mosaic

My schedule's a lot more full with electives. Also disliking night class, such an energy drain "orz

2f

So cold today, brr.

A bright spot was that I got in the Greek Art&Archeology elective with this uber cool prof. It's in a much better timeslot than my other elective. Though I'll just be keen and take both at the moment, see which one I like more (or has a higher midterm mark) and drop then. Excited for the first lecture tomorrow :)

Also got last semester's mark back, narrowly kept my 4.0! I should be good for research funding.

• Tech, society and biosphere: 85 (lower than expected...how'd this happen?)
• Intro to civil engineering: 86
• Urban engineering ecology: 91
• Construction management: 90 (curve saved me, whoohoo)
• Engineering communication: 86
• Solid mechanics: 97 (yehh)
• Engineering math: 95
• Fluid mechanics: 96

wheeee.

A not so bright spot is the interaction with TTC workers today. Apparently basic manners are not part of the job requirement (excluding the exceedingly rare nice bus drivers), does it kill you to add a "please" to "move back!"?

slurp

A trio of soup noodles cause I crave nothing else in the dead of winter. Just missing pho D:

Made In China / somewhere in Scarborough / Kenzo

they're hard to photograph cause of the steam :(

Also made roast meat for the first time, tasted so good! Adding potatoes make the sauce wonderfully thick. In fact the potatoes taste better than the meat, though both has the great melt-in-your-mouth texture.  Unfortunately it's not a photogenic dish so just imagine~

winter readings

Finished 2 more books by Alain de Botton, The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work was alright though I liked The Art of Travel a lot better. Both books are well written, but I don't feel compelled to continue reading (took a lot of effort to finish both books).

There are good quotations though!
from work:

Our work will have at least distracted us, it will have provided a perfect bubble in which to invest our hopes for perfection, it will have focused out immeasurable anxieties on a few relatively small-scale and achievable goals, it will have given us a sense of mastery, it will have made us respectably tired, it will have put food on the table. It will have kept us out of greater trouble.

from travel:

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conductive to internal conversation than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: larger thoughts at times require larger views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape.

'the imagination could provide a more-than-adequate substitute for the vulgar reality of actual experience.' Actual experience where what we have come to see is always diluted in what we could see anywhere, where we are drawn away from the present by an anxious future and where our appreciation of aesthetic elements remain at the mercy of perplexing physical and psychological demands.

When I consider...the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which nothing knows of me [l'infinie immensité des espace que j'ignore et qui m'ignorent]

the french grammar seems much more eloquent

Sublime  places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is just not nature that defies us. Human life is just as overwhelming, but it is the vast space of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectable reminder of all the exceeds us. If we spend more time in them, they might help us to accept more graciously the great unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.

A dominate impulse on encountering beauty is the desire to hold on to it: to possess it and give it weight in our lives. There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.'
But beauty is fugitive, it is frequently found in places to which we may never return or else it results from a rare conjunction of the season, light and weather. How then to possess it, how to hold on to the floating train, the halva-like bricks or the English valley?

...
...
...
Bonus from NatGeo:

Walking is falling forward.
Each step we take is an arrested plunge, a collapse averted, a disaster braked. In this way, to walk becomes an act of faith. We perform it daily: a two-beat miracle - an iambic teetering, a holding on and letting go.

rabbit ear fold

Thoughts in my head when I experience trouble falling asleep:

Things that happened in the day

How those things could have been different if I said/did X at Y

The perfect comeback to a conversation

Things that should and could happen tomorrow

Worries about the things that should happen tomorrow 

Anxiety about the things that could happen tomorrow

Anxiety about the future in general 

Anticipation about tomorrow coming

Varying degree of satisfaction now that another day has ended

and throughout all these, how miserable waking up will up if I keep thinking. 

sweet plum

plus a blanket and a book and we're good to go on cold, cold days.

2014 goals

^I miss having titles unrelated to the post content, but this should be the last of them.

Happy New Years ^^

My last moments of 2013 was spent playing Chinese checkers and cards with family, none of us actually noticed when the clock ticked to midnight. It's strange that so much emphasis is placed on an arbitrary division in time. Regardless, a new year is a fresh start.

The theme of 2014 will be to do and create more.
My resting state of last year (ugh using this term makes it seem so far away yet in actuality it's only been less than a day) seem to have been seated in front of the computer and just endlessly scrolling through the interweb's offerings. While there are great content to consume, consumption is a passive activity dictated by the content creators. So I endeavor to be on the creating side more.

A random list of things I would like to do / make:

• blend facial oil and masks (so much cheaper than buying too)
• have a self sufficient supply of commonly used herbs (starting with basil and green onion)
• learn another cuisine (Japanese? Korean? Indian?)
• go on more walks, preferably with my camera in tow
• take more trips! Currently dreaming about Northern France attracted by the promise of the best sea salt. Also the tea producing regions of China. Or the Japanese countryside! As you can see, my travel ambitions are all motivated by food. 

For school, primary goal is to keep up the grades in hopes of funding third year with scholarships as well. Also trying to engage with professors more, but haven't figured out how exactly.

In terms of extracurricular, the main focus is on Sky Garden to ensure a good season with abundant harvests. It's the one thing I'm absolutely sure that I love doing, and through it I want to be more involved in local foods/sustainable agriculture movement. Related to that, UT has this cafe coop called Harvest Noon that has a weekly bread baking program! Volunteers can even take home half a loaf, which is clearly why I'm interested.
Unfortunately, my certainty regarding Sky Garden doesn't extend to WISE. While I believe in our mission, our dependency on sponsorship really bug me. It's almost like a catch-22, without the sponsors the events can't happen, with the sponsors it's no longer our events. Shall see how the rest of the year goes, though I want to stay and make it better, cause it definitely can be.
Otherwise, want to rejoin Solar House (the final design is pretty awesome harhar) in the summer and attend TEDxUofT! Also should learn some software in my spare time (SketchUp, Revit), but I've been saying this for a while now.

Oh yeah I should definitely visit waterloo, he..hehee..hehehe