Archive for October, 2009

Pasta sauce and Halloween

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A smattering of ingredients for tonight’s pasta sauce

Had whole wheat crepes this morning. They were better than normal. I put two eggs in instead of one and a higher milk to flour ratio than normal. I’ll do that from now on. Even when making thick crepes, they’re softer and nicer than they were before. The one drawback of whole wheat flour is that it’s lumpier than white. A little stirring is all that’s needed.

It’s Halloween tonight; the plan is to head out somewhere along Broadway.

Annie’s Birthday

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Annie, Dad, Christopher, Marget, and Glen at Simpaticos

Today was my last day as a Phi Delt, I decided the fraternity was consuming too much of my time and could be a risky thing to be a part of when my academics are so important this year. I had a good talk with Azim, the president, who spoke of all the good aspects of fraternity life.

Annie’s birthday dinner was at Simpaticos on 4th Ave. I had the Teary Eye pizza, which was pretty decent, nothing exceptional though. It was nice to see the family.

Watching a movie in Spanish tonight and hopefully doing the Grind tomorrow.

Micro exam and last minute sushi dinner

Kitsilano Sushi

Tuna & Salmon Combo at Kitsaya Sushi

Had quite an interesting sleep last night, fell asleep on the couch for a few hours, woke up for a bit, went to bed, woke up around 5, snoozed till 6, studied till 8, headed to UBC and wrote the midterm. I’m quite relieved that I’ve finished up with my midterms.

Came home, slept for a bit, watched it rain outside. Decided around 7pm as a spur of the moment decision to head to Kitsaya Sushi with Katie (We bussed from 14th to 10th, then it was 5 blocks to Balaclava of which we bussed 1). Dinner was cheap and pretty decent. It was the first time I had actual sushi there as opposed to just the 18 piece yam/california/tuna roll combo. I think I’d do it again, though the value of 18 pieces plus miso soup for $5.95 is very impressive. I suppose it’s why Kitsaya’s always full of customers while the others aren’t.

October 28

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Tennis courts close to home. Reminds me of the tennis problem

I forgot to add yesterday that my best purchase of the day was 5lb of apples and 5 avocados for a total of $4.23, a deal indeed!

A few days to Halloween and I’ve got to think of a costume still. The plan is to find a suitable costume while minimizing effort. I wonder if the lagrangian can be computed with leisure as a good and labour as a bad (as opposed to traditionally observing labour as neutral).

John, my landlord, and I swapped magazines today – an issue of the Economist for a National Geographic. It was pretty cool flipping through the National Geographic, there’s some great photography in there!

Time to study a bit more and then get some rest

A chilly, sunny, autumn’s day

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Taken at north end of Main Mall

It was Siegel’s day today, but they didn’t have everything bagels! I was distraught. I ended up settling for half poppy and half sesame seed. There was also one rosemary and rocksalt which was quite delicious. I have yet to try the other flavours.

Will be studying late tonight. Don’t want to not know what I’m doing for my micro exam!

Snow-capped mountains and sun breaking through the rain

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The North Shore mountains as seen from UBC

It was a miserable looking morning, but through my morning class, the clouds lifted to reveal quite a sight. I spent the first few minutes of my between class break walking up main mall to the rose garden and looking out across the water.

Phi Delt formal last night and studying today

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The remnants of onions that didn’t quite turn out

The Phi Delta Theta formal was at the Raincity Grill on Denman at Davie. We booked quite a few long tables there and took up most of the space. I had a good evening. Alexandra was down from Poughkeepsie for a midterm break so I had the chance to catch up with her. For dinner I had a ceaser salad to start – with very good croutons I might add, then lamb which was delicious and very tender, and we all finished with some sort of pudding dressed with a berry merangue sauce. Quite the meal!

Today was primarily spent studying for my microeconomics midterm. It’s worth 50% of my mark, so it’s a big deal! I also tried transferring Katie’s music to the media center, but half the files wouldn’t transfer because of bad filename structure. The media center wouldn’t accept any file/folder names with commas, or accents, etc above vowels. 2000 songs or so failed transferring because of that.

I tried to do coconut rice for dinner, but it didn’t work out at all. I used coconut milk instead of water in the rice cooker. The rice ended up being overly hard (not completely cooked), so I had to add water and continue cooking untill soft. It was also way too coconutty. I think next time I’ll take Adam’s advice and soak the rice in coconut milk, and then steam it normally with water. I also did carmelized onions and potato chips. I wanted to try making the carmelized onions crispy, so I put them in the oven after carmelizing them on the stove. They all burnt and completely stuck to the plate, resulting in what can be seen in the picture above. The potatos were okay, but not great. They didn’t stick to the pan as I used parchment paper this time. They tasted too potatoey in the end. I think next time I’ll soak them in salt water instead of sprinkling salt over top. They’d also be better with some sort of seasoning other than salt. All in all, it was a good learning experience

Microeconomics study session at GFC

General atmosphere

Adam studying after cinnamon buns in Grounds for Coffee

Went to Grounds for Coffee this morning to indulge in cinnamon buns and get some studying done with Adam and Jenny. We were somewhat productive with some good back and forth between Adam and I. I’m realizing that more math courses would give me a big advantage if I want to pursue economic theory. Perhaps over the summer, but I can’t say that sounds particularly appealing.

Tonight is the fraternity semi-formal. I don’t think I’ll bring my camera, but I’m still deliberating over it. It’s at the Raincity Grill downtown. I expect it’ll be a good time. Will post tomorrow or add to this post tonight. I haven’t yet decided whether it’s a good idea to add to the day’s post throughout the day. On the one hand it keeps it very up to date, on the other, there’s no seperate post for the new information and no easy way for the user to notice that the post has been updated since it is visually the same apart from the added text.

Lunch at Vanier

Global warming protests

Spencer dressed up as a dinosaur, advocating for climate change

Had lunch with Annie today at Vanier. It was my first time there and my first reaction was that it’s pretty nice compared to the Queen’s cafeterias. I had a grilled wrap and it was pretty standard. Choose your meat, choose your cheese, choose your toppings. They had a pizza station, asian food, etc. It looks like you could differentiate consumption pretty often. The big difference between Queen’s meal plans and the UBC meal plan is that UBC has a pay-per-item system where Queen’s has a charge-per-meal system. At Queen’s you get unlimited food, which is good from a value perspective, but not so good if you’re trying to watch your weight. At UBC there’s a much greater incentive to eat what you take (you are paying for it after all) whereas there was tons of food waste at Queen’s. From a student’s perspective I think I’d prefer to go with the UBC varient as it ends up being quite a bit cheaper for the year.

Went for dinner with Mum to Banana Leaf. I really liked the layout inside and the food was good. The one gripe was that the Kung Pow Boneless Chicken contained whole red dried chilis. Eating one of these accidently was not a good experience for Mum. I’ll do a writeup and post it on the restaurants section. It’s at the top of the blog if you haven’t seen it yet. Be wary it’s still in progress.

Wednesday night at Phi Delt

Totem Pole

Totem pole outside Brock Hall

Siegel’s bagel for breakfast. I should have bought a full dozen for myself! Six won’t be sufficient for the week. A pretty average day of classes, 10-5 with a 2 hour break. It’s nice not being in all the extra classes like earlier this year. 9-6 with a 1 hour break was too much.

Every Wednesday night there’s a fraternity meeting where we talk about events, secret things, etc. There was also a sorority exchange yesterday where one of the sororities came by and we had a party downstairs. They’re always a good time with free and plentiful drink. Last night was century club where 100 shots of beer are drank in 100 minutes. I can’t say anything good about the quality of the beer, but it was a good night all the same. Caught the last bus back from UBC, 12:16.