1

Less than a day it'll be a whole new year! But I'm not looking forward to that, and in fact, it will be nice if time can freeze at the last minute of 2005....

Well, that will only happen if He decided to come back tonight. If that is so, I'd rather not to see Him again then... For one thing, I'm not well prepared standing before Him.

Tonight we'll go to the Mozart 250 opening gala. We'll see if I get asleep or not.

2

Two special things I'm going to do before the end of the year?

I'll need to use the HomeDepot coupon before it expires =) I'll need to get a heavy duty stapler to stretch the canvas on the frame. Yeah... I went to a art supplies shop today and got three custom frames. However I need to put the materials together myself. These frames are very expensive. Three frames with a few other tools cost me almost $200.

But I think it worths the investment.... Just got this from an auction:



The second thing I'd do is to see the Louis Comfort Tiffany exhibition at the SAM. Again, the exhibition will soon be over so I'll need to catch it.

3

Three things I've done without regret in 2005:

1. Moving into this house
I've been complaining all the troubles of being a house owner, but this sense of ownership is helping me to become a more responsible person =).... at least doing clean up regularly (I have yet to work on the ungly lawn).

2. Stepping back from the relationship
It's a difficult decision... but for a long time we both were suffering from it--at lesat not fully enjoy the relationship. We all need a better life together with the right one.

3. Taking a break and be with the family
Too bad we missed Simon in the birthday celebration with dad, but it's not easy to get the entire family to get together. It's such a blessing from Him that my parents are still very healthy.

The MS05-054 patch has a bug in it that crashes our software... and apparently it affects other companies too.

The Ice Hotel, Jukkasjarvi, Norrland, Sweden

Was having dinner with a couple of friends tonight and we talked briefly about my trip to Sweden. At first I planned to just stay at a hostel and will spend the time there as thrifty as possible... but then my friend mentioned the Ice Hotel....



I went home and figured out that it's actually quite expensive to stay in the Hotel. The cheapest one costs SKE 2500, around USD$315 that is $100 less than my plan ticket. The rooms that have skylights for people to watch aurora costs around USD $350.

Sigh... I probably can't afford it. But I will definitely visit it, at least going to The Ice Church:



And visit the cool Abosolute Icebar--they keep the bar at -5'c all the time and the glasses they use are all made with pure ice!




I finally started to seriously read this book, and found it quite useful since their description of the hotel is pretty concise.

When will I be able to see all the remaining 999 places before I die?

First day of work after Christmas

As expected, the office is super quiet. I wasn't so sure what I was doing for the entire day... but I did deploy some stuffs ;) A very inefficient work day today.

The year end celebration event wouldn't have a lot of people joining. I guess most of us will be out of town... But frankly, big group celebration isn't that attractive to us all. For one thing, we're mostly doing the same thing again and again: Dinner, singspiration, games, sharing, prayer, etc--one formula fits it all.

*sigh*

Does being older mean having less and less creativity?

I went by the Samuel fellowship a couple of times to pick up Ho Gor, and looks like they have the best refreshment--and pretty fancy too. The English fellowships always have something that smells great.

What about us?

Dated leftover.... chips.

Who prepared that?

Hum....

Getting ready for the Scandinavia trip

Just bought a ticket to Stockholm from SAS for less than $500 (I think this is a very good price.... going back to Toronto costs me more than $400 already) and I'll be off to the Scandinavia for about a week in March. I know... the weather is going to be below freezing point at the end of March there, but the ticket requried me to complete the trip by then.

This is the first time I'll be in that part of the world, and the first time traveling solo ..... An experienced friend warned me to be careful :-| The itineary hasn't been finalized yet, but most likely I'll take an overnight ferry to Tallinn after staying at Stockholm. Looks like this former Soviet city is pretty calm politically, as of today...

Yup, I need to be careful, and get myself prepared. I have already started searching for books on solo traveling. Here's what I have tagged so far.

I also need to learn some Swedish quick, so I bought this book:

I heard that the Pimsleur approach to learning a language is pretty effective. A friend of mine is trying out the German series and apparently it seems to be working -- at least he is speaking single words of German every once in a while.

Midnight mass

It's the first time I'd ever been to a mass. We went to the St James cathedral at around 11.30 and it was already fully packed so we need to stand--and we stood for two hours! Since there were a lot of people standing in front of me, I can't really see what's going on on the "stage". But looks like they have posted some pictures here.

The chanting sounded pure and unique. Not only the voices from the great choir created this spiritual atmosphere, the silence took an important place too.

tiramisu!

I'm going to try out this recipe!!!

Neatness

(A) says:
1. neatness is a norm that most people are expected to follow
(A) says:
2. my question was: under the premise that guys follow the neatness norm, would girls evaluate guys who are "more" neat favourably
(A) says:
3. the question is why some people are so neat:
(A) says:
I mean people who are more neat than the norm "requires"
(A) says:
4. maybe it's a desire to modify one's surroundings to his/her liking
(B) says:
you should start a blog
(A) says:
i have 3 blogs
(A) says:
5. maybe it's an expression of one's identity
(A) says:
nvm

So many good news!

Wow! two of my co-workers joined the newly wed family! And a good friend of mine just became a father last night at 8pm!!!

As for myself... the project is finally set for beta test ;)

DYI Noguchi style lampshade

Not quite Noguchi style, but more like an Ikea one ;)

Read more here