I am grateful

I am grateful that there is a park right behind our building.

I am thankful that Conny drove me all the way to Burnaby for shaved ice.

I am thankful that Bear shares a lot of house work.

I am thankful

I am thankful for the fun outdoor climbing session at Squamish.

I am thankful that I had a very delicious latte.

I am grateful for the beautiful view along sea to sky high way

I am thankful

I am thankful to find a nice place to stay at Squamish.

I appreciate the beautiful view at Cheakamus Lake.

I am grateful that Bear and I share a lot of common interests.

My gratitudes

I am grateful for the relaxing yoga class.

I am grateful that bear and I spent some time playing a board game.

I am grateful that conny's cat JJ enjoyed my company.

I am thankful...

I am thankful that I have a stable job.

I am thankful that my arm has finally recovered enough that I can start climbing again.

I am grateful that internet is so easily accessible, which brings me the chance to learn new knowledge anytime

I am grateful

I am grateful that I had an job interview that allowed me to rethink about improving my skills.

I am grateful that I had a good time chatting and hanging out with Kathy and Conny.

I am grateful that I had a apricot ale that tasted so good!

Thank you!

Thank you bear for ironing my clothes for me.

Thank you my warm and cozy bed for providing me good night sleep.

Thank you my beautiful and comfy shoes, I feel great wearing them today.

Thanks to...

I am grateful Cora made it to Richmond, it is one of my favourite restaurants in Ontario

I am thankful for the nice 40km bike ride we did today

I am thankful to live in a most of time messy but absolutely cozy home

My gratitudes...

I am grateful that it turned out to be a nice day although the weather forecast predicted otherwise.

I am thankful that my awesome friend Steph always shows interests in the things I do.

I appreciate the delicious lamb chop and lentil salad dinner we had.

I am thankful...

I am thankful that I have a lovely car that takes me to places (or can be eaten, see picture)

I appreciate that we can easily find reasonably priced delicious sushi in this city

I am grateful to have a friend Conny who not only celebrates happy moment with me but we support each other all the time

Gratitude Journal

Conny and I decided to start gratitude journal together as it is one of the very effective ways to keep one happy.

what we will do is to write down 3 things that we are thankful for then share with each other second day. I found photos often speak a lot of emotion for me so I decide I will also add photos to my journal.

If you are interested in doing gratitude journal and also like to share with me please do so, email me your blog post or just email me directly :)

This is the entry from yesterday:

I am thankful that I have a very loving husband who often times likes to have fun with me.

I am thankful that I found an enjoyable hobby, knitting. Finishing knitting projects is very rewarding for me.

I am thankful that I have lots of good friends who I enjoy spending time together.

Duck Legs

Friday night I made duck confit with venetian style pasta with pan fried baby arugula on the side. The lemon zest venetian style pasta went really well with the duck.

Cooking is just like conducting chemistry experiment in the kitchen.

Rock Climbing LongDong

Our Taiwan trip was awesome.  Rock climbing in LongDong and hiking YuShan made this trip home quite different from before.

This trip was planned around our friend Paul and Irene's wedding on April 7th in Taichung.  I am not a super big fan in spending all my vacation time visiting home, I usually spaced my visit to Taiwan for at least 2 years.  This trip was an exception because of the wedding.  Since it was just not long ago Bear and I first visited Taiwan together, this trip we focused on doing different things.

The part I enjoyed the most was rock climbing in LongDong.  LongDong is on the north east shore of Taiwan.  Tons and tons of beautiful sandstone formation right along the ocean.  Just the view along is amazing, climbing and enjoying the view at the same time made this place 100% my favourite for this trip.

We found most of info from this website.  We were lucky to be there for the new guide book release and met and author.

Valentine's Day Dinner at home

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I am testing this mobile posting option. It's a bit too time consuming to upload photos from my phone to my computer then post them on my blog (given how slow my computer is). Ok, I mean given how lazy I am...

Here is our valentine's day home made dinner

We followed a new cookbook I acquired during my business trip in Kingston. Why did I go all the way there to buy a cookbook, given how lazy I am? This special cookbook is called "chez piggy cookbook" and chez piggy is one of my favourite restaurants when I was still a Kingston resident. Don't get me wrong, it is still one of my favourite, but it is just a bit far to get to, and even harder to have a chance to share this wonderful place with my loved ones, so I decided that I should bring this special memory of my university life home with me to share with everyone. Hopefully I can master all the dishes in the cookbook and be able to share that with all of you wherever I go.

So the first guinea pig of course is...
oops I mean the first person I would share things with is of course Bear :)

So here is our valentine's day chez piggy meal at Vancouver home

Review of 2011

I know it's new year, I should be setting goals, but I think I need to give myself a bit of confident boost plus reality checks before I can sit down and set some realistic goals.

I think the best way is to do a brief review on what I have done in 2011:

1. Planned a wedding
2. Married a bear
3. travelled to Croatia
4. travelled to Italy
5. learned to ski
6. knitted my first pair of socks
7. knitted my first two hats
8. learned a bit of Croatian
9. lead climb a super easy route outdoor
10.went to Banff
11.set up our first Xmas tree
12.went for my first Helicopter ride
13.tried uphill skiing
14.learned to make bread

hmm...that's it...seems like I didn't do much on the intellectual side...

Anyone cares to share what they have accomplished last year?

Ceremony Music

For ceremony music, we have the choices of two guitars or violin/cello.  We have decided to go for violin/cello (string duo), because I am a (pretended) classic music fan.  For some reason I don't really like guitars at all.  Plus string duo and classic music just sound much more appropriate for a 600 year-old Renaissance Palace.

We got a promised play list through our wedding planner Kike:  Pachelbel: Canon D, Bach: Air, Haydn: Serenade, Schubert: Serenade, Boccherini: Menuet, Mozart: Andante.  I am familiar with all the pieces, they are very typical for wedding ceremony, but I was surprised that they don't have Wedding March (Midsummer Night's Dream) by Mendelssohn or Bridal Chorus by Wagner.  I requested them to add these two and Beethoven's Ode of Joy to the playlist.  Beethoven's Ode of Joy was one of my favourite during my childhood, so I thought it's important to add that.

Traditionally, bride walks down the aisle with Bridal Chorus and the newly wedded couple leave together with Wedding March.  I think Bridal Chorus (here comes the bride) is a beautiful piece of music, but it's a little too cliche (plus the story behind it doesn't have a happy ending http://www.oracleband.net/Articles/wedding-march.htm).  I am torn between following the tradition or picking a piece of music that I truly love.  Speaking of truly loved music, Pachelbel's Canon D is my adulthood favourite and it has nothing to do with the novel/movie Twilight.  We picked my favourite to be our first dance music.  Bear and I both really like Bach's Air as well, so I am thinking if I am not to use Bridal Chorus, I might choose Air as the bridal entrance music.

All the decisions seem to be harder when you have too much time to think about it.

Wedding Menu

We will  be hosting our reception dinner at Restaurant Dubrovnik.  If you search for "Restaurant Dubrovnik" on Google, there should be a lot of results, but those restaurants are all in Canada!!!  The one we are hosting our wedding reception in is really a restaurant in Dubrovnik!  The only info we can really find online is the review on TripAdvisor.  http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g295371-d1484121-Reviews-Restaurant_Dubrovnik-Dubrovnik.html  The restaurant is ranked as number one in the review in the area.  It's not a super high end restaurant, but according to the review the food is very good!  As much as I like pretty things, I think since it's a dinner, the quality of food is also very important.  That's why after reading the online reviews, Bear and I decided that we will host the reception in Restaurant Dubrovnik.

We got some wedding menus from last year as sample menus:

Menu 1 (with 3 different options):

MEAT MENU:
Cheese cream with pumpkin oil
Prosciutto and melon with mint
Beef soup with noodels and cognac
Home made pasta with mushrooms and truffles
Beefsteak in green pepper sauce
Strawberries with green pepper and ice-cream
Coffee

FISH MENU:
Cheese cream with pumpkin oil
Marinated anchovies on rocket salad
Fish soup
Home made pasta with cream of shrimps
Fish trilogy (seabream, red scorpion fish, scampi) on swiss chard risotto
Strawberries with green pepper and ice-cream
Coffee

VEGETARIAN MENU
Cheese cream with pumpkin oil
Croatian cheeses with honey, walnuts and grapes
Vegetable soup
Home made pasta with mushrooms and truffles
Tofu with sauce of mushrooms and julienne vegetables
Strawberries with green pepper and ice-cream
Coffee

Menu 2 (with 2 different options):

FISH MENU:
Dalmatian fish soup:  Traditional fish soup, served with fish meat and rice
Creamy shrimp risotto:  Rice and shrimps sautéed in olive oil and garlic
Grilled John Dory fillet:  served in olive oil, pepper and lemon sauce with boiled potato and swiss chard
Wild rocket and chicory salad
Creme brulee Dubrovnik Style


MEAT MENU:
Mozzarella with tomato:  Mozzarella served on finely sliced tomato, flavoured with olive oil and balsamic vinegar
Cannelloni with chicken meat:  Gratinated cannelloni, stuffed with chicken meat, served with tomato sauce
Beef fillet Wellington:  Fillet of beef wrapped in puff pastry with mushrooms, red onion with additional flavouring ingredients, served with grilled vegetable
Tomato salad
Chocolate mousse cake

These menus all sound very good and the prices are reasonable (especially they are wedding menus).  We really like the fact there are at least two options for each set of menu.  I know that at least one of our guests is severely allergic to seafood.  And it's not uncommon for that encounter Taiwanese people that don't eat beef due religion or family tradition.  Having the choices between fish and meat makes things a lot easier.  As far as I am aware, none of our guests are vegetarians, so we will eliminate the vegetarian option.

Back in April, we got some of this year's menus.  They are pretty good but not as exciting as the menus we got previously.  (something totally unrelated to us:  we have also accidentally discovered that catering outside of the restaurant cost at least twice as much).  They also added buffet menu option, however the food they provided for buffet doesn't sound nearly as interesting.  In May, the restaurant still didn't have more menus for us, the wedding planner told us that we can just mix and match and menu in anyway we want.  Flexibility is good, but not always true for us the indecisive ones.

It was such an hard decision Bear and I had to make.  There are total of 4 sets of menus (2 from last year, 2 for this year) to choose from.  At the end, we both think we should respect the chef's expertise, and keep the menu as it is, because they should know which items go together the best.  We picked menu 2, because the main courses in both fish and meat option seem a bit fancier than the other set menus.   I am very interested in trying out Beef Wellington.  One small variation we asked for is to replace the dessert in menu 2 with strawberries with green pepper ice cream.  The reasons are: 

1.  I know ice cream is very famous in Dubrovnik, and strawberries with green pepper ice cream sounds like something you won't encounter anywhere else. 

2.  We are serving cake after dinner, so ice cream is probably better so people don't get overwhelmed by desserts.

We will try out the menu on the day we arrive Dubrovnik.

Kayaking Trip II (what actually happened)

Friday evening, Bear dropped me and our "luggage" off at Andre's. He got to ferry terminal by transit. We (with the car) picked up India pizza for dinner. Ferry to Salt Spring Island was 2.5 hour, we arrived Long Harbour at 10:45 pm. The camp site is about 5~6 km from the ferry terminal. Bear jogged there, due to several reasons (darkness, miscommunication, poor cell phone reception, and Bear personality) Bear ended walking extra 2~3 km. Thanks to Deb who at the end went and fished Bear out from the dark. It was past midnight when we went to bed.


Saturday morning it was raining when we woke up at 8am. Due to the rain, no one was super eager to get on the water. Bear and I cooked bacon, and used the bacon oil to deep fried veggies, then mixed in egg to make deep fried veggie bacon oil egg soup....and Bear took more than an hour to make his Bearish coffee (ie. Bearish coffee is the type that takes very long to make :P). Cleaning up the bacon grease on the pot and pans was a lot of effort, as a result we didn't get to the kayak rental until noon, but luckily the rain had stopped at that point.

It took us about 2 hours to pack everything into the kayaks, Deb prepared us a quick lunch (we didn't finish everything they got for us for lunch, which resulted huge (yes, I really mean "huge") lunch meals in the subsequent days. We launched from Ganges at 2:30 pm, headed to James Bay on Prevost Island.

The current was going in the opposite direction, so it was a bit more tiring to paddling. After 2.5 hours of paddling we finally arrived our destination. Shortly, after we arrived, Soroosh and Kevin went out to put a crab trap in the water. While everyone was setting up the tent, Deb was busy cooking dinner and feeding us cheese, chips, tomato, avocado, cucumber and bread (left over from lunch). Deb made us mushroom, onion risotto and steak!! It was so delicious, all the snacking before dinner didn't prevent us from finishing everything for dinner. After dinner we had hot chocolate, tea (for Kevin who claims he doesn't eat chocolate because his parents were buried by chocolate) and waffle cookies for dessert. It was unbelievable that we had been eating 4 hours continuously.

It was cloudy on Saturday night, I wasn't able to see any stars in the sky. The ocean view was still very pretty. There were a few boats parked near the island. The night was quiet and peaceful, except we were quite loud :P. I had a very good sleep that night, the tent was exceptionally warm compared to my past experience. In fact, I would say that was probably the warmest night I had ever spent in that tent.

Sunday morning turned out to be warmer and sunnier than expected. Deb prepared us bacon then bacon oil poached eggs while Kevin dared Soroosh to climb a dead tree on a cliff. All my friends are so mature :) and guess what Bear was doing? of course he was busy making his coffee :) I was first helping with cutting green onion with my bone like fingers nails, but finally distracted by the tree climb on the cliff. I also climbed it after Soorosh did. After the relaxing breakfast, we decided to paddle around the island and go fishing as well. We also found out that we didn't catch any crab at all.

We paddled along east shore toward south end of Prevost Island. On the way, we saw lots and lots of seals, they were so cute!!!! Shortly before we landed for lunch, Andre and Deb caught a big fish (it's big by my standard, about 50 cm long). We served pizza and blueberries for lunch. Andre and Deb contributed a watermelon. The shore on this part of island had a very exciting bouldering problem, both Bear and Soroosh tried it. My attempt only went as far as I felt the texture of the rock were way too sharp and cutting into my skin a lot. It was sunny on and off, we sat around and enjoyed the sun until 3:30 pm. We paddled back to James Bay along the west shore. Most of the time the current direction was in favour of the direction we were traveling, therefore the looping around island wasn't super hard.

I prepared pork belly kimchi udon soup for dinner for everyone. By preparing I meant I boiled water and reheated everything. I didn't realize the difficult of serving soup while camping. Luckily we have tones of empty tupperware. I really lack experience in cooking meal for large group of people, never know what the amount is right. As a result, I ended up cooking too much food, we (especially Soroosh) were stuffing our face until we felt an explosion might occur. Andre and Deb cooked us the delicious fresh fish. Soroosh went out and put the fish head in the crab trap as a bait. The dinner felt a lot like a Korean meal, except none of us is Korean :P. Dinner was followed by hot chocolate and dessert again. Everyone of us agreed dessert goes into a different stomach, so we were able to consume dessert even after a more than satisfying dinner.
Monday morning, Kevin and Soroosh got up early to prepare oatmeal for us. Kevin was so nice and made Bear coffee. We finished breakfast early and started packing. We started paddling around shortly before 10 am. We caught 2 crabs with the help of the fish head. On the way back it started to become sunny. We had a bit of water flight with the very mature group of two (Kevin and Soroosh). We arrived Ganges around noon. The ferry we were aiming for departs at 3:25pm, however, the ferry was fully booked, Bear was walking on, so he was the only one ended up on the ferry going directly from Salt Spring Island to Vancouver. We drove to Fulford, lined up for the ferry to go to Vancouver Island. While waiting we had lunch, lunch was everything left in everyone's food bag. Some of the food looked and smelled a bit sketchy. Andre and Soroosh were brave (or hungry) enough to eat everything. We all "drank" the yogurt that was sitting for 3 days.

Fortunately, we got on the 3:50 pm ferry without any problem and arrived Vancouver Island at 4:30 pm. Because the kayak sitting on top of Andre and Deb's car, our vehicle was considered over sized which meant we got to line up in the very short oversized vehicle line and greatly increased our chance to get on the ferry. We were lucky to got on the ferry at 5pm. We arrived Andre and Deb's house before 7 pm, it was 5 min faster than Bear :)

At night, we sat in Andre and Deb's back yard enjoyed bubble tea, delievery Taiwanese food, and Andre cooked us the crab. The long weekend ended pleasantly with a lot of food in my tummy. It was a nice get away from the city. Thank you for the good time everyone!!! For Deb and Andre, thank you for planning the trip and inviting us!

Kayaking Trip I (planning)

We were originally thinking of going to San Francisco to visit Bear's Uncle, unfortunately (or fortunately) Canucks was playing in San Jose, it was impossible to go to California for less than $1000 per head.  After determining that we were not spending $2000 to go to San Francisco, we happily decided to join the Gulf Islands kayaking trip Deb and Andre were planning.

There were 6 of us in the group, Deb, Andre, Soroosh, Kevin, Bear and myself.  Because it's a long weekend, it was almost impossible to get on the ferry with a car without reservation.  We decided to only take one car, and Bear would do a combination of walking and busing.  The overall plan was:

Friday:  catch 8:35pm ferry to Salt Spring Island (ferry spot reserved), camp near Ganges
Saturday:  Launch our kayaks from Ganges, paddle to James Bay on Prevost Island
Sunday:  Paddle, Eat, Paddle, Eat, Paddle...
Monday:  Paddle back to Ganges, line up for the ferry from Salt Spring Island (Long Harbour, close to Ganges)  to Vancouver (since there was no reservation spot left), back up plan is to go to Southern part of Salt Spring Island (Fulford) to catch the non-reservable ferry to Vancouver Island then catch the ferry from Vancouver Island to Vancouver.

We planned for group of 6 meals.  Bear and I were responsible for one breakfast, one lunch, and one dinner.  I have only been on one kayaking trip prior to this one, so I didn't have much idea as to what kind of food was appropriate for a kayaking trip.  Deb said it's somewhere between backpacking and car camping, by that she meant weight is not as much a problem, but it's important to remember to bring food that will keep without refrigeration.

We decided to bring our (famous??) homemade cinnamon bread, veggie omelet, and bacon for breakfast.  Homemade pizza was our favourite choice of lunch (feasible for any type of camping).  Bear suggested pork belly kimchi udon soup similar to what we did at our last winter trip, except we needed to somehow figure out how to make it not as deadly salty.

Thursday evening, Bear and I were busy preparing the kayaking trip meals.  Bear made the pizza dough, and a dough for cinnamon bread.  For some reason the bread dough didn't rise at all, so we had to buy some cheese scone to substitute for the bread.  We made Caramelized onion and prosciutto pizza.  I prepared (pre-cooked) all the veggies for the kimchi udon soup.  As for pork belly, I washed and washed it, then boiled it to get as much salt off as possible.

Makeup Trial

It sounded silly to have a makeup trial with a local makeup artist since I will hire the artist in Dubrovnik on my wedding day.  I have been worrying about that the Croatian makeup artists might lack experience with Asian faces, and have been trying to figure out a solution.  After a bit of research, the suggestion is to bring pictures of yourself with the makeup on that you really like or a picture from a magazine.  So I came up with the idea, to get a local Asian makeup artist to do my make up, take pictures, and bring those pictures to Dubrovnik to show the makeup artist there.  Since we were doing our engagement photo,  I can just wear the same makeup for the photo session.  I convinced myself it's worthwhile (kill two birds with one stone) to spend money for a makeup trial.

The makeup trial also included a hair trial.  I was really lost with the hundreds and thousands of hair styles I found online.  After talking with a few friends, I decided to do a loose curly updo.  At the trial session, the makeup artist convinced everyone (my maid of honour and Bear) that I looked better with a bit of hair down, because I have a big head (according to Bear very squared head too) and chubby face.  So she ended up doing a halfup-halfdown for me.  She said it's very important that I respect my features :P.  And if you look at the third picture, you will see she set my hair a bit high on the top of my head.  That's a very common way to create an illusion of a longer skinnier face.

As for make up, she tried 2 different colours of eye shadow for me.  One is the earth tone (brown) and the other is purple (to match my theme colour).  We decided that purple looked better.  And of course, we can't forget false eye-lashes  which I think is probably the most important item for Asian makeup.  Since I have very obvious double eye lid (it's a crease on the eye lid that a lot of Asian don't have) already, she decided to leave out the taping eye lid technique.  Hahaha, you must be thinking what the hell is eyelid taping??  basically it's using adhesive or a small piece of tape to create a crease on the eye lid, here is a example.  I did that for a bit when I was in university.  Because the lack of sleep, sometimes my eyes were puffy, and the creases on two eyes wouldn't look identical, then I would use the technique to fix them.  Anyway, it is doubtful that an Croatia makeup artist knows this technique, but I am lucky that most of time I don't need it. 

The makeup didn't seem to be heavy enough, the foundation didn't have much coverage.  The eyeshadow was quite light that on the our engagement photos it's hard to see I have eyeshadow on.  Most of the work she did on the eyes were very similar to the ones that I used to do on myself anyway, but I am very out of practice now (since I don't climb rocks with false eye lashes or snowboard with eye shadow on).  The end conclusion both Conny and I drew was that my features are not very typical Asian, so I don't need to worry as much.  I will have a makeup and hair trial on Sept 19th before the wedding.  I think I will only show the hair pictures to him.  I will not show the makeup picture and encourage him to do what he thinks would look good on me.  And if it ends up he has really bad taste I still have the pictures to guide him.