Then last month the waifu and I were walking along Yonge St, and walked into Hyperink near Finch because they offered some cheap deal for simpler tattoos. I walked in, inquired and also asked about the fallen angel tattoo. The manager brought in a guy called Heng Li who was very keen and on the spot, made some quick alternations on his tablet to get a rough idea. We exchanged details and I followed his Instagram profile to see his portfolio and also keep in contact, and said while I was pretty occupied, I'd follow up when I was ready. He said he wasn't allowed to quote prices because he always quoted low prices, and his manager was upset with that. She said about $700-800 was fair, and I was okay. After a few days of discussing with the waifu, who was supportive, I reached out to Heng, only to find out he had left the studio and was working privately. He also offered me a lower price of $580, which for the size and detail, was great. I agreed and went back and forth on the hair details. He suggested red or white, when I initially thought of black. He sent a few samples and we adjusted the hairstyle, with me ending up sending several references to Poison Ivy and Black Widow to him, lol. 

On May 3rd, we reconfirmed in the morning for 12pm. Got to a townhouse basically, that he and 2 other tattoo artists were renting as studio space. He had prepared two sizes to see which would fit, but would charge the same regardless. After checking both, and looking at my arm, he thought to reposition "Selenia" slightly further up, as my upper arm was fairer, and thought that her face and hair on the fairer part would help it be more vibrant and clear. That mean the wings would extend past up my shoulder and for one of the wings, near my collarbone. He resized it to be a bit larger and printed the stencil, cut off the wings from it and stuck the main figure on me. I took off my shirt and off he started! For one thing, the pain was definitely not as bad as my calf that Justin did. I also learned that in the last 10 years tattoo gun tech has improved and he used some kind of newer tattoo gun that used to cost thousands back then. It hurt a lot less, but he said it could handle finer lines too. The general rule of thumb back in the day was that the outline would hurt the most while filling in the details would hurt less. This time though, the outlines didn't hurt much, but the shading did. Going over and over the same section of skin to fill it with ink was painful for my skin. We mostly sat in silence, occasionally talking while I was reading random stuff on my phone. Every hour or so we'd take a break and have more chats, while the waifu sat aside playing Tears of the Kingdom. About halfway through he said he'd take a longer break to get some water for us and to get himself a meal. My arm was feeling sore at this point and a break was welcome. He came back about an hour later, having needed to charge his Tesla. We got back into it and once the main figure was done, it looked great. He free-handed he stencil for the wings, and made them larger and one side follow the shape of my arm, which looked really cool, so we were good with it. He proceeded to fill it in nicely and easily. Surprisingly to everyone, the collarbone didn't hurt much, even though we all expected it to hurt more. I barely felt a thing (ignoring the usual tattooing pain). He finished close to 11pm. We chatted a bit, I admired my tattoo in the mirror a lot and he gave some tattoo aftercare advice, along with applying the second skin, something new I'd not had for previous tattoos. Everyone I had in the past was clingfilm. I'm due for a free touchup from him in 2 months, to see if there are sections that need improvements or some colour saturation and the like. 

Freshly done! Very happy with how it turned out.

Since then my arm has been sore but recovering nicely. I've tried to not move my arm as much, and my God, the itching. I forgot how itchy the scabbing and recovery process was. Ugh! Sometimes it just made me feel like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I remember Justin saying that slapping helped, but it didn't help much for me. I've been scratching as close as possible to the tattoo, which sometimes feels worse 'cause I'm almost getting the relief but it's not quite there!

On my birthday itself, I officially turned 37, lol. I was getting the usual midnight wishes from my friends the night before, and we woke up early for the clinic. Fielded messages throughout the day before I got home and chilled with the waifu while discussing her workplace issues. Had a simple meal at Best Hakka around 9pm, around the time the waifu wished me happy birthday. 

The weekend after though, from May 9-11th was hectic and hilarious. We had to wake up at 6am+ to do our procedure. Waifu doesn't want to elaborate on a public platform, so I'm just leaving it here. We only finished at close to 1pm. We grabbed a quick lunch before heading home to prepare the home for Victoria, since we were having a board gaming session at our place. We ended up playing mostly simple games because we were exhausted from the morning, and Victoria understood. Still had a good time chilling at our place and chatting about life in between the games. We had to put Toshi in the bedroom because Victoria's allergic to cats and we didn't want to be blamed for murder, lol.

The next day we drove all the way to Acton, near Guelph, for my birthday present. Hawkeye Bird/Animal Control & Falconry Experience. Yeap, we were doing falconry! It was one of the coolest experiences I've had. Onion wanted to do a unique experience for my birthday and it was a good one. I really enjoyed it. After reaching our guide, Brittany, showed us the birds and facility, along with 2 other guests, Blessan and Josef. We were first introduced to a massive golden eagle, and then several other birds of prey, such as a Harris's hawk, red tailed hawk, peregrine falcon amongst many others. My first time seeing a golden eagle in person, and we were told she was small, even though she was an absolute unit. Also, peregrines, being one of my favourite birds of prey looked super awesome in real life. Afterwards we sat in a shed, and she brought 3 birds upclose for us to take a look. Simone, the Harris's hawk we would fly later, Jack Daniels, a very talkative peregrine falcon, and a great horned owl that looked sleepy, lol. Throughout we were chatting and getting to know Blessan and Josef, and I put my bird knowledge to use, actively asking questions and bringing up what I knew to the guide (DDT affecting the eggshells, pellets, identifying the birds she brought in). Then we finally got the to exciting part. The actual falconry. We each put on the falconer gloves, made of thick leather. Somehow, I ended up being pushed as the first to try it out. After setting a loud, constantly beeping GPS on Simone, Brittany unleashed her and launched her to a perch. Basically the gist was she would put some quail meat on our glove, and Simone would fly over and land in our hand and eat it. Epically awesome to see a hawk fly all the way to me and I could see her eat upclose while admiring the plumage. Absolutely beautiful. I was told to do the launch motion, and Simone instead flew off to a nearby tree branch, more interested in some songbirds that flew too close. Despite calling her and quite a few whistles, it took a while, lol. Then she flew down... to the grassy floor. LMAO. We were told that Simone liked picking worms off the floor, and was probably eyeing some grub she spotted. Took a while before she flew to my arm again, where I launched her and she landed on a perch. Once the third quail was on my hand, I launched her again. Then each of us took turns to do the same. I could tell everyone really liked the experience. Thanks my love. We were given a tour of the remainder of the facility, seeing more owls on the other side. As we were getting into the car, Blessan asked to exchange Instagram accounts to keep in touch, which was nice. As I drove off, Onion was like "How the hell do you know so much about birds?!"

I drove us to Guelph, where we proceeded to have a very nice birthday lunch at Miijida. I enjoyed it very much my love, thank you for the whole day.

The following Monday, Charm was getting a haircut and wanted to hang out with the waifu, and I was invited to tag along. We knew there was a trail behind our home that would lead to the Shops at Don Mills, but had never taken that before. So we just took a stroll, the whole way, lol, learning about this new trail and route while chatting the whole way. We walked all the way the Shops before getting a light snack at the Danish Pastry House and continued walking all the way to her home. We ended up chatting more there, and her husband Raouf joined us after he was done gaming. Ended up talking about anime and bad colleagues, ha! He drove us back to our home since we stayed till like 2am.

The next day we played tennis with Victoria and her new boyfriend, Jason. Victoria's talked about tennis all the time, being obsessed and playing the sport for over 20 years. It made Onion want to try, and after our board game session with Victoria recently, we showed her our condo tennis court. She asked on Friday if we could book a slot to play the next day and we did! Lmao. Onion and I had no clue on proper techniques. Ended up each couple played on each court. Victoria and Jason played a proper match while Onion and I just pathetically tried to hit the ball to each other with mostly badminton techniques. After 2 hours we went up to our place to show Jason the unit since Victoria had a tour previously. We played simple board games like Spot and Here to Slay before they went off.

Also managed to catch Bloodywood in Toronto! I had read about their visa issues in the previous show they were headlining with Babymetal, so it was nice to finally catch them. They were phenomenal. I only discovered them because of a random Reddit comment mentioning Dana Dan by Bloodywood. The name was hilarious and I was intrigued so I checked it out and was impressed enough that when they announced the Toronto show I got the tickets. Energetic, very powerful and tight, and they sounded amazing live. There were also a ton of Indians in the show, which is something I've never seen in a metal gig before here, haha.

In mid May my eldest aunt on my dad's side, who I refer to as Gu Mah, along with her husband Uncle Henry were visiting Canada from Australia. They last time about 2-3 years ago and we had a meal at my Uncle Thomas' home. This time it was a barbecue at my grandma's place. Caught up with them and it eventually split with the elders sitting inside and the young'uns sitting outside in the tent we erected. Found out that all the groups were all talking about the same topic later on... LOL, yeah, you know what it is.

Gu Mah and Uncle Henry heard from my dad that we bought a home and my aunt Elkie was like, "What?! And you didn't think to tell me?" Which to be fair, we found it hard to bring it up because there was no good time to say "Hey we bought a place" in any of the last few family gatherings. Gu Mah and Uncle Henry wanted to take a look at our place so we arranged to meet up the week after and give them a tour of our place. There was a huge, heavy thunderstorm on the day we picked them up, lol, great. I drove carefully back to our place and we gave them a short tour of our place, and discussing stuff like the facilities and condition and all. They were very happy for us, as youth that managed to get our own space, especially when compared to Australia, whose housing crisis is still ridiculous. We sat and chatted for a while, similar to our previous conversation a few years back in our rental place, about all sorts of things from Uncle Henry's former job with the government, AI, how their kids (my cousins), Kye and Mei Lien were doing as well as what's been up in Canada. Towards the time we were supposed to drop them back, aunt Elkie called and said that they had a blackout because of the weather, and to take them out for dinner. So we went to an old favourite of ours, Olde York Fish & Chips. They were impressed with the flavour, and when the bill arrived, we each tried to live up to stereotypes by paying, lmao. Uncle Henry ended up insisting and paying the bill, saying we had a mortgage to pay and not to worry about it. We thanked them and drove them back.

The next day at church, I finally showed off my new tattoo to Brooke Holdsworth! Lmao, yeah. I had spoken with Paula and Brooke after church a few weeks prior to getting my tattoo. I noticed that Brooke had gotten a new tattoo on her hand during worship, and asked her about it. She was very enthusiastic in sharing the meaning. She basically had stars in between the fingers where Michael's fingers would be, as well as an indigenous feather and some other elements to represent their culture. Overall, very cool, and I shared about the tattoo I wanted to get. They were pretty hyped for me and asked me to share it the moment I got it. So the week after, I got to show off.

Towards the end of May I attended Doors Open Toronto with Onion. Due to my Gu Mah and Uncle Henry visiting and the house tour, we could only attend one day and we had to modify our original plans. We ended up primarily just doing the rowing at the Argonaut Rowing Club, where they let us use the rowing machines, showed us a tour of the building and let us sit in the actual rowboat to try rowing (stationary) on the water. Interesting to find out that this was the birthplace of the Toronto Argonauts in the CFL, hence the shared name. We tried to get to the RC Harris Water Treatment Plant but didn't have enough time, as parking was impossible to find.

Now the weather's hot as well and we've turned on the AC, jacking up our hydro bills a bit.

Oh, we also ended up getting a coach to learn how to play tennis, lol. I'll elaborate on that soon.

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