Sundays

Seems like every Sunday is Chinese tea. We went to the same place we always go to. We've been coming here for the last 8 years? I don't know. Just VERY long.

Same 'ol food for Chinese tea. My throat feels so dry and I always need water after. I blame MSG.
A couple days ago I was thinking about toys and the radio had stories about a Star Wars version of this toy coming out at the same time the final Star Wars movie is coming out. The toy it's based on is:

They're planning to make a Darth Vader version of Mr Potatoe Head called Darth Tater

What do you think?

Errand Saturday

Once again, Eric is running errands on Saturday. First I went here:

I had to pick up some art paper/booklet for my mom who teaches art and a student of art. Above is a pic of an art store at Market Village. A very good friend of mine works there. I doubt she reads this blog but I want to wish her the very best in her last year at OCAD.
I called my hair stylist and he said to come at 3:30pm. It was 1:30pm on my cell phone clock so I decided to burn some time at Pacific Mall since I was here already. I saw the same old stuff, lots of Chinese people, food, cell phones, computer stores, kiddy plastic jewelery stores, and car part stores. I did see a phone that jeff mentioned:

It's the fairly capable Nokia 6170. It features fast EDGE internet access, VGA camera, and push to talk (walkie taklie-like) functionality. It's a phone you have to see to appreciate. hmm... and a lot of the same phones that I saw last Sunday but in dummy (non functional) form. Oh yeah, the Rogers now have a new Sony Ericsson phone for sale, the Z500a sporting EDGE and VGA camera in a flip phone form. I already have a pic of it on December 31 of my blog when I went to Buffalo so I didn't take another picture of it. I got bored of the mall so I went to my hair stylist's mall:

I just spent the whole time playing Solitaire on my phone. It's my favorite game for this phone and for my old T616. Sorry guys, no before and after pic of my hair. Just imagine I had a fro before I had my hair cut.

Candy Bigger in the States?

You know how we Canadians lose out so many good things? For example, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions/Lotus Elise for you car fans, Victoria Secret for you girls (guys too I guess), more shopping malls, Las Vegas, Walt Disney & Universal Studio (OK, I guess our Wonderland is good too but can they compare?), Ivey League schools, I can go on and on about the good stuff the US has. Well one of my friends just came back from the states and got me this:

I haven't been shopping for candy lately, but are these normal? Can we get double sized Reeses?
I was so amazed I did a size comparison with my eraser

Since it was double the size, I could only finish one. For the healthy ones reading my blog, don't worry, I went down to the gym later that night to burn off the bad stuff... i hope.

I just noticed it's limited edition. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to eat it.

Picture of WInter

Speaking of pictures, there was a picture I took a couple days ago (Wednesday to be exact) that I forgot to post. These are one of those pictures that you have to take once every winter:

We really got a lot of snow this year and it's really cold. I thought it snowed hard and extremely cold every other year while the other winters were mild and nice. But last year was freezing cold and snowy as well. I'm hoping next year will be better.

Java Games!

I was browsing some forums and I found myself reliving the past with a site all about old console games but now playable on a web page with Java applet!! WOW! Here's me playing:

Guess what game it is? Should be obvious lol.

Here's the link if you want to play too:
http://www.everyvideogame.com/nintendo_Super_Mario_Bros_3.htm

Only thing that isn't great is the missing sound effects. It's not Mario without the dying sound.

Toothpaste

Nothing much but lots of work. Oh I worked out today again. It was my cardio day. Last week 20 minutes took off 264 cals this time I got 294 cals off. It must be from watching the frustrating Raptors on TV that got me all pumped up. Once again I used my phone as my radio and now its battery is almost dead.

Yesterday I was thinking about toothpaste. How do you squeeze the toothpaste out? This is how I squeeze it:

Yep. Right in the middle. When it starts to get too thin in the center we spend the time squeezing the bottom of the tube back into the middle so we can continue to squeeze the middle. Works well for my sister and I for all these years. I hear about some people complaining about squeezing the middle, but is that for real? I mean it's so trivial to squeeze the bottom stuff to the middle/top. I know ketchup and other condiments i squeeze from the bottom since I get it all out in one direction. Squeezing the middle would force me to do it twice, once from the middle then one more time from the bottom.

Bursting heaters at University of Toronto Trinity College

Yesterday was not a great day in terms of things going right. I mentioned I was dead scared when I lost my mom and sister at the mall, now is another story. I drove my sis back to her rez and some of her roommates were just outside her room. They told her that her fire alarm had gone off during the weekend and the steam had filled her entire room. Apparently her room's heater had burst. Everything in her room was moist and humid, from carpet to the curling posters now lying on the floor. I quickly moved her computer and monitor into the hallway to minimize water damage.

Unfortunately her monitor had already suffered damage with water inside the screen and all the buttons on the monitor didn't work. The annoying part was either the screen would flicker at random times or the monitor menu would appear and disappear. Thankfully the computer did not seem to suffer as much since the desk was protecting it.

She couldn't use her blanket since it was still very wet. Some of her cosmetics in small packs burst from the intense heat. Here is are the large icicles that formed at her window from the moisture trying to escape her room:

I hear from my sister that they finally fixed the heater today after claiming they'd "fixed" it after she complained about it earlier in the year.

An Exciting Sunday

Slept in today and woke up to go to yum cha with family at Ruby:

Nothing special happened. Occasionally I bump into a friend from university but it didn't happen today. Probably cuz we went pretty late today. Then we went to Dominions to buy me ham for lunch.

Didn't pick up any junk food since I'm rarely home to eat junk. But here are some very colorful bad for you stuff:

After that we drove by Brimley and Sheppard. I never went to that new mall there so we went shopping for a bit:

Three floors of shopping and 2 Fido stores, 1 Telus, and 1 Rogers. There's also a really cool Chinese cell shop that has many cool phones like the Nokia 6630:

It's a smart phone that sports a 1.3 mega pixel camera, dual processors, memory card, Bluetooth, and 3G technology (fast enough that you can do video conferencing).
They also had the fashionable Nokia 7280:

It has a built-in VGA camera, no number keypad, Bluetooth, and a vanity mirror. It was a lot larger than I had thought. It's like the length of 2 fat lighters.
I walked to the 3rd floor and saw another Chinese cell phone store that wasn't as nice. It had the Nokia 6260:

It's Nokia's first flip smart phone. It looks very sleek in black. I really wanted this phone before but after hearing about its flaws and its disappointing sales I turned to another phone.
After that I started to look for my mom and sister who were shopping. Spent more than 40 minutes on all 3 shopping floors, 2 parking floors, our car, vans in the parking look, 3 sets of stairs, and 2 security guards to find them. Let's just say it was a long story. If you're interested, leave enough comments with your name and I might post it in my next blog. I am so glad I found them. Spending the night before watching CSI is not good for the imagination.
Lastly, I saw this after finding them:

The phone I got that sports a VGA camera, 2.5G EDGE (able to stream tv), radio, memory card, and Bluetooth.

Cold Cold Day

It was so snowy today. I shovelled the snow and just stayed at home for the morning and afternoon. My fingers felt like they would fall off after I came back in from shovelling. They were in such pain. In the evening I went to a friend's bday buffet at the Buffet King. It was a very dangeroud drive so it was spin here and there almost everywhere. Nothing was plowed. Worst thing was that I had to make the trip 3 times before I was really there. Here's a pic in front of the dessert bar:

The food was ok. Sushi, Mandarin-style stuff... umm.... that's all. A lot of people were there. We stayed there till they kicked us out. Here's a pic of the outside after they kicked us out:

The sign's off but if you have good eyes you can see it saws Buffet King.
The drive home saw a lot of tow trucks. Here's a close up of a broken car. Guess what type of car!

Thank goodness it wasn't red. It was one with a new license plate. For my close friends, you know what I mean about old cars and new license plates. Thank goodness everyone I know seems to be alright driving in the bad weather. Otherwise I'd probably see some sad MSN nicknames. So drive safely this weekend.

Solar Flares

So today right after work/work out, I went straight to church for fellowship. It was alright. Tonight was sharing night. I haven't been for a while so everyone was asking me where I've been and some were asking if I was in Waterloo that term. I graduated a while ago and working too. So... it has been a long time.

After church today I noticed this in the sky:

I noticed it first while driving so I thought it was because of some lights being pointed into the sky light the flood lights downtown. But this is scarborough so no one does that here. And I noticed it at different parts of the sky so it had to be some natural occuring thing. Then I remembered watching TV about solar flares that occurred recently and that we should expect to see the Northern lights much better. I thought that meant IF we were up North we'd be able to see them more easily... North as in Northwest Territories. So I was impressed to see them today. Glad I got a picture of it.

Cold Days again

It's late so I'll make this fast. I was at the gym a couple days ago and I was going to use my phone as my radio. But when I went into my pocket to change the station I quickly got embarassed and tried to keep it out of people's sight. Why you may ask, because it's a camera phone. I do not want people thinking I take pictures at the gym. That is just such a violation of the gym code. So I tend to bring it out quickly and just as quickly hide it. Don't worry, there's no pretty girls at the gym so you're not missing much.

So Wednesday was crazy snow day in Toronto again. This is what it looked like:

No police were out. They're smart, they avoid the bad weather. Or they could be out going to all those accident reports. It took me about an hour to make it to work. I had a meeting at 9am... thankfully it got scheduled to sometime later that day.

I Win!

What did I really win? I'm wasn't sure that day. This is what I got in the mail:

Now you're thinking scam. Me too. But there's like all these big names like Ramada Plaza Resorts and Carnival. There's even a big signature from some person called Dan Lambert. It doesn't say who he is though. Although I haven't been winning much things lately, I do recall long time ago that winning letters didn't look this flashy and come with fake cheque-like things. Well there's fine print in the back of the cheque-like paper so I start reading it. "This is an offer to sell travel" is the first line on the fine print. I'm glad they're very straight to the point there. I guess they figure if you're going to read the fine print they might as well spare you the time. It continues to blab about things about mileage and where it'll take you. Then it goes to the part, "in return requires the attendance at a presentation on the sale of an independent vacation ownership resorts". Hmm... I'd love to start my own business but I don't think I have the capital for something like that. Oh wells... seems like I won a chance to get scammed to buy a travel package I'm worthy to be scammed to buy a resort at some place. I hope I win something for real next time. For all those wish granters reading this, please let some weird package like a mac mini or an ipod magically arrive at my door.

Sushi on 7

Yesterday I met up with high school friends for sushi buffet at Sushi on 7

It was like no one really changed much after we went to University so that was nice. The food was freshly made. We ordered crispy Dragon rolls, spicy salmon rolls, spicy california rolls, strawmushrooms wrapped in beef, beef ribs, tofu, some tempura, and butterfly (white) fish sushi. Everything was made when we ordered it so everything was really freshly put together. Crispy Dragon rolls were very good. Probably my favorite. It made the spicy california rolls pale in comparison. The spicy salmon was the kind where all the salmon was minced and on the top. I think I prefer the regular kind with spicy mayo. Everything else was pretty standard fare. Surprisingly there wasn't many people eating at the place so food came pretty quickly. We finished our meals with mango, red bean, and green tea ice cream. YUM!

Weekend

What's up with me weekend? Well, I did tell you I was going to avoid the mall right? Well turns out this is where I was yesterday:

Didn't get much done but I couldn't find the nice fashion headset... not even the ones I got the other day.
Anyways, my evening was NOT fun. My dad put a trojan on the computer in the basement. Trojan.Small and SuperSpider. Those two kept putting some Cool surfer program. Damn virus and adwares working together. Took me forever to get rid of them. It was 3am when I was done. Here's my workspace:

Then I went to bed. By the way, what do you think of the larger images? Do you think i should stick to keeping it smaller or leaving it like this? If I don't get any responses, I might go with smaller since this overflows into the right bar.

Headphones

I went to work out after work today. You know, I hope one day I'll be so in shape that I don't have to tell people I work out but will know I work out after looking at me. Well, till that day comes I'll be saying it again and again. So I notice everyone has their headphones in their ear and even the TVs have an FM frequency you can tune into to listen to TV. I want a radio too.. and my phone has that ability except I was missing the headset. So after my work out I drove to Pacific Mall to go pick up some fakes. I figure that I might get ripped off a bit but the internet isn't any cheaper. On the telus web site they're selling for $44.99 for the HS-3 fashion headset:

But I don't really need the fashion ones if I can make due with the regular ones. I found the fashion ones on the net for $2.99USD but with 13USD shipping so that comes out to $21CDN and the seller won't even reply to tell me if they're OEM (real) or fakes. Then there's the regular ones that cost $8.99USD with $11 shipping. Which also makes it the same price as the fashion ones.

I didn't want to worry about it getting to me and worry about customs and Canada Post handling fee. Might as well try pmall. So I go around to all the big stores that sell only cell phone accessories near the window facing Kennedy. Nothing. The mall is already closing and many shops have already closed to I walk quickly to get to the windowless side where the shops are smaller and there's the 2 cell phone shops. I found a shop that was open and sold accessories. I don't see any for my Nokia. I ask the store clerk who was just done talking on the phone and now talking to his friend. So I ask him "Do you have any Nokia pop-port stereo headsets" while pointing at my cell phone bottom and then gesturing headphones by pointing at my ears. He searchs around his side of the table and pull out HDS-3! I ask him if it has radio and it points at the base and says it does. I pay him cash and quickly walk out. Trying them on my phone, it works! Too bad can't get any radio signals in there. So I try a few of my music videos on my phone and they work. So happy. So here they are on my phone:

Maybe someday in the future I'll be able to buy the fashion ones and get a bigger MMC card for my phone to store more MP3s and videos. Maybe an ADP 512MB-1GB or KingMax 512MB-1GB. Need to go shopping less now. I'm glad we have pmall. I don't know where I'd go with out it. We wouldn't have Canada Computers, all that food, and cute gifts for girls.

Just Work

I'm at work SO late these days. I'm starting to think that if I don't take a picture of work, I won't have anything left to take a picture of for the Monday to Friday week. Well here's one of the few pictures I'm going to take of work:

Notice how there's no cars? No... it's not because I parked at the furtherest parking spot. It's because everyone has already left the office. Well... I did work out after work. It was great. Did 20 minutes ellipical and burned off 263 calories. Also did my usual circuit of machines and light floor work.

Pentium 3 for Sale

Nothing much has happened in the last few days. Been busy with either work, umm... work? oh yeah and working out. Did some catching up today and I'm trying to sell my Pentium 3 computer w/ scanner:

Specs are:

Intel Pentium 3 @ 500MHz

15 inch .28 Daytek SVGA Monitor

128MB SDRAM DIMMs @ 100MHz

13GB ATA/66 Quantum IDE Hard Drive

32MB ATI Fury Graphics Card with TV OUT!!

5X DVD/CD-ROM Drive Creative Labs

8x4 CD-Writer Panasonic IDE

Panasonic 3.5inch 1.44M Floppy

Motorola internal 56K Voice Modem

Sound Blaster Live Value Sound Card

UMAX 1220S Scanner capable of scanning legal sized paper

Logitech Keyboard and Mouse

QDI 440BX Motherboard

250W ATX Power Supply

If you're interested, send me an email to soul_with_heart [at] hotmail.com. That email address has served me so long. I'm always wanting to change it but email addresses are so stickly. But if I never change it, it'll be stuck forever.

Volunteering

Yesterday I went to the Bell Call Centre around Scarborough Town Centre to volunteer for the Canadians for Tsunami Relief. This is the lunch area where we waited and received training:

There was a little model of the Bell Call Centre too:

After that it was off to lunch at Scarborough Town for lunch. We passed by the EB store and I saw this:

So cool! Have you planned Halo 2 yet?
My sis picked me up after lunch and got me this from Mc Donald's:

It was one of those new toasted sandwiches from Mc Donald's. This was the turkey one. I had it when I was at work later that day. It was alright but not something I'd get regularly.

Slippery Day

Another snowfall, another slippery day on the roads. Nothing special happened today so I just took a picture from my car:

Traffic wasn't too bad so I got to work at the same normal time and got home as quickly as usual.

Improved Images

Today was the first day back to work for me since before Christmas. My phone also came in today as well, the Nokia 6230b:

I don't think a lot of people reading this share the same enthusiasm as I do for this phone.
Well, there is at least some good for you. You get improved image quality compared to what I had before. Take a look at these following pics.
Taken with the T616:

This was taken with the Nokia 6230b:

The image above was reduced in size for better comparison.

Even More Shopping

If you thought our shopping adventure was over then you're wrong. After that we went to another mall:

This mall doesn't look that nice but I think my blurry pictures and tricky angles make it look nice. This was the Boulevard Mall just a few minutes drive from the Rainbow Bridge. There wasn't much to see but it did look nice:

After that, it was already 7 something so we crossed the border into Canada to have dinner. There wasn't any hassle since we kept below the allowable.
Here's some clues at where we were having dinner:

Can you guess? Here's the actual sign of the place:

It's at the Niagara Casino! Yeah... it was sad. We spent a lot of money on shopping, we have to win our dinner. Just kidding, this place had a $20 buffet. It was a 1h long line up so it better be good. This is a picture of the floor as I waited:

It isn't as confusing and dizzy looking like the ones in Las Vegas. I read that they make it dizzying so you would not look down. Of course you then see the blinking casino lights and that's suppose to draw you in. Anyways, it didn't have any effect on me since I could use coins in my pocket to play. I had to convert them to tokens. Back to food. Once we got in, there were a lot of seats empty and the waitress was nice. They had yummy roast beef, alaska crab legs, shrimp, hmmm... that's all I remember as tasting good. Not much veggies so it's a guy kind of buffet.
I drove back through a hard rain storm. It was very tiring but we did it in 1.25h.