Tuesday, January 13, 2026

It's been a few months that we've lived in our owned home, and we're enjoying it! Sometimes it still feels surreal that we actually own our own place in one of the worst housing markets. And with no help at all. In fact, my family was/is a financial burden. And we still managed to save up together. No riches, no financial assistance from anyone, just us. I'm proud of that, and proud to have done it with Onion. I mean, if one wants to be pedantic, then sure. I was raised by my parents and they helped with education expenses and the like as I was growing up. And my grandma and aunt gave us shelter and food for a year as we restarted life in Canada. Yeah, fine. But I mean in general.

Anyway, it's the new year! 2026. I know I said I wanted to keep it consistent blogging, but I did post some 15 year old drafts and along with the whole moving thing really just tired me out. Moving in was less dramatic and simpler than expected. Now that we had a car and owned the place, we could move in anytime in October, since our lease for our rental was ending October 31. We took 2 weeks to pack and drive over the stuff to our new home, doing a little bit everyday, moving the non-essentials first. By the time the official moving day arrived, 90% of the stuff was already in the new place. The same people who helped us move from our previous place at Harrison Garden helped us again, lol. Hew, driving the company van, Chloe my cousin, and Zoltan, her ex. It was really for the big stuff. Mattress, bedframe, couch, and whatever boxes we had remaining. We paid beer and Little Caesars for their help. They completely admired the view we had, which was really nice. We hired a cleaning service recommended by Victoria to do a deep clean of our unit a week before so that we only needed to clean the parts everyone stepped in during the move. Toshi took it a lot better too. When we moved into Harrison Garden, Toshi was scared as hell and slept on Onion's neck during the night. At our new place, she took it a lot better and didn't freak out at all, being more curious than anything. What a big girl! Also, keeping her hidden every time we had a viewing from potential tenants at Harrison Garden was exhausting. 

Not too long after we came back from our Nova Scotia trip, the waifu and I watched Lea Salonga. Just as with Peabo Bryson, the waifu would go through hell to watch this. I've known about Lea Salonga from her roles as the singing voice of Jasmine & Mulan and her roles in Miss Saigon and Les Miserables (all courtesy of Onion, of course). Toronto already has tons of Filipinos. When we went to the venue, I swear, 90% of the audience were Filipinos. We heard Tagalong non-stop while queueing up. We were a little late heading over, so the moment we sat in our seats, the show started seconds later. Lea still had this youthful energy and she sounded amazing. She wasn't quite as intimate with the audience but she made some funny sarcastic quips and told us about some experiences relevant to her songs. When we asked who was a Filipino, pretty much everyone responded. When she asked who was a nurse, also almost everyone responded. It was hilarious for me to see, lol. She gave her apologies to the hospitals and clinics for the night. Like I said, she sang fantastically. All her songs sounded amazing and when it got to the classics like "Reflection"s, "A Whole New World" and a few other covers (like "Let It Go"), I could appreciate it much more. The waifu teared up at the Disney songs (not "Let It Go", lol). It was shorter than expected, even though we had the setlist ahead of time. Overall, a great performance.

We had my church's supply minister, Lee-Ann Ahsltrom, drop by for a house blessing in mid-November. I hadn't publicly revealed that we bought a place yet, so it was kept to just a few individuals who found out in conversation, one who happened to be Lee-Ann. She offered to bless our home and have a simple communion after. I was like, sure. I've never had a Christian house blessing before. Only Buddhist stuff like talismans, incense and that sort of Chinese traditional stuff. We walked through the home, discussing what our purposes and intentions were for each space, and what it meant to us. It was a nice, simple time to really go through what we felt our home was, and she provided nice and simple prayers for each space as we went through them. At the end we offered focaccia bread and some of the leftover wine we brought back from Nova Scotia (Tidal Bay). We ended up giving her all of our focaccia for her husband, who loved focaccia, and didn't step out of the house too much, because of his Parkinson's.

And just a few days after that, I broke our sink's P-trap. Yeah. Great. One month of homeownership and something already broke. Okay, first, the sink was draining slowly. We have a double sink, and if we kept the water running on one basin, the water began to rise on the other sink. As we dry our pots and pans on the other side, this was unacceptable. So, I plunged it. Only to make it worse. Yeah. Now the water was stagnant and wasn't moving at all, like even a drop. We bought a new plunger too. We bought a drain snake and it somehow got tangled and stuck under the sink; wouldn't budge at all. Seeeeeriously. I tried to empty the P-trap, and forgetting that the screws on each end screwed in opposite directions, cracked one of the screws when unscrewing it. Great. I tried to fix it to no avail. We went to Home Depot to see how we might DIY it. After calculating the cost of getting the individual parts and the tools required to cut the pipe into the correct size, we realized it wasn't worth it, as opposed to calling a plumber that Haidan, Onion's colleague, recommended. It made me kinda depressed and upset for a few days. I made things worse in every step and just didn't want to touch things and make them worse anymore. The plumbers who came by had quite a hard time and said it was a very difficult thing to unclog, and so I shouldn't feel bad. As part of sharing a central pipe with the condo, they said it was probably years of buildup from other units adding to it, and not necessarily our fault. Not to mention we just moved in a month ago at the time, not nearly enough time to clog anything.

Late November I watched Ne Obliviscaris and Rivers of Nihil with Psycroptic supporting. I was mainly there for NeO, but I was pleasantly surprised with Psycroptic, and for Rivers of Nihil, I didn't know it when I got the tickets, but I had been listening to Rivers of Nihil for a while, having discovered their self-titled album not too long ago, and even put some on my phone. NeO was doing a full album playthrough of Citadel and Exul, while Rivers of Nihil was doing the same for their self-titled album. What a treat! It was great hearing Rivers of Nihil live. Their first one or two songs didn't come through very clearly, but the sound guy must've done something because after that it was fantastic. The mix of growls and cleans was great, and the saxophone made things sexy too. Definitely glad to hear the album I liked as my first live gig from them. When Ne Obliviscaris came on stage, it was everything I'd hoped for. Hearing Painters of the Tempest (Part II): Triptych Lux live for the first time was a total eargasm. Holy crap. The bass solo, violin solo and guitar solo in the middle has always been my favourite part, and hearing that live could make me cry. I was recording it for memories sake, but I was also like, I want to experience this without any distractions, so I held up my phone but I didn't pay attention to how I was recording it so I could take as much in as I could. Sooooo good. Hearing the whole album as a whole made me remember what I liked about it, and as for Exul, I was a little more mixed on the initial release, but hearing it life gave me a greater appreciation for it. Made me like it more than I initially did. They also played And Plague Flowers the Kaleidoscope as an encore, and instead of telling the crowd to mosh, got the audience to dance salsa with each other during the flamenco-ish intro. Hilarious! Seeing people who had moshed all night suddenly dancing together was great. Also, this was the 2nd time I saw James Dorton as singer, since Xen was on leave the last time. Now that he's replaced him permanently, he's settled in very well and has down the growls perfect justice.

The day after, we met up with Garrett. Yes, our friend who died for 2 minutes. It was... a little awkward. We knew from his family that mentally he was a little slower. When we last saw him in the hospital, he had tubes all over his body and he was still very weak physically. So having conversations was rough in that state. Talking over text when he was discharged was more normal. We arranged to drive down to Etobicoke, where he was staying with his brother, and play board games at a board game cafe, Funny Bones. We started small and just caught up through the night. But conversations were a little difficult to follow sometimes. He interrupted a lot and would say "Yeah, yeah, I know," type of responses when we weren't done talking or about things he clearly had no idea about. At different moments we could see the Garrett we previously knew, and at times, it was as if we were talking to someone we had just met. Overall it was a good catch up, but we knew that he wasn't exactly the same person per se.

In December, I watched Papa Roach, The Used, and I missed Sleep Token as the opening band. I first heard Papa Roach when I heard that WWE's Raw opening music "Across the Nation" was replaced. I thought Across the Nation was iconic as hell, and it has never left my playlist. While I still preferred it over "To Be Loved" by Papa Roach, I did like it as a song by itself. I went down into Limewire space and found a lot of good songs by them that I listened to for decades. So when they announced they were coming to Toronto, it was a no-brainer. I missed opening band Sleep Token because I was late (waifu cooked dinner for me before I was to leave for the gig). I had never heard of anything by Sleep Token, so I didn't think I was missing much. But when I checked out their music on YouTube... man, I think I missed out. The Used proudly proclaimed their emo band status and history and it was energetic. When Papa Roach came, it was pretty much a karaoke for me! I sang along with so many of their songs from memory. What a nostalgic flashback. Fantastic energy, performance and hearing so many people around sing a lot so effortlessly was cool. 

And my next musical show after that was Ramin Karimloo and Hadley Fraser. From the Rehearsal Room, their concert series with Theo Jamieson. Also introduced to me from the waifu. The three men oozed gentlemanly charm throughout the night, along with belting out some really nice songs. In between, they'd share stories, with Ramin sharing about interesting facts we didn't know about Canada. Some were really interesting, while some were just hilarious, lol. One of the more interesting ones was finding out that Walt Disney's dad resided in Ontario. During one of their songs there was a tech problem (one of the mics stopped working), Ramin, with quick thinking, slid to Hadley's mic to continue singing, sharing their mics for the remainder of the song. Smooth! Overall, a great performance by all of them.

Onion and I also bought a new Christmas tree, since we moved in to a bigger space. Previously we had a tiny Dollarama Christmas tree which suited us very well for the season. We bought one with pre-installed lights, and had to buy decor that would fit the size of the new tree. The waifu wanted a gingerbread themed colour, so we did that. Toshi has been hiding under the tree, using it as a new hiding spot and occasionally hits the bulbs. When we bought a tree skirt, she managed to find her way inside, basically making it a fort. Lmao.