[ d o m e s t i c - k i n d - o f - d a y ]

I felt domestic today so I decided to make dumplings...from scratch! I've made dumplings before but had always used the store bought wrappers as they are pretty cheap and there is no fuss involved. Recently, however, I've been wanting to learn how to make the wrappers too. SO....today...cause I felt like being domestice, I looked up instructions on how to make the wrappers online...and tried to make them. They turned out to be easier then expected cause the dough was simple to make. And if you've ever made dough before, the technique is not that much different. Wrapping the dumplings with the home made wrappers was much easier than wrapping them with the store bought kind because these fresh wrappers were more maliable so I could manipulate them around the dough more easily. And...as a bonus...i got family bonding time as my little brother helped me wrap them too. Here a pic of our finished dumplings. Mine are the ones that are cooked and in the foreground. My little bro made the ones in the background. He calls them finger dumplings...and the big ones toe dumplings.

Oh...I guess I should wrap up my last entry... teehee...

Well, my friend got married at the Royal York...and all it's splendor! (For those who don't know Toronto Hotels, the Royal York is the most prestigeous). She was a gorgeous bride and I know they will be happy forever. Here are a couple of a pics. The first one is of the bridal party, and the second one of the first dance. Both were taken by the pro photographer...

...AND just cause I'm proud of the following shinning moment in my fishing career this year....

Please, just call me BASS MASTER PRO!!!

[ m o n t r e a l ]

Spent the long weekend in Montreal with a few good friends for a stagette. Good times - les bonbons and all!! Sorry, whatever happened in Montreal stays in Montreal...!

[ c a u g h t - u p ]

Wow! What crazy few months it's been! Ever since I got back from my European vacation, I've been so busy with volunteer work that I haven't been able to have time to myself. The only time I did kind of have some time was during the May long weekend in Canada, which was my birthday weekend - and that was only because people wouldn't LET me help out with my volunteer duties.

One of the reasons I was so busy was because, for the past half year I'd been a committee member and planning Imprints' Race-for-a-Wish. This race is modeled against the popular TV show The Amazing Race. For the benifit of those who don't know about this show, contestants travel around the world solving clues and passing different types of challanges (physical & mental) at each check point to reach the finish line. Because our race was for charity, we didn't have the budget that big TV corporations have so we made people travel around Toronto. The planning of the event, thinking of all the challenges, scouting for locations, sponsorship recruiting, trouble shooting, volunteer management, team management, promotion of the event, and everything else that needed to be done for this event was a full time job in itself - meeting once or twice a week for 4 hours at a time plus all the extra hours outside meeting times to get my leg of the race done. This past month when we we had to pull everything together we were meeting 2 days a week for 8 hours at a time - good bye weekends!! Needless to say, with no free time, I'm still single!! LOL!

One of the challenges we had a food challenge. I ran this station and we did it Fear Factor style (this too is a TV show where contestants are given nasty things like live worms and bugs and challenged to eat them for a cash prize). Since this race was for charity, we didn't make our participants eat bugs....we gave them a choice of eating either a small container of NATTO which is a sticky, slimy, smelly mush of fremented soya beans - a delicacy (sp?) in Japan, OR a whole column of Premium Crackers (about 50 soup crackers) to eat but they had to eat the crackers without using thier hands and they couldn't drink water while eating the crackers. Most of the participants (108 of them) chose the NATTO while only 20 chose the crackers because the crackers were slower to eat. I know that NATTO is an aquired taste and not many people like it at first, but I didn't realize that people would actually gauge and throw up the stuff. I mean, we had barf bags just in case but never tought all of them would get used! It was funny cause there were these big tough guys saying give it to me...then I heard them gauging after the first bite...LOL! Also, there were guys who were screaming, common, we're Chinese, we eat EVERYTHING...then I'd see them running for the washrooms! Too funny! Almost everyone let out sighs of disgust while they ate the fermented beans and at time's I'd hear "This thing tastes like ASS!!" being screamed out from the crowd of people. Aside from some people who were being poor sports about the whole thing, we had a good time.

In the end, the race (Saturday, June 16th, 2005) was a HUGE success and we managed to raise over $20,000 for the Starlight Children's Foundation!!! YEAH!!!! You can find out more about the race and Imprints at: http://www.imprintsgroup.org/

Crackers - the tasty choice

Natto - the hasty choice

Contestants eating their choices

Yummmy natto...

Some volunteers (I'm special )

Concurrently, I'd also been planning the JET pre-departure orientation for all the newbie JETs leaving for Japan this year. JET is the government run exchange and teaching program that I went to Japan on. I spent the past 2 months planning for it and hosted over 150 new JETs and volunteers. The orienation was all day Saturday and Sunday (this past weekend) and we ran seminars and workshops to help the new JETs prepare for thier new lives in Japan. This too, was a huge success and went by without too much of a hitch...well, except at first when, because of commincational differences, my co-cordinator and I weren't working well together (I was brainstorming and she thought I was attacking her ideas. WOW! Glad we got that cleared up!).

In addition, I'm a bridesmaid and between all the planning for the 2 big events that just took palce, I had to perform perform bridesmaid duites like planning and running the Jack & Jill (the same day as the race) and the stagette (This weekend - YEAH!!!). Thank goodness the other 2 bridesmaids are really cool and great about it so we've been able to be good friends to bride and throw her some good parties .

On top of the 3 big commitments, I also agreed to helpa good friend with her Dragon Boat fundraiser (2 weekends ago), and I attended 2 weddings of 4 very good friends in the month of May.

Friiiiiiiiggg... I signed up for all these things when I was unemployed because I needed to do something to keep me from going insane (TV and DVDs can only do so much), but didn't bet on all the final events taking place so close together.

Would I do it again? IN A HEART BEAT!! I'm so proud of what I accomplished with each volunteer group and so happy that I was lucky enough be asked to help out such great friends.

But now that the crunch is over...YEAH!!! I finally have a little room to breath...just a bit.....time for another vacation!!

[ h u m a n - n a t u r e ? ]

I got back from my European trip yesturday. I hit up sites in London and Bath in the UK, Brussels and the amazing town of Beruges in Belguim, and what tour of the north wouldn't be complete without a trip to Amsterdam? And although I got my camera stolen at a friends' house party in London.....grrrrrr ... I did manage to enjoy myself. BUT...after traveling to so many places (15 countries and counting) sight seeing and other expereinces become secondary to the impressions that local people you meet in that country leave on you.

London vs Tokyo

I found London and Tokyo to be quite similar in city culture...both had millions of restaurants, tonnes of shopping areas, complex train and subway lines, tonnes of socially accepted drunk people on the streets. Of course they have differences too...Tokyo people karaoke or drink all night long after the last train while the streets of London empty out...last call for London is 11pm while there is no such thing as last call in Tokyo...but the most important thing... the Japanese are WAY more friendly then the Brits...(all this and Tokyo is at least 2x's larger than London in population)!!! All those stereo types I had heard about Brits...Snobs, unfriendly, violent drunks...they turned out to be TRUE! ...Especially the things you hear about the the service there...changeroom attendants who open the door of your changeroom while you are changing and rush you out RIGHT when it hits closing time (mango in oxford circus for those interested )....bus drivers who can't drive and talk at the same time (my friend and I asked the driver to let us know where our stop was and after agreeing to tell us, he didn't say anything making us miss our stop by 20 minutes...AND when we noticed that we must have pasted our stop and I tried to get his attention to ask him about it, it refused to talk to me until he was stopped at the next stop)...and the people working for the trains who couldn't seem to give me the same answer twice about routes (i asked 3 people about a train to get me to a certain station and I got cold remarks from the first 2 people who were maning the gates - HELLO..isn't that thier JOB..to give directions?! The only helpful one was the guy I found cleaning the platform after I had been really confused as to which train to take...and with a million trains routes it's a pretty tough code to decifer as a tourist). I swear...I had much more success in finding info in non-english speaking countries...no joke! To seal the nail in London's coffin, on my return flight home a Brit was sitting next to me and asked for my impressions of London. When I told him that I found the people to be not so friendly...he had this understanding look on his face and didn't even try to convince me otherwise! That action, in itself, speaks volumes to the truth of my convictions!

Don't get me wrong...I have English friends who are pretty cool and I did meet some really nice people on this trip (note: all of these nice people are seasoned travellers...thus have more open minds)...but I think that the nice people I met were a rare commodity. I asked my Brit friends about this innate rudeness in the English...and after admitting that they can be rude...they added that they find us North Americans to be fake...questioning the genuineness of our friendliness and not believing that we can be that friendly ALL the time!! Unbelievable!! English society must be REALLY jaded!

Europe vs Asia

Comparing these two places, I found the people in Asia MUCH more friendly and helpful. I found that the Europeans were too into thier own thing to be bothered to help me out effectively...inlcuding the conceiarge at my hotel in Brussels who snooted at me when I didn't know the "famous" landmark he was telling me about (Shereton by the way )...whereas when I was traveling around Asia, people were WAY more friendly and so helpful to the point that they wouldn't leave your side until you found what you were looking for! In Asia I felt safe and never felt I really need to guard any of my valuables too much. BUT in Europe, I felt I needed to be on constant alert. Did I mention that after leaving my friend to head back home to Toronto, he got his laptop, i-pod, and psp stolen on his train ride from Amsterdam back to Brussels?! That's at least $5000 worth of goods he'll never get back..not to mention all his work on his laptop...and since his job requires him to be on the road 100% of the time...he lost his life on that laptop too! Those BASTARDS!!

Rich vs Poor

Another thing I noticed in my travels was that the friends or people that I met with who had less money, tended to be the more generous with it and with themselves...offering me places to stay, subsidizing meal costs, and taking me to see and expereince the local culture (and for those unfamilar with frequent travels...this is a God send!). While the people with lots of money to work with counted thier pennies and annoyingly kept pointing out their generousity (the exception is Japan where my japanese and canadian friends there were very generous).

How does this tie in?

My theory for the differences in attitudes in the peoples of the countries in Europe and Asia I visited is money factor: the more money anyone or any nation has, the more greed or sense of high power they have...looking down on others. With the exception of Japan, I found that the people from the poorer nations in Asia were much nicer and generous than the people in Europe HANDS DOWN!! Now before you go off on me...I want to point out that when I say people in Europe I am not talking about the expat or travelling communites...cause they're nicer - aside from these groups...they are ALL MEAN...yes I am generalizing . One of the guys I met in London, (who had lived in a city just outside of Amsterdam as well as Malaysia for a number of years) had warned me before I left London that if I thought the English were rude...wait till I get to the mainland!! Even other Londoners complained about their own societies' blunders in the social skills department.

I guess poverty breeds generousity and money breeds greed.

BLAH!

So that's my take on Europe so far. I do want to go back to check out Paris, Madrid, Greece and Italy one day...hopefully Europe will be able to redeem itself through the people in those countries.

The upside to all of this is that I was reminded about how friendly Canadians are...I was beginning to lose faith because I had been softened by the amazing friendliness of the people I had met in Asia. It's nice to know that Canada is in between...hmmm...now I wonder if that is because of our economic status? Rich...but not too rich. I'll take that stand point any day!!

Go friendly Canadians!!

----- update -----

OK...to be fair and clarify things for everyone so I don't make enimies out of friends, NOT ALL Brits and Europeans are mean....I was joking about that one. And London is NOT a good representaion of the UK...much like New York is not a good representation of the US and Tokyo does not represent Japan. They are cities all in their own and that's what I was trying to convey with my London vs Tokyo comparision. I didn't get to make it out to English countryside or other cities in the UK for that matter, so I cannot comment on the people there (Bath doesn't really count cause it's a tourist town). I'm am sure the people are more friendly outside of London. I did meet a lot of cool people while I was in London who were friends of the girl I was traveling with. She had lived there for 2 years and met them while she was there. I was only in London for 1 week so I didn't have time to really take in the culture there. My impressions are from my expereinces in the fleeting time I had there - and those expereinces were with the service industry and people on the streets.

However, I wasn't kidding when I said that the service in London sucks!! I'm sorry to be so blunt, but it's true - at least from what I am used to here in Canada, and from what I had expereinced in my life in Japan and traveling around the US, Mexico and other Asian countries.

I guess friendliness is a matter of relativity to what you are accustomed to because of the culture you are in or the people you spend time with. Although the peoples in the UK and Canada speak English as a common language, there are still volumes of differences between their country's cultures - Canada being an outwardly more friendly nation (this is not a generalizing statement). So, relatively speaking, in my expereinces, on the friendly scale the cities would be in the following order: Tokyo, Toronto, New York, London - Tokyo being the most friendly.

Maybe I'll get a chance to re-vist or live in London in the future and maybe at that time my impressions will change...who knows.

As for the food in London...man...what is up with jellied eels?!?!

[ l o n d o n . . . b o o o o ]

So i've been in England since monday...having a great time and meeting lots of great people here. Went and did all the touristy stuff including site seeing at Wesminster Abby and the Roman Baths (a kinda dream of mine cause i had studied latin and roman life for 3 years in high shcool) and stood on the prime meridian of the world in greenwhich....half my body in the east...and half in the west...tee hee...i'm such a geek! And yeasturday I was invited to go to a James Bond Party put on by my friend's ex-boss...guys in tuxedos...nice...and I met this really cool, not to mention HOT, ducth guy...who i danced with and I was totally thinking about blogging about him....but....

After the james bond party i returned to my friend's flat to continue partying as her flats mates were having a big house party with lots of people...we had moved to this house to stay for the night and brought all of our stuff and were lodging on the 3rd floor...I was having so much fun and thinking that this was definately the highlight of the trip...until i went upstairs later on in the night to find....at some point in the night someone came up to our room and went through our stuff....it's all a bit dodgy cause only our stuff was taken and there were lots of other rooms with stuff in it...but what can we do??? ...fortunately I had the sense to hide my wallet before i left.....my camera was in my friend's handbag along with her cell phone and visa cards...all of which were taken...and another mobile was in my hangbag which had been emptied all over the ground... this really sux ...i really dont want this to ruin my vacation but it's hard not to get upset about it.

I've been robbed 2x's before and all i lost was a total of about $3-400 that time...when i was in japan...once because i left my bag in the staff room at school in plain view...some student stole the money...and another time when i was at a conference after I just arriving in japan...stolen by another JET (this is what we call ourselves who are on this program)....at that time i didn't realize that i had been robbed till i had left the conference for a party at the Canadian Embassy and tried to get money out to pay for my cab fare....

cash is a shame to lose... but worse is loosing my camera this time around...ALL of my photos were on that!!! I hadn't uploaded any of it!! AND the worst part is that i was going to upload pics yesturday but thought i'd do it when i meet up with another friend in Brussels on Monday. I bought the camera for about $600 cdn...plus the memory card...another $100....so this is a real pisser. I've been having really bad karma recently ...with my flgith ticket to New York lost when JETSGO went down and now this... The only thing keeping me kinda sane is the fact that the camera is a japanese model and everything is in japanese so the f**kers who stole it won't be able to use it or resell it easily...PLUS...I have all the cables still!!! I guess i secretly hope that they get frustrated with it and throw it away on the tube (subway) or bus....i'm going to report it as lost with the transit system so if it turns up there...they can contact me. My friend feels really bad too cause she was in charge of my camera that night....

anyhoo.... sorry for rambling...i just need to vent...

[ l a t e - r i s e r s ]

Ok...so my long vacation is coming to an end April 18th when I rejoin the working world again. *sigh* BUT I decided that I don't want to leave without a fight...so I'm leaving Sunday for a quick trip to London and then over to Brussels. teehee Don't know how I'm going to afford it, but hey, if I don't go now, when will I be able to go again?

So this brings me to my beef of the moment....

I really want to go to Paris or another city on the main land but because I'm going to be meetig friends there, my schedule isn't that flexible and apparently, flights between countries in Europe aren't either. I was so happy when I found cheap tickets to London...but those cheap tickets came with a condition...my return flight to Toronto from London is at 11:45am...which...I thought wouldn't be a problem but I'm finding difficulty finding flights/trains from other countries that will take me back to London in time for my return flight to Toronto because apparently Europeans on the main land don't like to travel early in the morning!!!

WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?!?!

No wonder that flight to London was so cheap! I swear I scoured ever European airline and discount airline, train schedule...you name it, I looked for it...but nothing...no transportation from the main land back to London that will fit my schedule that early! Damn laid back Europeans...taking tonnes of vacations and not getting up early...grrrrrrrrr.... ...which is a good time to bring up a guy I once met from Germany who had 10 weeks of vaction...YES you read correctly...10 WEEKS!!!

Dammit...doesn't look like Paris is going to happen.

*** update ***

....after searching more I finally found a flight from Amsterdam that should get me into London on time...so looks like I'll be getting a 3rd country in after all...thank goodness the Dutch believe in "earlier" flights. YEAH! I'll post pics when I get back.

[ t h o u g h t s ]

I was chatting with a couple of my girl friends over the weekend and we got onto the topic of true love and how do you know if someone is THE ONE for you? Both engaged to be married, one of them offered that aside from the necessary chemistry between two people, the other person has to really KNOW you. Now, I'm not talking about what colour your eyes are and what your favourite food is...but they need to know you so well that they know exactly what to say and what to do at just the right times to make you happy - without you ever having to say anything. I haven't been thinking about relationships much since I've recently returned to Canada and am busy searching for a job, but this comment stuck with me and got me thinking.

Earlier, my mom gave me her out-dated relationship advice and told me that now is the time I look at all the guys I know and chose one of them - like picking the best apple from the basket. I laugh every time I think about this advice. But what if mom has a point? Taking the out-dated relationship advice from my mom and considering what my girl friend had shared with me, I began to wonder......

Of all the guys I know, who knows me? And of them, who REALLY knows me?

I know most girls want a mind reader...and I know mind readers don't really exist...but I want a guy who comes damn close to reading my mind! =P I want a guy who cares enough to pay enough attention to what I DO as much as what I SAY, and can figure out my inner working through these careful observations so that he can say and do things at just the right times. I want someone who is kind and considerate - not always thinking about his needs first but of others. But I also want him to be independant and confident and not cater to people's every whim - including my own. blah...I'll stop there cause now I'm only wishing...but I guess what I am looking for is described best in the song "Somebody" by Depeche Mode.

So far, no perfect matches.

Dad, being the generous man he is, also offered me unsolicited advice, saying that I shouldn't be too picky at my age (wtf?!) and that I'll never find a "perfect" match so just settle for someone...thanks Dad. (>_<) I am a bit "older" now, and the older I get, the more I realize that everything in life is about timing....and more importantly, what you do when timing presents you with a chance.

I know I'm not perfect, so I don't deserve a perfect man, but when timing presents me with that person and I decide to spend the rest of my life with him, I'd like to think that I found the best person for me. ...thank goodness I don't have to worry about making THAT decision in a while!! No jumping on the wedding bandwagon for me just yet! =P