The past Thursday I had the opportunity to climb the CN Tower for the first time as a part of a fundraiser for the World Wildlife Fund. It was quite an interesting experience.

The whole thing started around the last week of May, when I realized that maybe I should get myself in shape once more. I’ve been kind of slacking off at the gym, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get things started for the summer season.

And what a start it was. I trained twice a week almost every week since then. I remember dying on the Baldwin Steps behind Casa Loma on my first attempt. I never ran stairs before, not to mention running 144 flights (that’s 1728 steps!) in an all-out, do-or-die fashion. Eventually, with the encouragement of Daniel and Levi, I discovered a pace that worked for me. The key to the race was apparently: 2 steps at a time, and never stop.

My goal was to finish the climb in 15 minutes. Admittedly, this was a little unrealistic, but I thought if I gave myself an impossible time, I’d push myself harder. I was pretty nervous on the day of the run, which sounds a little silly, but I couldn’t help it — the anticipation, the pre-race nerves, what if I totally fatigued half way up?

After all the administrative chores, along with all the security check-points, a WWF volunteer registered my timer wristband, and that was it, time to run. The next 20 minutes were a blur. I couldn’t quite remember when, but I think it was around floor 47 when I told myself that I was insanely stupid for signing up for such a task. My legs were on fire. Reading the flight numbers slowly go up by one was a torture, I had to force myself to stop counting. After passing the 100th flight of stairs, my legs were done with 2 stairs at a time, I had to switch to doing 1 steps, I was also tasting blood at the back of my throat — so that’s why they tell you to breath in through the nose.

I ended up getting a time of 00:17:58, and placed 390 overall — all sorts of disappointing. I was pretty sure that I could do it in 17, but alas, I was almost a minute late. A lot of fun was had by all though, so it was all in all, a great afternoon / evening.

I want to thanks all the folks that sponsored me for the event! I ended up raising $420.00, which is pretty amazing! Congrats to the FreshBooks “old-school” team as well, they placed 3rd overall as a team with the average time of 00:12:47!

This year’s headliners features some of the best and brightest in Jazz. Tony Bennett is obviously one of the highlight and will be closing the festival this year. If you’re looking for some retro funk, don’t miss Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Grandmaster Dave Brubeck and awesome saxophonist Sadao Watanabe will be making an appearance as well. So get your tickets today!

Strangely the one performance I’m looking forward to the most (and thus, has bought a ticket to) is the British Jazz pianist / singer Jamie Cullum. I’ve bought his past three albums, and so far they haven’t disappoint. I find his style in jazz so interesting and different (to the point where sometime it offends some jazz crowds) that I even wrote a final paper on his performativity to jazz and popular music in my fourth year course Music and the Body.

I was wondering when he’ll come to Canada again, I told myself I’d go see one of his concert if he does. I estimated sometime next year on his next album tour, but the announcement that he’ll be playing the TD Toronto Jazz Festival at the end of June got me all excited. I’ll be with good company too — Heather, Dan T. and my sister Anna so far has told me they’d accompany me to this performance. If there’s anything to look forward to this summer for me, it’s the night of June 30th.

With that, I leave you with Cullum’s ‘These Are The Days’ from his earlier album titled Twentysomething. Enjoy!

These are the days that I’ve been missing,
Give me the taste, give me the joy of summer wine.
These are the days that bring new meaning,
I feel the stillness of the sun and I feel fine.

Sometimes when the nights are closing early,
I remember you and I start to smile.
Even though now you don’t want to know me,
I get on by, and I go the extra mile.

These are the times of love and meaning,
Ice of the heart melted away, and found the light.
These are the days of endless dreaming,
Troubles of life are floatin’ away like a bird in flight.

These are the days
These are the days
These are the days

I thought you said our love would last for ever
Believing that the tears would end for good.
I told you that we’d get through any weather
Maybe that didn’t work out, but we did the best we could.

These are the days that I’ve been missing
Give me the taste, give me the joy of summer wine.
These are the days that bring new meaning,
I feel the stillness of the sun…and I feel fine.

I pretty much just had the most jam-packed weekend of my life! The weather was fantastic, people were out and about in the city, I got to spend time with both family and friends, nothing gets better then some quality time with friends and fams!

Friday night I had the pleasure of attending the Luminato Festival kick off at Dundas Square, it was quite the crowd. I loved seeing people dancing and jumping to some quality music, and it was great to be downtown on a Friday night, the city was just bursting with life! First Nova Scotia’s East Coast New World Orchestra sizzles the floor with their regional folk music that made everyone danced (or at least, tapped their feet).

The dancing continued with a lindy-hop swing dance lesson, I’ve never seen so many people dancing to swing

Then, the fantastic, Grammy winning Count Basie Orchestra blew the night away with their smooth and swin’in jazz. I still can’t believe I heard them for free at a spot right in front of the stage. This was followed by the brilliant 14-years-old Nikki Yanofsky who wowed the crowd with her strong vocal work. I still have “Ol’ Macdonald had a farm” stuck in my head (in a good way).

After all the festivity was over, I ran into my high-school buddy Tim Chong and we had Pizza together and catch up on some good times as well as discussing good o’l photography, it was definitely a fantastic night all around.

Saturday a bunch of us celebrated Howard’s 22nd birthday with a dim-sum lunch, the food was quite delish, and then we went crazy and played mario-cart and smash brothers for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening, my family and I went to see “Evil Dead — The Musical”, which I think everyone in Toronto should go see because it was freaken hilarious. The one-liners and slapsticks were dead on, I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard in a long time. It does use a lot of fake blood for effect though, so those that don’t really like seeing blood might want to skip this one for that reason. Seriously though, if my mom enjoyed it, you will enjoy it too!

Sunday morning I went to see Heather play some tournament baseball with the Lion’s club. They didn’t do so well, and I wasn’t the lucky charm I thought I was. Nevertheless, it was fun being there watching a supporting a friend and enjoy the outdoors and tanning in the sun. In the afternoon I drove to Waterloo to have all-you-can-eat Sushi with Scotty, and then visited Alex for a quick chat (which usually lasts around an hour or more, so much for “quick”).

Jam-packed but fun weekend!? I think so. My cousin is visiting TO next week, plus gatherings here and there, this is going to be a fun summer!

The baseball game was quite a good one, first of all, it was opening weekend, second, there was a grand slam, on the first pitch by Thomas. The crowd went wild, hot dogs, fries and beer were digested, time were spent with good friend, what else can you possibly want from a baseball game?

Then of course, there was the awesome dinner at Shakespeare’s Arm in Guelph with a bunch of friend as a last gathering thing, since everyone is graduating and movin’ on to the next step of their lives. The dinner was of course, filled of hilarity and more hilarity — definitely a good break from exams.

And yes, I promise I will update what has been happening from Taiwan very soon, it’s just been so very busy running around in and out of the city. Trying to adjust to jet lag is not fun either.

On a totally random side note, I definitly need to purchase a portable hard drive, the amount of photos I have is eating up memory like me eating street food, they all go very quickly.

If anyone sees my buddy George Y. sometime soon, give him a big pat on the back and congratulate him, because just a few hours ago he has obtained his Iron Ring from the University of Toronto. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the ceremony, the fitting of the Iron Ring on the little finger is a part of “The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer”, and serves as a constant remainder to the Engineers of their obligations, duties, and responsibilities. To say that this event is a huge deal would be an understatement, so congrats George and Joyce! And don’t worry, if I were you, I wouldn’t want to take the ring off either!

Photos Provided by Joyce Xie (Who also obtained her iron ring, congrats!).

George and my friend Ho-Kwon Kim was also in the iGem 2006 competition working on cell thermometers, and won the third place for best collaboration between Universities (Toronto and Waterloo). The project, in a nutshell, uses the Lacl protein to induce or repress promoters to express GFP or mFRP. Amazingly fun stuff!

I also found out recently that George along with other has published a journal article, and is now currently working on building a microfluidic delivery channel network for a throughput device that studies the effect of mechanical stimuli on individual stem cells as his 4th year thesis project.

When I asked George about his grad-school plans, he told me “I don’t know yet, but I applied to a lot of places, most of them in the States, I’ll have to decide which one I’ll go to”. Which, I thought was a brilliant response in the tradition of classic George, because most of the answers I get when it comes to Grad school is “I don’t know yet, I applied to a few places, I hope I get in!”

What is wrong with me? I seriously have not touched my poor D80 for so long. Today I realized that the new Flickr Uploadr 3.0.2 was released more than a month ago. A MONTH!

Nevertheless, I’m glad they finally updated it. I’m loving the fact that I can change tags on individual photos, before I can only do that for the uploadr on Macs.

Now all I need is actually taking the time to take photos. I’ve been thinking of visiting Guelph’s very own Arboretum, but with labs, assignments and other misc. all lined up on my to do list, looks like my photo time will have to be once again placed on the back burner.

Speaking of photos, back in December when I had my gathering, my buddy Alex gave me an oppertunity to play around with multiple crazy filters his dad made when he was a kid. The end result was amazing, the fact that it was home made certainly adds to the “hip” factor. These filter basically takes the circle of confusion concept, adds a shape to it (instead of a circle), resulting in shapes forming on bokeh light sources. Turns out, you can make these filters by simply cutting a shape into a black piece of construction paper and sticking it onto the side of your lens, very cool stuff!

Then I went downtown with Alice to first have a wonderful dinner at Joe Badali’s. The dessert — Gelato Fresco, was especially good, thanks for suggesting it Alice!

We then headed off to the Roy Thompson to enjoy the TSO and Mozart’s Symphony #40 as a part of their Mozart @ 252 Festival. Overall I found it okay, I’d review the performance for you, but I found a review in the Globes that pretty much summed up my thoughts, better writing too. I also got to play around a little bit with Alice’s new Samsung M620. It was an interesting phone to say the least, but both Alice and I thought the userbility needs some major improvements.

The next day, when I returned to Guelph, my house-mate and I went to watch 27 Dresses. The movie was pretty much your normal romantic flick fare, but it was a pretty enjoyable one at that.

All good things must come to an end. It’s only Wednesday and I’m already exhausted. Labs are finally starting, and they’re surprisingly interesting, I’m sure I won’t think so when it comes time to write up the reports though, speaking of which…

Almost February already! Where did all the time go? Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to reading week, where hopefully I’ll be able to catch a break on a sunny beach somewhere down south. Until then, I will have to find some way to enjoy this white powder known as snow… ugh.

The hustle and bustle was well worth it though, my holiday gathering was a huge success. And New Years was mighty fun over at my friend Heather’s. I also got the chance to meet up with my cousin Dana several time over the holiday, which rarely happens, and well, just overall a busy, but incredibly fun and refreshing holiday. White Christmas, so awesome.

Speaking of my holiday gathering, for some reason all of the photos I’ve taken ended up with my buddy Alex. This is what happens when you have three photography crazed kids taking photos, swapping memory cards, and well, having too much fun to care who’s camera and flash unit belongs to who. The entire thing zoomed by, maybe it’s because being a host of 30+ attendee party takes a lot, but I don’t remember actually setting down in once place for more than 15 minutes max. At least I finished a game of Dirty Mind with some friends. Maybe I should take down-sizing into consideration, so I can actually have a decent conversation with a small group, rather than fragmented ones with a lot of people.

Anyways, you can find the photos over at Alex’s Picasa Web Albums, or view it via the slideshow below. Major props to him and his brother Dan for setting up the equipments, as well as editing the photos!

Happy New Years! May Everyone have a fantastic 2008. Go get ‘em!

But before that, Regina headed out with some of her own Toronto friend to catch-up, so Dana, my sisters and I decided to watch a movies: Live Free or Die Hard. I fell asleep during the movie from the fact that I’ve already seen it as an exam break, and from the shear post-exams fatigue I was experiencing at the time.

The next morning we went to Cora’s for brunch, then we went to shop at Sherway Garden, and then to bowling, which was hilarious watching everyone hitting the gutters. After that, we watched I am Legend, which was pretty awesome. Then we came home and had a hip-hop dancing lesson from Regina, you can imagine the hilarity that ensued.

The next day we woke up nice and late, and found ourselves snowed in, being the crazy bunch that we are, we decided to go out anyways, and ended up going to karaoke for the entire afternoon, after that, Regina went to the airport and went home! It was an awesome weekend, especially after my tiring week of exams, and working for the university.

Photos below, I didn’t take too much because it was just hard lugging my D80 around places, I guess sometime you just need something portable:

More photos can be found at my cousin Regina’s Picasa Photo Album