Posts in category "Daily Life"

Swine Flu Movie Reviews

Being sick is one of the most dif­fi­cult things for me. It’s a psy­cho­log­i­cal mind game. Not only am I unable to be pro­duc­tive1, which is some­thing that nor­mal­ly keeps me sane, it’s the only sit­u­a­tion in which I feel like I can’t take care of myself. All I’m left with is this mis­ery, this suf­fer­ing that men­tal­ly wears me down. On a long enough time line (though I’m talk­ing months to years), I lose the will to live.

I start­ed get­ting some symp­toms since Tuesday after­noon, when I was feel­ing faint at work. When I woke up the next day, the symp­toms had got­ten worse. I spat into the sink, and cheered the fact that my phlegm was­n’t dark green, which is the case when I have strep throat (some­thing that seems to hap­pen annu­al­ly to me). I should say that I only sus­pect swine flu, since I did­n’t have a blood test con­firm­ing it, but the per­son who gave it to me told me she had it, so I’m going on her word, and my symp­toms match up with how swine flu is dif­fer­ent from sea­son­al flu.

For me, it’s been:

  • run­ny nose with extreme­ly watery mucous
  • stuffed nose
  • loss of appetite
  • mild­ly sore throat
  • dry cough
  • headaches
  • very slight fever
  • hot flash­es and sweat­ing

This flu, though drawn out, has actu­al­ly been eas­i­er than strep, which is so painful for me that I get fair­ly severe headaches. I went through two entire box­es of tis­sues, and I’m sure I would have gone through more, I had not spent almost the entire time like this:

Nose tissues

On the upside, it was an excuse to drink Neo Citran every night, which I also call Yummy Sleep.

In the five days since I real­ized that I have the flu, I did­n’t leave my house, aside from going across the street to buy gro­ceries. Not a sin­gle one of my friends called me (although some of them prob­a­bly did­n’t know I was sick), which was a lit­tle dis­heart­en­ing, but I did­n’t let it get to me. Jen offered to pick up gro­ceries for me, but I did­n’t take her up on it because the offer was enough of a morale boost.

This time, I sur­vived, I did it by myself, and I’m stronger for it.

To keep myself sane, I watched a record num­ber of movies. Usually, it’s hard for me to watch movies, because I feel guilty for not being pro­duc­tive, but this time I embraced my sick­ness. I may watch one every two weeks when I’m healthy, but this time it was nine in five days (ten if I had­n’t passed out in the mid­dle of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice). Here are some quick reviews. Warning: SPOILERS.

Continue read­ing “Swine Flu Movie Reviews”…

  1. I have the moti­va­tion, but it isn’t enough when my head feels like it’s explod­ing from the inside. [↩]

Dinner With The Timmites

Thumbnail: Philly melt
Thumbnail: Quesadilla
Thumbnail: Ham tortellini
Thumbnail: Veggie burger
Thumbnail: Zoom H2

Tim was in town for a pre­sen­ta­tion this week­end, so a few of us went to din­ner at a restau­rant close to where he used to live. It turns out this place used to be called Drumlin’s Pub, which I knew from sec­ond year of uni­ver­si­ty, ohhh…seven years ago? I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber being in there once, doing shots at the bar1 while sit­ting next to an old­er guy who was over $30k in debt to OSAP, telling me to go after the big­ger girls cause they do way more “stuff”. On our drink­ing tours of the city back then, we would always try to find a place that served good, cheap wings, and Strongbow. If I remem­ber cor­rect­ly, Drumlin’s had hearty hon­ey gar­lic, but no cider.

Now that it’s under new man­age­ment, it has a real­ly gener­ic name — like Sandy Hill Bar And Grill — though it makes up for this fact with much bet­ter pub fare. Such social oppor­tu­ni­ties are great for test­ing out the 360° sur­round capa­bil­i­ties of the Zoom H2 sound recorder I recent­ly pur­chased as an invest­ment towards bet­ter sound pro­duc­tion in my videos.

In his defence, Tim was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that Jess has a new boyfriend, and was being (jok­ing­ly) self-dep­re­cat­ing about his sex life. Next at the table was Reagan2, who was asked about hers. Jess picked up the mic and point­ed it at me, per­haps to shift the atten­tion away from Reagan and shield her from embar­rass­ment. Of course, it all plays out much nicer when you have a record­ing of it.

  1. Back then I drank with Iain, so it would have been tequi­la. [↩]
  2. Note to self: pro­nounced “Ray-gun” [↩]

A Visit From Big Sister

Sushi with Misun

Misun, aka my big sis­ter, vis­it­ed from France yes­ter­day. We gorged our­selves on all-you-can-eat sushi, and I let her sur­prise me by choos­ing not to know what she ordered for us. Now I wish I had kept note so I could order the same things again.

Sushi with me

It was hard to argue with her about the bill. She kept insist­ing that she pay because she’s old­er (from her Korean cul­ture), and I kept insist­ing that I pay because I’m the host (from my Chinese cul­ture). I even used the argu­ment that if it’s the elder who pays, then she would always be pay­ing. Unfortunately, the host­ess took her side and refused my mon­ey.

She was only able to stay in Ottawa for the night, but before turn­ing in well beyond our bed­times, we caught up as peo­ple can only do in per­son. We’d been keep­ing in touch the whole time we’ve been apart, and now had the chance to fill in the details.

The time I most felt like I knew what it was to have a sis­ter was when we brushed our teeth togeth­er in the bath­room. Afterward, we com­pared grey hair, me laugh­ing at her three strands, as I have a steady diet of salt added to my pep­per.

Misun's note

When I woke up, I found this cute note, with our faces (includ­ing Dolly’s) drawn on it.

Follow-Up

(I love these entries.)

First: lis­ten to this. Some days I feel exact­ly like this song. Those days are pret­ty good.

I remem­ber read­ing the blog once of the guy who said that his aunt was Nancy. She was a Canadian woman who suf­fered from men­tal insta­bil­i­ty and killed her­self (“It seems so long ago/Nancy was alone/a forty five beside her head/an open tele­phone”), and Cohen read about the sto­ry in the news­pa­per, and penned this song about her.

Anyway.

I like him. He’s very unbi­ased. He does­n’t try to cod­dle me or side with or against me or force me into think­ing any­thing. He offers per­spec­tives that no one else can give me.

I was­n’t sure where to start, so I just tried to bring him up to speed on my life in the time that passed between us. It began briefly with how well I was main­tain­ing the progress we had made but quick­ly drift­ed to the rela­tion­ship, and that pret­ty much took the rest of the ses­sion.

(From here on out, I’m going to refer to it as the rela­tion­ship. Just cause I’m tired of writ­ing “half-rela­tion­ship” or “rela­tion­ship” in quotes like that. I’d say that two peo­ple as involved as we were would cer­tain­ly be con­sid­ered to be in a rela­tion­ship.)

Continue read­ing “Follow-Up”…

Ottawa Foodies Pot Luck

Digging in

Thumbnail: Roof-patio view
Thumbnail: Cheese on baguette
Thumbnail: Cookies
Thumbnail: Pie
Thumbnail: Pizza
Thumbnail: Pulled pork
Thumbnail: Rhubarb pie
Thumbnail: Salad
Thumbnail: Spread and toast
Thumbnail: Tofu stew

Cherry tomato pizza

Tiana brought me as her guest to the Ottawa Foodies pot luck, run by Pam1, and held on a rooftop patio right on Bank Street. It was a true potluck, where no one knew what any­one else was bring­ing.

The Ottawa Foodies usu­al­ly gath­er in the Ottawa Foodie forums, where they dis­cuss recipes and restau­rants in Ottawa, so this was the first in-per­son meet­ing for many. Many did­n’t know each oth­ers real names, so there were intro­duc­tions like, “Hi, I’m MissMuffins862”, or ‚“Hi, I’m Thomas, aka BagelRapist”.

I don’t think Tiana was quite ready for the food dorks, the type of which I was already some­what accus­tomed to dur­ing my time at the com­put­er sci­ence pro­gram at Ottawa U. I’ve deter­mined that food dorks are just as bad as wine snobs and com­put­er geeks. For exam­ple:

There were two guys who got into a heat­ed argu­ment about the kind of fat used in Mcdonald’s french fries. One of these guys also preached to me about the ben­e­fits of good rice, (and me — being Chinese — knew absolute­ly noth­ing about rice). There was one guy who said, “I’m doing a doc­u­men­tary on the youngest head chef in the ———- region”. I asked “Wow, how did he get that posi­tion?”, and his reply was “His par­ents own the restau­rant”. Then real­iz­ing the fact that nepo­tism ruins the cred­i­bil­i­ty of his ini­tial state­ment, he fol­lowed this with “He also made a flow­er­less brown­ie at 11.” Tiana asked, “Did he invent it?”. “No, he fol­lowed a recipe”. At that point, Tiana and got silent and we just looked at each oth­er.

But what some of these peo­ple lack in social skills, they make up for in culi­nary abil­i­ties, and the food was amaz­ing.

So I basi­cal­ly hung out with Tiana the whole time, and pigged out on every­thing I could. By the end of the night, my truf­fles, usu­al­ly rolled in coco pow­der to pre­vent them from stick­ing to each oth­er, had turned into a truf­fle.

  1. Who also hap­pens to know Tim. Ottawa is real­ly small. [↩]