Lau-d & Proud

Short Lived

Note the bootlegged DVDs.  Pacific Mall you rock!

What’s for dinner Ma?

aka. Pig Tongues

$5 to save a child

I am going to riding for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation this coming Friday and all I am asking for is $5, mostly because I am only going to be riding a stationary bike for 8 minutes.  But every dollar & minute counts!

$5, you help save a child some day.  Do it for the children, do it here.

Doesn’t this remind you of the World Vision/Amanesty International commercials where they show you sad little children staring at you with their puppy eyes?  And yes, I am hoping to guilt you into donating.  Is it working?

Movie Crazy

With the new AMC Yonge & Dundas opened, Jared & I went on a movie craze this Summer.

The Dark Knight

Saw it in IMAX. Awesome movie. Heath Ledger being the Joker totally made the movie. Definitely one of those movies that I would pay to watch it again in the theater.



The Forbidden Kingdom

I actually didn’t enjoy the movie much. The plot was based on a traditional Chinese fairytale but it wasn’t believable to me. Maybe it’s because I am Chinese and I knew the story. And I didn’t like the white guy as the main character. Seemed so out of place. The fight scene between Jackie Chan and Jet Li also left me unsatisfied. The movie could use more action and fights.

Get Smart

Couldn’t say much about this movie. It was not that it was bad. It’s got some funny parts but they seemed forced to fit in the movie. I really like Steve Carell though. He’s one of those subtly funny guy that even with just simple facial expression would make you laugh. He’s hilarious in The Office, which you should ALL watch btw.

Hancock

Entertaining. Well at least I thought so. Jared was ready to leave in the middle of the movie. Unexpected plot line was not revealed in the trailer. Worth to watch but not worth a movie ticket.



HellBoy II: The Golden Army

I liked it but Jared didn’t. However we did agree on one thing: it was better than the first. I really like how the creatures looked. If you’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth you can totally tell that it was the same guy who created the creatures in both movies. Predictable plot but really, who’s going to watch HellBoy and expected to be blown away by the plot line?

Iron Man

A good action movie. The CGI of how Iron man was built was really well done. Robert Downie Jr. totally fits the character as Iron man. The jokes were cheesy, and the fight scenes were believable (as far as DC comic action goes). Good rental if you have a good sound system.



The Love Guru

It’s got a really poor rating on imdb. So Jared & I decided that we must watch it to see how bad it really is, and it turned out to be quite funny! I think because the movie centers around the Toronto Maple Leafs with a Bollywood style to it that only Canadians (may even be Torontonians specifically) can relate & appreciate the humor. Mike Mryer’s got some really silly tongue-in-cheek puns that leaves you going “huh?” for a few seconds before “Ooohhh HA that’s funny”. It’s a good feel-silly light movie to watch.

Pineapple Express

Two guys high on dope, running away from drug lords and cops. It’s like Harold & Kumar but better. More action. More funnies. More stupids. No I didn’t smoke up before I watched the movie and it was still funny as hell. I am sure it could only get better if you WERE high. *I do not support smoking illegal substance under any circumstances* Where are those brownies?!?!



Sex and the City

Enjoyed it throughly. I watched it with Shirley whom had never followed the TV series. Clearly she did not enjoy it as much as I did. It’s got all the sassy personalities of all four girls plus more. It felt more like a Sex and the City extended 2 hour episode than a movie, one of the really good episodes of course.

Tropic Thunder

It wasn’t that the movie didn’t have funny parts, but with the cast this big, supposedly full of funny actors, I was really hoping for more. Majority of the movie was only mildly funny and didn’t have that laugh-till-you-cry effect. There was only a single scene in the entire movie that had such effect. One. Some parts even made me feel uncomfortable actually (the office dancing scene if you’ve seen the movie)

Wall-E

Such a cute movie! Okay, I might be a little bias because I like animated movies in general. But I really liked how Disney has created the Wall-e character. Since Wall-e doesn’t really speak, all emotions were expressed through the robotic movements of his eyes and hands and I must say, it was perfectly done. The same goes for Eve too. The way Wall-e communicate and interacts with Eve was absolutely adorable. No words. Just gestures & expressions. Pixar has done an excellent job with the animation. The only thing I didn’t enjoy as much was when the humans started getting involved. It did not have the same moving and touching plot line as the lonely earthbound Wall-E or the bonding of Wall-E & Eve.

Future Shop? Future Scam!

Recently Jared bought a PS3, and my contribution was to get Rock Band.

So I went to future shop.  PS3 Rock Band selling for $169 on a huge price sign.  Since everywhere else was selling for the same price, I was going to just take it to the cashier.  Then I saw a flyer laying around, so I mindlessly flipped through it and saw that Rock Band was actually on sale for $159!  Wow.  I needed to make sure so I asked a dude who works there.

“Is this the same Rock Band that’s on sale?”

“Yep.”

“So how come you guys didn’t change the price sign?”

“Oh we don’t update the sign if it’s only on sale for a week.”

I just thought that was lazy of them and didn’t think much of it.  So I took the game, with the flyer, to the cashier.  She rang it in and guess what, it rang $169!

I showed her the flyer before she changed it back to the sales price.

What a scam!  If I hadn’t just happened to be checking out the flyer, I would have never known it was on sale and would have paid full price for it.  Future shop is totally banking on people’s ignorance of their sales and scamming for a few more bucks.  Such bullshit!

And I only found out afterwards that if they rang in the wrong price I was supposed to get 10% off the difference of the two prices, or something like that.

Sun, Water, Nature

It has been a busy Summer so far. I haven’t been able to post as many posts as I have hoped, so here’s a snippet (& lots of pics) of what I’ve been up to so far.

June 6: PD day at work turned into a scavenger hunt. We ended up at the Drake where each team had to create a bride (guy) & groom (girl) costume from toilet paper & tinfoil. After a few drinks at the Drake, Jared & I enjoyed our night at Medieval Times for dinner & tournament with his work friends.

June 14: Viking boat race + Wife carrying contest with my coworkers at Toronto Centre Island. I made it on TV! (see post below)

June 19 to 22: Camping at the Pinery with Jared & his work friends. We climbed the sand dunes, relaxed at the beach, built some giant bonfire, took some nice sunset pics, & ate tons of junk food. You can also view Jared’s pics.

June 29: Jared & I went to the Pride parade for some gay flaunting, colourful costumes, leather costumes, drag queens, half naked men, half naked women, completely naked men, completely naked half-men-half-women, just about anything you can imagine (or can’t in some cases)

July 1 to 7: Road trip to South Carolina with Jared, his bro & gf to visit his Mom. It took us 15 hours on the road to get there (Read on to see what happened to us at US customs). We spent a day at Charleston, went on a mule drawn carriage ride, checked out the nice ocean side walk, walked on the Cooper River Bridge at night.

The next day we drove down to Myrtle beach and spent a few nights there. The weather was hot & sunny. The sand was soft and the ocean was warm. Besides laying on the beach, we also went putt putting, nascar go carting, outlet mall shopping, and fired off some fireworks on the beach. Every night we hit up Sonic for slushies & cheesy tots. Yum. It was a good vacation spent with my Jared.

However, the south was sure quite backwards though, they use styrofoam cups, they don’t recycle, they speak with incomprehensible accents, and they are racist. After a 18 hour drive back (Read on to see what happened to us at customs… again) I was glad to be home.

July 15 Update: Jared has also uploaded his South Carolina photos.

And of course, I am still playing tons of ultimate frisbee. Go Panic!!!

I was on TV!

A couple of weeks ago I participated in the Viking Boat Race as part of my company corporate team on the Toronto Centre Island. Besides the actual viking boat race, one of the event was a Wife Carrying Contest and the winning team gets the wife’s weight in beer. CTV sent a news crew to film the race and I was filmed in action!! (And no, he is not my husband, just a co-worker)

Photos to come.

Bad referral? Good Publicity?

My site just got referred to by a search engine for “toilet bowl cam shitting”… I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing…

Busy Bee that is Me

Sorry haven’t been posting much lately. My life has been extremely demanding of my time this past months or so. The main reason is I have overloaded myself with sporting activities: 3 nights of ultimate + soccer + floor hockey + rowing 4 days a week. Sometime I even fit in some ultimate/floor hockey scrimmage on the weekend.

With the limited free time that I have left, I hang out with Jared, visit my parents, and see my friends. So the trade off is my house and my chores. My place is an absolute mess. The only chore I do these days is laundry only because I have no choice. Four sets of gym clothes a week can add up quickly.

Besides sports, my weekends have been quite busy also. Beginning of May I was in Kingston visiting Jared’s family. Had an awesome steak dinner at his Dad’s, and a delicious comfort-food dinner at his Grandparent’s. Jared also got himself a digital SLR in Kingston which has become his new mistress and he has been showing her off.

This past weekend I participated in the Ride for Heart 50km bike ride. Thanks to constant pestering of friends and co-workers I was able to reach my fundraising goal of $300! The ride was exhausting for two reasons: 1) I have a shitty bike that weighs like a ton (not counting the bike lock that was mounted on my bike during the ride) 2) I did not have a chance to train at all before the ride. I tried to take my bike out last weekend but that’s when I found out that my bike was missing. I had locked it to my condo’s bike rack “illegally” (I did not rent the space). I got my bike back from the management’s office just the day before the ride and Jared was able to do a 10 minute quick tune up on it. Overall it was a fun ride, chatting with my friends and taking breaks for water & fruits & pictures.

Note: I have added a “Gallery News Lau” section on the sidebar that I will update when I add new photos to my Gallery. In order to satisfy my need of segregation I have uploaded all work related photos to my Picasa album instead.

Condo Bonfire

A few days ago I decided to clean up my stack of personal documents and throw away the ones that I no longer need. Realizing that I have given my parents my paper shredder, and me being too lazy to cut them up with scissors, I felt that I have exhausted all options to destroy these personal documents but one: Burn them.

Found a stainless steel cooking bowl. Placed it on the floor on top of a hand towel in my bathroom. Closed the bathroom door. Turned on the fan. Took the top section of my Swiffer swiper handle to use as a stir stick. Lit the papers with a lighter and threw them into the bowl. What could possibly go wrong?

A few minutes of the paper burning and me stirring up the now burning ashes, smoke started filling up the bathroom. The fan wasn’t doing much and I was starting to have difficulty breathing.

“So that’s what it feels like trapped in a fire…”

I opened the bathroom door to let the smoke out. 30 seconds later my smoke alarm went off.

“Shit! I can’t leave the burning paper unattended, but that damn alarm must be silenced before the concierge calls the fire station…”

I ran out of the bathroom and picked up a file folder and fanned it under the smoke detector until it went back to normal. Ran back to the bathroom to attend the fire. Alarm went off again. [Repeat]

After a few times running back and forth, my entire 500 sq ft condo was covered in a thin layer of smoke. The papers finally finished burning. Time to clean up. What else would go wrong really. Poured water into the still piping hot steel bowl and it sizzled with smoke and ashes everywhere. Great. Picked up the bowl and almost burnt my fingers. My floor towel now had a big black burnt mark in the middle.

“Whew. Good thing I remembered to put it on a towel. At least it didn’t burn my floor.”

Poured the ashy sludge down the toilet. Flushed. My toilet bowl was now black and grey covered in ashes. Who knew that sludge doesn’t flush down easily? No biggie. Used some Lysol and toilet’s back to being white and disinfected.

“I should wash the burn marks off my hand towel.”

Turns out you can’t “wash” burnt marks. The burnt area of my towel started falling apart. Now it’s got a big hole in it.

“Oh but it’s such a nice towel. I should save it.”

So I cut the burnt side of the towel and threw it in the washer. Went back to the bathroom and took a look of my bowl and it was all burnt and black. Inside and out.

*Sigh* “I will wash it tomorrow or something.”

My condo smelled like a camp site. The smelled seeped into my towels, my clothes, my hair, my walls.

Three days now and I can still smell it. I have been burning a large amount of candles trying desperately to get rid of the smell.

Last night I burnt so many scented candles and scented oil that it smelled like the perfume aisles in Sears where you felt suffocated. I really don’t know what’s better; the overpowering scented candles, or the ashy smoke smell in the walls.

Moral of the story? Condo + Bonfire = BAD IDEA