Happy Vernal Equinox!

Today is the official beginning of spring. Even though it is a bit smoggy but the sunset is still very beautiful!

The Loopy Christmas Tree

When Halloween is over, Christmas decorations seem to begin showing up everywhere. Even the office building that I am working in put up this loopy thing that resembles a Christmas tree in an abstract way. I would rather prefer an old fashioned Christmas tree but I guess the management of the building doesn’t want to offend any non-Christmas-celebrating-people. If I am so against Christmas, I would definitely go to work in those days to demonstrate my dislike. But so far, I have never seen anyone gave up their holidays. As far as I am concern, it doesn’t really matter what ethnicity that holiday belongs as long as there is a day off. After all this is Canada and we should celebrate each other’s festivals.

The more I look at this loopy tree, the more it resembles to the blue spiral art installation that I saw in this year’s Nuit Blanche.

It’s quite interesting that they are both the same shape but they portray entirely different images.

Winter is Officially Here!

Winter is finally here! There will be close to 5cm of snow tomorrow. While I don’t actually mind the fluffy stuff to much, I just hope that people can drive resonably so that I don’t need to spend two hours to get home from work.

Starbucks and U.S. Election

On November 4, 2008, Starbucks will give voters a free tall brewed coffee at participating U.S. stores. It’s a great promotional stunt but why don’t we have it in Canada? Afterall, the voter turnout for the last federal election was the lowest in Canadian election history, as 59.1% of the electorate cast a ballot. Tim Horton should definitely steal this idea.

The Chestnut Tree

A lovely animated short:

Domo-o-Lantern

Even though I have been in Canada for a long time, I have never made a jack-o-lantern. My family usually buy pumpkins but they always turn into soup before I can get a chance to carve it. Maybe it’s because the concept of playing with your food is still quite foreign to my parents. This year, the company that I am working in is having a pumpkin carving contest. It gave me a good excuse to tell everyone not to cook the pumpkin that I picked from the farm last weekend. Since I’m a beginner in pumpkin carving, I decided to make it into a Domo lantern since Domo has simple lines and I am confident that I can make it work. The fresh of the pumpkin is harder than I thought. It took me quite awhile to open up and clean up the pumpkin. Once the pumpkin was cleaned, the carving part went smoothly. I am pretty happy with the final result!

The pumpkin itself will not be edible anymore but I saved the pumpkin seeds so that I can make toasted pumpkin seeds. I remember having them at the Blackcreek Pioneer Village when I was on a school trip and they were quite delicious. By making this snack, at least part of the pumpkin can be eaten. I mixed a little bit of oil, salt and maple syrup to the dried pumpkin seeds and toasted them on a pan until they turn golden brown. I have to say they are pretty yummy.

When I am toasting the pumpkin seeds, it makes me wonder what kind of seeds are kwatji (瓜子), the red seeds that we usually eat during Chinese new year. My mom thinks that they might be seeds from watermelons but how would you harvest the seeds from the watermelons? I hope they don’t just collect the seeds that people spit out while they are having watermelons.

The Number Issue

At the very top of today’s Globe and Mail, there is this huge number at the top: $2,587,427,300,000 (total U.S. consumer debt). How do you actually say that? Hum…two trillion five hundred eighty seven billion four hundred twenty seven million three hundred thousand…or something along that line. But what if it’s bigger than that?

I did a search on the internet and found this useful info:

More can be found here

A U.S. billion is actually different from a billion in other countries. So, if I sign a billion dollar contract, is it $1,000,000,000 or $1,000,000,000,000? A $999,000,000,000 difference is not exactly trivial!

It also mentions that for an arbitrary or unknown large number, we can just call it A zillion. That should prevent us from having a zillion headaches when dealing with these ridiculously large numbers.

80 Facts About the Queen

Today is Victoria’s Day but I really don’t know much about the Queen except the information that is in my grade 10 Canadian History textbook.  However, I did discover some interesting facts about Queen Elizabeth through her offical website.  To celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s 80th birthday, a special section is created on her website that has 80 not commonly known facts about the Queen.  The following are a few facts that interest me:

The Queen’s real birthday is on April 21, but it is celebrated officially in June.

The Queen has sent around 100,000 telegrams to centenarians in the UK and the Commonwealth.

The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh have sent about 37,500 Christmas cards during The Queen’s reign.

The Queen has given out about 78,000 Christmas puddings to staff continuing the custom of King George V and King George VI. In addition, The Queen gives all her staff a gift at Christmas time.

The Queen was a Girl Guide (1937) and Sea Ranger (1943).

The Queen sent her first email in 1976 from an Army base.

For more information, visit 80 Facts About the Queen.