sunflower seeds

Monthly chinatown grocery trips are enough exercising for that month.
Though today's a special case where I had to walk down from Bloor e_e"

Disadvantage of living downtown is the inadequate grocery stores. Sobey's and Metro has like 3 aisles of produce... half of which is expensive organic produce which I would really like to buy but a poor student's budget restricts me (ditto for farmer markets, but they're also always during class times). Amy and I have long fb rants about grocery stores, aka first time cooking for self problems.

I miss the times when I had daikons, potatoes, a variety of leafy vegetables (aka not just bok choy), leeks, etc. Roommate don't particularly like vegetables. Actually, we have pretty different diets (aka me with my weird food preferences, like specialty bread, full fat yogurt, fancy honey and jam, etc etc...), which adds to the complication of living together.

Mm want buttery croissants.

food for thought

Consecutive midterms tomorrow and day after, whee.

market

Here's to a great year of tuitions being paid by scholarships and grants.
Cheers.

only plan is to improvise

Midterms are done for this week, but I feel that the bulk of the work still lies ahead...

Daft punk filler while I have nothing interesting to write about:

jotnotes

Today I would like to point out the difference between preparing for tests from highschool to now.

In highschool, the process went something like this:
notification of test -> study for test (do questions or memorize content).

Now, it's more like this:
notification of test with incomplete information -> calculate required mark to obtain x% in course -> location for test announced -> search for past tests, panic when few/none are available -> try to guess the questions on the test -> go through lecture notes again to make study sheet -> study for test.

durrr.
Second year was off to a packed start, was full of report writing just until midterms started. A lot of the first semester courses are reading/writing based, which takes even more time to do than problem sets. For evidence, I present midterm study sheets for two courses.

Exhibit A. a calculations based course:

 Look at all the white space remaining!

Exhibit B. a non-calculation based course (yet, apparently the final is mostly calculations):

2.5 pages of definitions to know, whee.

Also experimenting with mind maps as a study aid for non-calculation courses. Really helped for APS301 (and I totally predicted the quiz question right ha!), hopefully it'll work for this too. Though I must say I'm terrible at spacing the chart out.

carry that weight.

Amidst my solid mechanics problem set, I discovered /r/cowboybepop (man there's a subreddit for everything, like ffxiv and ni no kuni :D). Which led me to this incredible analysis of the final two episodes.

The only appropriate response is to change my wallpaper to this:

too much feelings e_e"

granola

Breakfast is now all set up. Non-busy mornings: smoothie, busy mornings:

Loosely adapted from David Lebovitz.

Recipe is along the lines of

• Dry ingredients: 6 cups of oats, 2 cups dried fruit (currants and crasins), 2.5 cups chopped nuts (almonds and walnut), 1.5 cups shredded unsweetened coconut, 0.5 cup brown sugar (might up it more next time), liberal sprinkle of salt.
• Wet ingredients: 1 cup apple sauce (never thought of adding it before), 0.25 cup honey, 5 tbsp olive oil.

Also simplified the baking process, stirring only once half way through. Saves so much time.

Roommates approve, so this is a success (y).

Winter 13 wardrode planning

What do I do when there's finally free time? Play Ni no Kuni for 5 hours (can't marathon games anymore, I hear the bgm even when the game's turned off...) and commence window shopping online (y)

So continuing my search for a new tote and wallet...maybe I should just stick with what I currently have for a while longer. Though the Teranishi one I wanted is gone, so probably going to get this one (eventually).

Also continuing is the dilemma of what to do with shoes. In need of replacement within hopefully next year are oxford and flat walking boots. So far all I have are rather expensive options @_@

The bottom two are pure splurges, if I ever get a bonus from PEY kind of splurge. Realized that I should just get cheap loafers since I half wear them around as slippers anyways. The Grenson derby boots are just swooooon. The broguing detail *u*
(most of them also require a trip to the US to get "orz)
Might get a pair of desert boots as a tie-in before jumping into $400 shoes territory.

But in terms of actual winter items, I'm pretty much set. All good for boots, scarfs, and most importantly coats. Really want to wear my wool wrap coat to class, but it's inevitably going to get super dirty draped on the back of chairs. Darn dry clean only items @_@

To buy (mostly carried over from Fall):

• Everlane Ryan tee, really hoping for some kind of Christmas promotion.
• Thick cotton striped tee 3/4 sleeve. 
• Black loafers, now a cheap pair.
• Awesome thick wool socks for boots.
• An actual set of suit items. Blazer, skirt, pants, all matching. Thinking of BR or Club Monaco during boxing day sale.

tortillas

After a rather terrible week of midterms, report, and job, this long weekend is strictly for chilling. To start that, Dave and I went on a food tour of Kensington Market.

To start off, two of Dave's favourite nibbles:

The crust of this pie is so delicious. From now on I'm judging pies by how good the crust is (which imo is harder to get right than the filling). Definitely more economical to buy whole pies, I saw people walk out with 3-5 in their hands /sojelly.

 Not surprised that they're all sweet, 上海人 pshhh.

Next up is my favourite:

It's a thick tortilla with a filling of refined beans, pork and cheese, topped with a coleslaw-y thing and spicy sauce. The taste of the three components work really well together. Bonus that it's freshly made, which unfortunately amounts to a long wait time.

So while we waited, we headed across the street:

Mm more flaky pastry. Taste of green olives was a tad strong though.

Though we later found the empanadas place I actually intended on going to:

Was alright quite full, so ordered a mini version instead. The pastry is thinner, so consequently there's more filling (and also consequently more expensive). The salsa is incredible though, adds a nice kick of sourness. This place was also quite popular so we had to wait a bit.

Lastly, after eating too much meat and flour, we topped off with some juice:

Here I witnessed the might of the Vitamix blender (or I think it is, looked similar). Smoothie was good, the addition of mint gives it a nice accent (though Dave found it too strong). The hibiscus jucie tasted rose-y, which was quite interesting (in a good way).

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But, in addition to the nice foods, I found Cereal Magazine!!! A Canadian stockist at last! No more kicking myself for not buying it in Bath!
Though I still didn't buy it this time, $24 is a lot to swallow especially after spending so much last night for Jordy's birthday (no pics cause my phone's still glitchy). It's okay though, as long as I know I can buy it, it's all good.

snip

A short interlude before back to editing report:

Finally saw the pink concrete truck!

Thought this mushroom looked cute while cleaning up the garden (such hard work)

 

My statics prof last year retired after teaching my class. She's been teaching for a long, long time. She was the professor of my current solid mech prof (a PhD student) and his supervisor (a full prof).

sunny

Photo featured on vsco grid!

Whee I feel a sense of accomplishment.
But is then again crushed by the report I gotta finish by Friday, it's a bit of a tall order. So back to work.

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So I finished draft 1, leaving editing till tomorrow.
Read a post from back in Feb, how right I was. No res = can't afford caffeine and fancy cereal. Except I just went to Bulk Barn and bought ingredients for granola. Except I won't have time to make it until the report is done.

crystals!

Motivation also coming from FFXIV, decided to continue the choose-an-mmorpg-to-play-during-the-summer-together tradition (heh Trickster days).

The trailer is awesome, no?

winter groud

Short dinner with Rui and Kate today, I miss girl talk so much. Also motivated to work harder by our talk, so go go cover letter writing.

growth

Went to Arup info session yesterday, shall concentrate my energy in praying to internship deity that that require a summer intern (and meanwhile polish resume and cover letter). It's also really sad that I think of great cover letter lines while I shower, don't write them down before going to sleep, and completely forget them the next day "orz
Actually that happens to a lot of good ideas.

Was talking to a rep about their sustainability division and my disappointment that the Toronto office didn't have that. He said a good line that (and I paraphrase) "sustainability should be in everything you do as an engineer", and that the division is more for auditing. I feel sufficiently cheered up and encouraged by that haha.

Aecon had an info session the day before yesterday, that was pretty good too! I'm impressed that the company invests so much in their employee with extensive training programs. They would definitely be my first pick for a construction related co-op. While I would love to co-op at Arup this year, the chances are next to none. So instead I think it would be good to get practical experience on the construction side, and then do consulting work for PEY.

Whee job searching.

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Another interesting magazine (that you can read online!): modern farmer on food waste

milky

Various food that has made the past week a little less grueling:

Curry udon from Tokyo Grill, an awesome homecooked style Japanese restaurant at Yonge and Wellesley. A major downside is that no complementary appetizer, or miso soup/salad is provided. But the food is good enough to warrant coming back, especially for homemade soba on the last Saturday of every month.

UHA milk candy that Dave brought back from China. I cannot be left alone with these, the entire bag will be gone in a day e_e" Bonus that the chocolate centers in these are absolutely delicious.

Pasta made from (sky)garden fresh ingredients (minus the canned tuna). First time at using pesto (made it with too much olive oil, opps) instead of a tomato based sauce, tasted pretty good! The fresh cherry tomatoes were so sweet too.