markings

Long time no see, was down with a bad cold for most of last week. It was a needed break from school though, to catch up on sleep and destress by reading a lot of manga.

1. Cheese in the Trap
aka my favourite webtoon, sorry Tower of God.
It's hard to say anything about this because it'll inevitably be a spoiler. The plot is so intricate that it makes the beginning chapters difficult to follow, but it's worth reading through. Both Seol and Jung will surpass your expectations.
Sarah if you see this, I highhhhhly recommend you to read this. 

2. Magi (and its sidestory about Sinbad)
Imagine One Piece and Negima mixed together and it's sort of the plot and setting of Magi. I'm usually reluctant to read Shonens, but this one has a good cast of characters. I like Sinbad's sidestory more, since it focuses more on going-on-an-adventure (One Piece) rather than the main story which focues more on we-have-to-save-the-world-against-evil (Negima). I like how the series spends time building up the main characters (both pro- and antagonists) and showing their backstory and motivations. If you do read this, I highly suggest also reading Sinbad's sidestory since it is a direct prequel and contains lots of relevant information. Plus Sinbad's currently the most suspicious characters

3. Ruler of the Land
This is a classical 武侠 story and it brings so much nostalgia. It's slightly similar to the Chinese story where the main character is a genius at learning martial arts but also only wanted to learn escaping techniques. In fact I clearly remember a scene where he gets into some minor trouble and was thrown into a local jail cell. In the cell, he was reading a legendary skillbook and learning the footwork movements. This story has all the 武侠 archetypes and plot devices, from the different clans to the legendary weapons, masters of different fractions all teaching their secret skills to the main characters, tragedy, romance, bloodshed etc etc.

when the thunder and lightning come

I'm sick, boohoo.

dodge & burn

I survived midterms season! No more midterms for a year!
I'm fairly confident that these are amongst the happiest of words that can come out of a UofT student's mouth.

Here's 2 random photos in celebration.

 A bokeh to celebrate that I finally figured out how manual focusing works on my camera.

A really post-processed image to show that yes, some office buildings do in fact use air conditioning in winter. Hurray for more affirmation that building science is the right field for me.

I'm happy to spend some quality time playing in photoshop, which I haven't done so in such a long time. After so many years, I've developed a routine photo touch-up process that I don't deviate much from. It's refreshing to devote an hour or so and just play around. My goal was to achieve high contrast in the smoke, which was really over-exposed in the original image. It took a lot of adjustment layers and masking to get it right haha, though the same effect could probably be achieved with a lot less layers if I use the burn and dodge tool more effectively.

tl;dr - midterms done, free time exists again.

building your legacy

Another successful WISE conference comes to a close :)
Much thanks to our team, and then coffee. Comi-Con downstairs was pretty alright too.

Here's another song from Noel Gallagher's new album:


I really like the energy of album, which is perfect for crunch time, aka now.

Well that's alright... I suppose

This song does a surprisingly good job of keeping me happy as I study for geotech. Isn't it so cute that it's acoustic because his electric guitar got taken?

sanitary pipe system

Engineering student achievement unlocked: working frantically in the computer lab way past midnight.

The municipal design project very much reminds me of English essays. The sense of loss at where to start, the slow and painful process of putting together a first draft, and then redoing everything. Actually this sounds like concrete design assignments too heh. But the municipal design projects comes with the bonus of endless spreadsheets to format and countless maintenance holes to label four different elevations on each of them.

soup

If only I discovered this at the beginning of winter, could totally live on this.

Soup is the natural extension after discovering the greatness of beans. As always, remember to soak them for about a day beforehand and cook until it's easily smashed. Flavouring is some classic mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery) and miso. I'd recommend saving a portion of the mirepoix to add in near the end so it doesn't cook to a mush. Add in some kale and it's a complete meal. This also keeps very well as you can freeze the soup. In fact it probably taste better after sitting in the fridge for a couple of days.