: notes to self :

kris and kanae


omedetou ne~ zuutto zutto tanoshiku shiawase seikatsu ni natte iidesu.





cutting the cake




the ladies (note jaime's pretty dress!)




kanae in her bee-yootiful kimono suteki!




mr kris ken ohashi




during james' "serenade"




nao yano!




adorable christy and minako




congrats!




default faces?




wide-eyed antics




sigh. it was a great wedding. kris is MARRIED!!

Relief For Victims Of Asian Earthquake And Tidal Waves



UNICEF Canada
www.unicef.ca, or 1-877-955-3111. Donations can also be mailed in to UNICEF Canada, 2200 Yonge St., Suite 1100, Toronto, Ont., M4S 2C6.

World Vision Canada
www.worldvision.ca, or call 1-800-268-5528.

The Red Cross
www.redcross.ca, or 1-800-418-1111 - the 24-hour toll free line accepts Visa and Mastercard. You can also mail a cheque made payable to the Canadian Red Cross, earmarked ?outh East Asia Earthquake and Tidal Wave Relief?to Canadian Red Cross National Office, 170 Metcalfe Street, Suite 300, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 2P2. Donations of goods won? be accepted.

The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (C.C.O.D.P.)
www.devp.org, or 1-888-664-3387, or you can mail a cheque to Development and Peace, 5633 Sherbrooke St. East, Montreal, Que., H1N 1A3. The cheque should be marked ?idal Wave Disaster.?BR>
Christian Children's Fund of Canada Donations can be made at www.ccfcanada.ca following the link to ?evastating Earthquake and Tsunami Hit South Asia? As well, donations can be marked as Earthquake and Tsunami Relief and sent by mail to: Christian Children? Fund of Canada, 1027 McNicoll Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M1W 3X2.

Oxfam Canada
www.oxfam.ca or 1-800-466-9326.

Sri Lankan Relief Effort
First aid kits, tents, tarps, basic construction tools, small generators, portable radios, flashlights and clothing can be dropped off at the following locations:

210 Silver Star Bvd.,Unit 801, Scarborough, Ont. (416) 298-7289

780 Burnamthorp Rd., Unit 11, Mississauga, Ont. (647) 321-7188

ShareLife
www.sharelife.org or (416) 934-3411 or toll-free at 1-800-263-2595.

UJA Federation of Greater Toronto
Send cheques to:
Tsunami Disaster Relief Fund
c/o UJA Federation
UJA Federation of Greater Toronto
4600 Bathurst St.
M2R 3V2
Beginning Dec. 30, payments can also be made on UJA? website at www.jewishtoronto.com, or by calling 416-631-5705.

Maha Vhara
(416) 208-9278.

Also, you can make donations at any Toronto police station.

on a scale of 1-10...


good day at work so far. how can i tell?

from 12:30-1pm, I felt like a mix between celeb/politician and Susan on Seinfeld, right before she died.





asa ni, karada wo 10 kai ugokimashita! undoushinakuchai ikemasennode saikin 3kilo futottanda. HIDOOOII. soredewa, kitto mokuyoubi ni okaasan to isshoni YMCA no member ni naru.

alert the presses






it's official.











i hate shopping.

mall meditations

or

it's taking a freaking long time to get these presents wrapped...



do you think there is much competition if one wants to become a mall santa claus? like, is there a union? CUPE 4040*?

do you think those that have been in the game for a while fear the newbies, the ones with their spry bodies able to sustain the impact from small cannonballing bottoms and sticky hands, while the veterans' bones creak under the weight of lists and lights?

Do you think there is performance pressure? For example, say Santa Eh wants to get in on the mall Santa racket. But the bigwigs at Santa Central are like, “Dude, your beard is so not white enough. We want polar neige, you’re showing us slushy sleet. Age some more and try next year okay? Buh-bye now.”

So what does heartbroken Santa Eh do? Is it common for less-than-desirable Santas to opt for cosmetic procedures? Does he scour the shelves at Shoppers Drug Mart for beard dye? Does he track down a micro-abrasion dermatologist and ask for a procedure to give him rosier cheeks? Does he go to the opthamologist to the Stars and get the Twinkly Eye treatment? Will he have to hire a voice coach to help him develop a robust and jolly James Earl Jones-like Ho-Ho-Ho?



Santas, don’t hate on your fellow Nick. There’s enough love (and malls) to go around man, enough!












ps: like how i post THREE times in one day? yes, my life is really that thrilling.
* if you got this, you are an old school pager gangstarr! much 52

"i'll trade you for..."

remember back in the day when us girls had our big old photo albums full of stickers that we would bring out to trade during recess? or when you collected Upper Deck and Topps baseball/hockey cards? (I had a Paul Kariya rookie card.. and lost it..aggggh)

I was quite obsessed with my sticker collection...always valuing fuzzies and shinies over flat, 2-D stickers (duh). My pride and joy was a huge holographic sticker from Niagara Falls which I got on our tour of the region with PiPi, Siung and MeiMei.

my point?

I feel like i've been visited by the Ghost of Collecting Past recently since I've been trying to round up volunteers. Today, I got a Portugeuse lady to commit! wooooooooooooo! My pride and joy has been Portugeuse Teresa (rare find), the Filipino contingent (they're in mint condition), and a detective from the Peel Police (no tradsies).


5 more hours till fun time!

oh irony.

i used to get so annoyed when my students in Japan would respond to my "how are you?" with a uninspired "i'mfinethankyouandyou?" like, kids, that's not how real life convos work you know!



nowadays at work, the usual early morning greetings with my coworkers goes as follows:

me: good morning
coworker: morning, how are you?
naomi: i'm fine thanks, you?
coworker: i'm fine thanks.

i should really work for the mombusho. dress-up dinner tonight, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

the most beautiful house in the world





delroy and rosita's house in kuching

doh!

i had to buy my lunch at the mall today. after 20 minutes of hazy deliberation, i settled on a turkey and havarti wrap from Dominion's for $3.99... i was convinced mostly by the havarti. oh how i love havarti. i remember fondly that one time i went to global cheese...after i recovered from the sharp smell and shock of seeing so much CHEESE, i quickly scoured the shelves for havarti. then, get this, the guy gave me some... FOR FREE!!! it was AWESOME man.

anyways, yeah so i bought the wrap.


then i went and sat down in a section of tables off to the side of the main food court. it happened to be right in front of a caribbean take-away restaurant. kill me now. the guy who came and sat beside me had a big take-away tray filled to the brim with rice, jerk chicken and peas. for 50 cents more i could have been chowing down on luscious jerk chicken and rice! aaagggggggghhhhh!





sidetracked by cheese... agh. story of kartik's life ahahahahhahahaha! welcome back =)

found

It was a pretty ordinary weekend, with one extraordinary moment. On Saturday I witnessed the emotional collapse of a close friend, in a movie theatre washroom of all places. It was overwhelming to watch her face during the episode, her small face contorting with pain, wracked with hurt and incomprehension. I’ve never seen such a broken heart. It’s true that the ones closest to you leave the deepest wound, and whether we like it or not, we imitate the contours of their shape, echo their voice, bear the weight of their heart. So what do you do when you feel like what you’ve become is unbearable? What do you do when you feel like you can’t breathe, move, the pain stopping up your mind, lungs, core? What do you do when it just hurts so much?

Please, I beg you, talk to someone.

No one can do it alone.

Amidst the deafening roar there must be a reprieve, a moment of grace, to know you are not alone. No one can do it alone.

We hurt each other in ways inexplicable, sometimes making survival feel improbable. But believe it’ll be okay. Our hearts are resilient, though they emerge out of the wreckage with scars, a relief map of pain and disappointment.

Despite the all-consuming devastation of the moment I was well aware of the grace that rested in the commas, semi-colons and ellipses of the conversation. I have never felt God’s grace so tangibly before. I always forget that God doesn’t just work on Sundays, enclosed in a sanctuary, on bumper stickers, on pretty days. His ways are enigmatic, yet on Saturday, in the AMC washroom, I got it. However brief, however transient it was, for that singular instance, I understood what He wanted me to see. It’s not about instant comfort, promises that it’ll be peachy tomorrow. It may very well take the rest of her life to be “okay.” It’s about discovering another sliver of strength you didn’t know existed. It’s about finding a greater ability to hurt for someone. It’s about finding peace in another while enduring an ache that your face constantly betrays. I think to be aware of grace is to be aware of beauty in the ordinary-an optimist’s motto perhaps. There was something beautiful about the moment. I think it was because I finally believed who she was, and she saw me clearly for the first time after I shared about my mom. And it’s like that Frou Frou song says “…there’s beauty in the breakdown.”

No one can do it alone.

Be grace extended, and really listen to people. I learned that sometimes all it takes is for you to let go of your fear. I learned that sometimes, all someone needs is for you to not judge them, ask them what is wrong, listen to them and try and fight for them. We all need someone to fight for us, to be there for us, to be our champion.





Thanks. Love you, and I'll talk to you latahhh!






ps: i got compliments on my cookies... FOUR TIMES!

france has the arc de triomphe...

I have les cookies de triomphe*.

I haven't baked in about four years. So it was with a wary heart that I attempted to make 6 dozen hermit cookies for tonight's Ladies Craft Night.



utiliser beaucoup choses




melangez!



avant mettez dans la fourneau. les biscuits est un petit peu, mais jolie n'est pas? Le biscuit dans la centre-gauche c'est na pas un "dropping" ok??





Voila! c'est fini.






*sincere apologies to all of my french teachers for this entry. and to the people of quebec. and france. and haiti. je suis AHO.

say what!


nurjehan gave me a shout out last night at the book launch! woohooooooooooo! hi to my fanclub of two homegirls sitting in the last row =)


14 days till my eating buddy gets back!

native speaker | chang-rae lee


She wasn't talking much anymore. I didn't mention to her that I had known at least six John Kims in my life. Kim is a prevalent Korean surname, and the name John is still popular among immigrant parents because they think it's very American, although of course it was more popular twenty-five or thirty years ago, after the wars. I knew I could have tried to comfort her, perhaps telling her how John Kim was probably just as hurt as she was and that his silence was more complicated than she presently understood. That perhaps the ways of his mother and his father had occupied whole regions of his heart. I know this. We perhaps depend too often on the faulty honor of silence, use it too liberally and for gaining advantage. I showed Lelia how this was done, sometimes brutally, my face a peerless mask, the bluntest instrument. And Janice's John Kim, exquisitely silent, was like some fault-ridden patch of ground that shakes and threatens a violence but then just falls in upon itself, cascading softly and evenly down its own private fissure until tightly filled up again. (96)



She peers over the stainless-steel counter. I bow my head low to her. I want to thank her too, with a surprise of saying something in our language, but there is nothing in my throat to call up. I am half afraid of disappointing her with some fumble of poorly accented words. If I had the sentence, the right words, I would ask her about her family and she could tell me about her daughter and her son. If I were able with my speech, maybe her feeling would turn and she could confide in hushed tones that her husband who brought them here too late in his life died one morning of a heart attack and was simply gone, and that's why she's here and not at home, sound asleep near her good children. (316)

first snowfall of the year means....



it took me

4 hours

to get to work.










the staffroom smells like corned beef.
and another zit is rearing its oooogly head. argh!
mary and i have made a date to eat extra-large bowls of pasta in preparation for Hibernation Mode. rawr.


the JLPT is finally over and done with. during the grammar section, everyone (well, at least moi) got to play a fun game called Guessing and Bubbling in Scantrons (i love this game!), while the listening section wasn't too bad. however the kanji portion wreaked havoc on my already shabby memory. i ran into natalie and natsuki which was cool, and the test admin gave us MUFFINS during break! woweeee!

bring on the party kids, i'm freeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

so as is customary at all inmate release parties, the main celebration involved a chick flick (u know, for sensitivity and disillusionment purposes, key attitudes for survival back in the real world). i saw bridget jones 2, and though i want to marry Mark Darcy, the movie wasn't that great. bridget, for the most part, was a complete twit. if i were Mark Darcy, i would've been thoroughly annoyed. right. spit spot, cheerio. or maybe i'm becoming more crotchety...just in time for Christmas! ah, as always, excellent timing Naomi.



ps: let's all forget montreal and go skiing!!!

*ahem*


IT'S FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOVEJOYHAPPINESSFREEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!!!!!!!!!!


well, after 5:15pm anyway =))))))



shikashi....

i'm going to fail the JLPT =( i tried a practice test yesterday and got a lousy 67% (you need a 60% to pass, and yes I know it's technically a pass, but still....) aaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! i hate multiple choice tests!!!! I get flustered trying to choose a meal at Pickle Barrel cuz of their multi-paneled menu, so how am i supposed to survive a MC test of Japanese grammar?? sob. this is like psych class all over again.


______________________


2:24 pm
-half of seiji and ots' present done thanks to HMV. for junior, Buena Vista Social Club deluxe edition, and for senior, the Beatles #1 Hits. woohooo maybe xmas shopping this year will be relatively painful. i really don't want to have to figure-4 a granny for a yoga mat.




andiboughttherachaelyamagatacdforme.agh!

for the sake of humanity...

PEOPLE!

ATTENTION S'IL VOUS PLAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



go to www.suprnova.org

do a search for Russell Peters
and download his Comedy Now show (you'll need real media player to view it).


i watched it last night and was crying because i was laughing so much.

the man is freaking hilarious (and he's from Brampton!)


DOWNLOAD NOW!!!!!!!! GO GO GO GO GO GO!!!!






how can you say no to this guy? =)
he does the funniest impression of a HK bag vendor at Pacific Mall... I cried.



ps: Teitur doesn't commit any musical crimes...v.good music for a drive, especially during the wintertime. i like a couple of the songs a lot, especially number nine. but the guy seems to have this weird need to rhyme all the time, and not the cool dropping dimes kind (the boy may soon need some new lines). but overall, it's a nice mellow find, and will probably get better with time, just like a fine wine. good looking out JM (oh how i love that voice of thine).

JM, esquire.

john mayer writes a column for esquire! cool eh... and the column reads like his song lyrics ... translucent idealism w. a few pleas for romance thrown in the mix. so in the september issue JM vouched for this guy Teitur. Apparently Teitur will make me swoon due to his cloudy romantic lyrics and moody ballads. So I shall step out in faith and buy the CD, without a KazAA preview or nuthin! he lives here. woohooooooo, tanoshimi!

i like it when people use "aeroplanes" instead of "airplanes." something more dreamlike about the former... or maybe it has to do with an unconscious connection to the Aero bar and its air-pocket pocked chocolate fun. hmm.

i bet being a musician on the road must be amazing. it sounds inspiring. obviously tough, and not always uplifting, maybe a bit depressing...but i bet they more often than not, they feel like they can breathe freely and expansively.



__________________



Weird moment #478

-been trying to track down a former president of the brampton filipino seniors club... but all contact info has gotten me nowhere. so reluctantly decided to do a search for him on the online birth/marriage/death index...eeeeep. thankfully there were no records for him. he's still kicking it, somewhere in brampton. phewwww.