May 2007 Archives
I finally get my package after waiting five weeks! Can you believe it?! I had actually given up hope and thought it was lost for good. Why in the world would it take so long for a package to be sent from Chicago to Vancouver? It could have gone around the world twice in five weeks.
Well, I'm glad I finally got my package. The funny thing is I'll be heading to Chicago next week. Sarah sent me striped tees for my birthday and I love stripes! Now I have more stripes in my wardrobe!
Here's a recreation of what may have happened with Sarah's package.
Finally, I get my striped tees!
I was pretty stressed out last week, but one thing I've found is that drawing helps relieve the stress. Also I feel better spending my time drawing rather than watching tv, which I still don't have. Not that I don't watch any tv shows - only ones that I've downloaded to my computer. And now that all the shows I watch have just ended for the season, I don't have any shows to follow (a good thing, actually). One of my goals for moving here is to change my routine and cut back on tv.
This week has been much better, but it's still early so it may be too soon to say. I'm looking forward to my vacation next week. It'll be a nice break.
I've been trying to do more drawing lately as a way to exercise my creative muscle and have some fun with it. I thought I might post one of these drawings and start a chain reaction. It would be more fun to get others involved and have more of an incentive to keep drawing. So don't be shy, let's see those doodles!
The Olympic committee has ordered Chicago to remove the symbol of a torch from its proposed logo for the 2016 Olympics due to a violation with the Olympic's rules regarding use of Olympic-related imagery. Apparently it is against the rules to use any Olympic symbols in the logo. Isn't that interesting? It's too bad because I really did like the logo and thought it represented the city of Chicago well. What a shame.
VSA Partners designed the logo and also carried the same style across all of its graphics for the Olympics. Actually I'm surprised that a well-known firm such as VSA would miss something so important as abiding by the rules of the Olympic committee. If they had done their homework they would have avoided such a big blunder.
Just think how much effort was lost designing the logo and the cost of materials that have already been printed with it. Not only that, but the amount of exposure the logo has already received and the emotional connection that's been established.
Of all the projects to screw up on this is certainly not the one. With the Olympics being such a high profile event, this costly mistake will certainly be a blow to VSA's reputation. This is a good example to all designers that doing your research thoroughly is necessary.
You know you're in a city with a high concentration of Asians when McDonald's distributes their very own red envelopes.
Can such a thing as wisdom be measured? I'm not sure, but I took this questionnaire to find out my wisdom score. The questions are quite interesting. Most of them examine how you feel when interacting with other people and your perceptions of them. I came out with a 4.5 out of 5. That must mean I'm beginning to show my years or my parents named me appropriately.
From what I've heard, your Chinese name is determined by your parents based on what they believe you WILL be lacking. By naming your child with an attribute that is missing from the child's personality, then in essence this makes up for it. Quite an interesting concept, but how in the world would you know what your child is lacking before they can even talk? Beats the heck out of me.
So in my case my parents believed I lacked wisdom (gee, thanks) and named me accordingly. Based on this test, I guess it worked.
I had a dream not too long ago that my car was stolen. I've never had a dream like it before so it really stood out in my mind. In the dream I am with my mom and sister and we are walking towards where my car is parked except it's not there. I remember feeling a great sense of confusion and helplessness because it didn't seem like there was anything I could do. My mom tells me in my dream that she had come down to retrieve something from the car the night before and must have forgotten to lock the doors. In reality I would be very upset, but in my dream I felt a great sense of loss rather than being angry.
Coincidentally, my coworker calls me the next morning and tells me that his car was broken into and his GPS, iPod and camera were stolen. I started thinking about my dream and wondered what it meant. Did I fear the same thing would happen to me? But how could I? I didn't even know car theft is prevalent here until after what happened with my coworker. So I decided to do some Googling on dream interpretation and found a more likely explanation. According to Dream Moods:
To dream that your car has been stolen, indicates that you are being stripped of your identity. This may relate to losing your job, a failed relationship, or some situation which has played a significant role in your identity and who you are as a person.
After reading this I was quite surprised that this was how I felt in the deepest part of my psyche. So what would lead me to feel this way? All I could think of was the day I felt so frustrated at work. The good news is the issue has been addressed and there have been no more dreams about my car being stolen.
Ever see a book on Amazon and check if your local library has a copy to borrow rather than purchase it? Or even peruse titles at a Barnes & Noble and later search for them on Amazon or at your library? We've all heard the saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover" and the best way to decide whether a book is worth the time to read is through other people's feedback. Amazon's rating and feedback system helps make that decision easier. But sometimes it makes more economical sense to borrow at the library before deciding whether the book is worth purchasing.
Browsing titles on Amazon and then searching your library's online catalog can be quite cumbersome. Sometimes you may need to search more than one library to see if they have the book. Switching back and forth between windows or tabs gets messy and time consuming especially when entering the title in several different library systems.
Save time searching and browsing with E41st - a great timesaving tool that does all the above in one place. E41st is a rich internet application that combines the power of Amazon's feedback system and your local library's catalog search engine to find books you want with just a few clicks of the mouse. The application provides a convenient breakdown of all the genres and even displays the book covers in an easy to scroll window. Clicking on a book cover gives you comments from Amazon purchasers and rating. If you're interested, you can choose to purchase from Amazon or search in your library. You can even select up to two libraries to search and get a list of similar titles. I wish I had found this app sooner!
For the first time, I made brownies from scratch the other day. It was pretty damn good surprisingly and definitely much better than the store bought mixes. It's super easy to make and great to share with your friends and family. I can't take credit for this recipe that I found online. Because I'm soooooo far away, i'll just share it with you all so you can try it yourself!
SUPERNATURAL BROWNIES
Adapted from ''Chocolate: From Simple Cookies to Extravagant Showstoppers,'' by Nick Malgieri (Morrow Cookbooks, 1998)
Time: About 1 hour
2 sticks (16 tablespoons) butter, more for pan and parchment paper
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark brown sugar, such as muscovado
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or 3/4 cup whole walnuts, optional.
1. Butter a 13-by-9-inch baking pan and line with buttered parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In top of a double boiler set over barely simmering water, or on low power in a microwave, melt butter and chocolate together. Cool slightly. In a large bowl or mixer, whisk eggs. Whisk in salt, sugars and vanilla.
2. Whisk in chocolate mixture. Fold in flour just until combined. If using chopped walnuts, stir them in. Pour batter into prepared pan. If using whole walnuts, arrange on top of batter. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until shiny and beginning to crack on top. Cool in pan on rack.
Yield: 15 large or 24 small brownies.
Note: For best flavor, bake 1 day before serving, let cool and store, tightly wrapped.
