & turtle cream puffs

2011-04-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

I finally made some Totoro Cream Puffs! They didn't turn out as pretty as Annathered's. If you'd like to try making these yummy cream puffs, please check out her "how-to" here.

At first, I had some doubts as to whether her cream custard microwave recipe would be any good since most recipes I've come across used the stove-top method. But I must say, the microwave method is so much easier and it turned out perfectly! Like Anna says, every microwave is different, so the cooking time may have to be adjusted. It turns out that I had to microwave mine at high for 2 minutes first and then for another 45 seconds after that.

I like that she gives out shorter cooking times for the beginner to play around with until they can get it right. I also like that her recipe makes very small batches. This way, if you goof up the first few times, at least you wouldn't be wasting a lot of ingredients.

Lucky for me and Derek, we got it almost right the first time. The only problem we had was that there were tiny holes on the bottom of our first batch of baked puff pastry. I figured it was because our batter might not be thick enough. So for the next 2 batches, we added less egg to the recipe and almost all the puff pastries turned out perfectly! Good job, Derek! I give credit to my sous chef for his wise suggestion.

For the fun part, we decorated them and filled them with the custard and ate them up right away. They were soooooooo yummy!!!!!

The true scientists that we are, we felt we had no choice but to make some more cream puffs, for testing purposes, you know ;). We wanted to test if day old cream puffs would taste just as good. After having our fill with the freshly made cream puffs, we were good enough to set aside some for storage in the fridge and freezer for testing later.

Of course, fresh out of the oven wins hands down. The cream puffs stored in the fridge still tasted quite good the next day, but the pastry lost its crispness. I'm sure the frozen cream puffs would have tasted divine, if we had only allowed to let it defrost for a good 15 minutes before wolfing them down. But, even though the custard was extremely hard, it still tasted soooooo good, that we ate it all up without waiting for it to fully defrost.

The verdict? It would be best to serve these cream puffs the same day. If you want to make them ahead, I'd suggest freezing them first and then allowing them to defrost slightly and serve as frozen treats. We will try some more experimenting with different flavours like red bean, green tea or chocolate cream custard. If successful, I will certainly blog about it again.

Puff pastries, fresh out of the oven.

Hmmmmm, some of these look like turtles.

My attempt at making these look like Totoros. Being naturally lazy, I took a short cut and used toothpicks to put on cream cheese icing eyeballs first. Then, I melted some chocolate chips and applied the nose and whiskers next. Once the eyeballs firmed up a bit, I dotted them with the melted chocolate for the pupils.

Derek decorated his turtles too.

Filling the Totoro pastry. Say aaaahhhh.

This picture looks a bit disturbing, but we're just filling the turtle pastry with the custard.

These are so yummy and easy to make that it's sure to become a family favourite.

Usagi Yojimbo & Gennosuke

2011-04-08T14:59:00.000-07:00

I'm so addicted to sewing plushies now. I think it's because the act of hand stitching, much like knitting, offers a meditative quality. I'm in my happy place when I'm creating something lovable with my own two hands. Sewing plushies is a simple act, but it also allows for the mind to focus on the detailing. So, step by step, a cute stuffed toy is being created. Dick's latest request was to make him a Gennosuke plushie.

Gennosuke is a Rhino bounty hunter found in the Usagi Yojimbo comic book series. Even though this comic book series is based in feudal Japan, which means there's a lot of killing and beheading going on, I actually did enjoy reading some of the stories and I absolutely love the Artwork! Why? Because it features a maniacal sword-wielding (fierce, yet cute looking) bunny as the main character. Yes, I managed to cutefy both of these two samurai characters and Dick still approved.

Here's the official website for Usagi Yojimbo: http://www.usagiyojimbo.com/

Here's Usagi Yojimbo, the main character. He's a masterless samurai (Ronin) bunny wandering Japan's countryside. He's not usually this happy looking, but this is my take on him.

Side view.

Back view.

His other side.

This is Gennosuke. Dick likes him because he's a bit of a rogish character. Whenever Gen gets together with Usagi for some ramen and drinks, he often takes off, after piling on the food and leaves Usagi stuck with the dining bill.

Side view.

Back view.

His other side.

Good times for Gen & Usagi.

Dick insisted that I make swords for them because they would be incomplete without these weapons.

Here are the two buddies roaming around aimlessly in the woods.

Finger Puppet Plushies.

2011-04-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

I think I have found my most favourite blog of all time. http://www.annathered.com/2009/09/02/behemoth-chicken/ She loves a lot of the same cute Japanese characters that I love.

As well, we share very similar hobbies PLUS she posts a lot of "How-to" tutorials so that her readers can try them out for themselves. As soon as I saw her stuffed Behemoth Chicken, I knew I had to make one of my own.

I had so much fun with my first plushie that I just kept going and going, non-stop, making more and more of these plushies. I did tweak my plushies a bit by making them into finger puppets. This idea came to me because I remembered my collection of finger puppets I got while visiting Japan.

My family loves these toys so much that I'm getting requests to do more and more of their other favourite characters. Dick wants me to make some superheroes and some Star Trek spaceships. Not sure how I can cutefy those items? But I will make a few more characters for his Katamatari collection.

Help!!! I need to stop this madness soon because I want to move on to other actvities, like re-creating Annathered's other ideas, such as her Bento Box food items, the Totoro chocolates and the Totoro Cream Puffs...

Aaaaahhhhh!!! Too many new play ideas, which one do I want to do next????? At this rate, my gardening plans may have to be put on hold.

Here's my version of the Behemoth Chicken. It's Colin's favourite. He calls it "Eggy".

I made an insert for it, so that it can be both a hanging toy and a finger puppet.

Next up is a steamed bun. This one is everyones' favourite. It can transform from a steamed bun into a rice ball (onigiri) or a blimp, depending on how you squish it.

Here's my attempt at making Kirby, Derek's favourite. I felt that the arms were too long so Dick said I should just make it into a Kirby airplane. I thought about making its arms wrap around an object like it was hugging it and so...

.... here he is hugging his feet. Now the arms don't look so oversized.

This one is a red pikmin, one of Colin's favourite video game characters.

Speaking of video games, Dick wanted me to make the Prince from one of his favourite games, Katamari Damacy. It's a really strange game where the Prince goes around pushing a ball that gathers more and more objects until it becomes so big, it rebuilds the universe. Dick wanted me to form this ball by gluing together lego pieces and old toy parts. I will have to do a separate post for this very odd video game. Here's Totoro, a family favourite from the Studio Ghibli films.

This is his pal, Chu-Totoro.

This is Chibi-Totoro. It looks like a tooth.

Here's the collection, so far... There'll be more coming.

Here are the plushies and other toys we had around the house that I used as models for my finger puppet plushies.

Here's my favourite one.

Long armed Kirby... still very cute.

Spinning Toys

2011-03-22T07:55:00.001-07:00

I promised to do a post on spin-toys and at long last, here it is.

When I left my office job, I received a lovely card from a favourite summer student of mine. To my delight, a spinning butterfly came fluttering out when I opened it! It's this sort of simple, yet unexpected surprise which brings pleasure for me. Yes, it's the oddest things that bring me pleasure. I immediately thought to myself, I need to re-create this somehow.

So, after a few attempts and some help from hubby and son, we managed to put together 2 fairly good samples but I must admit that I'm still on the look out for more appropriate wiring supplies to re-create a better model. This is still a work in progress and so it goes back on the shelf for another day.

Using some pretty paper, paperclips, mini rubber bands and some tools, we attempted to fashion our own spin-toys.

The butterfly is the professionally made model. The lady bug and bee are obviously the home-made models.

Here's how the spin toy works. First hold it by the bumble bee's bum and start winding the wing part.

When it's been turned several revolutions.....

release and let it spin..... wheeeeeeeee......... Ok, then. That was about 10 seconds of fun. Definitely worth it!

Denim Craft

2011-03-21T12:22:00.001-07:00

I recently had a friendly exchange with an acquaintance, discussing carbon footprints and it got me to thinking about ways to reduce my carbon footprint, but still have fun at the same time. As an Arts & Crafts enthusiast/budding environmentalist, I'm constantly looking for ways to create something new out of something old.

I had a pair of old blue jeans that I couldn't bear to part with but I had to admit that its days were numbered. So when that day came, instead of tossing it out to add to the landfill, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I can make something cute with it.

Originally, I was thinking of making an egg for a bunny or chick to pop out of. But the egg didn't quite turn out the way I wanted. As with most of my craft projects, they often end up as UFOs (Un-Finished Objects).

But not this time, baby. I was determined to finish what I started. Nevermind that the end product has changed. I decided that my egg should become a flowerpot instead. I stuck some dried bamboo branches and dried jasmine leaves (potential yard waste from my garden), stuck some puffy stars on them and voila.... A home decor item. I call it the "Make a Wish upon a Star" Plant.

Although I did use brand new ribbon to make the puffy stars, I will use ribbon scraps to make a more colourful arrangement next time. This way, I can claim that my work was made entirely out of old material.

This pair of blue jeans served me well, but the day came when I had to lay it down to rest. Sob, sob...

A couple of the belt loops had already come loose.

There were big gaping holes that no amount of patching could have helped.

I knew there was a way I could incorporate bamboo twigs from my backyard into my crafts.

So here's the completed "Make a Wish upon a Star" Plant!

As always, my biggest wish is for "World Peace", but of course I wish that my beloved Japan's troubles will be over soon and that the rest of the world can learn from them, especially how orderly and calm their citizens remained while coping with this triple (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear radiation) disaster.

Heiwa (Peace)

Sushi Birthday Cake

2011-03-06T16:35:00.000-08:00

Being Japanophiles, I was instantly enthralled by a Sushi Cake website my hubby recently introduced me to. So, I immediately requested that for my birthday, I'd like to go shopping for all the ingredients to make my very own Sushi Cake. I'm excited to now show how much fun I had making this Sushi Cake.

First, we made some sushi rice. We flavoured it with salt, rice vinegar, sugar and toasted sesame seeds.

Then we formed the cake base.

Now for the fun part... We made some flower decorations using salmon sashimi, clams, squid and mint leaves.

We added on shrimp, flying fish eggs, enoki mushroom and romaine lettuce...

... and voila! A yummy sushi cake, ready to serve!

For my birthday, my family gave me 2 birthday cards. Hubby picked out a card with cutesy animals and purple flowers for me. But my older son insisted on also giving me another one especially hand-picked by him. Awwww, I knew he really cared about me, even though he pretends not to.

Here's what it said on the front. So, he really does listen to me, even though he pretends not to.

... he even thinks I'm wise. And all this time, I thought I was nothing more than a nag and an annoyance to him.

This is so sweet. I'm so touched. (^ ~^)//

I got a cute ladybug mouse. I still don't know what all those black dots are for. Nothing seems to happen when I press on them. I just don't get how some of these high tech gadgets work?!?!?

Among other goodies & treats, I also got more paper crafts to add to my collection. With this, I will post on how to make spinning paper toys next.

Snow Moominmamma

2011-02-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

Finally, the days are starting to get longer and Spring is just around the corner. But before we bid adieu to this Winter and while there is still some snow left on the ground, my younger son and I took the opportunity to build a snow Moominmamma. It's an annual winter tradition for us. That's about the one good thing about winter. We get to build snow sculptures!

Before I move onto the snow sculptures, I have a pet peeve I'd like to clarify with all those winter-loving souls. There is no such thing as WARM weather during the WINTER season! It makes no sense to me when people remark how warm the weather is as soon as the temperature goes above zero. So, here's a handy chart describing how our body really feels according to the outside tempertaure.

Temp Range ........ Joan's Description......... My Hubby's Description

under -15°C .......... Friggin Freezing ...................... Freezing
-15°C to -6°C ......... Damn Freezing ........................Cold
-5°C to 0°C ............ Still Freezing .......................... Cool
1°C to 13°C ........... Cold ....................................... Warm
14°C to 20°C ......... Cool ....................................... Getting Hot
21°C to 25°C ......... Warm (Nice) ........................... Hot
above 25°C ........... Hot ......................................... Damn Hot

But I Digress. Here are some pictures of our snow sculptures from winter 2011 and winter 2010.

This is Moominmamma. We got this cutie while visiting Tokyo. But its origins is actually from Finland. According to Wikipedia, Moominmamma is married to Moominpappa and is the mother of Moomintroll. She very rarely gets cross and takes even the most distressing circumstances (such as the arrival of a comet, or being washed away by a flood) in her stride. Moominmamma would permit anything to her child and his friends, even smoking (she says it's good for the stomach).

Here's our Snow Moominmamma. If you look very closely, you can barely make out the apron we etched out around her belly.

This is what Moominmamma looks like in the evening.

Derek made this snow turtle last winter. It looks like it's sunbathing on the edge of a pond.

This is my interpretation of Sumi. Remember Sumi from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics?

New Year, New Challenges

2011-02-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

It's been only 3 weeks since I quit my long time job at Scotia. I had been employed in the same company with the same department for over 23 years. It beats me how I managed to stay so long at an extremely stressful job without losing my sanity. I suppose I stayed all this time mostly out of fear.

When I first started, I actually did enjoy the work, even though sometimes the work was so overwhelming, it scared the heck out of me. But I was young and full of energy back then and I took on the challenge of going through the steep learning curve. I forced myself to learn as much as possible, often taking work home where I can go over all the complex documents in order to familiarize myself with all the new material.

I was well rewarded in my early years and often given recognition for my hard work and dedication to learning more and more about my job. It turns out that the work I was involved in was always undergoing change so that even 23 years later, there is still more to learn.

Now, I didn't really mind learning new things, but over time, along with my seniority, I was expected to take on more and more of a workload and I didn't feel I was appreciated any more. I was simply expected to take on more and more challenging work because the bar kept on being set higher and higher, until I felt really really burnt out.

So why did I stay in a job where the stress level was so high that I started dreading going to work every day? Well, in fact, I did try to escape it on several occasions. The first couple of times I tried to transfer to a different department, my managers persuaded me to stay by offering me some relief in my daily tasks. It worked for awhile, but again over time, the burnt out feeling crept back in.

As I stated before, it was fear that mostly kept me on the job. The first fear was that once my husband and I acquired a mortgage, thus taking on one of the biggest debtload in our lives ever, we were scared to death of losing our jobs. So we both stayed put.

Then of course when children came along, we got ourselves nearly another mortgage in the form of childcare expenses. With the arrival of a new car, our monthly expenses just skyrocketed! There was no way we were going to leave our jobs now or even attempt to look for alternative work.

Fortunately, we stayed the course and bit by bit, we chipped away at all our debts. First, we got rid of the car payments, then the childcare expenses disappeared and last but not least, we got rid of our mortgage. That was the best feeling ever, to be Mortgage-Free!

Our next plan was to build up a large retirement nest egg by aggresively saving and investing in high quality and high-yielding securities. That was coming along nicely until the biggest scare of all happened. The stock market crashed in 2009! Again, my plan to escape the work place was derailed.

Now that the stock market has started to recover and our fears have been somewhat allayed, we finally felt this may be a good time for me to take that leap. I felt secure enough to leave my stressful job. That's not to say I'm ready for early retirement but I'm definitely ready for a change. So with that said, I gave notice at the beginning of 2011 and waded into the territory of semi-retirement. Yes, it is a little scary, not knowing what else lies out there for me, but I'm ready to take on new challenges.

So now I am looking forward to finding that dream job that is less stressful, is closer to home and hopefully one that allows for more creative input. I came close to getting that job just last week but a manager from a different department at Scotia offered me a short term contract that I was at first hesitant to take on. But then I thought, what the heck, let's see what else I can do at Scotia. It turns out this job is so stress-free and enjoyable that I may make a second career out of doing short-term contract work with Scotia for just a little bit longer. At least, with more spare time and less worries, I can more easily continue to pursue that dream job on the side.

Chinese New Year 2011 Celebration

2011-02-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

We began the Chinese New Year celebration early this year by having some friends over on January 29th. Since none of us were overly traditional, we celebrated with an assortment of non-traditional food like pork stew, baked salmon marinated with miso sauce and shrimp with lobster sauce. But we did pass out red packets for the kids and I made some stuffed bunnies to give out, in honour of the Year of the Bunny Rabbit.

The next day, we visited my mom and we brought her some Chinese candies and mandarin oranges. I also prepared some coconut red bean pudding (molded like flowers) and baked her some bunny butter cookies filled with red bean paste.

Later in the week, we visited my in-laws and as usual, my mother-in-law treated us to a huge home-cooked meal. The meal was very traditional and included a fish served up whole (symbolizes prosperity), a soup consisting of dried bean curd (happiness), rice noodles (long life) and black moss seaweed (wealth) and many many other delicious dishes.

For the remainder of the week, we made some steamed turnip cake (lo bok goh), pigs tail stew and some mochi ice cream balls. None of these dishes are really traditional Chinese New Year food but we were just in the mood to try something a little different, but still has Asian roots.

I sewed these 2 bunnies to give away to the Nakamoto girls.

This bunny is posing in a clay pot which can be transformed into a carrot. I will do a separate post on "Transformer Toys for Girls" on another day.

Butter cookies for the Year of the Bunny. (Those darn turtles keep popping up every time we bake cookies).

The Bunny cookies were filled with red bean paste for that asian touch.

Coconut red bean pudding flowers

Some goodies we received from my in-laws. Red packets, tangerine oranges (luck & wealth), deep-fried coconut-filled dumplings (wealth), roasted pumpkin seeds, egg with black vinegar soup (fertility) and sweet dough soup (wealth & prosperity).

Mochi ice cream balls failed. Didn't form them fast enough. The ice cream started to melt and leak out.

This was the best looking one. Ugly but they tasted really good.

The ingredients I used for a steamed turnip cake.

Freshly steamed turnip cake

They tasted even better the next day, after they were fried up.

Defrosting some pigs tail and pork bones for a yummy stew

These are the dried ingredients that went into the stew

The dried ingredients are soaking.

Mmmmm.... pigs tail stew.

It's back to work!

2011-02-04T13:41:00.000-08:00

Well, that didn't take long! So much for my maiden voyage into semi-retirement. It's been less than 3 weeks since I left Scotia and already I have been asked if I'd be interested in doing some contract work, starting next Monday. Coincidentally, I was also being considered for a full-time position working closer to home, at a job I was quite looking forward to. But since Scotia made me a firm offer I couldn't resist, I had to bow out of the other potential job offer.

I'm still holding out to finding more satisfying employment closer to home but I guess it just wasn't meant to be at this point in time. Oh well, I'm sure another opportunity will come up in the near future. For now, I get to re-start my 1-1/2 hour commute downtown to my previous workplace for the next 4 weeks. At least I got to miss the recent (Snowmaggeddon?) and I thoroughly enjoyed the 3 weeks off. I sure hope Old Man Winter will co-operate for my 4 week work term.

It's funny how after working at a stressful place for so many years that I came to dread Mondays, as well as Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. But now that I'm returning to a new job in a different dept., I'm quite looking forward to this coming Monday. I am a bit nervous because it is after all a new job and I don't know if things will work out or not, but at least I will get to see a lot of friendly and familiar faces and that is always a nice feeling. Maybe that was what I really needed. A nice loooong break from work to appreciate the work place again.

Now I only have a little over 2 days left to squeeze in some more fun time before I return to work. My hubby happened to have found this tutorial for me on how to peel a tangerine bunny rabbit. So, thanks to YouTube and a plentiful supply of mini mandarin oranges, I was able to cut out a respectable looking bunny on my 3rd attempt. Click here if you would like to give it a try.

Stay tuned for yet more fun with food during the Chinese New Year. (Next Post, Folks)

For this project, all you need is a small paring knife, an orange and a pen.

Draw in the markings.

After cutting, start peeling.

Almost done....

Admittedly, it looks more like road kill, but it does have some bunny like features, no?

Snow Days

2011-02-02T10:32:00.000-08:00

For the Eve of Chinese New Year, Torontonians were warned to brace ourselves for a Snow Storm with between 25-30 cm of snow expected to accumulate by the evening. So far, we only saw a mere 8 cm of snow accumulated by early noon-time,which we easily cleared within half an hour. But snow is starting to fall again as I type.

Due to the dire warnings and announcements of school closings all across the GTA, February 2, 2011 was declared a Snow Day. The first Snow Day announced since January 1999. Wow! Remember January 1999 when Mayor Mel called in the Army to dig us out from under 40 cm of accumulated snow? Ever since that day, Torontonians have been endlessly jeered by the rest of Canada for being wimps. Imagine what the rest of Canada thinks of us now!

Personally, I think it's nice to have a Snow Day. Why should we all scramble out and fight through the snow if we don't have to? Why not stay home and just have some fun in the snow right in our own backyard? Heck, if people in Orillia can have 5 to 8 Snow Days on average a year, why can't Torontonians enjoy a Snow Day every 12 years or so? So come on, denizens of the GTA, kick back your snow boots and relax and enjoy your Snow Day!

Our neighbour was just finishing up as our family leisurely strolled out just before noon to shovel our driveway.

All the men came out in full force to attack the snow shovelling.

Colin seems to think shovelling snow in my direction will dissuade me from taking pictures of them.

Whoa! That snow is flying in my direction a little too close. No one ever appreciates what a dangerous job we paparazzis must endure in order to report a good story.

Time to retreat and report on "Snow Days" from the past.

Here we were back in 1999, digging out our little Spruce Tree. It was just a baby tree back then, just like my little ones.

Good Job! We can almost see the bottom of the tree now.

Aaaah, time for a break.

After hours of shovelling, we made a snowbank so high, that Derek had to go mountain climbing in order to get to the top. Colin is already walking along the top of the snowbank ridge.

Once at the top, Derek came sliding back down. It made for a fun tobaggan run.

Colin had fun sliding down too, sans toboggan. Those were the good ole days when a Snow Day really was a Snow Day.

Happy Year of the Bunny Rabbit

2011-02-01T18:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Chinese New Year. 2011 is the Year of the Bunny Rabbit and lands on February 3. It's supposed to be the Year of Peace and Love.

Here's my attempt at depicting the Year of the Bunny Rabbit.

Check here for more Chinese New Year trivia.

Short Tales - Animal Games

2011-01-28T17:48:00.001-08:00

Here's another short story of the goings-on from a day at the Kids' Drama Class.

Chinese Eyes

2011-01-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

I'm back! After a 17 month hiatus, I will attempt to post more often. My creative juices are starting to flow again now that I have stepped out of the office cubicle world.

An ex-colleague of mine does volunteer work with children at a Drama School. From time to time, she feeds me stories from her interaction with these little kids. I'm always amused by how kids think and what they have to say. Here's one of her stories that I've re-created in comic strip form. I will continue to work on more of these stories and post them as often as I can.

Raising Monarch Butterflies

2009-08-01T12:00:00.001-07:00

It's been 9 years since our family first discovered the joy of raising Monarch butterflies. It all started in the summer of 2000 when I was reading an article in a "Family Fun" magazine, showing how families can have fun watching Monarch butterflies grow from the egg stage. All we needed to do were to hunt for these eggs growing on milkweed plants. And as luck would have it, we happened to have milkweed plants growing on our property.

I'm not sure how the milkweed plants made it onto our property, but I believe it may have something to do with the landscaping we did earlier in the Spring season, when my co-worker offered to landscape our front yard. He had owned some farmland in Barrie and was willing to transport some large rocks and stones to our place to create a Rock Garden for us and that's probably how the milkweed plant became a permanent fixture in our front lawn. Thus, a butterfly garden was born!

The first year we raised Monarchs was an absolute delight! We were utterly amazed to have witnessed both the spinning of the larvae (caterpillar) into a chrysalis as well as the emerging of the butterfly from the chrysalis. Over the years, we have shared this wonderful experience with family, friends and co-workers and except for the ones that were afraid of bugs, they too were enraptured by this miracle of nature. So, nine years later, we still have not tired of this wondrous activity and have recorded the stages again to be enjoyed for years to come.

Here's an adult butterfly looking for a good place to lay her eggs.

In the first week of egg-hunting, we found 5 eggs and 1 baby caterpillar on these milkweed leaves. Can you spot the 5 teeny tiny butterfly eggs?

Here's a close up of one baby bug and one unhatched egg.

Here are 2 older caterpillars chasing each other, after they have shedded their first layer of skin.

Here's a more grown up caterpillar hungrily munching on the milkweed plant. It's so much fun to watch them grow bigger and bigger each day and they are rather cute when they are nibbling away at the leaves, bobbing their little round heads with the springy antennae moving about.

When the caterpillars get all fat and juicy, they are ready to spin a sticky web on a sturdy spot and happily hang upside-down for the next 20 hours or so. If you time it right, you can catch one of these little guys perform the caterpillar dance as they wriggle out of their last piece of skin to reach the chrysalis stage.

As the day goes by, the chrysalis will become a shimmering green, studded with golden dots around the top and bottom of the chrysalis. It ends up looking like a beautiful piece of jade and gold precious gemstone.

Notice this chrysalis has pieces of tape stuck on either end of the stem from which it is hanging? That's because we had to perform a rescue operation to save it. What happened was that I had wanted to toss out the last of its poo and the partially-eaten leaf from the container when I noticed it was ready to hang upside down. What I didn't realize was that it had woven a web inside the lid in such a way that when I opened the lid, I inadvertently destroyed the webbing. I quickly replaced the lid but the damage was done. This poor caterpillar had to start all over again to re-attach itself to another spot. Unfortunately, it re-attached itself to a very low part of the leaf stem which was still inside the container which meant there would be no room for the chrysalis to form. Fortunately, both my hubby and Derek did a great job to delicately lift the stem up and taped it sturdily to the underside of the lid to allow for the proper transformation into a chrysalis. Phew!

By about the 10th day, the green chrysalis will turn very dark until it becomes black. At this point, the Monarch butterfly is just about ready to emerge.

When the butterfly first emerges from its chrysalis, the wings are still wet and tiny. The butterfly will hang in this position for a few hours to allow the wings to expand to its full size.

We like to keep the newly emerged butterflies in a fish tank for a day or two just to admire them for a bit before releasing them.

Here's Derek picking up one of them.

This is a male butterfly. You can tell it's a male by the thinner black stripes and the 2 black dots found on the 2 lower wings.

The second one is a female. Female Monarchs have thicker black stripes and no black dots.

The female butterfly didn't want to leave so fast and stayed around for awhile.

She must have been pretty thirsty as she stayed for quite some time taking in the nectar from a purple cone flower.

The male butterfly took off almost right away. Hmmm.... isn't it such a guy thing to do, to take off at the first possible chance! Can you see it flying off into the wild blue yonder just beyond the roof-top? Bye bye butterfly. Hope you have a safe journey flying to Mexico where you can breed more butterflies. We'll be looking forward to seeing the next generation flying back up to Canada to breed some more next summer.

Summer Staycation

2009-07-11T12:23:00.001-07:00

Ahhhhh.... Summer-time. I Love Summer. I especially Love Summer and Vacation Time. For my Summer Vacation, I stayed home and enjoyed all there was to enjoy right here in my own home, backyard, front yard, and the Richmond Hill/Markham/Scarborough area. Come join me as I recount some of the hi-lites from my Summer Staycation.

According to Wikipedia, a staycation is a neologism for a period of time in which an individual or family stays at home and relaxes at home or takes day trips from their home to area attractions.

Caught the first Monarch butterfly of the season fluttering around my butterfly garden.

Here's the Monarch butterfly laying eggs on the milkweed plant. I will be doing a separate post on the Monarch Life cycle again later this month. Every summer, we continue to be fascinated by the miracle of watching a butterfly egg hatch into a caterpillar, watching the caterpillar spin itself into a beautiful chrysalis and then finally transform itself into a pretty butterfly. AMAZING!!!

We started off the week by visiting Chapters Indigo where everyone picked up some books for summer reading. I really enjoy reading about Zen Philosophy. In a "Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilbur did a great job summarizing and integrating the ideas of some of the greatest thinkers and sages throughout the ages as well as the various religions and scientific theories in an attempt to explain how we evolved from the Lowest Level of Nothingness into the Highest Level of Nothingness. Very thought-provoking.

Sadly, one of my cousin's mom had passed away and Dick and I attended the funeral on the weekend. This is the garden area of the funeral home. I wish I had taken more pictures of the event but I didn't want to break any funeral visitation etiquette. I found it interesting that there were Buddhist Monks chanting and singing while saying some prayers during the ceremony. I also found out that my parents' burial plots are located not too far away from my cousin's parents' plots. It got me thinking about my own passing but I still can't decide what's best: underground burial or cremation? Well, maybe some other options will come up before I make my final decision.

After the burial, we were invited to a dinner reception to be held about an hour and half later. To pass the time, my sister suggested we visit J-Town which was only 2 blocks west of the restaurant where the reception was going to be held. J-Town may be the only truly Japanese Shopping Centre, run by Japanese vendors, filled with all things Japanese. Kevin points to a poster advertising their upcoming Sidewalk Sales. Hmmm... better keep some of those dates open for a future visit(s).

Here we are enjoying a peaceful Japanese Zen Garden at J-Town.

Here are some of the exotic snacks on display.

There were many interesting samples on offer to entice shoppers into buying some of their delicious treats, including miso-marinated tuna, yellowtail fish, different seafood dumplings, seaweed salads, and come crispy-deep-fried duck liver snack. Of course, I tried them all and they were all very yummy.

The sales clerk even gave the kids some very creamy chocolate pieces to sample. Lucky for us, the kids gave them up to me and my sister to try. The piece wrapped in pink was strawberry flavoured. Hmmmmmmm.... so so good.

In the Chinese tradition, each guest visiting a funeral home receives a packet filled with a piece of candy and some spending money. The money, usually a loonie, can only be spent on buying something sweet to be consumed on the same day to counter the sadness of losing a loved one. I ended up buying two $1.00 treats at J-Town (the Peach Gummies for Dick and the White Chocolate Macadamia Nuts for me).

I also ended up buying this Rice-filled Squid Snack for a buck.

This is what it looks like on the inside. Very very tasty.

You guessed it. I liked J-Town so much, I went back again the very next day to pick up on some more of their specials.

As the sign suggests, J-Town = Sweet, Eat, Smile, Laugh and Talk. So Kuku and so Kawaii.

Lucky for us, we went shopping on a "Surprising Sale" Day!!! Woohoo!!!

Look, Anpan Man buns!!! So very Japanese.

We picked up some more Japanese delicacies. Marinated baby octopi and marinated seaweed & squid. They were excellent. The best part was that these were going for half price because we arrived one hour before closing time.

Stocked up on fresh Asian ingredients, our family made some Fresh Rice Rolls to bring to my parents.

We also brought along these are waffle-like cute little fishie treats filled with a delicious red bean paste. Dick pan-fried them first to give them a more crispy flavour.

My sister and her kids dropped by to visit and we had an Asian Themed Party.

We made more fresh rice rolls. The fresh picked mint and thai basil from my garden added a unique and refreshing taste to the rolls.

My sis made some home-made bubble tea. She made 3 different flavours: strawberry, mango and green apple. I made some mandarin orange flavoured jelly cubes the night before as an added fun ingredient.

Here's the spread.

My sis also brought along some freshly picked raspberries from her garden. Apparently raspberries are very easy to grow. Her neighbour had given her 6 raspberry twigs to plant 2 summers ago. They have spread so quickly, she now has over 20 bushes lining her property. She has been busily getting other neighbours and friends to take some of these bushes away.

Here's Colin hunting for some red currants. He found only a small handful. We'll have to wait a little bit longer to harvest them.

My niece and nephew are re-enacting a scene from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in front of our mini bamboo forest.

Meanwhile, my sister is weaving together a bamboo wreath from some young bamboo twigs.

We ended the afternoon of fun by baking some ice-cream shaped cookies. Even though Derek missed out on this get-together (the poor guy had to work that day), we made a turtle cookie just for him.

During my holidays, I was happy to spend more time tending to my garden. Here's my black raspberry bush. Not too many berries for this year. Maybe next year, we'll have a larger bounty?

At least the gai lan (chinese broccoli) were ready for harvesting. I dug them out and re-seeded. They take about 2 months to grow from seed. So I'm hoping we'll get another harvest by mid-September.

The bunch on the left is from my garden. The bunch on the right came from the Chinese supermarket. We cooked the home-grown bunch for dinner tonight and it tasted good. The stalk near the bottom was a bit woody but became more tender closer to the top.

So far, the sugar pea plants which looked so promising in the spring have been a big disappointment for me. Of the 9 pea plants I started from seed, none of them survived the transplant. Even when I re-seeded directly into my backyard, only 1 lone plant made it but even that one surviving plant doesn't look too strong.

Same with the ox-heart tomato plants. I had 4 really strong looking plants started but due to heavy winds from several severe rainstorms, it doesn't look like any of those tomato plants will make it either.

I'm now pinning my hopes on the grape tomato plants. I started out with about 12 or 13 of these plants, of which only about 5 or 6 are still standing. I sure hope they can withstand today's heavy windstorm.

So now my summer staycation is coming to an end. I really enjoyed staying up late, sleeping in, staying in my pjs for as long as my hubby will allow me, relaxing, indulging in all my favourite activities like gardening, reading, paper-crafting, cross stitching and cooking. Much as I wish I could retire for good tomorrow, I'll just have to be satisfied that I got a taste of what my retirement life will be like in the not-too-distant future while I still get paid to enjoy my time off from the 8-4:30 grind. Make that the 7am-6pm grind when commute time is included. Geez, 11 hours a day, 5 days a week, wasted, not doing things I'd rather be doing. Yes, Early Retirement is looking better and better all the time. Soon, very very soon....

Happy Canada Day!

2009-07-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

Like most Canadians, I'm not all that patriotic. I'm not one to fly the Canadian flag proudly nor brag about Canada. Canadians may not be exciting nor flashy, but for the most part, we are quite a happy bunch and don't feel compelled to tell the rest of the world how great Canada is. Nevertheless, I will say this much. I'm ever so glad to be a Canadian!

My family came to Canada over 40 years ago from Hong Kong and I'm extremely grateful to call Canada my homeland. Aside from the weather, I really have no other complaints. Canada offers many things that very few places in the world can offer. Some of these most cherished things are: a high level of Freedom, abundant clean land with lots of open space and much of it still in its natural state, a stable government, and particularly in Toronto, a wide diversity of cultures that get along so well together because of our high level of acceptance and respect for each other (the Envy of the World, really). I could go on but these are the main reasons I feel so fortunate and I do love living here.

So, no fireworks for me tonight, no flag waving, no singing of the National Anthem. I'm thinking maybe it's time for a new National Anthem anyways. You all have to admit, "Oh Canada" is a rather boring anthem. The words sure could use some updating. I'm not so sure that too many of us would really "Stand on Guard for Thee". It sounds too militaristic.

I did spend Canada Day enjoying my favourite activities like gardening, cross stitching and other crafts. To commemorate the day, I made an Origami Box with pages from the LCBO booklet. Here's to Good Ole Canada.

I also took time out to visit the local Farmer's Market.

There were lots of fresh produce to sample.

These all tasted mighty fresh.

Some booths offered freshly made baked goods.

I haven't had a soft butter pretzel in ages.

One of the very friendly vendors offered me a large piece of white nectarine to sample. Even though there were "Foodland Ontario" logos everywhere, I found out that these white nectarines I picked up were actually from the USA. Oh well, maybe later in the summer, there will be more Ontario Farm produce. We only have a very short growing season, after all.

Here are some very tropical looking plants I'm pretty sure aren't native to Ontario. A Pineapple Plant and some Banana Plants?!?!!

These are some of the goodies I picked up. Nectarines from the USA, a cheese and tomato foccacia, a soft German Pretzel, some Greek pastries. (see what I mean about the diversity).

I couldn't resist and picked up the Pineapple Plant. Unfortunately, the pineapple is not edible but if I can manage to keep it alive for the long term, it should make for a great conversation piece.

It'll feel right at home next to the Mimosa Plant, another tropical plant that is native to South and Central America. That's why I love Canada. I can easily enjoy so many foreign items from faraway places right here in my little corner of Canada.

This is as Canadian as I got to celebrating Canada Day. Enjoying a butter tart topped with strawberries and Cream. According to Wikipedia, A butter tart is a type of pastry best known as a Canadian treat. The strawberries came from my very own Canadian Garden and the whipped cream is made by a company called Saputo, based in Montreal, Quebec. Can't get more Canadian than that. Happy Canada Day Eh?

The Month of Colin

2009-06-28T13:48:00.001-07:00

The month of June 2009 truly belongs to Colin, my oldest son. I hereby proudly present all the hi-lights for the month of Colin in which he turned 18, participated in a Multi-Cultural Show, attended his High School Prom, the Graduation Ceremony and a Post Graduation Pool Party.

For his 18th Birthday, we had a low-key celebration since Colin didn't want to make a big fuss about his birthday. Derek and I made him his favourite, a Chocolate Cake decorated with banana and strawberry slices and strange meringue mushroom figures.

His grandparents also joined in on the celebration and presented him with a great big cheque for reaching this milestone. It's really gonna come in handy towards his upcoming Tuition Bill. Thanks Grandma & Grandpa!

Here are some of the participating members from the Multi-Cultural Event held at Langstaff Secondary.

Colin choreographed the moves for the Kung Fu Skit where 2 rival chinese gangs rumble.

Got a good shot of Colin in action.

Here's the Group doing some Tai Chi moves.

I really enjoyed the Japanese dancers with their beautiful costumes and lovely moves.

The Korean Dancers also put on a spectacular show.

Here is the party of 10 that Colin shared a ride with to get to the Prom.

For Prom Night, Colin's group rode in style in this Stretch Limo.

The Limo Rental cost them $40 per person. Not bad considering it got them all the way from Richmond Hill to the Waterfront and back.

Here's Colin's Prom Date. Jessica is a sweet and multi-talented girl who not only participated in 3 of the Multi-Cultural shows, but also co-hosted it. She even made some Cream Puffs for Colin and making Puff Pastries requires great skill. Colin is so lucky!

Martin is one of Colin's best buddies dating from Elementary School

They held the Prom at the Atlantis Banquet Hall in Ontario Place. Coincidentally, the same place where my High School prom was held!

Colin's graduation momentos.

Colin also received a Certificate of Endorsement in Business Studies along with his High School Diploma. The Class of 2009 consisted of nearly 300 grads. That's huge. No wonder the ceremony took so long. I think that may be twice the amount of students as when I graduated from High School.

Proud parents

The Graduation Ceremony was held at this beautiful venue. I think my own high school graduation ceremony was held in our High School auditorium. How times have changed.

Colin receives his High School Diploma!

The Valedictorian, Mark Lee is a very charismatic fellow and also receipient of numerous awards. His speech was very funny and witty and he ended the speech with song. He is really quite the singer.

Mark was good enough to co-ordinate this photographic moment for all the proud parents to capture as all the New Grads tossed their graduation caps into the air at the end of his fine speech.

Notice the little baby in the arms of the woman in red? I was totally amazed that this baby sat through a 2 hour long ceremony without fussing or making a sound. Such a good baby.

Here's Dick clowning around with Colin.

At first, I thought we were gonna have to do some serious photoshopping to remove this clown who snuck in his smiley face out of the picture. But it turns out this clown is the High School vice-principal, so we decided to keep him in. Very Funny, Mr. Hilmer.

Here's Colin and the very lovely Jessica who won the Governor General's Academic Medallion, awarded to the graduating student with the highest final average of all Grade 11 and 12 courses. Her overall average was 96%. Way to go Jessica!!!

Colin ended the month with a BIG SPLASH by attending a Post Graduation Pool Party. Colin became an instant hero by bringing a Party Size Platter of Sushi. Too bad nobody thought of bringing a camera to commemorate the Final Good Times before everyone parted ways for the summer.

So now Colin will be off to Ryerson University to study "Information Technology Management" in September. Coincidentally, Ryerson happens to be the same post-secondary institution that both Dick and I graduated from more than 25 years ago. Of course, back in those days, Ryerson was not yet a University. It was a Polytechnical Institution and a fine Institution it was when it was known to us affectionately as "Rye High" because it still retained the same atmosphere as a High School. We hope Colin will continue the tradition by joining the "Ryerson Chinese Student Association"(RCSA) where Dick and I met and still hold many many fond memories of.

Heartfelt Thanks to my most favourite niece, Patricia, for giving Colin this Ryerson Hoodie as a most fitting Graduation Gift.

First Day of Summer/ Happy Father's Day

2009-06-21T10:10:00.001-07:00

Aaaah!!! Finally Summer (my most favourite season) has officially arrived and I was not disappointed. Time to soak in all the glorious sun rays and go strawberry picking from our strawberry patch. We've had a strawberry patch growing in our front yard for several years now. I remembered the first year we had strawberries, they were quite small and there weren't all that many for picking, but they were really sweet and tasty.

Over the years, the strawberry patch has grown in size and the berries have gotten bigger too. This year, I weeded out alot of the other plants that were fighting for space in our front garden and pruned back a lot of the cedar bush to make more room for the strawberries. It worked and it looks like we will have our best harvest yet. Unfortunately, more berries meant more pesky critters coming by to visit.

Dick thinks it may be birds eating up our berries and suggested that we stick a brightly coloured object that will make rapid movements in the wind, such as a pinwheel, to scare them off. We couldn't find a pinwheel but we did find a Spinning Hot Air Balloon that might do the trick. I think we were somewhat successful as I did mange to gather at least 3 pints of strawberries so far. Of course, I had to pick some that weren't fully ripe yet because I didn't want to take the chance of losing them to those pesky critters. The result was that they didn't taste as sweet to me but the rest of my family still enjoyed them.

In fact we had enough to serve for a Father's Day Breakfast this morning. We made a whole pile of pancakes, served with honey, freshly picked strawberries and whipped cream. Mmmmm... it was very yummy. We completed the meal with some hamburgers patties and peameal bacon. Needless to say, it was very filling.

For some reason, Dick owns a Pink version of the Nintendo DS and some years ago, Derek had pasted some eyes, cheeks and a mouth on it to make it look like Kirby. So, for Father's Day, I made Dick a Pop-up card to resemble his pink Nintendo DS. The boys chipped in and we got him a new Nintendo DS game (Ninja Gaiden-Dragon Sword). Since Dick seems to have taken an interest in Chinese music of late, I had also asked my friend Anastasia to download some of her favourite Chinese Pop tunes for Dick to transfer onto his IPOD to enjoy.

Happy Father's Day and Happy Summertime!!!!!!!

What's this? Some pesky critter has gotten to some of the berries before we could get our hands on them.

More chewed up strawberries. Could this be the work of some hungry birds? I think so because they left other evidence such as white streaks on some of the leaves.

Dick having fun with the Spinning Hot Air Balloon. My son, Derek had to assemble it because I'm not very good when it comes to following directions for this sort of thing.

Dick had hung it up on the Lilac Bush about a week ago. Let's see if it works.

I still found some berries with bite marks in them, but the area right below the Hot Air Balloon seems to have the most whole berries suitable for picking. In fact, this is our third harvest so far this season.

These were the first 2 berries of the season from a week ago. They are small but still tasted good. They were about 1/3 the size of the heart shaped strawberry Kelly had given to me from a few months ago.

Here's the giant sized Heart Shaped Strawberry I got from my friend Kelly.

Looks beautiful.. Doesn't it?

Here's an alien-looking strawberry looking red and juicy and almost ready to pick.

In honour of Father's Day, I made Dick a Pink Nintendo DS Pop up Card. It resembles the one he actually owns. Don't ask me why he owns a Pink One. Must have been on sale.

It's got pop-up control buttons inside the card. Happy Father's Day.

Healthy Yards Event

2009-05-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

Last week, I attended the Richmond Hill Healthy Yards Event where I got to pick up a Small Native Tree & Plant Kit. I was quite excited because for less than $25, I received a Kit consisting of an edible Black Raspberry Bush, a Red Dogwood Bush and assorted native wild flowers. Just like last year's event, there was a spot where you can pick up all the free mulch you can take back with you, as long as you bring your own shovel and containers. There were gardening experts on hand if you needed any gardening advice. There was even a Games booth where you can play assorted nature games.

Last year, I was initially disappointed that I had placed my order too late to receive a Small Plant Kit, but I decided to attend the Event anyways. It was a good thing too because I ended up playing a game where you had to match up pictures of leaves to pictures of the trees they came from in order to win a prize. I managed to match up all the leaves to all the trees correctly and I won myself a great prize! I was so ecstatic because I ended up winning the White Birch Tree that I had wanted to order. I was so very lucky that I won the White Birch because it wasn't even available on the order list this year.

This year, Dick helped me plant the bushes in our backyard while I transplanted the native flowers into my front garden. After several weeks of growing veggies and herbs from seed and transplanting them into our backyard, I think my garden is finally complete. I just need to see whether any of the flowers will bloom and if there'll be any goodies to harvest later on in the season. Stay tuned.

Here I am sitting in an Industrial Plough with my Native Plant Kit

A lotta folks helping themselves to the free mulch. Some brought garbage bags while others brought garbage bins or blue bins to fill'er up. There was even one guy who filled up the entire back of his pick-up truck. He must own a farm or something.
Here are the garden experts giving out some gardening advice to novice gardeners

Here's the Games booth where I won a prize last year

Here's the Red Osier Dogwood bush. It's suppose to bear tiny white flower clusters and white berries in the Spring and Summer. I may have to wait til next year to see that. The leaves will turn a maroon red in the fall and the branches will remain red, making for an attractive winter plant against a snowy backdrop.

This is the Black Raspberry Bush. I can see buds forming already. I hope we'll get some raspberries later this year!

Here are some Blue Vervain (the 2 largest plants), Showy Tick-Trefoil (the 2 small plants on the left, and some Harebell, the small plants on the right. Because these are all plants native to this region, they should grow very easily here.

According to the Fact Sheet I got with the kit, the Blue Vervain plant will produce beautiful electric blue flowers on the candelabra shaped flower head every year from July to September. The Showy Tick-Trefoil will produce magenta flowers in mid-summer and will attract butterflies and other pollinators. The Harebell is the classic bluebell flower that looks delicate but is a very hardy plant that tolerates drought very well, blooming from July to October. Now, that's my kind of plant. It won't readily die on me even if I forget to water it, has a long flowering season and has flowers in my favourite hues - blue and purple.

Here are some Ox-eye Sunflower (top), Spotted Joe Pye Weed (middle and some Dense Blazing Star (bottom).

The Ox-eye (false) Sunflower is an easy to grow butterfly plant. It's a tall plant producing sunny yellow flowers. It won't be my favourite, but I threw it into the garden anyways.

The Spotted Joe Pye Weed is another tall butterfly plant with clusters of magenta flowers.

The Dense Blazing Star is also a butterfly plant with spiky purple flowers. I like the colour but I'm not sure I like the shape. Looks like I may have a Butterfly Garden forming soon.

This one is a Wild Bergamot. This is Dick's favourite of the lot because it produces the scent of Earl Grey Tea. He loves that scent. I like it too because it is generally an undemanding plant and will produce showy lavender flowers in its second year.

These are the plants I didn't get around to transplanting. They are just a bunch of Prairie Ornamental grasses and some more yellow flowers. I may have to give these away or Dick might find a spot for them seeing as how he likes yellow flowers and grass more than I do.

Here's the White Birch tree I won a year ago. It was a short little thing back then.

This year, it has grown as tall as me. No white bark yet. In fact, it is not advisable to remove the bark from the tree until the diameter of the tree trunk is at least 6 inches. Even then, this can damage the tree unless it is harvested carefully and at the right time of the season, that being between mid-June to early July. So it looks like it will be a good long time before I can get my hands on any home-grown birch paper to use for my paper crafts.

Celebrating a 90th Birthday

2009-05-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

We celebrated my dad's 90th Birthday today. Because my dad has trouble moving around, it wasn't possible to have the celebration at a Chinese Restaurant. Instead, our family gathered together to have a Chinese Banquet catered in at a Party Room of the Seniors' Home. I liked it because it was uncomplicated and still very festive and it was nice to see the Fong Clan all gathered together again.

Here are some select pictures to commemorate the day.

Mom & Dad

My sister Cathy's family and my family (Both Setos, by marriage)

My oldest sister and her family

My second oldest sister and her family

My oldest brother's 2 daughters, son-in-law and mother-in-law

My third oldest sister and her family

My family

Some of the seven siblings and some of the spouses and a cousin

Two of the Great-Grandchildren helping to blow out the candles

Here's the Pop-up Card I made for my Dad's 90th birthday

... all our names are signed in chinese characters

I also made a Mother's Day Card for my Mom

It's another Pop up card filled with "Spring" Flowers. The flowers are attached to paper springs for a fun interactive card. Boing, boing, boing.....

I thought the 3 flowers were too lonely, so I attached a few more for extra fun!!!!!

Pop-Up Cards

2009-05-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

I just found another distraction to pre-occupy my time. Making Pop-up Cards!

It all started because Connie, our summer student returned to the workplace. I was quite excited to see Connie back because she is an amazing worker. I can give her a pile of work and she'll complete it in less than half the time expected and she's always eager to do more. The other thing great about Connie is her love of card making and cartooning. You can check out one of her artwork here. She's delighted a lot of people with many of her offerings like Birthday Cards, Christmas Cards and even cute little personalized Chinese Takeout baskets containing candy treats on her last day of work last summer. So of course, I wanted to return the favour by creating a Card made especially for Connie.

Anyways, I was always fascinated by Pop-up Art. I can spend hours browsing the Kids Book section admiring all the pop-up and peek-a-boo illustrations and pictures which can slide in and out in the kiddie books. They make reading so much more fun. So, here are my first three attempts at making Pop-Up Cards. They are not as polished or professionally looking as the Hallmark Cards, but they are all unique and can be personalized!

Here's Connie's "Welcome Back" Card

... which opens out into a Birthday card. It's a "Welcome Back/Birthday" Combo Card. I have to give some credit to my son, Derek, who showed me how to properly fold the nose part to make it stick out the right way. If you close and open the card, it looks like the Beaver is talking.

Here's a Mother's Day Card I made for my Mommy-in-law.

I goofed already because I forgot to cut out a connecting section on the top part of the Orchid Plant to make it stay in place. Fortunately, my hubby, Dick made a really good suggestion. Can you see the pink spring-like paper tab I stuck to the back of one of the flowers?

Here's a Birthday Card I made for my Dad.

I don't know what Dick was thinking of, but this is not a "Happy Goth" card, it's a "Happy 90th" Birthday Card. I sort of messed up this card a bit too with some smudges. But again, Dick came up with another helpful suggestion. He said I should draw a couple of pandas waving around some bamboo to cover up those smudges. That was a great idea and it really added more cuteness to the card.

Yes, I had to cover up another smudge on the back of the card with another panda waving bye-bye.

Two for the Price of One

2009-05-16T17:45:00.000-07:00

I was browsing the internet recently and stumbled upon a Craft site with a pattern for sewing a Peasant Blouse. I remembered I had sewn one of those back in my high school days and I absolutely loved it. It was one of my most favourite blouses but ever since I moved out of my childhood home, I forgot all about it until a couple of years ago when I longed to make another just like it.

As luck would have it, I found this pattern for free on the internet. My next step was to find the right fabric. Since I haven't had the opportunity to browse freely in a fabric shop, I decided to raid my closet to see what old fabric I could reuse. So here it is, a hand-me-down dress that I never did wear. It's an April Cornell dress too. I like the style but I didn't like the length as the hemline fell right around the mid-calf for me. I prefer dresses to be either just a little bit above the knees or right around the ankles.

So I decided to take a chance and try to make two outfits out of one by cutting the dress in half. The top half was easy. I just had to re-hem it and I easily made my self a cute little blouse. That left me with the bottom half to fashion myself a peasant blouse. Can I do it? Well, I gave it a shot and even though it was a bit of a tight fit, I managed to do it. It didn't even take that long as it only took me half the day to complete both blouses. Two for the Price of One! Actually, since it was a hand-me-down, I really got Two for the Price of Free!

For anyone interested in making their own Peasant Blouse, please click here.

Have fun!

After strategically cutting apart the bottom half of the dress, I came up with this design. There was even a small strip and a bunch of buttons left over for some other future project(s).

Here are my 2 finished projects.

My April Cornell Dress just became a Short little blouse. I'm pretty sure I will wear it more as a blouse rather than as a mid-length dress.

And here's my tight fitting Peasant Blouse. Now that I experimented with the pattern, I'm going to make my next one a looser fitting one.

Coconut Bun or Chicken Bum Bun?

2009-05-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a map of China. As you can see, China is a very large country with many regions. So you can imagine how diverse China's population can be. With the exception of regions like Tibet and Mongolia, I was always under the impression that most Chinese people either spoke Mandarin, Cantonese and other assorted local Chinese village dialects. Besides local food specialties, climate and topography, I figured that was the extent of Chinese diversity. Boy was I surprised when I recently learned how truly diverse China really is.

For some reason, I thought that people in Southern China spoke Cantonese and people in Northern China spoke Mandarin. I myself am of Cantonese descent as both my parents came from Hoiping, a village in the Province of Guanding (Canton). So when I befriended 2 people from China whose first lanquage was Mandarin, I just naturally assumed they were both from Northern China. I was somewhat right since one of them hails from Liaoning (the brown province located at the head of the Chicken) and the other came from Fujian (the green province located at the belly of the Chicken), just north of Guandong, my ancestral home. The Map of China has often been referred to as a Chicken.

Here's the part which surprised me. I had asked the girl from Fujian to go out for "Yum Cha" one day and this reminded her of a funny story about "Yum Cha". She said that when her family first came to Canada, her mother's friend invited them to go "Yum Cha". Her mother thought "Yum Cha" meant to simply "Drink Tea" which is what "Yum Cha" literally translates to. They are thinking what's so special about drinking tea? It sounded rather boring, so they kept politely declining the invitation. But the family friend persisted and finally they relented and they went out to "Yum Cha" for the first time. And this was when they learned that "Yum Cha" wasn't just "Drinking Tea". It was more like a brunch where you drank tea while enjoying "Dim Sum". "Dim Sum" literally means "Touch Heart" but really means assorted yummy little light dishes served alongside tea, to be shared with friends and loved ones. Now they love going to "Yum Cha".

Here I'm thinking every Chinese person would know what "Yum Cha" and "Dim Sum" was but it turns out that this is purley a Cantonese tradition. Even the girl from Liaoning did not know what the Dining Experience of "Yum Cha" or "Dim Sum" was when she first came to Canada.

Here's another funnier story. I had asked the girl from Fujian if she likes Guy Mei Bou, a cantonese word for Coconut Bun, and she made a face saying she couldn't eat something like that. So, I'm thinking, which person, Chinese or otherwise, doesn't like Guy Mei Bou (Coconut Bun)? She told me that she can't eat chicken bums. I started laughing so hard because now I have this image of a bun stuffed with chicken bums inside. She told me seriously, she couldn't eat chicken bums. I had to explain to her that Guy Mei Bou was really a Sweet Coconut Bun which resembles a Chicken Tail, not a Chicken Bum. At least that's why I think it's named that way. I had to show her what it looked like and believe me, it took quite a bit of convincing before I could get her to take a bite out of it. Yes, the girl from Liaoning thought the same thing too.

Can you believe that these people who lived in the same country for up until their teen years, (even the one from Fujian which just borders Guandong on the North side) didn't know of these foods until they left their homeland and only found out about them when they were on foreign turf? Maybe if they came from the tail end of China, they might have known what a Guy Mei Bou is. Nahhhhh....

Here's a Guy Mei Bou (Chicken Bum Bun) or Sweet Coconut Bun. Does it look like a Chicken Tail?

Here's a five-pack. (A plate of Chicken Tail Feathers)

Update: My letter to is Now Online and I got Email Responses from the Mayor and Councillor

2009-04-27T04:54:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

If any of you had trouble reading my little picture of my letter to the Mayor and Councillor about the underused airport route, it is now on-line. If you are interested, click here if you would like to view the letter online on yorkregion.com or click here if you would like to view the full print version.

Also, I got emailed responses from the Mayor and Councillor.

Here's the email I got from Councillor Godwin Chan:

"Ms. Seto,

On Sunday, April 26, 2009 issue of The Liberal, your email of April 19 to the Mayor and I was published as a letter to the Editor. Your point about the need for promotion is well taken.

Further to the Mayor's response, please note that GO Transit runs a good-size advertisement about the airport express service in The Liberal on Thursday, April 23, 2009.

Thanks for writing to us regarding the GO Transit service.

Godwin Chan

Councillor (Ward 6)
Town of Richmond Hill"

Here's the email I got from Mayor Dave Barrow on Apr 19 that Godwin Chan referenced:

"Ms. Seto; The service that you have mentioned is a GO Transit service from RH Centre.

They had advertised rthis when it first started last year but I will pass your message on to GO Transit asking that it be better advertised.

YRT and VIVA websites have lnks to GO but usually do not advertise routes etc. of each others systems.

Dave Barrow, Mayor
Richmond Hill is a Character Community
This month's character attribute is PERSEVERANCE"

Here's an email I got from Mayor Dave Barrow yesterday:

"Please see the attached response from Go Transit on your inquiry.
[1 Attachment]

Thanks,
Dave Barrow, Mayor
Town of Richmond Hill"

Unfortunately, there was no attachment. Mayor Barrow was having trouble with his Blackberry and couldn't attach. Anyway, he said he would send me the attachment from his office today. We'll see...

Birthday Black-out!!!

2009-04-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

So last month,I celebrated my birthday on a day when we had no running water and though we survived it, it was definitely an experience I'd rather not go through again. As luck would have it, we celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday this past Saturday with another misadventure.

The day started nicely enough, warm and sunny, but then BAM!, strong wind and heavy rain struck just before dinnertime and we lost power. Thankfully, dinner was mostly prepared, with the Roast Beef done to perfection because my carnivorous family prefers our roast to be done rare anyways. Since we have a gas stove, we finished off the rest of the meal easily on the stove-top while there was still some daylight left.

For the rest of the evening, we ate by candlelight and enjoyed each others' company the good ole fashion way, by chit-chatting the night away. With no electricity, we felt lost at first, but Dick still had power left on his IPOD. So we passed the evening yakking, while listening to favourite tunes from the 60's, 70's and the 80's on his IPOD.

The kids also had a fun evening as they played a game of Scrabble by candlelight. It was like Earth Hour all over again. I sure hope we don't experience Blackout conditions or lack of running water too often, but I'm afraid with extreme climate change being a reality, we will likely have more days like this come up again. A few hours or even a day or two without power or running water, I think I can handle. But can we handle these conditions if it goes on for days, weeks or even months? Very scary thought indeed!

Oh well, Happy Birthday to Dick's Mom! It was certainly an evening to remember. I'm sure that we will reminisce about this evening fondly in years to come!!!

Here's the Orange Cake with Chocolate decorations Derek and I made for Dick's Mom.

My camera-shy boys hanging out with their cousin.

They played Scrabble by candlelight and flaslight

It's always nice catching up with my sister-in-law.

Dick's mom making a birthday wish as she blows out the candles, putting us back into total darkness again.

One Big Happy Family!

I got published in the Liberal Newspaper!

2009-04-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, I emailed both Mayor Barrow and councilor Godwin Chan in Richmond Hill to voice my concern over the under publicized, but very useful service of providing riders a cheap and easy way to get from the Richmond Hill Centre to Toronto Pearson International Airport. I also emailed my concern to the local Liberal newspaper. As promised, the Liberal Newspaper published my letter in this Sunday's edition.

As it turns out, I was not alone in my concern, since two other readers also wrote in with their say. My letter was a little long-winded compared to the other 2 letters, so I'm gonna have to learn to be more concise and to the point in future. I must admit, I do tend to be a rambler. Anyways, it is nice to know that it is so easy to be heard these days with today's information technology.

I actually first learnt of my published letter because my councilor responded to my email saying he agreed with my concern and thanked me for my letter. The Mayor also responded after my letter was published in the paper. Now I realize the power of Published Work!

Anyways, this did prompt GO Transit to place another Ad in the Liberal Paper in the Thursday April 23 2009 edition. But I have to say their Ad was rather dull and did not stand out much. I don't even recall seeing that AD when I first flipped through the Thursday paper earlier in the week and only noticed it after councilor Godwin Chan pointed it out to me this Sunday. So maybe, GO Transit needs to hire a better AD agency to provide more Eye-Catching Ads?

Here's my long rambling letter, along with 2 others that pointed out the need for more publicity on the Airport Express Bus available to Richmond Hill residents and nearby residents of other municipalities.

Here's GO Transit's rather dull AD. Would you have noticed it? I remember seeing the more visual AD for composting and the little guy on the lower part of the paper promoting some Car Insurance. I had to go back for a second look to see the GO Transit Ad which I did not notice at all in my first browse through, much less the teeny tiny one-line advertisement of Richmond Hill's Airport Express Bus Route.

From Richmond Hill Centre to Toronto Pearson Airport

2009-04-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

I was just reading the local paper today and discovered that Richmond Hill has a very useful service providing riders a way to get to the Toronto Pearson International Airport from the Richmond Centre located at Highway 7 and Yonge Street at a very low cost of $5.10 per ride. This is way cheaper than the $50.00 to $60.00 (including tip) to use an Airport Limousine to get from Southern Richmond Hill to the Airport. Return trips are available as well on an hourly basis. The reader who wrote in said it only took 20 minutes for a one-way trip.

The Richmond Centre is now a transportation hub with among many other bus routes, VIVA bus connections going as far north as Newmarket, east to Unionville & Markham, west to Martin Grove and south to Finch and Downsview Subway Stations, as well as York University Campus. With so many buses going in and out of this Hub, this Airport Express Route would be invaluable not only to Richmond Hill residents, but also residents of neighbouring municipalities.

I was vaguely aware of it when the VIVA buses I use in my daily commute started announcing an Airport Express Route which I thought only became available in recent months. But, after several diligent internet searches, I found to my surprise that this Airport Express connection had in fact, been available since May 2008. Yet, nearly a year later, a recent user of the Airport Express route found this route averages only 2 riders a day. Meanwhile there are 22 bus runs daily going each way for a total of 44 daily runs. What a shameful waste of taxpayers' money!

I am no political activist, but after this discovery, I felt compelled to write a letter to both the mayor and a councilor in Richmond Hill to ask why the town and various transit websites such as the YRT (York Region Transit, VIVA Transit and GO Transit) aren't actively promoting this Fantastic service. This kind of service is something I'm sure the city of Toronto would readily boast about, but sadly there is very little promotion of this service by the Town of Richmond Hill, This, I imagine is why ridership is so low.

I also wrote a letter to the Richmond Hill Liberal to spread the word. It is my hope that after voicing my concerns that the town of Richmond Hill and the various Transit commissions would get their act together to promote this wonderful service.

Organic Gardening with Mark Cullen and the Tea Emporium

2009-04-18T10:47:00.001-07:00

This week, I had the pleasure of attending two FCP Events. The first one was a Wednesday Organic Gardening seminar hosted by Mark Cullen and the second one was a Thursday Tea seminar hosted by Shabnam Weber, owner of the Tea Emporium. Yes, I managed to weasel out of a Thursday Meeting to attend the Tea seminar, but I wasn't lucky enough to get out of attending a pre-meeting though. Oh well, at least I only had to sit through a half-hour pre-meeting instead of attending a full one-and-a hour meeting. Yay! That made my day!

I really enjoyed Mark Cullen's presentation of Organic Gardening. He definitely has a great sense of humour and was very funny throughout the presentation which was dotted with many humorous anecdotes.

One anecdote which resonated with me in particular was when he mentioned his wife's desire to raise chickens for eggs on a farm they moved to just north of Unionville three years ago. I too would like to raise chickens one day. Apparently, interest in urban farming , including the raising of chickens is on the rise. It is not illegal to raise hens in some GTA regions like Brampton and the Niagara area and Toronto is currently revisiting the possibility of lifting the ban on raising chickens in city backyards. It makes a lot of sense for people these days to pursue these D.I.Y. projects in order to live sustainably and have more control over procuring their own food supply. You can read about it here.

The Tea seminar was also very enlightening. All attendees were each given a fabulous cup of Rooibus Tea to enjoy while we listened to Shabnam Weber, Tea Lover and Tea Expert Extraordinaire Emporium rave about Tea. I certainly learned a lot about Tea and have come to appreciate it more.

For instance, did you know that all teas come from the same Tea Plant, whether it is white tea, green tea, oolong tea or black tea? It all depends on when the tea leaves were picked and how the tea leaves were processed. Also, tea does contain caffeine, but it differs from the caffeine found in coffee in that the caffeine in tea is a slow release stimulant which will have a gentler, but more long lasting effect, whereas the caffeine in coffee will give you an immediate jolt but you'll come crashing down after about an hour or 2 and you'll want to have another cup to give you that wide awake feeling again.

Rooibus Tea, the lovely tea that we got to sample, is considered an herbal tea as it is not made from the Tea Plant. Rooibus Tea is made from the leaves of the red bush tree (Rooibos) from South Africa and has a very smooth aromatic flavour. For people who are concerned about caffeine, this great tasting tea is perfect because it is naturally caffeine-free.

Other Herbal Teas include brews or infusions made by steeping flowers, herbs and spices in Boiling Water. Some of the more common Herbal Teas include Camomille, Hibiscus Flowers, Peppermint, Spearmint, Ginger and Cloves. All of these make for very soothing and relaxing beverages.

Thank goodness for these lunch hour seminars presented by FCP. They really are great stress-busters from the crazy hectic busy days at the office.

Here's Mark Cullens' "The Canadian Garden Primer" containing many beautiful photographs and great tips on both edible and non-edible organic gardening.

Here's the signed version.

Here's Mark's Earth Friendly promotional material which you can place directly into your front or backyard for planting. It's made of recycled paper embedded with assorted native Canadian wildflower seeds.

This was the Tea Card we received for attending the Tea Seminar. Looks like I'll be making a trip to the Tea Emporium soon.

LCBO Origami Gift Boxes & Easter Egg Cookies

2009-04-11T09:18:00.001-07:00

I have to hand it to the LCBO for their excellent production of the LCBO Magazines which come with beautiful photographs featuring their various liquid products. They come complete with recipes and ideas on how to pair different liquors with different dishes, often portrayed in very artistic & gourmet styles.

It's too bad I'm not a drinker (or maybe that's a good thing). So after skimming through this beautiful magazine, I end up tossing it in the Blue Box for recycling. But, I thought to myself, such beautiful artwork shouldn't end up in the recycling bin. It just didn't seem right. So I fished it back out and decided to make origami boxes with them. These pages are perfect for making origami boxes. They contain beautiful images, they are made of high quality glossy sturdy paper and best of all, they are already in a perfect square.

Although other magazines don't have the same high quality features as the LCBO magazines, be sure to skim through them first and pick out pages with potential before tossing them into the Blue Bin. You never know what beautiful boxes can be crafted out of these pages.

Depending on the sizes, each box can be used for collecting knick knacks like pushpins, coins, paper clips, beads, buttons, etc.... Or they can even be used as gift boxes for small fun gift items like brooches, bracelets, earrings, and even edible treats like homemade cookies.

So what are origami boxes? Origami is the art of paper folding to create artful objects using a single piece of paper only. If you have to use scissors, glue, tape or any other adhesives to create your piece of art, that is considered cheating. Of course you would need scissors to cut the paper into a square and size that you want to begin with first,but you can't use scissors thereafter. You'd be amazed at some of the beautiful artwork that can be created out of a single piece of paper, but I digress. Today we are going to concentrate on box making only. I love making Origami Boxes because they are both beautiful and functional. If you want to get fancy, there are books that will teach you how to make gorgeous boxes that will really wow the recipients.

You can check out this video to find out how you can make a basic origami box using an old Christmas Card.

How To Make An Origami Gift Box - The funniest bloopers are right here

Here are 2 boxes lids I made from 2 uncut LCBO pages.

Even the inside of the box looks beautiful.

Here are some other boxes I made using more LCBO pages and pages from some other magazines. Once you make one, you can't stop. Warning: This activity can become addictive. If this gets out of hand, I may have to join Origami Anonymous one day. Here are some more boxes of various sizes. The smaller ones are suitable for encasing fun jewelry gifts, or maybe even love notes.

For Easter, I couldn't resist making batches of Easter themed cookies. You-know-who (his name begins with the letter"D") thinks turtles should always be included in every cookie making session.

Here are the Easter Egg and Turtle Easter Egg cookies we made. The big cookie with all the colours mixed in there is the last cookie made with all the scraps and ends of the different colour cookie dough. That's always the most fun piece to make. We call the last cookie we make the crazy mixed up cookie.

Here are some of the cookies nicely wrapped up, ready to be packed away into the origami boxes.

They fit in perfectly. Happy Easter everyone!

First FCP Event of the year

2009-04-08T17:43:00.001-07:00

I just attended my first FCP Event of the year. I love FCP Events. They are lunchtime events organized by the First Canadian Place and attending these are a great way to pass the lunch hour.

Unfortunately, all the Food Seminars were already filled up by the time I had learned of the new Spring Events line-up. Fortunately, there were still spaces available for all the Gardening Seminars and of course, I registered for all 4 of them, including a Thursday Event, even though Thursdays are usually reserved for those dreaded Thursday Office Meetings. Maybe with any luck, I can still swing it. Will my boss really miss me at those meetings anyways?

I love attending these events because they are always informative and it gives me the perfect excuse to get myself out of the busy office. What better way to say, "Sorry, I can't attend to this matter/emergency/meeting right now since I already registered to attend a lunch seminar". Heh, heh, heh.

So, today's seminar was "Grow Your Own Organic Veggies" sponsored by the Canadian Gardening Magazine and hosted by Erin McLaughlin and editor-at-large Stephen Wescott Gratton. I really enjoyed listening to Stephen, who is a walking encyclopedia on all things to do with gardening.

Coincidentally, I was mentioning to my co-worker, Cheryl, a fellow Gardening Fanatic, whom I easily managed to convince to come along with me, that I came close to winning a door prize once as I was only off by one number. Cheryl claims she is never that lucky and lo and behold, it turns out that Cheryl was the lucky winner today and I was again off by one number. Luckily for me, Cheryl was in a sharing mood (like all good greenies are), as she willingly split her prize with me.

Another worthwhile FCP Event!

They gave away the May Issue of the Canadian Gardening Magazine to everyone who attended.

Here are the seed packets that Cheryl won with her winning ticket of 3712982. My losing ticket was numbered 3712983. We get to split up the winnings with a Tomato seed variety pack and a Ratatouille seed pack containing the main ingredients for a ratatouille, like tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants, zucchini and basil. Yay!

Li'l Sprouts

2009-04-04T13:56:00.001-07:00

Yay! Spring is finally here! Around this time of the year, I'm always itching to get my vegetable garden started. So far, I've got some snow peas, sugar peas, grape tomatoes and thai basil sprouting.

Last year, we started the tomato plants a bit too late and we had to wait until around September before the tomatoes were ripe enough for picking. It was rather sad to see so many new green tomatoes popping out around the end of September but didn't get a chance to ripen when the cold October weather arrived. So this year, I decided to get an earlier start with the tomato seeds and hopefully we can start harvesting by late July or early August.

In my haste to get the garden started, I may have started the pea plants too soon because according to the seed pack instructions, they can be harvested within 58 to 63 days. Since they were started 2 weeks ago, that means they'd be ready for harvesting by the Victoria Day weekend! That being the case, I decided to transplant all the pea sprouts directly into containers to be grown indoors, and then start a new batch to plant directly outdoors when the danger of overnight frost would have past which is usually around the third week in May.

No, this is not prep work for dinner, but rather it's prep work for composting. To speed up the composting process, I will finely chop up any kitchen scraps like carrot tops, tough broccoli stalks, cucumber peels, etc., before burying it in my backyard.

Here's a pile ready for composting. This is a great way to enrich my vegetable garden soil.

Here are some Thai Basil sprouts poking out, a week after planting.

This is what the grape tomato plants look like, one week after planting. These were grown from the seeds of some organic grape tomatoes I bought from the Village Market 2 years ago.

These are some sugar snap peas I started from 2 weeks ago. These are growing quite fast. They may be ready for harvesting by the Victoria Day weekend.

The snow peas in the black pot have grown even faster. They were also started from seed 2 weeks ago. I'm tempted to pick these pea sprouts now for a quick stir-fry, but my family keeps pulling me away because they want to see the pea plants grow to maturity so we can collect the pea pods. Awwwww, I can't wait that long....

March Girls' Birthday Celebration

2009-03-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

Readers of this blog may find the above picture familiar if you are also a follower of my hubby's blog, over at http://atatamete.blogspot.com/ where he recently posted about removing undesireable subject matter from an otherwise perfectly good picture by using Photoshop. He did an amazing job. So, pictured above is the edited version of the whole gang after enjoying an "All You Can Eat Feast" at China Buffet King in celebration of the March Girls' Birthdays.

Here are the 3 Girls celebrating a birthday in March. My very generous big sister Irene (in white) and b-i-l Wayne treated her daughter, me and my family, as well as my other sister together with her family to this fabulous buffet.

Here are my 2 boys with my sister and her daughter.

Here's my first plate. A sushi boat filled with assorted sashimi, sushi, maki rolls, some mango salad and some soba noodle.

Here's another plate with some Peking Duck in a pancake wrap and a chicken drumstick (a traditional chinese birthday treat).

Back at my place afterwards, to indulge in a Rich Decadent Chocolate Cake. Yes, we managed to squeeze in more food after the monstrous meal we just had. Who can refuse chocolate really?

Sharing a laugh or two with my sister over birthday cake and other treats.

These are some Mochi Balls I got as a birthday present. I love mochi balls, especially when they are freshly made. These packaged ones are almost as good and came in sesame seed, peanut butter and red bean flavours. My favourite is still the traditional freshly made red bean (azuki) mochi balls. So soft, cute and yummy.

Here were the gifts we exchanged with each other. I had wanted to post some close-ups of the Orchid Plant and a cute pop-up card had I bought along with a birthday charm I had made for my sister, but I lost a lot of pictures due to picture overload and other technical problems beyond my control.

Sometimes all these techie problems can be very frustrating and that is one of the reasons why I don't post as often as I do. But after reading some other blogs, I get my inspiration back and restart again. One of those inspirations came from Serena at http://serenadraws.wordpress.com/. I love her format where everyday, she posts a new CSOTD (Creative Somthing Of The Day). I highly recommend everyone to check out her daily whimsical illustrations there.

Korea Town North

2009-03-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

Becuase I've been slacking off with my blogging lately, I'll try to do some catch up with a double post today. My first entry will be about Korea Town North (the stretch of Yonge Street between Finch and Steele) and my second entry will be about the "March Girls' Birthday Celebration".

Everyday, on my way to work, going south on Yonge Street towards Finch Avenue, I always pass by a restaurant called "Hell's Chicken". I was curious enough to finally drop by recently to check it out. The restaurant was obviously a ripoff of the popular cooking TV show called "Hell's Kitchen".

I had expected from reading a few scant reviews on this Korean enterprise that Hell's Chicken might be a family runned Chicken Wing take-out type of eatery but upon entering the place, it turned out to be more of a Sports Bar, catering to the beer drinking crowd. That being not my scene, I made a quick exit. But at least my curiosity has now been satisfied. Below is a picture of the Eatery called Hell's Chicken.

Since we were already in the area, we made our way over to the Galleria Supermarket. This place is like one big giant supermarket selling pretty much everything you will find straight out of a supermarket in Korea. They even stock products from Japan. Everytime I visit this place, it always takes me back to our visits to Tokyo, where we were astounded by the large array of delightful products found there. Below is but a small sampling of what can be found at the Galleria Supermarket.

Korean Maki Rolls (Not quite as good as Japanese Maki Rolls)

But their Sushi Rolls can't be beat, especially all selling at $0.58 a piece. Among our favourites are Masago, Roasted Eel, Salmon,(pictured above), Surf Clam and Otopus.

Below are some freshly made meal packages that you have to pay for first before you can microwave them.

An assortment of meals made in single servings or family size servings.

Some Spicy Squid Balls

Deep Fried Chicken (Chicken Katsu)

Seasoned Fishcake. These are great served hot with rice or noodles or even served cold as a filling inside rice paper rolls (Fresh spring rolls).

Here's their Newest Arrival

All the ingredients you need, all ready to go into a Yummy Ham & Kimchi Stew. Just add water. I'm not so sure that the slice of Kraft Cheese (in the upper left hand corner) should be included in this stew. Sounds kinda gross to me.

Know of any good recipes for this item?

How about this one?

Some Korean Style Refreshment

I love these fun drinks

These ones were very good too.

These bottled beverage definitely reminded me of Toyko where they often entice customers with some sort of Toy Giveaway included with the drink. That's what I love about the Japanese. They have so many fun and creative ways to sell their products.

Earth Hour 2009

2009-03-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

Our family participated in Earth Hour again this year. Many feel this exercise is meaningless because turning off the lights for one hour is not saving any significant energy. However, we had a fun time with it last year and our family was happy to participate in it again this year, because it creates happy memories for us, it shows that we support the green movement and hopefully, over time, we will be part of a larger movement that will change our overall habits leading to less wasting of our Earth's limited resources.

As usual, we turned off the lights and played our favourite board game, "Settlers of Catan" by candlelight. For this year, we thought it would be fun to roast some mini marshmallows too. It was like being at a campfire and we all enjoyed the well toasted marshmallows.

Prepared some marshmallow skewers

Derek setting up the board game.

Colin strategizing

Roasting mini marshmallows over a mini open flame.

Dick enjoying some toasty marshmallows.

Haiku for a Spring Day

2009-03-21T17:22:00.001-07:00

Too lazy to blog
Will write poetry instead
Now that Spring is here

My mind awakens
So full of fresh ideas
Will try a haiku

Thick blanket of snow
Has finally all melted
As new life peeps out

Agenda for a New Economy- A Book Review

2009-03-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

I give this book Two Thumbs UP!! I enjoyed the book so much that I finished reading it in about 3 days. I highly recommend this book to all those concerned for our future lives. I feel this book would be an excellent teaching tool and should be required reading for all basic Economics Classes.

The author, David Korten, talks about two Economies with strikingly different priorities and values. There’s “Wall Street” which refers to institutions of big finance and the corporations that serve them. These corporations have become global symbols of Capitalism. The main problem with the Wall Street Economy is its creation of “Phantom Wealth” by issuing highly complex investments products that are difficult to understand. Examples of “Phantom Wealth” would be the High-Tech Stock Bubble and the Housing Bubble where values were artificially inflated to create the illusion of increasing wealth when none existed.

Then there’s “Main Street” which he describes as “the world of local businesses engaged in producing Real Wealth in the form of Real Goods and Services, where achieving a positive financial return is an essential condition, but the businesses function within a framework of community values and interests that moderate the drive for pure profit”. Examples of these businesses would be the local barbershops, the Farmers’ Markets, the Mom & Pop Shops, etc. This type of Economy is more caring & co-operative and takes into account local community and environmental issues.

The Basic Message that I believe we need to be aware of is that our current Economic Model is not going to work, no matter how many TRILLIONS of DOLLARS we throw at it. We need to let this Dysfunctional Economy run its course and die and start anew with a different approach. There needs to be more accountability and more attention paid to the limited resources we have to work with. The “Wall Street” crowd is obviously under the mistaken impression that there is NO LIMIT to Growth, but all indications show otherwise. We can only cut down so many trees and blow up so many mountains (Nasty practice of mining for coal) before the whole earth is destroyed. We need to see the Writing on the Wall and act now to reverse the Damaging Processes and begin with New Healing Processes, or else the Human Race is DOOMED, and deservingly so.

What I like about this book is that it also offers some solutions. Korten outlines a 12- Point New Economy Agenda with many suggestions we can implement. He has a lot of very good suggestions but 2 of my favourite ones are:

1). Changing the work compensation ratio from 1000 to 1 to a more reasonable 15:1. This means that a company currently paying its lowest-paid worker a $10,000 annual salary is also compensating its highest-paid (the CEO) an insane annual salary of $10,000,000! This has to stop. Korten suggests a Public Policy be put in place allowing for a more reasonable compensation ratio of no more than 15 to 1. Thus, if a company is paying the lowest-paid worker an annual salary of $10,000, then the highest-paid worker should not earn more than $150,000 annually. Similarly, in a healthcare environment, if the lowest-paid worker receives an annual salary of $30,000, then the highest-paid employee should not earn more than $450,000 annually. Sounds more than fair to me.

2). Introduce a Substantial Luxury Tax for nonessential consumption items that are socially harmful or environmentally wasteful or destructive. For instance if one purchases a fancy sports car like a Porsche , then there should be a substantial luxury tax charged as it takes more resources to produce and maintain than a regular car.

This book points out in no uncertain terms how the Public has been deceived and suggests ways we can reverse the damage. Effectively, the “Wall Street” gang was given a license by a very co-operative government to cheat, extort and rob the General Public of their hard earned money. Maybe the Dollar isn’t so mighty after all. What do you value more? The Not-So-Mighty Dollar or Time well spent with people you care about? So let us bid adieu to a life of Greed and Excess and usher in a new Era of Innovation, Restraint and Responsibility. It’s a time for exciting changes (BIG CHANGES). It may not be a pain-free ride, but it will be exciting. Are you up to the challenge?

A Week of R & R

2009-03-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

Sadly, my week of Rest & Relaxation is coming to an end. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed my week away from the Office. No rushing around, stressing about deadlines, forgoing lunch hours, wasting close to 3 hours of my life doing the daily commute. No Thanks! If it weren’t for the steady pay cheque and of course, all the great people I work with, I’m pretty sure I would have packed up long ago. So I say a BIG “Thank You” to all you great people at the Office for making me stay on just a little bit longer, until I can figure out a better way of making a contribution to Society.

I started my week of Rest & Relaxation with some (gasp) housework. It's something I've been putting off for a long time but I felt it was about time I got to it. I had to tidy up the spare room and purge as much as possible. Keep in mind that I’m a bit of a packrat and purging doesn’t come easy for me. So I’m proud to report that after a couple of days, I came away with 1 BIG garbage bag filled to the brim with stuff I was finally willing to part with and I even managed to set aside an area for potential Garage Sale items. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I found it to be therapeutic even and besides, I took my time doing it, taking many breaks. I give credit to all those bloggers out there that encouraged people like me to PURGE, PURGE, PURGE. Slowly, but surely, I’m getting there.

The main reason I took this week off was so I can spend my Birthday happily doing things I enjoy most and that definitely did not include pushing paper at the Office. That was my birthday present to myself. I enjoyed it so much that I’m gonna do this every year.

My Birthday celebrations started with my In-laws dropping by and treating the family to dinner at a local Family Chinese Restaurant. After dinner, we came across a new shop in the area called DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Cutie which offered Classes to Crafters assembling miniature playhouses. Hmmm… that looks like a business I could get interested in …

We then returned home to a birthday carrot cake, lovingly baked by hubby and the boys from a cake mix box (Betty Crocker, no less). It was an excellent choice because I’m not much of a “sweets” person and I DO love my vegetables. I also received a really CUTE birthday card, some yummy snacks like dried cuttlefish, some seed packets and a mini greenhouse for my upcoming gardening activity.

My favourite present of all was a book Dick personally hand picked for me called “Agenda for a New Economy” by David C. Korten. When he saw this book, he said it had “Joan” written all over it and he is Right about that. I LOVE this book. Here’s a book reflecting many of the viewpoints I already believe in. I feel that after reading this book, it has given me the push I need to pursue a path that is more in tune with my values. I shall do a Book Review in an upcoming posting.

The next day, Dick took me to Michaels to check out some Arts & Crafts supplies and Home Depot to check out some gardening supplies. Don’t worry, these were more window-shopping excursions than spending sprees. I intend to stick to my resolution of not accumulating too much useless stuff, especially after my recent purging. My modest contribution to stimulate our struggling economy amounted to a grand total of $5.82 for the day.

Continuing with the Birthday week celebration, Dick and I went to Yang’s Fine Chinese Cuisine for a fabulous Dim Sum Treat the following day. The Service was excellent and the food was well presented and delectable. A bit on the pricier side, but is to be expected for the quality and service we received. My only objection was that there was another menu listing more dishes in Chinese only. Where was the English version? In this day and age, I find this to be unacceptable for a restaurant of this calibre.

I spent the rest of the week enjoying some more of my favourite activities like trying out new recipes, baking, reading, cross-stitching, blogging, hanging out with my family and generally kicking off my shoes and relaxing with the sunlight streaming through the living room windows. Ahhhh, life is sweet….

Dick starts things off by preparing the cake batter.

Derek brings out the baked product.

Colin finishes off with the decorations.

Here's the finished product

My attempt at tidying the Spare Room. You can start to see some carpeting. This is way tidier than it was a week ago.

I even sectioned off an area for Garage Sale items.

Here's the store that offers classes for would-be Miniature Hobbyists.

Everything here is cute and miniature. Notice the cubic watermelons on the shelf? They really do sell fresh cubic melons in Japan, grown specifically this way for easy packing.

A miniature bakeshop filled with miniature cakes and pastries.

Cute birthday card filled with bunnies & squirrels doing some gardening.

Some small purchases from Michaels. More Model Magic and a fine detail cutter for some future craft project.

I bought some Thai Basil seeds from Home Depot to add to my collection of seeds I received from my birthday.

I also got a mini greenhouse to start my seeds in.

Reading and cross stitching in my favourite sunny spot.

Water, we need Water

2009-03-07T13:06:00.001-08:00

What’s more precious than Gold or Oil? PURE UNADULTERATED, CLEAN, REFRESHING WATER! Without water, we are not going to last too long, that’s for sure. I have always valued water and I do try to use it wisely whenever I can.

I had the chance of experiencing what it would be like to not have easy access to a clean water supply for about a day, courtesy of a water main problem occurring in my neighbourhood recently. So for about 32 hours, we had to make do with whatever water we had on hand. It wasn’t devastating nor life threatening, but it was definitely very inconvenient.

We conserved water the best we can by using a few cups of water for both cleaning and rinsing our dirty dishes. Cooking from scratch was pretty much out the door, so we decided to go out for dinner instead. The worse was not having enough water to flush our toilets with. Thankfully, we have 3 toilets at our disposal, with apparently 2 flushes left in each tank. Still, not knowing when we were gonna get our water supply restored, we went with the motto: "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down". Even then, I was the only one in our household who managed to let out number 2. No one else dared to. I hope this short period of going without a municipal supply of water will prove to be a valuable lesson for our affected neighbours and us. We must learn to CONSERVE WATER.

In fact, I’m so concerned about our water consumption that I even wrote to our councillor, with the suggestion that we increase the cost of our water rate by as much as 50%. Is that too much of a price hike? No, I don’t think so. Unfortunately, it's always having to resort to hitting consumers in the pocketbook before we can get a change in consumer behaviour. I reviewed a current water bill and noticed that our household of 4 used 50,000 Litres of water over a period of 87 days, with an Average Daily Consumption of 575 litres, or about 145 litres per person per day. The average Toronto home uses about 248 litres of water per person per day. That means our household uses about half of what the average household in Toronto uses. How do you compare? Are you using less or are you using more? Here’s a link for an overview of water use in Toronto and ways to save on water consumption.

My reasons for jacking up the Water Rate are 2-fold. Firstly, this should immediately raise revenues for the city to build up a good reserve fund for future water projects. Secondly, if this cost is too much for a household to bear, I’m more than certain that people will come up with many creative ways to CONSERVE WATER. Heck, most people I know already spend an outrageous amount on Bottled Water. Here’s a price comparison. A case of 12x 500ml of bottled water costs only $1.00. Dirt Cheap. Right? Well, that works out to be $0.16 per Litre. Guess what? Water from our taps costs only $0.0018 per Litre! Now, that’s DIRT CHEAP!!! On top of that, we don’t end up with cases and cases of used plastic water bottles, surely headed to some far-off landfill. And you know how I feel about the excessive use of plastic.

To highlight how poor our mismanagement of water usage is, I’d like to leave you with where Canadians rank when it comes to water consumption. Please click here.

In case you can’t access this website, let me tell you that Canada ranks 15th out of 16 peer countries and earns a “D” grade. Excessive water consumption in Canada can be attributed to the lack of widespread water conservation practices and water pricing that does not promote efficiency. Only the United States fared worse than Canada. Not proud, not proud at all.

This link only provides the ranking of Canada with other Developed Nations. Can you imagine how shameful we'd look if we were to compare ourselves with the rest of the world, including Emerging Nations like China and India, and all the other Poor Countries in the world?

SO REMEMBER EVERYONE, PLEASE USE WATER WISELY.

With only a 15 minute warning and a promise that our water supply would be restored the next morning, we decided to save 2 pots and a kettle of water in case we needed it. We figured how much water could we possibly need between 9PM and 7AM?

Of course the City Workers underestimated the time they needed to repair the water main problem. So we were told that it would take at least another day to restore the water supply. With not much water on hand, we used a minimal amount of water to wash and rinse our dishes.

I started to worry that we may not have enough water to flush our toilets with so I sent Dick out to gather some snow from our backyard for that purpose.

We saved some snow for watering our plants too. As I said, when you have a limited amount of resources to use, you will come up with creative ways to solve the problem.

Family Day

2009-02-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

This is our second year celebrating Family Day, thanks to Mr. McGuinty, who back in October 2007, declared the third Monday in February to be a new Annual "Family Day" statutory holiday for the province of Ontario. Good call, Dalton. Without this most important holiday, we would have been working straight from January 2 until April 10, before getting a nice long weekend. That’s just way too long to bear, especially while enduring the winter blues.

Our family took advantage of this holiday by playing board games that we hadn’t played in a long time. First, we played “Settlers of Catan”. We used to play this game pretty much every Friday Night, until all of Derek’s favourite Animes got re-scheduled to Friday nights. We just didn’t bother to re-schedule Family Game Night to another time slot. So, that was that. I think the last time we played this game was back on March 29, 2008, when we participated in Earth Hour.

Earth Hour is an Annual International Event created by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund), held on the last Saturday of March, that asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.

I remembered we had a lot of fun playing that game last year, when we had to rely solely on candlelight to see what we were doing. Colin had won that game last year. But, given that he was the “Banker”, the person in charge of giving out the “Resources”, and we were playing in semi-darkness, there was a very reasonable chance that he could have cheated. This time around, Derek won the game, but that was because he got to go first. I know, I know, I’m a sore loser.

We also used to play “Scrabble” quite often, but the boys, including Dick wandered back to their own favourite electronic games, while I started to take an avid interest in the Internet, with things like Facebook, Blogs, Forums, etc. etc. to pass the time, we started to split apart and played in our own little worlds. Because of Family Day, we made a conscious effort to play together again, as a Family and it is such a great way to re-connect and build memories.

Scrabble is one of my favourite games because I love any kind of Word Games including Crossword Puzzles, Jumble, and other word Logic Games. I fully expected to beat the pants off the others. This game started slowly for me. In fact, I was consistently trailing throughout the whole game …. til the end, of course. Being the “Comeback Kid”, I came in for the kill at the end, with a dramatic finish. I kept struggling with having too many vowels. They weren’t even the good vowels. I was stuck with a lot of “I”s and “U”s. Fortunately, what saved the day for me was that I always had the “Blank” tile to begin with, but I kept it as my secret weapon, until lo and behold, I picked up the second “Blank” tile near the end of the game. So, I’m thinking what am I gonna do with 2 “I”s, an “A”, an “O”, an “R” and 2 “Blank”s???? Then I spotted an opening on the board, and used up all seven of my last tiles to make the word: ORIGAMI. Can you believe that, Origami is one of my most favourite activities too and it saved the day for me. This is telling me something. Origami, is going to figure into my future Retirement Plans somehow. Hmmm……

So anyways, there’s probably nothing worse than a Sore Loser, except for maybe a very Annoying Self-Satisfied Winner. Please excuse me while I savour this moment.

YEEESSSSSS!!! (Pumps Arm in the air a few times) Neh, Neh, Neh, Neh, Neh (Places hand over nose, while wiggling fingers and sticking tongue out). O.K., Now, I’m done.

*** On a side note, just picked up the mail and found out that Colin got accepted to Ryerson for the Bachelor of Commerce - Information Technology Management Program. *** Yay!!! I'm so proud of my Colin!!!!

Playing "Settlers" during Earth Hour in 2008

Playing "Settlers" for Family Day 2009

Everyone is busy studying their letters while playing "Scrabble"

Yes, we have a Winner!

The Winning Word: ORIGAMI

Ataun's "Farewell" Bash

2009-02-15T11:05:00.000-08:00

February, Friday the 13th, 2009. That day marked Ataun's last day with Reorg. She started in Reorg exactly 4.5 years ago on August, Friday the 13th, 2004. Coincidence? I think not! I believe that Friday the 13th just happens to be Ataun's favourite day.

Well, if you know Ataun, you'll know that "Stewie Griffin" from "Family Guy" is her "Role Model" One of Stewie's famous catch phrase: "Victory Shall be Mine" is the same Motto that Ataun lives by. She relishes the fact that she will one day take over the world, through EVIL means or otherwise. Is she delusional or is she for real? Warning to all. Appearances can be deceiving. Ataun may look pretty and sweet, but what sort of sinister scheming and planning goes on inside that pretty head of hers?!?!?!? All I can say is, the day she does take over the world, you better be on her good side and she will spare you an easy and painless death. Sorry Ataun, please spare me but I do have to warn others.

All kidding aside, Ataun has decided to go back to school to hone her skills further and then return to the workplace, ready to pounce! So Watch out World!

On her last day, Ataun brought in some assorted sweets called "Burfi". They were so colourful and pretty and very yummy too. I'm not much for super sweets, but I really enjoyed the square pieces covered in chopped pistachio nuts. They tasted so creamy and so mmm....mmm....good.

In a tribute to her favourite imaginary friend, I made Ataun a "Stewie Griffin" Valentine cookie as her "Going Away" present. It depicts Stewie presenting her with a ribbon decorated Valentine Balloon that seemingly says "Ataun, Be Mine", but once the ribbons get unwrapped, it reveals the full message: "Farewell Ataun, Victory Shall be Mine". I hope that she enjoys the mixed messages and will cherish it.

As well, we presented her with assorted gifts for her upcoming "Scholarly Days" and beach wear for her trip to Cuba (the lucky girl). But I think the best gift of all was a Collage of some of the great friends she had made over the years. She leaves behind many happy and humorous moments. Life in Reorg will definitely not be so lively without her.

After work, many of her nearest and dearest friends that she had befriended over the short time that she was with us gathered together to wish her well. The private room we reserved for the occasion was jam-packed with people. Ataun is one popular gal! The few pictures I took at Ataun's Farewell Bash represented only a handful of the people who attended Ataun's Farewell Party, but I'm sure there will be many more posted by all the other well-wishers on Facebook and elsewhere.

There will be a HUGE gaping hole now that she's gone. So sad :(..... We will all miss her dearly. Ataun has been such a strong presence in so many people's lives, she will not be easily forgotten and we all hope that we will always be a part of her life in the future.

Farwell Ataun. Please come visit often.

Ataun brought in some sweets called "Burfi". So colourful, just like her.

A "Stewie " Valentine cookie for Ataun

Stewie's famous catch phrase: "Victory Shall be Mine" is Ataun's Motto to live by.

After Ataun took away the "A"s from her name, Beatriz spelled the word "NUT". How appropriate.

Ataun's "Farewell" Card

Best wishes from some of her friends who managed to squeeze their messages in.

Parting gifts & Cake for Ataun

A collage of friends she hung out with over the years

Ataun, back at the desk she started out in.

Caught her in the act, trying to lift a stapler. Notice, she is trying to look innocent?

The Bulletin Writing Team

The girls finally get to meet Mike from the Discount Brokerage Dept.

A bunch of friends raising their glasses to Ataun.

Ataun holding up very well, after her 5th shot.

Happy Valentines Day!

2009-02-14T17:42:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day fell on a Saturday this year and that made it easy to celebrate with all the loved ones in my family. Our day began with a Valentine’s Day Brunch of pancakes, beef patties, & fruit (all heart-shaped, of course). I had a lot of fun preparing the Special Valentine’s Breakfast Brunch because I finally got to use 2 of the kitchen gadgets I got for Christmas. Afterwards, we exchanged Cards and Valentine Treats.

The previous week, Derek and I had a lot of fun making some cookies just for this occasion. I gave some of the Valentine cookies away to my favourite Niece, Patricia and her very creative friend, Serena, whom I was fortunate enough to have finally met. Serena gave me a lot of ideas on how to pursue my love of arts and crafts and I thank her very much for that.

If you are interested to view some of Serena’s very whimsical artwork, please go to: http://www.serenadraws.com/ or visit her blog at: http://serenadraws.wordpress.com/about/

I also brought some of the Valentine cookies for a “Valentine’s Day/Family Day/Long Weekend/Goodbye to Ataun” Potluck lunch party held on Friday the 13th, at my workplace. I shall be posting a separate post for Ataun’s going away party tomorrow.

So, for our afternoon snack, we ate the remainder of the Valentine’s Day cookies, along with some of the Valentines Treats and served it with some “Love Spell” Green Tea. The “Love Spell” Green Tea is a Fresh Green Organic Sencha Tea containing some very fine ingredients such as Thai Papaya Chunks, Coconut Chips, Red Sugar Hearts, Pineapple Bits, Safflower and Fruit Flavours. The Tea looked beautiful and tasted heavenly.

For dinner, we had wanted to visit our favourite Vietnamese Restaurant (Kim Po), but their menu indicated that all their Vermicelli dishes are served with peanuts. We’ve been to this restaurant many times in the past and Derek, who is allergic to peanuts, had never suffered any allergy attacks while eating here. But with the new warning on their menu, we decided not to take any chances and to try our luck elsewhere. We checked out the nearby Richmond Court where it always serves good food with big portions and we weren’t disappointed in that department. Too bad we couldn’t say the same for the service. We had to ask three times for tea refills before one of the nicer waiters came along to serve us. All in all, I still had a lovely Valentine’s Day.

The amazing Kitchen Wizard. It's a salad server, strainer and flipper, all in 1. I actually used it for whipping eggs while making the pancake batter. I also got to used the Heart Shape Ring with a handle to form the heart shaped pancakes.

Special Heart-Shaped Brunch included pancakes, hamburger patty with cheddar cheese, strawberries and mango.

The Hamburger Patty with the Heart Shape cut-out was fun to eat also.

Colin and Derek enjoying their Brunch

Valentine Gift Exchange

Here are all the goodies for the whole family to enjoy.

I'm not sure what turtles have to do with Valentines Day but Derek insisted that turtles be included for this special occasion. It's all above Love. And Derek loves his turtles.

Here's a trayful of some of the cookies we created.

We served the cookies with this "Love Spell" Tea.

The food was really good at Richmond Court, especially the Beef Fried Noodles.

Here we are enjoying a romantic dinner at a local Chinese Restaurant with our kids.

Homemade Lasagna

2009-02-08T17:30:00.001-08:00

About a month ago, Derek and his friend made Lasgana as their homework assignment for their Food & Nutrition Class. As part of the assignment, they had to go shopping to pick up all the ingredients and do a dry run at home before actually reproducing the recipe in class. One of the requirements was that they had to complete the dish and clean up within the classroom period of 75 minutes. To cut down on the prep time, they were allowed to use Oven-Ready lasagna noodles. They managed to bake the lasagna at home in well under that time.

Colin, as usual was eager to taste test any food that comes out of our kitchen. He took his first bite and we heard the distinct crunching sound of very crisp pasta being eaten, much like the sound of potato chips being munched on. We waited for his opinion and he proclaimed that it tasted good. Success!!! Well, almost. What the boys learned from their dry run was that the lasagna noodles needed to be fully covered with sauce right to the edges and corners. Otherwise, the noodles around the edges comes out tasting very dry and crispy. Not an unpleasant texture, but definitely not desired in the final product, as it is being marked by the teacher. I must say the 2 boys did an excellent job. They managed to make a very good tasting Lasagna on their first attempt. Best of all, they cleaned up the mess afterwards.

So, tonight Derek decided to cook Lasagna for the family. Derek was the Chef and I was the Sous Chef. This time, we decided to use regular lasagna noodle (the kind that needs to be pre-boiled first instead of the "Oven-Ready" type) just to see if there would be a big difference. Of course, it took extra time, but we felt it was worth it because the texture came out perfectly. What I like about homemade lasagna as opposed to the frozen kind is that we can control what ingredients go into it. I find the frozen version, as with a lot of so called convenience food contains a lot of artificial ingredients and is very high in sodium. On top of that, it takes 80 to 100 minutes to bake it from frozen while it only took us about an hour or so to make it from scratch, even less time, if we were to use "Oven-Ready" lasagna noodle. Good Job, Derek! Looking forward to more family meals from our new Chef.

Derek pours the sauce over a layer of pasta while his friend grates mozarella cheese for the topping.

What a beautiful sight. The boys washing up.

The boys enjoying the fruit of their labour.

Here's Derek making the sauce.

Derek layering the sauce over the pasta.

Here I am lending a hand.

Ta da! 2 trays of Homemade Lasagna fresh from the oven.

Weekend Fun with Friends & Snow

2009-02-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

This has been one of the funnest weekend I had this whole winter. It started with having the Nakamotos over for dinner on Saturday. Terry had wanted to expose her 2 girls to some Chinese New Years tradition, other than receiving lucky money, so we had them over for a belated Chinese New Year's dinner. However, our knowledge of cooking a traditional Chinese New Year meal is rather limited. The best that we could come up with was preparing some fresh rolls, filled with glass noodles (silver chain), golden needles (wealth), water chestnut (unity), Shitake Mushroom (longevity, sizing opportunities), and various assorted other ingredients.

After viewing a picture of some of the Chinese New Year's food that Dick's mom had prepared for us last week, Terry was good enough to fill me in on some of the food symbols I was not previously aware of, such as that a head of lettuce (saung choy) means to generate wealth, fresh fruits like tangerines (saung gwoh) means lively & energetic, and that whole fish must be presented in pairs to represent togetherness in being a couple.

Now that she piqued my interest, I searched the internet for more Chinese Food Symbolisms and I came across this link: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/Chinese_Customs/food_symbolism.htm

Dick also prepared one of my all-time favourite dishes, "Haw Loong Woo" (Shrimp with Lobster Sauce). It's a dish he had learned and perfected from his training as a cook at his parents' Chinese Restaurant (Shangri-La Gardens) in Orillia. It's considerd to be more of a Chinese Canadian dish, and it proved to be a big hit with the Nakamotos.

After dinner, the girls had fun playing Karaoke Revolution with Dick. Terry & Ian also joined in the fun later.

The next morning, while making some Pillsbury Crescent rolls for brunch, I decided to have some fun with it. Since we are in the Year of the Ox, I thought of making the pastry into a the shape of an Ox Head. It was quite easy to reshape it and it was fun to do.

Later in the afternoon, we had one of the most beautiful sunny and warm days so far this winter. I had been looking forward to this day ever since the first snowfall. A day when the temperature allowed for the snow to be perfect packing snow to build snow sculptures! So now, the Snow Sculpture Building Contest is on!!! I had challenged Connie over at Beaversatile to this contest and have been waiting very patiently for this very day. Unfortunately, Connie appears to be not feeling too well at this time, so I hope she will have another chance soon to submit her snow sculpture entry. If any of my Facebook friends would like to join in this contest, they are most welcome and we'll take a vote at the end of winter to see who wins.

Winter isn't my favourite season, but this is one of the few things I enjoy most about winter. Let the Contest begin!!!!

A platter full of Fresh Rolls

Annette & Rachel singing "Sweet Home Alabama" & some Britney Spears tunes.

Terry and Ian sang a Frank Sinatra Classic "New York, New York" . They really pumped it up.

The kids having fun with "Mario Cart"

The girls could have played all night, but had to cut it short because it was getting way past their daddy's bedtime.

Raw Ox Head

Ox Head, fresh out of the oven. Yummy and Fun to eat!

Derek made a snow turtle and I made Stewie

Smiley Turtle & Stewie Griffin (Good vs Evil???)

Friendly Turtle. Awwww, so adorable....

Stewie scheming some evil plan to take over the world????

Happy Belated Chinese New Year

2009-01-31T11:54:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since I last blogged. It's a combination of being overworked at the office and not being motivated to spend time blogging. Well, I'm back!

I had a great time over the Chinese New Year weekend. It started on Friday Night when I went out with a bunch of high school girlfriends. Right after work, I rushed over to Susie's house for some quick pizza with her and Susan. Susan then drove us up to Yuk Yuks in Vaughan to meet up with Michelle & Christine to catch the 7:30 PM show. Susan was a bit disappointed with the YukYuk's show because the featured headliner, Ron Josol, a Philipino comedian, was replaced with a different comedian. The replacement was actually quite funny, but overall, we found that the comedians relied way too much on profanity for their acts. Anyways, it was a cheap night out since the discounted tickets for the show only cost $3 a person. Can't think of any live acts cheaper than that. Afterwards, the girls came over to my place to have some tea, dessert and other snacks. Apologies to my family (Dick, Derek & Colin) for enduring the girls'yakfest which lasted way past midnight. In my defence, I did suggest that the boys spend their time at the nearby 24 hour Tim Hortons, if they'd rather not partake in the Girls' Night Out/Girls' Night In party. But they decided it was best to stay in.

On Saturday, we visited my in-laws downtown, where Dick's mom cooked us a traditional Chinese New Years meal. It was nice to see my sister-in-law and her family and spend some real family time together with them, as we don't see each other as often as we'd like. As usual, Dick's Mom cooked a lot of food. The New Year's Feast included Roasted Suckling Pork, Whole Dace Fish (the kind with a lot of teeny tiny bones to represent togetherness and abundance). There was a dish with black moss seaweed which is a homonym for exceeding in wealth (Fat Choy) Kung Hei means wishing you, thus Kung Hei Fat Choy literally means wishing you prosperity. For dessert, she prepared some sweet steamed glutinous rice pudding (bubble soup) with sweet rice balls containing lotus seed paste - signify having many male offspring. (Well, we did get 2 and I think that's plenty).

On Sunday, we visited my parents at the Senior's Home. We were hoping to meet up with my sister and her family there, but due to the flu season, they didn't make it. We did meet up with my brother and her girfriend though, which was nice as I hadn't seen them in quite a while. I made my mom very happy by writing Chinese Greetings and signing all our names in Chinese characters in the CNY card. She was beaming from ear to ear when she opened the card and was very impressed to see that I have not lost my ability to still write some chinese.

On Monday, Chinese New Year's Day, we had an office potluck to round out the festivities. I contributed with a dish called Buddha's Delight. It's a vegetarian dish consisting of rice noodles, nappa cabbage, chinese mushroom, golden needle, wood ear, gingko nut, carrots, green beans and tofu. (that's my version). The long Rice Noodles represents long life. The gingko Nuts respresents gold nuggets. I actually like gingko nuts, because they look so cute and for the texture but my family doesn't. They all think it tastes too bitter. I don't know if it's because there was way too much better tasting food at the potluck, or if my dish consisted of too many foreign ingredients, but there was a lot left over. Oh well, all's not lost, as it just meant that I had enough leftover for another lunch the next day.

Kung Hei Fat Choy!!!! It's the year of the Ox. So, OXOXOXOX to everyone!!!!!

Celebrating at my In-laws

Paying respect to the gods and praying for a Prosperous New Year

Here are some of the foods presented for the New Year

The whole family gathers around for a Traditional Home-cooked New Year's Feast

Here are some of the beautiful red envelopes (lucky money) we received for the occasion.

My mom was so happy that I didn't forget how to write in Chinese.

My version of the Buddha's Delight to celebrate the Year of the Ox.

Why I love the Blogosphere

2009-01-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

I love the Internet and I especially love the Blogosphere. The Blogosphere is like a whole new community for me where I can get to share ideas and thoughts with a group of like-minded people, in a fairly anonymous way. Some bloggers choose to remain faceless and some choose to use pseudonyms, but they always have something of interest for me to latch on to, once I have discovered them.

I started out following a few bloggers in the beginning, but that list keeps on growing because I get introduced to new ones through the first ones, or I just stumble upon them while searching on a subject of interest. For instance, I started with a handful of bloggers, such as my friend, over at “Just Maintenance” blogging about his wild adventures in Taiwan, while on a short term assignment teaching English to a group of young school age kids. Then there’s Connie, who is a very talented cartoonist, among other things, blogging about her frantic life as a University student and her secret desire to be a paparazzi? over at Beaversatile, and of course there’s my hubby, recently blogging about his adventures and misadventures? while travelling in China and visiting his ancestral village.

Another favourite blogger is “The Journal of the Girl who loves to cook”. I have been following her blog for the longest. She started out blogging about assorted favourite recipes, usually with an Asian theme, but then progressed to her love of baking and finally to blogging on her fledgling and what appears to be a very successful business of creating pretty awesome and cute looking edible cakes and cookies. Her work is truly AMAZING!!! I highly recommend you check out her Chinese New Years Treat Baskets at: http://cookingismypassion.blogspot.com/

I could go on and on, but I just want to say that in addition to my interest in all things funny, cutesy and arts and crafty, I also enjoy reading up on anything which is “Green-Issue” related, as well as topics relating to “Early Retirement Planning” and “Financial Independence”. Strangely enough, there is a strong relationship between “Early Retirement Planning” and “Green Issues”. Basically, the simpler you live your life, the less impact you have on the environment (Green Issues) and the faster you can reach your goal of “Early Retirement” since the less you spend or consume, the faster you can save up in order to give up your hours spent working on a job you may not necessarily like. “FREEDOM 55”, HERE I COME! I’m still trying for “Freedom 50”, but it doesn’t look like it’s quite achievable yet in this economic climate, unless I can convince my family to pursue an even more simple style of living.

Anyways, I happen to have discovered another blogger which is sure to become a favourite for me. I found his link from a recent “No Impact Man” post which talks about how the Japanese manage to live very happy lives by using only 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the average American. After checking out this blog: http://www.idratherbe.tv/injapan/, I’m totally convinced that living a SIMPLE LIFE is my GOAL for 2009. Once I have achieved “Financial Independence”, meaning I no longer depend on a weekly paycheck, my next GOAL may be to live out my life in semi-retirement, teaching English in some quaint town/village in Japan.

I leave you to admire some of the utterly enchanting photos I found on this latest favourite Blog depicting “Simple Living in Rural Japan”.

The Holiday Festivities continue....

2009-01-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

To recap, my family and I pretty much spent almost everyday between Christmas and New Years attending dinner parties and eating, laughing, eating, laughing and more eating and laughing.

Special mention goes to a fabulous dinner hosted by the Nakamotos. My hats off to Terry who slaved over a hot stove, making a very delicious Chicken and Potatoes dish stewed in Coconut Milk, as well as Garlic Shrimp, and Pan-Seared Scallops. Hmmm... sooooo soooooo goooood. She also made some very fancy appetizers made of crusty bread slices topped with smoked salmon. Hmmmm, another big hit. We contributed with some Rumaki appetizers and chocolate & lemon squares.

Dick and our 2 boys had a great time being in a virtual (All Girl Band) playing Rockband with the Nakamoto girls (Annette & Rachel). Dick had the most fun doing the singing part, as did I. I gave the drums a shot and did pretty good for my first try, but it was hard work. I was all sweaty after performing "Eye of the Tiger". It looks like Rockband is this seasons favourite among the teens and the young adults. Rockband was first introduced to me at the Seto Christmas Party, but I much preferred the Nakamoto Girls' "All Girl Band" version which featured music more to my liking. I wasn't too crazy about the heavy metal music played at the Seto Party.

I was most impressed with how gracious Rachel & Annette were as young hostesses. They certainly kept us entertained while Terry prepared dinner. Annette always had outrageously funny stories to tell us. Rachel was quite concerned that Derek was sitting on the sidelines at the beginning, reluctant to join in with the Rockband fun. She then engaged him in conversation, asking if he would like to visit a neighbour's pet ferret instead. By the end of the evening, the girls somehow persuaded Derek to join in and they had a blast playing the drums part as a 3 person player, each taking turns, one playing the left hand drums, one playing the right drums, and one person stepping on the drum pedals.

After our delicious dinner, Ian insisted that we drop by their neighbours' house a short walk away to go feed a couple of ferrets. The Nakamotos girls were asked to take care of the ferrets while the neighbours were on vacation. So all eight of us bundled up to pay the ferrets a visit. But alas, we didn't get to see them, because it turned out that the ferrets were already having visitors. At first we thought that the neighbours returned from their vacation earlier than expected, but they had asked some other friends of theirs to feed the ferrets as well. Those are certainly some very trusting neighbours as it appears they have given house keys to pretty much everyone on the block to go in and check on their ferrets!

While we were out, we decided to take a short tour of all the Christmas Lights that lit up the neighbourhood. Some of the Christmas Lighting were very impressive indeed. My favourite one was the house decorated with a inflatable Homer Simpson. A Classic!

Later on in the week, we visited my parents at the Seniors Nursing Home, where we briefly met up with my sister Cathy and her daughter. We exchanged gifts and stayed a bit snacking on some chinese buns and some putos (Philipino stlye steamed cupcakes) that the boys and I had made. My mom is not a very big eater and so she made me eat up a big portion of her lunch. It was very good food, considering it came from a nursing home. It was a plate of rice served with very tender chicken pieces and gailan (chinese broccoli). Yummy.

Well, another year has passed and a Brand New Year has arrived. I hope that 2009 will settle down to be a calmer period than the turbulence we experienced in late 2008. My family and I did not feel too much of the negative effects caused by the Global Financial Crisis, but still it was a little unsettling to hear of some of the doom & gloom experienced by some others all over the world.

I was very fortunate to have spent New Year's Eve with some very good friends who are just like family to me. A home-cooked meal featuring Roast Beef (with generous portions of rare beef made especially to suit our carnivorous family), Korean Beef, Stir-fried Shrimp, Roasted Sweet Potatoes, and much much more was lovingly prepared for us, not to mention all the various homemade appetizers like crackers with hummus made from scratch, crackers topped with brie cheese & caramelized, a baked brie cheese wheel covered with a savoury coating and topped with cranberries, and of course a sushi platter... to be followed by assorted dessert dishes and Champagne. After midnight, we chatted some more, while the kids watched a movie. We had such a great time that we didn't realize it was already past 3AM in the morning!!! This is the latest I've stayed up in a long time. Good Friends, Good times. Life really doesn't get much better than this.

I'm pretty sure this will be the last of all the over-indulgence and we will return to our regularly scheduled healthier and lighter meals. I must say, I feel very grateful to have been surrounded by such loving, warm and funny friends and family while ushering in the New Year. Much as I would have loved to post some photos of the occasion, my friends were too darn shy to allow it, so I'll have to keep these happy memories close to my heart sans pictures.

Chocolate & Lemon Squares and some personalized ornaments for the Nakamoto girls

It's a Homer Simpson Christmas

It's Rockband Time

Happy Christmas Day

2008-12-26T12:20:00.000-08:00

Christmas Day landed on a Thursday this year which is convenient as this gives us an extended long weekend of 4 days off from work. The boys have long outgrown Santa, but they had a lot of fun exchanging gifts with each other. Lately, they had been obsessed with the "Engrish.com" website where people post Asian Products with badly translated English. They always get a kick out of reading the product labels. In keeping with that, they felt compelled to write bad engrish notes to each other, along with their gifts.

We are a family of Japanophiles. We all take an interest in and pretty much love all things Japanese. As a family, we have already visited Japan three times. Since we hadn't been there in over a year now, we had to find a way to get that fix by visiting Asian Markets which carry Japanese, as well as Korean and other Asian goods to use as stocking stuffers. In general, we don't snack a whole lot, so we figured Christmas was as good time as any to indulge in some offbeat snacking foods. The snacking chips with all the unpronouncable ingredients were interesting, and I'm sure are not at all healthy for us. Sometimes, its not just the engrish which makes us giggle, but the cute pictures depicted on their products which makes us laugh out loud. I'm not quite sure how healthy some of the 12-grain snack bars are, but since the one ingredient listed did not include anything resembling a chemical, we think it should pass as a healthy snack.

That evening, we visited my favourite niece, Patricia, for Christmas Dinner. We brough along some Rumaki (Bite size Chicken Liver & Water Chestnut Bacon Wraps) as appetizers. But after the Big feast we had on Christmas Eve and the continuous snacking and testing of our appetizers, we really didn't have much room for another big Christmas dinner. Regardless, I did my best to consume all the good food that Patricia's mom had prepared for us. I'm not sure how I did it, but I somehow managed to squeeze in a small piece of the homemade Blueberry Cheesecake that Patricia had lovingly made for us. I'm so glad that we have one day of rest before we go out for another eatingfest at our good friends, the Nakamotos, this coming Saturday.

After all this non-stop eating, I seriously will have to go on some sort of Butt-reducing exercise regiment.

Christmas morning has arrived

The boys' gift notes to each other (You can click on it for a larger view).

Colin had a little more to say on the back

This was featured on engrish.com because they "Promise the Best"

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese Omelet

When you eat this, your vegetable family will become Karate fighting poataoes?

This is suppose to taste like a bowl of curry

These taters are jumping for joy because they get to be curry flavoured

Tomato wavy chips....

with a delicious tomato taste

Cuttlefish wav chips...

hot spicy pepper. Tastes just like from a grilled cart street vendor

Healthy Japanese snack

ABC (Already Been Chewed?) healthy snack rolls

Classic Engrish

This is one long ingredient. It's good for one year, if only we can find the Best Before Date

Christmas Dinner at Patricia's place with the girls.

Brother-in-law Wayne and my guys

A Seto Christmas

2008-12-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

The Seto Clan celebrated the Annual Seto Christmas Party on Christmas Eve at May-Goo (that's chinese for Auntie May) and Uncle Jim's house this year.

Their doggie, Rex was the official greeter. He is soooo cute!!! Every time the door bell rang, Rex would scamper over to the door and barked loudly to greet each and every arrival. Then he would scamper over to retreive his favourite toy, (a Toy Stuffed Bone) and scamper back as to proudly show off his toy to us. I wish I had taken a picture of him with the toy bone in his mouth, but he was so excited greeting the guests and kept on moving around, that it was impossible for me to get a good shot of him.

May-Goo and Uncle Jim were absoutely amazing! They had just returned home from a vacation in Mexico. They made it back home at around 3AM in the morning of December 24. Uncle Jim had a few hours of sleep and then went in to work for 4 hours and returned home to help May-Goo set up for the party. By 6:30PM that night, they had the whole spread laid out, with lots of appetizers, a special Philipino style Christmas Ham, Christmas Goose, veggies and assorted desserts. Everyone else brought their home-cooked/store bought food to add to the spread and needless to say, we were all STUFFED by the end of the night.

For entertainment, the older cousins mostly enjoyed playing the PS3 Rockband on the big Screen TV, while the younger cousins enjoyed their hand-held Nintendo DS games. The adults had a great time catching up with each other by socializing the old-fashioned way (that would be face-to-face conversations sans electronics). Is the art of conversation dying? or is it evolving from being face-to-face to virtual interacting by machine? Dick speculates that in the future, we will still socialize in the same room, but instead of talking to each other face-to-face, we will be chatting through hand-held devices (in the same room!!!). I, for one hope that we will continue to connect as people without having to resort to some hand-held device, otherwise, we will become part human, part machine. Hmmmmm... makes you think what Christmas get-togethers will be like five years from now.

Thanks May-Goo and family. As always, we had a wonderful wonderful time!

Rex greeting all the visitors in his Festive Attire

Our gracious hostess, Auntie May

Younger cousins enjoying their Nintendo DS's

Older cousins enjoying PS3 Rockband

Adam & Colin join in

Rockband was the party favourite for these cousins

They rocked!!!

Malay-Goo & Uncle Norman

May-Goo & Debbie prepares the Dessert Table

Malay-Goo is the first to dig in.

The Seto Women

Our Hostess & Hosts (May-Goo, Rex & Uncle Jim) enjoying a relaxing moment

Connie pays a visit/Sweet Treats & Other Goodies

2008-12-21T17:50:00.000-08:00

This past Friday, Connie braved the first real snowstorm of the year for the GTA to come visit her friends in Reorg. She did not come empty-handed. She put together pinwheel cookie packages and hand-drawn personalized Holiday Cards for everyone. It took her over 2 hours to make it through the height of the snowstorm which dumped nearly 20 cm of snow on the ground. It normally takes her less than half an hour for this trip. Undeterred, Connie made it.

Why did she choose this day to come visit? Well, she had just finished completing all kinds of assignments and writing exams and then right away got to work baking treats and creating about a dozen homemade cards before making her trek and she had to do it by Friday because that was Angie's last day with us. She's so thoughtful!

Connie made different and unique cards for everyone, including a belated birthday card for Kelly. Knowing that I have taken an interest in trying to be environmentally friendly, the card Connie made for me was of an environmental beaver discreetly unplugging the Christmas Lights. I actually enjoy Christmas Lights, but like the beaver, we only keep the lights on for brief periods, like when I'm wrapping presents and preparing stocking stuffers. The Christmas Lights do bring on a kind of magic and spirit to the season. The talented Connie even created her own signature Beaver Stamp for the envelopes. So now, even her envelopes will be keepsakes.

During this holiday season, I also received baked goodies from other fellow bakers like Shalini and Patricia. Shalini made some melt-in-your mouth shortbread, as did Patricia, whose shortbread cookies included craisins. All those goodies were so good with a nice Cuppa Joe. Thank you girls!

This is the envelope with Connie's Beaver Stamp

Connie knows me too well in my baby step attempts to save the environment

Cookie treats from Shalini, Connie & Patricia

They all hit the spot with a cuppa joe.

Farewell to Angie/Christmas Staff Party

2008-12-20T13:07:00.000-08:00

So, another staff member has left our Dept. We celebrated with Angie twice in one day before she got to leave us. Angie is an extremely popular girl. In the year she has been with us, she has made a lot of really close friends. You can't help but love her. She is always making everyone laugh. Every day is like one big party when she is around. We will all miss her dearly. I'm sure she will miss us too as she became teary-eyed upon receiving a giant card, cake and assorted gifts from us.

After the big send-off at the office, we all celebrated again at a Christmas Staff Party at the Duke of Devon where we all had a Jolly Good Time. There were a lot of people there with good food & drinks. It was nice chatting it up with a bunch of folks from some other Departments that I hadn't seen in a long while. Of course the Reorg Gang had a wild time as usual. Our Dept didn't win as many door prizes as last year. We did get one winner though. Lisa was delighted to have won some fine booze. This Christmas Party brought back good memories of last year's party when good ole Jonathan was with us, back when he was the life of the party. Here's to you, Jonathan. I hope you are ripping it up over there in Taiwan!

Lisa made a decadent Chocolate Brownie Cheesecake for Angie's send-off

Angie gets teary-eyed. She misses us already

Angie and the Reorg gang

Lisa won some booze

Me, Kelly & Anastasia

Shalini, me & Ataun

For old times sake, here's a shot of me, Ataun and goofy Joanthan from last year's shindig.

Happy Birthday Dick

2008-12-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

Dick and I celebrated his birthday yesterday by watching the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" on opening day, same day as his birthday. Coincidentally, Dick found the 1950's version being televised the night before, so we had a chance to watch both old and new versions for a good comparison. I enjoyed both versions as they both conveyed a much needed message to the people on Earth. The premise of the movie is that a spaceman and his robot lands on Earth to warn us humans to either clean up our act or else the Earth, along with the human race will perish. The spaceman in the older version was a friendlier being while the spaceman in the newer version was much more serious. His mission was to save Earth and its other lifeforms from the human beings' destructive ways and he had no trouble wiping out the entire human race in order to do so. His stark message was: If Human Beings continue with their destructive ways, then Earth dies and Human Beings will die. If Human Beings die, then Earth lives.

So is that what it will take to make us all realize how very destructive we are to each other and to this Earth,(our one and only Home)? Or will we all as a whole, come to our senses and do what it takes to continue on with our great civilization, without intervention or threat from an ExtraTerrestrial Force? IT'S REALLY ALL UP TO US, ISN'T IT? CAN WE GET OUT OF THIS MESS WE ARE IN? I'll save this thought for another post.

Anyways, Dick's parents dropped by mid-week to celebrate his birthday. Dick's mom as usual prepared a scrumpdelicious feast which lasted us for the next couple of days. She even baked a simple but yummy orange cake to mark the occasion.

On Thursday night, Colin & Derek volunteered to make a chocolate cake from scratch for their dad. It turned out really well and I decorated it to look like a Flat Screen TV. That is as close as Dick is gonna get to owning one in the near or far future.

For his Birthday dinner, Dick wanted to order a party size Sushi & Sashimi Platter from our friendly neighbourhood Sushi & Sashimi take-out. We love this place because the sushi chefs are so friendly and fast and as a bonus, we always get treated to a couple of complimentary Handrolls while we wait. There aren't too many dining venues which provide such great service.

Well, I hope you enjoyed your Birthday, Dick! Another year older, another year wiser???

Dick's parents dropped by mid week to celebrate his birthday

Colin & Derek making chocolate cake for their Dad

Even though it looks more like a computer screen, this is a suppose to be a Flat Screen TV

Happy Birthday Dick

Our favourite Sushi & Sashimi take-out joint

They are friendly and fast here

Dick enjoying his complimentary Hand Roll

Dick's Birthday Sushi & Sashimi Platter

A most enjoyable visit to Sickkids

2008-12-10T18:18:00.001-08:00

Today, I took my son Derek to Sickkids to job shadow my high school friend, Dr. Michael Tropak. He is a Research Associate developing new drug treatments for various childhood diseases at Sickkids Hospital. I'm so happy that Michael took the time out to show Derek what his job is really like. Mike is one of the few people I know who loves his job and is really passionate about his work. He is so dedicated that he happily puts in more than his regular 36 hour work week. When not at his lab, he is constantly updating his skills and keeping up with the latest medical developments by reading all the latest medical journals relevant to his field. His wife can attest to the many extra hours he will spend at the lab, in the evenings and on weekends. But dedicated as he is to his career of choice, he is also a dedicated father who takes time to attend his childrens' extra curricular events without fail and takes time to cook for his family as well. What a guy!

So on this chilly morning we were supposed to meet, I underestimated the time it would take us to get downtown from Richmond Hill. I know the drive from our place to Finch subway is usually 20 minutes long, if we were to start out at 7am. It in fact took an hour when we started the trip at 8am. I don't know if it's because we hit prime time rush hour or because the roads were extra icy and slippery, but the ride to Finch subway was excruiatingly slow. It reminded me of the movie "Office Space" where the featured office worker was commuting in stop & go traffic and an old man pushing a walker on the sidewalk was making faster progress than he was in his car. I just don't know how people can stand doing this kind of a commute day after day. This would definitely drive me crazy.

Alright, enough with my ranting, when we finally made it to Sickkids, apparently a fire alarm went off and none of the escalators were in operation. So, we ended up walking up 9, that's nine flights of steps up to Mike's office. Well, that took care of my exercise for the day. I introduced Derek to Mike and he immediately showed Derek all kinds of interesting things like skin cells under a microscope and heart cells from mice they were growing from a culture. That was cool, because you can actually see the cells beating just like a heart. I didn't stay to see everything that Mike had lined up for Derek, but I'm sure Derek learned alot. Derek was always interested in the Sciences and after job shadowing Mike, Derek is now even more interested in pursuing a career in the sciences.

So I want to say Thank You so much Mike for taking time out to present a career choice to Derek in such a fun and entertaining way (These are Derek's words).

I really had a great time catching up with Mike and obviously Derek gained some good insights into what a Researcher does and to top it all off, the Viva bus people gave out Holiday Treats to all their riders today. Yum!

I had to remove some pictures because I didn't get pre-approval from the hospital to post certain pictures due to privacy reasons. I sincerely apologize for this.

We met him at the Sickkids Atrium

He made us climb up 9 flights to get to his office at the top

Taking a tour of Sickkids

One of the waiting areas

One of the seating areas

Viva Transit gave out treats to their faithful customers

The Wonders of Christmas

2008-12-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas always brings back childhood memories for me. Here's a little story from when my kids were wee ones. I remeber when Derek's cousin came by to visit. She was really excited about a new dress her mom had just bought for her and she couldn't wait to show it off. But, Derek was off in his own thoughts, quite oblivious to his cousin, much less her new outfit. I have no idea what was running through his head, but I couldn't help but giggle silently about his cousin's vain attempts at trying to get his attention. She was actually a good sport about it and walked away after a few moments of trying to get his attention.

This is my version of what may go through a little boy's head while a little girl tries her best to get his attention. Come to think of it, I believe this can even apply for boys (men?) of any age, not just childhood. (Just replace the boy's thought bubbles with the latest high tech gadget that's selling on the market). Ask any guy if he enjoys shopping for clothes with his girlfriend or wife, and you'll know what I mean.

Trimming the Christmas tree

2008-12-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

It is snowing lightly today and that put our family in the mood for starting the Christmas season. We pulled out the tree from storage and got to work decorating it. Of course Christmas was always an exciting time of year for them when they were much younger. But decorating the tree just wasn't cool when they first became teenagers. Surprisingly, Colin & Derek didn't mind helping out this year. They even recalled some of the earlier ornaments they had made from their pre-school days. They were hung on the tree with fond memories. Of course they had to laugh at each other's homemade ornaments first before hanging them on the tree. Over the years, we have added to our collection of home-made ornaments and now the tree is covered with mostly home-made ones.

Getting into the spirit of Christmas

Colin & Derek join in the fun

The tallest member of the family gets to place the star on the treetop

The tree in all its glory

Hand made ornaments from Christmas' past

Colin & Derek had a lot of fun decorating the tree

It's starting to feel alot like Christmas

Stockings are hung on the fireplace with care

Market Downturn Comic

2008-11-29T15:17:00.000-08:00

Yes, this market downturn has got everyone down, except for maybe the brave speculators with available cash to dive right in, hoping to buy some stocks for deeply discounted prices, or so we think... Well, nobody really knows, not even the experts know for sure where the bottom is or when the markets are going to turn around.

One thing I have noticed is that management is trying to make our department feel better about it all by putting a spin on things. For instance, even though management keeps telling us that due to the market downturn, there will be less market activity, thus our workload should be lighter, that is in fact not true. Our workload has not become lighter, it has become HEAVIER. The reality is that since most companies don't have any cash on hand, there is increased complexity to the restructuring of many companies, resulting in more complicated deals being worked out. In fact, our department will now have MORE work, because we have to sift thru ever more complicated documents to sort out all the mess the highly leveraged companies have put themselves into, not to mention the increase in Bankruptcy cases and Class Action cases we must deal with.

The sad part is that since management have made the decision that our workload is becoming lighter, they now have an excuse to start laying off people and the remaining employees will have to take on an EVEN HEAVIER WORKLOAD. Sigh...

OK, I will stop dwelling on negativity. I should be thankful and I am. I am thankful that I live in a peaceful country (keeping my fingers crossed) and I live in a warm and comfortable home and I'm surrounded by loving friends and family. I hope and pray for peace around the world.

Holiday Crafts

2008-11-23T17:32:00.000-08:00

So my 2 weeks of holidays just ended. No more sleeping in(sob). I thoroughly enjoyed my time off. I got to do most of what I wanted to do. There were more things I could have done, but my "to do" list is always longer than my "done" list.

One of the reasons why I didn't get more done was because the sewing machine broke down on me right after I completed only one set of oven mitts. Either the motor is dying or the sewing machine needed oiling, I'm not sure which, but I didn't feel much like trying to figure that out. Instead, I decided to create some Christmas ornaments by hand sewing and glue gunning. Forget the sewing machine. It took me longer and the hand stitching wasn't as neat as machine sewing, but I was still quite happy with the results.

So I had to close my Craft workshop on Wednesday as I dedicated most of Thursday to cleaning up the house before Dick's Thursday night return. After that, I just mostly relaxed and visited my parents. Well, it's back to work for me tomorrow. Can't wait til my next holidays, coming up in December.

Here's my sunny workbench

The oven mitts I managed to hand sew after my sewing machine broke down

A row of Santa ornaments

Mrs Claus & Santa