Yum, Coke!!

I ran across this the other day, which describes the effects that Coke has on your body. As much as I am a lover of pop (or soda or whatever you choose to call it), this is turning me off of it big time.

This is my favourite part:

In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.

I've been trying to wean myself off of pop for a while, with some success, but I don't think I can ever give it up entirely. Especially root beer, that's my favourite.

KOOKY: Down the Rabbit Hole

Thanks for IT P/J for taking these pictures for me. As I had mentioned in my previous post, the maintenance tunnels underneath VGH are very scary. Here's proof (sorry, the pics are little blurry, but you get the idea):


Tunnel:

Maintenance level:
Hobbit size door. The guy in the picture is the new guy. He's been here only two weeks, and already we've subjected him to the tunnels. Hopefully it won't scare him off...

KOOKY: A trip to the hospital

No, I didn't get into an accident, although I did witness a car accident this afternoon. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

About once a month I go to the Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) campus for various reasons. Today, I'd managed to stack three meeting there in the same day. I would say at least 1/3 of our users, if not more, are located here.

The drawing you see on the left is the newest building on the VGH campus. It's the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre. I personally think it's an ugly building, and actually didn't set foot in the building other than to park in the underground parking lot, which by the way, costed $15! All of which I will hopefully get reimbursed by the Faculty. Hopefully. (BTW, if you want your name on a building, donate $20 million dollars like the Diamond family did).

The VGH campus is huge, the buildings spanning several block. I was actually in three different buildings for my meetings today. Meeting #2 was in a building that's partially under construction. They've gutted one half, and once that is done, they're going to gut the other half. I think.

It's interesting being in old buildings. I was finally introduced to the older part of the tunnel system that spans underneath the entire VGH campus. It's really, really creepy down there. They apparently use the tunnels in part to move patients around (or dead bodies). I was going to take a picture, but I got distracted.

And I was also introduced to a stairway that is very, very scary to go up and down. The stairs are very shallow, to the point where no one's foot can be completely planted on one step. Plus there is a low overhang that you have to watch or you can bang your head on it. I'm 5'2", and I barely clear it without stooping under.

The best part about this stairway is that no one seems to be/wants to take responsibility for it, which is why it is it's present state and may not ever be renovated, repaired or torn out. This is such a typical scenario that I've witnessed over and over. I call it the "Same, Same But Different" syndrome. They don't want to be a part of your organization, but if something goes wrong with whatever IT stuff they're doing, it's still your fault and you need to fix it.

KOOKY: It's just one of those days...

Yep, there's plenty of sarcasm that goes on around here, and sadly, it's not just restricted to working in a university environment. Today, my co-worker finally found the culprit that was causing all his woes. It was a D-Link router. Somebody had bought it to extend the network across the room. This router started causing a huge slow-down in the entire network.

Did I also tell you that his woes started on August 4th? Yes, this has been going on for four months. All because someone had decided to circumvent IT and go with his own solution.

My manager said that if this was the private sector, we would have given this group a very hefty bill for all the countless hours spent trying to troubleshoot the problem. It would have been enough to pay off my car loan, and my car loan ain't small.

The only consolation my co-worker's getting is that he can now let off a litany of swear words that he's been holding in the last four months and the knowledge that his nightmare problem is finally over. I'm certain he's gone for a good, stiff drink tonight.

So folks, if you think you're an IT guru, let the real IT guys do it for you. Even if you "know what you're doing", let the IT guys do it. You're most likely causing a mess in the infrastructure without realizing it. For the love of God, please don't create any more messes. Please.

Shaun of the Dead

London is taken over by zombies!

This movie was great! It was zany funny, and full of zombies. Lots of killing, then dead people coming back to life from the dead.

The picture shown here is my favourite part of the movie, where the characters pretend that they're zombies so they can walk across the street (filled with zombies of course) without letting the zombies know that there is still living people among them. Hilarious!

I've been wanting to see this movie for a long time and I finally got to. It was totally worth the wait.

The next film to come out from these guys is Hot Fuzz. This looks good too. Trailer:

KOOKY: Published!

Our group secretary wrote a small article for the Vancouver Sun's weekend edition. It's an interesting read.

It's too bad most of you won't be able to meet Doug. He may only be the secretary, but everyone knows not to piss him off. He rules the nest, and even my director defers to him. Doug is certainly quite the character.

I saw dead people!

So today we went to the Telus World of Science to see the Body Worlds exhibit. It was really cool. What I saw was exactly what is shown in the picture (and the skater was actually at the exhibit too).

Yes, it's also a real live dead person in the picture. The process that they used is called plastination, which is a really cool way of preserving the bodies.

The really neat thing about this exhibit is that you get a sense as to how things are put together in your body and how compact everything is in your body. The body's a very complicated machine. I was trying to pick out all the part of my body that are currently in pain or that I've recently damaged, like my hip flexor, or the cuboid bone in my left foot.

Two things really impressed me about exhibit:

1. They show specimens of health and unhealthy organs (eg someone with a healthy lung versus someone who had lung cancer). It really brings home how much damage one can do to one's body. I'll definitely be taking care of my body a bit more now.
2. All the male "exhibits" (yes, they kept the penises and testes on) have the same sized penis. Don't know why I noticed that, but it certainly made me wonder...

Anyways, if you get the chance to go see it, go. It certainly is interesting, and it gave me a better appreciation of my body.

Aeon Flux

I saw Aeon Flux a few nights ago. I didn't know anything about this movie other than it was Sci-Fi and Charlize Theron was in it.

Reasons why to watch:

• Charlize Theron is hot.
  

Well, that's about it. Yes I would love to have the body (and the flexibility) like Charlize Theron, but I guess not.

However, let's put aside the atrocious acting for one moment and focus on the storyline. I was actually somewhat intrigued by the plot until they played the whole cloning angle. After that, any appeal that the movie had was lost.

The whole cloning plot has been so overdone, you think that they would at least be a little more original. But they weren't.

Even Jonny Lee Miller couldn't save it for me, and I think he's a great actor.

Anyways, I give it about 2 out of 10.

Napoleon Dynamite

So I saw Napoleon Dynamite tonight. I think hubby had put it best: It's so stupid that you have to keep watching to see what happens next.

I actually quite liked it, and sadly, it reminded me of my days as a geeky loser in the 80s. Ha. It was cheesy in some parts, but not overly so. The rest of it was just weird, but in a funny way.

Anyhoo, I give it 8 out of 10.

The finger bone is connected to the ankle bone...

It looks like I strained my hip flexor. I'm not too certain how, but there it is.

I really like this chiropractor that I'm seeing right now for my hip problems. He prodded and poked, pushed and pulled, and asked me a million questions, even questions unseemingly unrelated to my problem (like if I had changed my diet or was suddenly fatigued). He certainly assessed me more so than my two previous chiropractor (one whom I'm still seeing for my upper back problems).

I felt that he was being extremely through, plus, he knows more techniques than just plain ole back cracking. Today, he was doing some sort of myofascial massage on me. My RMT does a similar technique when I get messages from her. Hurts like heck, but my hip flexor's already feeling better. Next appointment, he's going to fix my tight bum. I'm thinking about switching over to this guy for my back cracking, ha!

He also told me that my squatting technique was incorrect and showed me the correct way of doing squats. I'm all big about correct form, I see enough incorrect form at the gym already; these people are just waiting to end up like me, or worse!

This guy does a lot of sports therapy, and I'm tending to like these people more, because they tend to see the body more as a whole, and not just focus on the isolated area where the problem is. The more I learn about my body, the more I find that everything is interconnected.

Anyways, this guy has a lot of athletes for patients. I know that his partner treats players from the Canucks and Giants. Their office walls are peppered with autographed pictures of hockey players. I'm definitely going to take a closer look at the pictures when I get a chance.

Winter Wonderland

Let me prelude this with: Snow belongs on mountains and only mountains.

It started snowing Saturday mid-afternoon and stopped Monday mid-afternoon, so it snowed for two days straight. I had driven around Sunday and Monday night, and nare a snow plow nor salt/sand truck did I see. Very bad of the city, I really wonder sometimes why I pay taxes.

Anyways, these were taken yesterday...

Water

You really don't know how much you depend on something until it's take away from you. Take for instance, water. We had to boil our water from Nov 16th to Nov 27th because the turbidity levels were too high from a severe storm we had on Nov 15th. The Boil Water Advisory lasted 11 days.

So no drinking tap water, no washing food with tap water, no washing dishes with tap water, and no brushing your teeth with water. And if you had a baby or toddler, you had to bathe them with boiled water.

I've lost count the number of times that I've turned on the tap water when brushing my teeth. I think I've even rinsed my toothbrush with tap water once by mistake.

So anyways, here are a couple of pictures for posterity...

This was taken on Day 4. The turbidity level was 30 NTUs (Nephelometric Turbidity Units) that day. The highest it got was 70 NTUs. The allowable limit for safe drinking water is 1 NTU. I've been told that it used to be 5 NTUs, but after the Walkerton incident, they lowered it to 1.


The number of 500 mL bottled water two people used in that time period: 35

You too can look as hot as Jane Fonda

Apparently, one of the possible side effects of owning a Wii is losing weight and getting toned.

If you don't believe me, read this.

I didn't know that the Wii had this sort of functionality, and for that alone, I'm intrigued.

But guys, this is definitely one way you can talk your wife/girlfriend/partner that you need one of these things. Not only will you get your gaming fix, but the two of you can look hot together!

I spoke too soon...

The Boil Water Advisory was lifted today. The cold water's pretty clear, but the hot water's still a little silty looking, and probably will be for some time as there's probably a lot of silt in the boiler.

Good times.

Craziness abounds in Lotusland

Sigh.

It's day 12 of the boil water advisory.

My left hip flexor cramped up on Friday, so now I can't go to the gym until I at least see a chiropractor, which I will be doing on Wednesday.

It's been snowing like crazy since Saturday mid-afternoon. It should stop soon. However...

Half the city's shut down. I can't go into work even if I wanted to as there's a power outage at UBC. So I'm working from home.

I cam home last night to find that there was a power surge and one of our routers blew. We can't print for the time being. I had planned on putting a couple of other posts up, but spent three hours last night trying to troubleshoot the problem. This has also affected evil homework.

I'm tired, I didn't sleep very well last night.

And it's going to start snowing again on Thursday.

Sigh.

Wedding Crashers

With our new digital TV service, we now get some movie channels to try out. So I recorded and watched Wedding Crashers.

For a cheesy date movie, this one's pretty good. The funny lines weren't too cheesy, I didn't get bored (okay, a couple of parts were slow, but not overly so) and overall, the plot worked.

Owen Wilson actually annoyed me. I can't see him being a romantic lead. Period. I love Vince Vaughn's role, and the crazy lady he ended up with. Jane Seymour was terrific. And Rachel McAdams should have been a brunette, not a blond (in real life, I mean); it suits her better, I think.

Anyways, I give the movie 8 out of 10.

A side note: I love, love, LOVE the PVR functionality!!! It's so easy to record and watch something, and I never have to worry about setting the VCR incorrectly any longer yay!

Another note: I'm pretty ambivalent about keeping the movie channels. I still feel that I'm on someone else's time schedule and was limited to a very limited selection. Really, the value for the viewer is the Pay-Per-View channels and the Video-On Demand, something I'm not really gung-ho on buying, mostly because it's expensive. Plus, I would still be on someone else's schedule, and I'm not certain if the DVD extras and commentaries would be included. Call me crazy, but I love watching that stuff.

Still, we get the movie channels for free for the next 10 months, so I might as well take advantage of it and watch movies I've missed out in the past.

Cell phone value

I was reading this article today in the Globe and Mail. Apparently we pay more for our cell phone service than those people down in the US. My sister constantly astounds me with stories of how cheap cell phone plans in the US are compared to Canada.

Granted, the US has 10 times the population, and thus, 10 times the market, so they can afford to be more competitive.

One line in the article did interest me:

“In Canada, wireless has been seen as a luxury,[...] In the U.S., it's been seen as a necessity.”

The perspectives are interesting. This would maybe explain why a lot of people that I know don't use their cell phone, and in fact, want to get rid of it. This sort of thinking however, really keeps Canada in the dark ages when it comes to tech-savviness, and also explains why Canada never really get the cool phones till later, if at all. Boooo.

It would be interesting to see how the landscape will change once the cell phone number portability regulation comes into effect next March...

geoGreeting!

This is cool!

(Give it a minute to load, then click the "Zoom In" button. Mouse over the letters at the top to see where in the world the building is located...)

Babykeeper

No, this is not a torture device. It's actually a handy gadget to keep your kid from touching all sorts of things or crawling under the door when you have to go wee in a pubic toilet.

It's also one of the more bizarre things I've seen. But apparently there's a market for it, and for a mere $39.99 USD, you can get one shipped to your house.

Babykeeper

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

We saw Borat tonight. It was funny, but not as funny as it was hyped to be. Hubby and I sat there wondering if some of the stuff (like the Pamela Anderson and the Jewish Bed & Breakfast stint) were staged.

My favourite part was the whole wrestling/running naked around the hotel scenes. While this certainly wasn't the funniest film I've ever seen, it's certainly the most original.

Boil Water Advisory

The water on the left is what my tap water looks like right now. Pretty gross, eh?

Yesterday, the Health Authority had put the entire Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) under a boil water advisory. That's 2 million people who shouldn't be ingesting tap water.

I've seen lots of rain and bad storms like this before, and I've seen muddy water before, and I've been through a boil water advisory before, so it wasn't new to me.

Hubby, be the health-conscious person that he is, bought two cases of bottled water. All the bigger containers had already disappeared from the shelves.

I was talking about today with a co-worker. He doesn't believe there's a threat. I don't believe the water's that contaminated myself, but he was failing to understand what in the water would make him sick. Well, it's the coliform and E. coli levels in the water. And if you ingest too much, it can cause serious problems in your body.

With typical male bravo, he claimed that he knows what his body can handle, and it certainly can handle a few specks of dirt in the water. That really is the least of your worries if you actually know what is in the water reservoirs. There was a health reason why all the coffee shops are not selling coffee, and it has nothing to do with your coffee looking muddy.

My co-worker's probably one of these types who will never go to a physical until it's too late. He's still in his 20s, so he will feel invincible still. I suppose he will learn in time. I for one have learned not to argue with such stubbornness, it's not worth it.

Flu Shot

Yesterday I got my flu shot. I had to pay $20 for it.

Now I'm not complaining about the money. But I work for the Faculty of Medicine. And you think they would lead the way in paying for the flu shot for their employees?

You're wrong.

It's not the money, it's the principle of the thing.

And my arm still hurts. Bah.

Potty Training

I have no idea what they are saying that isn't English, but I found it hilarious nonetheless. I never knew that excrement could be so happy.

Robot Chicken - Calvin and Hobbes

Moving forward... finally!!!

So hubby and I have been talking for over a year now about moving from regular cable to digital cable and HDTV. Today we finally did. I'm soooo excited!

Hubby ordered the Shaw HD + PVR box from Best Buy the other day, they were having a 10% off sale (which by the way, hardly made a dent in the price, it's still trés expensive!).

I let hubby set it up while I was upstairs doing evil homework. When I finally came down to check on his progress, he had figured out enough to start watching TV. One of the first things I watched was a clip of an A-Team episode (the Cowboy George episode to be exact).

I love the A-Team! Murdock's my favourite character, and Dwight Schultz is a great actor. We managed to get a couple of Dwight Schultz episodes in during our Star Trek marathon last Saturday too.

Anyways, flipping around some more, we tried out the HD channels. Oh my goodness! I don't know why we waited so long get HD. The picture was so clear! Now hubby has to figure out the PVR, and we're good to go. No more missed episodes of Lost, yay!

Score!

Today I did some mad clothes shopping/retail therapy. I discovered that my wardrobe is sadly lacking in sweaters and pants so I had to go shopping for some more. I ordered $125 worth of Banana Republic gift cards with my AirMiles and already had about $55 worth of Jacob gift certificates left over, so lots to spend with.

I got quite a bit of a shock when I went into BR. I decided to buy a pair of jeans which cost $135. However, when the girl rang it up at the till, it came up as $31.99!! Someone must have punched it in the system incorrectly.

However, I'm half debating about returning them because:

1. I don't like Banana Republic clothing in general, too old for my taste, even though they market for my age bracket
2. The jeans make my butt look flat and unflattering. Yes, I'm vain.
3. Despite the fact I had bought Petite size, I still need to hem them. Apparently Petite in BR world means 5'4". Bah.
   

Anyways, I ended up getting three pairs of pants, two sweaters and a pajama bottom. So, I got $460+ worth of clothing for less than $200!

Top 10 Fitness Lies and Myths

Little Dumb Man had posted this article today about the top 10 fitness lies and myths. If you click on each point, it will bring you to the actual article on the eDiets.com site. Whether or not you believe in his statements, it's certainly something to think about...

(And a little side note for the people who run the eDiets.com website, the QuitAssist advert on the right column is really annoying me. I don't like video/audio playing automatically, I'd rather control this thing myself.)

Star Trek Freakiness!

Later today, my friends and I will be having yet another Star Trek marathon. What this has morphed into over the years is we as a collective (no Borg activity present! Sorry, bad pun) choose a few select episodes/movies from my vast collection (The entire Next Generation and Voyager series and all 10 movies. Yes, it's a heck of a lot of DVDs) and we watch them. Yes, we are geeks.

This time around, we decided on a time travel theme. I've already made a list, but many times we've tended to deviate from the theme and watch whatever is interesting.

Anyways, IT P/J had earlier this week stumbled upon this coincidence, and interestingly enough, it ties in beautifully with our theme.






Picture of Michael Aron, who plays Jack London in Time's Arrow.











Picture of the real Jack London










The similarities between the actor and the real life (but dead) person are really similar, don't you think? They have the same eyes, mouth, chin and general head shape, although I think the real Jack London's nose is a bit more prominent than Michael Aron's.

Perhaps a great-great grandfather?

Shrink Pictures

I found this tool a little while ago and thought I'd share. If you don't have a photo editor like Photoshop or The GIMP, you can use this site to do some common things with your image.

You can shrink your image to an indicated pixel size, add greyscale or sepia effects, and even choose the image quality. Plus they have a special avatar tool which not only resizes the picture for you to a proper avatar size, but will do different cropping samples as well. Then all you have to do is grab the image and you're good to go.

What I love about this tool is that the functionality that it offers is about the only functionality that I use for images anyways, so it's very handy. And because it's online, you can use it anywhere and load it up to your image server. I've always had a server to load the image to, but I didn't always have a tool for resizing. It's easy to use, and you don't have to install yet another application where you only use about 1% of the functionality. Good times.

Original picture (click picture to see original size, Blogger is resizing pic):


Cropped to 350 px height (click picture to see new size):

Kitty Litter Cake

I'm only posting this because someone's too lazy to post it himself, and I'm not feeling too well....

*******************

OMG!!! You aren't going to believe this one...LOL!!!

Want to be forever eliminated from the guest list? Just take this to your next "pot luck" dinner!!!

Kitty Litter Cake

This is *no joke*

READ THE INGREDIENTS AND STUFF FIRST AND THEN LOOK AT THE PHOTO...

TRUST ME...

DON'T LOOK AT THE PHOTO FIRST, BUT LAST...


This is for all you cooks out there looking for something a little different........

WANT TO HAVE FUN AT A PARTY? PREPARE THIS RECIPE! COMPLETELY EDIBLE,
BUT YOUR FRIENDS MAY NOT THINK SO!

On a recent visit to our veterinarian to get shots for our cat I found this recipe on the waiting room bulletin board. After recovering from hysterical laughter, I obtained a copy from the office staff so that my wife could make it, which she refused to do. I took it to work and gave the recipe to a lady at work who loves cats. The pictures below show the results of her work. It doesn't look very nice, but it's actually quite tasty, so I decided to pass it along.

CAKE INGREDIENTS:
1 box spice or German chocolate cake mix
1 box of white cake mix
1 package white sandwich cookies
1 large package vanilla instant pudding mix
A few drops green food coloring
12 small Tootsie Rolls or equivalent


(Wait. What is the equivalent of a Tootsie Roll?)


SERVING "DISHES AND UTENSILS"
1 NEW cat-litter box
1 NEW cat-litter box liner
1 NEW pooper scooper

1) Prepare and bake cake mixes, according to directions, in any size pan. Prepare pudding and chill. Crumble cookies in small batches in blender or food processor. Add a few drops of green food coloring to 1 cup of cookie crumbs. Mix with a fork or shake in a jar. Set aside.

2) When cakes are at room temperature, crumble them into a large bowl. Toss with half of the remaining cookie crumbs and enough pudding to make the mixture moist but not soggy. Place liner in litter box and pour in mixture.

3) Unwrap 3 Tootsie Rolls (or their equivalent?) and heat in a microwave until soft and pliable. Shape the blunt ends into slightly curved points. Repeat with three more rolls. Bury the rolls decoratively in the cake mixture. Sprinkle remaining white cookie crumbs over the mixture, then scatter green crumbs lightly over top.

4) Heat 5 more Tootsie Rolls until almost melted. Scrape them on top of the cake and sprinkle with crumbs from the litter box. Heat the remaining Tootsie Roll until pliable and hang it over the edge of the box. Place box on a sheet of newspaper and serve with scooper. Enjoy!


I KNOW SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY MADE IT AND TOOK IT TO WORK. (THEY HAD A GREAT TIME!!)

I'm just worried about that Tootsie Roll Equivalent...

Hal, the IT Admin

Ya know, as amusing as this is, we IT people really go through all this pain and suffering. So have some sympathy the next time something blows up...

del.icio.us

So I've been using del.icio.us for a few months now, and I have to say, I quite like it. For those of you who don't know what del.icio.us is, it's a site used mainly to store your bookmarks. However, it does things in a different way.

When you find a site you want to bookmark, you can simply right-click or click on the plug-in to update your bookmarks. What you will see is similar to the image above. The neat thing about this system is that you can tag (or label) your bookmarks any way you want, and you can use as many tags as you want to represent the bookmark. You can also share your bookmarks, although I don't choose to.

To find a bookmark, you can either do a search, or you can reference a tag cloud. The words in the tag cloud tend to be bigger or smaller depending on how often you use the tag.

Things I like about del.icio.us:

• You reference your bookmarks anywhere there is an Internet connection. I don't have to back up or copy over my browser bookmarks should I go through the pain of rebuilding my machine (or even better, should my computer crash)
  
• You're able to tag and group your bookmarks anyway you want, and not in a hierarchical fashion. This is great as this is how we tend to sort and organize things in our brain.
  
• You can add new bookmarks even if you're not at your usual computer
• You can filter down the bookmark list using the tags on the tag cloud.
  

Functionality I wished del.icio.us had:

• Believe it or not, I would love to be able to sort the bookmarks alphabetically. You can't, only with the tags can you sort alphabetically.
• When I'm tagging a page, I wish there was the ability to "guess" what tag I'm typing in, as in guess using an existing tag in my tag cloud. I don't want to tag things with similar words (eg "blog" vs. "blogs"). The two words are the same thing in my mind, and it's very annoying to have to go back and fix it.
• I would love the ability to automatically find 404 links and delete them.
  
• I would love the ability to exclude certain tags when doing a search.
  

Right now, I have about 1000 bookmarks, and the list has surprisingly shrank since I first exported my bookmarks over. As I'm super anal, I'm going through each and every bookmark to fix the tags and make them more meaningful to me, as well as fix my list of bookmarks.

Despite the negative points, I still like this tool, and rarely use my browser bookmarks any longer. Give it a try.

Importance of a 5-Point Harness Carseat

Someone on Hitched had posted this link, so I thought I would share. The title says it all.

Failure To Launch

We saw this last night. We really wanted to rent MI-3, but alas, there was nare a copy in sight at the video store. So out of all the pickings that was left over, this was something that we both didn't object to.

I'll give it 7 stars. Like your typical romantic comedies, it's cheesy. And a very typical romantic comedy. However, the premise of the plot is a little different, hence a higher score.

Matthew McConaughey for some reason, started to annoy me though. I can't place my finger on it, but it wasn't his character, it was, well... him.

Will it blend?

I was shown this by IT P/J the other day. Really, I don't know why you would feel the need to blend something as tough as glass marbles, but if you so desire, then there's a blender out there that will do it.

IT P/J mentioned in passing that they actually use these blenders in the Starbucks stores. Hmm....

(And as a side note, for someone who doesn't have time for anything, he somehow finds all these interesting things to send to me. =P)

Jane Eyre - The End? (Lots of spoilers

Okay, this is my last Jane Eyre post, for a little while anyways. I love the picture above, they look like a disgruntled married couple having an argument.

I thought I'd post some other viewer's comments:
I agree with The Unconscious Argentinean's comments the most, but didn't agree with her feelings under the "Things that troubled me" section. It was weird watching the flashbacks the first time in episode 4, but they work well, I think. Rochester's desperately trying to talk Jane into staying, he knows that she's going to leave. It's Jane who has the upper hand, not Rochester. Also, the lack of the childhood scenes. Frankly, I thought her childhood would translate quite boringly onto the screen, despite the fact that they are an important part to Jane's character development.

Here's one by Living in the Past and one by La Reine Noire.

And for some complete silliness, click for some picspam here (not quite SFW), and here.

Jane Eyre - Ultimate-Ultimate

Inevitably what happens after a TV or movie showing that people really like, there will be someone out there who makes a music video. Most music video out there are pretty quickly put together by amateurs, which goes to show you that the software is out there to make something pretty snazzy, very cheaply and easily nowadays.

Unfortunately, I find about 99% of them not worth watching. Music, I think is a very personal thing, so how one interprets music and relates it to his or her life is also very personal.

Anyways, I've been watching a great many Jane Eyre music videos, and have actually found some music that I really like. One thing about having people from around the world do these music videos is that I'm hearing music that I've never heard before, which I think is cool.

So I have some new ultimate-ultimates (warning, lots of spoilers below, so if you want to listen to the music, click, then minimize the browser to just listen):

Nara by E.S. Posthumus. I actually like this video, even though the editing is a little choppy (which I will forgive because this is a first-time video), is that it's presented a little differently that many music videos, and the music actually matches the mood the creator is trying to impart on us. I've since downloaded some more music by this group. What's also great about the music is that this music lends itself very well to movies, which is why it works so well in this video. If you actually check out Wikipedia, this same music has been used in several different movies.



Another great group that I've discovered is Within Temptation. They are a goth metal group from the Netherlands. I'm not normally into metal, but they put out some pretty funky stuff. The music video's okay, but I like the music itself more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1YdTRHW2-8

While this is not an ultimate-ultimate song, I'm putting it here because I like the bass (Everything by Lifehouse): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s7qwYVbp6U

And for those of you who saw the trailers on TV, the music is by Goldfrapp, an electronica band from the UK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvN4aRILm5s

If you're a computer geek, raise your hands!

I know that it's past Halloween, but I thought I'd put this up anyways, it's mildly amusing, but only computer geeks will get it.

IT P/J, who sent me the link, said that the voices were all recorded separately. And apparently these people live all over the globe! Good coordination people!

Server Room of Horrors

Happy Halloween!

I figured since it's Halloween, I thought I'd talk about ghost and death.

One of the most well known ghosts is the Lady in Red that haunts Fairmont Vancouver Hotel. It has been said that she haunts the 14th floor (which is really the 13th floor) of the hotel, and has known to approach people in the dining room, demanding her seat back at the table where the patron is sitting in.

Ghosts have been sighted at the older movie theatres around Vancouver. (Sorry, the link won't work, just copy and paste into a new browser window. http://www.where.ca/vancouver/article_feature~listing_id~119.htm)

This link lists a few haunted places around the Lower Mainland. James Cowan Theatre and Ceperley House are about a 5 minute walk from each other, and about a 5 minute drive from my house. I've known about these ghosts forever as I've lived in this area most of my life. Ceperley House is now an art gallery. I remember going there as a child and I was consciously aware of the building was haunted, but never seen the ghost. Still I was scared. What can I say, I'm chicken shite (still am!).

Errol Flynn actually died in Vancouver. What he died from was pretty gross in itself.

One of the most famous murders in Vancouver history, the death of Scottish nanny, Janet Smith. It is rumoured that she haunts Hycroft Manor, along with some other ghosts.

Another well-known murder, which involved the well known Bow Mac sign on Broadway. (Janet Smith's murder is further down on the page).

This morning, one of the radio morning shows that I listen to on my way to work was broadcasting live from Balthazar. Where Balthazar stands now used to be a brothel back in the 1920s. Apparently the owner, a Madam Maxine, was murdered in the basement, and even today, many of the staff, especially those who have been there a long while, have had encounters with her. Fun stuff.

Man, I'm going to give myself nightmares tonight. I told you I was chicken shite.

The Picard Song: SIMS

IT P/J sent this to me. The dancing SIMS crack me up, and I still pee in my pants every time I watch it, and the original video. Apparently, the original remix was done by Dark Materia, and you can even download the MP3 from the site.



And just for old times sake, the original video:

CAN

A friend of mine sent this to me a few days ago. Normally I don't post stuff like this. I'm not the type to buy into fuzzy, feel good stories like all those "Chicken Soup for the Soul" type of things. Frankly, I find them extremely boring. I don't find puppies cute or revel in nice scenery.

However, I'm putting this link up to remind myself that no matter how much I would love to have control over how where my life leads me, I don't have any control. Zero. Zip. Nada.

This is also a reminder to myself to look for the good in a not-so-good situation, because there is good in everything, even when I can't see it.

We as humans can be really short-sighted at times. Really.

CAN

I've had an epiphany just now...

I've realized just today that I've been holding a lot of anger, resentment and bitterness in one part of my life. Specifically, towards one person. This person, I don't have much respect for, yet I need to work with person, and to get something done that also been a thorn in my side for the last six years. I think that's partially been holding me back for so long.

I want to get on with my life my way, but these feelings of resentment have been really holding me back. There is light at the end of tunnel, I just choose to ignore it and whine.

So I'm going to stop whining at get on with it.

I will try my hardest not to continue feeling anger, resentment, and bitterness, after all, I'm human as well. But knowing is half the battle, and knowing what's been dragging me down this past 1.5 years helps me let go of things a little easier.

Really, I don't have a lot to complain about. I know someone who recently lost her leg in a car accident; someone else fighting cancer; and still many others who battle with infertility issues, weight issues and money issues. I have none of that. My life's pretty good all things considered.

I've been praying for a long time for me to get to this point. And I've finally gotten there.

Law & Order: SLU

Someone on my chat board posted this, so I thought I'd share, it's very funny. It amazes me to no end that the Muppets can still entertain me. I think even some of the jokes younger kids may not understand. This clip rocks!

Tired...

I had a very harrowing week this week. I was not in a happy place in terms of work (something blew up), and it was only today we finally fixed it. I think I will go to bed soon which is not a good idea as I was hoping to get about 4 hours of homework done.

That just means that I will really need to focus tomorrow and get as much done as I can to make up for the 4 hours I'm losing tonight. What I'm doing now is pretty tedious and time consuming, which makes it look like I've done nothing. So I'm not in a very happy place right now...

Bah.

Jane Eyre (Part 3) - Meet Edward

When I first heard that Toby Stephens was to play Mr. Rochester, I thought, "Who the heck is he?" Well, I went over to IMBD and lo and behold, I have seen him before. He played the the Korean-cum-White Boy baddie in Die Another Day. Believe it or not, one of the few things I remembered about this film was how impressed I was with the actor who played Gustav Graves. In fact, in the scene above, if you listen to the commentary on the DVD, they were quite astounded by the depth of acting. I recall thinking that this was one of the better bad guys that I've seen, and I actually liked his evilness.














As I had mentioned earlier, Mr. Rochester is my favourite hero because he's so passionately in love with Jane. I love Toby as Mr. Rochester. Like Ruth Wilson, he brings so much depth, charisma and emotion to the character. Toby made Mr. Rochester alive in my mind. So, here are my impressions of Mr. Rochester as I was watching Jane Eyre.

Mr. Rochester is creepy. I've noted that on at least three occasions, Rochester knows exactly where Jane is, even if she thinks he doesn't. I suppose when you're newly in love with someone, you always know where that person is. You tend to be hypersensitive when it comes to that other person. Rochester's "Jane-radar" was going waaay off the scale. At least twice, he pops out from nowhere. Similar instances are in the book, but watching it as it is portrayed really gave me the creeps, I thought he was stalking Jane.

Mr. Rochester has bad hair. I have decided that I don't like the long hair. I don't know whose idea it was to give him long hair, but I thought at times he looked about 50 years old, and one time, I though he was actually constipated. I blame the hair for that. Plus, Toby kept on having hair accidents off-set. What you see are hair extensions, and they would fall out once in while, and at the most inopportune times. Poor guy. He would have looked much younger and better looking with short hair (Okay, Mr. Rochester is supposed to be not much to look at, but Toby Stephens is a very good looking man, so hence the hair comment. Gimme a break, I'm female).

Mr. Rochester is a big jerk. Really, it never occurred to me that how Rochester was treating Blanche and Jane was not right. Not only was he was being manipulative, but cruel even. It was the first thought that went through my head when I realized (after all these years) what Rochester really was doing with the whole house party thing. So thank you Toby for showing me what a jackass Rochester can be. And I still don't know what Jane sees in him.

Mr. Rochester is a magical cowboy. Okay, this has nothing to do with the character and everything to with the actor. I've noticed that when Toby is walking, he looks like he's swaggering. Either his shoes hurt him, or his breeches are too tight, but I always think he's in pain. This is not a slight on him, merely an observation, so please don't flame me. As for the magical part, his mother's none other than Maggie Smith, and at least once, I thought I saw the McGonagall glare. Hey, it's in the genes. (I think he looks a bit like her, and probably where he got his chiseled good looks).

But really, Toby is an excellent actor. I've been watching clips of some of his other work that he's done, and I'm thinking, "Wow! This guy is really, really good!" If you don't believe me, click here for the clips; just be careful that you avoid the Jane Eyre ones as they contain spoilers. So I'll be watching a lot of Toby in the near future.

Don't go yet, still more coming...

Jane Eyre (Part 2) - Meet Jane

This is Ruth Wilson. She plays Jane Eyre in the new BBC adaptation. I have to say that she was AWESOME as Jane! Really!

The one thing about her acting that I love is how she shows emotion. Her face is very expressive and she can do subtle very well. Even when her facial expression seems to be bland, you can tell that something's just brewing below the surface. That takes talent.

I've never realized before how emotional and passionate a person Jane Eyre was until I saw this adaptation. A previous adaptation that I've seen long ago with Timothy Dalton had Jane act really dull and lifeless. This of course coloured my characterization, in my mind, of Jane as a dull, lifeless person. If you don't believe me, watch this YouTube clip.

But Jane Eyre is anything but. Ruth Wilson really made Jane Eyre's character come alive. While re-reading the novel, I suddenly pictured her as Jane, and I could see that she really was an interesting person.

So Ruth Wilson, thank you so much for showing me Jane's true character, and show me who Mr. Rochester fell in love with! (Really, I've always wondered what he saw in her!)

Another kudos for Ruth. If you check out her IMDB page, you will note that she's has virtually nothing on her CV. This is because this girl pretty much came out of acting school last year. I'm definitely looking forward to watching her in the future. She's made a fan of me.

Still more coming...

Jane Eyre (Part 1) - some spoilers

Once in a while, I get very obsessive about a certain thing. My poor husband has to put up with my obsessions, usually by ignoring me (but pretending to listen/care). Well, if you can guess from my last post, Jane Eyre is my new obsession.

So the BBC just aired a new adaptation of Jane Eyre. I have to say I quite liked it. I had to first watch it bent over my laptop (very uncomfortable), as it won't be airing in North America until January 2007 on Masterpiece Theatre. Thus, I entered the world of illegal downloads (something I've never done before), mainly because I did manage to watch the first episode when it aired in the UK, and got sucked in. (You lawyer type out there, I will be buying the DVD, so leave me alone!)

Before I go on, I must warn those of you who love the book and who intend on watching this latest adaptation that this version has been modernized a fair bit. And I don't mean so much of the language as some scenes/passages were either removed, rearranged or redone, all for the 21st century audience. There were a lot of complaints that there was a fair bit of the novel missing, or not redone to their liking. This group I would label more as "purists" to the novel itself. I won't go into too much detail as I don't want to spoil your viewing pleasure should you choose to watch.

However, I recall having the exact reaction the first time I saw Pride and Prejudice (the one with Keira Knightley). This too was modernized somewhat and I forced myself to throw away all my preconceptions and to watch it a second time in the theatre. I have to say I enjoyed it better the second time around and it did work well, but it still should have been longer than 2.5 hours.

So after seeing Jane Eyre at least twice over (and some of the episodes more than twice), I have to say, give it a chance, it does grow on you.

So here's my opinions/weird thoughts thus far...
- The mad lady wasn't mad looking enough
- Yes, the ending was cheesy, but it fit in the the screenplay writer's vision of Jane Eyre
- The kissing scenes fit in well, but I feel this is where most of the purists will complain (once you see it you will understand).
- No, my favourite quote isn't in there, it got replaced with something just as good =D

Favourite line by a minor character:
Adele: Mrs. Fairfax, Mr. Rochester says that all the ladies will find me disgusting!
Mrs. F: That's nice dear.

Favourite non-verbal scene:
Lady Ingram giving Jane the iciest stare in the world. Even I could feel the chill! (Sorry, I couldn't find a decent pic of this, but Francesca Annis was absolutely perfect for Lady I!)

More to come...

Jane Eyre: a book review(-ish)

Believe it or not, I've never read the entire novel of Jane Eyre from beginning to end. I've always intended to, but really there are parts of the novel which are really, really boring and wholly unromantic.

What propelled me to finally read the whole novel were two things:
1) I have a ton of novels that I've never fully read sitting on my bookshelf. So I made a resolution of sorts to read through every one of them from beginning to end before I buy any more books. Okay, I've bought some since, but I'm definitely keeping to my resolution of reading the books from beginning to end. I am notorious for skipping over sections and reading the ending before I actually get to it. What can I say, I get bored and impatient easily. I don't think there's a single book that I haven't done this to.
2)The BBC put forth yet another adaptation of Jane Eyre, which has just finished airing in the UK. I found out about it before my UK trip and actually saw the first episode when we were in Scotland. More on that later.

I have to say that I liked the book, and actually reading through some of the boring bits helped me understand Jane and the plot a bit better. However, I suspect that when I re-read this book again, I'll probably only go back to the parts I like.

Although Jane Eyre isn't my favourite book, Mr. Rochester is my favourite romantic hero. Sorry, but Mr. Darcy is a big stick in the mud as a character, Mr. Rochester is way more dynamic and romantic in my opinion. Really rich guy falls for a poor, plain Jane, what woman wouldn't want that happeneing?

My favourite quote from the book, from Ch 27 (Mr. Rochester speaking to Jane):

Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat -- your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me. -- But why do I follow that train of ideas?

My only major beef with the book is St. John Rivers. I couldn't believe how much I wanted to punch him in the face! What a self-righteous, pompous ass! And how dare he use the name of God to justify what he's doing to Jane. I though he was emotionally abusing her. I would love to dig further how people back in the Victorian era would have viewed St. John and his self-righteousness. I certainly don't agree with it, and I'm Christian.

I'm also questioning what the point of having St. John in the book, or rather, why he is that way to Jane. He could have been the kind clergyman cousin and that would have been the end to him. If Charlotte Bronte is trying to make a statement with him, I've completely missed it.

Another beef: I don't know why Jane has so little faith in Rochester after she runs away from him. She's constantly fearing that he has gone back to the continent and taken up with mistresses again. Does Jane really not know her man?

Overall, an enjoyable book. Next up, my reviews of the latest adaptation...

Ghostly Fun

Hubby and I went on the Haunted Vancouver Trolley Tour tonight. This is something that I've always wanted to go to. They only run this tour for a couple of weeks in October, so it's easy for me to forget about it.

However, I took the plunge and booked some tickets for tonight. It was really fun. We got to visit an old morgue where they did autopsies and an old cemetery. I didn't know that there were over 90,000 bodies buried there, and I drive past there every day on my way to and from work!

Our guide told us lots of ghost stories, grizzly murders and sad stories of how people had lost their lives. I didn't realize that Vancouver had such an interesting past!

IE 7

I haven't been posting for a while simply because my life's been very dull. I have some posts coming up, but they're long for me to type up, so you must be patient.

Anyways, IE 7 was finally released on Thursday, and yesterday, I downloaded it to my work laptop.

My reaction: meh.

What I noticed right off the bat was the font on some of the sites that I frequented changed, and not necessarily for the better. That annoyed me, and hints that the browser may still not be treating the CSS as it should be.

Tabs: big deal. Firefox and Safari have had them for a long time already. Actually, tabbed-browsing started with Opera, and I used Opera for a while because it didn't have the same sort of usabilty problems as IE. However, Opera crashed a lot, hence my switch to Firefox.

Security: from my perusal of the menu items, it seems to be better, but I'm playing a wait and see game. Someone had already passed around an email stating that a vulnerability had been found with Outlook Express. Sweet.

The only thing that impressed me about it (and I really wished that Firefox has), is that when you go to close the browser windown, it asks you if you want the tabs that are currently open, if you want them to be reopened again when you start up the browser. Some may not see this as a very handy feature, but I'm normally in the habit of closing my browser windows at the end of the day.

I hate to say this, all browsers so far, leak memory, and/or are memory hogs, and my poor, underpowered desktop normally can't take the abuse. Plus it saves me from having to re-boot too often. Plus, I normally have about 5-10 windows opened at any one time, so having them re-open again without having to bookmark all the time is a godsend.

Final verdict: we'll wait and see, but so far, not very impressed...

Weird Al

You know, I never realized that Weird Al is still going strong. A couple of weeks ago, he just release his 12th album. The local radio station played his polka remix from his new album, and I was double over with laughter, it was so well done!

So anyways, here's a blast from the past, one of the songs that I use to love a lot when I was a kid. Enjoy!

My foot's feeling much better

Today was the last time I had to see my physiotherapist about my foot, when I had put my cuboid bone out of alignment over a month ago. My physio gave me a clean bill of health, and gave me more exercises to do in the next few weeks to strengthen my ankle and foot muscles so this doesn't happen again.

While I've become a little afraid of my physio (he actually put a bruise on my foot that lasted over a week in my last treatment), I have to say that I admire his skill as he not only fixed my problem, but taught me prevention techniques (not wearing heels again would be one =P)

I've learned early on that if there is something physically wrong with my body, that I should take care of it right away. I learnt that lesson when I was working one summer during uni break as a receptionist in a physio office.

I remember very distinctly two patients who had similar problems: they both couldn't walk because they had sustain some injury. Patient #1 was a young teenage boy who had both of his legs broken in a car accident. Patient #2 had somehow busted both his knees while lifting something heavy at work, and had to go in for surgery. They both initially came into the office in wheelchairs.

After six weeks, Patient #2 was on crutches, and would eventually walk on his own as he did well with the treatment and his exercises. Patient #1 was still sitting in a wheelchair.

After a while, the physio who was treating Patient #1 decided not to treat him any longer and told the family so. Why? Apparently, this family had simply gone from physio to physio, allowing their son treatment from the physio, so that it could alleviate the pain in the teen's legs (apparently he was in constant pain), but wasn't encouraging him to do any of the exercises. The teen told his family that his legs hurt when he tried doing the exercises. I'm certain that they did, after weeks of not using his legs, his muscles wouldn't be used to being used again.

I remember distinctly the physio vainly explaining to the family her reasons for stopping treatment, and she didn't feel right to continue to take their money. The family wouldn't listen, and instead continue to coddle the teen and defend his reasons for not doing his exercises.

I left the job soon after that incident as I had to go back to school. That summer taught me that the body has an amazing capacity to heal itself, but only if you let it.

Royal Victoria Marathon

Here's hubby running the Royal Victoria Marathon. Sorry, don't know why the pic's so small... Blogger might be doing some image resizing.

You can't tell, but it was raining quite a bit that day. Soggy run for hubby.

KOOKY: Please kill me now..

No one told me when I started this job that I would become a lawyer. 50 pages of legalese. Blergh. And this is the second draft. Well, my only consolation is that it's down from 61 pages.

Read on...

YouDeserveATaxBreak.ca

I got this postcard at my gym the other day. Fitness Industry Canada is trying to get the Feds to give the people who actually pay money to go to the gym a tax break. I of course filled out my name on the petition.

However, does having a gym membership necessarily mean that you're getting healthy? How many of us let our gym membership run month after month without setting foot in the gym?

One of the step instructors at my gym is this nice, soft-spoken Japanese lady. She's soft-spoken, unless she's teaching class. Then she belt's out the encouragement. "Come on! Higher! Faster!"

One thing that she said this past Saturday at my step class that I didn't agree with was this: "In order to lose the belly, you must do suck in the belly all the time. This builds up the muscles in your core and flattens your stomach." This woman has two kids, and she's lost all her pregnancy weight, and then some. She's as skinny as a stick.

Like I said, I don't agree with this, not 100% anyways. She's also one of these people who can go on exercising for several hours (She teaches 3-5 classes each day she teaches, which is about 4 times a week, so that's about 12-20 hours of exercise). I'll be lucky if I get 3-5 hours at the gym a week. She probably loses calories faster than she can eat them. She seems to be the type that has really high metabolism. So the combination of less eating, insane amounts of exercise and a high metabolism, she's become all muscle and no fat.

If I only had that much energy and time.

Anyways, check out the petition: YouDeserveATaxBreak.ca

This is art?!?!?????

Yes boys and girls, this is art, as it is apparently in a art gallery, the Tate Modern in London. I was actually there three weeks ago, and saw that they were building something in that big space. I didn't know it was a slide. It looks fun, and I would have gone down it if it had been done when I was there.

But I don't know if it's art...

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I haven't been around the last few days as we were in Victoria. Hubby was running the Royal Victoria Marathon, and his time is 1 hour and 57 mins for the Half-Marathon.

It was a neat weekend as we got to stay at The Empress Hotel for the first time.

Life for me is slowing getting back to normal. Read: I'm continuing on with my school project, so it's more sitting in front of the computer typing out code. Well, I suppose I should be thankful for this chance to get my degree done, no matter how tedious and painful it may be. I have to keep reminding myself, that no matter what happens, this (by BCIT rules) must end sometime in 2007, (and not at the end of the year either, sometime much closer to the beginning of 2007). Bah.

Lost...

Lost Rules.

The Others are creeping me out big time.

Can't wait for next week's episode, I'm hoping they show what's going on back at the camp.

Production Testing

I don't know why people want to still do production testing with test servers, data and software. We know that the test works, now you need to see if the software actually works in production.

I'm writing some code at work that's suppose to interface with another piece of software. We tested everything, and it was fine. Now they want to test the code that I wrote in production. I'm okay with that.

What confounds me is that they wanted to test my production installation against their test environment. No, don't assume that you're production code is perfect. No code is perfect. It could be that there is something in production that is off-enough to cause a bug, but you didn't get that in test.

Idiots.

(Sorry for the non-techies that don't understand this, but I had to get this off my chest. Something that is relatively simple, and shouldn't have taken up a lot of time is made more complicated and drawn-out by jackassery, and a lack of communication. Bah.)

"So how was the food?"

Surprisingly, I got asked the question a lot when I came back from our trip.

What can I say, English food isn't the best tasting in the world (in my opinion anyways), and you certainly don't go there for the food, like you would, say Paris.

On our trip, wee had bangers and mash, fish and chips, Yorkshire pudding. And good old English breakfasts.

Anyways, I decided to dig up some references on British Cuisine.

Traditional British Food

What Wikipedia has to say

Finally...

My mom finally got her lost piece of luggage back. 7 days after we landed in Seattle. It was slightly wet.

We figured that her piece of luggage got into Seattle the day after our flight. The airport was supposedly to deliver the bag straight to my mom's door, but it sat at Sea-Tac airport for another four days before someone had the presence of mind to call.

Whatever. At least she got her stuff back.

Holiday: Scotland

Again, the weather was awesome, except for the last full day, when it was really rainy and windy. We stayed at the Cherry Tree Villa Bread and Breakfast, I highly recommend it. They cooked haggis for us for breakfast. I have to say it tasted like really salty fried liver pate. Haggis is normally boiled, and server with neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes), so I have to try that the next time I go to Scotland. My sister also ventured to try black pudding. Urgh.

See Photos

Day One

• Fly into Edinburgh.
• Mary King's Close - really cool look at how people lived hundreds of years ago.
  

Day Two

• Edinburgh Castle
• Museum of Childhood
• Museum of Edinburgh
• Princes Street Gardens
• National Gallery of Scotland
• City of the Dead ghost walk. Read the write-up of the poltergeist. I was ready to pee in my pants! Good times!
  

Day Three

• Palace of Holyrood House & Queen's Gallery - yes, the Queen really lives here!
  
• Scottish Parliament building - it's an eyesore, and a thorn in the Scottish people's side, for more than one reason.
  
• Museum of Scotland & Royal Museum
  
• Greyfriars Bobby's grave
  

Day Four

• The Georgian House - how the rich people used to live in the 1800s
• People's Story
• Arthur's Seat - great views of Edinburgh
  
• Royal Mile, bought whiskey from the the Royal Mile Whiskey shop.
  

Day Five

Loch Ness and Highlands of Scotland bus tour

I have to say that this was the first bus tour that I didn't feel ripped off. Yes, it was 12 hours, and it was very tiring, and yes, I was on the bus most of the time. Plus, it started pouring rain, and I had to buy a baseball cap to keep some of the rain off.

We got to see Loch Ness, and tour the loch a bit. The captain of our boat was actually a marine biologist, and his research was on the Loch Ness monster. He even showed us some evidence as he had sonar and radar equipment on his boat. Pretty cool.

Other things of note on the tour: Urquhart Castle and lots of hairy coos and sheep. And we heard lots about William Wallace and Rob Roy and Mary, Queen of Scots (actually, we heard about them all over the place!) Our bus driver was very funny and told us lots of Scottish history and tidbits, which made things more meaningful.

***
All in all, it was a splendid trip. The next time, I would love to do a driving tour around Great Britian, and see some of Ireland.

Holiday: London

We had awesome weather in London, it was in the mid-20s the whole time was there, and didn't get a drop of rain! Here's the summary of our London leg:

See photos

Day One

• Fly into Heathrow
• Dinner in Chinatown
• Walk through part of National Portrait Gallery

Day Two

• Buckingham Palace
• Museum of London
• Sherlock Holmes Museum (I think this was a rip off, but my sister wanted to see it)
• Harrod's
• Thames Festival, really cool, and free for all Londoners

Day Three

• Rest of National Portrait Gallery
• Trafalgar Square - the Scissors Sisters had a concert here the night before.
  
• National Gallery
• Watched The Producers, the musical, very funny!

Day Four

• Natural History Museum, cool place for kids (as an aside, London Fashion Week was being held at the museum, however, the only people we saw were press nobodies, no famous people!)
  
• Hyde Park
• Tate Modern (I will never understand modern art)

I love, love, LOVE! London, and would live there in a heartbeat. But cost of living's too high (it's not the 4th most expensive city to live in the world for nothing), and I don't think I would be able to earn enough to live comfortably. Le Sigh.

Next stop, Scotland!

Jet lag bites

The reason why I didn't put up a post yesterday was because my jet lag was really getting to me. I had finally succumb to sleep at 8.30 pm last night, and even then it was a struggle to stay awake. It's about 8.30 pm right now (AKA 4.30 am), but I'm adjusting a little better, thanks to my 10 hours of sleep last night.

Some British terms that I've learned while on holidays:

way out == exit
way in == entrance
take away == take out
hose pipe == water hose
jumper == sweater
999 == 911
"mind" your head == "watch" your head (substitute as required)
car park == parking lot
push chair == baby buggy
trainers == sneakers
lorry == truck
bin == garbage can
rubbish == trash
"bin your litter" or "bin it" == throw your trash in the garbage can
hen party == stagette

I'm certain there's more, this is what I heard/saw the time I was there. I will have pictures and a trip summary, I promise, I've just been very tired. However, tonight will be CSI and then sleep!

The Scottish are smart.

I had two free drink coupons from Starbucks, and they both said that they were valid in the UK. Knowing that I was planning on a trip to the UK, I had purposely saved them for my trip.

My first attempt at using the coupons was in London. I was still trying to adjust to the time change when I decided to go into a Starbucks that I had spotted down the street to order my usual pick-me-up: Tall Hot Chocolate, No Whip. Don't ask me why a drink with warm milk wakes me up, it just does.

I asked the person behind the counter if I was able to use the coupon and I flashed it in front of her face. She barely glanced at it and said yes. I got my order and left.

(As an aside, I normally pay $2.92 CDN, this is after tax, for a Tall Hot Chocolate. In the UK, the same costs 1.99 Sterling, again after tax, and if you use the exchange rate of 2.1, that's about $4.18 CDN. You can see why I saved my coupons as I did. I blame the 17.5% VAT that is automatically included for the inflated price.)

My next attempt was in Edinburgh, on a day that was unusually warm, even for Scotland, so I decided to get a Strawberries and Creme. I walked into a Starbucks on the Royal Mile that I've passed by a few times.

Me: Can I get a Tall Strawberries and Creme, no whip?

Scottish Barista: You mean a Venti, right?

Me: No, just a Tall, thanks.

Scottish Barista: No, you really want a Venti.

Me: . Er, yes, I want a Venti.

See, smart, to make up for my brain fart, which I blame a combination of lack of sleep, the cold that I had since near the start of my trip, and weary feet from walking all over Edinburgh that day.