Gingerbread House...

This X-Mas my family and I got to try something we haven't done since we were kids :)

While I was out last-minute shopping with AK he showed me some pictures on his phone...

At first glance I said...

"wth... nice... you didn't make that, did you?"
"Sure I did..."
"Whatever, man... you? The Korean Hulk?"
"Ya"
"Mr. Destructive? Mr. I-have-no-patience-for-anything?"
"YES!"

Anyway, you get the point :P Apparently his parents went out and randomly purchased a gingerbread house making kit from Costco (or Price Club as AK calls it). AK also APPARENTLY put it together on his own in under 2 hrs... sure sure...

Sooooooo... since I refuse to be bettered than him in the random crafts department I HAD to go out and purchase one too!!! An hour before we were to have our X-mas dinner my sis and I headed out to the grocery store in hopes of finding a kit. I was praying pretty hard cuz the day before I was out with AK and I wasn't able to find one at a different store. We went to Superstore and I walked over to the bakery... the nice little Filipino lady told me there was one more on the table!!! Yee haw! I was still a little unsure of what I was going to find... it was, afterall, the last one. As I suspected the last one was cracked :( Not so cracked that it was obvious but still cracked non-the-less. *sigh* what to do? Beggars can't be choosers, right?

I picked it up, obviously... the last one. That night we had the crazy feast and we didn't have time to put it together... it had to be left for the night after.

After indulging for the second night in a row my cousins and myself broke out the gingerbread house kit :) It looked simple enough... everything was neatly packaged


It seemed that I was right about being paranoid for grabbing the last kit... there was 'earthquake' damage :(


I performed some maintenance :p... filled the cracks with the icing and put them back together :) Good as new! ok... not quite...


Next came erecting the main structure... This task was made much easier by the little plastic base that was provided. There were trenches molded to provide guides for placement... the hardest part was trying to get the icing in place...


While I was holding the pieces in place waiting for the icing to set my cousins began on the Tree, Gingerbread Man, and Gingerbread Snowman :)... hehe, the one I did, had claws :D


We worked on-and-on into the early morning, got the roof Iced (more like buttered with icing :p)... decorated.. and soon we realized that we were running low on candies... wtf :@ at the rate that we were going.. we were going to run out before we were finished!!! Not cool...


Finally! After about 2 hours the house was complete :D Et Voila!

We had so much fun putting it together that we're thinking of having a little competition next year ;) If you haven't already you (and your family) should try it too :D

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AK sent me pictures of his house... O.o ... then he told me about the bag of Skittles that came with it!!! :@ I felt ripped off :( Check it out... it looks REALLY nice, BASTARD :P

Song Of The Week: My Chemical Romance - Welcome To The Black Parade...

It's not often that I come across a non-hip hop/r&b song that catches my attention. Disregarding its political message this song is pretty impressive... I've been listening to it for the past week :p

Merry Non-Denominational Winter Holiday...

X-Mas, X-Mas... the weathermen promised us a white X-Mas... and it didn't happen. I asked for a winning Lotto ticket... that didn't happen either :p

Those who know me also know that I never look forward to X-Mas... I never look forward to any holidays/celebrations, for that matter. Meh, it's just me. As with every other year I spent TOO MUCH time running around like a chicken without a head seeking out gifts. A few years back our family decided that we were spending waaaay too much money on gifts for EVERYONE! We could easily spend $1000-$2000 just on gifts, am I right? We don't have a particularly HUGE family, but I guess it's bigger than alot of others. What was our remedy? It's sorta 'Secret Santa-ish'. We all put our names in a bowl and then we each pick one out. The person you draw is the person that you have to buy a gift(s) for. We also put a cap on the amount of $ we can spend. Usually $50 or so... AND you're not supposed to purchase GCs cuz that's cheating!

I ended up buying for more than just one person (in my family)... it just feels wierd buying for one person only. The end result? Hmmm.. I'm probably going to be crying when I see my next VISA bill... on top of the new phone, bluetooth, and plane ticket to S'pore (will blog about that too) the presents are going to hurt :/

This year seemed not-as-festive as previous years... not sure what it was...

Anyway, we had the usual family gathering on the 24th. This time my cousin and in-law couldn't make it... they're in Thailand) so no crazy Karaoke Revolution or DDR :p My Uncle brought over 2 guests. I'm thinking they're both from the Vancouver Raquet Club where he plays badminton. They didn't speak much English... and I don't speak much Chinese :$ so there wasn't much conversation there, hehe.

My Sis and I ran around doing some last-minute shopping. I had to grab AKs gift plus I wanted to look for a Gingerbread house kit :) By the time we got back the rest of them were waiting for us so they could start dinner. WOOOO HOTPOT!!!

WOW... We had 2 burners going one with Chicken/TomYam and the other with just chicken. I was pretty surprised at the amount of food that was on the table. I guess mum's just used to preparing for a HUGE party! I remember waaaaay back in the day, we used to have an open house during X-Mas. People would come and go as they pleased... and THERE WAS ALWAYS ENOUGH FOOD!!! Imagine that O.o

After a couple of hours stuffing our faces we brought out the dessert :) The highlights were Aunt Sally's home-made cheesecake and the Mango Pudding! There were lots of other sweets/chocolates to choose from too. Among my favorite were the shortbread balls and the Turkish Delight! :D At the same time my sis and cousin handed out the gifts and we all tore in :p Somehow it's not as exciting as when we were children... but it's still fun because my cousins are clowns and are always goofing around while we're together! Oh ya... we did the traditional X-Mas cracker thing and put on our crowns too ;)



OO... Since there was so much food left over my cousins came over again and we had Hot Pot once more :D... then we put together the Gingerbread house!... coming soon...

That Time Of The Year Again...

It seems like such a short time ago that it was X-Mas! Now... here we are again. One year later...

There are only 4 short days left and I'm STILL not done my shopping! :'( we'll see how it goes. As for the lack of updates... sorry sorry... work has me tired :(

On Call...

I have recently acquired the on-call pager, blackberry and laptop. After having them passed to me I asked around to see what the experiences of others were. It was mostly, "You'll almost never get paged."

On Friday AS decided to stay back after his shift. We had a nice chat, time flew and then we decided to head over to Richmond Center to walk around then grab some grub. there we were enjoying our KFC in the foodcourt when he hears a beeping sound. I'm not sure why.. but when I hear strange sounds I tend to ignore them... for him it was different... it was a sound that he's familiar with. I thought it was funny because his facial expression changed, then I heard what he said, "omg... is that the pager?"

below: now you know why I didn't buy a BBerry earlier

Crap... anyhoo, we made our way back to his car, fished out the BBerry and I called the number back. We made bets as to who we thought it was.. I guessed Singapore, he guessed Australia... we were both wrong :p it was Dubai! Heh. Since we were close to the office we went back so I could jump on my PC. It would have been easier than trying to find an internet connection somewhere else and then VPN'ing into the network. After about an hour of on-call OT we both went home.

Not but 1/2 hr later as I was pulling in front of the house the pager went off again! I thought for sure it was Dubai... nope, it was a local number. When I called back I discovered that it was 2nd level calling to let me know that one of the mirror drives had failed... wtf. So I had to call someone else and wake them up :D lol. I opened a ticket and passed on the message. He said he would call me if he discovered it was something serious. I wasn't expecting to get a very good rest, lucky me :) no call! Yay!

Sooo.. the first day that I get paged I end up with 2 calls and 1.5 hrs of OT/on-call pay :p

Having the pager sucks... I'm always worried that someone's going to interrupt me if I'm out... oh well. I'm sure the pay will make up for it :/

Oh ya... the Support laptop blue-screened on me... we later discovered that it's a HW failure. Nice, support needs support :p So now I have to configure a new one. At least it's a brand new IBM T60 :)

Dead Battery...

Yeeeeesss... I had a dead battery today... it wasn't as simple as a dead Blackberry battery or a dead watch battery. It was the car battery O.o

In my old age ;) I find that I'm forgetting more and more... simple things like turning off the car lights are eluding me. Thanks AS for turning my lights off... unfortunately for me, it was too late. I got into the car and put the key in... nothing. I got the buzz from the seatbelt warning but I could tell that something was wrong because the radio wasn't working, and the heating coil light was not on :( grrr.

The last time that I had to use my CAA card was loooong ago so I didn't even have that on me. Good thing the dispatch can look you up via address. All I had to do was verify with photo ID... *sigh* the crappy week continues... If my head wasn't attached I'd forget it somewhere too :@

Movie: Turistas...

Synopsis: A group of backpackers narrowly escape a bus accident in the mountains of Brazil. Around the corner they discover a little cabana/bar on a white-sand beach with crystal clear water... the perfect getaway. After a night of partying they wake up on the beach only to discover that there's more going on than meets the eye. They have been robbed of all their belongings... who can they trust? Where can they go?

---

I have to say that I was going into this movie expecting waaaaaaaaay more out of it than I got. It felt like Turistas was just trying to feed off the success of an earlier movie... a movie that featured backpacking tourists... a world away from home... visiting unknown land... strange things happen... people get cut up... sound familiar? *drumroll please* HOSTEL!!!

The only difference is HOSTEL was good. Good as far as Horror movies go anyway :p There was more action, more of a plot, more gore :D very good special-effects and visuals.

Don't get me wrong... there were good parts in Turistas too... beautiful scenic shots of Brasil, Mountains, Jungle, Waterfalls, Caves... Bikinis :p but there were too many scenes that were drawn-out and lots of other little inconsistencies. One of the most annoying scenes was towards the end... a never-ending underwater chase. GRRR... Blah... wait for DVD, don't waste your money watching it in the theaters.

What A Week...

Photos from JohnHarveyPhoto.com

The week is finally over and the weekend is here...

It has been a long time since I've looked forward to the weekend as much as I have this week. Monday started out blah. The only thing interesting about that day was having to dig the car out of the snow and then make my way to work. The whole city was buried in snow, but the plows DID come out. However, the side streets near my work had not been plowed yet. To top that off there was a flatbed truck stuck on the left side of the road. That made it hard for me to achieve a good angle of approach to get into my work parking lot. Which, incidentally, was the only parking lot in that area that had not been plowed yet, WTF. So I ended up driving around the back streets all the way to the exit with the stoplight... BUT I couldn't turn right because the plow had gone that way and made a left turn (pushing the snow to the right side) :@! I had to make a left, go under the bridge all the way to the next traffic light and turn into the sidestreets there. I had fun rallying around the backroads there before coming back 'round to the main road and making my way back to my work lot.

I was praying that the truck would not still be there when I got back, but lo-and-behold it was. I ended up driving that same route around the lot, under the bridge, and back around @ least one more time while I was contemplating whether I should attempt to drive into the lot full of snow.

Third-time 'round I drove past the truck, into one of the plowed lots, circled around and attempted to drive in a different ramp. Weeeeeeeeee! I made it in. *sigh* stupid... I arrived to work on time and still ended up being 30-45 minutes late. grrr. Oh ya... only 1 manager made it into the office that day... nice.


Tuesday and Wednesday had to have been the crappiest days I've worked since coming to this company. For some reason on Tuesday everyone's computer seemed to be breaking down, argh! I don't mind so much when that happens... it's just that I have to open up a ticket and then log it under my name and wait for the hardware to come in... I have the memory of a goldfish :/ it's going to be hell to remember what computer belongs to who, and what went wrong with it (why they sent it in).

Blah... I don't even wanna rant about work anymore... it's too depressing...