Posts in category "Photos"

We Call Ourselves Chiggas

I went to buy some wrist­bands, because rule num­ber 3.4.4.1.2 of the 2004 ITTF Handbook basi­cal­ly states that peo­ple can only tow­el off once or twice a game. I look around for some Adidas wrist bands, since I usu­al­ly play in Adidas trunks, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, every place I look either has no Adidas wrist­bands, or they have the Adidas non-rac­quet-sport wrist­bands, the ones that are twice as long and con­strict the wrist. There was a set that was some brand I nev­er heard of, but it was half price and the logo looked like the skip but­ton on an MP3 play­er so I decid­ed to buy it any­way. Turns out that this brand is actu­al­ly Karl Kani, a brand name in urban fash­ion.

Let me back things up for a sec­ond here.

I’m pure Chinese by blood, raised in a neigh­bour­hood of sub­tle fam­i­lies who paid off their mort­gages, bought mini-vans to dri­ve all their kids to hock­ey prac­tice, and spent the week­ends plant­i­ng new sets of flow­ers in their gar­dens. I went to a high school for the sons of rich cou­ples and gov­ern­ment offi­cials. MY FREAKIN NAME IS JEFF. I’m prob­a­bly the last per­son who should be wear­ing “urban fash­ion”.

So yeah.

wut wut.

Tremblant '04

Tremblent cabin 1
Tremblent cabin 1
Tremblent cabin 1
Tremblent cabin 1
Tremblent cabin 1
Tremblent cabin 1
Tremblent cabin 1
Tremblent cabin 1

Got back from Tremblant today. A bunch of us rent­ed a cab­in for the week­end about ten min­utes away from the moun­tain. I went snow­board­ing, or rather attempt­ed to snow­board, on Saturday. There was a heavy fog at the top of the moun­tain and vis­i­bil­i­ty was extreme­ly lim­it­ed, although the tem­per­a­ture hov­ered around a pleas­ant ‑5°C, a far cry from the ‑46°C from last year. I’ve def­i­nite­ly improved over the last time that I went, although I still can’t carve on the toe side. Every inch of my body is stiff now, from my neck to my ankles, but it was worth it.

Tubing 1
Tubing 2

We stopped by a lit­tle hill made for snow tub­ing on the way home. It only cost $17 to use the facil­i­ties for four hours, and there’s even a con­vey­or sys­tem to drag the inner tubes to the top so peo­ple don’t have to walk up, the ulti­mate in lazy recre­ation. The hill was divid­ed into eight lanes, each with it’s own char­ac­ter­is­tic bumps and jumps, and we tried to link up our tubes in var­i­ous con­fig­u­ra­tions such as mul­ti-per­son daisy chains and leg locked lines. Possibly the best bang for the buck ever.

First Weekend In Boulter

Thumbnail: Boulter car ride 1
Thumbnail: Boulter car ride 2
Thumbnail: Boulter car ride 3
Thumbnail: Boulter car ride 4

Spent the week­end at Trolley’s house with Wheaties, Aaron, and Nick. The car ride took about three hours, squeezed into the back of his com­pact Jetta. I would have called shot­gun but I doubt any­one would have respect­ed it; Nick and Aaron had pri­or­i­ty as the biggest guys. I made a playlist for the ride there, and it was good for the first half. The prob­lem with such playlists is that they’re usu­al­ly meant for sum­mer in the open air, not night time win­ter rides. A lot of songs end up being inap­pro­pri­ate.

Thumbnail: Boulter home 1
Thumbnail: Boulter home 2
Thumbnail: Boulter home 3
Thumbnail: Boulter home 4
Thumbnail: Boulter home 1
Thumbnail: Boulter home 5

Trolley’s place is a 350 acre farm, on a long road that’s actu­al­ly named after his fam­i­ly. Definitely a place with per­son­al­i­ty and an amaz­ing view of the open coun­try­side. Heat is turned up by throw­ing more logs in the fur­nace. His cat Femo is more vocal than Dolly and always cries for atten­tion. She’ll quick­ly turn bel­ly up if you scratch her the right way, and does­n’t like to wan­der more than an arms-length away.

The first par­ty was at the cab­in, which is a small hunt­ing lodge a 10 minute walk away, also owned by the Trolley’s. That’s when I remem­bered that I’m real­ly bad at par­ties with lots of drunk peo­ple. Drunk peo­ple who I don’t know scare me. A lot. I nev­er know what the hell they’re going to do. At one point, two peo­ple put on box­ing gloves and start­ed beat­ing the shit out of each oth­er in this tiny cab­in, which must be about 196 square feet. The sec­ond par­ty was at the house, and much low­er key. People start­ed jump­ing into the hot tub and out the win­dow then rolling around in the snow. I did­n’t drink the first day (aside from a swig from a bot­tle of Fireball, which actu­al­ly isn’t bad), but end­ed up buy­ing some alco­hol for the next.

Thumbnail: Boulter snow 1
Thumbnail: Boulter snow 1
Thumbnail: Boulter snow 1
Thumbnail: Boulter snow 1
Thumbnail: Boulter snow 1
Thumbnail: Boulter snow 1
Thumbnail: Boulter snow 1

One of the days was spent on a hill on some pri­vate prop­er­ty. We set up a jump to do some freestyle board rid­ing, and broke out the mod­i­fied GT Snowracers and tobog­gans.

A great time.

Simple Stir-Fry

Thumbnail: Stirfry 1

Thumbnail: Stirfry 2

I have fig­ured out the eas­i­est stir-fry in the world. One morn­ing I took my stir-fry strips out of the freez­er to defrost by the time my class­es were done. When I got home, I real­ized that I had no veg­eta­bles and I was too tired to make rice (actu­al­ly it was more of being too tired to clean the rice pot because it’s always a bitch). I found a pack of gar­lic pas­ta sal­ad, and threw every­thing togeth­er.

Ingredients:

  1. Approximately 700 grams of beef stir-fry strips
  2. One bag of Green Giant Garden Creations Pasta Salad (Garlic)

Directions:

  1. Pre-heat fry­ing pan to medi­um heat, add oil
  2. Add stir-fry strips and gar­den sal­ad
  3. Cover and stir occa­sion­al­ly until the pas­ta is desired ten­der­ness (should take about 20 min­utes, liq­uid should be a light sauce by then)

Note: To ensure beef is cooked through, add beef in pan a few min­utes before the pas­ta sal­ad.

A Bunch Of Things With No Title

This has been the busiest week­end EVAR. It’s been the first time that I was too busy to write an entry. I mean, I usu­al­ly make time to write, with the same pri­or­i­ty as show­er­ing and eat­ing, but yes­ter­day I only had time for two of the three.

Friday was all run­ning errands and watch­ing Return of the King (which was alright). Much to my sur­prise, Aaron, Trolley, Wheaties, and Nick all chipped in and bought me Double Dash, which we prompt­ly played until five in the morn­ing. I woke up with just enough time to get to prac­tice (although it was only four hours of sleep), played for two hours, then came back home and slept some more.

Thumbnail: Chocolate truffles

By the time I was awake, it was time for Aaron’s pot luck. I had a chance to meet Chris, Mel’s boyfriend, who’s a fuck­ing great guy to hang out with. Of note were Jen’s pota­toes, which must have been the most flavour­ful I’ve ever tast­ed. I brought about three dozen of the Bailey’s truf­fles I made, which were well received and gone in five min­utes.

I got back around two in the morn­ing, col­lapsed on my bed, and here I am now, grog­gy and hun­gry. In half an hour I have a ride to the first match­es of the new­ly formed city-wide table ten­nis league. I’ll be play­ing for about five hours in rota­tion, vary­ing between sin­gles and dou­bles match­es. I expect to be one of the worst play­er there, which means that I’ll prob­a­bly gain a lot of play expe­ri­ence.

I still need to start an eco­nom­ics assign­ment and watch an account­ing tape, both of which were sup­posed to be done on Friday. Today might just be anoth­er total write-off.