soon tofu

Good food is the only way that I'm surviving until now.
The green tofu place (aka Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu) opened a Chinatown location! Mad happy when I saw a "NOW OPEN" sign while walking back from Trainhead last Wednesday.

 Opening special: pork bone soup for only $3.99, sooo worth it. The meat is melt-in-your-mouth and the soup is well flavoured. Only downside is that the potato was left whole, and therefore not flavourful.

But onto the star of the meal:

Combination (beef, shrimp, and mussel) soon tofu in regular spicy, which isn't really spicy (or less so than I remember from the North York location). But the toooffuuuu, so soft and delicious. The complimentary purple rice scores bonus points.

By now I've had soon tofu at three different restaurants around the area, this, Bapbo, and Hana Korea. Will do a comparison of these tomorrow, when I will be finally done exams "orz


Until then~

Hana Korea:
I *think* their soon tofu is a bit cheaper than the rest, but you also get the smallest portion of rice. However the soup taste really good (y). Though I really like theirs because of the seafood in it,  consisting of fish, mussels, and bits if squid.

Bapbo:
Perks of being the closest to Chestnut and beside Chatime. Otherwise the soon tofu is alright, has mussels, a big shrimp, fish-tofu thing (pretty good). The complimentary rice has a nice sprinkle of sesame on top. But huge points lost for not providing a raw egg to crack over top.

oust

A sure sign of the end of frosh(-ness) is moving out. I'm officially evicted from Chestnut next Wednesday, but thought it was a good idea to move most of my stuff out today ahead of the rush.

The desk is now mostly empty except for the giant stack of MSE past finals to go through.

Living at Chestnut has been tons and tons of fun (all you amazing people), with the usual sucky parts of res mixed in (the nosy neighbours, increasing worse food, and the sketchiest elevators ever). It's going to be such a shame when we won't be able to have impromptu sgs nights and hours long dinners consisting of more laughing than eating. 

maguro

The fish actually just melts in your mouth *u*

 Spicy sashimi bibim

Ryan, Rui and I unanimously agree that this is the best sushi/sashimi we've had. There's no way I'd ever go to AYCE sushi again, $20 is so much better spent at ND Sushi.

real pine

Programming final went alright, though mark will probably be worse than expected since there's bound to be bugs in my code.
But yeeeeees 4 day break until MSE! Well 2 days until I start studying again.

Meanwhile it's stress eating and shopping :D I have 18 masks (don't be too alarmed, 16/18 are sheet masks) in my taobao shopping cart. A bunch of MBDMs, TonyMoly's egg pore packs (mixed reviews, but worth a try) and trying some Innisfree ones as well.
I figured that I like brands that focus on an/a group of ingredients, ie. Skinfood & Lush. Somehow it feels healthier? Though it's just as likely to be a marketing ploy.

But my purchases are somewhat justified because I just finished 3 of my masks (finally) :D

Laneige water sleeping pack, Kiehl's rare earth clay mask, and Skinfood rice pack (not pictured). The two above are HG though!

The Kiehl's one cleans your pores really well and minimized their appearance for roughly a day. Though it's rather expensive so I'm hoping that I can replace it with the Innisfree volcanic ash mask.

The laneige one has a really calming smell and, haha, lots of memories associated with those.
Bought this with Mel on the way to the first ever spa day at Lyndon's and got a whole bunch of complimentary samples (which eventually led to me buying the entire water bank line durr). Was so fun back then, button-mashing in Marvel vs Capcom harhar. Now all they do is play league D:
Also brought this along on Gritaly, which I sorely miss T_T The historic structures and gelato... Good thing I'm heading to England in early August *u*

collection

Let this post be a continuous record of the (most likely negative) feelings regarding finals.

To start, infinite series will be the death of me.


Mon, Apr 22:
Exam times are mentally exhausting, lecture times are physically exhausting, midterm weeks are both.

I'm slow (aka bad) at tracing through code. Debugged all my practice problems through trial (guided with the little intuition that I have) and error with the compiler (y). Majority of the finals is tracing output, gg.


Tues, Apr 23:
So not prepared for programming. I attribute this state to the following reasons:

1. Motivation ran out about half way through calculus
2. No solutions for past finals
3. Class average is too high from midterms, so the final is going to be brutal

Instead of studying the whole day, I spent time surfing taobao, eating out with friends, and generally lazing around. Not good.

Wed, Apr 24:
Trainhead pho after programming, worthhhh.

1w

Marks going into exams are:

MSE: 92%
CME: 103% ahahahaaaa whoohoo
Programming: 94%
ESP II: 75% (depressing, goodbye 4.0 cause of this)
Calc II: 88%

juuuust to put the pressure on for finals

tulips

The signs of spring has finally come! Spotted while walking to Eaton yesterday:

Except I won't have the chance to venture outside and enjoy it ;_; finals yay...

conscious

Finally went shopping after an entire semester, in my roommate's words "I feel like a girl again". Also finally in the possession of a white dress again, ahhh can't wait for summer to come~

...
...
...

On the topic of preparing for summer (and also because Indigo had a sale for $5 classic), here's my summer reading list:

• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Catch-22
• Nineteen Eighty Four
• 1Q84
• In Defense of Food
• Brave New World
• Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse-five
• Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 

Seems realistic for 4 months mmmm. Haven't read a non-textbook since winter break as well ;_;

double jump

Finally done with programming project yesterday, it was super stressful "orz We managed to find and correct most of the weird bugs (a lot was because I flipped the coordinate system without realizing), but ran out of time in the end. Had to hand in a not perfectly working program e_e"

With the last assignment of the semester due on Monday, it's time to think of finals! whoohoo...
Say hello to the stack of past exams that will hopefully guarantee myself an 80 once I've successfully completed them.

Macbook Air on the side for size comparison T_T"
On the bright side, I get to sleep in all morning!

Also on the bright side, good food!

Top left is a rare sighting of a good chestnut meal. Beef patty with sunny side up egg and a surprisingly good (for res standards) arugula salad *u*

The other three photos are from SiChuan Landscape (巴山蜀水), a relatively new sichuan-ese restaurant in Chinatown. The food is pretty authentic, especially the dandan noodles (lower left) and dumplings (钟水饺). They're both dimsum dishes, but they came in large portions. The tofu on the upper right was delicious, it's apparently made in the restaurant and has great texture. I'd definitely recommend this dish.

bus error

Now I see why there are signs posted around engineering common rooms reminding us to shower.
Given the choice between making my program work and showering/eating/sleeping/anything activity, I much rather make my program work.

Debugging is a nightmare.

bigger cucumber

Found two super interesting websites via TED,

88 Bar - about tech and design in China (Sarah check this out), and
The Perennial Plate - about "adventures in sustainable eating"

A video on each site especially stood out to me,

the first is a presentation about a chairty program that utilizes crowdf-unding to provide lunches to school children in rural China. The presenter frames this program in the perspective of designing for trust, which really ought to be one of the Df(x)s that we learn in ESP.
It's bit of a long video, but do watch it in full:



the second is about roof-top gardens in BeiJing and HongKong:
On and off, I would wish that I lived a far simpler life as a farmer in a beautiful rural region. Then I realize I'm far too depend on modern conveniences and would too quickly miss the vibrancy that big cities have. Otherwise I'd totally transfer to mineral and make double the salary of a civ...

Anyways, the urban rooftop garden seems to be a happy compromise between the above scenarios. Hopefully I can learn more about urban agriculture throughout my university studies and do some related work (ie. green walls) in my career.

p.s. the green wall near MedSci cafe is an amazing place to eat lunch. No fair that the artscis have the nicer buildings D:

star lake

Watched 2 films over the course of the weekend as I procrastinated from doing programming: Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Howl's Moving Castle.


This man, my gosh, is the definition of having self discipline. Slightly ironic since I watched this documentary because I didn't have enough discipline to keep working haha. But I shall learn from his example! Goal is no cellphone gaming from now until exams end, if his apprentice can make tamayaki for months, I can pay full attention in my last week of lecture >D

Oh and damn the sushi looks amazing.


Howl's Moving Castle is just beautiful, and hilarious too (calcifer!!). Sophie is insanely headstrong and stubborn haha. My revised list of top 3 Ghibli movies is as follows:

1. Princess Mononoke
2. Nausicaa tied with Totoro
3. Howl's Moving Castle

The theme is great ;_;

persian tea

I think friday nights have transformed from sgs night to eating out night. Both is good :]

Have not had Persian food for such a long time, not since middle school I think. Kebobs are still so good *u*

Although Aida's mom's spaghetti with meatballs are still the best. It was so worth trading dumplings for haha. Good ol' times~

pointers

It's gonna be a long night of FDS, whohoo.
According to the golden rules of project management, work expands to fill allocated time (y)


But first, must whine about programming!
Signs that things are very very bad:

• You don't know why your code doesn't work
• You don't know why your code works (but only sometimes)
• You change random things until it works (but only for that specific input)
• Segmentation faults

But the moment your code works, man that feeling is awesome. Then you move onto the next function and it's the same process all over again. 

shore

Daft Punk was the music choice for the long weekend :D Looking forward to the new album!

^a remix, not a leaked official song.