Taiwan is a 好地方2

I miss 蛋餅, 意麵王, 便當, 7-11, 蚵仔煎, 甜不辣, 餛飩湯, sashimi, 蔥油餅, 挫冰, 芭樂, 知多家, 屈成市, 康是美, 台灣麵包, 士林夜市, 高島屋, 新光三越, Sogo, MRT, all the tea shops and hello kitty stores, 台灣親切的服務... most of all, i miss my family and chloe calling me "Jackie A-yiiii~"

after a nightmare at the vancouver custom and a $1200 fine, i came home to sleep for 19 hours straight. woke up at 4am. i hope i've recovered from all this mess...
i'm ready for school and work now. wish me luck.

回台灣後根本沒時間寫blog,真不懂住在台灣的人怎麼會想或是有時間寫哩? 這裡有太多更有趣的事要做阿. 等我回去的時後可能又會回到我常常寫blog的日子了. :(

Jack's home and will be back soon!

many of you knew that my wife ran away one week after our wedding.
This is probably why she hasn't updated her blog.. =)

某天在車上突然覺得冷氣很冷, 我叫ming把它關小一點, 沒想到他竟然說 "妳忽冷忽熱, 是得瘧疾ㄛ" >.<

there's something about ming~

ming has this habit of doing things last minute.
from university papers, paintings (when he used to paint), art shows, friends' wedding slide shows, master thesis, marking papers, report cards, to now homework as a student again. no matter what deadline he has, he will use it to its fullest. but you know what, he always aces them. he always gets A's on those assignments, and he always turns in quality work. i admire him a lot that way, but not the last minute thing. another great thing about ming is that he never gets stressed out (ok, maybe that one time when he had to finish the report cards, proof read my paper, and stayed up all night), whereas i on the other hand, gets stressed out weeks before the assignment is due. also another thing about ming, when he has to start working, he will always start organizing his desk, his room, clean the kitchen, or do laundry before he starts sitting down. this has always been the case. he says by doing that it "gets him in the working mood." so his work time always gets delayed hours afterwards. for example, tonight he mowed the lawn, did some laundry, and went to the bathroom before he sat down. and it was 11pm by the time he settled down. no matter, he will still turn in some great work and get >90% on his assignment (just like his last one, which he did the a.m. morning of the due date).

Very touched~

Had my bridal shower this past Saturday. I can't believe that i actually have so many great friends who care about me and showed up at my party! It was literally EVERYONE that i know in Toronto made it to my party. What a great turn-out!!! The party was great, thanks to the organizers Helen and Jamie. Helen made sure the night went smoothly with lots of events and Jamie was a great host at preparing food and drinks to make everybody comfortable. Jamie also did a lot of organization, starting from the invitations(coz i asked for it) to making sure there is enough alcohol for all the guests and herself. LOL... The night was so much fun, i think all of us are so busy with our own lives now and the girls never get to hang out without their partners anymore; so i thought it was such memorable time. I felt like a movie star that night, although i don't normally like to be the centre of attention. I just want to say THANKS, GIRLS!!! I had a fabulous time, nothing beats the party we had. :) by the way, jamie is next~

yesterday was 30 days till our wedding. and ming knows that i've been under a lot of stress lately, so he bought me flowers. how sweet~ :)

Last night we finally gave in and turned on the AC at home. Ming and i have been trying to avoid using it because we think it is such a waste to cool a 4-bedroom with a basement house just for two people. But last night i couldn't stand it anymore. I slept so well overnight, my face wasn't like a grease pan when i woke up this morning, which was nice. Today was cool though, hope this lasts...

grapes/raisins have a lot of Iron. blood also contains lots of iron (normally). i was eating a ~1 yr old Raisin Bran cereal, and i tasted "blood"~~ ooohhh....

Today i had a realization.

The notion of men being superior than women still exsits around us. I am sure that this thinking is comman in many places of the world, but it sort of came to a surprise when i felt it so close to me.
On one occasion with lots of friends around, i probably asked ming to do something more serious instead of screwing around, a friend commented "oh, i guess i know who wears the pants in this house." On another occastion, we were playing games with friends, i was winning or ahead of ming, so i told him that he could "organize my chips for me" and that was apparantly wrong. "Wow, if she does that in front of all your friends, it must be worse at home!" HOLY!!! No matter if i was joking or not (because i was actually serious about asking him to help me), what is wrong with "a man organizing a woman's money?" Absolutely nothing!!! Why can men scold at women or nag about them in the public while the other way around makes women "revolutional or untraditional." Maybe my tone of voice is not the nicest sometimes, but i truly don't believe in trying to save the men's face in the public (i welcome objections). Long as we both respect each other and we can "stand each other" there is no need to be afraid and think that men should be treated as "the man" when there are other people around. I have to say that ming is a great guy and probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me in my life (besides my parents and sisters) but i wouldn't have stayed with him if he believes that i should treat him as "my lord" when we are in front of others. We live in a 21st century. Men do things for women just as women do things for men. I clean the house not because i am a woman, i clean because i can't stand the dirtiness (not that i have been cleaning a lot). And i do the laundry or do the dishes because i know he doesn't have time to do it and i love him so i help him out around the house. Ming brings home dinner not because he was asked to do it, he does it because he loves me and he wants me to have a good meal. There is no such thing as who wears the pants in the house or "outside the house" anymore. Women and men are equal, they are the same privately and publicly. And if the couple seem to be doing well. regardless of what people think, other people should not barge in to comment about it. 姊姊妹妹站起來!!!

So we've finally sat down and talked about our wedding budget. I think we've always knew that this wedding is going to cost a fortune, but it finally hit us today(more to ming than me, coz i did the budget sheet months ago). It is interesting when the final budget came out to be 3 times the original budget, hahaha.... Was I being unrealistic back then or are we simply spending too much money. I have to tell though, that 1/3 of the budget is accomodations for the friends and family. I've learned not to stress over money. I know that i have had a fairly decent comfortable life that i never had to worry about money; but i still try to save whenever i can. But recently i have learned that money can save me a lot of troubles. Sometimes trying to save a small amount of money may end up costing me more, in monetary terms or other ways.
Anyways, a small wedding is turning into a big one (money wise). OMG~ I'm glad that i didn't try to spend less at Aritzia since it is so minimal compare to the budget.

I think this blogging biz has slowed down a lot these days. No one is really updating their blogger. However, i still check other people's sites once in a while, only to find the same old entry from weeks ago.

The summer is here, what have we done so far? Still got a s**t load of work to do for our wedding, but we are such slackers that i know things won't get done until last minute. My gown isn't here yet, ahhhh!!!! Scary!

Had a nice relaxing Canada weekend, didn't do any work at all. Ming pulled his back again. I did do a few things tho, met up with an old time friend, went to a baby shower, went picknicking with friends, and played board game last night. It was a nice weekend.

summer days

By the end of tonight (hopefully coz i'm still working on my papers) one of my two summer courses will be finished. Time has really gone by so quickly. In less than a month our friend will be delivering, less than 2 months, I am getting married, and less than 3 months i will be in taiwan. Pffff.... Scary!!!

I saw some photos of Chloe today on my sister's blog (finally, after so many weeks of malfunctioning of the site) and Chloe has grown up so big!!! She is seriously a big girl now. Pffff.... Scary!!!

We got 13 reply cards back for our wedding, out of the 90 that we sent out, hahaha... Now there are confirmed 80 people attending the wedding. How the list grew from 60 to 80, i don't know. :) The seating plan is done. Yay. At this time I am more concerned for my school work than wedding plans. One thing at a time.

random thoughts (during my slacking off from paper)

ming is snoozing away right now on the couch. he fell asleep right after dinner tonight, coz he didn't sleep at all last night, trying to finish his report card. he also told me some stuff about education and his kids in the class and i think he is doing some crucial job in the society, but being a "trying to do it all" type of person, he is bound to be disappointed coz sometimes it is just out of a single person's hands. there are too many other factors, like the whole government/insitutional system or societal factors that affect our jobs. i think being a teacher is just as hard as being a nurse. both physically and mentally challenging. i think these two professions should get paid the most in this world! but then i think about those farmers who grow the food that we eat, those clean our water at water plants so we can drink, and those police who protect us so we feel safe, and many many more, so i guess no one should be paid more than the other. therefore, maybe communism is better~ but then again, i don't know much about communism, hahaha...

no more basketball

Well... that's it for NBA this year.
Tony and I will go our separate ways now as he goes on to marry Eva and I go on marrying ming... Just jokking, ming!!!
MVP of the playoff. Well deserved. Eva jumped onto Tony after the game finished, such a sweet moment; she cried when Tony was awarded the MVP.
They will get married on 07/07/07, the luckiest day. How I wish I was a star~
Go Raptors!!??

I love HGTV

I watch a lot of HGTV. I probably spend over 50% of my TV time on this channel. I have to say that for those who likes or interested in designing shows, you gotta watch Sarah Richardson's show. She is now my all time favorite designer!!! I watched her show when she was just a young little non-famous girl doing this show called "Room Service" where she showed a lot of crafty idea and projects. Then she started her own designing show called "the Design Inc." And now she has a new show called "Sarah's House" and it is a not only beautiful eye pleasing show, but also an entertaining one. You see all the construction/renovation challenges that even an experienced designer faces! In fact, not only one designer, but many designers, coz there are other designers on the show as well. I used to like Debbie Travis ( I still like her, just not as much), but SR is now my idol. Her house, her clients all have beautiful places! So envious.
Then my next favorite kinda show is those British real estate shows. There was one episode that they even went to Italy to find properties!
Yeah, so that's all. If you have the channel, watch it!
http://www.hgtv.ca/sarahshouse/default.aspx

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On my drive home from work last night, while i was passing by the airport that i always drive by on the highway, i suddenly saw this jet taking off, attached to it was a banner, a very long banner that says "___ WILL YOU MARRY ME" in red lettering. Oooohhhh, how sweet~ I wonder where the girl was at that time? And i hope she saw it, coz that banner was only flying for like 20 seconds then it fell off! LOL...

Canadian dollar hits 94 cents against US dollars today, amazing...

Lately I'm feeling very sentimental~

I heard that a few days ago ming's parents came to my house in Taipei to "lift kiss." During our conversation over what happened during that day, my dad was really proud of the work that he and my mom have put into cleaning up our house. He sent me a few (actually, many) photos of different spots in the house to show me how tidy it was. I was really proud and touched by what they have done. This is my parents you're talking about, two people who strive on clutterness. They did an awesome job, the place was spotless (well, I couldn't tell about the details, and I bet they would not be up to my standard, since my parents are old now and have bad visions), it must have taken them 'days' to do that! Seriously, coz our first floor is big and there is tons of stuff!!! They did this to protect me, to show respect to ming's family, and to honour the event. I am overwhelmed by their effort. This really makes me think even more (lately I have been thinking a lot about this) about living close to my parents so I could help them out around the house and take care of them (who knows if I'll do it once I do live close to them). Coz honestly, they are getting old and I feel like I should spend more time with them. Their house is big but they are not hiring anyone for help to save money (for what I don't know; me I guess). This summer when I go back, I will be cleaning up again. That's the least I could do, once every so many "years." Thank you mom and dad. :..)
This is only one section of the first floor. You can see the many things hiding behind the table. The last time I went back, the table was full of stuff, with tons of more stuff on the floor. I bet that those things are just stuffed in mel's room now.