You know what’s really ironic? I used to dread, hate, and die a little inside every time we had to write out our “goals documents” at work. It’s not so much that I don’t like goals (because I do, I love them lists, they give me purpose in life)…it’s just the idea of writing them down in fancy business lingo in no less than 10(!) pages made me want to throw up. But now. Now…I sat down and made myself a fancy 2012 goals template after reading Nicole is Better the other day, and I’m embarrassingly proud of myself for the effort I put into making my 2012 goals. Yeah, irony. I told you so. Unemployment has done interesting things to my brain that I can’t even explain.

To make proper goals for 2012, I had to reflect on how I spent 2011…

The first Starbucks, Seattle

We began the year with a trip to Vancouver/Seattle to sort out our wedding details. But no, just before we got on that flight, I made a huge decision that I’m still thinking about (a little bit) today. I decided not to pursue potential career moves for a while, and made a terrifying phone call at 6pm on a cold and wet January evening to tell a very nice man that I did not want to go through with a job interview the next morning at 9. It was a leap of faith, and this nice man was very understanding about my decision. Soon, everything was set in motion…

Cross-Canada journey by train, in the Rockies

We left Toronto in a very romantic sort of way in March. With 12 boxes as our checked luggage, we got on a train late at night from Toronto’s Union Station and headed west. It was one of those moments I wished I had a head scarf and big sunglasses and a dainty vintage suitcase (scuffed leather, of course). Our friends sent us off all the way to the escalator to the platform, and then we sped off into the middle of nowhere, Canada.

Jaipur, India

From Vancouver, we got on a plane to Beijing, then Delhi, and then BAM! Cultural shock. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything else in the world. India was everything I thought it was going to be, but in real life. Boy, does real life shock you a lot more than pictures. India took some getting used to, but now all I can think about are the places we missed and how my next trip will be so much better. I’m also going to have to go back there and take another cooking class…I need to perfect my naan-making skills!

Kenting, Taiwan

After India, boy was I glad to see Taiwan. Being in such an unfamiliar setting made me miss everything about home, and Taipei did just the trick by filling our bellies full of delicious Taiwanese street food and bubble teas. I got to hang out on the beach with my little sister, sans my mom telling us to stop tanning this time, which was really nice. We got burnt, needless to say. Good times.

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

From Taipei, we took off on the second part of our journey into Southeast Asia. It was fun to see another side of Asia that I had always heard about, but had never been. Cambodia and Laos were my favourite countries along the way, although relaxing in Bali was super awesome too. One of the craziest experiences we had in Southeast Asia has to be when we ate at a highly-recommended local noodle joint in Hanoi. All I have to say is, I ate alongside baby cockroaches scuttling around on the table, and I survived. I’m proud of the way I held my shit together while eating, but hopefully eating with cockroaches will never have to happen to me again! (The noodles were yummy, and mostly sanitary, because they came out of a bubbling stock pot in front of me.)

We climbed the Great Wall!

I also get to say that I climbed the Great Wall of China in 2011! The bonus story from the photo above is that by traveling, carrying backpacks around everywhere, and getting food poisoning, I lost all the weight I gained from the past five years of being a cubicle monkey. By the time we got home to Vancouver in June, I had lost almost 15 pounds since the beginning of the year. Weight loss is the most underrated yet most wonderful by-product of backpacking.

Wedding prep

We got home and spent the next 12 days in a complete frenzy preparing for the wedding…

Wedding

Then we got married! Smack in the middle of the year, we got married and got to see some of our close friends and family. Everything about the day was perfect and I feel so blessed every time I think about it :)

Lake Moraine, Alberta

We took a summer road trip with my mom to Banff, and did a lot of hiking in three days. Basically all we did was eat beef and hike around the lakes. It was beautiful to hang out in Alberta for a few days with my mom, and I’m so glad to have been there because now I can wholeheartedly recommend the Rockies to visitors to Canada!

Paris, City of Light

In late August we made our move across the Atlantic to Paris. I can still remember the slightly damp smell in our apartment after a summer thunderstorm in Paris, as we sat around wondering what we had signed up for exactly. Paris was shut down for the holidays when we arrived, but soon we found our rhythm along with the crowd of Parisians trickling back into the city in September.

Champagne at Taittinger

We’ve also had lots of friends visit us in Paris in 2011…and got to take some road trips with our friends. Our day trip to Champagne was ridiculously full of laughter and good company. Alex and I made a visit out to Versailles, that was pretty cool too.

Freshly baked croissants

…and all the while, I was baking my heart out, learning some very important things, like how to make croissants and pain au chocolat, and how to put butter in absolutely everything I make. Tough life. Truth be told, I have never stressed about school, but because I love baking so much, I think I have developed more white hairs from Le Cordon Bleu than I had from working or from university.

London

I took some time off and checked out London properly – it had only been 7 years since I had last set foot in England. Back then I was a broke university student who could only afford chips from the fish and chips menu. This time London was a bit more fun! In fact, I think we’re going to live there. Quite exciting, as the Queen might say.

Nuremberg Christmas Market

We finished off the year with a bang, starting from a tour of the German Christmas Markets in mid-December. It was so much fun to hang out in the freezing cold (with a drizzle of rain on the side) and drink piping hot mulled wine that we’re already planning next year’s trip. Seriously, how can a girl refuse German delicacies like sauerkraut and bratwursts?

Lastly, we went to Belgium (the 21st country I’ve been to. I’m keeping count) to eat mussels, frites (disappointingly thick), chocolate, and waffles. It was a good fun two days of doing nothing important but eating well, and then we rang in the new year at the Eiffel Tower with a bunch of tourists on New Year’s Eve. Not a bad end to a very different 2011, I’d say.

Into 2012, I have some big plans! (Again, unemployment really tampers with your brain and plants weird thoughts in there…)

I want to…

1. Read 1 intelligent book per month
2. Complete a half marathon between 2 hours and 2 hours 15 minutes
3. Practice yoga a bit more regularly, especially after I get a job again
4. Get a job that I like and suits the lifestyle I want
5. Eat less meat. If I do buy meat, buy from good quality, environmentally responsible butchers, and consume in small quantities
6. Try meditation…and if we click, do it once a week
7. Revamp this blog more so the Recipes and Travel sections are up-to-date and fun to browse
8. Sort through, edit, and do something with the photos from our travels in 2011
9. Learn a few more tricks in Photoshop and Aperture, software programs I don’t use as much as I should!
10. Get back into Daily Paris Photo blogging
11. Take some time to see family and friends in North America
12. (the craziest resolution of all that will take lots of planning and free time) Try doing something with the pastry skills I’ve learned and not be shy about selling the goodies!

What are your resolutions this year?

Happy 2012!

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In three weeks, we will be leaving the city we’ve called home since 2006. It feels like a permanent move, although in this day and age, I’m not sure how long permanent really is.

I’ve picked up and moved far, far away twice in my life. The first time was in the summer of 1995, from a place where I spoke the language and grew up surrounded by family and friends, to a foreign land where I barely understood my teacher’s heavy Australian accent and had zero friends. Even though it was a long time ago, I remember that day in July when I hugged my grandmother goodbye in her big front yard. I remember pulling away in my uncle’s car, turning around to wave, and feeling a mixture of excitement, sadness, and anxiety, but not really understanding what it all meant. As a kid, it was unfathomable to me that my life was going to be tremendously different, and that there were going to be challenges I never knew ahead of me. It really is true that we are much more adaptable creatures when we are young. My mom tells me that I cried a few times in the first few months we spent in Canada, but I think I’ve blocked it out. I didn’t have any friends when school started, so I used to sit on my own in the bathroom stalls during recess to hide from the duty teachers and the groups of girls huddled on the playground. When finally one of the girls took pity on me and invited me to her birthday party, it was December. However, when I think back, I think of happy things like eventually understanding my teacher and her Australian accent. I think of moving at the end of our first year in Canada to a new school where I had a fresh start: people here didn’t know that I didn’t understand English only ten months ago! I think of my last year of elementary school as a year where I made lots of friends and got life back on track just like the way it used to feel in Taiwan – and it felt fantastic.

The last time I said goodbye, it didn’t feel permanent – partly because I didn’t want it to be. Unbeknownst to all of us then, it will be another nine years before I even have a chance to slow down and consider Vancouver as a synonym to “home” again. That morning, we all woke up in the dark, and I’m still touched (and surprised) that many of my friends rose with me. We shuffled around silently in my old house, and with my two suitcases crammed with bare necessities, set off for the airport at dawn in three separate cars. I was moving away for school, it wasn’t going to be long before I came home for Christmas. This was still home, where I would return every time I had a break. Except, it didn’t really turn out that way. As time wore on I stopped coming back, because tickets were expensive, breaks were short, and I wanted to see the world. I’ve made a point to try to visit at least twice a year, but it hasn’t always happened according to plan. I became a unit of “we”, then jobs came along and vacation days became a prized rarity, and “we” began planning vacations around all the different corners of the world where our families are. So very quietly, without anyone really noticing or pinpointing an exact date, it turned into a permanent move.

And now, officially, a third one on its way.

Something’s different this time. This time, I’m completely in charge, and it frightens me. The first time, I wasn’t a decision maker, although my sister and I were huge factors in the decision. The second time, it was my decision, influenced heavily by incentives ahead, and what felt like a very limited number of options given the criteria I had set for myself. It didn’t feel like a decision; it felt like a natural progression in my life. This time, this time the world’s wide open ahead of me, and I can just as easily stay here as I can move, yet I’ve insisted, and encouraged, and rallied for this day since 2006.

So here we are. Me, feeling exactly like I did in 1995: excited, sad, and anxious. And probably still very naive of what the consequences of this move will be in the years to come. Nevertheless, plunging ahead.

Wish us luck.

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A very very special and exciting announcement today!

We’re off!

It was an extremely agonizing decision and I was pretty bummed out for a couple of weeks trying to make up my mind to get to this point. There were tears. There were excited conversations. There were moments of questioning my own sanity. There were moments of angry bickering. But finally, finally, finally….here goes:

I’ve given notice to work, and as of March 11, I will become a world wanderer…and a student at Cordon Bleu in Paris in September! Alex and I have decided to take the next few months to do some traveling in Asia, before returning to Canada in June for our wedding. Then we’ll be off in August to Paris, where I’ll be pursuing the Patisserie Diploma at the Cordon Bleu school from September to March!

Continue readingSunday Supper: come eat cheese with us!

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Happy New Year!

Now that we’ve gotten another overhyped party out of the way, I’m excited to start 2011. (The bitterness for the celebrations: they always feel mandatory, and end up somewhere on the spectrum of “fun”, but the street car wait & ride home last night at 3AM made me question if I should retire from celebrating at midnight every December 31 officially).

Onto 2011. This year, I promise I will make some serious changes in my life. There are some plans in motion to make sure that we get to see more of the world and enjoy life in different ways, and I can’t wait to share all the updates as they unfold. Of course, we’re also getting married in 2011, so it’s going to be a big year!

I also hope to blog a bit more often – coming up I’ll have a couple of regular “weekly columns” to make sure I have a good reason to write as much as I can.

Lastly, I want to make sure I continue to take many more photos! I’m going to be getting a new camera bag soon to help me tote around the camera a little more discreetly, and we’re swapping in for a different lens to play with, too. The last thing that I’m doing, that will hopefully help me update more often and take more pictures, is the monthly wallpapers.

Beginning of every month, I’ll post a photo wallpaper for download. So far, I’ve made them in two sizes only – my Mac and my work laptop. If you’re interested in having a resolution that’s right for your computer, just leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do next month. Suggestions for the following months would be super helpful, too!

Download the 1280×800 (standard Mac size) wallpaper
Download the 1024×768 wallpaper

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Sorry, someone had to say it.

I have to admit, it’s been a great summer this year. We’ve been so spoiled with sunshine-y beautiful weekends almost every weekend since May, and as we get into the “late summer” season, I feel satisfied with all the outdoor activities we’ve undertaken so far.

A few more things on the list…

1. Biking the trail in NOTL and going to check out An Ideal Husband at the Shaw Fest
2. Harry Potter exhibition at the Ontario Science Centre!
3. Bike & Wine in NOTL some time with some friends
4. Making peach jam, peach ice cream, and peach pie – ahhhh peaches!
5. Freezing the late season berries for fall and Christmas baking
6. Spending two weeks in Vancouver to sort out our wedding details! I’m not sure what that will look like yet, but will definitely be blogging about it!
7. Finishing 10K in under 60 minutes by end of September. This is a modified goal from my plans in the Spring since the summer has been so busy with moving and random work & personal trips
8. Finishing a couple of my web design projects on the side by the end of the month

Since we spent the August long weekend up at the cottage, we’ve only had this past weekend to clean up our new apartment and start putting things away. We’ve painted it a lovely shade of light gray (Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore – fantastic!) which makes the Victorian apartment feel rather modern and bright. I can’t wait to start cooking and actually living here.

  

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It’s been official for more than a week now. We received a call on Alex’s phone on Friday, July 30th at 12:41pm letting us know that the sale of our beloved apartment was closed. The proceeds have since then shown up in our bank account, and our mortgage balance is now a big, fat, relieving 0. It’s been a thrilling ride, this whole first-home-ownership thing, what with the renovations and all the drama attached. Since I never got around to posting pictures, I guess now would be a bittersweet time to walk through the journey we undertook in the last 2 years and a few months…

Awesome blue-gray carpet, available only in the 90′s.

Freshly painted with “builders’ beige” / Someone took the blue theme very seriously

The solarium, another specialty from the 90′s.

The first month we owned the place, we lived in our old rented apartment. We proceeded to recruit our friends to destroy the fixtures and hoped to piece it back together in a month. Not so much. Major roadblock – needing a building permit from the City of Toronto because we wanted to take apart the non-structural wall for the solarium. Yes, I said non-structural. The end result: an additional month of concrete floors and construction mayhem.

Carpeting underneath washer/dryer = bad idea! / Taking apart beige kitchen

Ripping out carpets only to discover possible pee stains in the styrofoam lining?

We put down laminate flooring, built a second bedroom, installed a new kitchen with granite counter top, got new window coverings, painted and painted and painted some more, and laid out the apartment with our new snazzy furniture by July 2008 – three months after we became owners. The only place we didn’t venture into renovating yet was the bathroom.

A month later, the toilet upstairs burst in the middle of the day and flooded our apartment. Thankfully I was home and noticed it in time so there wasn’t a lot of damage…I heard the upstairs apartment had everything covered in a few inches of water by the time the flood got to our place! Anyway, the silver lining in this incident was that we promptly had our ceilings repainted by the condo board as part of the damages, and by January 2009 we also upgraded to engineered hardwood flooring because the laminate floorboards were starting to curl up from the moisture – all for free!! In the mean time, we also upgraded all of the lighting fixtures and put up the kitchen wall tiles to complete the renovation work.

Lastly, in late 2009, we tackled the bathroom renovations. It was a difficult month that I referenced to in this post, where we went to the gym on the 33rd floor to use the bathroom everyday. I know. The only positive thing I could see was that the bathrooms in the gym were seldom used, so at least they were most likely quite clean and well-maintained. After that month, our renovations were complete, and talks quickly turned to selling the newly renovated apartment.

  
A rain shower and a bathtub. I’d say that’s the thing I’m missing the most right now.

Anyway, now we’re in a little one-bedroom apartment in the Beaches, trying to figure out our next big adventure. We had a lot of fun with our first apartment, and I’m definitely looking forward to the next renovation project in the future where I get to play with another colour palette and look. We’ve kept some key pieces from the apartment that I love, too. This little place is quaint but so far, I have to say, I miss some of the taken-for-granted condo amenities from our previous place – free hydro and built-in AC would be nice right now in the middle of summer, for instance! Oh, and never underestimate the power of the garbage chute.

Hope you had fun browsing the pictures and thanks for sticking it out! The complete set is on Flickr here if you’re interested to see all the rooms!

Read the rest of The One Where I Try Not to Cry on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

Yes, it’s that time again! I’ve been sneaking in Californian strawberries from my weekly grocery trips since March, but finally the Ontario ones are here! The Farmer’s Market is back at St. Lawrence Market, and although there are many stalls that sell local strawberries along Jarvis Street on Saturday mornings, I fell immediately for one particular stand where their little sign said “VERY SWEET”. Nobody else had such bold claims written in black and white, so it must be true, right? I bought two pints the first weekend, and for the past two weekends, I splurged and got a whole flat every week. It felt like such a commitment at first, and the stress that followed on what to do with the berries has been interesting…

So far I’ve whipped up a quart of my favourite Strawberry Fro-Yo, and made a few jars of jam. Emily’s recipe is delicious, and I’m already worried about rationing the jars to family & friends!

I’ve also had some time to play around with some simple floral arrangements using peonies and other late spring/early summer blooms. After seeing a few wedding blogs feature decor using simple jars, wild flowers, and seasonal blooms, I’ve been itching to test out my preferred combo. I’m pretty satisfied with my first try here, but think I might continue on tweaking until I find the colours I want, too. I’d love to get some bright grosgrain and satin ribbons on the jars to get more texture and colour, for example. What do you think?

Strawberry

Read the rest of Let’s Talk Summer on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

There’s definitely something in the air these days. The days are longer, people are happier, and my office has gotten brighter. It might be because I finally got around to moving to a cube by the window (only three years after I joined the company), and have even acquired responsibility of plants at work (boy are these people going to be sorry that they entrusted me with things that are “alive”). Anyway, I’ll get to the point – I love Spring.

The prospect of Summer is shaping up pretty well. This year I’ll be training for another half marathon in the Fall – race to be determined, hopefully somewhere outside Toronto. My goal is to get to 10 minutes per mile, which will get me to the finish line 26 minutes earlier than last year. So far, I’ve realized that 26 minutes might seem like a small number but the training process has taught me otherwise. Therefore, my final goal will be determined closer to the race, if my legs are still functioning then. My sister has also signed up to train with me, which may* make the race fun.

I’ll be heading home to Vancouver for a few days at the end of the month for a wedding, and it’s something that I’ve been constantly chatting about to anyone who comes across me. I think everyone will be relieved once it’s over. It’s funny; quite a few of my friends are now married, but this one seems particularly sentimental. I’ve been super-involved since Day 1, and I’m currently doing some deep soul-searching to deliver a heartfelt speech on the big day. I have so many thoughts in my head that I want to say, and when it’s over, I’ll also share it here so everyone can read about my awesome friend Jenn.

Another trip we have coming up is also about getting in touch with the past – I finally get to go to Chicago to visit my bff from elementary school! The last time I saw her in Chicago was three years ago, and it was quite an interesting experience getting to her dorm at U of Chicago…which I’ll share later. Anyway, come this September, Iggy and I will have known each other (and been friends) for 20 years! It is crazy to think in terms of decades – not only do I feel old, but it also makes me realize how amazing it has been that we have grown up in different (physical) locations, but have not grown apart at all. We still nod excitedly when we echo each other’s thoughts and squeal with delight when we finish each other’s sentences.

In terms of recipes for the summer…let’s just say, I’m exciting for the jamming season to begin! Last year we ran out of jam way too quickly, so this year I’ll make sure to savour the season and can everything that comes my way! I’ve also run out of my delicious strawberry fro-yo so as soon as those berries hit the farmer’s market, I’ll be all over them to start re-stocking the freezer!

Alex’s birthday is this weekend and I have a few things up my sleeve to share – will get around to posting them soon!

*I said “may make the race fun” because the last time we ran a race together lil’ miss speedy head ran off immediately after passing the start line. Now I’m sharing this little tidbit with the Interwebs so it’ll take longer for her to live it down.

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As I alluded to earlier, we had tickets to the Gold Medal Hockey Game at the Winter Olympics, a.k.a. the event Canada had been waiting for, so we set out for a long but exhilarating weekend trip to Vancouver.

Plane tickets between Toronto and Vancouver during the Olympics ranged from $600 – $1,000+ during the games, and the $600 ones were hard to find. So we bit the bullet and did a Buffalo to Seattle trip, with a lot of driving in between.

Our tickets

We left Toronto at 2:30AM on Friday, and got to my house in Surrey at 4:00PM EST…long journey, indeed! We stopped at my mom’s work for a delicious lunch, and continued to my house for a quick nap before the Canada-Slovakia game. Due to the fact that my mother does not subscribe to cable (but she listened to the game on the radio!), we ended up watching the game downtown at one of the LiveCity locations. It was drizzling the whole time, which made it quite an interesting experience for the non-Vancouverites in my group, but it was phenomenal to share the experience with lots of Canadian fans huddled in the rain.

A little hometown pride just after we crossed the border

The big event came on Sunday morning, when we eagerly showed up at GM Place, or Canada Hockey Place, at quarter past ten – the game didn’t start until 12:15PM. The enthusiasm had all of us on pin cushions that we had to leave Surrey ASAP (well, except me, because I had caught a cold and wanted to stay in bed until the last possible minute).

My favourite sign. If you think about it hard enough, it could have been a double-entendre because of the Canadian gold mines….but that’s way too much thinking, I know. And way too geeky. I know.

Just after clearing security – Go Canada Go!

Yeah, we got there super-early.

Our seats were in the 300′s, and considering the categorization of tickets and the face value, I found it slightly disappointing when we realized where our seats were. There were 3 categories for ticket prices, and I think if there were 4, it might’ve been clearer for people to decide on their bidding price – i.e. 2 categories in the lower bowl and 2 categories in the upper bowl.

That said, once the game started, it felt like I was right there in the middle of the action, anyway. I think I took 10 pictures altogether during the 60-minute regulation time, including during intermissions – it was that captivating.

Face-off at 12:15

A little scuffle that got the crowd all riled up

During the last intermission between third period and overtime, you could tell the crowd was tense. The split between Canadian and American fans was about 70-30 at the game, I would say, and everywhere you looked, people were holding their breaths. There were fewer people lining up for drinks, fewer visits to the bathroom, and fewer lighthearted conversations between fans.

It’s OK, though, we won. If there was one medal Canada really really really really really wanted, with a cherry on top, this was it. AND OMG WE GOT IT!!

The moment I realized we had won. No good pictures needed. I love how blurry this is…it reminds me of jumping up and down, having a giant group hug, and celebrating with strangers all around me.

The team celebrating the win – this was the first opportunity I could get a clear shot.

  
We left Canada Hockey Place with big smiles, and lots of renditions of our national anthem, as the celebration poured into the streets

We joined the crowds at Robson Square – it was a fantastic party!

Yay Canada! I wonder if this bus stop is still standing…

Our experience at the Olympics turned out in the best way possible. I could not have asked for a better ending to the game, with all the tension building up for a great big hurrah to finish off our weekend. Being a part of the crowd that celebrated with the team moments after the game finished is something that I will always remember. It was a heart-thudding, never-ending-smiling kind of experience that brings goosebumps now when I look back :-)

How did you celebrate the win, fellow Canadians?

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We went to see Valentine’s Day on Valentine’s Day, and I LOVED IT! It wasn’t super cheesy like I had expected, and it was funny, touching, realistic, and sarcastic when it needed to be. I highly recommend it! It’s put such a big smile on my face :-)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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