It’s not everyday that you have the opportunity to cheer on the Olympic torch relay. Yay for the flame! Sure, there are people out there who oppose the Olympics and try to block the Olympic torch relay for whatever reasons, and sure it has a slight corporate look to it these days. But nevertheless, I was quite touched to see the torch go by my neck of the woods.

A friend of mine was also very fortunate enough to actually be a torch bearer. You can check out his experience at this video.

From what I’ve heard, torch bearers also have the opportunity to purchase the Olympic torch. Or course, the internal gas canister is removed for safety reasons.

As for the torch bearer process, I’ve been told that each torch bearer runs approximate 300ms (well, that’s what my friend did… might be different on the location? I don’t know….) And before the transfer of the flame, a a key is used to open up the pressurized gas canister, preparing it to be ignited. Pretty cool actually. This experience totally reminded me of my childhood of watching the Calgary Olympics… ahhh, memories.

My first

Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve gone all festive.  This time last year, I was out in Nepal trekking out of Annapurna or trekking to Everest basecamp or something like that. Made a simple digital photo post card at the local internet cafe and spent the day getting them addressed and mailing them out.

This time around, I’m actually in one location. At home, but financially not too charming. Although, I’ll still most likely try to quickly make something up this weekend. Preferably this weekend eh? As it’s the first weekend of Dec, and I gotta consider the time spent to make something, photograph it, print it, and mail it.

In anycase, as I found a bit of time. While cooling off from a busy school week, I picked up some minty candy canes (I never understood the cherry flavours) and visited the local craft/art shop. Which in fact wasn’t as easy as I thought, as I’m sorta new to this neighbourhood.  Anyways, picked up some pipe cleaners, googly eyes, small pom poms and a glue gun. And while watching a cheezy movie borrowed from the local library, I was able to produce 36 colourful candy cane reindeers.

Why did I go through the trouble of making these awesome reindeers? Well, in my college class, over 90 percent of the students are from overseas, and some do not celebrate or have knowledge of some of the Canadian Christmas traditions and customs. Sure, the minty flavoured candy canes might not go well for a few of them, but hey… I wanted to do something a bit Xmassy, without breaking the bank. Now, I just gotta somehow get them all to school without breaking all the bloody candy canes.

(left) recent, (right) 2 weeks ago

Well, 2 weeks later and I’ve gotten another wisdom tooth pulled. This time around, straight to the strong local anesthetic. Though, when the tooth became loose, I felt a terrible jolt down my spine. Weird, it most certainly woke me up with a slight chill down my back.

For the moment, my mouth is still gauzed up, I’m wondering how people eat when they get more than one wisdom teeth removed. Currently with a gaping crater on the other size of my gumline, I’m finding interesting bits of debris in there all the time… yummy.

Oh well, better buy another tub of yogurt, ice cream, pudding and mashed fruit to keep me going for a day or two, or until I feel adventurous enough start gnawing away something with more texture. Ice cream is nice… but I can’t get the ones with bits in them.. boo hoo…

I did not meant to leave such a long time in between my last post and to now. But amazingly, school work, part-time work, and my own personal work have kept me pretty darn busy. Especially the school work.

Do I have much to report? Well, honestly not too much as it’s just schooling stuff for me for the past couple of months.

Though, I did get one of my wisdom teeth removed today. Was suppose to do 2, but due to time restrictions, only got one done. As always, my nerves weren’t cooperating. As in, when the dentist tried to freeze around my wisdom tooth, nothing much happened. Always in the past, I required more time, or a bit more local anaesthetic to get me numb. And this time around was no different from the past. But, as I had a slightly impacted wisdom tooth, and the dentist wanted to make sure that the nerve-ending within my jawbone were numb, I was given a different stronger stuff in the end. I still felt that cold  stinging feeling, but I just wanted to get the process going.

At the end, I was also pleasantly surprised to receive my wisdom tooth as a going away token. Package in a nice small plastic carrying case shaped like a tooth. In the past, I kept my baby teeth, though after a decade or so, I noticed that they all started to shatter. Probably due to the lack of moisture and lack of calcium or whatever… (I never said that I was scientific). This time around, I was told to store my wisdom tooth bleach. Okay, will give it a try.

Currently reading: School assignments
Today’s bit of happiness: Gone skating with fellow students. First time skating in about 7-8 years. I last skated back in Sydney, Australia.

Well, it’s back to school for me. Once again, life as a student. And to my surprise, in a class of 35 students, there are only 4 native-born Canadian. wow!  What gives?

I’m back in school, studying International Business Management at for a post-grad college certificate and there’s plenty to learn, and to read already. Some of the students seem to be a bit overwhelmed already, but I’m having a blast with regards to what I’m learning, as I can see all the potential and practical use for it all.

Well, a great opportunity for me as most of my fellow students are from overseas. A great time to make some international contacts and hopes finding some great international import/export opportunities.

Currently reading: Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
Today’s bit of happiness: won a game of Settlers of Catan

For the past few weeks, I’ve been teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) to a group of Japanese university students. Certainly feels weird when your university students were just barely born when you were finishing off highschool, etc. This getting old thing… certainly is weird, bloody 4th dimension.

My students grew up in a day and age where there internet has been pretty  much always been around, things were and have been always wireless. The cold war is only something from a history book, and I wonder what they think about 9.11. To me, anybody born in the 80s will always be a child in some form, but now there are people born in the 90s who are now joining the workforce… wow. Time certainly goes by quickly.

I was rummaging through my parents basement and found an older version of a pop can. Remember the days when the opening was more narrow? The widemouth came about in the late 90s… almost a decade ago. And the diameter of the ends of the cans also started to change. In actual fact, allowing the manufacturers to save approximately 15% the original required material to make a 355mL can.

I still remember the days even before the ends were curved, and cans were completely straight and there pretty much was no easy way to stack them on top of each other. Boy, packaging technology sure has evolved.

Well, on a similar note. Through out my travels, I’ve also come to learn different regional variations of what people call this carbonated beverage which is usually contained within a metallic container or PET (Polyethylene terephthalate, or normal plastic bottle in layman terms). Anyways, these are just examples of what I discovered throughout my travels. This is not in any form an officially documented colloquial English language research result.

Pop - for most people in Canada and the northern states. (though in many other places, people wonder what I want to do with their grandpa)

Soft drink - most commonly known around in the English speaking world. Also recognized even though other words might be more recognized.

Fizzy drink - Australia & New Zealand

Cola - southern states of US… I think.. or was it Sprite? I can ‘t remember.

Minerals - some parts of western Rep of Ireland.

Currently reading: the Economist
Today’s bit of happiness: woke up early morning and just when I checked the alarm clock, it said 05:55.55… pretty cool.

You know that it’s not a good sign when your computer monitor looks like this.

Some weird fuzzy white border appearing from the frame of your screen, and slowly dissolving into some white abyss. Not good. And after you force quit (power down) and try to reboot. All you get is a briefly blinking HDD light, and the fan to the CPU maing a move. After a while, the CPU is burning hot and still a blank black screen. BIOS not even loading…

Ouch, this totally sucks. Oh well, there’s goes about 200,000yen in 2.5 years.  I was hoping to hold off purchasing a new computer until the prices of Core i7 came down, or until the Core i5 came out. At the moment, I’m back on my old laptop with no battery, and 512MB of RAM. At least XP is still useful.

Have though about the MAC market, but as I’ve got the PC version of the Adobe Creative Suite (which cost me pretty much the same as my laptop), I don’t think that I can easily go MAC just yet. And as I haven’t really earned any income since July 2008.

I picked up a cheap desktop at the local computer shop Core 2 Quad Q6600, video graphics card, 3GB, with Vista for under $600. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t go past beyond the booting Windows screen. Once again, lugging the desktop with the huge box, back to the shop via the lovely TTC bus, and an exchange for another system.  Core 2 Quad Q8200, onboard video card, 4GB and no OS. Hopefully second time’s the charm.

Now, I’m off to my first casual Japanese Conversation club, which I found via Meetup.com

Currently reading: Saturday’s Toronto Star
Today’s bit of happiness: Ate a whole melon for lunch.

What’s up with the temperaure in Canada these days? Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year… and I’m assuming that we should already technically be in summer… but it’s unusally chilly. Even when I went out for my morning jog (like to say that I do it regularily… unfortunately not… only 2-3 times a week, bad me…), the mercury on the scale was hovering around 13C. I’m okay with that, when I’m out jogging. But isn’t that pretty cool? Nae pun intended.

Currently reading: God is not great (Christopher Hitchens)
Today’s bit of happiness: ran through a bit of rain and bunch of puddles and mud care free. I just hope that I don’t catch a cold

During the past few weeks, instead of buying yoghurt from the shops, I’ve been making my own yoghurt. Okay… for you kids with dirty minds. Gett’em outta the gutta.

I’m serious, with the help of some Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris and Acetobacter orientalis yoghurt culture, I’ve been trying different kinds of milk (low-fat, no fat, homo milk) and making my own yoghurt.

The really cool thing about this culture is that you don’t need to do the whole, 40C degree incubation for 10-12 hours. With this culture, I can simply let it incubate at room temperature overnight, or for a day, depending on how thick I want the yoghurt.

Sure, I’ll admit that this kind of yoghurt isn’t for everyone. As it lacks the solid texture feeling that many of us are used to from the shops. This yoghurt is much more runny and sorta reminds me of Dahi yoghurt which is quite popular in Indian cuisine.

Anyways, a great way to save a few pennies. And all it takes is milk. In the near future, I want to see if this yoghurt culture also works with Soya milk.

Currently reading: Beginning Joomla! (Dan Rahmel)
Today’s bit of happiness: had a great jog in the morning.