SlantyNet Welcome Guest | Login or Register

Looking at a map of the world the other day, it looks like Belfast is as far north as Fort St John. Anybody care to confirm? I would, but this cursed dial-up is killin me.

In other news, I’m off to London for a wedding this weekend. I expect I won’t see anything but the inside of pubs and hotels, which sounds like a fun trip to me! I’m going to see my cousin Rob who’s been living in London for the past 5 or so years, so that’ll be fun as well.

I’m still applying for jobs, there’s some hope that I’ll be able to get work as a C# developer which would be great. Hopefully if that happens we’ll be able to finally get a place of our own, and get some decent internet access. But I’m not holding my breath, I’m awful lazy when it comes to things like looking for a job.

This story reminded me of the time Kim ws getting something out of the back seats of our car.  Her hands were full with the stuff she was getting out so she closed the door with her hip.  She had a jacket on and had placed the keys in her jacket pocket.  As she swung her hips to close the door her unzipped jacket went with the motion and ended up caught in the door… of course the pocket with the keys ended up inside the now locked car.  She was stuck to the car and the keys were inside.  She ended up taking her jacket off and leaving it hanging outside the car while we got a ride from someone back to our house to get the spare keys.  Maybe if I wrote that up more eloquently Readers Digest would give me some money for that story… but you guys are getting the crappy version for free.

Well, I’m back to work and I think it might almost be easier than my vacation. Almost. This previous week, the wife, the inlaws and I painted the house.

Before

After

See more at House Painting 2006

In other home improvement news, Jerry has entered a contest to win a landscaping package for his house. He’s a geek and not a landscaper, so he sure could use a hand. Vote for Jerry, entry # 10

Congrats Kylie, Matt and Makena! A new story to be told! Matt, Kylie’s & Makena’s Adventures in Canada

Hi people, It's been a good week. Markus is doing a great job as the new sous-chef and that's all I can say about that for now. I did a bit of baking yesterday... on a school field trip. We took the kids to a nougat factory. They also make the famous and delicious pineapple cakes. I was so happy, I've known these cakes since I lived in Japan, when ever so often a Taiwanese kid in my class would come back from a trip here and bring me back a box of them. They're actually more like shortbread cookies with pineapple filling. Yesterday my students and I made a bunch of them, it was fun. I miss baking as we don't have an oven in our apartment, only two gas burners. Most people don't have them here, nor clothes dryers. We have to hang our laundry in the laundry room next to the kitchen. It's ok though, things dry really quickly. Supposedly there is a dryer function on the washer but we haven't figured out how to use it, it's all in chinese. Another cool thing we've tried recently is the local tea. It's kind of like oolong but I don't know its name. It's tasty and the ritual of preparing it is half the fun. First you warm up the cups with boiling water. Then you let the tea seep for a while, then you pour it into the cups and empty that into a bin, since it's the first round and the tea is too bitter still. Then you pour the second round and drink it quickly. The cups are tiny and seem like toy sets for little girl's tea parties. You continue this routine of filling them up and this can last for hours. We experienced this on top of Yaming Mountain, with our Taiwanese hosts. It reminded me of a Taiwanese movie I saw in a Colombian movie theatre about 10 years ago by Ang Lee (director of Brokeback Mountain). The movie was called something like Eating, Drinking, Man, Woman. A great movie about a Taiwanese retired chef who still pulls out all the stops for his Sunday dinners with his three daughters. While watching this movie I remember my mouth watering, the food looked so good. I saw this movie with Spanish subtitles! The funny thing is that the next day my cousin Camila and I went out for fried rice, which is the only chinese food we could find in Bogota. But I'm pretty sure the movie is available in the foreign section of Blockbuster in Canada. It won all kinds of awards. Bye for now!

Our stuff finally arrived, and even better we picked it up with no hassle at all from customs. Not that we were smuggling, but I thought they might bug us a bit about the two palettes of stuff we were bringing into the country, but no. So now it’s sitting in the garage waiting for us to get a place of our own to unpack and assess the damage. I can’t wait!