Tuesday, September 21, 2021
So I've been taking plenty of driving lessons since July. The waifu and I signed up for All Star Driving School and I ended up with David as my instructor for the 10 hour practicals, after the 30 hours of dreadfully boring (but important) theory lessons. With David, we got through mostly 2 hour lessons per week on the weekends, with me first going through the residential areas before going onto the main roads, doing turns, and later parking. David's confident I'll pass, after his guidance and my skills. It's been challenging to relearn and drive in Toronto, after 12 years of driving in Malaysia. In Malaysia, I was a good driver, never having got into an accident except for when a car kissed us from behind while I was waiting at a traffic light. I sped, sure, but I was careful and everyone always trusted my driving. Over here, I need to be aware of pedestrians way more since sidewalks are a thing here, when they're almost non-existent in so many areas of KL. People obey stop signs here, but in Malaysia, even though they technically exist, I've never met anyone who obeyed them on the road. Not once. Readjusting to local driving rules is tough.
Onion and I also went to the Beyond Monet exhibition downtown. She was interested to go and we got tickets, reading up on Monet's history and life and techniques before we went. Overall, very beautiful!
The first room was a bunch of banners showing upclose sections of his paintings, with several quotes attributed to him, as well as some of his life story and motivations, in English and French. Several small wooden bridges were there too, representing his Japanese garden he had later in his life.
The second room was basically a hallway with shimmering reflective paper streamers making a very nice effect with slowly changing light colours.
The third place was the highlight of the exhibition, with a 360° exhibit surrounding us all. It was animated very nicely, with the transitions and movements of the paintings taking an almost life-like quality. It showed his paintings, his quotes, his critics and displayed them in dazzling glory all around us. Everyone was spaced out in the circles, sitting and watching the roughly 40 minute video. There was a gazebo in the middle too. Definitely a nice experience. We went to eat at Loose Moose afterwards, having some pretty nice food.
Oh, also, we bought a nightstand a few months ago, to store things in our bedroom, and also a convenient place to put phones and whatever else we need. Toshi has ended up taking over it and uses it as her night time bed! It's SO CUTE. Like seriously, when we get ready for bed, she'll actually get off from wherever she is and join us in "bed", the nightstand. Then she'll curl up and sleep peacefully throughout the night, until the morning when she'll step on my chest and demand pets. It's crazy adorable and sometimes the waifu and I will just turn to Toshi and look lovingly as she's drifting to bed; watching the adorable girl doze off.
Chronicled
5:36 PM
Sunday, September 12, 2021
So at work, Elizabeth has officially left, and on her last day she bought us donuts from Tim Horton's. Wishing her all the best in her endeavours! Some of the colleagues, Angel, Charmagne, Vivian, Tracy and Hew came along and celebrated her farewell at Ye Skewers, a skewer hotpot restaurant, very reminiscent of Malaysia's loklok. Good time catching up and just chilling and chatting. Kris, one of the warehouse workers has also left to work in a film-related industry. Another colleague, Mae was let go from work. Good riddance, honestly. We thought she was fine but she was constantly clueless at work, with no idea how to do anything despite everyone guiding her effectively. She kept approaching me asking to calculate conversions like inches to centimetres, or pounds to kilograms. As if she couldn't do it on her own. And she would approach me to check item numbers and all even when they were on the catalogue list. I mean, seriously, why couldn't she look them up herself? She was very annoying, constantly interrupting my work. And you know how when you've been taken away from your current work task, it takes you a few minutes to get back into that flow and do your work again? I could barely get back into work without another interruption. I understand when people need help here and there, and I'm constantly consulted by all my colleagues for information here and there. But she took it to the next level. I found out later she was barely doing anything at all without asking others, which meant they were effectively doing 90% of her work overall. After a warning meeting with all the factors she needed to change and improve, upon her time to resign, she bitched about the colleagues, telling our boss that when she wasn't in the office, we were chatting all day long and not doing work. I don't deny we chat a little more without the bosses there, but definitely not to the point it's detrimental to our work produced. And that kind of snitching is just so low. A lot of people were relieved when she was gone.
Church is planning for a hybrid service next month, a partial reopening. We've been productive in the search committee meetings producing our documents and looking through candidates, but it's a weird position, as I've never been the "employer". I always need to check myself to see if I'm being picky and overly critical or if I'm too lax in certain areas. Oh, last month I was walking out of church after the online streaming and an old Chinese lady spoke to me in Mandarin. I had a hard time understanding her as she had a heavy China-accent. But eventually I got to understand that she was lost and wanted to call her doctor. I ended up calling the daughter, telling her that her mother was lost and where to find us. In the meantime I had to make basic conversation with the old lady in Mandarin as we were waiting for the daughter to drive over. That was a hilarious and awkward 20 minutes. Anyway, the daughter finally arrived and I was profusely thanked.
Anyway, I missed out blogging last month 'cause I was just really occupied most days and didn't really have time to just chill and blog. Summer's hot as hell and things have mostly reopened with limits. The current COVID numbers are slowly increasing with schools reopening too. I'm somewhat cautiously optimistic that with the kids getting vaccinated that the 4th wave won't be as bad. Hopefully. But the anti-vaxxers do piss me off 'cause they want the pandemic to end (as we all do) but they're the reason it doesn't. And they make it worse in fact. In the iBridge WhatsApp chat group I'm in, everyone's free to bring up random stuff and conversations. Some people have brought up stupid things that I constantly correct and inform. One such incident was involving Samuel, who posted about being vaccinated unwillingly because his work required it and making a topic out of it. He said he supported the freedom to choose and Anna agreed. I shot back about the the right to freedom and personal choice ending when it affected other individuals, giving the standard seatbelt example when driving. Pretty disappointing as they seemed like cool and sensible people in general. Jassica, one of the first friends I made in Malaysia when I moved there has also gone somewhat off the deep end. She survived her leukemia, stopping her chemotherapy and doing some kind of alternative medicine thing involving some sort of guru in India or somewhere. That experience led her to have this worldview and understanding of the Universe similar to "The Secret", where asking and proclaiming the things you want will get you if you follow a certain method, which she'll teach you for several hundred dollars in personal coaching. She brought up the fact that we shouldn't fear death and just deal with COVID; she suggested that we needed to get herd immunity naturally during the early stages of the pandemic. Yeah... the flu wiped out millions of the natives in North America. Millions died to a lot of diseases before they became endemic. I don't think they know what that cost is truly like, in human lives just because they're all young and healthy. It's so frustrating. Like I said before, I've lost a lot of respect for people during these COVID times.
With the waifu, we dropped by my aunt and grandma's twice to help out with heavy yard work. My aunt left the backyard untended since COVID started, so there were a ton of weeds and growth. We cleared off a ton of unwanted plant life and mowed the lawn, as well as moving crazy heavy patio slabs and applying mulch to certain areas. Crazy exhausting, seriously. We were treated meals every round though, which was nice.
Also with Onion, we started to catch up on board games again since we slacked on playing them for a while. Apart from the last few times with Chloe and Zoltan (who have now peacefully broken up) and Victoria and Chris, we hadn't played in ages. We went to Snakes and Lattes and played Wingspan, Galaxy Trucker (probably more accurate as Chaotic Warrior), Twilight Struggle and some smaller games like Hey That's My Fish and Magic Labyrinth as start games to warm us up. We also played a few rounds of Magic: The Gathering with my old, classic black deck, and her newly bought Challenger deck called Flash of Ferocity. I also bought another Challenger deck to try beating her, getting Dimir Rogues. It's the first bunch of Magic cards I've bought in almost 20 years. Lots of new mechanics I wasn't aware of, but it's a really powerful deck and I beat Onion with it, much to her chagrin, lol. However before that she was on a constant winning streak, winning something like 12 of the games we played. Thanks to my rogues, lmao.
Also on gaming, I've finished Pokemon Black Version and Odin Sphere. On my commute to work, I've shifted between playing games, reading or watching YouTube videos, depending on my mood. Pokemon Black was the game I was playing with these past few months on my commute on my phone. I haven't played Pokemon since Gen 2 came out. But I thought why not, see how much Pokemon has changed. And even then I played a game 10 years old. I finished it, and thought it was quite a decent entry, heavy on the lore. And since the last Pokemon game I played (besides Pokemon GO) was Gen 2, the last time i remembered it, it was all 2D with Gameboy-era sprites and colours. I was blown away with how nice they made Black look, with the 3D graphics of the DS and the very beautifully designed world of Unova. The individual sprites for all the Pokemon was a nice touch, and since I could only access the Unova region's Pokemon before post-game content, it was a nice touch experiencing the Gen 5 Pokemon fresh, without knowing what types a lot of them were, as well as the various new mechanics. I've also just finished Odin Sphere a few days ago. Fantastic story and gameplay. The combat is smooth and responsive, and I liked the quick actions and moves I could take to wipe out dozens of characters on the screen. I didn't get the perfect true ending because I interpreted the prophecy correctly and played all the ending characters with the battles they were supposed to be in on my first try. Apparently you need to get all the bad endings first before attempting the true ending, which I didn't bother with and just watched on YouTube. The waifu recommended this game and said it was a really good story, and that I'd enjoy the quality of life improvements in the remaster. Oh yeah, definitely. Like I said, combat was amazing and smooth, and it was an all-round great game with a lot of character development, with interesting ways to interweave all the main characters stories together.
I think I'll end here and blog later in the month, to make up for my missing post last month. I think last time I would've been happy to add way more in my post to make it really long, but considering my irregularity of blogging now, eh.
Chronicled
10:15 PM