Maggie 的个人资料Muggetspace照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
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10月10日 Happy ThanksgivingDid part of the Niagara Wine Route on Saturday. Photos can be found here.
Now that I've started using Flickr for photos, there really isn't a whole lot of reason for me to post anything here. All other text update's put into my other blog.. So what am I doing to do with this?? 8月27日 A Street Festival in Waterloo?So Rachelle and I went to the 17th Annual Waterloo Busker Carnival on Friday night. I can't believe it's been happening for the last 17th years, cause this is the first time I've heard of it. Not once in the five year I was at UW did I learn that there is an annual street festival in Uptown Waterloo. But then I didn't know about the park across the street. It wasn't bad. I might even say that the performances were better than the ones I saw at the Toronto Street Festival a couple weeks ago (with the giant giraffes). I think the difference is that I had better views of the performances this time, and these guys actually try hard cause they have to earn their pay from the audiences afterwards, the City of Waterloo pays them nothing. And they get paid well! They pretty much demand $5 from people, lowest they will accept is like a loonie. If you have small change, don't even bother. I guess it's one way of making sure people aren't cheap...
Saw three shows. (1. Brent Matthews) was with a guy who combines skateboard tricks with jugglling. (2. Alakazam) was a contortionist who squeezed himself through a squash racket. (3. Les Walkyries) were scantily dressed three French ladies playing with fire.
I like #2 the best, he was a good entertainer, and definately not for a younger audience. #3 was a lot more photogenic though. Yah fire!
Who says there's nothing to do in Waterloo?? 8月7日 First Weekend in WaterlooYup, after over two months in Waterloo, I finally managed to stay here the *entire* weekend. It's such a large feat. Not like I had no reason to go back, with the Danforth Festival and all, but I just couldn't be bothered to take the train home. So what did I do instead? Visited Laurel Creek Conservation Area, and paid another $4 per person entry fee. Yup, it's part of the same group of conservations areas as Elora Gorge that I went to last weekend, but there's just so much less to see. It's at Westmount and Northfield. I can *walk* there from my apartment.
There's camping, canoe rentals, even a small beach. Yes folks, there's actually a "beach" in Waterloo. Unfortunately, the bacterial level in the lake was too high for swimming. Yummy! Lots of geese, saw a pair of mutated birds (like in Central Island), and a hilarious limping Canada Goose. I think I'll be interested to go back once in the fall to check out the fall colours, and once in winter for cross-country skiing. As for summer, I guess I could have rented a canoe for $10 an hour. The water is pretty clear and calm looking, but I was deterred by the bacteria level.
Oh, and there's a trailer park to the north of there called Green Arces. It's a gated community. How fancy.
Speaking of which, you can get a seasons pass to camp at this place for around $1000 for Apr until Oct. I think some people live there for the whole season. There were a row of "waterfront" campsites, which were all occupied by people with permits dated till Oct 15th. This one site even planted flowers around the campground permit post as if it's their address post! I mean, they either live there all the time, or they leave all their tents and stuff there and go there for random weekends like a cottage. Such selfish people, hogging the nicest campsites for the entire season... 7月31日 Centre IslandWent back to Centre Island for the first time in 2 or 3 years. Realized that there are still areas I have yet to explore. We rented bikes this time, a quad bike and a tandam bike. The quad one was a lot of work, no matter how hard you pedal, you can only go so fast. The tandam bike rides like a normal bike, once you have enough forward momentum that is. Otherwise, the fishtailing is sort of scary. We basically rented the bikes for two hours and toured the entire island. I'm tired.
They have a disc golf course there now. I don't know how long it's been there, but it seems like fun. Of course, judging by our attempt at an ultimate game today, we'll be a danger to innocent pedestrians. And man, are we getting old. Run back and forth a few times and everyone's out of breath. Or maybe we are just out of shape..
All in all, it was a pretty fun day. 7月10日 Toronto Street FestivalI'm starting to feel like such a Toronto tourist or something. Did the whole wandering around Downtown last Friday for Canada Day. Come this Saturday, and I find myself wandering around Downtown again, this tiime for the opening weekend of the Toronto Street Festival. Had another family dinner first (was going to try this "stone rice" thing in North York, but then my dad backed out cause he think it will be too hot, so ended up at a local Japanese place, again).
Caught the later shows at the Dundas site, some circus acts that had too many tall people standing in the front. Somehow managed to squeeze close enough and saw a decent fire act. Didn't take any photos of that though. The Les Girafes Urban Operetta act followed. Besides the coolness factor of the giant red girafes, the whole performance made no sense to me. The French are just weird.
 That ended around 9:30, and since we all got Day Passes, we hopped on the Ex Streetcar to see the Festival of Fire finale. Smarter than last Friday by taking the streetcar instead of walking at least. Also found a pretty decent place to watch it. It was close to one of the Ontario Place parking, and was as close as you can get to the place on the east side. I think it's going to become my "secret" fireworks watching place from now on. It was quite secluded. Only had my mini-tripod and my SD200 on me today though, so the fireworks photos are pretty sub-standard. For a finale, the fireworks display was a bit weak though. At least we heard music this time, being so close to the Molson Amphitheatre.
I guess summer in Toronto is pretty interesting after all.. 7月2日 Happy Kennedy Day!..Canada Day, that is; I have a friend that kept typing "Kennedy" instead of "Canada". Anyways, I was pretty much set on spending the long weekend in Waterloo, (since my parents went off to Quebec for the weekend), unless there were people willing to do something somewhere. I would have expected most people to have plans, but I can always count on gathering some Graydon people at the last minute. Today's gathering was one of the poorly planned and spontaneous yet!
We started off the day at the Design Exchange in the TD Centre, which was surprisingly small. I went hoping to see some funky furniture, but only saw Finnish jewellary. Then some debate over where to go next. Went off to explore Queen's Quay area, and found some buildings and exhibits I've never known to exist before. Sat on a rock for a bit, and debated over what to do next. Went to dinner at Marche at BCE Place, now called Richtree Market. Mmm waffles and mushrooms! Debated over what to do next. Rushed back down to lakeshore to watch fireworks. Ended up on the pier at Queen's Quay and Spadina. Debated what to do next. Went to Matt's house. Went home. End.
It's great how I can never make decisions..
I like giving alternatives and outlining the implications of each choice. Doesn't have to actually choose anything at the end. Sort of like those people with the brain damage we talked about in cogsci....uh oh...Took my scooter downtown today as well. It really is a great idea. Faster than walking, and you can bring it practically anywhere, indoors and out. At least, it was good on my legs at first, but near the end of the night, my right leg started cramping. And now they are tired.
Hmm, need to get my x-rays done tomorrow before noon. I hope I can wake up! Today's my first splint-free day, my wrist is cranky now... 6月29日 Pride WeekendSo the Pride Parade was this weekend in downtown. I've never been before, my parents went like two years ago, and since my uncle and aunt from Hong Kong were in town, we decided to take the whole family downtown to join the crowds, including Grandma. I can't say it was exactly a family event though. My mom told me that Canadians tend to be a bit more conservative in their gay parades than people in San Fran, but it seemed like that's not really the case. For the most part, the majority of the groups were boring. You have random people from random companies, where most of the partipants aren't even members of the pride community. Then you have your standard cross-dressers, some very pretty, some very not. Another group of biker types wearing very revealing leather strips and collars. Then came the really disturbing groups, such as "Totally Naked in Toronto" and some trans liberty groups...
If it's really all in good and legal fun, why do I think that uploading my pictures from the event would get my account deleted? Hehe, so going to just share the G-rated stuff.
They also didn't seem to give out as much free stuff this year. My dad did manage to score an umbrella from Ikea, and I nearly got beaned in the face with a bottle of bubbles from Air Canada cause they were just tossing them out to the crowd. Got sprayed with water a lot. Oh, and besides the usual condoms, they were also giving out little packets of lubricant like packages of ketchup. Didn't understand the significant of that until Michael mentioned that it is a gay parade afterall. Ah, right.....
So apparently lesbians have coined the term "dyke" for themselves. Man, that's still a vulgar nickname.. 12月13日 Snow in CaliforniaSo back from a weekend of snowboarding at Lake Tahoe. We drove up Friday night, and went to Heavenly on Saturday and Squaw Valley on Sunday. Heavenly had better views, superior and cheaper rentals, and better snow conditions. Squaw was a bit of a ripoff, but the slopes are better, if not for the ice patches. Skiing on the West coast is always so warm!! I've officially been spoiled! I am displeased with the crappy step-in board rentals now, and prefer the performance stuff. Probably means it's the right time to upgrade my equipment. Heavenly was interesting in that it's on the border of California and Nevada, which divided the slopes in half. And of course, once we crossed into the Nevada side, there's plenty of casinos to go around. Didn't get to visit Reno though, one of the last few places in the area I haven't been to.. Nobody gambled though, out of eleven people, only Yuan and Stephen actually played. Everyone else just back to the hotel room. Lake Tahoe was smaller than I thought, but it really is a beautful lake. The water is amazingly clear, and it's surrounded by snow-covered mountains. Didn't get much of a chance to drive around it though. Other highlights:
12月3日 Random Thoughts of the DayI think Matt has fully adopted Spaces as his new blogging tool. Too bad everyone on our contact list refused to upgrade to Messenger 7.0 Beta to see the notifications. The final versions of Spaces and Messenger won't be out until early next year. Hey..that's in less than a month!! I hate how time flies! No plans for this weekend, surprise surprise. Good thing too. I'm tried, and just want to veg. Too bad I have to update my resume, study for my psych exam and prepare for my MS interviews.. Finally consolidated the photos from last weekend. Six days, two cameras = 2+ GB = 2000+ photos. Online shopping is *evil*! I just ordered another 90 odd photos from SnapFish to take advantage of free print offers. Finally got around to ordering a hard drive enclosure to make my own external hard drive, and ordered my brother the Japanese artbook he was searching for since the last time I was in Seattle. I doubled my Amex credit today just by clicking on a link. That's just too easy. |
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