Sleek & Cozy

I love the look of Danish designer Finn Juhl's Poet Sofa - it's sleek and cozy at the same time with it's clean, spare lines and arms that seem to hug you:

Bright Chair Company's Lorae sofa seems to have been inspired by a similar aesthetic:

Both make me want to curl up with a book and a throw, if only it wasn't so warm out!

MAN UP!

I worked out at the gym this morning with my trainer who told me about one of his male clients who cried - cried! - at the end of their session yesterday.

Said client's been lazy with the cardio which K makes all his clients do on their own after the 1-hr session.  I don't think 20 minutes is much to ask post-session, even though I skip it sometimes when I've got a pile of work waiting for me at home.  Back to sissy-boy though - K cut their regular session short by 15 minutes and walked him over to the treadmill for some cardio and sissy-boy came up with every excuse in the book, finally resorting to tears.  TEARS!  Seriously?!?

I'd get mad first before I cried at the gym, but that's just me.

Sadness

I was scanning the headlines when this one caught my eye: Reference books slowly being phased out of libraries, and this makes me sad. 

I realize that times, they are a'changin', and electronic copies are more cost-effective and a greener alternative to printed copies and maybe I'm a bit of a luddite having written papers in university using hard copies of, among other references, the Canadian Periodical Index but it's just not the same - at least not for me.  (How's that for a run-on sentence?)

See, the thing about reference books I like is that the information is there to be found all in one place and it's not going to change - or at least it'll be the same until the next edition comes out.  And let's not forget easy cross-referencing.  On the internet though, you take your chances that your search will serve up just the right results. Information is pushed out rather than pulled by you and maybe, at the end of the day, I'm just old.  Or tired. 

So, good night.

Piglet!

My sister arrived late yesterday afternoon with my Piglet.  As usual, Piglet was shy when I first arrived home today but she warmed up to me as the night wore on.  My sister spent the evening out with her girlfriends so I was head babysitter, which made me a little nervous since my brother was up until 1:30 this morning watching a Dora marathon because Piglet wouldn't go to bed until her mom came home.

I'm happy to report that taking care of her was a breeze.  Granted, there was a lot of Dora and dinner was a little later than normal but she still ate, we had fun at bath time and though she's a bit of a Goldilocks when it comes to her bedtime bottle - my brother's first try was too cold, my redux was too hot and finally, it was just right - she settled into bed with no crying for her mommy. I turned the light off, closed the door and the only sound from the baby monitor minutes later is deep breathing.

I ROCK!

About Alice

I picked up About Alice by Calvin Trillin on sale.  I had a $50 gift card from Chapters that I wanted to use online and was searching for sale books at the right price to make up the transaction balance.

Anyway, I had never heard of Calvin Trillin having never read The New Yorker where he's a staff writer.  About Alice is a short volume that reads like a funny, anecdotal love letter he wrote in memory of his wife Alice, who he adored.  She died in 2001 waiting for a heart transplant after 25 years of battling lung cancer.

This is a lovely story that can be read in one sitting.  I was so inspired by how Trillin recounts their relationship that I'm rather curious to search out some of his previous efforts to learn more, including Alice, Let's Eat.

The photo to the left of Alice and Calvin Trillin is from the book's back cover.  From the dust jacket:

In Calvin Trillin's antic tales of family life, Alice was portrayed as the wife who had "a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day" and the mother who thought that if you didn't go to every performance of your child's school play, "the county will come and take the child." Now, five years after her death, her husband offers this loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page - an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, managed to "navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and sill delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in."
Though it deals with devestating loss, About Alice is a love story, chronicaling a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who "seemed to glow."
"You have never again been as funny as you were that night," Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later.
"You mean I picked in December of 1963?"
"I'm afraid so."

Kitchen Chinese

I picked up Ann Mah's Kitchen Chinese over the long weekend and read it in a day - mostly on my balcony yesterday while I was giving my pasty legs some sun.

It was an easy read with a main character that, in hindsight, I completely identified with because she was so very insecure about herself when it came to her professional life.  The romantic ending was a bit of a stretch for me but it was nevertheless good.

I read the interview with the author at the end of the book, and that's when I learned that Ann Mah is the daughter of Adeline Yen Mah, who's autobiography, Falling Leaves, I first read in university.  Her story, along with Wild Swans by Jung Chang, which I read for a History class, was what got me hooked into non/fiction about the Chinese experience. On the one hand, I want to learn about my cultural history, but on the other, I really appreciate reading stories about characters that I can relate to and even identify with on a very personal level.  A quick check of my bookcase for Falling Leaves reminds me that I lent it out to I don't remember who, who never returned it!  Grrr!  Same thing happened with Accidental Asian, which I lent to my friend WL, who had it forever, and possibly gave it to SA who was waiting to read it, and that's when I lost track of it. So annoying!  

From the back cover:
Isabelle Lee thinks she knows everything about Chinese cuisine.  After all, during her Chinese-American childhood, she ate it every day.  Isabelle ma speak only "kitchen Chinese" - the familial chatter learned at her mother's knee - but she understands the language of food.  Now, in the wake of a career-ending catastrophe, she's ready for a change - so she takes off for Beijing to stay with her older sister, Claire, whom she's never really known, and finds a job writing restaurant reviews for an expat magazine.  In the midst of her extreme culture shock, and the more she comes to learn about her sister's own secrets, Isabelle can't help but wonder whether coming to China was a mistake...or an extraordinary chance to find out who she really is.

Perfect Weekend

After the steamy discomfort of the past week, this weekend has been perfect - sunny, warm and relaxing.

I haven't been up to much beyond reading, eating, sleeping and a couple loads of laundry.  I had S&W over for dinner last night after failing to get last-minute Summerlicious reservations at Celestin (scallop ceviche and lobster lemon risotto?  C'MON!) I had loads of limes left over from the caipirsakes I made last Saturday and my basil plant looked ripe for some harvesting so I browsed Epicurious - my go-to website for some refreshing summer recipes.

Our al fresco evening started with glasses of Stonechurch Vineyard's Syrah Rose and my new favourite salad, mango-radicchio caprese salad with basil vinaigrette.  The sweetness of the mangoes and white balsamic vinegar tempered the slight bitterness of the radicchio, nevermind how colourful it is!  (I had it again for lunch today, which is what you see below)

For mains, I grilled up some salmon steaks which I topped with lime butter sauce and paired with another past favourite, arugula salad with lemon-parm vinaigrette.  This we had with another bottle I picked up from Stonechurch last weekend - their 2008 Riesling.  I wish I had gotten more than one, but fingers crossed, I'll see it at the LCBO soon.

I woke up a little earlier than I would have liked this morning before 10 and lazed about before making myself a stack of pancakes spiked with vanilla protein.  As an added treat, I added some frozen mixed berries to a pot of simmering maple syrup and soaked in some sun out on my balcony. 

The fragrant yumminess of steaks grilled by my neighbours permeated the air yesterday, and even W, a long-time pescaterian was tempted so I'm due at their place later for a BBQ.  More eating!  And no working!  A girl can get used to not working on weekends!

R & R

It was a 4-day weekend for me and I did not ONCE check my work email.  The thought had crossed my mind a few times, like every time my cursor hovers over the link to webmail which is in my bookmarks toolbar.  But I resisted. So proud of myself. :)

The last couple days have been pretty stress-free - I had the tasting menu for lunch at La Cachette, the restaurant at Strewn Winery, and even managed to squeeze in a few tastings at Stonechurch and Palatine Hills.

Clockwise from top left: Baby Spinach with Bacon, Benedictin Bleu & Croutons; Saute of Shrimp with Pernod Cream & Pink Peppercorns; Brome Lake Duck Confit with Molasses & Chili Pepper Gastrique and Orange Lavender Creme Brulee

I didn't think there would be time for tastings since I was due back in Toronto for a Chinese family association dinner with my mother but the sign here says it all:

All told, I came home this weekend with 14 bottles - 9 of which I picked up at the vineyards and the others at the LCBO.  The cross-border shopping coupled with my booze binge made for a a very, very expensive weekend.

My last work-free day started with a bit of a hangover after last night's condo crawl.  I managed to make it back into my place after 4am, guzzled some Gatordade, showered and fell into bed, waking up too early this morning around 10.  I suppose the upside to waking up at that hour is that Mickey D's was still serving breakfast so my post-drink-up cure of a sausage'n'egg mcmuffin was readily available. And was it ever good in all its greasy glory! 

I wish this break could be a couple days longer but such is life.  I'm well-rested and chilled out and (mostly) ready to take on Monday now.  Bring it on!

Retail Therapy

I've been working my ass off the last few weeks - so much so that I got sick and had to see a physiotherapist because I strained right wrist with too much mouse-work.  Lame, right?  Anyway, I drove across the Peace Bridget to Buffalo for a day of shopping at the Walden Galleria and Target.  There was a great sale at Loft - 40% off all regular priced items and an additional 50% off sale items so I picked up a couple dresses including the one-shouldered number below which I'm going to wear to my sister's wedding.  The rest of my big haul included 2 pairs of pants, a skirt, 3 tops including J. Crew's sequin necklace tank below and a silk-flower embellished cardi, a scarf, a couple pairs of shoes and miscellaneous stuff like pretty picture frames.

I had some time to kill while N was at rowing practice so I hung out at Chapters and caught up on the latest fashion mags.  A browse through the sales stacks unearthed a couple Penguin clothbound Classics that are no longer available online on Chapters including Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Cranford, so I snapped them up.

All in all, it was a very satisfying day.  Now I'm off for dinner at Treadwell's which I'm super-excited about! :)

Rationalizing

I got a piece of mail from Rogers, my cable and internet provider this week announcing changes to their cable pricing.  Normally I just toss these into my recycling but I've been reading Money Sense so fiscal responsibility is top of mind.  I thought about the TV that I actually watch - none of which lately include the specialty channels I've been paying a premium for so I called and downgraded my package, which saved me $30 a month.

Next on my list was my internet usage. I've been paying for 60GB of usage a month when my history for the last 6 months shows an average of about 5GB per month.  Stupid, right?  I'm actually rather annoyed at myself for throwing my money away but no more! The 20 minutes I just spent on the phone with the customer service rep will save me almost $500 a year!  So, yay for saving money!

Friday in Sao Paulo

It’s Valentine’s weekend in Brazil and I came back to my room at the Intercontiental to find roses waiting for me. Lovely, right?

The best thing about the Intercon, besides the comfortable bed and pillows is L’Occitane’s Verbena line of toiletries. My favourite scent! I’ve tucked away the little bottles every night before going to bed and when I come back to my room the next evening, there are new bottles waiting for me.

Anyway – this trip to SP has been muito otimo (very awesome), despite the usual intensity of traveling with senior execs because I’ve a colleague, J, from Toronto who’s here part-time that I’ve really bonded with. The execs left yesterday afternoon and I’m now able to get down to the work I was meant to do on this trip. I spent the day in the office and we called it a night around 7pm and spent the next 4 hours at a local pub for “happy hour.” I ordered a caipirhinia followed by a couple caipirsakes which are far smoother then the former. A Caipirsake is apparently unique to Sao Paulo and is a caipirhinia with the cachaca swapped out for sake which results in a drink that taste like limeade. YUM!

We ordered a fantastic carpaccio pizza and stewed beef 2 ways – one flavoured with gorgonzola and the other with mustard – and had a fantastic time. There was a lot of talk about work, but also about life.

J has raved about how generous and open all the Brazilians have been towards her – from our partners here and how open they’ve been in taking care and seeing that she’s felt welcome to the cab drivers who’ve given her a discount on her fare because her ride took longer than it should have because of construction which is clearly beyond their control. After tonight, I can attest to kindness of the cabbies myself. I don’t know any Portuguese so it was a very silent ride but my cabbie was attentive enough to notice my interest in all the furniture and home décor shops on the street we were driving down so he turned on the light when I pulled out a pen and paper to write down the street name. He said something to me in Portuguese – I didn’t understand precisely, but I know it was a comment on the concentration of shops, so when he wrote out my receipt for me, he turned it over and added something extra, and the something extra was “Gabriel Monteiro da Silva, Lojas,” the street name. How sweet is that? I left the cab smiling.

Meanwhile I’m crazy-itchy. Mosquitoes have feasted on me – my left side in particular since I’ve a bite on my elbow and not one, not two but THREE bites on my the lower half of my leg. Plus I’m allergic so they’re super-swollen. UGH!

Heading back to SP

I've been working much of this weekend in preparation for a business trip back to Sao Paulo. I leave tomorrow night with 4 others but instead of returning before the weekend as I have the 2 other times I've been, I fly home Sunday night! This means I'll finally have my chance to see the city beyond my hotel, the offices and the restaurants our partners take us to for dinner in the evenings.

I will be spending the weekend with another colleague from Toronto who will be staying for an extra week thereafter.  We'll be there for the kick-off to the World Cup so there's bound to be lots of festivities in soccer- (or should I say football?) mad Brazil.  Ooh!  And maybe I'll go shopping!  I don't know what the big tourist attractions are in Sao Paulo.  I know there are football stadiums and a public park comparable to Central Park....and there's a fancy mall with a really cool bookstore that I want to see.  Other than that, I'm just going to go with the flow.

I'm already planning my wardrobe for the week ahead so I don't over-pack!  Now, back to work!

Skinny Minnie

I've been working with a personal trainer now for 9 months and have seen significant results. Pants that used to fit are now saggy in the butt and hang loose off my hips, but on the plus side, I'm shopping my old wardrobe, now able to fit into pants that had grown too tight over the last few years, and shirts that made my muffin top all too apparent.  How thrilling is that?!

You know what's even more awesome?  I'm actually wearing belted skirts with my top tucked in!  I don't think I've EVER done that before in my life - at least not with a measure of confidence!!

Despite how proud I am of my leaner self, I'm rather embarrassed by the attention it's garnering.  It's not that I haven't been transparent about my efforts.  I've talked openly about my workouts and the changes I've made to my diet including the days I go low-carb/high-protein now that I'm in burn, so I should be happy that people are noticing.  But when my manager says, in the middle of a conversation, "Check out the pipes on this girl!" I squirm.  If I was a guy, I'd probably flex my arm in response just to show it off but instead I feel self-conscious.  And when another manager callls me a Skinny Minnie and my colleagues comment on how great I look, I feel uncomfortable because of the attention.

I know I should get over it, turn it around and be proud because I've worked so hard for these results.  But changing one's self-image takes time.  Not to say that my self-image was horrible before.  I know I sound like an ass when I say this but I know I'm pretty, and have even been called beautiful on occasion, though not usually cute, which is fair because I'm far too serious to be considered cute.  (I know, I'm an ass, but please, indulge me here.)  Yet I've never had the stereotypical thin Asian girl body.  I take after my decidedly pear-shaped aunt so have always been self-conscious about that, always comparing myself to other Asian girls. 

I know I will never be a skinny Asian girl - my hips will always be curvier and my bosom will always be, um, shall we say, modest, but I can learn to revel in the strength of my body.  I can do straight leg deadlifts and one arm rows with 65lb dumb bells and 100lb bar squats; I can even do real push-ups - 2 sets of 15, no less! - and I don't look like a butch.  I made it very clear to my trainer that I didn't want to look butchy.  How many skinny Asian girls can say the same? 

The Piano Teacher

I finished Janice Y. K. Lee's The Piano Teacher today and that's when it occurred to me that this book, like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, was also set during WWII.

I've always had a particular weakness for non-/fiction written by Asian authors - Chinese ones in particular because I'm curious about how the customs and beliefs I've grown up with and am used to thinking about in the Chinese language are articulated in English.

For example - the Chinese preoccupation with food.  In Chinese culture, one doesn't ask "how are you?" but "have you eaten?"  Maybe it comes from living through famines over the many centuries of Chinese civilization - the most recent one during Mao's misguided Great Leap Forward in which an estimated 30MM Chinese died.

Whenever I speak to my mother or aunts and uncles on the phone, they always ask if I've eaten yet.  Without fail.  And sometimes, I surprise myself with how Chinese I am and beat them to the punch by asking them first.  Lee references this fixation in the novel and I was mildly amused by it, despite the tragic context.

I'm a bit ambivalent about the book...it was good but not great. And I think my next book will have to be contemporary in its setting - I need a break from the tragedies of WWII.

From the back cover:
In 1942, WIll Truesdale, an Englishman newly arrived in Hong Kong, falls passionately in love with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite.  But their affair is threatened by the invasion of the Japanese and World War II overwhelms their lives.

Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong and is hired by the wealthy Chen family as their daughter's piano teacher.  Seduced by the colony's heady social life, she soon begins an affair...only to discover that her lover is hiding a devastating past.  As the threads of this spellbinding novel intertwine, impossible choices emerge - between love and safety, courage and survival, the present, and, above all, the past.

I want one

I love books - the look and feel and smell of them - so I'm rather a luddite when it comes to eReaders. When the Kindle was introduced I had no desire to get one but with the Kobo, I'm reconsidering. I don't think I'll ever stop buying books but this light-weight reader would be perfect for travelling. It comes pre-loaded with 100 classics and can store thousands of books. And at $149, the price is just about right.

Itchy...and random

I've been on a loose spending fast of late and am seriously itching for some retail therapy.

I've cheated by redeeming my air miles for $50 Indigo gift cards to buy these gorgeous clothbound Penguin Classics that now grace my bookcase:

Last Saturday, I went back to Anthropologie to return 3 tops I'd picked up the weekend before after my haircut and left with the pretty embellished sleeveless number below and on Sunday, before my massage, I killed time browsing around Yonge and Davisville where I found this adorable Frog Prince tealight holder:


See? Weak.

Anyway. I've been holding out on buying some new clothes after losing about 10lbs with all the training I've been doing because I've only really just started this first "burn" cycle and am fairly certain there's more weight to be lost.

I woke up this morning to sunshine and thought, maybe I'll head out to browse the shops. But now it's raining so I guess I'm safe from temptation.

Perfect day for a 10K

Every year, on the first Sunday of May, Yonge Street shuts down for a few hours so thousands of runners can participate in the Sporting Life 10K. This is my third year running it and I ran my best time: 1:03:35. My goal had been to run it in an hour which I obviously didn't manage. In hindsight, I probably could have but I was too cautious of running out of gas too soon.

Here's a view of the crowd ahead of me:

The forecast had called for thundershowers and I was all set to bail if faced with heavy downpour in the morning but luckily the rain held until I was about 5 minutes from home, and then it only rained for a short while. It was actually the perfect morning for a 10K with nary a chill in the air. My first year was brisk to say the least.

I celebrated my best time with brunch at Earth beginning with a Kir Royale.

My trainer gave me the greenlight to use this day as a cheat day to eat anything I wanted, so I had Earth's version of Steak and Eggs - soooo good! What made it even better? We sat indoors so there was no chance of a little extra seasoning from the birds above ruining my perfect dish.

And dessert! I was allowed dessert! So I had the chocolate torte. It turned out to be a little too rich, an issue that would have been resolved if dessert had arrived before my latte ran out but service was s-l-o-w.


On our way back to the car which I'd parked on Roxborough, I noticed this amusing sight:

Someone's got a cheeky sense of humour! (I quite like her stripe-y tights!)

I'd booked myself a massage uptown and had an hour to kill so browsed the shops, leaving with this adorable frog prince tea light holder:

I rounded out my Sunday with groceries from Chinatown, lunch-making for the week, a quick dinner of salad and a nice long soak in the tub.

I really missed Sundays like this...

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I stayed up last night until 1am to finish reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This, like The Lovely Bones and The Time Traveler's Wife, is another book that I wonder why, having finished it, it took me so long to discover. It was absolutely delightful.

Like Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine, TGL&PPPS unfolds through letters and correspondence. I pride myself in being able to pick up on hints the author drops in order to anticipate the plot but I did NOT see the ending coming, which was a very pleasant surprise.


From the back cover:

January 1946: writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.

Coolest Teeny-Tiny Flat EVAR

Gary Chang, an architect in Hong Kong has designed the coolest multi-room flat ever with 24 rooms in all of 344 sq. ft!

Little Bee

I picked up Chris Cleave's Little Bee at a Target in Washington state when I visited my sister in Vancouver last month and finished it early this morning.

It was a really good read since it was engaging and enlightening. For example, I didn't know anything about the conflicts in Nigeria over oil, nor did I know much about immigration in Britain. The ending seemed a little rushed though.

I don't want to spoil the story so I'll just reiterate the spare description on the back cover:

This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again - the story starts there...

Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens. The magic is how the story unfolds.

And there you have it - you've been told. :)