Welcome to the year of the Horse. I literally woke up with a cold….fun! Now, officially sick. I thought I was going able to press it down but didn’t work. I’m always sick at the wrong time … usually during the busy work period that I can’t take sick days off. Well, this is not going to stop me from eating the yummy Chinese food for the celebration. I will worry about that later.
Happy new year. May the year be prosperous and healthy and happiness.
Sigh… I’ve been working day and night shifts this entire month, weekends to get these Q3 numbers finalized and reports to the Ministry. 3 different Companies, 3 sets of books, 3 set of reports, all due on the same day. What did I get myself into?? It just sucks that my friends overseas are enjoying their week long Chinese new year holiday and I’m slaving away working OT to meet the deadlines. Clearly, those who set the deadlines dates are not Asians! It will be another long working weekend. 😦
Nothing better than some hot tofu soup on a cold winter day. The tofu is super smooth and soft.
Sogong-Dong Tofu House
3229 Hwy-7
Markham, ON L3R 3P3
Chinese new year is coming. Being overseas, the atmosphere of course it is not the same as in HKG but at least in Toronto, there is a good size of Chinese population so there is some decorations and celebrations going on. But since it is not a holiday for us here, so I have to work and have stupid Q3 deadlines right on the day so I will not get a break. I’ve been working day and night shifts there past few weeks, need to take a break. My mom said I should learn how to make it or else the tradition will be gone. This is my first time making 年糕 (Chinese rice cake).
It is actually not that hard to make, all you need is 3 ingredients.
– bag of 400g of glutinous rice flour (sticky rice flour)
– 1 cup wheat starch
– bag of Chinese brown sugar (5 sticks) “peen tong”
First, boil 2 cups of water with the brown sugar to let it melt, then put it aside to cool off. While waiting, mix the glutinous rice flour with the wheat starch in a big mixing bowl. Pour in a cup of water into the flour mix and stir until it is a milky texture with no clumps. Then, mix in the sugar water into the flour mixture and then pour into the pan for steaming. Steam with water for about 60 minutes or until it is no longer liquid and sticky. If you poke a toothpick into it, nothing should stick to it, then it is done.
Let it cool and for it to harden before cutting it. When eating, cut into slices and dip it in egg and then pan fry it to eat. Yummy!!
They were airing this movie on TV, I was already sitting on the sofa and didn’t want to get up and work, so I decided to watch a bit of it. It’s these documentary movie about the behind the scene of the singer and how their life is. As we all know, he got notice from the Youtube videos but then no one want to to sign him just base on the popular Youtube views. He then went to all the radio station around and sang to get people notice him. From small concerts, he grew his popularity and then to his big fame now touring all over the world.
I’m not his big fan but never hated him, also he is Canadian so I have to root for Canadians. Too bad now he has got his fame and money and going into the dark end of doing drugs, drinking. Hope he clean his act soon, he has a lot of people as his role model.
Now I have his song stuck in my head. Baby baby oh, baby baby oh…
We finally had our seasonal party for work. It was at a new local restaurant – Bricco Wine Bar. The place is small but comfortable atmosphere. We had the whole place to ourselves so a private party. YEAH!! It wasn’t a sit down dinner but there were servers bringing around appetizers. I came like 1/2 hour later than started or that I wasn’t standing near the servers, I only got a few of them, mostly the chopped peppers on bread cracker. There was also a table of platter of cheese, ham. The most amazing thing was the fried calamari and shrimps. They were so good, it ran out and we had to ask for more. It was lightly breaded and not dipped in batter, what ever the spices was, it was very tasty. It was a jumbo shrimp too, not the tiny ones.
The main filling was the polenta station. The chef was serving bowls of polenta with your own fixing. It was very delicious, very smooth polenta with corn taste. The only thing was, the drinks was not included and very costly. It costed me $4 for a coke, $14 for a glass of wine. It was a fun night to hang out with co-workers outside from work. It was different seeing the other partying side of them.
I’ve been watching this TVB series 貓屎媽媽 which is about a cafe store. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to brew my own cup of coffee. I have brought a few bags of coffee beans from Costa Rica and Jamaica and starting to use it now. From grinding the coffee beans to brewing the coffee to making own foam milk. I was trying to do latte art but failed, the coffee was not strong enough.
I went to get my morning coffee @ Timmies, it is always hard just to stick with coffee and not get any of the tempting donuts on the way. They had the new pecan tortoise torte donut – caramel inside, chocolate cover with pieces of pecan on top. It was good but the caramel inside was so sweet that it hurt my tooth.
Love eating wings, too cold to go outside so made my own at home. Honey garlic wings, it turned out pretty good, craving satisfied. The only exception is that my whole house smelled like honey garlic. I was sleeping with the scent, even air fresher spray couldn’t get rid of the smell.
I’ve been eye-ing on this laptop for a few months now. I’ve been looking for a new ultra-book for work. And I have very specific things I wanted so it really narrow it down to only a few options. I wanted an ultra-book, touch screen, white. To my surprise, there is not a lot of white laptops out in the market and I didn’t want a Macbook. So really only left with Sony, Samsung, Acer and HP. I first saw this Acer at the Microsoft campus when I was visiting my brother over the summer. I was playing around with it and the laptop was very sleek. Then I started to do my research but this first generation of the Acer didn’t get much good reviews. So I waited around and who knew after a few months, they came out with a better improved second generation of this Acer Aspire S7. I was still in between this and the Sony and then Surface Pro 2 was coming out… but after many hours of research, I’ve decided that I wanted this Acer.
But trying to buy this in Canada was a big headache. I don’t know if it was because it is not a popular model that they didn’t have much inventory or it was in too much demand that they were always out of stock. I checked the major vendors here – Future Shop, Best Buy, Staples, Microsoft Store, Tiger Direct, Canada Computers, NCIX. They were either not selling this or out of stock. And the stores in USA wouldn’t ship north of the border. Finally, it wasn’t until end of December that I finally saw it back on stock at the online Microsoft Store. You would think that ordering from a big chain like Microsoft should be a piece of cake but I was totally wrong.
I placed my order and they said they will send me email confirmation within 24 hours. I waited for 2 days and got nothing, so I called them asking what the status was. They said that my order got cancel because my credit card didn’t go through. First problem – why didn’t anyone notified me that the order was cancelled?? If I didn’t call, I would still be waiting for weeks… very bad communication. Second – I kept asking the customer service what was the problem with the payment. I used the card that day and I know I haven’t gone over my limit. They wouldn’t tell me what the issue was, just said it was a problem with my credit card. So being frustrated, I called my bank to see what the problem was. They told me that everything on my account was fine, no issue and that they saw Microsoft made a charge on my account and then reversed it the next day. So clearly, the payment did go through, just their stupid system reversed it again.
Fine, so there is nothing wrong at my end. I went and place the order again. After 24 hours, still no confirmation, called customer service, same thing, my order was cancelled. I asked them again if they can tell me what the issue was so I can try to resolve it on my end. NOTHING, no answer provided. Worst shopping experience ever!
So I gave up with Microsoft and decided to purchase from NCIX. This is the first time I brought from them as well and I had no idea that they go through so many steps to verify my card before they release the item for shipment. I mean, from all the online purchases I have made from like Amazon, Chapters, I never had a credit check before. There was at least 5 verification steps .. not going to go into details but took over a week of back and forth before they are finally comfortable that I have money to pay. URGH!!
But once finally that is cleared, they shipped my item pretty quick and finally I have in my hand the laptop I wanted… seriously, it took 3 weeks or calling and emailing. This is by far the most stressful purchase I have made. The laptop is beautiful, now I’m trying hard to learn how to use Windows 8.1. It is SO DIFFERENT from Windows 7. I can’t find anything!!
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