Pre-traveling Rush

I’ve been run­ning for two weeks. Metaphor­i­cally of course—I don’t have time to run unless it’s after the bus.
It was to be expected: the pre-traveling rush is always intense. I had to wrap up work projects, pre­pare for the fact we are leav­ing for seven weeks and in between, keep up with the usual stuff such as gro­cery shop­ping and sleeping.

Welcome To The Jungle

I’m still a travel junkie. I’m afraid there is no cure for it.
On Decem­ber 14, Feng and I will land in Can­cún, Mex­ico, for seven weeks of travel. As usual, we have no defined travel plans. We will go wher­ever the chicken buses will take us.
Fol­low us on the road… Wel­come to the jungle!

Seven Things About Me

A while ago, Nigel tagged me for the pop­u­lar Seven Things About Me meme. I com­pleted it twice in the past, but the last time was in April 2008—so I fig­ured I was due for a newer version.

How I Gained (and Lost) Weight in Canada

Alright, I was never 500 pounds nei­ther I am 100 pounds today. I’m aver­age. I’ve never been described as “skinny” or “thin” but again, at 5’7, I’m not a tiny lit­tle thing so I’m not aim­ing for that. My weight hasn’t changed in the past three years and I’m about the same as when I came to Canada in 2004.
But mov­ing to Canada played havoc with my body, espe­cially in the first few years.

The United Nations At Home

Some­times, when I look at my reflec­tion in the mir­ror, I’m almost sur­prised to see that, indeed, I have a big nose and dark eyes that are much too wide to be mis­taken for most Asians’ almond-shaped eyes. I’m almost about twenty inches too tall and forty pounds too heavy to be your aver­age Asian woman. I guess I’m not Chinese.

Picture of the Week: Winnie-the-Pooh Characters

When I was a kid in France, I remem­ber Winnie-the-Pooh (or rather “Win­nie l’ourson” en français) being pop­u­lar. I think I even had a vinyl record of tales with Win­nie char­ac­ters that my par­ents played on thep­hono­graph. Yes, vinyl record. France wasn’t very mod­ern in the 1980s.

Picture of the Week: The House of Paint

A few weeks ago, I saw a call for entry on OttawaStart’s Twit­ter feed. Pho­tog­ra­phers were invited to sub­mit their view of Ottawa, explor­ing the city’s grit­tier side. Pho­tographs would then be exhib­ited at the Ottawa CONNECT — Art and Pho­tog­ra­phy Exhibit.

Little quirks

We all have lit­tle quirks. I know I have a few. Okay, maybe more than a few.
For instance, I enjoy eat­ing with chop­sticks because I don’t like the metal­lic taste some forks and spoons leave. Besides, chop­sticks are eas­ier to wash. And being able to eat any­thing with 筷子 (“kuàizi”, the Chi­nese word for them) (includ­ing cake and small grains of rice) is always a good life skill to have.

A Weekend Offline

We called Bell. Tech­ni­cal sup­port said there were issues in our area and that it would be solved with­out two to twenty-four hours. “Twenty-four hours like… like a day?” we shrieked. “What are we going to do? Talk to each other? Play board games? Clean the house? Make babies?”

Oui, I hablo Spanish!

A lit­tle while ago, Guillermo, my good blog friend and fel­low immi­grant in Ottawa, asked me if he could inter­view me. “No wor­ries!” I replied—hey, who doesn’t like being interviewed?

“The inter­view would be in Span­ish” he quickly added. See, Guillermo and is fam­ily are from Argentina and even though I know for sure he speaks Eng­lish flu­ently, the inter­view was for his Span­ish blog.

“Well, sure” I replied, men­tally review­ing who could edit my Span­ish replies.

“Oh, and it’s a recorded inter­view” he finally added.