Snakes and…

How’s that for a night of the random-est dreams?

• Deciding in Malaysia that my mom was being unreasonable and ignoring her (and actually leaving).
• Having lots of snakes in the home and having to kill them; had someone (can’t remember who) shove a giant red snake in my face and tell me it was safe because it was female (but turned out to not be); my old property manager was in this dream and I’m not sure why.  And we found a giant (like, GIANT!) yellow and green snake.  Don’t ask.
• Ordering tea at Starbucks and having someone there know my name and offer me a free drink (a sign that I’ve been there too much maybe).
• Hit the car beside me trying to get out of a tight corner parking spot.  Drove off to get my car fixed, then came back to leave a note on their windshield.  The other car was red.  See, I dream in colour. 
• Someone and I were trying to find a quiet room to make a conference call at work.  Mundane, but it makes sense given this whole open concept office thing.  At least I wasn’t checking excel spreadsheets all night this time.
• There were more but I forget.

The horror… A partially-Canadian-built bus!

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/18/sheldon-alberts-mccain-insults-obamas-ugly-canadian-bus/

Dear Mr. McCain,

I hate to state the obvious, but I think there are bigger issues in the United States than the Obama’s bus.  Which isn’t really his anyway, it’s a presidential bus.

You must have missed the memo.  The bus was purchased from a Nashville manufacturer.  I’m sorry that they couldn’t find you an American bus that met safety standards, but I suppose safety and security aren’t as important as buying American.

You must also have missed the memo that this is a global economy.  I don’t know where the part for the bus were sourced but I’m pretty sure it isn’t limited to North America. 

So the bus is ugly.  Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and let’s be fair here.  I’ve never seen a tank that I thought was pretty but if I was in a warzone, I’d rather be in one than a sportscar.

Back to the Past

I guess I’m in a bit of a reminiscing mood tonight.  I was surfing facebook (evil Facebook!) and I was thinking about all the friends I’ve made and left.  I wonder about where they are now and what they’ve done with their lives.

In Primary 2, one of our class assignments was to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up.  There were 3 students who wanted to be lawyers.  Of the rest, half wanted to be doctors and the other half wanted to be teachers.

I said I wanted to be a teacher, just like Mrs. Marcia Young (who had been my teacher in Primary 1 and 2) – funny the things the brain remembers.  I can’t for the life of me remember the name of my Primary 3 teacher – I do recall that she was extremely strict, had her hair in a bun everyday (and insisted that her students should do the same) and wore a qi pao everyday.  I also recall that she made fun of me for wearing a headband and told me that I was too small to be a prefect.

I do recall some names and faces (and in full disclosure, attempted to creep some of them out on facebook but it’s really hard).

Fast forward to Canada.  I remember some names from Grades 6/8, but the weirdest thing is, the names I can’t remember are the ones of friends I used to hang around with the most.

High school is a bit closer – I joined facebook a couple of years after graduating high school so I have many of my high school friends on facebook although I don’t actually talk to them or anything.  It’s just interesting keeping track of what they are up to.  And in case this seems creeptacular, it isn’t as if I go around looking at people’s photos everyday.  I don’t interact with my high school friends much so they don’t show up on my feeds.  It’s just interesting to see that many of my friends did end up living their dreams (or not, depending).

In short, I just seem to be in a very reminiscing mood tonight.

Also, I make kick ass banana chocolate chip muffins.  I don’t know how that’s related at all (it isn’t) but I had to share.  Yum.

It’s also very damp/humid here and everything gets soggy so quickly.  I think I should move to etobicoke.  Or something.  I’m bored.

Sandakan Food

Finding good Singapore or Malaysia food in Canada, even in Toronto, is impossible.  I’ve been to Restoran Malaysia in Richmond Hill (the best Malaysian food in this area from whate everyone says) and while it’s not bad (actually, the roti paratha is pretty darn good), it’s not quite “amazing”.

See, Malaysian food tends to vary greatly from region to region.  I’m from Sandakan and we have some “specialties” and we flavour things a bit differently.  I love Sandakan sticky (?) noodles.  And noodles coated with so much dark soy sauce that they’re black.  I think the key is that even savoury foods from Sandakan tend to be slightly sweet.

Sadly, I have no pictures.  We usually bought stuff to take home in Sandakan and pictures of lumps of deep fried dough or black noodles in bags just don’t look that appetizing.  The taste is fine though.

You know what I didn’t get to eat on this trip home?  Good banana fritters.  And lye yau fah.  It’s this jelly-ish agar agar thing made from coconut juice and something or other.  Which I’d try to duplicate but I can’t even find a damn recipe online.

Of course, the last time I tried to duplicate peanut pancakes, they came out tasting far too much like baking soda and way too thick.  I need a different recipe.  And I should probably use real eggs for authenticity rather than flax eggs.  There I go breaking my own rules.

Oh… and the pineapple jam tarts… *sigh* 

As for Singapore – I’m not in love with the food there, but there are at least appropriate substitutions.  I can find black noodles – not quite as black and they have different types of noodles.  There is tau fu fa.  I can find peanut pancakes (that aren’t quite as good).  But there is roti paratha that is perfectly fine (actually, I think this is more a singapore indian food than malaysian) and there are singaporean foods… laksa, cheong fun, mee siam.  Ya, I eat all  of those without the seafood. 

But even the pineapple tarts from bengawan solo don’t compare with the sandakan ones.  They’re different.  I think the sandakan tarts aren’t strictly pineapple.  And they’re sweeter.  And they have a flaky crust rather than a soft cookie-like crust. 

See, I know my food.

And now that I’m depressed from my lack of good food, I’m going to actually do some work.

Orange orange

Is it just me or is this ridiculous?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ndp-candidate-takes-mid-campaign-vacation-in-vegas/article1999879/

Not so much that she took a mid-campaign vacation, but that the NDP is running a lot of “pylon” candidates.  I know most of the other parties are probably doing the same thing, so I shouldn’t just trash the NDP, but they drew the short straw and ended up in the newspaper.  If you’d not going to win the riding, maybe you shouldn’t run any candidates.  Looks like the NDP really is just hanging onto Jack Layton’s smiling coattails.

And speaking of Jack Layton, the entire NDP campaign is Jack Layton.  His name is on the side of the NDP plane – the party name only gets a mention on the engines.  I guess that’s a pretty accurate summation of the NDP campaign – the party is the engine driving Jack Layton forward. 

Maybe to become the formal opposition party?  But the poll results these days are so wide and varied that a coin toss would be more accurate.

Has anyone read the NDP platform?  Or budget?  Notice that there are almost more pages of Layton’s grinning face (coincidentally, the name “Layton” tends to remind me of the series of DS puzzle games with Professor Layton and Luke and not so much of Jack the NDP-er) than there are of text.  And of course, the press has made a great deal about the giant swiss cheese holes in the budget. 

In my opinion, the NDP does not have enough experience at the national level to govern.  Or even be the formal opposition. 

But wait, you say.  Jack Layton has more years as an MP than Ignatieff.  Yeah, but no matter what you make of the Liberal party’s issues, the party as a whole has much more parliment experience than the NDP.

At least pylons are orange in colour.

Voting time… again

We find ourselves in the midst of another election.  Again.  It’s like deja vu.  I don’t think any of the candidates in my district have changed since 2008.  In fact, I’m pretty sure they just dragged out the signs from last time and put them back up.  If I had to guess, we’re going to find ourselves with another Conservative minority.  Just like the last 2 elections.

In any case, Canadian political parties don’t tend to be as polarized as United States political parties.  The difference between the Conservatives and Liberals aren’t as great as the parties try to make it.  I don’t see a significant difference between a Conservative minority or a Liberal minority.  I know, the current polls are putting the NDP in second place.  Maybe that will make a difference… maybe not.

Where do I stand?  I’m probably voting Green.  I probably identify as a Liberal if we’re talking about the mainstream political parties.  I used to identify definitely as a socialist/NDP-er (and have voted NDP in the past… because obviously I’ve voted so much) but I have been moving right-wards, I think.

Why Green?  I identify strongly with the environmental focus – I think it’s something that really needs attention.  It’s so easy to forget about it as we go about our daily lives because the earth changes so slowly.  The only time that it seems to come to mind is when natural disasters happen.  Then everyone becomes an environmentalist.  The earth isn’t ours – it’s a temporary loan.  It was here long before we were and it is our responsibility to treat it well.  The Earth is not ours to wreck.

As for the rest of the Green party platform – to be honest, it seems a bit idealist at first glance.  The Green party platform tends to identify on the political spectrum in different places depending on the current leader.  I agree with it generally, but as I mentioned above, I don’t find the Canadian political parties significantly different from each other, especially when it comes to general governance.

I love politics – I realize it’s much less interesting in Canadian than it is in the States but it intrigues me anyway.  If I get around to it, I may post my thoughts on the other parties.

It’s a bird, it’s a monster…

Yep, it’s the A380.

One just came up by the window at HKIA and my first reaction to seeing it was “my, that’s a big tail” followed by “that’s a tall plane”.  Then “oh, it’s the A380″.

The thing really is a whale.

A really pretty whale.

Airport Madness

I’m at HKIA, waiting for my flight to Singapore – it leaves in about 50 minutes.  I’ve been here for the last 3 hours.  Of which 30 minutes was spent waiting for a train to take us from where my YYZ-HKIA flight landed to where my HKIA-SIN flight is leaving.  The train was out of service.  It was cruel.  A train would pull up, everyone would gather around, and inevitably, the signs would still flash out of service and the train would leave again.  But that’s okay – I got to my gate eventually.  I’m guessing it was too early?  Did I mention that we landed in HKIA at 4:30am???

My head is so messed up.  We departed Pearson at 1:40am and I got maybe 6 hours of sleep on the plane.  And most of it was really messed up.  Highlights (good and bad!) of the first leg:

• I know those new Cathay seats are supposed to be better but they’re just… not comfortable.  At all.  The “lie back” isn’t really a lie back to me.  Just kind of a gentle tilt, maybe.
• Being in a B777 when it takes off is one of the coolest feelings – it’s a very powerful plane and you feel it.  In the right weather (ie. when there is some light), you can actually see the wind rushing over the wings.
• Why (WHY!) do people insist on bringing those roller bags that barely fit onto overhead compartments with them on the plane?  I know my mom is guilty of this too so I guess I shouldn’t say anything, but it’s ridiculous when everyone has one – there simply isn’t enough overhead space for it.  Not to mention, it takes two people to lift some of those things and causes jams in the aisles! My shit fits under the seat in front of me.  That’s plenty of room.  WTF is so important that you can’t check it on a 16 hour flight?  Alternatively, how much crap did you check???
• It’s a good thing the seat beside me was empty.  The way I was sleeping, I’m sure that I would otherwise have managed to deck someone accidentally.
• I like being vegetarian.  I get my food first.  It was kind of meh but I’m pretty sure it was better than what I got in 2009 on Cathay so I won’t complain.  I remember some mashed potatoes (? – yeah, that’s how fantastic the texture was, I couldn’t tell) with some veg from 2009.  Brutal.
• Unfortunately, I accepted these cup noodles, not realizing in my sleep deprived state that they were a) chicken flavoured and b) had pieces of dehydrated chicken in it.  I ate a piece… I’m not sure how chicken is supposed to taste, but I don’t think dehydrated chicken is a good idea at all.  Note to self: Read what they serve you on airplanes.
• On the flipside – I got melba toast instead of cookies at dinner and melba toast instead of banana bread at breakfast.  I don’t mind melba toast (I like dry crunchy snacks – preferably salty but I’ll live with just dry and crunchy) but geez, what was wrong with giving me oatmeal cookies and banana bread too?  I said I was veg, not vegan!  And there was definitely egg in some form in my breakfast since it was french toast.
• Yes, I got french toast for breakfast.  I was in carb-induced heaven.  Just feed me that all the time on the plane.  I’ll be happy.

Oops, I think I wrote a novel instead of “key point”.  Sorry.

What Today Brings

Today, I wished I was a doctor.  Or an engineer.  Anyone, really, who had the ability to help others.  In case you haven’t guessed, this is related to the tsunami in Japan.

Sort of.  I feel like I’m in a midlife crisis or something. 

I always vehemently opposed being a doctor.  It wasn’t for me.  I’m squeamish about blood.  I’m just not that good at the biology stuff (far too much memorizing and far too little thinking).  But reading about what Doctors Without Borders is doing in Japan made me realize that maybe it’s not about me.  Maybe it’s about how what I can do can help others.  Or could have.

Sure, I made a donation to the Red Cross.  And you’re right, if I had tried to become a doctor I would still be in med school now.  But you hear of DWB and Engineers Without Borders.  Whoever heard of Accountants Without Borders?  My skillset isn’t exactly conducive to helping people, you know?  And no, tax evasion would not count.  That is, of course, assuming that I knew anything about taxes, which I don’t. 

The only problems accountants solve are those created in a capitalist society and by governments attempting to create jobs.  I’m sorry, but the T1 tax return could be a lot shorter. 

My point is, maybe I should have been thinking differently.  Maybe I should be thinking differently now.  I don’t think that I will go back to school and in any case, I would still make a terrible doctor now.  But still.

Black Holes, Here I Come

I spent the last hour wishing everyone I talked to would disappear.  Then I realized I wanted to crawl into a black hole.  Just me, my new mac, a piano and a guitar.  And a dozen cookies to keep me company.

I’m off to the gym after work today.  I considered not going so that I would have time to catch up on all this marking and studying but maybe it will help me vent.  If not, I’ll just step off after 0.9 miles.  or 1.9 miles.  The goal, by the way, is 2.9 miles or 3.3 miles. 

It’s because I want my week to end off in a nice, round number of miles.