i met my parents for lunch today at a restaurant called "fire and ice" up in markham on hwy
7 west of woodbine. it's similar to the mongolian grill in waterloo, only better! the way
it works is this: there's a grill in the center of the restaurant where they do all the
cooking. first, you select a combination of meats from the menu. then, you pick your
vegetables and sauce at the counter, put it on a plate, and give it to a chef. then the
chefs at the grill cook your order for you! it's better than the mongolian grill because
this place cooks your veggies and meats separately, which is important because they have
different cooking times. at mongolian they throw everything into one big pile, which means that
everything gets charred while the chicken is still cooking. the downside of fire and ice
is that there is no all-you-can-eat special, which i'm sure will disappoint stu and the
rest of the waterloo carnivores.
anyways, i ordered
the manager's special, which had steak, shrimps and scallops in it, and it was great! for
$15 i had so much food (hey, it takes a lot of skill to cram the maximum possible
amount of noodles and veggies into
one plate) that i took the leftovers home and had enough for dinner. i'll be back.
on another note, i was thinking of how i nearly got sent to detroit by my group leader last
week ... which reminded me of a hilarious scene from the infamous
kentucky fried movie.
click here for the priceless sound clip ...
no! not detroit! anything but that! nooooooo ...
yesterday we celebrated jennifer's b-day by going to shoeless joe's sports bar
at hwy 404 and hwy 7 in richmond hill. on tuesdays they have a 2-for-1 deal for chicken
wings, so when you order 16 wings, you actually get 32 for the same price! we wound up
eating nothing but wings ... my favourite flavour was the southern bbq flavour, which had
a nice cajun taste to it. for some reason the taste reminded me of the wings at the
honest lawyer bar/pub on dundas st in london, where keith and i went occasionally to
watch monday night football in fall 2002.
the funniest part of the night was when winston pulled out the gift we brought for jennifer.
winston told everyone it was a keychain ... but it was actually a musicbox! whoops!
i noticed i hadn't written anything for 9 days. time really seems to fly by quickly.
i spent some time this past week trying out my new digital camera ... the pics really
look great! unfortunately i'm getting near my 10mb quota, so i can't upload any more
pics to my website.
yesterday after mandarin class, elisa and i went to practice mandarin at a food court
on silver star blvd. i've passed by that plaza a few times before, but i never knew
there was a food court in there! the nice thing was that it was pretty quiet in there
even during the peak afternoon hours, and we were able to sit there as long as we
wanted. anyways, we got a lot of practice in, even though
we got distracted and started chatting after awhile ...
we then met up with the waterloo crowd for korean barbecue for dinner. keith brought
gavin along, who i hadn't seen in about 4 years. it seemed like poor gavin had been
stuck in waterloo forever working on his comp sci / bio double major, but he's finally done and
he's now working at a downtown hospital as a genetic engineer, which sounds like a
really neat job. stu came alone this time (his trusty waterloo sidekicks couldn't make
it), but he still managed to eat a ton of food. good old stu ... he's truly one-of-a-kind.
hmm ... jennifer's b-day celebration is on tuesday, that should be fun. happy birthday
jennifer, and make sure to wear your seatbelt at all times! (to everyone else:
watch out for the maniac in the white corolla/blue matrix)
after all the events that occurred over the past two weeks, it'll be nice to have a sunday
where i can finally get some sleep.
unfortunately, our planned trip to vegas in april fell through because francis (a friend
in los angeles who was going to meet us in vegas) didn't have enough vacation days left, plus
he already had plans to host another friend during late april. so, vince and i are turning
to plan b, which is to spend a weekend in new york city. let's hope plan b works out.
and yes, i'm still in the midst of reading goedel, escher, bach. i've finally reached
the halfway point of the book. it'll probably be summertime when i finally finish the whole
thing.
yet another busy weekend. i spent it with my fellow hart house singers at the
hart house farm, which is a small house (kinda like an old-style farmhouse, or cabin)
way up northwest of toronto! sadly, the bus departed at 10am, which meant yet another
early weekend morning. we ate, had workshops, ate, played games, watched movies,
and ate some more. and even after all that eating there was still too much food left!
on saturday night we watched the movie run lola run, which i had heard about
many times before and had never had the chance to watch. i really enjoyed the subtle
differences between the three "variations" played out by the film, and seeing how
each of the differences in the variations led to the different endings. note to self:
start watching more arthouse movies and quit watching the garbage from hollywood.
once again i forgot to bring something important. in this case, it was a sleeping bag. i had to
sleep on a rock-hard mattress, without a blanket, in a cold room. even though i turned
in around 2am, i couldn't sleep and was curled up in a fetal position due to the cold.
i don't know what time i finally managed to fall asleep but the sky was getting bright.
when everybody else woke up at 9am i was forced to get up too, stumbling around in
a blind haze.
other than the fact that i got virtually no sleep on saturday night, i really enjoyed myself
and i would like to thank the organizers for putting everything together for the rest of us.
when i finally got back to toronto i got one other piece of business out of the way
before getting some sleep. i went to futureshop and bought a digital camera that i had
been eyeing for the past few weeks, and it was on sale too! now i am no longer cameraless
but i will be down a whole pile of $$$ after the memory card, batteries and taxes are
factored in. oh well, i suppose that's what income tax refunds are for.
i slept at 9:30pm last night. outside of sundry
events like air travel and all-nighter sessions at university, i can't remember the last
time i went to bed that early ...
i've been typing so much regarding my go tournament that i'm going to make today's entry
brief. yesterday evening, ciro and i went to the tso at roy thomson hall to see itzhak
perlman conduct music by mozart and schubert (whoa, 2 concerts in 4 days! yes this has
been an extremely busy week for me.) the tickets were only $10 and the performance was excellent.
if you're under 30, love classical music and want cheap concert tickets, visit
tsoundcheck asap!
surprise!
my day yesterday didn't end with the go tournament. i drove downtown afterwards, to the
cbc studios on front st, for the schafer music festival at 7:30pm. (the hart house singers
sold tickets to the festival for $11.50, which was a very reasonable price.)
now, i'm not a fan of modern music (i.e., stuff written after 1900), so i didn't have very
high expectations. however, i was pleasantly surprised by the music before the intermission.
after the intermission, we were presented with the worldwide premiere of a new work by
mr. schafer, called "the fall into light". i'm sorry, but i did not like this work at all.
it was representative of just about everything i hate about modern music, and worst of all,
the piece lasted over an hour. at the end, naturally, mr. schafer received a
prolonged standing ovation from the crowd.
at work today, willem showed me something that scarred me for life.
before he left work last friday evening, he took a two-week old
french fry from wendy's (please don't ask me how he acquired the "specimen"; all i will say is that
i was involved somehow) and he placed the fry on top of three thick napkins, which he left
untouched over the weekend. he showed me the
fry today, and there was a HUGE spot of grease surrounding the two-week-old fry. in fact,
there was so much grease that the grease soaked through all three napkins and came in contact
with the plastic bag beneath the napkins.
i don't know about you, but for a two-week-old fry to have THAT much grease in it is just ...
well, it's disgusting, that's what it is. i don't think i'm ever going to eat french fries again.
24 Mar 2004
happy b-day jennifer!
21 Mar 2004
getting lazy ...
12 Mar 2004
a well-deserved break
08 Mar 2004
the hart house farm
04 Mar 2004
tsoundcheck
01 Mar 2004
schafer festival and the "french fry"
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