Canada Day

This weekend, 1 July, is Canada Day. This email came around our office on Friday and I love it.

Nothing like a good beaver in a toque to get you in the mood for the festivities eh!

Wimbledon Withdrawal

I have loved being back in Vancouver so far (with the obvious downside of being hubby-less for a bit) but this week is difficult because Wimbledon has started.

By far my favourite iconic London event, I'm still mad that I only made it there 2 years out of the 5 summers that I have been in London. I think the first year I was too lazy to figure out the complex system, a second year I stupidly booked a trip home to Vancouver that coincided with it, the third year I had just started my new job at Sky and didn't feel I could take the piss and ask for more holiday right away (having started on 1 June and then immediately taken 3 days off to go to Cinque Terre - no regrets! Still one of the best holidays ever. Seafood spaghetti from Aristide in Manarola, you will always be in my heart).

Finally, in 2010, I made the effort to take time off and go. We were completely ready to get up at an ungodly hour and queue up in the morning, but miraculously Keith managed to score some of the 500 Centre Court tickets online at Ticketmaster right at 8pm. We had 3 computers going and he managed it. He didn't even go - Kate and I were the lucky beneficiaries. That year marked the first time in 33 years that the Queenie deigned to grace Wimbledon with her presence, so that was one of the 3 times that I have seen the ol' girl in person, within spitball shooting distance. (The others were at Royal Ascot, where to be fair, she shot by on a carriage and I was 5 people deep behind the track railings. The other was at the Queen's Summer Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, where I was too busy chowing down on free afternoon tea to even stand still during the anthem when she walked out of the palace). She had come to watch Murray play, which we got to see at Centre Court as well. We also got to see Caroline Wozniacki (SNOOZE) and I think the third match might have been Nadal. All 2nd round matches of course, so easy wins for the seeded players.

Last year, we didn't manage to be so lucky with the Ticketmaster frantic clicking, but Keith and I committed to the cause and got a cab from our Clapham Junction flat at 4:30am to join the queue. We obviously didn't beat the people that had been camping overnight in the field, but we we timed it perfectly to beat the first load of public transport Wimbledon wannabes. Still we were 1086 and 1087 in the queue (still have the queue cards in a scrapbook!) and nervously waited, having no idea how many tickets they release for each court during the day. I remember well that we were in front of two guys in their early 20's who had WALKED from Central London after a night of clubbing and hadn't slept at all. We admired their dedication. In hindsight, I'm glad we didn't get the tickets online. Queueing and the anticipation was as much a part of the experience as the Pimms and strawberries and cream were. When we got our Court 1 tickets we were ecstatic. We watched Djokovic and Tsonga take out their 2nd round opponents. Tsonga being by far the more entertaining player to watch - big fan.

So this year it is with great sadness that I 1) sleep 2) sit in the office while all of the action is happening. Unlike in the UK, neither Wimbledon or BBC's live internet feed of the play is available, because it is geo-blocked. BOOOO. Last year I didn't even need the internet feeds since I worked at Sky and smack dab in front of me is a 55 inch television which we would turn to Wimbledon everyday as play started at noon. (Completely approved by our Director who despite having his own personal TV in his office would come out and OOOH and AAAHHH as he cheered Federer on).

Making it even worse is that Keith scored Center Court tickets online AGAIN this year and went yesterday where he watched a match that is going to go down in the fact and history books - Nadal losing in the 2nd round to Rosol, ranked 100 in the world. Epic. And I missed it!!!

Why didn't I just wait until the summer was over to move back???? Oh yea... because I didn't want to do another year-end at Sky. Happy year-end, Sky friends!

Rage Donations

The power of the internet!

I'm sure most of you know these stories already, as they are taking the internet by storm, but it's the kind of thing that really interests me/breaks my heart/makes me want to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Which is obviously something that is common amongst many people because 3 (fairly) recent incidents have inspired what has been coined as rage donations, and the scale of them have been really escalating.

The first came in the London riots of 2011. The lawlessness was spreading like wildfire and a  Malaysian exchange student was punched in the face and had his bike stolen. His jaw was broken and as he was sitting on the side of the road, a crowd gathered, seemingly to help him, but one of the guys in the bunch that gathered unzipped his backpack while he was pre-occupied and took his wallet and ran off. Talk about preying on the weak! It was all captured on someone's phone camera and googling it to put it up here made me angry about it all over again:

It was one of the many images that really stayed with Londoners that summer. People were incensed, a lot more so than when seeing The Foot Locker lose all its merchandise. I'm not sure if it's more wrong to rob a person than a face-less corporation, but I'm definitely one of those people that let emotions steer my decision on what's right and wrong. And i must not be the only one, because one of his friends set up a donation page to help him get the surgery required for his jaw and to maybe pay for a small gift for him to make him feel better. Well-wishers flooded the donation site, accumulating £22,000 for him before his friend then shut down the page to say it had collected enough.

9 months later, the original criminals have also been brought to justice, which you can read about here and here.

The next instance of this occurred 2 weeks ago. At the beginning of May, a 10 year old girl in Scotland started the cutest blog about her school lunch. It's called Neverseconds and she calls herself VEG (super super cute, please read her blogger profile explaining the name). Every day, she would take a picture of her lunch, describe it, rate it on taste, health, and even report any hairs found in her food (mostly none, thankfully). She encouraged other children to send her pictures of their food, and enthusiastically reported on her favourite meals and not-so-favourite meals. She was not critical of the food, though honest if sometimes she felt she hadn't had enough or was too scared to ask for extra salad and fruit. Her blog became popular really quickly, amassing tens of thousands of hits in a matter of days. Local and national news coverage followed, and Jamie Oliver sent her father tweets and autographed one of his cookbooks and sent it to her. She decided to take the attention and direct it to a good cause - raising money for Mary's Meals, a charity that feeds children at schools in various countries in Africa. Her goal was to reach £7,000 which would build one whole kitchen . She also encourages other kids to send her pictures of their meals and then plays a game with her Dad where he spins the globe and she has to find where her latest email has come from. She even documents how many seconds it takes her to locate it, so sweet.

But suddenly, THE MAN decided that what she was doing was drawing too much unwarranted criticism of the school canteen, and the local council decided to ban her photography, putting an end to her blog. She posted a sad little goodbye on the 14th of June, lamenting that she didn't think she was now able to raise the £7,000 she wanted to for a kitchen for Mary's Meals.

Rage donations again ensued. People took to the tinternet in a blaze of fury, red mist descending before their eyes as they clicked the donate button furiously and posted vitriolic messages against the local council on comments sections of the news articles covering her blog's unfair demise. This time, vengeance was even quicker, and within two days the council had to reverse their decision, with local politicians having to come out and make apologies, and back she is again with her camera at school. She has now raised over £100,000 for Mary's Meals and her blog has had nearly 7 million views!!!

But the biggest rage donation of all is happening this week. As I type, sympathetic You-tube viewers all over the world are trying to make up for the assinine behaviour rained down upon a elderly bus monitor by, get this, SEVENTH GRADERS. I'm not linking the video because it's too horrible. You can read a longer summary here, but here's my take: What is wrong with people these days? These kids bullied and harassed said elderly bus monitor on the ride home from the bus, calling her fat, poking her, calling her so unloveable that she has no family (and I'm not sure whether they were aware that her son had committed suicide years earlier), reducing her to tears. They then had the audacity to post this video to youtube. But then, maybe it's good that they did, because through this forum attention was drawn to the suffering she'd gone through, and again, a well-wisher set up a donation page to raise money to give her a nice holiday. I think she may now just be able to take a permanent holiday, given that I think it's raised over $600,000 (more than most people's retirement funds??). Most definitely, giving to someone that people feel has had a wrong done to them makes people feel good.

I like the ends to these stories. But it does pose a lot of questions. Does it make up for the wrong that's been done to them? Would you suffer 10 minutes of emotional abuse for $600k? What about all the people who invariably would have suffered similar or much worse, and haven't been compensated in the same way, or at all? What makes people click donate in such massive volume but not give a penny to the bum that you see on the street every day?

Is it just the internet that has driven this behaviour?

I don't know. But I'm going to make Keith donate to Neverseconds today. He needs to do it rather than I because he's in the UK and can claim Gift Aid (where the government add another % to the donation because of tax!)

Lesson Learned

If you go to get your free lunch even just 20 minutes after the email has gone around the office, you will be left with nothing but salad.

No fish tacos for me today, and the guacamole bowl was completely dry! Haha.

Given that I'm supposed to be dieting right now maybe I should go for lunch 20 minutes late everyday to avoid temptation!

While hovering around waiting for my boss's boss to finish talking to my boss, popped into the empty meeting room to admire the view from our office which is on the 34th floor - I think it's one of the tallest buildings downtown - from what I can see outside the window anyway! It's breathtaking. Skyscrapers, parks and greenery, beach, sea, all within view. And it's not even a brilliantly sunny day.

This picture doesn't even do it justice, ipod camera does not have a wide enough lens!

Of course, THIS is the view from my desk

Contracting - the life of a second class citizen.

Our beaaaautiful wedding pictures

At my parents' house, each of our university graduation pictures (which served as family portrait photo sessions as well) hangs on the wall above the fireplace. It's nice how they've accumulated over the years, although I often complain that, since I am 8 years younger than my oldest sister, her graduations caught me in some of my most awkward adolescent times (the biggest zit I ever had is forever frozen in time, perfectly captured front and center, proudly displayed for all to see smack dab in our living room)

As the years went by, we each slowly added wedding photos onto the fireplace mantlepiece. Somehow, my sisters also managed to get married in the year when I was on an upswing in yo-yo journey that is my weight, as well as timed with a particularly bad experiment with a tightly wound perm, and so the photos that are on the mantlepiece are also rather ghastly. I think it was a good thing that Keith and I met in London, since it meant that by the time he ever journeyed over and saw my me in my past splendour it was too late for him to make a beeline out of my life.

Anyways, when I finally got to add my wedding photo to the mantle piece it was definitely a yay moment for me - finally! I get to have a good picture on the mantlepiece! Who doesn't look good on their wedding day, in a fancy expensive dress, after 3 hours of hair and makeup (and in my case, 8 inches of fake curls - yes I seem to have a thing for curly hair). But my Mom had a photo frame for our wedding picture which was portrait rather than landscape, so I had to find the right photo for it. Shame that the best ones of me in portrait are of me by myself and the ones with Keith and I together are just average - can't we just leave him out?

Anyway, took a while for me to get the pictures from our wedding photographer, so for a while the frame sat ready and waiting on the mantlepiece with the stock photos of random strangers still sitting in the frame. One summer while I was in London my sisters were being silly and decided to paste my head over the woman's in the stock photo, but jokingly left the dude's head without Keith stuck on it (I think they would claim this is because they don't have any pictures of Keith to cut up, but I like to think that they think they can't tell the difference between one white guy and another anyway*). Tonight my sister was saying to me - do you remember when we did that? And I was like - no. i've always seen the frame with the proper photo. you guys must have done it while I was away, you scoundrels! So she told me what they'd done and then she said - hey I bet Ma is too lazy to have removed the picture that we made, I bet it's behind your wedding picture! So she took the frame apart and lo and behold, there was their masterpiece. It was like one of those Sherlock Holmes stories where you find some hidden treasure map in the fake back of the frame of a painting. Except without all the excitement and reward?  Judge for yourself whether their handywork should be displayed instead of our actual wedding photo - feel free to comment if we should change it! If I get 10 comments I will consider it.

Also check out random white dude's freaky hand above my awesome head. And what's up with the semi-mullet and those Princess Diana sleeves? Did they buy this photoframe in 1980?


*JOKES. we are not a racist family.

Whoa Vomit Indeed

Is it gross that I kinda want to eat these meat swiss rolls that these guys made and put on youtube?

seriously...  i really want to eat that. ok the last 30 seconds of so of this video where these guys/animals hoover them down is disgusting, but otherwise... i'm thinking YUM.

I think I must be really hungry from my diet which so far has lasted 3 days. 3 whole days and I'm watching meat rolls on the internet. whoa...

This Week's Lunch and More Fish Out of Water Stories

Well, let's start with the fish out of water story first. Fish out of water is my new euphemism for whenever I act like a caveman and don't follow societal norms that all grown fully functioning adults are meant to know and understand, purely because I have forgottem them in the last 7 years.

....... Today the bus drive had to teach me how to get off the bus.

I still remembered how to pull the string for the bell to indicate next stop. Pretty proud of myself there. And I was still playing Scramble as it pulled up to the curb. Then I stood there at the door. We were at the stop, but the door hadn't opened. I looked up at the driver, then thought, em, maybe he hasn't pulled up to his sweet spot yet. And then he shouted down the length of the bus "push on the door handle!" So I did. And the doors then opened. I stepped out, embarassed, only just remembering to shout back "THANK YOU!" at the bus driver, which people will often do here even when they haven't had to have special needs instructions to GET OFF THE BUS.

What a dufis.

Let's have a look at this week's lunch menu, and how I'm doing on avoiding all the nice food and eating only the salad!

Week of June 11

Monday
 ·         Greek Grilled Chicken
·         Braised Lentils
·         Lemon Potatoes
·         Greek Salad
·         Spinach Salad w White Beans
·         Pita & Tzsasikki

May's self-score: 7.5/10. Had a bit of tzatziki and the pita was a carb and a little greasy and there was feta on the salad. Didn't eat any potatoes tho! (p.s. those are my own celery and carrots, yes, from 3 weeks ago when I bought them with my cute Grandma! They were pretty dry)

Tuesday

 Steamrollers

May's self-score: 0/10. The steamroller is a burrito. and it was big. There were no side salads. I ate it all and I LOVED IT. Also, had a coke. When I am bad, I go all bad.


Wednesday

·         Indian Butter Chicken
·         Channa Dahl with Chickpeas and Coconut Milk
·         Coconut Roasted Cauliflower
·         Steamed Scented Basmati Rice
·         Raita
·          Garden Salad
·         Grilled Naan

 May's self-score: 8/10. Only had one piece of the butter chicken and 10 chick peas. There were mozza balls in the salad though. And that's a Tim Horton's french vanilla cappucino you see up in the corner of my monitor. Ate a banana for fruit, that's good right?

Thursday

  tba
   
Friday

Sandwiches and Salad

TBA for Thursday! I can't deal with that kind of unknown! Friday I'll be good - even going to peel the bread off the sandwiches and just eat turkey on top of the salads.

However, what isn't helping is the breakfasts I'm having and the dinners. Tonight was poutine at La Belle Patate, check out their menu! I got tired of reading by the second board and Clara and I got one traditional and one  La Belle, with smoked meat and beef :

Mmmm poutine. For all you ignants, that's fries*, gravy, and cheese curds. Nothing says mmm mmm good like the word curd. it's reminiscent of curdle, which is horrible, but I guess that's what cheese is.

Have downloaded the Calorie King on my ipod to make me feel bad about the poutine and control my DIET.

*If I'm explaining poutine to you, you must be English, and therefore I should have said chips. But I'm converting back, guys. I'm converting back. They are FRIES.

Scramble Update

My sister demanded that I update my blog with the latest Scramble results. She didn't take kindly to me boasting that I became a a potent challenger to her immediately, and used the ensuing rage to inspire her to great heights in the world of Scramble. She's become so ridiculously good she's graduated to playing with my brother in law's friends.

Our scoreboard has become a long list of her kicking my ass. At least a dozen games in a row. Yesterday I eeked out one tiny victory in this long list of failures:

 

I was excited about my one sad little victory but you can see previous to that she was beating me by wide margins. It was getting impossible to beat her unless I scored in the 1700's. I felt small and defeated. I was letting the anxiety get to me:

Then, in my proudest achievement ever....

followed by victory celebration:

 
The saddest part of all this is that my sister and I have learned tons of words, but don't know what any of them mean. Here are a sample:

Lithias
Tahsils
Hae
Hie
Tae
Haet
Tawers
Epos
Brawest

Richmond Night Market Round 2

More culinary delights! This time I had a hurricane potato hot dog again, but then had a "car wheel" cake, which comes in the 4 flavours you see displayed behind me:

It was $5 for 6 of 'em and there were 5 of us, so we played a ferocious round of Rock Paper Scissors to determine who got the extra. Yours truly won! Victory! So I got a custard flavour and a red bean flavour. They are yummy and basically taste like pancakes with filling.

Jos had a "chunky dog" which was another hot dog wrapped in carb, this time sweet potato, and she covered it with japanese mayo and seaweed:

And of course we topped it off with a bubble tea, we didn't end up getting it from this particular stall but they do have the best name and sign, don't you think?

That cartoon character is from a Japanese comic strip and he's always mooning. Just what you want to think of as you gulp down a drink on a hot summer day.

Hot Stone Massage Chinese Styles

My sister generously gave me a coupon for the facility my niece does swimming lessons at which has a pool spa and yoga place. I decided to used it on a hot stone massage. The spa is Chinese owned and run, so predominantly is the clientele Chinese that they answer the phone in Mandarin, which I cannot speak. When they didn't have any opening on the Monday before I started work I just said thanks and hung up! So because my sis goes there a lot for Kaylies swimming lessons she went and booked it for me for this Saturday just past.

The reason I mention this is because this definitely caused some confusion for them - they called me Yvonne the entire time. My cup of tea left by the relaxing sofa area had a post it that said Yvonne Lee on it.

Now I've been to quite a few spas, and each of them, while generally working the same, do have it's own quirks because of how its facilities are laid out. So the language barrier didn't really stop there. The lady that took me into the changing room showed me the private changing stall and then my locker. Usually robes and slippers are provided for you to change into - but the locker was empty. So I said "no robe?" and she repeated back at me "no robe" so I thought maybe u just get nekkid in the treatment room. But then I went into the changing stall and found slippers and robes so I was like do I wear these or what!

Also in all spas I have previously been to the robes are ROBES. This was a towel with snap buttons at the top. Skimpy.

Next the differences came in the actual massage itself. I always get hot stone massages and they do differ by spa - what areas they concentrate on, the pressure they put on it, etc. but almost always they focus the most on your back and when they ask you to turn over and lie on your back they are mostly doing shoulders neck and head. But here u started lying face up, which worried me that there would be no back work cuz that's the best bit. But anyways she started with the legs and feet and I had to repress the first giggle when she put a tiny hot stone between each of my toes. Whats the point of that! My toes aren't under a lot of stress. I thought about wriggling them out for fun but your toes can get a pretty good natural grip on stones - who knew?

But the funniest part was when she massaged my BELLY. Who needs their belly massaged?? Mine barely has muscles in it. It certainly never aches. But slap a hot stone on it she did it made me feel a bit like a piece of meat being marinated (mmm who doesn't like a good slab of roast pork belly!) and again I fought hard against the giggles... I tried to think of the most somber thing I could and ended up thinking about visiting Auschwitz in Poland - a bit of a callous use for the experience I am ashamed to say, but it was the first sobering thought that popped into my mind.

I thought maybe the belly rub had to do with the totally unscientific belief Chinese people have about breaking up the fat in your problem areas so that you could lose the fat easier... Once upon a time they sold gimmicky contraptions to middle aged ladies where they basically put a vibrating belt around your waist to achieve this effect. Chinese people don't believe in the no pain no gain attitude of getting in shape - miracle products and starvation are where it's at!

However where they do wholeheartedly believe in no pain no gain is where it comes to pressure in massages - at one point I thought she was going to break the bones in my neck she was steamrolling over them so hard. That little lady has strong hands!

Overall still a very enjoyable and relaxing sat morning!

Back to Real Life, the old 9-5 (in this case 8:30-5)

Well after a month away from work, reality is cruel. How quickly one gets used to waking at 10am, and how jarring it is to then reset your body clock to 7. So confused is my poor internal clock that I have jolted awake an hour before my alarm every morning. I think Keith’s morning paranoia has, by osmosis, seeped into my subconscious as well, because I think it is largely to do with not trusting that my alarm clock will ring, because it is a new alarm clock. It hasn’t earned my trust yet. I am wiped out after a 4 day work week!

Some highlights so far:

free lunch! the grateful ones out of us would say, what a nice company. the jaded ones would say, what a way to keep you working at your desk throughout your lunch hour. To you jaded ones, I say, it did not stop me from walking to the mall to exchange a top at H&M today after I devoured my chicken wrap.

After 3 years of enduring the Sky canteen, which got pricier and pricier as time went by, which started turning microwavable pasties and sausage rolls into meal options, and served up watermelon and feta as a "prepared salad" choice, this is a wonder. Let's compare my previous paid food options to this week's free lunch menu

At Sky
- above described canteen
- The Coach and Horses, a 10-15 minute walk to the closest pub serving food, which someone saw a mouse in once
- Cafe Society, which cannot even be bothered to melt some cheese on a jacket potato. How can you eat your jacket potato with solid cheese? quel the f***?

This week's menu:

Monday

·         Jerked Spiced Chicken w Apple Chutney

·         Grilled Vegetable Stacks w balsamic glaze &fresh basil

·         Roasted Potato Medallions w Caramelized Onions

·         Broccoli Crunch Salad w walnuts and Orange Creamsicle dressing

·         Southwest Cesar Salad with Chipotle Dressing

Tuesday 
 

Sandwiches and Salad

Wednesday 

Vietnamese Subs

Thursday

·         Miso Soup

·         Build Your Own Chicken Tiger Bowl w Tangy Cabbage &Spicy Yogurt

·         Teriyaki Tofu Bowl

·         Basmati Rice

·         Soba Noodle Salad w Sautéed Mushrooms & Bean Sprouts

·         Pickled Cucumber Onion Salad

Friday 

Pita Wrap Cafe

Well there goes the diet. I am going to try to be good and get lots of salad and just a bite of the nice mains. Works for the days that there are salads (i.e. this week, not Weds, and not Friday). Did pretty well on Thursday:

 I will of course only ever put up pictures when i do well.

Confusion at Timmy Hobags

Marched up to the Timmy Horton’s today and resisted getting a full bagel with cream cheese (why don’t they sell them in halves? They really should sell them in halves. A full one is just too indulgent). Wanted to get some healthy breakfast alternative but Timmy Hobags is not the way to go for that – all I could see was bagels, muffins, croissants, and sausage sandwiches. I decided to ask if there was porridge even though I knew the answer was going to be no – but it certainly made me realize how entrenched in British terminology I am.

Me: Do you sell porridge?

Timmy Hobags Representative: Porridge?

Me: Hmm. I don’t think you do. Never mind.

Timmy Hobags Representative: Porridge… porridge…?

Me: No no it’s ok

Timmy Hobags Representative as she goes to make my French vanilla cappuccino, to fellow TH reps: What is porridge?

*me standing at counter thinking: why doesn’t she know what PORRIDGE IS? Is it her poor English and foreigness???*

TH representative #2: What? Police?

TH representative #1: No no! Porridge! Porridge!

TH representative #1: OH PORRIDGE. We call it OATMEAL HERE!!!!

Oh yea. Oatmeal. I forgot.

Zzzzzzzz

Work does not inspire new posts. Unless I guess I put up the food menu. Which I must say is a great improvement on the Sky canteen menu and it's freeeeeeeee!

Take Me Out Conquers The World

The other day I was channel surfing when I came across a commercial for a new program about to debut on American TV Networks - Take Me Out. I gasped, then emailed Charlotte immediately in the UK. This was a program that we had discussed at length at work - approximately 25-30 girls stand onstage, each behind a lit podium. An eligible (or sometimes not so eligible) male descends from a shaft, to a song of his choice, and the host announces his name and where he's from. He then discusses his background and hobbies, a video of his friends/family describing him is shown, and he shows off a talent. In between these various rounds the host banters with the girls. Throughout this entire hilarious exchange, girls turn their lights out if they are not interested in going on a date with the eligible bachelor. Some turn their lights on immediately on seeing what the guy looks like, some wait until they hear some of his interests. The most hilarious instances occurs when say it's a weird 50 year old bald dude with a twirly moustache dressed in a 3 piece suit and carrying a cane, and the girls some girls are nice and leave their lights on, but with no intention of being chosen to date the guy. The best time was when only two girls were left with lights on, but because they were all clapping and dancing along to the song playing during the sequence, the last girl didn't realize only her light was still on, and when she did, you could see the look of horror on her face as she DIVED onto her button to avoid having to go on a date with the guy. Hilarious!

The UK version is hosted by the hilariously named Paddy McGuinness. That's gotta be a stage name, right? We often bemoaned the fact that such low quality television could be commissioned. And now they've exported it!!! I fully intend to watch it because I think (sorry in advance for the gross generalization) the Americans will be totally shameless, not that the UK version wasn't full of pretty desperate candidates.

Not one week later, tonight I was eating my dinner as my Dad was watching the Chinese channel on TV. It was all in Mandarin which I don't understand, so I wasn't paying any attention. But THEN. I heard the familiar buzz of a light being turned out... and looked up to see a dude onstage with 30 Chinese women standing behind lit podiums. !!!!!!!!!! I doubted myself though, because on this show there was also a panel of people making comments and asking questions of the dude standing next to the host. ? So I asked my dad - is this a dating show? Do the women turn out their light if they don't want to date the guy? And my Dad says YES. This is Take Me Out China!!!!!!!!

That was it. I had to find out where this show had originated and who was the original exporter that was responsible for this disease spreading across the world. Once again, Wikipedia does not let me down. It's Australian!!!! Damn you Australia!

More Gems - Those Glasses in their Original State!

Tonight I went out with a friend that I have known since we were 10. We went to the same elementary school and high school (and the same university as well because it's not strange to stay in your hometown to attend university). She went on to get a post-grad degree in education and her career is now constantly peppered with blasts from the past - she teaches at the elementary school that we attended (crazy enough!) and often runs into teachers that taught us, whether in elementary school or high school. Tonight she was telling me a few stories of a teacher which taught at our high school and is now a counsellor at her elementary school, and that inspired us to have a look through our old yearbooks (her versions, mine are in a box somewhere in the garage, hopefully intact).

We discovered many funny yearbook comments (and some cheesy graduation quotes, well cheesy on my part, hers were just sarcastic), but the biggest find was my Grade 8 (age 12-13) picture which I am pretty sure is when I wore those pink frame glasses that I found in my closet! Shall we have a look?

OHHHHHH yea. I told you all I was styling. Why on earth am I wearing a hooded shirt underneath a vest? I cannot tell you. What I can tell you was that vest was purple suede, and I must have really liked it because you know ahead of time when picture day is and you would choose your attire carefully. Purple and suede are two of my favourite things. My favourite shoes for years were these purple suede heels with leather straps criss crossing over the top and at the ankle. And I also found these purple suede shoes at Nordstrom Rack down in California but they were unfortunately not in my size. I was despondent as you can see:

Anyways I digress. I also feel the need to end this post with a better picture from my graduating yearbook to make up for all the ugly photos above. My friend said I still look like that, and I was like REALLY? I'm still that cute? And she said No you've still got those cheeks.

Scramble with Friends (or Foes)

Latest iphone game addiction: Scramble with Friends.

The idea is that you get a 4 x 4 grid with scrabble letters on it, and you have to link up as many words as you can using the letters in the grid - left, right, up, down, backwards, zigzag, etc. Points for the words are calculated using scrabble style points - with double/triple letter/word tiles just as you would in scrabble. You get 2 minutes with the grid, and you play against an opponent who gets the same grid. The most points after 3 rounds (of 3 different grids) wins.

My sister introduced me to this game the other day, and she and I (she in between all her household errands and picking up and dropping off her kids at school/art/cooking/swimming/chinese/math class, I.... vegged out on bed/couch/bed/couch all day) have been playing non-stop ever since. To the point where we run out of tokens - each round costs a token, and you get 14 to start, with them replenishing every 20 minutes. So far we have managed to resist the temptation to just buy more tokens.

I was slow to start, but got to a point where I was challenging to my sister. I then invited more friends to play, and then found an opponent, who should remain unidentified (let's say his name rhymes with Wark Milson) had an unnatural talent for this game. Immediately he was beating me by a good 50% margin, sometimes almost doubling my point totals. I was incensed - I thought I was so good with words and spelling! But my indignation failed to fuel better results, and my ass was resoundedly whooped for a good 10 games at least.

Finally, yesterday, in a fury of flying fingers... :

I could not believe my eyes. This was followed by the following exchange on whatsapp:

Just so you know, that last message from me that's been cut off is "Sore loser! Have a great day at work knowing that you are inferior to me!"

GLOAT GLOAT GLOAT