People still wear skirts in this weather!

Boo-hiss it's cold outside. It's -8 degrees right now. Snow is on the ground, I almost slipped on ice today. And I think I caught a little sniffle from having to walk to and fro for our community visits.

Mistaken identity. I ran into somebody in the lobby of my building whom I met the night previous. I made some small chat but then I slowly started to realize that he has no clue who I was. He started to talk about stuff that I had no clue about: control-something, free dinners and some other course. The ride up the elevator thankfully was only 4-storeys before I could get off and avoid talking about more about stuff that made no sense. It was about the 2nd floor by the time I thought about saying something like, dude what are you talking about, are you thinking that I am somebody else? There's always the trade-off between being honest or avoiding an awkward social situation with someone you hardly know for the sake of being friendly. Well I don't see myself running into him some time soon. And if I do, I can pretend we never had said conversation because he probably won't remember me hehe.

I've been thinking about some of the useful things that I need or want lately and I've assembled short list of useful gifts ;) teehee:
*Footstool - I saw this portable one that a lady took out of her purse in the White Oaks Mall food court to prop her feet while she ate fast food.
*Earmuffs - This is not a euphemism for anything, real earmuffs. I think earmuffs look absurd, but I really really need to get some ear coverage in the cold weather. Although..I did like these ones we used to have as kids, covered in bunny fur, but it squeezed the hell out of my head so it hurt to wear. Bunnies were getting their revenge.
*A sweet ass sewing machine - The kind that has a gentle purrrrrr, has 40 different settings and is heavy duty enough to handle jeans while delicate enough to handle schiffon or spandex.

(And this list will keep growing...)

Fresh obsessed, I think not.

So I had gone grocery shopping last Sunday and one of the items I bought was romaine lettuce in a three-pack. I sat down to eat dinner on Monday night with my pre-made veal parmagiano and then made up a salad to go with it. Thinking that I was going to save time I tried to take the short cut and cut the lettuce first before washing it. I planned to just toss the cut lettuce in some running water through a strainer. But then I noticed a bug in my lettuce. I tried to rinse it away, but it was quite persistently sticky. So I put the lettuce right underneath the running tap. Then I noticed another bug on the same piece of rectangular lettuce, hidden beneath the rolled up corner. Ok I found at least 5 bugs on a single piece of cut lettuce, now this in my books is just a couple bugs short of infestation. I bought that particular type of produce because I thought it would be quick to prepare. It turns out that I spent more time cleaning it than I did eating it.

The Dominion didn't live up to its "Fresh Obsessed" standard in my books. So I went to return it later in the week. The bugs weren't as obvious when I brought it in. Friggin wished that I had taken pictures of the damn bugs to prove that they were actually there (an OCD type of thing I picked up from my dad)--but alas I don't have a camera (see lost camera post). Anyhow, when I went to return it, the lady at customer service gave me this attitude like she didn't believe me. I don't know what it is, but I can't come up with a stern enough rebuttal at the time. I got my refund anyway, but I can't let people walk all over me grrrr. So here is what I would have said to her:
"Yeh so there's bugs, but you're returning it 6 days later," Says ugly grocery lady. [she actually said this]
"Excuse me?...What did you say? What's with the attitude? You seemed perfectly normal when you were dealing with the last lady who wanted to take one of your shopping carts home to carry her groceries," says me a little bewildered.
"Errr, ummm, yeah but it's 6 days after you bought it."
"Yeah well you should have seen the amount of bugs on it after the first day. You're lucky. I don't know why you're giving me attitude because you're giving me the reimbursement anyway. I don't need a lecture from you. Do you know how long it took me to wash the freaking lettuce (throws lettuce onto the counter-top), 20 minutes. 20 minutes!! That only gave me 15 minutes to eat my dinner!! It took me 6 days to return it because I am busy. I go to class for 40 hours a week and when I'm not in class I'm studying, and when I'm not doing that, I'm sleeping or eating. OK? so I don't have time to come back here just to get a lousy $2.99 put back onto my debit card. It's not like you are losing money by giving me my $2.99 back. Have you actually taken a good look at these bugs? They're disgusting! Even when I had washed the lettuce, I couldn't even eat it without feeling grossed out-thinking about their red bodies and spiny legs clinging to my lettuce. Fresh obsessed? I think not. I think false advertising! And another thing, the receipt says that I can return anything within 14 days!
Have you seen the sign behind you? It says "CUSTOMER SERVICE". Not "BITCH WITH AN ATTITUDE, AND THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG." So as a customer I expect to get service. Now if I hear another comment out of you and I'm switching to The Superstore, and I'm going to tell all your customers about your little bug problem! (sigh) I'm in a hurry right now, give me my $2.99!"

If only I could have said all that...I would have been one of those crazies that people would probably stare at but it would have made me feel better.

I really was in a hurry--on my way to the Food and Wine Expo at the Metro Convention Centre. It was fun. I probably had a bit too much wine, in a place that was a bit too lit up, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. It should have been called the Wine, Alcohol, and a little food Expo because it really was just about the wine. Lots of people were getting hammered. And the people serving the wine, some were volunteers, which meant really that they could drink wine for free while working. I discovered a couple of new wines (to me) that I like, apart from the regular Zinfandel that I enjoy. Riesling and Chardonnay are quite tasty. I could tell when my face started to get red, right around the time more people started to stare at me. OH so embarassing. Damn lack of alcohol dehydrogenase. Anyhoo, it was a good time. The best food we ate came from this place called Taste of Elios: pulled pork, venison ribs and ostrich risotto. Mmm, I can't wait until we can go out again for good food and drink.

Let's see, what else did I do this week. Well I went to see Chicken Little with Karen. We walked to Rainbow Cinemas at Front St and Jarvis St. It only took us half an hour to get there, albeit in the rain. But it was fun. The movie was so cute. Chicken Little looks like my sister as a baby too! I'll have to upload a picture of her when I download the capabilities. Right sis?

My parents came to visit me for a meagre 2 hours on Saturday. I must admit that the visit was way too short. They did bring me a brand new lamp though from Ikea. One that I've desperately needed since being here. I can't understand why apartments don't have overhead lights! Anyways, I've nicknamed it The Sun because I barely ever see sun in my apartment unless it has reflected off some windows of another building into my room. At best it's only an hour or so of premium sun. The Sun also came to be because I now have a slab of tinfoil on my ceiling to help reflect the light onto my desk area, hence increasing its status of any old lamp to a magnitude of greatness!!! HAHAHAHA. However, Boon says he used to have this same lamp and said it died on him and so he's not very impressed by the lamp, nor by the tinfoil. Ever the skeptic!!!

And yet another rant

After the aforementioned dinner on Friday I was walking home with a classmate who happens to be in my clinical skills ASCM group. Anyways she mentions that our tutor said for next week, especially for our new tutor, we are expected to wear nicer clothing. Uh-huh, like our white coats when we're on the wards I'm thinking. Then she said, nooo, like nicer clothing...and then she told me that our tutor had told her and others that I, for example was not dressed nice enough. Huh? This took me by surprise. I'm not one to say that I dress the best in the class or anything, however I would never picture myself to not dress nicely. I've been a little puzzled by this all weekend. I'm trying to figure out what was so bad about it.

I found it a little tasteless that she would tell the group and not tell me. Having to hear it from a 3rd party is pretty jarring, especially since she wasn't specific about what I needed to change. I was wearing brown dress pants, with a white tank top and a pink wrap sweater over top. Perhaps I wasn't being conservative or boring enough. Anyway, I'll take it as an excuse to go shopping?! Problem is I had bought all of those things within less than a year. Which means my style has to change as well....why can't I just be me?

Rant of the Day

In keeping with a a theme created in class, I will have my rant of the day. So I went out to dinner on Friday night with some classmates. I was misled as to the night's events. Figuring that it would be a smaller gathering I agreed to go. I also thought it would be a small Chinese restaurant. Nope, completely opposite of what I had anticipated, and I hate surprises like that--I'm really not very spontaneous. What I thought was to be a small dinner in fact ended up being a dinner at a "classier" restaurant on the 51st floor of the Manulife Centre with a party of 15+ in tow. Now what I don't get was that the restaurant's menu was pizza...pizza and more pizza. And of course some pastas as well. For a restaurant that can flaunt having an amazing view, the food sure sucked. I got gnocchi because I wasn't about to spend $15 on a gourmet pizza. Come on, if I wanted pizza I'd defrost the free Delicioso pizza I got from Dundas Square. At least gnocchi isn't something that you can get any time. The problem with gnocchi is that if it's done poorly it can tast awful-ie chewy, but if it's done right, it tastes amazing! OK for $15, I'd take the risk. So it wasn't the best decision. It tasted very generic, the sauce did. The gnocchi was slightly denser than I like. Needless to say I got very bored of eating it, and even though the bowl was the size of a half pint, I still didn't finish it.

Then somebody remarked, oh there are no non-asians here. I must admit, I also thought the same thing in my head. It's still a totally weird concept to me (with the exception of the badminton team) because of the friends I had in high school 99.99% of them were non-asian. But actually hearing that comment is one of my pet peeves. Duh, if you hang out and seek other asians, you will inevitably be hanging around with them no? It's not intuitive, it's a fact. My pet peeve isn't that asians hang around other asians, it's that when they do, they point it out like it's some weird anomaly. (*I don't hang around these people all that much*)

Anyhoo, at the end of the night, we all had to pay our bill. Oh here's another funny thing...at the beginning of the night, we got drink menus. $10 for a cocktail, $8 for a large bottle of water. The funny part was watching the waitresses try to get orders for drinks from a bunch of low-tolerance, slightly frugal people. So being a "classy" restaurant, the bill came as one communal bill. It was over $350 plus taxes. Then in all the commotion of people suddenly realizing that they will have to pay cash and have to add properly, someone shouts out, "you have to add 30%." Then someone agreeing, "yeah, trust the Finance guy." Just because somebody did their degree in finance doesn't give them a right to tell people how to spend their money or how to etiquettely and socially act. (*I don't like this guy--he once told me on another social occasion that I'm too quiet and that I need to improve my presence--WTF he had never even talked to me before then*) If I'm not mistaken, you pay for your food according to the quality of the food, and the service. Somebody ordered some sushi and it only came with 3 pieces. He said it wasn't very good and ended up eating the other half of my gnocchi that I didn't finish. If you're paying tip, you're displaying to the restaurant and the chefs the integrity of service that they offer. As one popular chef said, "I don't need a review to tell me how good my food is, I can see the plates as they come back into the kitchen."

Anyhow, back to the paying situation. So although the bill included gratuity, somebody insisted that we pay 30%. So my meal was $15 plus $4 for a drink. Since everybody agreed to pay 30%, I stuck pretty close to it. So that's roughly $25 for my meal. Once all of the cash was totalled, someone notices that we were $30 under what we intended to pay. So someone suggests everybody pay another $2 to make up the difference. I sensed a lot of ambivalence towards this idea. We managed to make it to $10 short of "our goal" and there was some guilting tactics that ensued but to no avail. Finally I and another girl put in another $5 just to get them to shut up about it. Obviously people didn't want to pay 30% and they were just too chicken to say anything. Then you think you have the right to tell them to feel bad about it? Gratuity was already 17%. Which means that even if you didn't like a single morsel of the food, they are still being tipped so to speak. What bothers me most is that I paid a total of 50% tip while I didn't see the guy who made such a big deal out of tipping, chip in any more than the next person.

Right we're all going to be doctors and we will have more than enough to pay 30% tip in the future, but the fact is that it is still a personal choice whether or not you choose to tip and how you want to spend your money. Next time, I'm not putting in any more money. Enough with keeping the peace.

I ate 2 pieces of toast and peanut butter at midnight to quell the hunger pains.

Saturday Blues

So what's new...studying again for an exam on Monday. This time I hope I rock it. I've never taken studying this seriously before! In fact, I've never been this serious in a long time. I think I'm losing a bit of humour and sense of adventure....Can it really be starting this early? Methinks I miss my friends and the good old days.
Today I've had the hiccups 4 times. I think that's a record for me. I usually get them when I'm in a rush to go somewhere or when I'm excited but I also get them in my sleep, which can be pretty amusing for some people. OK I'll make a half-glass-full statement: I'm just soooooo excited to write my exam! Anyhoo, at least I have the whole first season of LOST to look forward to.

"RU the Girl? The RU Girl?" HAHAHA. Courtesy of Booner who couldn't figure out how to read the TV show title "ARe YoU the Girl?" put on by the remaining 2/3 of TLC.

Aight, back to studying...