more LA County Fair pics

tablescape contest!

more Venice Beach photos

don't even need a title

It IS that hot!

meteor shower

I heard the news that there will be the Perseid meteor shower tonight. I stepped outside my apartment a little after 11 pm, when the meteor shower was supposed to peak. Of course I saw nothing but a few stars. I'm not gonna see anything with all the bright lights around my apartment. I guess I was just being naive lol.

I woke up this morning feeling cold, really really cold. I was all curling in my blanket thinking how it could be this cold in a summer morning. I fell asleep and woke up again at around 8. It was just SO COLD. I decided to get up and see if it would be any warmer in the living room. As soon as I opened the bedroom door, I heard the AC blowing. Good Grief I forgot to turn it off. It was blowing all night and look how much electricity I had wasted! And I was so stupid that I didn't even realized the AC was on the first time I woke up.

I punished myself not to use AC today. It was 102F outside lol.

called AAA today

Since that 'tire incident' last month, I decided to apply for the AAA membership. I was glad that everytime I had a car trouble, it happened either in (or close to) my apartment complex or in the school parking lot. I know I won't always be that lucky.

This afternoon I was gonna drive to the gym, and I found my car wouldn't start. I immediately knew what happened. It all started two days ago. I was driving home from Ralphs and felt there's chewing gum on my shoe. Both my brake and accelerator got that piece. It was around 9:30 so I had to turn the light on to clean it. Then...I forgot to turn it off! I didn't go out the next two nights so I didn't realize it was on the whole time. The battery just went dead.

I tried to call my neighbor J for help but apparently he wasn't home. So I called AAA. Their service was FAST! It was only after about 15 minutes and I was still watching the Sharapova match when the guy came. They must've had repair people on the road all the time so they could come right away.

I have to say I was still lucky this time. At least I was waiting in my apartment, which was way cooler.

Leave

My neighbor got a new doormat. It hurts to finally know his true feelings...

Paycheck

I watched a movie called Paycheck last weekend on TV. Ben Affleck plays a so-called 'reverse engineer' who looks into the latest technologies and finds out how it works. He then invents something that's even better. When the job is done, all memory in this working period is erased. One day his childhood friend and billionaire Jimmy offers him a job he can't resist. It takes 3 years and the pay is a huge. When he gets his paycheck, he learns that he actually gave up all the money (90 million dollars) in exchange of 20 items that seemed worthless. He must use these items to reconstruct his memory, cuz someone is trying to take his life.

A typical John Woo (吳宇森) movie to me. There are several scenes with 2 people pointing guns at each other, and his trade-mark white dove flying in slow motion. Can I just say stupid? That was just so old.

However, something struck me a little bit. In the movie, Rachel (Thurman) asked Michael (Affleck) if he believes in second chances. (He doesn't, but somehow it's what saves his life.) Do I believe in second chances? Have I been given second chances in our life? Should people be given second chances?

Everyone's got his own answer, I think.

Do cucumbers go bad?

I bought two cucumbers the other day. I made shrimp and cucumber salad with one and forgot about the other. Today I went through my stuff in the fridge and saw it, so it was about uh, maybe a week old. However there's some sticky stuff on the surface, which was kinda gross. Well I usually peel and seed the cucumber so it didn't really seem to matter. I just wondered what that sticky stuff was since cucumbers are usually waxed on the surface. Yuck~

late afternoon in the parking lot

Lot 13 at 7 pm. 91 degrees F. Hot.

I must've been really bored.

tire-some

I had my tire repaired this morning.

Monday evening, when I was driving out of the parking lot, a lady yelled out loud, "Your tire is really low." I stopped my car, and told her, "Yes, I noticed. Thank you." Actually I didn't know it was my tire. I only noticed the rattling sound from the side of my car.

I then decided to go to Sears Auto Center to get the tire fixed before it actually went flat (or it would be the 4th time in my life to have a flat tire lol). I drove very slowly; pulled over several times to let other cars pass. It took me about half an hour for this 10-minute drive. When I finally got to Sears, the front girl told me, "We're closing. We only do body parts now. Sorry."

It felt like the sky crushed me. I must have been really devastated. I drove all the way here and now you wanted me to go back? I don't even know if my tire could go through this again. I came up with this idea that maybe I could inflate the tire and hopefully the tire would stay good long enough before I had it fixed. I then drove to the gas station and tried to get the air machine going. I had to call M to make sure how to use the machine correctly. I've seen people use it but to be honest, I wasn't sure I could do it right. Luckily, it worked! My tire just looked like normal! I could finally drive home without worries.

So I went back to Sears this morning, had my tire repaired, and also did the alignment (which I should've done a long time ago). I'm a happy man again!

mad

I know being mad is not healthy. Recently I've been in some gloomy mood. It felt like nothing was done right. I was physically and mentally very tired about what was going on in my life. This morning something came up and it just made me really mad. Surprisingly this madness turned into some kind of energy. I started doing stuff that I listed but never thought I would finish. It feels really good in a way.

So is my anger gone? Maybe.

the moon

taken just outside my apartment

arson?!

I was really surprised this kind of thing would happen on our campus.

Today you could see university staffs and students sending out flyers saying that early this morning, there was an arson event near Life Science 1500 building. The building is right next to where the Commencement is taking place. Just now in the afternoon, the school announced that all the finals this afternoon and this evening were cancelled. Today's Commencement Ceremony was also cancelled.

Stepping out of our building, I could see several police officers sitting around the lawn. They'll probably stay there all night.

The university is taking this very seriously, especially after recent tragedy in Virginia Tech. I wondered who would ever wanna do that? Ruining thousands of people's finals and graduation is gonna do any good to you?

final glance at Toronto

Post Office on Adelaide Street


Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a newly lauched structure in Royal Ontario Museum. The official opening was on June 2. Too bad I didn't catch free admissions on June 2 & 3.


Queen's Park Circle

more random shots

CN Tower, looking from Front Street, on the way to the convention center


inside Union Station


corner of Yonge-Dondas Streets


Yonge-Dundas Square


inside TTC subway train


King Street, on the way back to the hotel; caught in heavy rain

random shots in Toronto

St James' church


King Street


corner of Front & York Street


Ontario Legislature at Queen's Park


the subway

candidate chalk talks

I had a little chat with my professor yesterday. We talked about this recuitment of our new faculty. I asked her about the chalk talk since it's not open to the public. I originally thought it was like a test to see if they could teach. In fact it was something totally different.

Basically only the literally 'chalk talk' part is as what I expected. The candidates were given a dry erase pen and a whiteboard. They were asked questions as if they were in the qualifying exam or thesis defense. They were also asked about their 5-year plans and proposals if there were to be one of our faculty members. I told my professor it was way more scary than I thought.

meeting faculty candidates

Our department is recruiting a new assistant professor. We have 6 candidates this time. Of course we students have no power deciding which candidate is to stay. We are, however, privileged to meet with each candidate at lunch time.

So we have one candidate coming to campus every 3 to 4 days. This candidate talks to (or I should put 'is interviewed by') our faculty members for 30 minutes each. Then we take him to lunch. After lunch, he continues his interview session, and then gives a seminar by the end of the day. There's also a chalk talk the next day, but it's not open to the public.

We have had 5 candidates so far. I was actually pretty struggling whether or not I should go to the lunch meeting. I know it's a great opportunity for me to meet with the candidates, to learn how these postdocs or young researchers think about their own career, since I'm close to getting my degree. The only problem was that I was still a bit too timid to talk to new people, especially faculties, and well, in English. I also knew not a lot of students would be interested, so there would be maybe, 3 or 4 going. Then I would have to speak a lot, I mean, A LOT. Anyway I still went, and now I'm really glad I did.

So far I managed to go meet 4 of them. The only one I didn't go was the one when I had to go to the Canadian Consulate to get my visa. We had one American, one Dutch, two Chinese and one German (of course they had at least their PhD degree or postdoc experiences in the US). The meetings were very casual. You didn't even have to talk science or ask difficult questions. In fact, all our candidates are immunologists or neuroscientists, and I know nothing but the knowledge on the immunology textbook. The conversations were partly about our work and the candidates' work, but most of the time we talked about other stuff like food, Southern California, traveling experiences. One time I even mentioned my recent failure on making desserts.

I was very thrilled by the whole process. The candidates had very distinct but amazing personalities. Most of them were very friendly and outgoing. I was also glad that my fellow students, J and R, went almost every time. They could just easily mingle and talk to people about whatever was brought up. That's the kind of quality I don't have but should really have. I kinda realized if one day I happen to be at the position, how knowledgeable and enthusiastic I should be.

I'm still very far from that point.

Sometimes recipes don't work (on my hand).

making kasutera

I always like to try new recipes, especially dessert recipes. Most of the time the outcome is great, and I am more than happy to share them. However sometimes the taste is just not that impressive. It could be that the recipe itself is bad, change of some ingredients makes it bad, or the person who is cooking it (that's me) is bad.

I tried 2 recipes that turned out to be not so good. One was kasutera (カステラ, a kind of Japanese sponge cake). I got this recipe from a dessert cookbook I recently bought in Tokyo. Basically it's just eggs, sugar, honey and flour, and it's very simple to make. What surprised me a bit was that it called for 100g flour, which to me was too much (we only needed 3 eggs in this recipe). The result was just as what I expected. The taste was good. It has very delicate honey flavor, but the texture was awful. The cake was chewy because of the flour.


berry strata

The other was berry strata from Giada's show, Everyday Italian. She is one of my favorite chefs and her dishes are always big hits on the table. However, this time was not the case. A strata is kinda like a bread pudding. It's also very easy to make. I happened to have most of the ingredients on hand and I really wanted to use the frozen berries that had been in my freezer for a while. The only thing I needed to get was ricotta cheese. So as soon as I saw this episode, I decided to make it. The strata baked beautifully, but it was the ricotta cheese that ruined the flavor (I think). The ricotta cheese didn't really blend in the whole eggy fruity flavor. Instead it tasted a little like some sweet lasagna (ricotta cheese is the major ingredient in lasagna). It's still sitting in my fridge now. I probably won't finish it.

stop sending me junk!

I receive about 10MB of forwarded mails per day, mostly from one source, my former boss. I don't mind if people forward mails to me. I'm happy that I'm not forgotten. I'm a bit concerned this time because it feels like it's the wrong person (a principal investigator, or to be easier, you can call him a professor) doing the wrong thing.

This started a little over 3 months ago. I sent a Christmas card to my former boss like I did every year. I then received an email from him about two weeks after. He wanted to make sure this was the email address I normally used and he would like to send me a manuscript about the experiments we did a few years ago. I replied promptly. The rest is what you see today: an average of 10MB forwarded mails every day! I opened and read each mail in the beginning, hoping that I didn't miss any important information he might leave in the mail. Not long after I got tired. He's not gonna send me the manuscript he claimed he had. Yesterday I checked my mails through Outlook, and I found I had over 200MB unread. I know I should be a bit more appreciative, but this is a bit too much.