I was so excited to have tea and dessert at my friend Wendy's house tonight. We had planned it since the middle of the week and I was in charge of choosing the dessert. So after grocery shopping yesterday, I stopped by a local bakery...well, a bakery in City Square Mall actually, which doesn't say much. I picked out the cutest "Sinful Chocolate Cake"...and it was heart-shaped which was kind of silly but I just went with it.
I arrived at Wendy's tonight with cake in hand, very proud of my selection. It even had a little santa claus ornament on it.
After eating some appetizers, we opened the cake box and oohed and aahed for a few minutes...then dug right in. I had been thinking about the cake all night and was ready for some sinful deliciousness. Wendy was in awe of the gooey chocolatey taste and I think even said "this is the best cake I've ever had" and I followed that with "do you taste mould?" I kept eating it just to make sure my taste buds weren't fooling me....and I think I devoured a huge chunk of green mould that was sitting in the middle of my piece. Blech. I actually can't even walk down memory lane, it was so disgusting. I really wish I took a picture of the greeney/white fuzz in the middle of cake. It was mad.
Fortunately, Wendy did not get a piece near the mould and dodged that bacterial bullet. I, on the other hand, quickly Googled "eating mould bad" and this is what I found out:
"Mold is bacteria which can be very harmful to your body. It eats at your insides and it never digests. Make sure you use the bathroom or vomit to get it out."
Weirdly enough, that's twice this week that I've ingested mould. Can't be good.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
kiwis and other random stuff
I just found out that I can eat kiwis again. I couldn't be happier! I was so happy that I went out and bought a huge bag of them and just polished off 3. I'm feeling a mild allergic reaction but I'm willing to suffer a bit for that green, juicy, seedy goodness!
And did you know that kiwis have a ton of vitamin C? I didn't. Bonus because I think I'm seriously lacking vitamin C or D because my skin has been getting paler and paler. So I'm pumping up the nutrient value in my alimentation over the drab winter months.
In other news, I was at the gym yesterday, watching CNN on the widescreen tv in front of the treadmill, and felt a surge of energy while I watched the newscast on Obama's proposed cabinet. I ran like the Dickens as I watched Hillary and Barack chatting it up on the executive plane. I watched in admiration, in awe and with exhiliration. I don't think you can even dream of a better group of people to lead a country in a period of economic hysteria. Visionaries and humanitarians. That's what this world needs in place of realists who want to tighten their belts and cut the fat. People are the culprits and the victims of the economy. We need leaders who will regulate corporate action, inspire change and nurture heavily impacted citizens.
Obama is an orator, with a love for discussion rather than argument or undemocratic action. He's a true liberal democratic. And this really invigorates me.
From kiwis to Obama...haphazard? No, just two positive developments that are making this day a really good one!
And did you know that kiwis have a ton of vitamin C? I didn't. Bonus because I think I'm seriously lacking vitamin C or D because my skin has been getting paler and paler. So I'm pumping up the nutrient value in my alimentation over the drab winter months.
In other news, I was at the gym yesterday, watching CNN on the widescreen tv in front of the treadmill, and felt a surge of energy while I watched the newscast on Obama's proposed cabinet. I ran like the Dickens as I watched Hillary and Barack chatting it up on the executive plane. I watched in admiration, in awe and with exhiliration. I don't think you can even dream of a better group of people to lead a country in a period of economic hysteria. Visionaries and humanitarians. That's what this world needs in place of realists who want to tighten their belts and cut the fat. People are the culprits and the victims of the economy. We need leaders who will regulate corporate action, inspire change and nurture heavily impacted citizens.
Obama is an orator, with a love for discussion rather than argument or undemocratic action. He's a true liberal democratic. And this really invigorates me.
From kiwis to Obama...haphazard? No, just two positive developments that are making this day a really good one!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Saturday night at the inlaws
It was Lenny's nephews birthday party on Saturday and I was in cute heaven. It was Jaiden's first birthday and I have to say he is the cutest thing I have ever seen. Everyone says he looks just like Lenny and not so much like his dad:
But he kept trying to put his finger in the socket to his right. And wow, after looking at this picture, I notice he's surrounded by hazards. Mom material, I am not.
Toys were everwhere, so next, I put him in this mini-atv and ran him up and down the main floor of the house. I was dying of laughter because Jaiden would push this button and you'd hear "meep meep". It was hilarious...but it got annoying after a while so I called Lenny from outside (he was bbqing) and asked him to come in and help me change him. I was warned that he would start crying but we toughed it out...although as soon as he started crying, his grandparents came running from the kitchen to pick him up and didn't let us finish.
The grandparents answer to his tears: blare Portuguese music REALLY loud and dance around with him in your arms - with only one sock on and no shirt. As annoyed as I was, I have to say that Jaiden was in latin heaven. And it was really touching.
And so there ends my hour alone with the cutest kid ever. The rest of the night, I couldn't even get close to Jaiden with all the family crowding him. But I'm sure he cherished our time together like I did :)
Awww....I could've stared at him forever but he turned around and lightly bit me!
I was excited when Jaiden's mom, Maria, asked me to look after him before the party. I was charged with looking after him for an hour...only an hour...while Lenny's parents cooked and Maria drove to Burnaby to pick up her sister. Maria knows how uneasy I am with the really wee ones and therefore said to me "don't worry, just make sure he doesn't climb the stairs". And she left me with the task to change him into his white linen suit after 45 minutes (she didn't want him getting it dirty before people started to show up).
Somehow aware of his mom's directions of staying away from the stairs, Jaiden decided to rebel. I was like a video on replay. Chase Jaiden to the stairs, pick him up, drop him off in the living room, chase him to the stairs and so on. I tried holding him but he got antsy and wanted to explore. So I put him on this plastic horse:
But he kept trying to put his finger in the socket to his right. And wow, after looking at this picture, I notice he's surrounded by hazards. Mom material, I am not.
Toys were everwhere, so next, I put him in this mini-atv and ran him up and down the main floor of the house. I was dying of laughter because Jaiden would push this button and you'd hear "meep meep". It was hilarious...but it got annoying after a while so I called Lenny from outside (he was bbqing) and asked him to come in and help me change him. I was warned that he would start crying but we toughed it out...although as soon as he started crying, his grandparents came running from the kitchen to pick him up and didn't let us finish.
The grandparents answer to his tears: blare Portuguese music REALLY loud and dance around with him in your arms - with only one sock on and no shirt. As annoyed as I was, I have to say that Jaiden was in latin heaven. And it was really touching.
And so there ends my hour alone with the cutest kid ever. The rest of the night, I couldn't even get close to Jaiden with all the family crowding him. But I'm sure he cherished our time together like I did :)
Sunday, November 9, 2008
uh - sir, you have spit on your lip
Okay, I'm in a wild n' crazy posting mood today. So I thought I would tell a little random story:
At the two-day seminar in Seattle, I sat beside a middle-aged electrical engineer from Surrey. Now this guy was your typical engineer. He looked down when he spoke and rarely made eye contact. He was very vocal though. And didn't stop talking not realizing that I was a little turned off by his rant. He would open the flood gates of negativity in regards to sales and wouldn't stop until I would interrupt and when he wouldn't even acknowledge what I had said, I would find an escape and then turn around and talk to my other seat mate, Maria.
My first conversation with him went like this:
Me: "Oh so you're a fellow Canadian?"
Him: "Yeah"
Me: "I've heard your name before, I must know you...have you ever worked for us?"
Him: "No but I've heard of your firm and I don't have a very good impression of it".
And he went on to tell me why. And as he did, a pool of spit had gathered in the middle of his lip and I thought it was a piece of muffin or something. And I'm usually the person that will tell you if you have something on your face that shouldn't be there. But I kept quiet and thank god I did, because this kept happening throughout the two days. He had some sort of a superfluous saliva problem and it would've been rude of me to bring it up. He actually spat on my arm while talking about how much he hates the US proposal interview system. Thank gawd I was wearing long sleeves.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
workin' it in seattle
Sales be dammed. I just spent the last two days in Seattle at a seminar focused on winning my company more work. During which, I asked myself "how did I get here?" How did I get to this point in my career, where I'm running down a path that I had not originally planned?
I started out my teenage years with a desire to be a translator for the UN. With English, Spanish and French as my base languages, I set out to learn Japanase and German. Learning languages was easy for me and I loved it. But after meeting a translator who came to one of my high school "career day" events, it didn't seem as much fun as I had originally thought. She basically told me she makes hardly any money and had to work a second job. But I had high hopes. The UN. So I met with the school guidance counsellor and we attempted to develop a strategy. She was clueless and made me even more so. We didn't even know where to begin. Translator school? huh? what? where? We found one in Alberta but good ol' AB did not appeal to me. So I said, "screw this". I'll just take languages at UBC. I took French and Spanish and wasn't entirely sure, but thought I would get my BA in one or the other.
Then I regained my political self (I was that kid that staged walk outs when World Vision attempted to reel teenagers into the 24 hour famine). Political Science was my new direction. Even though my political passion had died (after realizing that no one really cared), I still had it in me. It fascinated me that I could sit in a class and learn about what was going on in the world politically. So I got my degree and thought, hmmm now what? My new goal: international development. That didn't work out. Then it changed to international law. Got an LSAT score good enough to get into U of Saskatchewan. Nix. Then non-profits.
Working for a non-profit in social development was an achievable goal. I got a job working at Immigrant Services Society of BC and loved it. I felt like I was really doing something to effect change. But after awhile it got stale and I wasn't moving up. My boss even told me this job was just a stepping stone for me. It lasted two years.
I needed to earn more money, so I went to work for a quasi-government agency that paid well but was in no relation to my skills or career path. That lasted for almost 2 years...yikes. And now, after another two years, I find myself in a position that I love but I'm at a place that I never expected to be. Funny how this happens. And interestingly enough, my work life seems to work in two year increments. And if I multiply those two years by ten increments, 20 years will have already passed. So how do I re-focus? And where do I go from here?
I really love what I do at work and love the people I work with. But the problem is I really lack a "specialization" in one thing. I'm a generalist. This could be a result of jumping from one thing to the next...this seems to be a trend in my life. I never stuck with anything long enough to specialize -- piano, organ, guitar, tennis, modern dance, kung-fu, samba, immigration consulting...wow, the list could go on.
So back to the course in Seattle. I was lucky enough to sit beside Maria Jackola from Jackola Engineering in Montana. This girl was a glowing soul. She was lively and warm -- so full of life. She was so real. In those two days, she and I had some really key conversations that related to my career path. Maria was studying graphic design because it was her passion. When she talked about it, her eyes lit up. And she really felt that I should take one or two intro courses in design because based on our discussions, she saw a designer in me.
Now here we go, another complete diversion from my original high-school and then post-university goals, but in a way, I think that if I can incorporate all my skills: languages, writing/editing and design -- I can get myself to that perfect place. Career satisfaction.
And maybe specialization takes years but I'd like to stick to one thing for the next few years. And that one thing is what I'm currently doing. I just don't want to ask myself in the next 20 years - why this? So that's why I'm going through a re-evaluation now. I'm going to take a course in design and see if I like it. And if I do like it, my goal is to go out on my own in the next two years. And I can call myself a specialist - take that HR!
I started out my teenage years with a desire to be a translator for the UN. With English, Spanish and French as my base languages, I set out to learn Japanase and German. Learning languages was easy for me and I loved it. But after meeting a translator who came to one of my high school "career day" events, it didn't seem as much fun as I had originally thought. She basically told me she makes hardly any money and had to work a second job. But I had high hopes. The UN. So I met with the school guidance counsellor and we attempted to develop a strategy. She was clueless and made me even more so. We didn't even know where to begin. Translator school? huh? what? where? We found one in Alberta but good ol' AB did not appeal to me. So I said, "screw this". I'll just take languages at UBC. I took French and Spanish and wasn't entirely sure, but thought I would get my BA in one or the other.
Then I regained my political self (I was that kid that staged walk outs when World Vision attempted to reel teenagers into the 24 hour famine). Political Science was my new direction. Even though my political passion had died (after realizing that no one really cared), I still had it in me. It fascinated me that I could sit in a class and learn about what was going on in the world politically. So I got my degree and thought, hmmm now what? My new goal: international development. That didn't work out. Then it changed to international law. Got an LSAT score good enough to get into U of Saskatchewan. Nix. Then non-profits.
Working for a non-profit in social development was an achievable goal. I got a job working at Immigrant Services Society of BC and loved it. I felt like I was really doing something to effect change. But after awhile it got stale and I wasn't moving up. My boss even told me this job was just a stepping stone for me. It lasted two years.
I needed to earn more money, so I went to work for a quasi-government agency that paid well but was in no relation to my skills or career path. That lasted for almost 2 years...yikes. And now, after another two years, I find myself in a position that I love but I'm at a place that I never expected to be. Funny how this happens. And interestingly enough, my work life seems to work in two year increments. And if I multiply those two years by ten increments, 20 years will have already passed. So how do I re-focus? And where do I go from here?
I really love what I do at work and love the people I work with. But the problem is I really lack a "specialization" in one thing. I'm a generalist. This could be a result of jumping from one thing to the next...this seems to be a trend in my life. I never stuck with anything long enough to specialize -- piano, organ, guitar, tennis, modern dance, kung-fu, samba, immigration consulting...wow, the list could go on.
So back to the course in Seattle. I was lucky enough to sit beside Maria Jackola from Jackola Engineering in Montana. This girl was a glowing soul. She was lively and warm -- so full of life. She was so real. In those two days, she and I had some really key conversations that related to my career path. Maria was studying graphic design because it was her passion. When she talked about it, her eyes lit up. And she really felt that I should take one or two intro courses in design because based on our discussions, she saw a designer in me.
Now here we go, another complete diversion from my original high-school and then post-university goals, but in a way, I think that if I can incorporate all my skills: languages, writing/editing and design -- I can get myself to that perfect place. Career satisfaction.
And maybe specialization takes years but I'd like to stick to one thing for the next few years. And that one thing is what I'm currently doing. I just don't want to ask myself in the next 20 years - why this? So that's why I'm going through a re-evaluation now. I'm going to take a course in design and see if I like it. And if I do like it, my goal is to go out on my own in the next two years. And I can call myself a specialist - take that HR!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
I love daylight savings
It's so fantastic to get an extra hour of sleep. I feel like I accomplished so much today. I even went back to the gym for the first time in a month.
So I woke up this morning planning on going to Hot Yoga. I thought it would be a nice transition back into exercise.*
* There is actually no logic to this...Bikram's is definitely no "nice transition" into anything but a week of pain and a revulsion of ever going back. But I thought it would slim me down for a day since I've been feeling a bit sausagey lately. And even more illogically, I only ever feel like going to the gym when I'm feeling svelte.
So I woke up all refreshed, yawned, pulled on some shorts, sweats and a jacket, packed a towel and yoga mat and made my way to the end of the street. I walked up to the door of Bikram's and yanked. Locked. Hallloooo...I stared inside. It was empty...as if it had never been there.
Shucks. Bikram's on Cambie closed down as of November 1st...yesterday. So there I was, defeated and thinking "blast it!" I sulked back home, moped around for a bit, sighed a lot and then started cleaning. Avoiding the gym, I went out to Burnaby to visit a friend. Had a great time eating all you can eat sushi and window shopping with Susie - my hot chica banana :)
I made it home by 5 and somehow got up enough motivation to go to the gym (which is a block away from my apartment). It was a meek gym jaunt, a half hour at best. Did a bit of this, and a bit of that with little direction...and came home to eat dinner.
So although it took a whole day to finally get to the gym, I'm glad I did. And I hope this will become a regular thing. Even if it's just half and hour, at least it's something?
Yawn...exhausted...must be all that exercise. Bedtime...it's been a long day :)
So I woke up this morning planning on going to Hot Yoga. I thought it would be a nice transition back into exercise.*
* There is actually no logic to this...Bikram's is definitely no "nice transition" into anything but a week of pain and a revulsion of ever going back. But I thought it would slim me down for a day since I've been feeling a bit sausagey lately. And even more illogically, I only ever feel like going to the gym when I'm feeling svelte.
So I woke up all refreshed, yawned, pulled on some shorts, sweats and a jacket, packed a towel and yoga mat and made my way to the end of the street. I walked up to the door of Bikram's and yanked. Locked. Hallloooo...I stared inside. It was empty...as if it had never been there.
Shucks. Bikram's on Cambie closed down as of November 1st...yesterday. So there I was, defeated and thinking "blast it!" I sulked back home, moped around for a bit, sighed a lot and then started cleaning. Avoiding the gym, I went out to Burnaby to visit a friend. Had a great time eating all you can eat sushi and window shopping with Susie - my hot chica banana :)
I made it home by 5 and somehow got up enough motivation to go to the gym (which is a block away from my apartment). It was a meek gym jaunt, a half hour at best. Did a bit of this, and a bit of that with little direction...and came home to eat dinner.
So although it took a whole day to finally get to the gym, I'm glad I did. And I hope this will become a regular thing. Even if it's just half and hour, at least it's something?
Yawn...exhausted...must be all that exercise. Bedtime...it's been a long day :)
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