Lau-d & Proud

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

LEE

Went to LEE Restaurant with Jared for our anniversary recently. This was the second time we went there. LEE can be best described as Asian fusion. Normally I have a strong repulsion against Asian fusion because I grew up with Asian food being prepared the way they are meant to be cooked and served.

When Jared suggested LEE I was a bit reluctant so we read numerous reviews on the www. Interestingly all reviews were mixed with extreme praise and extreme criticism. We decided to be the judge ourselves and I was pleasantly surprised (both times) with the quality and flavour of the dishes they serve. We have tried about 7 dishes from LEE so far and I liked most of them. One particular dish did not suit my Chinese palate but that does not deter me from going back again.

If you decide to go, I highly recommend getting the Singaporean style slaw. It’s like a flavour explosion in your mouth.

My Ratings:

LEE is located on King St West (Bathurst) area in Toronto, Canada. Susur Lee is the chef and he also owns SUSUR which is a very high class restaurant right next door to LEE where normal people like me would have to spend half a paycheck on a single meal.

Into the Wild

[Possible spoiler in post]

I always enjoy “Based on a true story” movies, when I am in the mood for one that is. Into the Wild was a story well told. I watched the movie and thought it was really touching. I didn’t know anything about the story so I was deeply emotional about the ending. Yes, tissues were involved.
However, a piece of advice is before you watch the movie don’t go googling about it on the internet. Don’t read about Christopher McCandless’ life or news articles about his family. After the movie I went online to find out more about McCandless and I started to form an opinion about him which for sure would have tainted my reaction towards the movie.

My Rating:

Earth Hour (Photos)

Like millions of people around the world, I participated in Earth Hour 08. I turned off my lights, my computer, my heat and went for a walk in downtown Toronto. I didn’t expect the whole city to be blacked out (like a few summers ago with the power outage) but places like Eaton Centre, Yonge & Dundas area, and City Hall did turn off their lights, while a lot of the buildings in the financial district didn’t seem to care much about wasteful energy consumption.

City TV also hosted an acoustic concert with Nelly Furtado at City Hall so I checked it out for a little before the cold got too unpleasant.

Anyway, took some pictures when the lights went off. I didn’t know how to use my camera properly so the pictures turned out a bit brighter than it really was. Oops.

Magnetic Poetry (updated)

New content added to Magnetic Poetry. I should quit my day job.

Ride for Heart

On Sunday, June 1^st, 2008 I will be cycling with my friends and co-workers along the DVP and Gardiner Expressway and help generate funds to support life saving heart and stroke research.

The money you donate will help the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario continue to fund world-class research resulting in medical advances, social change and education that will prevent and reduce death and disability from heart disease and stroke.

Please help me reach my fundraising goal. I am almost there!

Please Donate

Earth Hour 2008

In case you haven’t heard already, Earth Hour is March 29. Turn off your lights for one hour at 8pm this Saturday.

Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference.

Visit www.earthhour.org or other Earth Hour related sites for more information.

Participate. Make a difference.