Everyday Memories

Kinda, sorta, worry

2012-01-25T11:17:00.001-05:00

Nathan slept 10 hours last night! Well, he did cry for 5 minutes at 12:30pm or so just like the night before but went back to sleep. That's two long stretches of sleep in a row, and not because he just had needles (those will come tomorrow). Not that this is a cause for celebration, since I know that unless something happens for at least a week, it's not really a habit. In any case, I quite enjoyed my longer sleeps and not feeling so zombie like when I wake up in the mornings.

You know what they say about new parents, they always worry. And in some ways, I do find that to be true. It's not necessarily a can't-fall-asleep-worry, as much as it's a I-wonder-if-this-is-normal-worry. Like yesterday, when I saw his sleep count, I had that I-wonder-if-this-is-normal-worry. I know one should never complain that their baby sleeps too much, but when you see 20 hours...good thing it's only 16.5. :)

Nathan seems to have also gotten his Daddy's cough. It started with a few coughs a few days ago, and now it's more frequent. :( There's probably nothing that I need to give him or else Steve would have said something already but you know, it's still something you think about. Luckily, there's a doctor's appointment tomorrow so he can get checked out. I know, technically there's one at home too but haha, some independent investigation doesn't hurt.

But it is true that he's eating, he's sleeping, he's pooping, so everything is okay. :) Yay, he's up from his nap, let me see if he'll be more playful today.

Sleepy bear

2012-01-24T23:26:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: So it turns out that we double counted one of his sleeps since Steve and I both stopped the sleep timer separately. So his actual sleep count yesterday was 16h38m. Whew!

Take a look at the total sleep count for today. 20h20m and counting...REALLY!?!?

Nathan looked sleepy yesterday all day too. I figured it's because he's trying to catch up sleep from our roadtrip. He usually sleeps around 15 hours, and was hovering between 13/14 on the trip. His sleep count yesterday was 15h52m, so I figured he should be less sleepy today. Nope. Still sleepy, if not more. At least he's still eating. That's the only thing he's been doing really, sleep & eat. We tried to play with him but he gets tired quickly. I'm hoping this is his way of gaining some chubbs in preparation for his 4 month weigh in but I highly doubt it.

I have this theory that Nathan is thoughtful only to his Daddy. There's been 2 or 3 times where Steve agrees to give him the bottle so I can sleep earlier or not have to wake up at night and ALL of these times, he has long sleeps. Now, considering that he usually wakes up every 2-3 hours, if not 4, how is it possible that he just "happens" to sleep longer when Daddy is going to feed? Last night, Steve was going to feed him since I was tired from the night before. Nathan slept at 8pm until 12:40am. While the bottle was being prepared (I woke up from him waking up), he went back to sleep....for another 4.5 hours! I guess he's being good and knows that Daddy has to work so decides to not wake Daddy up. I say, Daddy should give a bottle every night. ;)

Still need to back post a few entries missing photos, but will do that later. Going to get ready for bed while he's still sleeping.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Our first road trip!

2012-01-18T11:42:00.000-05:00

Nathan went out of the country for the first time yesterday, to the not so far city of Buffalo. :) Steve had this week off and we decided to see what it would be like to travel with Nathan by taking a short road trip with him. We will be spending 3 nights here and another night at the grandparents' on the way home. Long enough to mimic what a longer vacation would be like. Short enough for a good experiment. But most importantly, close enough to home so that if anything were to happen, we could always just change our plans and go home.

The Car Ride
This actually was pretty easy since we stopped off to lunch with Grandma on the way to Buffalo. Nathan napped in the car on the way. Mommy, Daddy and baby were fed before we completed the rest of our journey. Considering that the trip from the grandparents' to the hotel was only one hour, we did not drive far at all. We synced up our car journey to when Nathan's naps were so that made things much easier too and he pretty much slept the entire time we were driving. We will try to do this again on our way back.

Sleep
We try to make sure he still gets enough sleep and gets his naps but of course, we threw off his schedule a bit with us going out. Yesterday, we decided to not go out for dinner and just order in pizza (not that that is a compromise by any means since Steve was looking forward to eating Papa John's pizza). We already went out and about to do some shopping after we got here so he was already sleeping later than usual. Going out for dinner was just asking for trouble. We purposely chose a one bedroom suite hotel for our stay complete with a full kitchen. The two areas are separated by a door so we were able to put him in his pack & play to sleep in the bedroom while we ate dinner and watched TV in the sitting area. When he woke up for his feed, we pushed the pack & play back out to the main area so we could prepare for bed without disturbing him. This has worked really well so far. Overall his first night sleeping was okay, waking up every 3 hours to feed just like at home. He cried a bit to go back to sleep each time but at least he was okay falling asleep by himself.

Now that we are traveling with a little one, we also made adjustments to our schedule during the day so as not to disturb his sleep too much. Like right now, he's napping and we're just chilling in the hotel until he wakes up. We plan on going out for the rest of the day until after dinner, so we might as well let him get his total sleep count somewhat decent first. :)

Gear
It's a good thing we have an SUV, because we had so much of Nathan's gear to bring along. I already tried to pack light, but light only meant everything fit and we had a little room to buy stuff. We found out the morning we left that the hotel we were staying at also offers pack & plays for guests, but we already brought our own, which I think I still prefer since they said that they weren't a guarantee. The stroller and the pack & play already take up a good chunk of cargo space. We also brought along Nathan's portable rocking chair so he'd have somewhere to sit instead of just lying in the playpen all day or need to be held by us. Nathan had his own little bag of clothes, a big bag with a pack of his diapers, toys, blanket, playpen sheets, wipes, and a few extra things like paper towels, tissues, garbage bags for the stay and car ride. All this stuff, and we haven't even gotten to our own stuff. When we pushed our luggage into the hotel on those luggage carts, it seemed like we were moving in! But in reality, it really wasn't that much once you take it off the cart and use the stuff.

I brought one long sleeve onesie, one short sleeve onesie, and one sleeper for each day we were gone, with the usual backups in the diaper bag. He also had 2 pairs of pants, a thicker sweater, a thin sweater, and a snowsuit. I thought it might have been a bit of an overkill but I didn't really want to risk him leaking onto this clothes and us not having clothes for him or needing to do laundry. It was a good thing I brought enough clothes, he's already on his 3rd sleeper of the day!

Nathan's up! Will write more later.

Oh...and happy 4 months Nathan! We will celebrate with a good dinner tonight. ;)

3 Months(ish) Update

2011-12-30T15:44:00.000-05:00

Nathan didn't have a 3 month visit to the doctor's so there were no stats to do any updates until now. We weighed him on Christmas at Steve's parents. My little guy is still a lightweight but he continues to grow steadily in length. I realized this week that while I had gone shopping to get him 3-6 months "going out" clothes, I don't really have any 3-6 month sleepers for him to wear at home. He's outgrowing his current sleepers and they just fit. Luckily, there's 20% off sale at Carter's this week so I was able to get some sleepers for him. I find Carter's clothes fit Nathan really well. Long and slim. :)

Height: 60cm (+2cm)
Weight: 11lbs 8oz (+1lb 6oz)
No head circumference data.

He can probably gain more weight but since I can't really force him to eat more than he already does, I guess he'll just continue to be a lightweight for now. My arms are quite happy with that.

We started to keep track of Nathan's schedule a few days after he turned 2 months using this app called Baby Connect. It's a $4.99 app from the App Store, which in the app world in quite expensive, but I've been extremely happy with it. The main reason I chose this one is because it also has a web interface so you don't necessarily need a smart phone to log events. So why bother logging everything you ask?

I bought it originally to log his sleep so I could better understand his schedule and see if he is getting enough sleep. Many books recommend keeping a sleep log to see if the things you're doing for sleep training is working. Pencil and paper logging wasn't really appealing so naturally I searched for an app to do this for me. :) I get a timeline view of Nathan's day so that I can easily see what his natural pattern is. I honestly never thought I'd be one of those moms who log everything, but it does have cool, geeky benefits.

For example, I can get random stats like:

December Totals
460h26m of sleep
202 diapers (136 poopy)
28h38m of total feeds excluding bottles
I also use it to keep track of the weight, height, and head size and it automatically computes the percentile for me and plots it on the curve. :) We also use it to track milestones and vaccines for future reference purposes. The best part though, is that multiple people can do updates. Both Steve and I have the app on our phones and my dad who's been the person who helps me most, also logs the events on the computer. When Steve and I are out on a date, I no longer have to call home to see how Nathan is doing. Yay push notifications. :) It really makes going out much less worrisome. My dad tells me he intends to continue to track Nathan's progress after he returns to Hong Kong. :) They're in Ottawa right now, and I'm sure he logs on everyday to see whether Nathan is sleeping well. :P I get no commisions or perks for singing this app praises, but I do think it's a good app to use if you're looking for something to log events for sleep training, etc.

UPDATE: As Relgar made me realize, I guess it is easier to understand what the app does with some screen shots. :)

Now of course, having the app doesn't make the baby sleep well. Despite my efforts in getting Nathan to sleep better, we have still have good days and quite a few bad days. Some days he doesn't nap well, other nights he still wakes frequently. But at the very least, I know when he's low on his total sleep count from a previous day and I try to get him to sleep more to catch up the next day. Overall though, Nathan is a much more smiley baby this month. He's still super happy in the morning and loves it when you talk to him.

He also started showing that he has preference. We have been feeding him a bottle a day since he was about 3 weeks old in the hopes that he won't reject the bottle when he's older. Despite all that, he started making a fuss whenever we give him the bottle. He definitely prefers me but if he refuses the bottle, he goes hungry until he accepts the bottle. Mommy still wins eventually but ah, the battle of the wills has begun. This month, I had to start paying more attention to the things that I do to make a conscious effort to develop a good routine for him.

Nathan is still not a big fan of toys. If there are people around, he'd much rather stare at faces than play with any of his toys. Most of the time, the toys I've taken out for him just sit on the sidelines. He does however, like this one toy that Auntie Amy bought him. He can grab it easily with his hands and has gotten really good with grabbing onto it for prolonged periods of time. He can bat at all the toys hanging from his play gym now and even use both his hands and legs to try to hit all the hanging objects at once! He also got much better at tummy time and we stopped having to support his neck when we carry him around. We tried sitting him in the bumbo but he's still a bit short for it. He still rolls from tummy to back off and on, but not necessarily every day. He stares at his hands often before he falls asleep and on his bouncy chair, and recently also at his feet.

Staring at his feet. He looks chubby in this picture (Carter's clothes :P).

Hand in mouth default position on the change table.

Lounging on the bumbo.

Happy 100 Days Nathan!

2011-12-29T19:54:00.000-05:00

Nathan turned 100 days on Tuesday. We also had our first big snow storm of the season on Tuesday. We didn't do much to celebrate since I wanted Nathan to catch up on his sleep but we did trek out to check out washers and dryers for our new house since the Boxing Day sales were on this week. We ate an early dinner at Congee Queen and came home before it got too crazy out there. We did our night time routine and Nathan was sleeping by 7pm.

To make up for the lack of cake on Tuesday, we had cake the next day. Nathan was actually sleepy by the time Daddy got home so we had to quickly take a picture with him and put him to bed. :P It's a coconut cream cake to commemorate the big snow storm on Nathan's 100 Day Birthday.

I'm so glad you're sleeping better again little guy and back to your happy self! Despite the lack of sleep and a few days with lots of crying, your smile and seeing you grow everyday makes us forget all of that. Thank you for 100 wonderful days sweetie. We love you!

Huge Price to Pay

2011-12-27T21:26:00.001-05:00

No, this post is not about some expensive item that we bought on Boxing Day. There was no shopping to be had on Boxing Day, and no sleep for that matter. Yesterday is hands down the most painful day we've had as parents since Nathan was born.

Nathan was colic yesterday.

I usually want to avoid using that term on Nathan, since he usually isn't that bad. But yesterday, it was just one long painful day.

In his defense, Nathan wasn't actually colic, he was over tired. Waaay over tired. He was so tired, he couldn't fall asleep.

It all started early Christmas morning, he didn't sleep so well that night and was awake for a whole hour between 3-4am. Christmas morning we had to get ready for church and it was a Christmas joint service in the main building i.e. we weren't able to sit in the quiet nursery like we usually do for English service. Nathan ended up missing his morning naps and was awake from 8am til 12:45pm when we finally got him down for a nap near the end of service.

Our first mistake, we let him sleep in the car seat for a full four hours that afternoon. We thought since he missed so much sleep in the morning, he needed to sleep longer. In hindsight, that ended up messing up his sleep schedule for the rest of the day.

We brought a playpen and even his sleep sac to Steve's parents for Christmas dinner in the hopes that he would be able to sleep while we were there. Our second mistake was that we put him in the library downstairs where you could pretty much hear everything that's going on in the house. Nathan fought being put to bed hard, and when I finally got him to sleep, he only slept for less than 10 minutes. :( Next time we know to put him upstairs where it is quieter. He didn't end up sleeping until 10pm when we had him in the car seat ready to go home.

His sleep that night continued to be poor. He woke up at 4am and didn't go back to sleep until 5:30am. I was so tired trying to get him to sleep that I had to wake Steve up to take over. When he finally slept, he only slept 42 minutes.

Then the neverending story of sleeplessness began.

Nathan fought loud and hard every time we tried to put him down to nap. And when he finally did out of exhaustion, only napped for 20 minutes only to be up again. He looked so tired and we were all exhuasted but the crying would begin before his head even touched the bed. He was tired enough to nap for an hour at 1pm, but the battles resumed pretty much right afterwards.

Luckily my brother came over yesterday afternoon so at least there were 3 of us trying to get him to sleep. By 6pm, we were exhausted and I took out the swaddle because at this point, I just wanted him to sleep so I could sleep. He slept for an hour, woke up to feed, we did our bedtime routine and put him back in the swaddle.

Nathan then slept 10.5 hours. God answers prayers.

We didn't do our job in guarding Nathan's sleep and we paid a huge price. We resolved to never let this happen again even if that meant changing our own schedules just so he could nap.

I made sure Nathan napped regularly today and thankfully was able to get him to sleep back in his sleep sac with very little cry or fight. We started our sleep routine a little earlier tonight at 6:30pm so he could catch up on sleep. No fighting and almost no crying, he fell asleep at 7pm. He did wake up 30 min. later when the sleep sheep stopped (lesson learned: turn down the volume in the evening) but I was able to soothe him back to sleep within 2-3 minutes.

Whew.

I'm glad you're back to your happy self again Nathan in time for your 100 Day Birthday! We'll have cake tomorrow because sleep is more important than cake.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T15:32:00.000-05:00

Having been pregnant and having Nathan this year gives me added insight into the nativity story. I can't imagine travelling 10 hours on a mule while 39 weeks pregant. Nor can I imagine delivering Nathan in a stable and wrapping him in a manger.

It also makes me ask questions about things I never thought of. I wonder if Baby Jesus was colicky? or fussy?

Interestingly enough, I no longer feel the anticipation for Christmas like I once did. Perhaps it's because I know all the gifts I receive will just be for Nathan. :P Or because there's no such thing as sleeping and waking up Christmas morning because I would have been up two or three times by then. I do however, feel super blessed to have Nathan spend Christmas with us, and that's enough.

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones!

Week 12 and lessons learned

2011-12-15T22:49:00.001-05:00

Nathan is fast approaching three months when he's supposed to start sleeping longer, when colic ends (though I would only classify him as only an occasionally colicky baby), and he can interact with us more. It's also the end to the period when books say you can actually start spoiling a baby with the things you do. Now we really gotta watch what we are doing!

Nathan's sleep has its ups and downs. He slept 5-7 hours at night last week, but went back to waking 2.5-3 hours this week. He's back up to close to 5 hour stretches again last night.

I've learned that the only thing that is predictable is that he's not predictable. :)

Having him wake up at night to feed isn't all bad. He usually falls back asleep right away and I get to stare at him and enjoy holding him in the still and quietness of night.

I've learned to really treasure every moment I have with him, even when I'm really tired.

Nathan now smiles big smiles when you smile at him. He's happiest in the morning, right after his 7 or 8 am feed. He 'talks' really loud and loves it when someone is there to chat with him. He giggles spontaneously, particularly on his change table. I really have no idea why he's always happy when we lay him there. I don't even have to change him necessarily, but he's happy. I guess he likes being clean but mostly I think he just likes the fact that we look at him and are interacting with him.

I've learned that the most important thing I can give Nathan is my time.

Nathan started staring at his hands intently last week. He'd lie on his crib and just stare at his hand before getting sleepy. He'd wake up and stare at his hands. He started sucking on his hands instead of doing tummy time last week (sneaky!) These past few days, he learned to bring hand to mouth with precision and sucks on his thumb, fingers, knuckles, or fist as if it was the yummiest food in the world making loud satisfying sucking sounds and all! He has also learned to reach out and bat at the toys hanging from his play gym. The sweetest of all though, is that if your hand happens to be near his hand when he's lying down, he reaches for it. He really likes being touched and stroked. My heart melts every time he does this.

I've learned that even the littlest things your child does can bring the greatest joy.

I told my friends years ago that I didn't know if I want to have kids because then all the presents I'd get for any occasion would be really gifts for the kids. Indeed this is true. Never before has there been this many presents underneath my Christmas tree, and they're all for Nathan.

I've realized that I actually don't mind.

Super cheese, but having Nathan is already my biggest gift.

I must give Nathan a hundred kisses everyday. I don't know if this constitute spoiling but I have decided that I don't care. :)

Sleep Training Part 1

2011-11-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

Nathan always seem to have one off day around the time he turns the next month. We had one when he turned one month where I was pretty much up all night and only slept 1-2 hours. We had another one of these nights on Saturday night. The worse part about these nights is that no one is a happy camper the next day cos' we're all so tired, Nathan included.

Sleep hasn't been Nathan's strongest skill. He wakes up every 2-3 hours and fights to be put to bed at night. This can't continue forever. So we started reading a book on sleep recommended by one of our close friends - Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. I was eager to see what I could do to help Nathan sleep better. I haven't read through the book yet but here are a few things I've learned so far:

Watch out for signs of drowsiness.
This has been the single most helpful thing so far. Paying attention to when Nathan starts getting drowsy and putting him to bed has resulted in less battles before bedtime. This also helped us realize that he actually needed to go to bed earlier, around 8pm, instead of the 11pm we used to do.
No more than one to two hours of wakefulness.
Babies cannot handle more than one to two hours of being awake. This goes hand in hand with the first point but it helped to use this as a general rule of thumb so we could better understand what Nathan's signs of drowsiness were.
Guard his sleep.
As parents, we are responsible for guarding Nathan's sleep. Since he's still young, the Dr. Weissbluth reassured us that we should do whatever it takes to sooth Nathan to sleep. I thought I had to start sleep training him and let him cry it out. So far now, we do what we need, including swaddling, to get Nathan to sleep whenever he's tired.

The result?

I've noticed that Nathan's a much happier baby than he was previously. He's most happy in the early morning, smiling lots right after his early morning feed. The best thing though that's come out of all this is that there's no longer a werewolf period!

I went to an infant sleep workshop yesterday. Most of the information covered were similar to what I'm reading in the book. The videos we watched also said not to start sleep training (i.e. let cry, gradual cry, etc.) until at least after 3 months. Phew! However, one thing I learned was that babies under 1 years of age need to have 14-15 hours of sleep a day. Nathan is not quite there yet...he's at 13ish hours but we'll get there.

At least we're seeing some progress so I'm encouraged to continue.

It's very very quiet..

2011-11-25T05:58:00.000-05:00

I'm lying in bed listening to the sounds that Nathan makes while sleeping. :) I can't sleep anymore because I've already slept 6.5 hours, the first time I've had such a long stretch since Nathan was born. And Nathan is still sleeping!

He was actually quite fussy last evening. We put him down for a nap after we ate dinner and he just kept waking back up. He was clearly tired but just couldn't stay asleep, so back to the swaddle it was. Even then, he only napped for 40 minutes.

He was on a feeding frenzy though. He couldn't last more than 2.5 hours before wanting to eat yesterday and ate every 1.5 hours from 6pm. Well, I guess it was storage for his now very long sleep...7.5 hours and counting!

Steve's alarm is going off now...

I was actually lamenting last night how I haven't had a long stretch of sleep since Nathan was born. Well, I guess the little guy decided to be nice to his mommy. It's probably just for one night. :)

Thanks Nathan!

Happy 2 months!

2011-11-19T00:18:00.001-05:00

I really need to get going with those pictures to back post. Update: Nathan's now past 3 months and I still don't have this up. :P

Today is Nathan's two month birthday. For some reason, he seems to be more grown up today than yesterday. We took him for his two month checkup yesterday and he also got his first immunizations. Poor baby. :( He was really good though and went back to sleep after a feed at the doctor's. Nathan hasn't put on that much weight but gained a lot of height in comparison. His weight is only 19th percentile, compared to height being 50th percentile. So nice of you Nathan to be considerate of Mommy's arms.

Head measurement: 39cm

This picture makes me laugh for some reason. :)
Weight: 10 lbs 2 oz - yes, he's a lightweight!
Length: 58cm

Yum...sugary drugs (Rotarix)

Getting his first shots. :(

We had tickets to see Lang Lang yesterday night and wondered whether it was wise to go out on the night after he gets his first shots but my parents assured us they would be fine. I had been looking forward to that concert since the day we got the tickets! Steve and I enjoyed a nice Thai dinner before the concert. Lang Lang's touch on the piano seem so effortless yet magical. I know many people are fans of Lang Lang and while I really enjoyed the music, find him a bit too dramatic. The TSO also played Beethoven's Symphony #7 last night. Sooo good! Reminds me of why he is still my favorite composer.

Despite enjoying our first date night out that was more than just eating dinner, I kept thinking off and on about how Nathan was doing. I couldn't help it but called home to check to see how he was doing twice. I was actually quite tired by the time we got home. I fed Nathan and put him to bed though that did take a little while. We finally all went to sleep at 12:30pm and I was all ready to have a sleepless night since his shots might bother him.

I woke up at 5:15am wondering why I had slept so long!! Nathan always wake up every 3 hours to eat at night. The last time he did 5 hours at night was when he was 3 weeks old. He finally started waking up at 5:25am. I fed him and he went right back to bed. :) Me on the other hand, I struggled to go back to sleep from 5:45-6:15 at which point I guess I fell asleep shortly afterwards.

Next thing I knew, Nathan was waking up to be fed again. I looked at the clock. 8:45am! 5+3. Can't complain.

Went out with my parents for dim sum today. We then went to No Frills and then Markville. I brought a bottle along with me for Nathan but nope...he decided to sleep the entire time! He didn't eat for 6.5 hours. I wonder if that means tonight will be rough. He did decide to catch up on all his missed meals by eating every 2 hours since we got home. He even wanted to eat at the 1.5 hour mark in the late afternoon. So we did some tummy time to distract him.

Nathan's been rolling over a few times since that first time he rolled over when he was 5 weeks old. Mostly it happens when he's agitated like that time. Two nights ago, he rolled over 3 times in a row!! First time took me by surprise since he rolled when I wasn't paying attention! The second time I was trying to see if he could do it again. The third time happened so fast that I couldn't get my phone fast enough. Of course when I get my phone ready for a fourth roll, he's too tired and refuses to perform. :P

Those 3 rolls were on our bed which I think is a little easier for him since it has more give than on his playmat. So I was wondering if he might be able to use his new found skill on his playmat. A very interesting video was the result. :) I guess the little guy does know what he needs to do to roll afterall. Lean head, kick leg.

So proud of you little guy!!

Week 8: Swaddle Me Retired?

2011-11-15T22:46:00.001-05:00

I haven't swaddled Nathan to sleep since Saturday now and he seems to not be missing it. Perhaps I can retire the Swaddle Me's? I was originally a bit worried that he'd wake himself up after waking up to feed without the swaddle at night but it seems he can just go back to sleep. :) Yay!

Nathan's now 8 weeks old. We weighed him at G&K's place with a kitchen scale again last Friday night. He's 9lbs 14oz and 56cm now. 3lbs up from birth weight though still very much a shrimp. Still in the 20 something percentile. He's still eating every 2-3 hours, though tonight he's been eating every 1.5 hours. Not sure why he's so hungry. Oh he just woke up to eat again (well at least it's close to 2 hrs this time). Will continue this later.

(a few days later...)

Okay, so the comment about retiring the swaddle? I take that back. We had a lot of trouble transferring him from our arms to the bed without his arms flailing and waking him up, so we had to put him back in the swaddle. Ah well. I guess we'll try again in a few days.

New location, no swaddle

2011-11-12T09:27:00.001-05:00

(I have all these previous posts queued up waiting for pictures and haven't gotten around to adding them yet. Will backpost them later.)

We tried allowing Nathan to sleep without being swaddled in his crib again last night.

We tried last week with limited success. He would wake up every 1.5 to 2 hours. The room wasn't prepped for feeding properly with just a plastic chair. Added to that, my shoulder and neck muscles were killing me. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper either.

We kept him in the bassinet for the rest of the week and tried again last night. Nathan slept from 10:30pm to 1:45am. Woke up to eat and was able to fall back asleep soon after. It was only 2am when I went back to bed! Unfortunately this is where it went downhill for me. I also went to sleep at 10:30pm but was unable to fall asleep. :(

Fast forward to 4am. Nathan wakes up again for a feed. I'm still up and haven't slept. He still goes back to sleep on his own but takes a little longer to settle and stay asleep.

4:45am Steve and I are now both wide awake at this point. Sigh. And now hungry. Luckily my mom made noodles and kept a stock in the fridge. We munched on it happily.

5:40am Back to bed. I am still lying there wondering why I'm so awake.

6:00am Nathan wakes up to eat again. He's sleeping progressively less and less between feeds. I'm up anyway so I go feed him. Nathan also able to fall asleep on his own and did not take too long to settle! Afterwards it's only then that I could sleep.

7:30am Nathan wakes up crying. Me, super tired now and therefore convinced it must only be a dirty diaper. Steve volunteers to check and it was. Whew! I pass out a this point.

8:30am Nathan acted like he was hungry but didn't eat much and subsequently went into crazy werewolf mode with lots of crying and kicking. Back to the swaddle.

Turns out he was just tired and couldn't settle.

I think it went better but definitely lots of room for improvement. I need to learn the fall asleep quickly from him. And he needs to stay asleep longer. And maybe not go into crazy werewolf mode.

He's passed out next to me now. Think I'll go catch up on some sleep too.

- Posting from iPhone

Nathan: Week 7

2011-11-08T10:05:00.001-05:00

Nathan is still feeding every 2.5-3 hours for most of the day and having his "werewolf period" of fussiness from 9-1am. Well, since daylight savings time, it seems it's only to 12ish now. :) It takes him a long time to settle during this period but aside from that, he's pretty calm for the rest of the day. He's definitely a "show baby" and makes everyone thinks that he's an angel by sleeping or being really calm through most of outings.

He passes gas a lot, and they're sometimes quite loud, to the point where I'm surprised such a loud fart can come out of such a little guy!

His bowels must also be working well and quite efficiently I must say since he has what it seems like gazillion poopy diapers per day. I sometimes wonder whether he needs to eat often because he poops so often. This past Saturday, he managed to poop twice in his bath water (I had to change the water of course.) and then subsequently went through another 2 diapers after eating. 7 bowel movements, 4 diapers and 3 baths all in the span of 30 minutes. I would have never thought before having Nathan that I would actually not be too grossed out seeing poo poo come out of a baby. I was more concerned with getting Nathan out of the water to keep him clean.

He still doesn't pay much attention to the toys above his playmat or bouncy chair buy Nathan certainly is fascinated by lights. He is happily entertained, for a short little while only, staring at the lights on the ceiling.

He also started making noises more this week. I have no idea whether he is trying to communicate something or it's just noises but it's really cute! Little Nathan also started smiling during his awake moments this week. Sometimes it's a grin with wide eyes, and sometimes it's a smile with no eyes. He finally cooperated this morning by smiling while I was taking a picture and video taping him!

The day has come...

2011-11-04T00:47:00.000-04:00

I took Nathan for an infant massage session today! It's actually more like me booking a session so that I can learn how to give him a massage. The RMT showed me what to do on a doll while I massaged Nathan. To my surprise and delight, he really seemed to enjoy it! Not so much when we were doing the tummy part (so we'll skip that for now), but definitely the arms and legs. He was so enjoying it that it was like he was in a trance. It's a really good bonding activity and even Steve the skeptic came out saying he'll tell his patients to try out infant massage for their fussy babies. I don't think Nathan is that fussy really but let's see if he'll sleep longer tonight. Update: Nope! He didn't sleep longer but it still is a really nice bonding activity.

Anyway, what this post is really about is that the day has come when I have to retire some of Nathan's clothes!! :( Someone told me when Nathan was born that I would feel a little sad the day I would have to put away the clothes he no longer fits in. I totally understand now. I tried to fit him in his blue dino sleeper (the one he wore with his 1 month cake) after bathing him tonight and the legs were too short for him. I really liked him in that sleeper too. Sigh. He also had this one sleeper that opened on the bottom that made him look like a little wizard (think Mickey from Fantasia) when he wore it in the hospital. Not only does he not look like a wizard, he looks like he is wearing capris when we button it into pants now.

I guess this is my first taste of what being a parent watching their child grows up feels like. I am sure there will be many more bittersweet moments to come.

Growing up too fast!

2011-11-03T23:20:00.000-04:00

The books I read said that sometimes babies will seem as if they grew overnight. I definitely noticed Nathan suddenly being bigger this week. His head is bigger, his face a little chubbier and his legs longer. The 0-3 month clothes that were too big for him last week and just got into rotation are now just slightly roomy. Today I noticed that he's also getting to the point where he'll have to be moved out of the bassinet soon. I took advantage of the nice weather and went out for what is probably his last stroll in the bassinet. I enjoyed the walk with my parents so much that I forgot to take a picture!

Nathan's almost the full length of the bassinet!

Is it strange to think that my little boy is growing up too fast? I've already caught myself saying "when he was younger" a few times already to the strange looks of people. I replayed the videos and pictures I took of him when he was just a week old and think, he's so much bigger now! I know, it's great that he's growing, I don't take that for granted at all. But sometimes I just wish time will pass a little slower so I can just treasure each of his looks, his sounds, the way he feels in my arms a bit more.

Brutal Night

2011-10-23T18:37:00.000-04:00

Last night was probably the worst night yet. Nathan was pretty much inconsolable from midnight to 4am. He seemed hungry but would only eat in spurts. Steve tried his best to take care of Nathan since my stomach wasn't feeling so well but by 4am, the constant crying has worn him out so I took over. From 4am onwards it wasn't constant crying thankfully, but it was waking up every hour. Perhaps Nathan is growing through a growth spurt?

I was so tired by the time we were supposed to wake up for church. Normally it would be okay to sleep in and skip this one week since we had a rough night except they were hosting a welcome reception for Nathan! So off to church we went. All those years of little sleep is coming in handy for these kind of days. This crazy mommy even went out for lunch with friends and a walk in a park with G&K afterwards. :P It was such a beautiful day! Sleep can be had when it's cold and wet. :) Or maybe in a few minutes from now....

Family picture at Mill Pond

There was one bright note in the midst of the drama last night. We put Nathan on his stomach since it helps calm him sometimes and also so that he could use all that energy he had for tummy time. He was so agitated that he managed to roll himself from his stomach onto his back! Definitely not a learned skill yet by any means but it was the one interesting moment in a night full of crying.

I am hoping it's a one off thing only and not something he will get into the habit of doing!

Happy 1 month Nathan!

2011-10-20T21:52:00.000-04:00

Nathan turned one month on Tuesday, also the day of his Daddy's birthday! To celebrate, Nathan's parents went out without him. :P It was our first real date night since Nathan was born and my parents were kind enough to watch Nathan for us so we could go our for dinner to celebrate Steve's birthday.

We were brave enough to venture out to Vaughan to eat at Grazie's, an Italian restaurant. (We considered going downtown for a bit but decided that might be too ambitious.) While we did talk about other things, more than half of our conversation was related to Nathan. I guess it is true that even if you're not with your kids, you still talk about them.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

On Wednesday, I organized a small surprise party with our small group. Since Steve went back to work this week I've been a bit bored. So naturally, I baked! Every year on Steve's birthday I make his birthday cake and figured, this year should be no exception. I did however hijack his cake a bit for Nathan. :) I also made a key lime pie (Steve's favourite!). Despite being tired from making the cake while trying to take care of Nathan at the same time, the party was a much needed social interaction opportunity for me. Since I am still recovering from the C-section and therefore not allowed to carry the car seat, I cannot go out with Nathan by myself yet. I also didn't realize how bored I would get without social interaction. Must plan my weeks better so that there is some activity for me too. Baking is nice, but I still don't get to talk to anyone.

My birthday boys. :)

Nathan's first fondant cake!

Nathan went for his 1 month checkup today. I feel like he's already so much bigger than when he was 10 days old but the numbers don't seem that much different. He still fits in his newborn clothes.

Weight: 8lbs11oz (6lbs13oz)
Length: 52.5cm (51.5cm at 10 day)
Head: 38cm (36cm at 10 day)

It's okay though. I secretly wish that Nathan won't grow up too fast so that I can enjoy him in this tiny state longer.

Happy 1 month birthday my little one!

Thanksgiving Weekend Outings Part 1: Dim Sum

2011-10-11T11:33:00.000-04:00

My sister was back in town for Thanksgiving so we all went out on the Friday to dim sum.

The hoodie was a bit too big for him, made him look a bit gangsta. :)

A very happy gangster. :)

The pants are still a bit too long. Nathan's toes stuck out of his pants. So cute!

Nathan was good for the most part at dim sum, awake but not crying. We took advantage of this opportunity to take some pictures.

Take 1: Nathan making funny faces at great grandma.

Take 2: Wait, great grandma isn't ready yet!

Take 3: Okay, good shot!

With great grandma and aunt Vania.

He started crying near the tail end since he too was hungry and he's the only one not eating. But all in all, not bad for a first time dim sum outing!

Thankful

2011-10-10T23:55:00.001-04:00

While we didn't have turkey today (we had it two weeks ago), we enjoyed a quiet and relaxing Thanksgiving today (yay afternoon naps!). There's always lots to be thankful for, but definitely more so this year.

Of course thankful for Nathan, for his safe delivery and good health. Thankful that he is eating well and growing. He looks so much bigger in the bassinet now.

Super thankful that Nathan has been sleeping well the past FOUR nights! He has given us his 5 hour stretch between 12-1am until 5-6am. It makes such a big difference to sleep during normal sleeping hours. Who knows what tonight will bring but thankful for the sleep we've been able to get.

Thankful for my parents who've been cooking and helping out around the house for us. Being parents now it definitely helps me appreciate even more what my parents did for me - all the time, energy, dedication and patience they put in to raise me.

Thankful for Steve who has been simply amazing during these past three weeks - well, I guess he always is :), but his support and encouragement have made a huge difference. I am going to miss having him home when he goes back to work next week though I am thankful we got the full four weeks of his time off to experience this special time together.

Thankful for family and friends who have shown their immense love and support to us this past year. I am always in awe of how fortunate we are to be blessed with so many people who love us.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

- Mobile Posting!

Not again!

2011-10-09T11:04:00.001-04:00

Our little guy tried to foil our attempts to go to church this week by multiple bowel movements and wetting his clothes. Not again!! He needs to learn from a young age that when his mom sets her mind on something, it happens :P and that yes, we will go to church on Sunday.

So here we are, on our way to church, even if we're a little late.

- Mobile Posting!

Steve Jobs - Changing the Way We Live

2011-10-07T14:16:00.000-04:00

Steve Jobs, the brain behind the Macintosh computer I grew up using in school, the genius who changed the way we listen to music and communicate, passed away this Wednesday. While I can't say I am a super Apple fan, at the end of the day I still think I'm a PC, but I do love the Apple gadgets that I have.

The best example is the device I'm using to type up this post, my iPhone. For the longest time I was convinced that I wanted a phone with a keyboard. After Steve (the hubby) got his iPhone, I realized that maybe I didn't need a physical keyboard. BB Torch didn't impress me much so I ended up getting an iPhone too. I guess the story wouldn't be that different had I got an Android phone, but to me, the first iPhone did revolutionize smart phones.

It's also changed the way I document my experience as a first time parent. While I carry a camera with me whenever we go out with Nathan, and I have a giant DSLR to pictures of at home, I have used my phone the most to take pictures of Nathan just because it's the most accessible.

The video of his first bath at the hospital was taken with my phone. I won't post that here since it's not PG. :)

Karate Chop!

Wide awake at 4am

Nathan "dancing" in his playpen

Huh? I'm so confused.

Sound asleep. :) He looks so grown up in this picture.
- Mobile Posting

Voting Day

2011-10-06T23:06:00.000-04:00

We took Nathan with us to go vote today for the Ontario Provincial Elections. Steve and I had a really nice walk with Nathan to the voting station and then to the shopping plaza near our house.

As we were walking into the voting station, we had this conversation:
Steve: This is the first time Nathan is going to vote.
Me: No, he can't vote until he's 18.
Steve: Wow, we'll be really old then. We'd be like 50!

It's really hard to imagine what Nathan will be like 18 years from now. What will our world be like? Hopefully he'll be a responsible (and going to vote!), law abiding citizen. But most of all I hope he'll be happy, healthy, and a man after God's heart.

What's in a name?

2011-10-05T22:10:00.000-04:00

Many people have asked us how we decided on our baby's name.

His full name is Nathan Daniel Zhiqian Chin - 陳智謙.

Nathan and Daniel were our top choices since April. We brainstormed names as we drove down to Washington D.C. and Steve and I agreed those two were our favourites. Since then we went through lists of other names and though we had ones we liked, those remained our top two picks. I had three preferences for a name: 1) I wanted a gender specific name i.e. you could tell it's a boy or girl from the name. 2) I wanted a name that had a common way of spelling it, unlike my name, which is not spelled correctly half the time. :P 3) I would like a biblical name. Both those names met all three criteria.

Nathan means God's gift, which resonated strongly with me since I very much felt that being able to have a baby was such a gift. It is also the name of one of Steve's close friends who he very much respects and looks up to.

Daniel means God is my Judge. It is one of my favourite prophets in the bible. It's also my dad's name. :)

In the end, we decided on Nathan because it won't be so confusing to call our baby at home, and we just knew too many Dans and Daniels.

For the Chinese name, we went with a Mandarin pinyin romanization since we couldn't quite figure out or agree on what the Cantonese romanization would be. My parents helped us come up with the Chinese name for Nathan. I chose the middle character 智, and my parents suggested 謙 as the last character.

智 means Wisdom. It's based on this story from 1 Kings 3:5-14.

5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”

6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.

7 “Now, LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. 11 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. 13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. 14 And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”

謙 means Humility. Humility is one of the greatest virtues a parent can teach their kids. I hope this is a virtue Nathan will have as he grows up.

Nathan: Week 2

2011-10-02T15:08:00.000-04:00

Nathan's second week was filled with many firsts for him and his mommy and daddy. :) Nathan started having the one 5-hour stretch between feeds which were much appreciated by us, but he also started fussing more at night. He sometimes stays wide awake after a feed in the middle of the night and does not go back to sleep until 7 or 8 in the morning. Good thing we're both not working right now and can sleep in.

My parents helped us watch Nathan on Monday so we could sneak out after a feed to go to Costco to pick up some stuff. I forgot how much easier it is to leave the house when it's just the two of us. It was so good for me to get out of the house and actually interact with the outside world. We also snacked on poutine. :P We got home and Nathan was still soundly sleeping.

On Tuesday we took Nathan out for his newborn photo session. Poor Nate was crying so much in the car on the way down because we were trying to hold off on feeding him until we got there. I felt like such a bad parent for starving my little guy. He did make up for the lack of eating by needing to be fed like 3 or 4 times while we were there. Good thing the photographer was super patient with him. On our way home, we stopped by Costco again (since we forgot to get some stuff on the day before). This time, we took Nathan in with us - his first shopping experience! He slept the entire shopping trip and the big storage compartment underneath our stroller made for a great shopping cart. :)

First Shopping Trip!

Nathan went for this 10-day doctor appointment on Wednesday. Unlike his first visit, he was SUPER cooperative during the entire visit and barely made a sound! He gained 8oz from his last visit and weighed 6lbs 13oz, just one ounce shy of his birth weight. It would have been nice if he had hit his birth weight but it's close enough.

Mid-yawn in the carseat.

6lbs 13oz (or 3.095kg)!

Picture with Dr. Singh

I was hoping to go shopping for some nursing tops after I stopped working during my week of vacation. But since Nathan came a bit early, that never happened. So on Thursday, we took Nathan shopping at Markville! I was never a big fan of malls before Nathan was born mostly because 1) I don't window shop 2) malls somehow make me tired and 3) I don't like crowds so I try to avoid the malls at all cost on the weekends. Shopping on a weekday on the other hand is a very pleasant experience and I can see now why my friends who are moms tell me I will love the mall after I have kids. There must have been a couple dozen strollers at the mall! I admit, it's awesome to just push the stroller around and not have to worry about cars or the weather. Nathan slept in his bassinet the whole time allowing Mommy to shop for clothes and Daddy to look at TVs. I think we'll be visiting the mall more often in the days to come. :)

Nathan's comfortable ride through the mall

Nathan unfortunately failed his hearing test in one ear when he was checked in the hospital so we had to take him back to for a re-test on Friday. So we made him study hard (or so Daddy says :P) and he passed his first test on Friday! To celebrate, uncles and aunties came over to visit Nathan and also help Steve set up our new TV (our old one died). It was so nice to just hang out with friends on a Friday night.The partying continued Saturday when Nathan attended his first house party to celebrate G&K's birthdays. Nathan slept pretty much the entire time that he was there allowing his parents to catch up with friends. Maybe he got jealous that we got to eat so much good food while we slept because he had another round of cluster feeding between 11pm-4am requiring feeds every 1-2 hours after we got home. Good thing he decided to sleep for 5 hours afterwards but we were so tired that we again didn't make it to church this week.

This second week has taught us that Nathan doesn't follow any of the "milestones" that we've been told about, e.g. when cluster feeding usually happens, when babies start getting colicky, etc. He runs on his own schedule, and we have learned to just adjust day to day.

I call it agile living. :P

Happy 1 Week Nathan!

2011-09-25T22:45:00.000-04:00

Nathan marked his one week milestone with us by fussing from 5am to 8am. He just wouldn't settle but also wasn't interested in eating. He needed a few diaper changes (read: this kiddo is getting expensive!) and in the end managed to go to sleep after his 8am feed, which also let us have a few hours of much needed sleep.

We celebrated his milestone by taking him out for a stroll around the neighbourhood. It really was more a treat for me since I haven't left the house since Wednesday and am starting to go a little nuts. It was a really nice afternoon and we just took Nathan out with the bassinet. He must have really enjoyed the ride because he continued sleeping the whole time. I'm loving our stroller. Aside from being a smooth ride for Nathan it's also like a walker for me. :P

Steve's family and paternal grandparents came for dinner tonight. Steve made ribs and corn on the cob (yum!!) and his mom made my favourites - turkey and lasagna. It was like celebrating Thanksgiving two weeks early. Too bad I don't have any pics on my camera since I had to feed Nathan mid-dinner.

I'm hoping tonight won't be as rough. Steve thinks otherwise. The lack of sleep from the first week is starting to catch up to me. I hope my body will adapt to this new sleeping schedule soon. I haven't seen these big eye bags underneath my eyes since my Eng Sci days.

First week with Nathan

2011-09-25T01:19:00.000-04:00

Nathan \n(a)-than\
Origin: Hebrew
Meaning: God has given or God's gift

It's hard to believe it's almost a week since Nathan was born. Last week at this time, I was in the hospital getting induced since my water broke in the morning. It feels just like yesterday. Looking back at the delivery process, I can see that God watched over us and we were blessed in so many ways. The induction process went well, I progressed quite rapidly, and I got my epidural early enough that I was able to sleep through most of the induction process.

At 7am, that's when everything went on fast forward. The OB on call just happened to come in to check on me. I was throwing up due to intolerance to the epidural drugs. At the same time, Nathan's heart rate dropped while the OB was checking on me. The OB tried to stimulate Nathan's heart rate but it wasn't responding. We went from waiting to push to prepping the OR for a C-section in a matter of minutes. I quickly got pushed through the halls and prepped for the operation. There seemed to be a whole army of nurses and doctors in the OR. The doctors and nurses were all really good with explaining to me what was happening. While I was disappointed that we had to do a C-section, any surgery at that point to make sure Nathan was okay was well worth it. The section only took 3.5 minutes and hearing Nathan's first cry was the most comforting sound in the world. Turns out, Nathan had nuchal cord times two! That was probably what prevented his head from descending and contributed to his dropping heart rate.

Aside from the OB coming in to check on me at the same time when Nathan's heart rate dropped, there were so many things for our hospital stay that just "worked out":
- The nurses change shifts at 7:30am so we just happened to have two set of nurses on hand for the emergency C-section, i.e. lots of help
- The unit in the hospital was relatively quiet when I got admitted and I ended up having a dedicated nurse for the induction and for the day right after Nathan was born. Both nurses were super attentive and caring and made the whole experience that much better despite the circumstances.
- We also got to stay in the birthing room for our entire stay in the hospital (which is nothing short of a miracle at Markham Stouffville).

A few minutes after Nathan was born

Post-op with Nathan

Nathan's "Stats" on the whiteboard in the room

We returned home on Tuesday afternoon and quickly got thrown into our new life as parents. The first day home was the toughest and full of lessons learned. We were paranoid that Nathan would have jaundice and forced him to feed every 2 hours after we got home. Nathan ended up wanting to eat every hour from 3-8am anyway so we were so exhausted by the time Wednesday morning rolled around. We had to get ready to take Nathan to go to his first doctor's appointment that afternoon that neither of us ate breakfast that morning. I seriously thought I was going to pass out during the check up because I was so exhausted. Nathan's check up was fine medically aside from him going into hysterics during the actual check up (sigh...so embarassing and not cooperative!). We rewarded ourselves with McDonald's on the way home and decided that we were going to switch game plans going forward.

Self-taken family photo before we left the hospital

Going home! All strapped in and ready to go.

Since then, I've smartened up (or at least I think so for now). We are feeding Nathan on demand with a 3-4 hour feeding schedule. So if he looks like he wants a feed or cries for a feed, he gets fed. Otherwise, we get him to eat around the 3-4 hour mark from the last feed. I start sleeping after dinner right after I feed Nathan in anticipation that he'd want frequent feeds at night. He's been relatively good to us and usually lets us sleep for two 2.5 hour periods at night so we don't feel like zombies anymore. Nathan's been feeding well so that has really helped. We'll see what he does tonight.

It's only been a week and though I can remember what life was like before Nathan was born (since that was just last week!), I already don't look forward to him growing up. I really treasure these days when Nathan is so small and tiny. Everyday he's getting heavier and his face is getting rounder. It is amazing how I can just stare at him and do nothing else. :)

Like an Igloo

2011-01-19T21:07:00.003-05:00

So our hot water heater valve starting having issues last night and the pipe coming from the valve started leaking water - constantly. We called the company and they can't service it until Thursday morning. So in all our wisdom of not really knowing how our hot water heater works, we decide to turn off the gas that goes to heat the water. The water didn't stop leaking but at least it leaked slower.

Fast forward to today and we come home. Our makeshift pipe made from a garbage bag is still directing the water to the drain and it looks like we'll survive until tomorrow morning, but the house feels really cold.

13.5 degrees!!!! Turns out, our hot water heater powers our furnace so all it's been doing is pumping cold water through - all day! My fingers are freezing as I type this.

In the meantime, we're going to play with our new toy (XBOX Kinect!) in this igloo.

Total Lunar Eclipse

2010-12-22T00:06:00.004-05:00

Stayed up to watch the total lunar eclipse last night. Usually the moon is too bright to see the stars around when it's full. The total eclipsed moon was a brilliant red and the stars were the perfect accessories to a beautiful scene.

Wedding & Snorkeling

2010-12-19T02:12:00.000-05:00

Who would have ever pictured a wedding and snorkeling in the same scene? On our second day in Maui, we went to a tiny public beach thinking that was where our friend had recommended us to go to spot turtles.

We did see turtles, but we also saw a small wedding take place on the beach! It was extremely small, maybe with 8 guests in attendance. The vendors - photographer, videographer, wedding planner, musicians, priest, etc. - probably doubled the wedding party size. While any place in Maui is picture perfect, it was really an odd place to have a wedding ceremony. I hope Steve and I don't show up in their wedding video walking in the backrground with our snorkel gear. :)

After our first snorkel site, we drove further south to find the actual spot that our friends had recommended. It's a natural reserve with a lot of fish!

Some pictures from snorkeling...

Warm Thoughts

2010-11-24T00:27:00.015-05:00

The weather has been interesting to say the least. Last night was foggy but warm. This morning was sunny and almost spring like. This evening as I left work, it was so windy I could barely walk straight. Winter's still coming.

I could totally go back to Hawaii right now! We never expected to enjoy Hawaii so much but there were so many things to do that our fear of just sitting on the beach and doing nothing never happened.

The first day we went in Hawaii, we did the Road to Hana drive. I'm glad we did it the first day since the drive itself, though not long distance wise, takes a long time because the roads are windy. We also packed our schedule so much every day afterwards that it would have been hard to convince ourselves to go on an 8 hour drive.

Start of our drive with Haleakala in the distance

The first part of the drive was rainy and foggy. I was afraid that the rest of the drive would be like this. Since our luggage had not arrived (it didn't make a connecting flight), there was nothing else to do but to continue, and I'm glad we did!
Steve got a lot of comments from other tourists on being Canadian. :P

We walked through this rainforest walk and saw lots of interesting plants and flowers, even some little creatures! The creatures liked me too and I ended up with 10 mosquito bites after that 20 min. walk!

It just goes to show perserverence gets rewarded because it got super sunny and beautiful!!

I can sit and watch these waves forever, but we had a long ways to go on the drive still.

Our ride. :D
That super awesome ride was my promotion present from Steve...except someone hogged the steering wheel for the most part of the trip! It's all good since I got to enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Black sand beach. The sand is like little pebbles.

A little birdie came to visit us at the picnic table while we were having lunch.

There are white sand beaches too.

At the end of the Road to Hana drive (which is actually past the town of Hana) is the Seven Sacred Pools. Legend has it that if you follow the sequence and take a swim in all seven pools, then you will be cured. There's actually many more pools than just seven and it's a popular spot for tourists to take a break and have a swim. Since we're without luggage, we just went for a hike (read: many more mosquito bites) and enjoyed the scenery.

I LOVE this picture of Steve.

On our way back, there was a mixture of rain and sun. I've never seen rain over the waters with a rainbow before!

Hawaiian rainbows during sunset looks awesome. :)

We rewarded ourselves after our long drive with a nice dinner at Mama's Fish House. It's actually quite a big restaurant/complex and it's right by the ocean. Too bad we went for dinner and didn't get to enjoy the view. The food was good, but a bit pricey. Everything has macadamia nuts in it!

Mama’s Macadamia Nut Crab Cakes with fire and ice relish

Mahimahi stuffed with lobster, crab, Maui onion and baked in a macadamia nut crust.

Deep-water Ahi peppercorn grilled with Hamakua mushroom sauce
and breadfruit- potato mash.

The most photogenic part of the meal I thought, was the dessert.

Banana Macadamia Nut Crisp served warm with
homemade Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream

Polynesian Black Pearl - Chocolate mousse and Liliko’i cream in a pastry seashell

This was just the first day!! No wonder they say Hawaii is like paradise. Such good memories...I want to go back!

My new toy

2010-11-23T22:53:00.001-05:00

My work laptop is dead. :( I tried to turn it on to do some work last night and it kept blue screeening. I took it into work today and they said the harddrive is pretty much toast. Sigh. Well, it's still not fixed so I get to spend tonight doing other things...like write on this blog that I've semi-abandoned in the last little while.

My coworkers tease that it's because of my new toy that my laptop got jealous and decided to revolt. Perhaps....but I still like my new toy. *grin* Afterall, I would have been completely disconnected from the outside world at work today without it.

Finally, after 5 years on my "dumb" phone, I've gone over to the dark side...
I have my brother to thank for making the appointment for me so that I can actually own this new toy. Now I just have to replay all the levels of Angry Birds on own phone since I previously played on Mr. Sticky's.

So much work. :P

Perspective

2010-11-22T02:14:00.004-05:00

Remembering all the things that really matter in life.

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.
— Mother Teresa

Back to reality

2010-10-13T22:37:00.004-04:00

Why is it so cold???

We just came back from a super-duper awesome 2.5 week vacation to Hawaii, Japan and Hong Kong.....and are now zombies trying to stay up to adjust back to Toronto time but are brain dead at the same time. Sleeping at 9:30pm last night after 22 hours of flying + transit back and waking up repeatedly after 3am probably doesn't help. Now add to starting a new role at work today and ~3000 emails to sift through and you get the picture.

It's all good because the vacation was awesome and the memories are still fresh. :) Maybe ask me at the end of this week and I'll wish I have another trip planned. Surprisingly, we have no vacation plans after this. I've never had no future vacation plans after a vacation. Sigh, we're falling behind. :)

I haven't finished unpacking and no pictures have been downloaded off memory cards so...I have nothing to show. Just boring text but at a post nonetheless. I'll try to post something more interesting than text later this week. In the meantime, hope everyone had a good gobble gobble day!

Looking back in time

2010-09-16T00:49:00.006-04:00

I was looking through old photos of my parents trying to find their wedding picture for their church anniversary publication. It brings a smile to my face to see my parents so happy and looking so good. :)

Thank you Mom & Dad for getting married. Otherwise I would't be me.
Thank you for demonstrating what a loving marriage looks like. I hope to have one as strong as yours in 30 years too!

Banana Shpeel

2010-09-14T23:46:00.008-04:00

Tonight was the premier of Banana Shpeel, a Cirque du Soleil show, in Toronto. We've been watching a lot of shows/musicals this summer, so I figured I might as well end the summer with another show!

Despite getting the tickets on sale, we had amazing seats! 9th row center. :) I read mixed reviews before seeing the show. Some people really did not appreciate the slapstick comedy or the non-PG jokes. I thought it was pretty funny. I admit, sometimes it does get a bit ridiculous, but it's still entertaining nonetheless.

It wouldn't be a Cirque du Soleil show without their acts. While I don't consider tap dancing 'Cirque', (it's more like So You Think You Can Dance), I've never seen live tap dancing before so I didn't mind. The rest of the acts were good, with the last two living up to the mind-blowing standards of Cirque du Soleil.

I could see why some people don't like the show because the clowns do get a lot more stage time than usual and people want to see Cirque for their acts. Is it my most favourite Cirque show ever? No. But if you want a good laugh and a Cirque show fusioned with a musical, then this will be an evening well spent.

Yoshi has a big nose

2010-09-10T00:33:00.011-04:00

My little bro turned 25 on Monday.

What did I do after making a wedding cake? Bake another cake! :) I didn't have as much time as I originally planned to work on this cake due to the drama with the wedding cake but I think it turned out alright.

His favourite mario character is Yoshi. I like Yoshi too. We used to fight to be Yoshi when we played Mario Kart together. I never knew Yoshi's nose was so big! I actually had to wait for it to dry separately and then put it together because it was so heavy.

Happy Birthday Wilkie!!!

Jasmine and Eric's Cake

2010-09-09T23:49:00.004-04:00

I'm still trying to recover from Jas & Eric's wedding this past weekend. I never thought I would ever be as tired as I was from my own wedding...I was wrong :P but it was every bit as fun as I had hoped it would be.

Being a bridesmaid and the cake lady at the same wedding is doable, but very nerve-wrecking at the same time. How so?

I finished J&E's cake well ahead of schedule with relatively little stress. Not bad I thought. Since I was in the bridal party, we had arranged to deliver the cake to the caterer the day before the wedding. Well...the bottom tier collapsd on delivery and I had to turn back and go home to redo the cake just like on those cake shows. (Doesn't this remind you of Cake Boss?) I knew it was too easy!

(Sorry, I was so heartbroken when I saw my cake that I didn't take a picture of the disaster but that image will forever be etched in my memory.)

Looking back, everything did happen in the best possible circumstances so I really couldn't have asked for a better time to learn my lesson. Everything worked out in the end and I managed to redo the cake in record time.

Take One

Since I couldn't deliver the cake on the day of, poor Steve, who was also the GM of the wedding, had me always asking him everytime he called if the cake was delivered yet. At the end of the day, the party was awesome, the cake was eaten, and it was all worth it!!

Take Two

The middle tier is 6" high and is a chocolate hazelnut cake with chocolate buttercream. Bottom tier is a raspberry lemon chiffon cake with vanilla buttercream. The cake toppers were made out of clay by the groom's cousin to resemble their Wii Miis.

Congratulations Jas & Eric! Thank you for letting me be a part of your wedding in so many ways!

Gary and Anna's Wedding

2010-08-10T01:08:00.011-04:00

Over the weekend I had the great pleasure of shooting my good friends' Gary and Anna's wedding. Words could not describe the love that filled the sanctuary and the reception hall. Many happy tears were shed by all, including me, while trying to take pictures! Thank you for sharing your very special day with me.

Gary gave Anna such a big hug when she got to the end of the aisle. :)

The SUPER long feathered signing pen!
This was my absolute favourite part of the ceremony. After the bride and groom came back in, they immediately took to the stage to lead everyone in worship, something that they're both very good at, and very passionate about. It's by far one of the most awesome worship sessions ever!

The Siu siblings with Anna.

Congratulations Gary and Anna!! Have an awesome time on your honeymoon!

Big 3-0 Birthday Celebration - Part 2

2010-07-24T00:45:00.004-04:00

Since I already took 6 days off after my CSC Nigeria trip to go to Kenya, and we have a big trip planned for the fall, I really didn't have extra vacation days to spare. Previous years I would take my birthday off, but this year, not only could I not take it off, the day was packed with meetings! But it turned out to be quite fun afterall, thanks to Mr. Sticky.

I got a very very nice birthday present this year from Steve. :D I got it just before midnight and let's just say...they're shiny and sparkly. *BIG GRIN*

I went to work early the next day since I had an early morning meeting. Just as I was about to start my last morning meeting, I got a message from security telling me there was something for me to pick up! It's.....an edible arrangement, complete with balloons!!! Since I had to go back to my meeting after picking it up, we didn't get to eat it until after lunch.

Corrie said I shouldn't eat cafe food on my birthday so we went out for a super quickie lunch at Kenny's. Steve joined us and came to pick us up and when I opened the car door...I found a bouquet of roses! It looked super huge. I thought it was two dozens but after I counted, I realized it was 30! :D There were so many roses that I took my coworker's advice and left 6 at work in a vase and took the remaining two dozens home. It was so nice to have fresh flowers in my office for a while. :)

In between my meetings, I finally got to enjoy the edible arrangement with my friends at work and with my team during the team meeting. It was sooo good, especially the chocolate covered strawberries and the black & white chocolate bananas.

Thoughtful Mr. Sticky ordered the arrangement so I could celebrate with friends at work. I couldn't have thought of a better way to spend my day there. Who knew spending birthdays at work could be so much fun? :)

And the celebration continues...

Big 3-0 Birthday Celebration - Part 1

2010-07-23T23:33:00.004-04:00

It's been really quiet on my blog I know...but I'm back! The last few weeks have been packed to say the least! After making the wedding cake, I GM'ed a wedding the week after, then went to Chicago, then planned a bachelorette, then went away for a weekend for the bachelorette. Whew! Not that the next couple of weeks are any better, but at least tonight I had time to process some pictures.

So let's back track a month back to my birthday celebrations. So many people made the milestone birthday so special that it deserves some recognition. :)

Celebrations began the Friday before with the lunch gang. Corrie thoughtfully organized my birthday lunch and unlike previous years where we always go to Ding Tai Fung for my birthday lunch, this year we went for dim sum. CoKa walked in with this cake caddy and inside was a mango cheesecake made by Corrie! Thanks Corrie!!!!! :D I especially loved the flower made out of mango. It was super yummy!

Despite the group's best efforts to surprise me with Chinese birthday buns, the waiters there weren't too bright and kept asking us when we want the buns. Oh well...I'm still super happy that I got to eat them. Even as I'm typing this now I have this grin on my face. :)

You know what the best part about birthday celebrations are? Feeling super special that friends would take the time to celebrate with you.

Thanks guys!!!
This was only the beginning! Part 2 to come...

Ben and Annie's Wedding Cake

2010-06-20T12:07:00.004-04:00

Have to rush off to go to lunch...but I told my parents I'd post a picture of the wedding cake I made for Ben and Annie. It was such a beautiful wedding, definitely one of the most fun and memorable ones we've been to recently.

More pics to come!!

Trip Planning Again

2010-05-31T00:49:00.003-04:00

It's been almost two months since we've been back from Kenya so it must be time to start trip planning again. :D

Okay I lie. In the meantime we already booked tickets to go to San Fran in August, mostly because the fares were insanely cheap and we couldn't pass up a good deal. 2 for 1! I've been to San Fran before, but that was 5 years ago, and Steve hasn't been. It'll be a good way to pre-celebrate our 2nd year anniversary.

The big trip really comes in Sept when we try to hit up Hawaii, Japan and HK all in one trip. We've been putting this trip planning off since we've both been so busy the past couple of weeks and we just really never had the time to sit down and figure out if we can get the itinerary to work out.

And then there's Chicago, where we were going to go to celebrate my birthday, sort of. The tickets however were so expensive! Well...fine, they're not expensive, just more expensive than my San Fran tickets. I couldn't get over the fact that it will cost me more to fly to Chicago than San Fran. Sadly, after pricing the fares out for a whole month, we still can't find cheaper tickets so we just bit the bullet and bought our tickets. So part one is done, Chicago has flight + hotel booked now. Steve's supposed to plan the rest. :)

So back to Hawaii/Japan/HK. Are we crazy for trying to fit that all into a trip? Probably. :) But I always travel like that so it shouldn't come as a surprise. I'm all about the optimized trips. (Oh and let me justify the Hawaii part by saying we are attending a wedding there.) So after looking at sample itineraries and recommendations from people for places to visit in Japan and Maui, we think we can make it work with the remaining time I have off. Sigh...if only I have more vacation days.

What we thought would be ridiculous flight prices are actually reasonable...with Delta. Reading all the bad reviews about Delta makes me quite uncomfortable actually. So I've been searching for the past two hours on flight alternatives, but no other airline comes close to Delta's price. :( I think I'd be okay if I was just traveling on a roundtrip flight with them but we're talking about 7 flight segments here.

Sigh. I need to hear good experiences traveling with Delta. Anyone?

Chocolate Crab Cake

2010-05-23T23:30:00.012-04:00

I meant to blog about this weeks ago but I never got around to processing the pictures so this is a much delayed post.

It was my good friend Eric's birthday at the beginning of this month (literally) and his super awesome fiancee Jasmine organized a chocolate & seafood themed surprise birthday for him and even flew all the way back from Cali for it.

Why chocolate and seafood? Apparently when Eric used to live in Vancouver, that's what his family would do on special occasions, eat seafood and chocolate buffet brunch. So of course, this being a potluck party, I bring...chocolate cake!

I just learned a new method of making chocolate ganache and of course, this was a good opportunity to test it out. :) Now if I make it even more in advance next time then I think it would turn out even better. I think I was a little impatient this time before covering the cake with it so the finish wasn't that great.

Despite having kinda missed the surprise because no one was paying attention to the door, we still managed to somehow surprise Eric. :) I'll let pictures tell the rest of the story...

Eric reacting to all the people coming out from various directions to surprise him after we heard him arrive
Hug from his mom. Aww...
Eric explaining the gifts he got from Jas, the sweater and the tie
Jas realizing that Eric had already knew about the party because her google calendar was visible to him. Bad capture of Gabe on left. :P
Awesome food spread
But where is the cake? Here's a hint...

I love Jas & Eric reaction to the cake :D
Chocolate Crab Cake!
Jas said there's bonus points if you can put chocolate and seafood together. So the keener in me of course had to give it a try. :) The crabs and the sign are made of fondant. The cake is a triple layer chocolate filled and iced with chocolate ganache.

Family Pic

Happy Birthday Eric!!

Long Week...but it's Friday!

2010-05-14T18:07:00.005-04:00

This week was long and in fact, started out not so good. At least it got better as the days went by although it was long and busy. It's all good now, cos' it's Friday!!!

Though I'm excited mostly because I get to go to Cafe Michi tonight! Yum!

Two weddings to attend tomorrow. It's gonna be a busy weekend! I've been meaning to pull pics of my camera to post up, and also go through the other ones from Africa. It might have to wait until next week.

In the meantime, many people have asked me what the safari vehicle was like when were in Kenya. It's really just an SUV with a sunroof at the back that opens up. Here is a rare picture of Steve and I inside our safari vehicle taken by one of my teammates from Nigeria who also went to Kenya after our assignment.There are also other safari vehicles, like the ones that are completely open on the sides or ones where the whole roof of the van come up. Ours ended up being good since it was just the two of us and it's quite safe since we're still mostly enclosed.

Wet snow in May?!?!

2010-05-08T23:38:00.006-04:00

I was joking when I said it feels like it's going to fall and then to winter when I came back from Africa. I don't actually expect it to snow in May!!!

I thought my eyes were just tricking me when I thought I saw snow while driving late afternoon. Nope, it was snow alright. Wet snow. First thought, hm...I wonder if my sucky stock tires are going to be alright. Maybe I should have changed out of my winter tires later. Second thought, what am I thinking?!?! I shouldn't feel bad for not having my winter tires on in May!

On my way home tonight, there was actually ice accumulated on my windshield as my wipers worked hard to keep my windows cleared. Brrr....we have the heat on in the house right now. Is it really May?

I guess there's always one random snowfall in spring. This one is just REALLY late and not like those calm flurries we've had in the past!

Sticky Dines Out: Zucca Trattoria

2010-05-06T22:25:00.007-04:00

Thank you for your well wishes. We went to Zucca Trattoria to celebrate on Tuesday. Steve's been craving Italian food for a while now and the meal was very yum! Craving satisfied!

I finally watched Julie & Julia on Monday night and now everytime I eat something good I say yum!

The great thing about the restaurant was that while they have a menu if you really must read one, most of their offerings were off menu, i.e. whatever they have fresh that day. I had oysters for appetizer...super good! So fresh.

Steve's yummy asparagus salad
We didn't eat dessert at the restaurant because Luky tweeted that they opened at Coldstone at Yonge & Eg! :D And what better dessert than ice cream? Yum yum yum...Now we don't have to drive downtown or to Pickering for Coldstone anymore. We'll just be having Coldstone with our friend GJ very often. :)

Happy 50 months!

2010-05-04T02:03:00.007-04:00

Wow, back to back milestones with the number five in it.

So today is our 50th month anniversary! Who celebrates in months? We do!! :P Well, it's also to make up for us not celebrating our 4 year anniversary since um...I kinda ditched the hubby and went to Africa.

And just in case you're scratching your head and wondering why it's 4 years already, it's our dating anniversary.

So thank you to the most wonderful hubby who makes me smile everyday, cooks the most yummy food, and just makes me want to hang out with you every minute! He also surprised me by digging out ALL the dandelions from our backyard. There were soooo many! (Major weed problems this year.)

Not used to being too mushy on the blog so I'm gonna stop before you all puke and leave you with this.In Kenya with Mt. Kilimanjaro as backdrop

Just like the Telus commercials....(well sort of)

2010-05-03T23:46:00.000-04:00

They seemed much more gentle coming out of the cell phones on TV.

We could actually see scratch marks on them (using a binocular). It's from all the fighting they do. Apparently they don't get along and I don't really understand why. Here, they just started fighting all of a sudden.

Do you think those things towards the back of the mouth are teeth?

500th Post!

2010-05-02T00:12:00.010-04:00

I can't believe I've had this blog for so long and I'm only on the 500th post. Just goes to show I don't blog consistently. :P They say, it's not the destination, but the journey that matters. Well, at least it's been a good journey so far and I've been so immensely blessed that I really can't ask for more.

The other significance of 5 is....the big five! Yes, back to the animals! :D How can I post safari pictures without talking about the big five. It's like the must-see list every person who goes on safari have to check off. I got the impression that if I didn't get see all the big five, my driver/guide would have been extremely disappointed. It's as if he didn't do a good job.

So here is the first of the big five...

Is it already May?

2010-05-01T02:51:00.000-04:00

Gaa...it's May! Why is it already May?

I can't believe it's been three weeks and a bit since I've been back. Well I can in a way because work is already busy again and as you can tell from my lack of posts this week, busy.

On Monday, I had the opportunity to share with my area at work about my CSC experience in Nigeria. Even though I talked for 40 minutes, it seems only a fraction of all that I experienced there. There always seem to be more stories to tell. Luckily I will have the opportunity to share this story a few more times to different audiences. I meant to ask someone to take a picture of me during the presentation since I promised a staff at DOPT I'd send him a picture when I did my presentation here. Alas I forgot, so took a picture with my team instead.I wore one of the African dresses I got made in Nigeria. As you can see, I was very bright that day. :)

Tuesday morning, I had a conference call with people from my Nigeria 3 team. It was so nice to hear everyone's voices and just catch up. I hope I didn't disturb my office neighbours too much because I laughed aloud so many times during that call. After the call ended, I must have looked super goofy walking to my next meeting because I had this huge smile on my face. :)

Everyday since I've been back, I would recall some random story or incident that happened while I was in Calabar. Life is so normal now that sometimes I find it hard to believe I even went there at all. While I was preparing for my presentation deck, I went through a lot of the pictures. Ahh...such good memories.Celebrating Kei's Birthday at Obudu

Nerd Post

2010-04-22T01:10:00.002-04:00

I usually don't talk geek stuff here too much, but I just have to this time. I promise it's not TOO geeky.

The product that my team (and my previous team) have been working hard on got announced last week and we're going to have a celebration at work tomorrow. Usually, the release managers order cake and everyone has cake. This time, we're having a dessert potluck. So, surprise surprise, I'm baking something. Afterall, what is a product celebration with cake?

I haven't baked for 9 weeks now (yes, I counted) so I was actually quite happy thinking about what to make and how it'll look like. I decided on Mocha Chocolate Chip Cupcakes.

Ready for the oven!Nice and puffy fresh out of the oven.I made my usual Swiss Meringue Buttercream to go with it and then conducted various taste tests :) to see if I wanted to make it into a chocolate buttercream or not. Since there are already chocolate chips in the cupcake, I didn't want it to become TOO chocolately since it might hide the coffee taste. Some chocolate though brings out the flavour of the coffee.

This is the final product. :)The chocolate is 70% cocoa so it was just the right chocolatey sweetness I was looking for to complement the cupcake.

Muahahaha, they are so geeky, it makes me smile!!! The two products are XL C/C++ Compiler for AIX V11.1 and XL Fortran Compiler for AIX V13.1. The 2nd row are features that are new in this release. I won't bore you with the technical details.

Yes I admit it, I'm a nerd. At least I'm a nerd that makes cakes. :D

There's always a taller branch

2010-04-21T00:49:00.009-04:00

I hope you're not getting bored of the animals. There were so many and I took so many pictures! I haven't even gotten through a tenth of them but I really love working on them.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words but sometimes, I find that a picture no matter how beautiful, fail to capture the real beauty seen through your own eyes. Landscapes are often like that. Maybe it's because our eyes can process the contrasting light better. Or perhaps just turning your head beats any panoramic shot.
I found Kenya breathtaking. The savanna grass at Masai Mara was so tall! It definitely made spotting animals a challenge, but when a gentle breeze rolled through the plains, they swayed so beautifully in unison. Each day I was there, I would wonder whether they grew even taller overnight. It's hard to believe that during the migration months, the same grass would be as short as a football field.

On the subject of tall, this animal is definitely considered tall. I would have never thought it was short, except when I was taking this picture, it was trying to stretch it's neck to reach the leafy branch. I think if it could tippy-toe, it would have. :) I think I know why all these trees in the park only have leaves at the top. It's because they're too short to reach them!
Today's an easy one (I really wanted to post this picture), fight for them cupcakes! :)

It's a Stork!

2010-04-20T10:26:00.008-04:00

Pudgy is right again, it is indeed a stork! It's a Maribou Stork and we saw many of them while we were in Kenya. These ones here in particular came all the way up to the restaurant at Sweetwaters Tented Camp where we stayed. We were eating lunch and they looked like they wanted to come in too. I think the previous picture I showed was the female. The male is not as attractive in my opnion but I find the little bits of hair on his head quite amusing. :)

They are HUGE birds. When their wings are opened it's quite an amazing sight.

Sleeping More

2010-04-16T08:51:00.005-04:00

Ever since I came back from Africa I've been sleeping more, mostly because of jetlag. I would go to bed around 9 or 10 and then wake up at 6. Getting 8 or 9 hours of sleep is completely unheard of in Vicky-land but I'm liking it. Though last night I only had 6.5 hours. Doh! Can't get back to the old routine.

Pudgy, my fast and smart reader, is again correct. That was an antelope but more specifically, it's a Topi. If you ever go on a safari in Kenya you will realize that you can't call antelopes just that, because there are so many different species!! Topi is also nicknamed "Blue Jeans". Can you see why? :)

Since I'm asking questions, you are probably wondering if there's a prize. :P

So I don't know how many animal pictures I'll continue putting up but at the end of this, the winner gets a dozen yummy cupcakes in the flavour (do they use flavour to refer to cakes?) of your choice! And if it's Pudgy, and there is definitely a high probability it might be :), I'll personally bring it to you. :D Obviously, I'm assuming here that most people answering will be in Toronto.

Now we have that out of the way....here's the next picture! And no, you can't just say bird.

Got Milk?

2010-04-14T09:20:00.005-04:00

I have smart friends. :) Yes hyenas...hyena cubs to be exact. It was pouring rain when we were on the game drive in Lake Nakuru. We suspect their den might have flooded so the mother and the cubs probably came out to dry themselves.

Next picture!

Safari Snap #2

2010-04-11T16:05:00.010-04:00

Pudgy's so smart! :)

The picture in the previous post is of a Plains Zebra, the most common type of zebra seen in Africa. Our driver told us we also saw a Grevy's zebra, which has thinner stripes, but looking at the picture, I'm not convinced. (He said the one further back is a Grevy's.) Grevy's zebras should have much thinner stripes. Sigh, I'll have to modify my animal log and strike out the fact that I saw a Grevy's zebra.

Time for the animal guess of the day! This one is a bit harder than the last. See if you can identify this one. I love this picture too! He's mid-yawn. :)

Safari Snap #1

2010-04-10T01:36:00.008-04:00

What is this animal?

Well I did say it was going to be easy. :) I REALLY loved this shot so I wanted to post it. These animals are one of my favourites to photograph. There's something dramatic about the stripes.

Summer to Fall

2010-04-09T01:56:00.007-04:00

Not only are my timezones messed up, so are my seasons.

I went from winter straight to summer when i went to Nigeria. Then when I went from Nigeria to Kenya, it felt like I was going from summer weather to fall weather. I actually caught a cold the first day I arrived there. Sigh. Good thing it was very minor and didn't affect the trip much. Toronto weather has been like Kenya weather since I got back and with the recent gloomy rains, it does feel like it's almost winter.

So to get myself out of the winter mode...I've removed the wintery look and put on something...neutral. Okay, it's only that color because I want to use that header picture. :) It's taken from my Kenya trip. Flamingos on Lake Nakuru. There were thousands there (even in our wet season. Our guide says in the dry season, the whole lake is covered)!

I have many many many animal pictures from the safari. To make it more interesting for people reading this, I'm going to start posting animals that I have never seen before this trip and we'll see if you know what animal it is! We'll start with something easy tomorrow...

Comforts

2010-04-08T02:26:00.004-04:00

After two days of travels beginning Tuesday morning leaving Masai Mara to finally arriving back home, I am enjoying all the comforts of being back in Canada and definitely appreciating it on a whole new scale. It's all about the little things often taken for granted.

I love (and missed!)...
...how everyone drives in lanes and traffic is so orderly.
...that there's street lights.
...that power is always on.
...that I can brush my teeth using tap water.
...that I can take comfortable showers.
...that I have access to my own washing machine & dryer again.
...that internet is FAST!!!!

Ahh how I've missed you reliable internet. Gone are the days of loading gmail in HTML or clicking on a page and returning back 10 min. later to read the contents. I promised myself that I would never complain about my internet speeds again.

I got back this afternoon and meant to take a nap for two hours but instead "napped" for 6. Doh! Oh well, at least I can do laundry. :D

I have mail!

2010-03-24T02:31:00.000-04:00

Today was my third last day of work at the Department of Public Transportation (DOPT), and it was a long one. I can't believe we're already presenting our final presentation to the Deputy Governor and the Executive Council tomorrow morning!

I finalized the process maps I made for the private public partnership (PPP) process and incorporated them into a Powerpoint deck that outlines the PPP process. Another deliverable check!

Our presentation on the PPP process got postponed to tomorrow after our EXCO presentation so I had time to work with the CRUTECH student, Emeka, on the DOPT website design. Almost there! Hopefully it'll be ready for content integration tomorrow afternoon.

We had to meet at the hotel conference room at 5pm to do a dry-run of our presentation to the EXCO tomorrow. The first thing I did when I got back was ask the front desk to see if they had something for me, and they did!

I have mail!!!

Mr. Sticky was suuuuuuuuuper thoughtful and sent me a very sweet card. THANK YOU!!!! Too bad it took three weeks to arrive but at least it came before I left. Hm...those postcards I sent to work aren't arriving anytime soon. :P

After the dry-run, we all got changed to go to the Presidential Lodge for dinner with the Deputy Governor. The food was delicious and although conversation was light, it was a really great opportunity to get to know His Excellency better. Ann from CDS gave a great speech at the end summarizing what the CSC program was doing in Nigeria and the impact it has. As she was talking, I looked down the table and it was then that it really hit me how much I'd miss the team when we all go our separate ways at the end of this week!!

CSC Nigeria 3 outside Presidential Lodge

There's more work to be done before departure though and after dinner, we headed back to the hotel to do some more work on our final presentations. The dry-run was really useful because it made Drew and I realize we needed to rework our presentation a bit. A bit turned into 2:30am and we're finally done. We ended up reworking the whole presentation but I'm very happy with our outcome. I hope the recommendations that we made will get implemented.

It's now late and we have to be up and ready to leave at 9am. Wish us luck for our presentation tomorrow!

English in Nigeria

2010-03-20T09:34:00.000-04:00

You're welcome.
I'm sorry.
I'm coming.
Okay.

Four phrases commonly used in the English language but have different meanings than what I'm used to.

While in Canada, "You're welcome" is the typical response when someone says thank you, In Nigeria, "You're welcome" means welcome. It's the phrase that greets me every morning as I walk into the Department of Public Transportation. And the response? Thank you.

"I'm sorry" seems to be the universal phrase for an apology, but here in Nigeria, it also means "That's too bad" or "Sorry to hear that". When I recounted our adventure to Obudu and how long it took, I kept hearing "I'm sorry". I had to constantly remind myself that they felt bad for us. However, on Friday when it was pouring rain, our driver also said "I'm sorry" as he was getting the umbrella to take us to the car. Maybe it is apologetic too? I guess I'm just not used to people apologizing for things beyond their control.

The first time I heard "I'm coming" used, I was extremely puzzled. Picture this. At the end of a conversation about the plans for the next hour or so, our protocol from the Governor's office, Jane (who's very awesome by the way!), says "I'm coming" and proceeds to walk away. I thought I misunderstood. Is she coming or leaving? I now realize that "I'm coming" means I'm going to go and come back. I tried using "We're coming" the other day at the office but I think I confused the staff since I said that as we drove away. Maybe it can only be used in singular form?

And then there's "Okay." I'm used to it meaning agreement. In Nigeria, I actually am not sure what it really means. Sometimes it simply means I heard you or just an acknowledgment that you stated your view. You can ask a question expecting a yes or no answer, and the response is "Okay." That is probably the most frequent occurrence. After three weeks here, I still don't know what to make of that response. It's okay. :)

The most decrepit car award goes to....

2010-03-19T18:29:00.005-04:00

Saw this car on the way back to the office today. I've seen many old cars around Calabar, but this one was definitely the most run down. Even our driver was commenting on it.

The amazing thing was, despite the way it looked, it ran fine on the road. No black fumes. No rickety sounds.

Indian culinary adventure in Nigeria

2010-03-17T23:24:00.000-04:00

We've had the opportunity to try many different types of food during our stay here in Calabar; grilled fish, traditional Nigerian soups and rice, pounded yam, but also Chinese and Lebanese food, though with a Nigerian twist. Tonight for our dinner out, we decided to explore the Indian cuisine here in Calabar.

Greg and Rahul had obtained the items on the menu for us beforehand. From our past experience at other restaurants, ordering beforehand shortens the wait for food upon arrival. Otherwise, our dinner usually turns into a 2-3 hour affair. Rahul helped us place the orders at 5:30. We left at 7:00 hungry.

The restaurant was in a hotel though it did not appear to be frequented by others. After our drink orders we eagerly but patiently waited for our food to arrive. Patience is a virtue that has been forged by eating out in Nigeria. An hour later, rice finally emerged from a dark room that appeared to be the kitchen (or at least lead to it). There were three plates of rice. Each portions were meant for one, but since we're sharing all the food we all took a small portion and snacked on it while we waited for the remainder of the food.

Another 30 minutes later, two chicken skewers with 3 pieces of Naan bread was served along with a small bowl of chicken curry. This too was divided up amongst our group. We started to wonder about the portions of the food being served. Certainly they do not expect 12 people to only eat these two dishes?

I looked at my watch, 9:00. No additional food has shown up on the table. Everyone was hungry but it became increasingly clear that the food we had ordered was not going to show up anytime soon. We notified the staff that we were not waiting any longer and wanted the bill. There was a huge frenzy and a small bowl of vegetable curry with a big plate of rice showed up.

When we had inquired about all the food that was ordered, we were told that certain items were not available and that the vegetable curry was the last dish. That was the straw that broke the camel's back and we all just wanted to leave at that point. One of the things I've noticed while dining out is that if you ordered something in advance that was not available, no indication is given upon arrival that the dish is not going to show up on the table. Had we known, we would usually order something else! Why this information is not communicated is something that I still don't understand. Miscommunication seems to be commonplace here in Nigeria, but that is a whole other topic for another post.

Our group collectively decided to head to a fast food place to eat after our ordeal at the restaurant. On our way to Mac Bite, our van was hit while going around the roundabout. The dinner saga continues! Luckily both vehicles were heading towards the same direction so it was just a slight bump. Our mission to get food was briefly delayed as the drivers exchanged words. We drove off after a few minutes and finally arrived at Mac Bite.

Everyone had their full and we finally returned back to the hotel at 10pm. That was some dinner adventure and one of my most eventful dinners yet!

Smarter Cities for Cross River State?

2010-03-17T16:13:00.001-04:00

This morning, Drew and I arrived early to our office at the Department of Public Transportation (DOPT) all decked out in our suit jackets and formal business wear. Today was the big day for the Smarter Cities presentation to the Governor and the Executive Committee. Unfortunately, His Excellency the Governor could not be there, but we still had the great opportunity to present to His Excellency, the Deputy Governor, Barrister Efioke Cobham. I must have repeated that name to myself a hundred times before the presentation for fear that I would say it incorrectly!

While we arrived at 9:50am to set up for the presentation, the meeting did not start until two and a half hours later. During the time between, I had the opportunity to meet many cabinet ministers, including ministers and special advisers working with our other Nigeria 3 teammates. I also got a copy of the Nigerian Chronicle, the Cross River State newspaper, which I will spend time going through tonight. The most interesting of all, were the conversations Ann from CDS, Drew and I had about the current politic state of the country, politics, and the like.

Though I have no pictures to show for it, the Executive Council chambers is beautiful! Decorated with mosaic tiles depicting scenes of people and scenery at the corners of the walls, potlights on the ceiling, marble floors, and advanced sound and av equipment, I forgot for a few minutes I was in Nigeria.

At 11:30am, His Excellency, the Deputy Governor walked in and the State anthem was played, followed by the Nigeria national anthem. His Excellency started the meeting with an opening prayer. Opening prayers are a common practice in all meetings whether at the department, ministry, or state level. Clearly, separation of state and religion is not something practiced here.

The Deputy Governor's name was pronounced properly (whew!) and after the formal introductions were out of the way, the rest of the presentation seemed to go without a hitch. At the end of the presentation, many council members asked questions that were both thought provoking and challenging. Even though the conclusion of the presentation was simply a call to action, I hope that today's presentation planted a seed for future things to come!

Reflecting on this morning, I'm amazed by the experience gained through the CSC program. Presenting to the provincial government back at home would be something completely outside the norm, but here, it seemed like such a natural progression. There will be another presentation again next week, but this time by our whole team on what we've achieved and our recommendations. It should be a good follow up from today's presentation.

Here comes the chimps!

2010-03-16T10:30:00.003-04:00

On our way back from Obudu Cattle Ranch this weekend, we stopped by the Pandrillus Drill Ranch in the Afi Mountains to visit drill monkeys, chimps and do a canopy walk through the forest.

They say chimpanzees are most closely related to humans. There were definitely similarities but also differences - the entrance by these chimps being one. Please don't ever greet me like this! :)

The oldest chimp there, Moffy, was an aggressive one. She came out later than all the others and when she finally did, came with a wooden plan the size of a book. She then catapulted the wooden plank over the electric fence at us. We all ducked for cover! She disappeared for a while and then reappeared, this time with a wooden stick. She also threw that over the fence. Sorry no pics. I was too busy making sure I didn't get hit!

Tropcial Storm in Calabar

2010-03-11T03:10:00.002-05:00

The rainy season has started in Calabar, and for the second time this week I woke up to the sound of someone pouring a million marbles on the roof.

Turns out it's just a typical tropical storm in Calabar. The intensity of the rain varies, but it seems to vary between medium rainfall to a downpour.

Staff at the Department of Public Transportation (DOPT) where I work told me that in the midst of the rainy season, there is often one week where it rains for 7 days non-stop! I'm thankful we're only at the beginning of the rainy season.

One of the great by-products of an overnight storm is that the weather is usually quite cool the next day. The majority of the days we've had so far in Calabar have been sunny, humid and very hot. Yesterday, when it was 'light off' (i.e. power outage) at DOPT, our office went from cool to uncomforatble in less than 20 minutes!

The video was taken from my room late last night when I awoke to the sound of the "falling marbles". You can hear how loud the rain is even from inside, and the sound of singing frogs outside.

Calabar Day 3 PM: Tour of Calabar

2010-02-28T23:45:00.006-05:00

In the afternoon we toured Calabar. The first place we stopped was at the Drill Ranch. There, we saw chimpanzees and drill monkeys. Drill monkeys are unique to Nigeria but are endangered due to hunting by humans for bush meat. The drill ranch is run by Pandrillus, a Nigerian NGO founded by two to promote the survival of the drill monkey.

At the Drill Ranch

Next, we stopped at the Hope Waddell School, named after the first missionary to Calabar Rev. Hope Masterton Waddell. The school's field is where soccer was first played in Nigeria! The sport has since grown to be a national sport.

After a brief stop to see a 2000+ year old monolith stone from ancient tribes, we arrived at the Slave History Museum. The museum had a very moving exhibit of how slaves were sold and treated. Unfortunately there was no ventilation and it got very hot while we were there so it was difficult to concentrate! Coupled with not yet having lunch made me feel light headed. Luckily our final stop was at Cal-A-Bar for some traditional Nigerian fare.

One thing I've learned since my arrival in Calabar, ALWAYS add up the bill! During lunch, we all chipped in for our portion but still ended up being 2000 Naira (around $13) short. This was surprising since we all chipped in extra for tip. After some time, we added up the total and realized the math was incorrect! It was finally cleared up, but only after another 20 minutes.

In the evening, Ann Oden, CDS Director in Nigeria, invited our whole team over for dinner to meet our partners. Drew and I were excited to finally meet the people we'll be working with for the next four weeks. Since my arrival in Calabar, we haven't done any work so it felt a bit strange. It's great to finally talk shop and get started!

We had a great first "meeting" with the Special Advisor to the Governor, Department of Public Transportation, Mr. Gab Okulaja, his wife, and Special Assistant to the Special Adviser on Bus Systems, Nella Asikpo. Our conversation had a good mix of information about the Department of Public Transportation (DOPT) and Nigerian culture. I even learned some Nigerian dance moves from Gab and Nella! :) It should be a good four weeks.

Looking forward to the first day of work tomorrow!

Calabar Day 3 AM: Music and Culture

2010-02-28T18:51:00.011-05:00

Oh it's been three days in Calabar already. Though it's a bit strange to think I started this week with snow in Toronto and today I was dying of heat in Calabar.

Apparently there was a huge storm last night but I didn't hear a thing and slept right through it. :P It was cool this morning when I woke up for breakfast but the air quickly heated up in the afternoon sun. Me and several others from my CSC team went to check out the local church just down the street. It seemed like it would have been a short walk from what we saw in the car yesterday but it was longer than expected. Perhaps it was the humid air (despite it being a little cooled by the rain).

Walking to Church

Church services here lasts between 2-3 hours. The first service was quick packed. I'd say maybe 400-500 people? It starts at 7:15am! Well not sure about the exact start time but it wasn't finished by the time we got there for the 9:15 service. We probably got started around 9:30-9:40. A lot of what was said was not understood by us because the acoustics weren't that great. Nigerians speak with passion, but very loud into the mics and the speakers are all hanging from chains just above the pulpit so the acoustics were not great. Add on a steep roof and you just hear a lot of echo. The other difficulty was that sometimes they might speak in Efik or Pigeon English. The singing and dancing during worship was awesome though and I wish our worship service at church was as rich and lively as the one here.

Holi Celebration with CSC Nigeria 3

Back at the hotel, Rahul had already set up some colourful powdered face paints. Today was the celebration of Holi and we all participated by getting our faces decorated. I wish I had used the red so it would show up more in pictures! Rahul also brought some very delicious Indian sweets for us. Thanks Rahul!

Kaju Katli

Golden

2010-02-28T18:35:00.004-05:00

I know I'm in Calabar but we just won hockey gold, how can I not post about it?!?! I actually thought the game was later in the day but I forgot about the closing ceremonies so it was actually earlier. After coming home from dinner at Ann's house I quickly checked the internet and noticed it was tied at 2-2. I was able to get some play by play from Steve online and would have screamed in my room if it wasn't so late when I heard Crosby scored for Gold!!!

I was googletalked in after the game and was able to remotely participate in the festivities including the singing of the anthem which brought tears to my eyes. Go Canada!!! That's right, hockey is still our game.

Despite the fact that we did not finish on top of the podium, and I have to say the US did had a great medal haul, but we got 14 gold medals!!! That's just amazing considering we came in the game just hoping to win ONE on home soil! I think this speaks volumes about Own the Podium. What's more important though, I hope the funding toward athletes will continue even for the future games like London and Sochi.

Ah wish I can watch the Closing Ceremony. It's such a great ending.

GO CANADA!

Day 2 in Calabar

2010-02-27T18:16:00.014-05:00

Our morning started out with breakfast at the hotel. I had raisin bread, though the bread is more crumbly than what we have in Canada and a Spanish omelet which was very good.

We then had our medical and security briefing. Since we've arrived in Calabar, we've been treated so well and I can see that the Governor's office and CDS have really gone out of their way to take care of us.

For example, when we arrived at the airport, we were picked up in this special van:

Dr. Joseph Ana did our medical briefing today. He was the Commissioner for Heath in Cross River State from 2004-2008 and gave us a lot of useful information to stay healthy during our stay here in Calabar.

Some interesting facts from the briefing:
- Nigeria has a population of 140-150 million people (it's the most populated of all African countries). 1:4 Black Africans live in Nigeria.
- Cross River State has a population of 3 million (Calabar has about 1.2 million)
- There is no social welfare system in Nigeria
- Malaria is the biggest killer of pregnant women and children under 5 and accounts for 70% of outpatient cases
- Nigeria is the 3rd most infected country by HIV, up to 12% of the population was affected at one point. Not sure what the stats are now.
- Avoid pasteurized milk and ice cream :(:(:( since the milk may have a lot of bacteria in it
- We should brush our teeth with bottled water (oops!)

Mr. Bassey Okim then gave us the security briefing. He is the State Security Advisor and the government's chief advisor on security matters. It was comforting to know that while the normal due diligence is needed to guard our belongings while travelling, Calabar is quite safe.

Some interesting facts that also offered me some insight into roads in Calabar:
- Every route in the state joins to the Calabar Highway
- There is only one route out of Calabar and it can be closed in 5 minutes (making it easy for the police to catch criminals)
- There are marine routes since Calabar is adjacent to the water
- Current crime rate is 16 per 100,000 people and the team hopes to reduce it to 4:100,000. For comparison, other parts of the state is 1000:100,000 so Calabar is very safe!

We got Mr. Okim's own phone number and the Emergency Response Center number in case there are any emergencies.

We ate lunch and then headed over to the Women and Children's Hospital to register. The facility is newly constructed and is due for completion this year. Friday was a holiday and the staff were away for the weekend so it was very quiet. Not sure whether there were patients there.

Women and Children's Hospital
(you can see Dr. Ana standing at the bottom of the steps)

We headed to the supermarket where I bought myself some Ribena :D and a box of tissue for my desk. Instead of buying the 800 Naira Kleenex brand I decided to go with the 180 Naira Rose Belle Nigerian brand. It's quite soft and comparable to Kleenex. :)

In the evening, after a slight African delay, we finally headed to the African Cultural Night. I was very excited and had been looking forward to some good African music. Perhaps they tried to cater to our mostly Western culture, but a good portion of the music turned out to be Western style. :( There were dance performances though and I enjoyed them very much! Interestingly, a lot of the performers were Christian and they were very vocal about spreading the Gospel. Not sure how my fellow CSCers felt about it but I was very fascinated by the way they worship.

We ate dinner there and I had the Efere Ine, translated as Fisherman's Stew. It was quite spicy but very tasty. Accompanying my meal was garri and a local Nigerian beer. The portions were quite large and it was hot out so I couldn't eat much but thoroughly enjoyed my first taste of local cuisine! Though I promised to try the foods put in front of me, I had to pass on the goat that others had tonight. One new dish at at time, maybe next time!

Tomorrow some of us are going to attend the church just down the street from our hotel for Sunday morning service. Really looking forward to see what a worship service is like in Nigeria!

Arrived in Calabar

2010-02-26T18:51:00.002-05:00

I'm safe in Calabar and it's late at night already. Spent much part of the evening just setting things up, checking email, and writing on our team blog. :) I posted an entry on there tonight so this will have to be short.

Since some of you say you'll be checking for daily updates ;) I'll try my best to update everyday. I have lots of stories to tell already but it'll have to wait til tomorrow.

The room is basic but comfortable. There is hot water but I might take cold showers from now on. It's so hot here! Typical tropical humid climate. Though, I think after being in this room for a few hours it's finally cooled down a bit.

My bed (king size!) with mosquito netting on already though I've been sitting "outside" and don't see any bugs yet.

The desk area with my laptop setup. It is quite dark but sitting underneath the lamp with the laptop is okay.

I have orientation 9am tomorrow so need to go to bed. Let's hope I can sleep and not be too jet lagged. It's only 6:50pm in Toronto . :S

Note: I couldn't change the blog timezone since it ends up changing ALL the time on my previous post. So FYI, I'm GMT+1, i.e. 6 hours ahead of Toronto.

Last Call

2010-02-22T23:19:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow morning I will have my last CSC call before our team departs (on their separate flights) to Nigeria. My flight leaves Wednesday evening to London. I have a long layover in London and then I will leave Thursday evening London time for Abuja, Nigeria. That is two overnight flights. I hope I don't look like a panda by the time I get there. I do hope to fit in some brief sightseeing in London but we'll see how that goes.

Even though I'm leaving Wednesday, it's still quite surreal that I'll be leaving so soon. For many weeks we've been having these morning calls and preparing that I almost feel we'll have yet another call next week. It'll be great to finally meet everyone, instead of just hearing everyone's voices.

Many people at the office in recent days have either greeted me with "Oh you're back!", to which I respond, "I haven't left yet.", or "When do you leave?". It is a bit nerve wrecking thinking about actually being there and trying to do something that will hopefully make a difference, but the fact that there are so many resourceful people on my team reassures me that we'll all figure it out somehow.

Last check on the weather shows that Calabar is raining all week. Sigh...reminds me of Vancouver. :P Only um...20+ degrees hotter! My upcoming month in the tropical climate makes me bear with the snow today a bit better, but I still wish it would have waited til I left to snow. :P

Back to wrapping up all the loose ends...

Checklist

2010-02-20T03:23:00.004-05:00

Couldn't fall asleep tonight. Before I went to bed (or tried to at least), I made a list of things that I need to do or remind myself about before I leave for my trip. That list was loooong. I guess maybe that's why I got back up when I couldn't fall asleep in a couple of minutes and didn't feel tired. I thought I should get moving on that list!

While trying to make myself fall asleep, I thought, next week this time, I'll be sleeping in Calabar. Craziness! It's so so soon. There's TONS of stuff I need to do before leaving but I'm excited for this new adventure and at the same time wondering what I've gotten myself into. :P

Part of the reason why I have all this work to do isn't the immediate things that need to be taken care of, or handed over to someone, though there's plenty of that, but it's all the stuff that I would have needed to do if I wasn't away. Like taxes! Good thing Steve reminded me tonight to gather all my receipts.

Packing starts first thing in the morning so I have time to buy stuff in case I'm missing stuff.

Down to the last stretch

2010-02-18T07:10:00.003-05:00

Less than a week before I leave for my CSC assignment! Can't believe the day is almost here.

We got our project assignments at the end of January. Drew, my fellow team member from the US, and I will be working with the Cross River State Department of Public Transportation. Since our knowledge of transportation systems is limited, we've been scheduling interviews with people who work in the field to learn more about their jobs and how we might be able to best implement the deliverables we've been asked to do.

Aside from that, I've been busy wrapping up all my readings for my pre-work and getting 'poked' with all the vaccinations that I need before my trip. The vaccinations were separated into 3 separate appointments over the course of a month. A nine shots were taken. Ouch. Steve had to take the shots too since he will be joining me in Kenya.

My flight is next Wednesday evening. Gotta start packing tonight!

Let the Games begin!!!

2010-02-13T01:45:00.003-05:00

Went to the Opening Ceremony tonight. The atmosphere inside BC Place was just unbelievable!!

Many people ask me, so what do you think? I know many compare the opening ceremony to Beijing and surely, many aspects cannot be compared. We neither have the equal man power nor the thousands of years of history and culture to do something to that extent. However, I loved how it was different, so that it's not a direct comparison. I thought it showcased what our country was all about very well, and it makes me proud to call myself a Canadian.

The day started out grim with the tragic death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. It's difficult for an organizing committee to figure out how to do a festive and celebratory opening ceremony and yet still respect the events that happened that day. I thought VANOC did a wonderful job of dedicating the ceremony to Nodar Kumaritashvili and pausing for 1 minute silence. To hear silence (mixed in with babies crying) in a stadium full of 60,000 people mourn the death of an aspiring athlete was very touching.

My favourite moment of course was when the Canadian team walked into the stadium. If the roof could come off because of all the noise and cheering in the stadium, it would have.

GO CANADA GO!!!

Before the Games begin...

2010-02-12T14:31:00.001-05:00

Everyone is hyped!!! It's very hard not to be in the mood when you have hundreds of people dressed in Canada gear all around you and cheering randomly. Pre-Olympic events have started around the city and we had a chance to walk around and do some stuff yesterday evening. Now if the rain would just go away....

Lining up outside LiveCity Yaletown

We had to line up for 45 min. to get into LiveCity Yaletown, slow because of security checks. We couldn't stay for the torch relay but was able to check out the buildings inside. It was pouring while we were there....so we bought a Canada hoodie jacket which has since become very handy in rainy Vancouver.

LiveCity Yaletown Stage

In the evening we went to see a free Aboriginal concert thanks to our Aunt Judy who hooked us up with tickets! I still can't believe the concert was free because it was one amazing performance!!!

The Black Arm Band

The performer who played the didgeridoo wowed our whole audience. I thought the instrument only makes one sound, but he was able to make beats and animal sounds too.

Vancouver!!

2010-02-11T13:57:00.004-05:00

Steve and I arrived in Vancouver yesterday and I was saddened to see it so rainy and gloomy. I didn't take many pictures since I was trying to keep my camera out of the rain.

We arrived in Vancouver to their beautiful terminal. The last time I was in the Vancouver airport was over 10 years ago and it didn't look anything like this. Free WiFi at YVR! Why don't we have that at YYZ?!?!

Banners at YVR

Despite the rain though, the excitement of the Olympics fill the air and the city is beautiful with all the banners and lights. Even the buildings are decorated!

Robson Square

New month, new stuff

2010-02-02T18:14:00.003-05:00

I can't believe it's February, where did the time fly?? Countdown for CSC Nigeria is now in days, not weeks. I can't believe it!

We received our Statements of Work for our projects last Tuesday. (Has it been a week already!??!) Drew, my partner, and I will be working with the Department of Public Transportation. Lots of details to iron out still but super excited that we'll be working on something that will (hopefully) have impact on the lives of the people living in Cross River State!

Just looked at my calendar, I fly to Nigeria 3 weeks from tomorrow. Ahh!!!!

The past week has been crazy and more so this week, with me starting my new role on my new team. There's also a lot of other stuff going on and every day seems packed with meetings of some sort and deadlines to meet. Strange thing is, ever since I moved to my new office in the other pod, I've gotten a lot more people coming by to talk to me instead of on instant messaging. It's like when I used to sit close, we'd just chat by text, when I sit far now they come talk to me face to face. I don't understand, but don't mind the visitors. :)

Reality

2010-01-25T20:15:00.003-05:00

I logged onto work last night and noticed that my name was no longer under my department's group. My profile has been transferred. It's so strange to not be part of the team that I've been part of since I started working.

I found green bins (they're the boxes used for moving offices, not for organic waste) sitting in my office after I came back from lunch. Sigh. I am to be packed up from my current office by Thursday afternoon. I'm going to miss my nice sunny, window office.

Even though I knew in my head that I was switching departments for a while now, the feeling has never quite sunk in. I had so many things to do and every day just seemed like business as usual. Not anymore.

The reality of it all has hit me like a brick wall.

I came home and found that I had gotten my passport back from the Nigerian High Commission. My visa came back successful. So relieved! I looked at the date today...25th. By this time next month I'd be in London on my way to Nigeria.

Wow, less than a month.

Today's been full of realization of all the changes that will be happening in the next month or so. It's not like I didn't know about it, I just haven't had time to really feel it.

I'm sad and nervous and excited all at the same time.

Well, at least life's not dull.

Haiti

2010-01-14T23:15:00.004-05:00

Extremely saddened by what is happening in Haiti. Sorrow is an appropriate word.

It really makes me realize how extremely blessed I am, living my very couchy life in Canada. The images from Haiti just make me completely speechless. The non-censored pictures already brings me to tears. I have no courage to click on the other ones.

I question why God allow these things to happen. Why is life now even tougher for those who were already very poor? I don't know. I just pray.

Life is truly very fragile. Please donate if you haven't already.

T-6 and Tired

2010-01-12T01:29:00.001-05:00

Maybe being tired at 1:30am in the morning while still having to finish reading through my CSC materials isn't the best time to blog. But I need to type something to stay awake. I'm very tired, and it's only Monday!

I have to finish reading this module before my CSC call at 7am.

I looked at my schedule for work for the next week and have no idea how I will finish all that I have to do. I'm also moving to a new team (after 7 years!) in February, which also adds to the hectic and busy schedule.

I also have a list of to dos that I was to finish this week that I don't know when I'll fit in.

Tired. Is it really only the second (full) week in 2010?

Alright, I'll stop talking about how tired I am and all the things I need to do. Why would you want to read about that?

I was applying for my visa to Nigeria tonight and was filling in the form. I was faced with questions I didn't quite know how to answer. For example, identification marks. Took my tired brain a while to figure out what would classify. In the end I decided that I had nothing to fill in for that space. Also for the visa application, I was to provide names of places I've lived in for more than a year. I filled in Hong Kong under the City field. Apparently, it's not a valid city. I tried SAR Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, "Hong Kong" to no avail. So it's now blank. Hopefully my visa still gets approved.

I also worked out two days in a row. :) Quite happy with myself and also sore. But if I wasn't sore, then I feel like it was wasted. :P No work out tomorrow, rabies shot #2. My last shots are still either red or bruised. :S

Alright, back to the reading.

T-7 weeks

2010-01-05T21:40:00.002-05:00

Yawn.

Another Tuesday, another 7am call. I'm amazed that I've been able to wake up every week for these calls. Well there's not many more left...only 7!

I can't believe we're already halfway through pre-work and that there's only 7 weeks until I get ready to fly to Nigeria. Ever since 2010 hit, it also hit me that this trip is no longer "next year" but THIS year, and very soon. Still lots to read and prep for. Pray that I remain sane in the 7 weeks to come.

Steve and I went to get our travel immunizations today. 2 shots in the left arm, 2 shots in the right. I have to get rabies shot for this trip, so two more trips to the travel clinic still. Compared to the H1N1 shot though, this is painless. I can move my arms around freely with no pain. Just don't punch me in the arm... :)

Okay, I'm getting distracted by the World Junior Hockey game. US just scored. :( Ahhhh....come on Canada!

2009 Year in Review

2009-12-31T19:08:00.027-05:00

2009 was a year that was...

...filled with baking!
3 Wilton cake decorating courses
50 cakes, cupcakes, pies, and cake pop baking sessions

One of my goals this year was to take the Wilton cake decorating classes. Looking back at the first cake I made, I'm quite happy with the progress made but also know there's lots more to learn! I *think* I had 50 cake related baking sessions, but I may have miscounted. That's almost one baking session a week! I've thoroughly enjoyed this new hobby of mine and look forward to much more baking in 2010. This may actually turn into a side job. We'll see!

...packed with traveling!
3 continents
13 countries
18 cities

Like last year, we traveled quite a bit in 2009. We visited my parents in Hong Kong and went on a tour to Guilin with them. While in Hong Kong, we also visited Macau. Having lived in Hong Kong for over 10 years, I can't believe it was my first visit to Macau! Civic long weekend, we went to NYC. Both of us haven't been to the Big Apple in over 15 years! It was a very enjoyable visit of the MET and MoMA with lots and lots of eating with his cousin and our friends. Maybe we'll make it a civic holiday tradition? In the summer, Steve and I took a Northern Europe cruise with 50+ family and friends. DEFINITELY a rare opportunity and one of the most memorable things about 2009. Following the cruise, Steve and I toured Munich, Prague, Vienna, and Salzburg. And of course, nothing like Black Friday shopping in Grove City with a stop in Pittsburgh to wrap up a year of travels.

...full of changes!

Steve started working in emergency. It was the first time I had to get used to him being on shift work schedules since we got married. Sure, he used to do it in residency, but we didn't see each other every day then. The first two months was tough, but now I think we've got a good handle on it. He also turned 30! Well, that's more like his milestone. Mine was pulling off a pretty good (in my opinion) celebration for him with his XBOX cake!

I lost a LOT of people from my team at work. The economy was not without its effects on me. The first few months of this year was tough but I think my current team is stronger and better through it all. I'm thankful to still have a job I love and enjoy doing.

We didn't have very many weddings to attend this year, but there were definitely LOTS of babies! We're now at the age where weddings and babies overlap. :P 3 girls and 3 boys. Sadly, I have to accept that I'm now Auntie Vicky. :D

And if you made it this far reading my year in review...we bought a house! Well, a to-be-built house to be exact. Will not be done until end of 2011 so don't hold your breath for updates on it. We're not too excited yet because it's so far out in the future, but it's definitely another major change in our lives.

Let's see what 2010 has in store for Sticky!!!

Reflect

2009-12-25T01:19:00.006-05:00

Merry Christmas!!

My tree has been up and decorated since the beginning of December but I haven't found the time to put up a picture. December always seems to be so busy.

Work was busy with deadlines and people busy wrapping up work items before the holidays. Several times this past month I wondered why things were so hectic when things were supposed to slow down.

Despite making the conscious decision not to organize additional parties this year so we could just relax, evenings and weekends were still filled with parties and lots of eating. Don't get me wrong, the parties and meeting up with friends were great. I just feel....tired.

Christmas isn't just a holiday to me, or a day off. It's not just parties and presents. It's core to what I believe and I'm a little disappointed at myself that I've been so busy with presents and parties and haven't had much time to just sit and reflect on the reason for this time of the year. I guess now's a good time. I'm just sleepy. Yawn. I think the lack of sleep the past two weeks is catching up now that I've "relaxed" a little.

I'll post more over the Christmas holidays with some more Christmas related stuff. For now...

Have a blessed Christmas!

Dedication

2009-12-20T09:53:00.009-05:00

Today is TT's baby dedication. Having seen what A&R went through with the pregnancy, she's most definitely a gift and a blessing. I'm so happy for them today and excited to be celebrating this special day with them. Can't wait to see TT, it's been a while.

TT's dedication cake. I must say I'm quite happy with it. :)

Updated Post-Eating Notes:
The cake is a white velvet whipser cake with lemon swiss meringue buttercream. The cake can be more moist, but it's not too sweet. I think some addition of syrup would help. The lemon buttercream I was happy with. Just enough lemon but not too much to overpower the cake. The buttercream to cake ratio was good. Three layers of cake. :) I'm not sure I like cakes just made with cake flour. I may try this again with a combination of all-purpose and cake flour to see how it turns out.

Tickets Booked!

2009-12-19T09:41:00.002-05:00

My tickets for my CSC are finally confirmed (after making calls to my credit card company and the travel company). I realized that I don't need a visa to go to Dubai since I'm Canadian. :D Sweeet!!! At least that's what the website shows. Hopefully I get a chance to walk around for an hour or two during the transit.

Having the tickets book make the trip seem that much more real. Next to dos: appointment with travel clinic for vaccinations and finalizing the safari itinerary in Kenya.

Flights

2009-12-16T02:22:00.003-05:00

Steve needs to stop working overnight shifts on Tuesday nights. I get so tired by the time I come home from work due to the 7am CSC calls that I nap when he sleeps before going to work. And then....I end up staying up late cos' there's no one to tell me to go to sleep. Vicious cycle. :P

Well it's not all counter productive. Last week, I found a way to get myself to Nairobi without having to stay overnight in Lagos.

Background: I need to finalize my flights for my CSC trip so that we can begin the visa application process. I want to go to Kenya for a post-trip vacation afterwards since I'll probably be pretty tired after the assignment and would need a break before going back to work and I've always wanted to go on a safari. However, since Calabar is not a major city, we need to make sure we get flights into Lagos or Abuja that can make connecting flights to Calabar. The original flight that I thought would work so perfectly did not work out in terms of time. Staying in Lagos overnight is also not a good idea, possibly unsafe and very expensive ($400 USD a night in a hotel!!). After a great website recommendation from a fellow CSC teammate, I found a flight that works!!

Granted it is $670 USD more expensive than my original flight, but if I have to stay two nights in Lagos (one there, one on the way back), then it's still a better option.

Originally my flight flies out of Lagos and through Addis Ababa in Ethiopia before going to Nairobi. I just found another flight on Emirates that flies through Dubai. Definitely the more appealing option since I am reading many bad reviews about Ethiopian Airlines. Scary. That and Emirates is supposed to be good. Now if I can manage a short city stopover in Dubai, I'd be SUPER happy. We'll see. Not sure if I can get a transit visa since my connecting flight is less than 8 hours. :( If not, maybe it's still good to hang out at the Dubai airport since Steve's flight doesn't arrive in Nairobi until the evening anyway.

All these logistics, but I love planning trips. :) The flights need to be finalized before the end of the week. On that note, if anyone is interested in a 9 day safari in Kenya at the end of March...let me know! :)

Wear your pride on your hands

2009-12-07T20:29:00.007-05:00

The Vancouver Olympics are only a little more than two months away. Originally, I was super psyched about going. But then after our Round 1 draw only came up with hockey tickets, we decided to not go. I suppose it's all for the better too especially since I will be leaving for my CSC trip at the end of February.

Despite my disappointment with not going to the Olympics in person, I'm still super excited that we'll be the host country, and do hope we'll lose this bad streak of no gold medals as a host country.

I'm showing my support by wearing my new gloves!!! Couldn't find them at the Bay on Saturday, but found them at Zellers on Sunday. Yayy! They're super warm and comfortable.

GOOOO Team Canada! (and please win hockey gold)

I Love Mario

2009-12-06T00:49:00.008-05:00

Finally got to play Super Mario Bros Wii today. Ahh...how I've missed you Mario (and Yoshi!). My left thumb is still hurting from the last three hours of playing. I love the way they designed this new game. So fun!! We only had 2 players on the screen and it was already crazy. I can only imagine the chaos with 4. :) After more than 20 years of Mario playing, it's still an awesome game, and still equally hard to pass levels.

In the game you can earn star coins and purchase hint videos using them. This one was just AMAZING! I wonder if real people actually play this or they just run some algorithm that simulates this? How can you possibly get 3 people to coordinate so well as to not drop Luigi?

My new craving

2009-12-03T23:10:00.007-05:00

A few weeks ago, Steve took me to Le Cafe Michi for Japanese food. It's as if I went to Japan. Soooo yummy! Ever since then, I've been craving to have it again.

We went again yesterday with our good friend GJ and I just ordered the same thing as last time. :) We started with friend chicken (bottom left). It comes with this slightly spicy miso paste. Yum!

The one I ordered is on the bottom right, Cafe au Lait Chirashi. It comes with the seaweed salad instead of the normal salad (extra bonus for me!). I usually don't eat uni outside of Japan, but I'll eat it here. The other great thing is that they hide the unagi in the rice. It's like a surprise with every bite. :)

Steve ordered his usual Salmon Don (top left). The dinners come with dessert. :D We had the green tea mousse cake and the sake cheesecake last time. Both very good. This time we had the green tea mousse cake again and the tiramisu. No dessert pics because I ate it so fast and totally forgot to take pictures. :P

I'm craving it again looking at the pics...who wants to go??

Happy Birthday Grandma!

2009-12-02T23:23:00.003-05:00

We celebrated my grandma's 85th birthday on Monday night since I was out of town this weekend. Nothing special, just a simple dinner. She wanted buffet but my stomach is in no shape to buffet just yet. We'll have to save that for the Chinese date.

The picture was taken with my new toy....my G11. :) I look like I'm looking somewhere else because I was showing her how she could see herself in the swivel screen. :D It's not the greatest because I didn't quite get all the settings set up properly. Hm...maybe I'll read the manual at some point. :P

The main reason for this new purchase is for me to bring along for my CSC trip since it won't be practical carrying my DSLR around. I feel bad for my S400, it's been with my longer than I have worked full time and now it's finally getting replaced. I think I'll still keep it around until it no longer works. It is after all still smaller than the G11.

December

2009-12-02T01:18:00.007-05:00

I can't believe we're already in December. I sadly changed out of my template since the cold weather outside is no longer autumn-like. :( This year seems to have gone by fast yet not so fast. Months seem to fly by when I'm busy at work but when I look back at the last few months, I'm happy that goals that I set out to do at the beginning of the year are getting accomplished.

Oh I just realized I never blogged about my goals for this year.

One of my goals this year was to take the Wilton cake decorating courses. And not only did I take the courses, I got really addicted to baking and cake decorating! Never would I have imagined that this would become a permanent hobby, nor realize how much I enjoy doing this. I would have been able to buy a 5dmk2 by now if it weren't for this hobby. :P Looking back though, I am quite satisfied with how far I've come with my cake decorating skills since the beginning of this year. Definitely lots to improve still but at least there's progress. The real test will be my first wedding cake order next year!

Another goal was to look into doing another volunteering trip again. This became more than I could imagine as well - my upcoming CSC trip! I have always wished I could combine my work with development work, and this was more than a dream come true because I also get to realize my other dream of doing development work in Africa! Still super excited about this. Excited enough to wake up at 6:45am for calls every week. :)

The last goal I'm still working on...which is to shorten my backlog of picture queue. Hope to get some time to work on it this month before the year is over. :)

2/3...getting there.

Global Teams

2009-12-01T06:56:00.004-05:00

It's not even 7am, and I'm on my CSC call, waiting for the rest of my team members to join the call. For those of you who know me, I'm most definitely not a morning person so I'm still in my trying-to-wake-up state. This is the reality of having a global team. We're all over the world, so in order to all have a somewhat decent time for everyone, it means early meeting for North America. Can't complain though, someone on the team has 6am time.

Free Day

2009-11-30T18:21:00.003-05:00

Enjoying my day off today. :) So nice to have a day off after coming back from the weekend in Grove City and Pittsburgh. I usually go straight back to work right after a vacation so I've never had this recoup time that I have today, and it's quite nice! Nice to be able to sleep in and just unpack and do laundry. Too bad Steve had to go to work at 4pm today, or it would have been even nicer spending the day at home together. Alas, these free days only come once in a blue moon from working hard on a project. Despite enjoying the one day to recover, I think I would still max out vacations. :)

It was really nice to get away just the two of us this past weekend. I also got a free day from our director on Friday so it was perfect for Black Friday shopping! Working in a software lab means I don't have to dress up to work and therefore I actually had to go buy clothes for this upcoming trip. The fact that it'll also be the hottest month in Nigeria meant I need to get light breezy clothes. BR did not disappoint and I am ready to go to Nigeria with my summery business casual clothes!

I still haven't downloaded pics from the trip so I'll save the blogging to accompany the pics. I did want to highlight how we were super lucky and blessed this trip though.

On Saturday night, we were to stay back in Grove City. However, when we got to the hotel, they told us they didn't have us on their reservation. Turns out Steve had accidentally booked the Holiday Inn in Grove City OHIO! There was one room left at the hotel and the nice receptionist called the Ohio location and they allowed us to cancel with no fee. The only room left was the executive suite but they nice receptionist gave us a discount on the room, so we only had to pay a little over what the standard rate would have been. Just as we were heading out, another couple came in asking to see if there was still room. I felt bad that we had taken the last room, but at least we weren't homeless! Whew. The room was super nice; it even had a jacuzzi!

Yesterday, when we were driving back the radio told us there would be a 2-3 hour wait at all the boarder crossings. We ended up heading to the Rainbow bridge since we figured we can see a view of the falls while we waited. :P Somehow the GPS (which was not so helpful in Pittsburgh but came through this time) took us on a shortcut to the line up on the bridge. We crossed in a little over 30 minutes. No view of the falls though, it was dark and raining.

We also bought over limit and told the customer officer that when we crossed, but he still let us through. Yayy!

Goals

2009-11-23T00:01:00.003-05:00

I like setting goals. It gives direction and purpose. It prevents me from wasting too much time and letting daily routine take over. As part of my CSC pre-work, we were asked to reflect on the goals for our trip. I thought I'd share them here so you can also keep me accountable!

Personal goals I hope to achieve

I hope the experience of seeing first hand how life is in a developing country will give me greater appreciation of all the resources and opportunities that I so often take for granted. I also hope the trip will give me a greater insight on what we can do to make a difference in the developing world. I also hope to learn more about the Nigerian culture and their cuisine. One of my goals is to try every dish that's put in front of me, regardless of whether I think I'll like it or not, but at least try. I must say I'm not that looking forward to having goat/lamb, but I will try at least one bite. I think this is the hardest goal for me. :P I am also hoping to attend a church service there. I LOVE African music. Really looking forward to worship together with Nigerians there.

Assignment goals you hope to achieve that benefit the community and your client

Since I don't know too much about what I'll exactly be doing there yet, it's quite hard to set concrete goals. Currently, my goals are simple. I just hope that my work and expertise will be useful and that our project achievements will have long term benefits rather than short term gains. I really hope to be able to work on the health care related program if at all possible. We'll see!

Professional goals

I hope to gain international project management experience through this work and learn from my team members who have more experience in this area than I do. I think there will also be lots to learn in the area of team building and collaboration!

Pre-work has started!!

2009-11-22T23:42:00.002-05:00

Two Fridays ago, I got my first email to my CSC Nigeria team, the team members and what we'll need to do before our first team call. I was so excited I got goose bumps reading the email! My team will have 15 people, 50% bigger than the previous teams that have been going. I wondered why our team was bigger but was happy that I now have the opportunity to meet 5 extra people! We are a team of 15 from 11 different countries! The diversity of culture and geography that our team will be composed of blows my mind. It's amazing that we'll all be working together in Nigeria.

Now that pre-work has started, the reality that this is going to happen very soon is starting to set in. I already have a backlog of pre-work that I need to complete before my first team call on Tuesday. We've already started receiving information on logistics and making travel arrangements, making the trip seem that much more real.

Back in February when I applied for the CSC program, I never would have imagined that I would be here today, preparing for a trip to Nigeria. Though I've traveled quite a bit, this trip will be like no other. The lifestyle and culture will be completely different. There are days when I have thoughts like "Am I ready for this?" and "What did you get yourself into choosing Africa?!?!". When I read about the health and safety information, sometimes it is quite daunting. Most of the time though, I'm just really amazed at this opportunity to do international development work with work!

Almost 3 months to the day when I'll find myself in Nigeria. Goose bumps!

Become a mentor!!

2009-11-16T00:06:00.003-05:00

DreamCatcher Mentoring (DCM) is now recruiting Canadians to volunteer as mentors for its 2009/2010 e-mentoring program. DCM is an e-mentoring program that connects Yukon and Nunavut high school students with Canadian mentors around the world. Since 2005, DCM has matched over 300 Grade 9-12 Yukon and Nunavut students representing 14 schools with mentors working in their aspired ‘dream careers’.

The DCM program was created to address the increasing drop-out rates from high schools in the north. The staff at DCM believes that a tailored, one-on-one e-mentoring program will educate students to learn more about their career path and empower them to realize the rewards of staying in school. For most students, DCM provides an opportunity to interact with a professional working in their aspired career that they would otherwise never have the chance to communicate with, especially for students living in rural communities.

DreamCatcher Mentoring is looking for mentors from all fields and sectors to mentor high school students in Canada’s North. Mentors are required to post messages to their mentees 2-3 times per week, committing about 45 to 60 mins per week. Mentorships typically last 3-4 months either between October to January, or February to May each year.

If you're interested in being a Mentor for DreamCatcher Mentoring, please register at: www.dreamcatchermentoring.ca. Once registered, if DreamCatcher Mentoring determines that there is a student who shares the same career interests that fits with your profession or area of expertise, they will be in touch about the next steps in our process sometime between now and March 2010.

To register or learn more, visit www.dreamcatchermentoring.ca.

Not so comforting...

2009-11-13T01:27:00.003-05:00

I was just reading a blog entry by an IBMer who was CSC Nigeria Team 2. They just finished their assignment in Calabar. I knew one girl who had malaria. Now it seems as if multiple people on the team caught malaria.

Even worse, while she (the blogger) was on the phone learning about the conditions of those who had malaria, a team member passed out in front of her.

It's actually a little scary.

Oops...maybe I shouldn't have told Steve. I guess I'm not doing such a good job of making him feel reassured about my trip there.

Scary yes. But I'm actually still very much looking forward to go. I guess I'll just carry lots of meds with me.

What is injustice?

2009-11-12T23:47:00.002-05:00

Tonight, I had the awesome opportunity to attend a talk hosted by the Give A Day campaign which included awesome African music, and thought provoking talks by Dr. Jeff Turnbull, the president elect of CMA, and Stephen Lewis.

I loved every bit of it. It is so exciting to see so many people turn out for a talk on social activism and the fight against HIV/AIDS, but it is also these kind of talks that reminds me how lucky I am to be so privileged and have the opportunities that I have EVERYDAY.

Though the fight against HIV/AIDS and poverty seems almost impossible, yet inaction because the situation seems so futile will do nothing to solve the problem. I'm very much a realist and do not believe we can easily solve the problem. But I also know that not doing anything will result in no change.

Every day in the newspaper I read about discrimination, injustice, human rights. And though those issues are valid, I can't help but think that there is a greater injustice in the world everyday - the disproportionate distribution of wealth and resources. How is it that we are battling obesity when there are people who are dying of malnutrition and starvation every day? How is it that so much attention is focused on who should get the H1N1 vaccine when millions die every year from diseases that are completely treatable like malaria and TB? We have evolved so much and know more than we ever had before, and yet the most basic problems still affect 25% of the world.

It's simply not fair that I am sitting in front of my computer, in a heated house, with a glass of clean water beside me, full from dinner, writing this to you. How did I get so lucky? And if you're reading this, you're also on the same boat.

Don't feel bad about being fortunate. Do something to make a difference. If you have a charity fighting against HIV/AIDS that you already donate to, make a donation. Otherwise, considering donating a day's pay towards the Give A Day campaign. Millions, including the majority of the population in Nigeria, live under $1 USD a day. You'd be amazed what your 'small' donation would do.