Carpentry and Homelesness

Setting the bar high for all the rest of us human beings....

Cruise Ships

I really am not a cruise ship person and feel like I never will be - I feel they are big floating resorts and I am also not a resort person. But obviously I am a insignificantly tiny minority. One weekend, when I inquired about all the traffic diversions near Coal Harbor, I was told that Vancouver was expecting 10,000 visitors from cruise ships - there was nothing special going on - it was just an ordinary summer weekend and I remember thinking that 10 cruise ships in one weekend is a lot - but now I realize it was probably just 2 or 3: this weekend it was 3 of these humongous monsters and all the tourists that slowed down my run.

Pest Control

So this morning I had a whole bunch of fruit flies, from the left over dried small fish/kombu/bonito flakes I used for the miso soup base, I guess. I just emptied the trash hoping they would eventually go away. Well that eventuality had not yet arrived by the time I got home this evening - there were armies of fruit flies all over the house, out of all places about 5-6 of them were also on my computer!!!! War was waged - three of these make-shift fruit fly traps - glasses of vinegar (I gave them balsamic - like a last meal before you are hanged) + mirin + whiskey even, fitted with these papers rolled in to cones (apparently, they are stupid - the smell attracts them but they don't know how to navigate the double surface of the conical/glass system to get out - according to Google); this is the result two hours later and almost all flies are gone - well at least I am not running in to them as I walk around the house... Ha... ha... ha... who's your mommy now, fruit flies????

Compare that merciless attitude with this: A couple weeks ago, I had a little mouse who would show up at my apartment on a daily basis. Having seen him I took extra care to seal the few food items I had unsealed. He would still keep coming - so my apartment manager brought some of those sticky-pad-mouse-traps and put them here and there in my apartment. I reluctantly agreed, remembering this one time one of my ex's used these to combat the mice in his apartment and we would wake up in the middle of the night to little mouse screams and he would have to go and deal with it - I wouldn't know what he did with them - I want to think he didn't put a hammer to their heads - even though it would have been better than letting them a slow and painful sticky death. I imagined I will wake up and have to deal with squirming little mice in the middle of the house - the apartment manager said I could call him, but I would like to be a big girl who takes care of my problems as best as I can... The mouse still kept coming; and I would be sitting on my couch at night and he would just run around the living room floor (I have my meals in the living room) hungrily looking for crumbs and when he found the tiniest one, he would so happily take it in his tiny hands and eat away. I imagined this little fellow on the sticky pad, his tiny eyes begging for life and I wouldn't be able to do anything at that point, even if I wanted to release him... And here I was, always coming home to a life-less apartment and now here I had some life, sort of like a pet - I couldn't watch him die. It would still be pretty sad if I came home and found this little mouse dead in some other trap, I certainly could not watch him withering away to death on a sticky pad. So I told the apartment manager, we have to plug the holes in the apartment, I'd rather he not come to my place than kill him. And this we did, and I haven't seen him since... and I miss him sometimes, given also he was a pretty well-behaved mouse - I saw no droppings in any of the cupboards or in any food storage places or even on the counter... Yes, I know, I need some pet, in the lines of a dog or a cat, before this goes to the next level...

I also realized today, as I watched some fruit flies struggle their way out of the liquid, and try so hard to dry their little feathers and come out of the trap and finding myself almost reaching out to set them free in recognition of their effort, that teaching in the US has had a larger impact on me than I thought. 'Give points for effort', or 'A for effort' as we used to say, is a very American thing - where I went to school, there were no points for writing down the equation or drawing a diagram - you really had to have the problem solved properly and completely if you wanted to avoid zero - it was a binary system back where I came from...

Still I must admit, seeing them fruit flies fall in the liquid, struggle their way to death by drowning gave me immense pleasure... almost makes me wish I had more fruit flies... Ha ha ha what a bunch of idiots!!!

My First Steak

Here, at medium rare - I am really impressed. Having no confidence, and add to it, no thermometer or not ever having really watched someone make a steak, I stayed away from the top sirloin and bought the cab sirloin. With boiled and sautéed new potatoes fried with garlic scapes and apples sautéed with balsamic vinegar and honey in the after-steak-pan...

At ~250g, 1inch-ish thick, marinated with just sea-salt and cracked pepper for about 10hrs, 4 minutes per side, starting with smoking hot pan reduced to medium high, 5 minutes of rest... too much for myself, but if you eat as slow as I usually do, you will manage it. Except that today, I had a pretty bad low-blood-sugar attack - just feeling extremely dizzy, so when I started eating I was eating like just about most of you - like you haven't seen food for 3days... That plus I was actually quite impressed with how the steak turned out...

Siphon coffee

Here's the Syphon coffee from 49th parallel, vancouver's famed coffee shop. At $5/cup, it is actually to be shared. This method of coffee brewing diesn't yield a stronger brew than your average drip machine, certainly is not as strong as the traditional Italian moka pot, but the novelty of the method must intrigue even the non-physicists... And for me it brought back pleasant memories of the tiny coffee shop in Mito, Japan, that I first saw this aparatus - this particular one at 49th wad also from Japan, but the water was heated with a much sophisticated halogen lamp...

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Rain

Rain, is what you make of it, said a bus stop ad featuring a steamy kiss in the rain. No kisses were involved in my case, but I ran my daily 3km run in this pouring rain... Just me and this one seaplane that ventured out, while other humans and seaplanes stayed put...

I remember Stephanie once saying when I was getting close to moving to Van, 'it rains a lot here, but people seem to not mind' and I remember thinking my first month here 'huh!?'. I must have now turned in to a Vancouverite. That or I just am at war with my belly fat...

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Vintage cars in town

I have no idea what the occasion was, but there they were as I was walking home on Granville Street...

Sundae - Korean blood sausage

Sundae (pronounced Soondae) in North Vancouver's South Castle Korean Restaurant... This according to my Korean friend is the authentic one - with home made sausages (from pig intestine, not from the plastic sausage casing they use on the grocery store sausages). We got it in soup and it came with other parts of the poor li'l pig - his ears, heart, kidney etc... poor poor li'l pig... But it was quite yummy actually, spicy like I have come to know Korean food...

Mushroom Kale Quiche

in pie-crust (I like my quiches to have a crust sometimes) - Kale and mushrooms sautéed with onions and garlic and chipotle sauce with raisins and goat cheese... yum yummmm....

Indecent Mountain

Sometimes, instead of running on the West End beach, I run towards the Coal Harbor beach and run there - it has less people variety, but what it lacks in that, it makes up in excellent views of water planes landing and taking off from the Burrard Inlet - I will get a picture of one of those one day and splendid mountain views. But one of the mountain always reminds me of a woman, her legs, in missionary position... yeah I know... I need to get my mind off the gutter...

Nouvelle Cuisine

Farmer's market day. Quick sautéing to preserve original taste, with only salt, sparingly - in a nouvelle cuisine sort of way. Russian kale, yum yum yellow oyster mushrooms, the most flavorful tomatoes I've ever had - heirloom tomatoes - so sweet - this is definitely going to be made in to a pasta sauce this summer and a new food for me garlic scapes.

Japa Dog

Vancouver's famous Japadog... Just a regular hotdog with some fun toppings... I had the okonomi-dog... I went in thinking of the yum yum Hiroshima okonomiyaki we had... so it was a big let down...

Around Stanley Park - the whole 11km Part 3

these are blackberry bushes full of flowers... soon there will be yum yum blackberries

Around Stanley Park - the whole 11km Part 2

Around Stanley Park - the whole 11km Part 1

Around Stanley Park - the whole 11km Part 1