Babies

I love babies because when my professors' wives give birth to them my classes get cancelled . Here's to sleeping in tomorrow in lieu of attending my weekly early morning class on protein structures!

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Power

To commemorate the one year anniversary of the blackout from last January, I turned off all my lights in my room for a few hours this evening. I turned them back on at around 7:30, the time power came back exactly a year ago today. This time around I didn't do any knitting, but I was a lot warmer.

I might make this lights-off ceremony an annual event from now on.

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P.S.
CBC is calling a Conservative minority government.

Size does matter

I had a few hours to kill after dinner this evening, so I went for a stroll in the Eaton Centre down the street from where I live. The last time I was there was during the frenzied holiday shopping season when crazed shoppers jammed every free square foot of space at the mall. This time, however, that sea of humanity has been replaced by a forest of 'Sale' placards outside every store. A healthy love of price reductions has, of course, been deeply ingrained in me through generations of careful Chinese upbringing. Unfortunately, this same Chinese heritage also means that I do not possess the physical dimensions required to take advantage of most of the sales items which were available only in XL and XXL sizes. I guess it pays to be fat amply fleshed out.



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Those who can't, teach

After a five week haitus from helping with the ESL class after service, I returned yesterday afternoon to a much more crowded classroom. It's such an encouragement to see new students and volunteers!

For the most part, I find that I'm as much a learner as I am a teacher when I interact with the students. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to explain certain phrases and concepts in Chinese. One especially keen student jots down phrases she hears on soap operas during the week and brings them to class to have them explained to her on Sundays. Some of these are quite shocking, like the phrase "I had Jason attacked!", while others, like "That's ironic" are impossibly difficult to explain in Chinese--Alanis Morisette had to write an entire song to explain that one to me in English, and even then she got it absolutely wrong.

Despite the occasional embarrassing moments when I realize I can't explain every English word or idiom, I encourage everyone with some free time after service to stop by and help out. It's such a rewarding experience to meet interesting people with a desire to learn a new language, while showing them God's love through both short scripture verses and by lending a helping hand. Plus you get to see Ju explain to her students that C-U-P spells Thermos...hehe just kidding Ju, you were great!!!!!


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My pet rock

Last night, Tiff and I decided to split a dish of snails at Eon, the neighbourhood Chinese restaurant. The whole exercise of digging snail meat out of the shell with a small wooden stick made the going slow, but I nevertheless found the dish quite tasty. But about 3/4 of the way through the dish, I noticed that one of the snails I had in my mouth was slightly different from the others. For starters, this little freak of nature lacked any opening for the wooden extraction utensil. With a bit more exploration, I noticed that its shell also had a noticeably different texture than the others. Finally, I took the snail out of my mouth and told Tiff that it tasted like a rock. Anyways, to make a long story short (and to save me from further embarrassment), let me just tell you that it really was a rock. In my defense, every single snail was coated in a thick layer of sauce to mask the inherent tastelessness of snails, and this rock, which was shaped deceptively like a snail, at first tasted no different than the other snails. It was an honest mistake. Seriously.

In any case, I washed off the rock in tea, and now I have a pet rock on my desk named Oscar.


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Fort

Inspired by the cloyingly sweet images at cuteoverload.com, I've decided to post up this gem of Bunchkin in the midst of building a luxurious fort on his favorite king-sized bed with three deliciously fluffy pillows and an oversized down comforter covered in cozy flannel.

You know, I think I'm going to stop making my bed for a while...for the bunny's sake.


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This blog is still up

Just a quick note to remind those who have lost faith in this blog that I am still in business :-)

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