Things I Love Thursday

Posted on 24 February 2011 | 3 comments

Every Thursday, I like to post a list of things I’ve been loving lately, as started by Gala Darling. It’s an exercise in cultivating happiness that I enjoy doing.

♥ My brother gave me the complete set of Fawlty Towers DVDs (one of my favourite series!) and a new iPod Touch for my (very early) birthday present! I am spoiled.

♥ Favourite applications so far: WhatsApp and Words with Friends. It is amazing to be able to connect with friends in Hong Kong again.

♥ My tortillas de patatas are getting increasing excellent.

♥ Notebooks, the paper kind. I like to think by writing and have an assortment of notebooks I’ve journalled in over the years. My current one is black with multi-coloured peace signs all over it.

♥ The glorious black sesame gelato from Bella Gelataria — heck, I’ll warrant that any of their flavours are glorious! A friend brought me there for the first time this week and I cannot wait for summer to come and to try their gelato frappes.

♥ Meeting a friend’s adorable furball of a tiny Pomeranian who was all excitement and delight to see so many people to play with.

♥ This isn’t the best quality, but one of my favourite music videos is ‘WINDING ROAD’ by ayaka and Kobukuro. I love it when people are passionate.

♥ Speaking of passion, this has got to be the best cake a six-year-old Angry Birds fan could get:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hwVRzaQNkA]

3 Comments

Posted in Things I Love Thursday

Reading Week? What is this ‘reading’ you speak of?

Posted on 19 February 2011 | 2 comments

Give Pause

Let’s see… in all the years I’ve been at UBC, what have I done with my Reading Breaks?

2008: Participated in the UBC Learning Exchange Reading Week Project, which I highly recommend doing at least once in your time here.

2009: Jet-set across Canada to visit my UofT friends. I think we actually did study together one day of that week, so that counts as having done my reading, no?

2010, AKA the two-week Olympics break: Flew to New York for the first week to visit my friend there and came back the second week with the intention of getting all my homework done, but not doing any of it at all. I think I was watching the Olympics and just lazing about. I really should have just stayed in New York that second week as well.

2011: Went skiing for the first weekend (which doesn’t really count as Reading Week), went to work for the first half of the week, and developed mysterious food allergies in the second half of the week. My hives were horrendous, and neither the doctor nor I have any clue what could be causing them, since I haven’t done or eaten anything new. Am currently on antihistamines that are the equivalent of sleeping pills, my friends tell me. I’ve been trying valiantly to do some of my readings, but I can’t honestly tell you how effective this is.

Lesson learned (all too late)? Just take a break from school and don’t give myself the extra guilt of ‘I should be doing reading’. Old habits die hard; it’ll never happen. Clearly the hives are Nature’s way of enforcing this ban on reading upon me.

(In other news, I just started a new blog keeping track of a whole other kind of reading.)

2 Comments

Posted in Academic, Involvement / Leadership, Recreation

61. Go skiing

Posted on 18 February 2011 | 1 comment
Sun Peaks ski slopes

Sun Peaks

Standing on the edge of the ski slope, I wondered how on earth I’d forgotten that I have a fear of heights. Maybe because I hardly ever put myself in situations which activate that particular tremor?

Welcome to Sun Peaks, site of my first skiing experience last Saturday. Living in Vancouver is a funny thing, because we don’t get winters like the rest of Canada, and it was also the first time I’d seen so much snow. Looking back, I wish I’d made snow angels, but my mind was on something entirely different that day.

Next to me, a child slid gracefully down the kiddy slope, her arms relaxed by her sides, her hands empty of the poles I was clutching onto, as if skiing came as easily to her as breathing.

Take a deep breath, I told myself. Just go.

I went — too far left. Woah, that’s a steep drop coming right ahead of me and OH MY GOD FALL FALL FALL BEFORE YOU SHOOT OFF IT!

It’s a good thing that I am all for falling to my side in order to stop, if I can’t stop myself properly in time. Which was almost always.

Nope, I was not taking that T-bar up the actual bunny hill any time soon. I was going to stick to the kiddy slope for as long as I wanted — which was pretty much the whole day, but I got brave enough to do the whole run by the end of the day. I’m pleased about that, even if I did have to fall a couple more times on the way down.

But hey, I learned how to put my skis on and off, and how to slow down and actually stop (sometimes). It’s all about the baby steps.

And I got to tick another item off my Day Zero list as well.

1 Comment

Posted in Day Zero, Recreation

Things I Love Thursday

Posted on 17 February 2011 | 2 comments

Is everyone enjoying their Reading Break? I am! Because of:

♥ Sleeping in for the first time since I can’t even remember when. Granted, I only went to bed at 3:30 am, but that was because I was:

♥ Chatting with my ‘twin’ back home in Hong Kong and sharing all our trials and tribulations. I love my Hong Kong VoIP phone!

♥ Waking up to a shining sun, yay yay yay!

♥ Going skiing for the first time at Sun Peaks. More on that later!

♥ Having a delightful Valentine’s brunch with my volunteers at Tomato Fresh Food Cafe.

♥ Successfully altering an evening dress I picked up months and months ago for the excellent deal of $10, all by myself, without taking hours, like I thought it would.

♥ Taking funny group pictures with one of my best friends for her grad photos. (Lovely ladies in fine dresses flexing their biceps is a pretty good example of what it was like.)

♥ Meeting fantastic friends of friends!

♥ Having a fajita dinner at a friend’s place. I love living in res and being able to just walk over to where my friends are, rather than living off-campus where hardly anyone was around.

♥ Speaking of which, that soy meat we had last night really tasted like meat. Glad to know the world has improved at making fake meat since the first time I tried it ten years ago.

♥ Lastly, this video! Try working out what the title means in relation to the rest of it. If you want a hint, take a look in the comments section. Have fun!

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/13768695]

2 Comments

Posted in Things I Love Thursday

Things I Love Thursday

Posted on 10 February 2011 | 1 comment

Late this evening because I’ve been so caught up in everything, but am pleased to report that life is looking up! For all of these reasons:

♥ This is a little old, but it’s adorable and cracks me up every single time.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9eL3ejXmE]

♥ A friend of mine recently introduced me to the glories of apple smeared with peanut butter, and I have a newfound appreciation for the fruit I once described as ‘boring’.

♥ After weeks of banging my brain against my own intellectual walls, and with some guidance from my thesis supervisor, I’ve finally handed in my prospectus and know what I’m doing!

♥ One of my best friends here has been feeding me lately with soup and scones. Deeee-li-cious, and oh-so-time-saving!

♥ I realised I can say ‘I love you’ in six languages: English, Old English, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, and h@n’q’@min’@m’. Two-thirds of these languages are not widely spoken (okay, Anglo-Saxon is really not spoken at all these days), but I am still all excitement.

♥ I’m going skiing for the first time this weekend!

♥ Today I pet a cat with a stubby tail! My classmate told me this is a Manx.

♥ Are you excited for Reading Week? I AM. Even though I have to work and have a ridiculous amount of work to do this year and have thus turned down almost all social invitations, I am still so pleased at the prospect of adequate sleep!

To which I am now headed for. Goodnight, my friends!

1 Comment

Posted in Things I Love Thursday