The Moon
Originally uploaded by tracer.ca.

Last Friday was 中秋節, which is one of the two big Chinese festivals. The Mid-autumn festival is a time to get together with family and eat.

I really like holidays that involve eating.

One of the nice things about having holidays land on the lunar calendar is that the moon is full when it ought to be. Boy was it ever full that day. It hung low in the sky and was absolutely massive. It was at about this time that I got camera envy. I certainly wished for a lovely telephoto lens to capture it, but I left that task to other, more capable, photographers. Thanks, Paul.

月餅
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I had some photography to do, so we had quite the late dinner. By the time I returned home, the kitchen was already buzzing with activity. The table was set for a great meal. We had bought roast duck from the Chinese butcher. And then we boiled some fresh lobster and soft-shelled crab.

Delicious!

We were so full afterwards that we forgot to go outside to look at the moon. But as I had discovered earlier, it was getting rather brisk. So it's probably just as well.

I tend to get ill during the winter holidays; not every year, but often enough that I'm no longer upset that it happens. I've spent a New Year dreaming feverishly in a guest bed, Christmas ruined by food poisoning, and countless holidays propped upright in bed.

I think that my immune system just gives up at around this time of year. After I got out of university, I started sleeping more and trying to slack off, but this was just not my nature. So I've filled up my schedule again such that is comfortably hectic again. I think my body retaliates by conspiring to get me some proper sleep during the darkest times of the year.

So sitting in bed with a box of tissues is not a novel experience for me. It is somewhat mitigated by my trusty laptop which has provided me with a means of distracting myself. This holiday season, I managed to get ill while at home which means that I'm surrounded by people who will take care of me and that I have access to high-speed Internet. So I've just been wasting time for NITI and getting stuff done reading LiveJournal. No, wait a second, reverse that.

I even found a pair of earbuds lying around, so I've been able to listen to the music on my laptop. This is in addition to the streaming audio that my last.fm account provides me; a feature I have only recently discovered. The nice thing is that since I have paid, you too can listen to the music that I do.

Whenever I get tired (which is often when one is ill) I just close my eyes and pass out. Each time I wake up, there is more tasty food to eat. I've tucked into numerous steamed fish, pork ribs braised with bitter melon, mutton belly with bean curd, and other tasty treats.

This is the best holiday ever!

cough, sniffle, cough

I'd like to point out that we're cooking a veritable feast for my sister's unbirthday dinner. We had made so many preparations that I really thought her birthday is today, but that's not quite true. It's properly tomorrow.

We've got a nice fish to steam, that was caught earlier this summer. There's also beef tongue with brocolli, roast chicken, roast carrots, roast potatoes, stir-fried peas and pork, and chicken pot pie.

Now that I've made your mouth water, I'm going to go back to the kitchen now.

Dock and sky
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

This weekend was absolutely brilliant. I went home for Father's Day and had a brilliant time up in the Muskokas Kawarthas. You see, my dad really enjoys fishing, so this weekend we decided to go up to the lake and try our luck. We've been going to Rice Lake for many summers now. My little sister has gone there before she was born, so it's been almost two decades of camping and fishing there. We have a little RV parked on a campground on a Native reserve. We have a little boat moored to a dock. And every weekend in the summer, my dad likes to go fishing.

Now normally, fishing is a rather miserable endeavour. You go out in a boat into the hot sweltering sun, or the bitter cold wind. Then you stand around for hours and nothing happens. For the true fisherman, this is merely a temporary setback: "I know that there are fish lurking down there; they're just not hungry right now." "Another cast of the line and I'll get one." "This time for sure." They are hopeless optimists.

Campfire
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Unexpectedly, we actually did catch fish this weekend. Small fish, big fish, sunfish, perch, and bass. Bass isn't in season right now, so those got returned to the lake, but we took our earnings and froze some of them. Frozen fish are nice, but fresh wild fish is particularly good eating. After a filling dinner, we sat around a fire and watched the flames shoot sparks into the air. I sat there for a while enjoying the plasma dance and then pulled out the camera and tried my hand at capturing some photographs.

We set out the next day for some more fishing and caught a few more fish. Then it was time to pack up our things and return home. I slept in the car for most of the trip, which is pretty good since I've been pretty tired lately. I think we stopped to get some groceries some where, but this was a little hazy to me.

餃子
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

At home, we made some food and I gobbled it down. Then I had to dash down to the train station, but some bags and boxes in hand. Mom had dug out some slacks that I used to be too fat to fit into; then I shrank by several kilograms and they were too wide. She altered them over the weekend and now I have a wider range of grey pants. Huzzah! I got to the station with a couple of minutes to spare and got on to the train with a smile and a skip. On the trip back to Montréal, I got a pair of seats to myself so I took advantage of this fact to curl up and sleep. The sunset woke me up for a while, but then the trees blocked it out and I was able to pass out again.

I arrived in a dark station with no-one to greet me on the platform. Bucking up my spirits, I dragged my things off the train, into the métro and onto the St-Laurent bus. St-Laurent is still blocked off for the last night of Fringe, so I had to do a little more walking than I expected. I passed by quite a few cheap jewellery hawkers that were trying to sell things to tourists. I also passed by several food stands. Once I got to Duluth and l'Esplanade, I noticed that the people on the corner were having a garage sale. It turns out that all four roommates were moving out, which was sort of sad, so they were basically selling everything off. I managed to pick up two Kate Bush albums that I'm converting to FLAC right now. Oh, and a book of cookie recipes that I'll have to try out.

This evening, I head back to Toronto to see my family. The occassion? It's f_law's birthday.

No, f_law isn't actually Timin. My sister appears to have misappropriated his picture as her icon. I think she adores him.

In any event, this weekend should be enjoyable, albeit active.

Canada Day weekend was quite busy.

My parents came down to visit, and they stayed for four days. They showed up on Canada Day, and we drove around the city taking photographs. Then we drove downtown in an attempt to see the fireworks. This proved to be a big mistake, mostly because of the volume of traffic and bad map reading skills. But we did make it to an overpass near the habourfront, so we got to see a good chunk of the display.

I spent Friday at work, and the hacking was good. But most people were just goofing off, so it was difficult to be productive.

Saturday was taken up with going to the Jardin botanique de Montréal. My mom really enjoyed the Chinese gardens, and we had a fun stroll through the place. Also, we had Stanley and his girlfriend Cherie come along­; Stanley is the son of one of my parent's old high-school friends. After walking for most of the day, we decided to head to 新同樂 where we had dinner.

By Sunday afternoon, my parents were on their way home. It was a busy weekend, but it seemed to turn out well.