Outside it’s snowing, but inside it’s a clatter of carts and dishes. Dim sum is mostly seafood, especially shrimp, but the most common ingredients are oil and monosodium glutamate.

My parents go full out with the tripe and the phoenix talons (a euphemism for chicken’s feet), dishes that scare most Westerners, and even some Canadian born Chinese such as me. The dim sum here is much better here than at the restaurant across the street, they note. The rice-flower skin of the shrimp dumplings is delightfully smooth and thin, a demonstration of the chef’s skill. The mooli cakes, made from fried daikon radishes, taste especially savoury. Even the buns are steamed well and slightly sweet.

The praise of my parents is a testament to the quality of the food. They have the ability to find fault with almost anything, the root of years of childhood despondency and confidence issues, but today the food is nearly impeccable.

Short and sweet.

I’ve been falling sleep with the TV on lately. Discovery channel, trashy tabloids, commercials every quarter hour. The constant chatter keeps me company the way old movies on DVD can’t. It’s like the world never sleeps. Someone else is awake, and watching the same thing as me.

It’s one of the things I like so much about you. If you hide that, you’re hiding the best part.

The little girl was taken to Humber River Regional Hospital, and later transferred to the Hospital for Sick Children, where she was diagnosed with what police call “a significant brain injury”.

The J is like an H Ricky, Hal-a-peen-yo

This is live.

Sometimes I wake up with a song in my head that I may not own, or even particularly like. Sometimes I wake up knowing some news before I read it on my lunchtime break. Sometimes my dreams will take off in a strange direction, and I’ll be cooking something complicated or unloading automatics through house windows or fucking someone I’d never have a chance with in real-life.