Happy Chinese New Year!

Okay, so I'm a day late. :-)

Yesterday was Chinese New Year. It's the year of the dog. Since I was born and raised in North America, any traditions I've learned or picked up, I did so from my Mom. Thanks, Mom! :-)

On Saturday, for New Year's Eve dinner, I planned a hot pot dinner and invited a few friends over to enjoy a nice meal. The previous week I had picked up a shabu-shabu pot that I figure would do the trip for such hot pot meals! However, it wasn't realized until we put the pot to use that there were certain limitations...

We were using a burner normally used for fondue. As a result, the flame from this burner was aimed in one area. Unfortunately, this area happened to be the middle of the pot. This resulted in a sort of chimney/volcano effect. Needless to say, the broth in the pot did not get hot enough to cook the foods quickly.

Solution? We brought out a regular saucepan large enough to hold the broth and accomodate all diners. Soon enough, the broth was simmering away and we were eating like kings!

Ingredients used for this hot pot: thin slices of beef, tofu cut into cubes, napa cabbage, shrimp, pork shaped into balls, snow peas, and mushrooms. As a side, I prepared some gyoza (frozen pre-cooked) and some lo bock gow (made from scratch!). Wash it all down with your choice of beverage! :-)

Afterwards, we had green tea ice cream and some cake that one of our guests brought. All in all, it was quite filling and satisfying. :-)

Okay... Note to self.. Never write or talk about food just before dinner...

Hump Day

I started to go through the Rough Guide to London. Let's face it, there's just way too many different sites and stuff to check out in London. It might prove to be difficult to decide on the must-sees. Maybe this weekend we'll take some time to discuss what we really want to see.

The weather this winter has been rather erratic and very atypical. The winter season started off with a 41cm dumping of the nice white stuff, but soon after the usual winter weather took a bit of a nosedive.

During the holiday break, the weather became mild and the frigid cold at the start of the New Year. Since then, the weather has been bouncing back and forth between +10 and -10 (give or take). Tomorrow, for example, the temps are going to dip to about -16 overnight. Then, for the weekend, the temps will climb back up to about +3. Bleah!

Minority Government (again)

Well, as the polls predicted, the Conservative Party were elected into office. However, since they did not get the majority of seats, they are considered a minority government. The Liberals, I think, will be the official opposition. The Bloc came in 3rd and the NDP 4th.

Overall, I think the Bloc lost a couple of seats. The NDP, on the other hand, managed to gain quite a few more seats since the last Federal election.

OK, so enough politics.

I got my copy of The Rough Guide to London from Amazon.com. I've just started to go through it for ideas on an itinerary. I'm still waiting for the latest edition of Lonely Planet London to be shipped. It looks like they are preparing it for shipping. If I'm lucky I should receive it next week.

We still have not decided on accomodations. I think this needs to be resolved soon to avoid missing the boat on any preferred places.

Ideally, it would be a good idea to put together a list of must-sees and then work from there. Decide what can be done in the time we have. Perhaps save a few as a "Plan B" in the event something happens.

In any case, the research continues...

Civic Duty

And so, on January 23rd, I performed my civic duty as a Canadian citizen and cast my vote. The candidates were ery difficult to decide on as it seems that each at least the major ones) had some issues that bothered me. Nevertheless, I went to the polling station right after work. This may have been a mistake as I hit the the post-work and dinner-time rush of voters. In all, I think I stood in line for at least an hour just so I can cast my vote.

Whom did I vote for? That will remain private information. As the major candidates weren't too appealing, I decided to make my choice based on which of them were considered the "lesser of the evils". Perhaps not the best way to decide, but then again, better to vote than not to.

I have not yet checked the news to see what the outcome was. I suspect that it would end up being a minority government again with the Conservatives in charge. The opposition will most likely be led by the Liberals.

I've never really been big on politics. In recent elections, both in the US and Canada, I have yet to see any truly innovative, intelligent or exciting candidates. None seem to have that spark that would inspire citizens to rally to their side and give them full support on decisions made. For example, I found on one website the approvals ratings of the US Presidents. Clinton had the highest approval rating at something like 65%. George Dubyah was somewhere around 43%. What does that say to you?

UK Bound

I decided I needed a break from work. Since our planned, big vacation was not until sometime around October, I felt I needed a smaller break along the way just to maintain some sanity. Sooooo, we're bound for the UK in March.

Why the UK? Well, the Caribbean could have been a nice destination if it weren't so expensive. Plus, around the period I was thinking of taking vacation, I think a lot of the destinations would have been crawling with Spring Break-ers. Uhm, no. I don't think I want to deal with that.

Another reason is that I do have a friend who lives out there now. At least it's a good excuse to go visit the country as well as see friends. :-)

OK, so the weather might not be sh*t-hot there, but that's to be expected there anyway.

In any case, the tickets have been bought. We just need to tighten up some details in the itinerary. :-)

False Allegations

Pinched from Dragonflypurity:

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often or don't really know each other) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you!

Change of Scenery

Sometimes I get bored with something and require some change. In this case, I decided to change the look of the blog. Of course, silly me, I forgot to copy down some of the extra HTML from the old template to insert into the new one. No matter, I managed to at least re-insert the weather pixie and the counter. Let's see how long before I get tired of this one! ;-)

In other matters, it's Friday! Thank goodness. This past week has been somewhat slow since it seems that a good number of people are still on holiday. I think things will be back to normal on Monday.

I think I need a vacation. Not a terribly long one, but maybe a week off somewhere. I've looked into the cost of a Caribbean vacation, but it's so costly for 1 week of doing next to nothing. Maybe I should look into a different type of destination? Maybe a week in London or something? Something to think about nonetheless.

I've been working a a small project at home recently. I have these movie clips (mpeg) I took when we visited Japan last spring. Since the clips were done in 640x480 resolution, the sharpness really isn't that great. I managed to splice together all the video and audio (after spending some time to figure out how to demux the mpeg files!) using iMovie on the Mac. Then I used iDVD to create a DVD img file that could be burned to disc. I burned the current results of this endeavor into a re-writable disc. On the TV, it's not that bad, but you can see artifacts and a certain amount of pixelation. It's worse on a computer screen. I think, if I have time this weekend, I will see if it's possible to improve the picture quality. If not, then I might just see if I can add extra features and stuff to make the resulting movie more easy to watch! :-)

Happy New Year!

Well, another year has come and gone. And being the non-party type, we more or less slept through it.

New Restos:
Recently a couple of new places opened up in the neighborhood. I think they are owned and operated by the same people as they two restaurants are right next to each other. One is called Maxi Nouilles and the other Maxi Pho.

The noodle place was the first to open so we tried it their first weekend at the end of October. In general, the decor was modern, contemporary, not like some of the other more established asian food joints in the area. The menu was somewhat extensive, with the main focus on noodle dishes, of course.

Not sure what to order, we decided on one of their lunch specials which included soup, main entree, egg roll and rice. I ordered the singapore noodles and D ordered a rice noodle dish. Now something to take note of: why serve rice with noodles? Starch plus starch? It might be a good idea to subsititute the rice with something else. On top of that, D's rice noodles were not all cooked through. Service was very spotty as it seems that the wait staff were all over the place. I noticed that some people were not given menus once they were seated. Service needs to be more attentive and better organized.

A couple weeks ago we tried the Maxi Pho place which opened some time after Maxi Nouilles. Again, similar decor and menu with different soups and sides. We each ordered pho: D had the beef and I had a dac biet type pho. Again, the service was quite spotty. We saw a few people who wanted to pay and had trouble flagging down someone to pay. Again, people not getting menus soon after being seated. As for the food, the pho we had was pretty standard. I did not find anything special about it.

In summary, both places can stand a huge improvement in service. I'm not sure what sort of clientele they're trying to attract in the area, but if the service is not great, then don't expect too many returning diners of any kind!