Warm days, blistering nights

It's been a good day today. Great weather and all. I could even go grocery shopping without having to put on a sweater,which is really a miracle of sorts. The only irritating part of today was the fire drill they had at 6am this morning... it was so sudden, and everyonewere just too disoriented this morning it was actually as amusing as it was irritaitng...

Oh I finally managed to boil rice here. Previously I did not buy rice cos it would have been too much, but now that I have rice, I had difficulty boiling it. The first time I tried, it got so bad that the rice just stuck to the bottom of the pot. Thankfully my Jap housemate was a rice expert and he taught me how to cook perfect rice haha. Perfect cos it went well with the Teppanyaki styled beef, bean sprouts and cabbage.. a decent meal for a change. I've been eating well of course, but just not really something I would consider a meal..

Anyway, this blog is getting too descriptive, quite unlike me I think.

Let's see what words I can muster,
to describe this cold and bluster,
without practice I'm all a fluster,
and no longer of words am I their master.

Wind, cold and piercing,
Sun, lost amongst the clouds;
Leaves fall asunder,
grass billows in wake;
a squirrel scampers from tree to tree,
with fear of winter looming,
hark the tell tale signs so obvious,
even in summer it doth start snowing.

A sudden glint,
a warm gleam,
the sun is back to save us;
ever strong,
ever silent,
the hero returns once more.

Alas for the sun however,
this battle is not his definite win;
the time is not upon us yet,
to cast the cold away for good.
We will wait,
as we have always,
in faith of his return.
As always we will wait.
Anon.

sour snow

Brrr.. its gettin so much colder here, and its so erratic damn it. Like one day its fine and dandy, and by night time it suddenly gets cold, and the next morning, it snows! In September! When the sun still sets at 8pm and its just the beginning of Autumn, and its snowing! Wah... I mean it was real pretty and all, and it was my first time seeing snow, like literally falling around you, but still! It was so random I tell you. Ah well, many more days like this I assume.. the weather forecast for the next 2 weeks supposedly places Calgary in a temperature range of -2 to 10, with only 1 or 2 days past 17... Is it cold, or is it cold...

Anyway, well for the first time, I cooked for my room mate... well, kinda first time. Cos we all have this tendency to cook by ourselves. Like the French guy doesn't cook at all, one Jap guy cooks pre-cooked food like fish and chips, and the other guy, pretty much cooks anything. So this time, I figured that I should be nice and try to cook something Chinese, and binge off the roomie's rice while I'm at it. So well, since I had pork cutlets and all, I decided to cook Gu Lu Yo or sweet and sour pork. So I happily went to buy the pineapples and all, then today when I was cooking, I realised that I didn't have soy sauce, or cornstarch or sesame oil... Then after that, I realise that I din have the correct utensils to cook... so well, I had to improvise... salt and water for the soy sauce, and egg to sub for the cornstarchy texture, and well, I can do without the sesame oil. I had to use a pot which was a size too big, and I had to deep fry the pork with oil tat only covered half the pork. My room mate prob got scared off half way and retreated to his room. Oh well, I had to improvise all over, but in the end, thankfully, both of us had food to eat. In my opinion, it was a little too sour, but my roomie says its ok. Maybe he's just nice, I dunno, but we're guys so I doubt it. aha... well then, I'll probably start more chinese cooking while I'm here cos I found a place that sells Chinese food stuffs so yea... I hope I wun have such problems with improvisation after this...

Just had a great evening, so I thought I should share. There's a bar thing on campus where alcohol and food is served. Beer is about 4.25 CAD a pint, so that'll be about 7 SGD, so tats kinda normal, and the food prices are about... 8.99 CAD aburger with fries and stuff like that. So yea, its pretty expensive. However, they have special nights where there are discounts and stuff like that. So tonight, its wings night. What this means is, each wing is 0.25 CAD, and u have ot order 10, so its 2.50 for 10 wings, and u can jus have this for dinner and it'll fill u right up, together with maybe a pint or 2 of beer. And tonight was spent with so many international students from all over the place. I've met people from New Zealand, Canada, England, Czeh, Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong and Japan, just to name a few... can remember their names now, but I'm not too sure about their faces, especially since it was pretty dark there, but otherwise yea it was a pretty good night.. and there'll be other parties around too, like 80s theme party and other stuff like that... great.

Well then, classes have officially started and so far, its almost a joke, cos of the timetable. Macroecons is on Mon, Wed and Fri from 10am to 1050am. I have no connecting classes after that so basically I start my day early and end it early too. Entrepreneurship is on Tue and Thurs from 330pm to 445pm, so my Thurs starts in the middle of nowhere... Tues night I have Portfolio management at 6pm to 920pm so thats considered my long day. Lastly, and the most sucky I might add, is Microecons which is on SAT 8am to 1120am. This completely shuts down any plans to do travelling over the weekends, but oh well... as an exchange student who has already kinda taken these courses, I can afford to 'work around' the times *hint hint*.

The next thing that will kill all forms of travelling is the textbooks. I knew it was expensive here, but I didn't realise how expensive till I checked it out. Micro and Macro (basic) textbooks would cost $130.95 CAD each, Portfolio Management costs $178.95 CAD and lastly, Entrepreneurship costs $81.95 CAD which brings to a grand total of... $522.80 CAD without taxes. After taxes, its about $554.17 CAD and finally, $809.10 SGD... omg... what can I buy in SGP for that amount of money? I can buy the i-phone (which is simply beautiful by the way), I can get 147 comics at $5.50 each... basically, the amount I would have to spend on these 4 books is equivalent, if not more than, all the items I brought over to Canada, sans my lappie and camera and handphone. How do the people here survive? I don't understand why it should be so expensive here seriously... For the past 3 years I have never spent more than 100 SGD on books in any term... in fact I think I only spent a total of... 3, 4 hundred on books over the last 3 years? Sigh...

Calgary

Alright, so I am now finally in Calgary. whoppee... I can tell u its really cold here. When I arrived, it was about 10 and it has stayed that way so far, tho its a little erratic. When the sun comes out, it can rise to about 20 or more, then the clouds come by or the wind picks up and its back to 10... I won't be surprised if it went below 10 sometimes too. Its freezing when I take my bath but its alright once I am out of the bathroom cos I think the house is heated.

The room's pretty nice, spacious and all as u can see above. Just need to get a pillow. For now its holding up as one of my long pants which is reasonably comfy, jus a tad too small.

Food here's expensive too.. kinda like US, but I guess I will survive. Just went grocery shopping today and I bought quite a bit. Should last for some time haha. Oh and I watched my very first American Football game today! It was hmm.. kinda fast and slow at the same time. Fast as in the action of it all, with the constant thigh grabbing, chest pushing, arm locking and shoulder banging happening within a few seconds or so. However, every time a tackle is made (and this happens almost constantly) the time stops and they hustle again, thus the slow part. But it was fun nontheless. Pictures on facebook sorry ahha!

Down Town LA

St Mary's Cathedral in LA

An old Spanish wood sculpture... beautiful

The reprint of the painting of Mary of Guadalupe (I think?)

Water court in Down Town LA

Angel's Flight cable car/ tram

Grand Central Market

Civic Centre

The Walt Disney Music Theatre

Another Music Centre

Metro, the most loved travel form here

Some shiny building... kinda schweet for an office eh

actually, you guys should go to my face book to see the pictures.. uploading them here is a real bitch cos somehow I am only allowed to upload 4 at a time and there are about 200 of 'em.

Alright its now a looong time since I blogged haha. I mean, its not really that loong in terms of days passed, but tis been long in terms of what I have been doing. Since my last post, I have been to Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, San Fran's fisherman's wharve, Seattle's pike fish market and all that. What can I say, its been a blast.

Let's start with Las Vegas. The part of the desert Nevada which provides enough vice to equal its weight in sand. Lust? Check. Gluttony? Check. Greed? Check. Sloth? Check. Anger? Check. Envy? Check haha. well then, need I say more? There really is alot of things that Las Vegas offers to people, subtle or otherwise. But oh well... the casinos were really beautiful. Innovative, bright, colourful... every thing that I imagined it to be, thankfully. But that is not the highlight of being in Nevada. The highlight has to be my visit to the Grand Canyon. It is indeed a wonder to the world; it really is Grand. Just standing there and looking out at the expanse of canyon, the 3 hour plus drive becomes remote, the hustle bustle of the casinos some 3 hundred miles away are long gone, and finally, it seems almost as if I have found for myself a glimpse of paradise. It really is wonderful. You can almost see how the hand of God had a play in this, leaving nature and time to do its work but yet like a painter He knows the final art work. Like a tireless composer God has added new notes to this composition which has taken so many years to compose and is still left incomplete. Then again, what is our time compared to His? With every step I took along the rim of the canyon, the view I got was different, as if as a reminder to me that the wonders of God's creation is indeed unlimitless and is not for human minds to understand totally. The pictures I will post in due time do no justice to the immense beauty of it all. Sigh... how I wish I could go back now...

Oh well, moving along now, I went to San Fran. Now, this is really a colourful place, if u get my drift (think rainbow... ring a bell?) There was this one time when I was on the cable car (more like a tram actually) and when we stopped momentarily along the sidewalk, this gay couple decided to give us a free show of sorts and starting tonguing each other in full view of everyone there! Well, I am accepting to their nature, but such PDA can still make me squirmish at times. Who can blame me right? I also saw the most I saw of homeless, blacks( sorry dun wanna be racist here but I can't think of a better term to coin it) and beggars and schitzos. They just sit around, and drink, or beg, or dig at cans, or talk to themselves, and well, the works. It is really saddening to look at, as much as it makes me uneasy. You never really know what they are thinking, or what they can do, and its highly disturbing. Alright, apart from that, San Fran was really a hilly place, and that is an understatement. I think I did enough walking to last me a long time, and it was all up or down slopes... real tiring on the legs. There were some nice sights too of course, like Alcatraz and the Golden Gate and Bay bridges.

Seattle is a pretty quiet kind of place to me. Shops were closed by 8 and the streets were real quiet and empty and dark. Scary? U'betcha. I was walkin about kinda late and it was getting to my exchange buddy how dark and lonely the streets had become as we walked briskly back to our hostel. And it was a loooong walk too. Not that many sights to see here, tho the Underground tour and the whole history of Seattle is really interesting.

Well then, till the next post, which would probably be just pictures, cheerios.