Facebook and My Ottawa Friends

Dear Ottawa friends,

About two weeks ago, I was playing with Facebook features and removed my "relationship status" so that it doesn't show. Please let me clarify that DH and I are still happily married. I sincerely thank you for your caring. Thank you to those who checked up on me to see how I'm doing. It was not my intention to cause any worries. From what I heard, I caused "some sad gossip" in Ottawa. Little did I know that the one who cares most about finding out if I divorced is actually someone who wouldn't contact me directly, even better, he does not even own a Facebook account!!!

Yours truthfully,
little camy

Labour Day Weekend in San Diego, CA

DH and I got a ride from a friend and went down to San Diego, CA. There was traffic on the way down and it took us 9 hours drive to get there after work on Friday!

It was 2:00am when we arrived and we crashed at our friend's brother's place. The next day, we spent a day at Las Americas outlet in San Ysidro, CA, near the Mexico border. Then our friend dropped us off in downtown San Diego to check in at Doubletree Hotel, which we previously bid on priceline.com. Let me tell you how unsatisfied we were with the customer service when we called Priceline. We encountered some problems and called them, this people avoid answering by hanging up!! Yup, it's ridiculous! The first time it happened, we thought maybe we lost connection, but after it happened thrice, we looked up on reviews of Priceline and the general public do agree that their customer service is horrible! Despite the bad experience with Priceline, we enjoyed our stay at Doubletree. It was a nice hotel and we got a room with a nice view on the 21st floor of a 22-storey hotel. We were greeted with their signature warm cookies.

On Sunday, we didn't have a car, so we spent the day checking out downtown San Diego. We walked so much that my pedometer registered over 22 000 steps! We started off from our hotel and went to Balboa Park. We visited the Natural History Museum. Then we walked back towards downtown and stopped by a 7 Eleven for some lunch/snack. We continued our walk all the way to the habour to enjoy the water front. Finally we walked to Horton Plaza where a friend picked us up to go to the beach and then dinner. Look at the map!


View Larger Map

Hidden heart harm of fatty foods

This is an interesting article from BBC. Here's a quote I took out of the article (link to article further below):

"Instead of a healthy pink muscle, his heart looks like a pulsating
lump of lard after a lifetime of eating too much saturated fat.

The layer of fat encasing Mr Haj's heart was so thick the surgeons
doing his triple bypass could not see his coronary arteries."

The video on the page shows surgery... you may or may not want to view that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7605999.stm

Wonton Noodle Soup

Today, I made Hong Kong style shrimp wonton noodle soup for the first time. Surprisingly, it came out very good at the first trial! Woohoo! One item down on my list of cooking challenges, one more item on the list of items I will not order at restaurants. DH says is delicious :D.

It is really worth making my own wonton noodle soup? At least it has no MSG! The wonton wrap was the only thing I didn't make from scratch. Now let's see how much it costs me:

For wonton:
1 pack of wonton skin (1lbs, ~86 pieces): $1.59
1 lbs of ground pork: $1.79
2 lbs of shrimps: $6.00 (yeah, I got a deal on these)
seasoning: negligible
-> This makes about 14 portions of 6 wontons, therefore $0.67/portion.

For noodles and soup:
1 lbs of pork bones: $1.00
1 lbs of fresh egg noodles: $2.39
1 lbs of vegetables: $1.00
seasoning: negligible
-> This makes about 4 portions, therefore $1.10/portion.

Wow, that's cheap! I didn't realize until now. So, if we round up a bit for the cost of seasoning, a bowl of wonton noodle soup would cost around $2.00. Unfortunately, I don't know how much electricity I used, I guess that's the price I have to pay for some MSG-free and safe homemade food!

Sad News

Recently, I read in the news that a Montreal woman was shot to death in Afghanistan. It is a sad news, but even sadder when I found out that she is the wife of Professor Kirk, who taught me EMF.

http://www.mcgill.ca/channels/announcements/item/?item_id=101156

Revolutionary Idea!

Did you ever wonder why women change their name to their husband's after marrying them? It tradition is still practiced in many culture. It is a very confusing, especially nowadays that women have their own career and that divorce is a common practice. I met a woman who was widowed thrice and is currently married to a fourth husband, therefore she had have 5 names in the course of her life... now how confusing is that!

In Quebec, under the civil law, a woman cannot legally change her name to her husband's:

"Both spouses keep their birth names after marriage and continue to exercise their civil rights under that name, i.e. they must use their birth name in contracts, on credit cards, on their driver's licence, etc. However, women are free however to assume their husband's name socially. Women married before April 2, 1981 who already use their husband's last name to exercise their civil rights may continue to do so."

I don't believe that women should be her man's belonging. My revolutionary idea is if the husband insists his wife in taking his name, then the wife should offer a name swap! He takes her name, she takes his name!

Tips for maintaining your laptop battery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion

Since I'm getting a new laptop with a Li-ion battery, I read up on it and found interesting tips I want to share with you.

Waiting for my next laptop

After my blue-screen experience with the previous Dell Inspiron 1420, I decided to try HP. Don't get me wrong, I received good service from Dell's tech-support. For some "unknown" reason, the three I spoke to coincidentally had Indian-sounding names and spoke with an Indian-like accent. Though satisfied with the level of service, I didn't fall in love with my Dell Inspiron 1420, therefore I decided to try HP, a brand I never had experience with. My friends recommended me a Mac. I would love getting a Mac, but I never saw it drop enough to fit my budget.

There's a similar/same deal going on with HP laptops as for the Dell laptops: get 25% off 14.1" laptops over $999. I upgraded mine to reach $1050 with a Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T8300 (2.4GHz) and 250GB of HD. There was a free upgrade to 2GB of RAM and it also comes with a free HP Deskjet D1560 Printer (value of $70), which I don't care for.

Now, I'm patiently waiting for my next toy. :D

Home Sweet Home

When I was growing up, I always wondered why people get excited when they meet someone from their home country. Especially in a Chinese community, they get very friendly when they meet people from their village and speaking their dialects.

My parents have been visiting for the past few weeks. Today, I went to SFO airport to send them off. While waiting for them to cross security, I overheard someone speaking Québécois. I turned my head to look and had a smile. This feeling of belonging to a limited group of people speaking a language with a specific accent is quite strange. You can identify where they come from almost without a mistake, they probably grew up on the same land as you did. I bet it would be even more surprising for them to hear me speak, because I just don't look like someone who speaks Québécois!

Still hanging around... without computer!

It's not really easy to keep in touch without a computer. The laptop I've been using finally died in the 2nd half of April. It just refused to power on! It was a good old Toshiba (897 MHz with 256 MB of RAM) that a good friend lent me. It's time for an upgrade!

It took me a good couple of weeks before I found a deal that attracted me. I got myself a Dell Inspiron 1420: 14.1", Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T8300 (2.4GHz), 3 GB of RAM, 120 GB of HD with built-in Bluetooth and webcam priced at regular price for $1019. After 25% off and 8.25% tax it totaled $833.30. I was quite satisfied with the deal!

Unfortunately, it was just not meant to be. On the day after I received it, I was playing with its webcam software and I encountered the Windows Vista blue screen (BSOD - Blue Screen Of Death)! I had a chance to work with Dell's tech support. I followed tech support's instructions and did a system restore. After restarting Windows Vista, I got a 2nd blue screen when starting Internet Explorer! At that point, my case was escalated and I was given a phone number and a contact name. The service I experienced was quite good. It took me about 2 weeks of phone exchanges with Dell's tech support but the cause of the blue screens was not determined. I finally decided to return the laptop for a full refund (due to defectiveness). In the meantime, I got a third blue screen.

Once again, I'm computer-less... it feels weird... Let me know if you find any good deals for my budget of less than $900 total (out of pocket)!

Free Drinks!

Jamba Juice is giving away free breakfast tomorrow until 10am to promote their new breakfast products!

http://www.jambajuice.com/

And coincidentally, Starbucks is having some kind of promotion tomorrow as well... but they are not telling what it is "because it will spoil the surprise"!

http://starbucks.com/

Enjoy!

Home, Sweet Home!

It is booked! I'll be back to Montreal on June 26th until July 15th. Please mark down your calendars if you care about meeting me!

It will be the 3rd time I go back home after I moved to California and also the 3rd time I use my points for a flight home. Let's see if I can keep the trend. My target is to not have to pay for airfare to visit home. This time, I redeemed with United Airlines' Mileage Plus program. DH redeemed using Delta Airlines' points. He wants to get rid of them. We would be flying separately, which really bothers me. After 6 years of long distance relationship, I have grown enough hatred towards traveling alone and crossing borders alone. However, I guess I will do it to save a few hundreds of bucks. Sister is going back too. She decided a few weeks after us and was able to use her points as well, but she will arrive half a day after me. It's funny: the 3 of us will arrive at 3 different times with half a day intervals between arrivals.

Flight Booking Tip

This tip was known to me since 2002. It is probably the most useful tip that my travel agent gave me. It came in very handy today. I thought of sharing it with you on my blog.

When an airline change your flight (ie. when they bump you to a different flight) or there is a schedule change (ie. change in time of the flight), you are eligible to ask to be rescheduled. I've done with successfully with Northwest Airlines and also confirmed it with United Airlines. UA told me that if the flight schedule change is greater than 90 mins, then we can request to change flight within the same class.

Couple weeks ago, we booked tickets for my parents to come visit next month. We purposely booked direct flight from Montreal to San Francisco. There is only one per day. We just found out today that they rescheduled them to transfer in Denver one the way going and Chicago on the way back. This would cause major confusions to my parents and a longer travel time. We checked the timetable, Air Canada canceled direct flights on both days. We called them and were able to reschedule them on different days with direct flights.

Ever since I knew about this trick, I like to book early for big holidays (3-5 months in advance) as soon as I find a decent deal, usually for July (hight season) or Christmas. Then as the days come closer (about 3 weeks - 1 month), airlines would readjust their schedule according to demand. I would monitor and if they change my itinerary, then I request to change to a more ideal time or even airport! For instance, for Christmas 2002, I booked to depart on the Sunday before Christmas because Saturday was a blackout date, after they changed my itinerary, I was able to negotiate to depart the day before!

South Beach Diet

It's that time of the year, spring is around he corner and I'm getting ready for summer by starting my annual South Beach Diet. I really love that diet, it works very well for me so I do it every year :D.

Today is day 2. I have another 12 days of no carbs to endure before I can slowly re-introduce good carbs. It's quite painful, but hey... it's guaranteed to work! My record is losing 7lbs in 9 days and I was able to lose 10lbs for my wedding.

Going Vegetarian - Conclusion

I heard that some of you wanted to know the result of my vegetarian diet. Well, it wasn't as "cleansing" experience as I thought. The first 3 days was wonderful, we ate at home and had homemade cooking. After that, it went all wrong. We over ate! We went to try vegetarian Indian food. We had dosa and other dishes for the first time. It was good, but it was also a lot of potatoes and starch (and saturated fat from the coconut!)! We were quite stuffed. The following days, we had a lot of curries and also went to Sweet Tomatoes (a salad and soup buffet). Needless to say, we over ate for the remainder 7 days of our 11 days of diet! I have to say, that's not exactly what I expected from the diet!

For conclusion, I believe it is fairly easy to be non-strict vegetarian here in Silicon Valley. Supermarkets have great selections and many restaurants offer vegetarian alternatives. However, it becomes very tricky when you go out with non-vegetarian friends. Especially if they want to go for pho (vietnamese food) or Chinese food. It is definitely challenging when you want to have cheap fast food! One time, we had to fill on potato wedges at Safeway for quick lunch! So, finally, I don't see a need of going vegetarian again in the near future. As far as I am concerned, it's only healthier if you eat at home or at fancier restaurant.

Going Vegetarian

On Monday, I started a vegetarian diet. DH and I are going vegetarian for 10 days just for an experiment. It has nothing to do with religions and believes. I still believe we are not at the bottom of the food chain, so it is merely for fun! I wanted to cut all animal products, but I think I should start slowly, so I'm allowing myself to milk products and eggs, so that I can eat cakes and cookies :D.

The purpose of this experiment is to verify how difficult it is to be vegetarian in our society and if the vegetarian diet gives noticeable physical difference. Today is Day 4, the first 3 days weren't bad. I find myself eating a lot of veggie soup with noodles or pasta. Our friend T. is participating in our experiment and he says he's been eating more carbs than ever: he stuffs himself with lots of bread and rice! I think the most challenging is for T. and DH to say no to free meat at work!

After 3.5 days of vegetarianism, I do feel a physical difference. I don't feel as stuffed, almost wanting to eat something. I definitely have more water intake from all those veggies and fruits. On the other hand, T. feels more stuffed than before from eating all those refined carbs! I wonder if I would lose weight or body fat percentage... Oh... I must mention that on Monday, we also started the National Body Challenge, therefore, we started exercising on Monday, maybe that would affect our weight and percentage body fat too. Anyway, I don't say no to losing some fat and weight... :D

Hawaii at End of Month!

Remember I mentioned going to Honolulu, HI at the end of this month? Yup, we are going for $100 in "taxes", that includes flight for 2 and two night hotel in Waikiki.

We received the trip info on New Year's eve. It is confirmed and we flying with NorthWest Airlines. Yay! That means we can collect WorldPerks points! (NWA's frequent flyer program).

Honestly speaking, WoldPerks points are quite useless to us. Before our marriage, DH and I had a long distance relationship for 6 years. During those 6 years, I have mostly flown across the continent with NWA because they were the cheapest, but also because they had and evening flight landing in SJC. Until now, I have collected roughly 43000 points. Unlike for Star Alliance airlines partners, I have never been able to redeem a flight with WorldPerks. They claim flights within Canada-USA start at 25000 points, but in real life, all I have seen cost more than my 43000 points! I tried to redeem them for hotel nights, but there's no such option... Then how to get rid of them or use them?

DH really wants to go see volcano in Big Island, HI. I wasn't too enthusiastic about it: we are going to be in Hawaii for only 2.5 days, I don't want to be rushing or spend too much on a "free" trip. He tried to convinced me to book for flight to Hilo. It would cost us $220 (that's $49/way + tax).

Finally, we found a solution that saves money and helps get rid of points! We went to Honolulu, HI for our honeymoon by Hawaiian Airlines. We joined their frequent flyer program to get $10 off the price of the flight and collected 4000+ points in 2006. Then, we participated in some surveys and joined their mailing list for some bonus points, which brought us to above 5000 points, enough for 1-way inter-island flight! I have one account and DH have another one, that makes it enough for 1 round trip from Honolulu to Hilo! Then, I remember my mom has 11000 points in WorldPerks, which is not going to take her anywhere... She has only flown once with NWA and collected 5000+ points in 2002. To keep her membership active, I have helped her find bonus points and in 5 years, I pumped her up to 11000 points! NWA and Hawaiian Airlines are partners, that means another round trip inter-island flight!! Which her permission, I redeemed 10000 points for a second inter-island flight and it is only costing us $5 in taxes.

Here is a summary of our trip so far:

$100 + 2($5) = $110 in total taxes
includes: 2 flights from SFO to HNL, 2-night hotel, 2 flights from HNL to ITO.

Did you know...

That you don't need to take taxi or shuttle from HNL airport to Waikiki beach? There are several public buses you can take. For instance, bus 20 would take you directly from HNL to Waikiki and would cost you only $2. The average tourists wouldn't know and would pay $15 for shuttle or even $30 for taxi! That's what we did last time and it didn't even saved us time due to multiple drop offs at different hotels. So, public bus that is!

Since we are going to the airport twice in this trip, it would cost us a total of $16 in public transportation. We also booked a car at Hilo airport (ITO)'s Dollar Rent A Car for our day trip, the estimate total is $30.15. Therefore our new subtotal would be: $156.15 for the trip.

Let's see if we can keep this entire trip under $400. :)


View Larger Map

Trip Expenses

When I go on trip, I would mark down all my expenses. I like to know how much I spend for future reference. It makes it easier to budget for the next time. After computing my expense for this last trip to China, to my biggest surprise, I found out that we spent less than one thousand dollars during our journey. If we add up the cost of the tour and every miscellaneous expenses, the total spent on this trip is US$3,243.68 for the two of us! (I used the rates of US$1 = RMB¥7.30 and US$1 = HK$7.60) and I budgeted $5000!

The biggest portion of trip was the tour, which cost $1209 (per person), then we had to add $35 (per person) for Saturday return flight. Visa to mainland China was $45 for dual entry for us (for the American passport, it is flat rate of $100). Therefore, before leaving, we spent $2578.

Yes! That means... we only spend $665.68 during the trip!! and that includes 7 days that is not part of the tour, ie. eat and stay at our own expense! Hehe, we were very lucky and blessed, my relative took care of our extra night lodging in Guangzhou and we stayed with my good friend in Hong Kong. I wanted to spend more, I wanted to go crazy clothing shopping, but bad timing I guess... I really don't like this season's style and plus, it wasn't sale season either. Too bad for me, but DH is very happy he got 3 pairs of cheap pants and 1 sweater (all 4 items for RMB¥200, about US$26.32).

Finally, as my friend said, we are so under budget that we can use that money for a mini-getaway :D :D. Our next trip: Honolulu, HI at the end of January!! (This one is from attending one of those timeshare presentations: flight + 2 nights hotel for two in Waikiki, we paid $100 in "taxes").

Back from China!

It's been about a week and a half that I've been back from my trip to China. We joined a tour and went to Beijing, Nanjing, Wuxi, Sozhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou and finally Guangzhou where the tour was dismissed. Then we made our way to Hong Kong and flew back to San Francisco from there.

The trip was good. My main concern was DH getting a culture shock with the food. Not only he didn't complain and ate a lot, but he also didn't get sick! What a relief. Well, we visited big cities, it should be much safer than visiting say Xian or other remote areas.

In preparation for the Olympics, the Beijing National Stadium (or the Bird's Nest) was already there, we drove by and could have a look. It was either a very foggy or smoggy day, we couldn't see well. Streets in big cities were clean and I noticed significant reduction in number of people spitting (almost none!). I have to give them credit, every time I go back to China, I can see significant improvement: they evolve at very quick pace!

When we got to Guangzhou where the tour was dismissed, we finally got to eat food other than "tour-package-deal" meals. DH was very pleased. Guangzhou is known for good food. We met up with my relatives and they took care of taking us out. We tried local specialties like free-range chicken, fresh fish balls, dumplings with fish-meat wrapper, wild caught shrimps, and even pigeon! We stayed in Guangzhou for 2 nights and then took the train to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was charming. It was great for walkers! For 2 days in a row, we walked 21,000 steps per day! (Daily target is 10,000 steps). We were proud to show our friends and relatives what we walked.

On the first day, we walked from Central to the escalators to mid-levels, visited the zoo (open to public, free admission!) on the way and then walked to the tram station to go up to Victoria Peak. After seeing the view of the city from high, we walked back from the tram station to Central and finally from Central to Causeway Bay. We stopped on the way for afternoon tea and visited Cisco office in Wan Chai. We met up with DH's cousins in Causeway Bay for dinner.

On the second day, we visited The Hong Kong Museum of History in Tsim Sha Tsui. It was free admission on Wednesday. We walked North on Nathan Road from there to Mongkok where we shopped and experienced the crowds in Hong Kong. We went as far as Gold Fish Market!

Thursday was a relaxing day, we took it easy and had a day trip to Shenzhen where we indulge ourselves with half a day at a SPA.

Friday was the last full day in Hong Kong. We occupied ourselves with last minute shopping and last minute meeting with friends and relatives.

Saturday morning, we head out early at 7:30am to catch bus E22A from Tseung Kwan O (near Po Lam MTR station) to the airport. It took us 1hr15mins and costed HK$24 per person. The ride and flight were uneventful. We met up with 4 tourmates who took the same flight home. The flight was nice, the flight attendants were courteous. I was tired and slept most of the flight. Never has a trans-Pacific flight seemed so short (about 12hrs)!

Hardest Chinese Words

I came across this website that votes for the hardest Chinese word. Very interesting.

http://recordcup.com/ranking/287/hardest_chinese_ever.html

This word to the right means "exorcism". I have no idea how to pronounce it!