Ultimate spring rolls
Originally uploaded by Simon Law.

Get them at Ben Thanh Viet Thai in Cambridge, Ontario.

Julie and Desirae
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I go to Waterloo once a school term to hang out with people. It's good to walk the halls of your alma mater, after senility has had time to replace your memories with something fonder. In September, this visit often coincides with halfwitted's birthday party.

Driving to Waterloo was a tad annoying, as it was the long weekend, so I spent a good two hours queueing up for my rental car. They gave me this huge station wagon, as they had nothing smaller, and I drove for hours upon hours. When I finally got there, I met up with elliptic_curve who is back in the country.

She made a Thai curry and I made tabbouleh before we picked up butterbee. There was some confusion as to how to put on a toga, which was the mandatory attire, and then we were off.

Elsa Ratz
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The night involved lots of chatting, various tasty snacks, and a surprise engagement. Well, a surprise to me at least. As the night wore on, more and more people changed into non-toga clothing, as it's awfully difficult to wear a makeshift toga comfortably. You don't know how many times I was stabbed by safety pins.

The next morning, I lazied around the place a bit. Then I helped the lovely Elsa, who doesn't even live there, do some cleaning. She is the best party guest ever!

That evening, I crashed cypherpunk95's housewarming party with elliptic and butterbee. It just so happened that da_lj was at the previous affair, so I was happy and shocked to see him. It's a small, small world. We were shown around the house, I lounged about in a huge cast-iron bathtub, and made eyes at their new stove. Now we're cooking with gas!

I bumped into Justyna, who I chatted with for a while. And a few professors from Waterloo. Then I noticed some guy walking around with a Nikon F-series. It was only after some conversation that I realized that I just met tracer99 and Laura. I've been following their lovely photographs for a while, which made me very pleased to meet them.

We drove butterbee and her boyfriend back home, before going back to elliptic's place. I had to sleep on the floor, which was cold, but was snuggled my favourite kitty in the world. So I suppose everything turned out fine.

Elliptic and I drove to Montréal, avoiding one group of frosh to see another. We proceeded lazily, stopping at Arby's and Real's Truck Stop, making terrible time. But it didn't matter, we were going back to civilisation.

Holden and David
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Somehow, I have managed to get myself on Slashdot. This article stems from a talk that I did in Waterloo on Monday. And really, we have David and holdenk to blame. For it was they who coordinated this stunt.

While I thank Holden for the wonderful marketing push he's given my career, I'm a tad worried. After all, now I'm in the public eye.

So… uhm… does the camera make me look fat? :P

Mr. Noodles
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

It is easy to have a good time in Waterloo, if you try. Especially if you import people like pphaneuf, whom I don't get enough time to hang out with in Montréal. The humour is not lost on me, I assure you.

holdenk hung out with math_foo for a while, whom he hadn't seen in forever. Where forever was last Wednesday. I made friends with Timin, who seems to have forgiven me. But he has retained mricon's training and still bites the hand that feeds him. Playfully, of course.

We played some games at ayria's place, after I wrote a small random number generator to substitute for a lack of dice. But then I realised that I used too many characters:

perl -pe 's/.*/rand(6)%6+1/e'

I made dinner reservations, which are mostly unnecessary in Waterloo. And then eight of us showed up at Ellison's Bistro and had a wonderful time. I must admit that I had to resort to bribery to get some people to join us. But in the end it was worth it, even though both of them would have been procrastinating anyway.

There was a slideshow we watched of party photographs that azrhey had taken. Boy, does that girl have a two-track mind. It is interesting to note that Holden and Pierre are set up to be arch-enemies. One is pantsalicious while the other isn't. One day, one of them will grow up to be Evil and the other will have the moral obligation to thwart him.

Yvonne and Pierre
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After driving some people around, I went over to musicdieu's place where we trashtalked a bit, just like I did the last time I visited him. Then I passed out. Without the assistance of Zubrówka. When I awoke, it was 5:00 and I drove morethanreal home.

I found myself on one of her three couches at 9:30 and made a couple of kettles of hot water, because I was quite cold. I sat in the kitchen for a couple of hours, hoping she'd wake up so we could get some breakfast. But that didn't happen. So I drove back to Math's place and the three of us went on a quest to get brunch.

Nobody is open for lunch on Sundays in Waterloo. Nobody except Bánh mì Givral Deli which serves cheap and delicious submarine sandwiches. We filled up on these and headed back. Whereupon Holden tried to give me more relationship advice.

Holden and I drove back and along the way I took a five-minute nap that stretched into an hour. No worries though, I dropped him off at Sheppard station and headed downtown. I needn't have rushed since the train was very, very late.

"That was a really good RPG session!" — pphaneuf
"That's better than some of the nookie we've seen today." — holdenk

I'm going to Waterloo this weekend.

It's an opportunity to see Timin and try to make amends.

I have sixteen boxes of Julie's books stacked by my doorway. In the morning, I'll lug them into the van. After work, I shall drive to Toronto.

Saturday morning, I will pick up holdenk and we will drive to Waterloo. I'll stack the books in the basement and then find people to hang out with. I think we'll have a marvellous time. You should be one of us!

In the morning, I was pleased to discover an open access point close to Tor's window. I tried to contact halfwitted and since he didn't respond, I went back to sleep again. Oh sleep, glorious sleep. By noon, I was able to get in touch with him and brought my things over to his flat where I saw Mike again, the roommate with good kitchen equipment. We all piled into the car and went about town shopping for dishware and groceries.

They also made me stop at Starbucks, which is laid out like a temple to milk and coffee. It's stunningly bizarre with people rattling off the longest strings of meaningless words. We then made our way about town until we had a car full of food. I made myself busy in the kitchen setting out a five-course meal.

It is here that I want to point out that holding parties back-to-back is really confusing for your guests. Especially if there's overlap between the attendees. But no matter, small parties are just as fun as big ones.

Footprints
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I think Grahame was one of the first people to show up, but he left with Tim for a while to go see northbard, corbet and tormenta. I started entertaining people as they came through the door. Tor showed up again as did musicdieu. I have to say that Luke lives a life that's filled with stuff, he left after the borscht to go see a concert with Prof. Ragde. sailorfrag managed to sneak in the door without my noticing. Two of my guests, Rob and Justyna, realised that they actually went to high school together.

We ate, and chatted, and I gave myself a burn. It's just a small burn, more of a blister, because we had to handle some baking in the oven. I wound down the party gradually, and it ended with me crashing on the couch. I seem to see a trend developing here. A couch-surfing trend.

In the morning, I woke up and did some dishes. Then I decided that a bath would be nice, so I took one of those. I had padded out of the washroom when the telephone rang. Aha, 點心 was on. I packed up my things, said goodbye to Mike and thanked him, then off I went into the world. First to pick up libertinette and shader_boi before going to elliptic_curve's to retrieve her and James.

Emo book
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

We spent about two hours chatting in the restaurant as the tables filled up and emptied around us. We also ate prodigious amounts of food. "Slowly," I had to counsel them, but they just inhaled it all. Once we finished, we went to Starbucks again. Again!

I realise that I'm not vague enough for this journal to actually be hosted on LiveJournal, so let me do some of this here: It is safe to say that we mocked the Starbucks drinker furiously, which led to many innuendos, insults, and assorted quips throughout the afternoon. Good times? You bet. I also came up with a fabulous television show idea that I should totally try to get produced. Does anyone know a person with a steady hand who wants to film television?

With that over, we went to visit Timin. I brought him gifts of 蝦餃, but he was afraid of me for some reason. He was always running away and hiding from me. Oh no! I think he hates me now. Maybe it was because he thinks I exiled him or something. Will someone please tell Timin that I still love him every day?

Scenesters on the couch
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I was soon accused of becoming a scenester. Not only that, but a scenester band photographer. C'mon, do scenester photographers take over-saturated pictures of other scenesters in hoodies? Like this one on the left? Do they ask snarky rhetorical questions?

All too soon, it was time to leave for Toronto. I got in the car, dropped people off at home, and then headed for the highway. Once there, I dropped off the car, was given a box of food, and sent on my way to the train station. I caught the train with a little time to spare and slept on my way back.

I don't know if it was a relaxing weekend, but I'm sure glad I saw all of you.

Walking in a winter wonderland
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

This weekend, I was too busy relaxing to write in this diary. I think. Maybe I was too busy being on vacation to write? I don't know.

It started with the train trip down on Thursday night, by popular demand. Doing the Montréal to Toronto leg of the trip by rail is always fun and slightly romantic. I spent the trip going down listening to music and hacking on UniConf.

Do you know how weird it is to do software development on the train? The guy next to me was fiddling with some spreadsheet for a while before sitting back to watch a movie. I caught him sneaking glances at my screen trying to figure out what the small characters whizzing past were saying. Unit tests are not very interesting to watch, I'm afraid.

When we pulled into Union station, I threw on my backpack and headed for the subway. I was already very tired so I napped on the large and spacious subway cars before walking home. Once I got home, I continued hacking for a while longer before going to sleep.

Holden, Michael, and Dimitri
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

In the early morning, I looked out of my window and saw softly falling snow. I decided that it was a bad idea to drive in a snowfall and went back to sleep. After all, it was my vacation and I'd do as I like. When I woke up later, there was a generous blanket covering everything.

I had some breakfast, bundled up and shovelled some snow. It's been a really long time since I've done that. After we dug out the driveway, I put my things into the Volvo and I headed off to Waterloo. I made my way to the 401 and turned on the radio. The local news station was reporting on how Torontonians were whinging about the delay in clearing the roads of snow that morning. Then they talked about how the highways were just getting cleared of accidents. Man, sleeping in on a snowstorm is one of life's great pleasures.

I arrived in Waterloo where I pulled into sdt's driveway. Actually, no. I pulled into Prof. Smith's driveway by accident. I moved the car after Stefanus dug out his. He's getting so middle-aged now, I even saw him stopping his shovelling to talk to the neighbours. Oh, Ashley and Stefanus have the coziest little home with a wonderfully spacious kitchen. I sat at their breakfast bar with my laptop for a while and sang to little Noel. He's so cute!

Łukasz Kosewski
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After a bit of e-mail, I went out shopping with Stefanus for some groceries and then went back to start preparing some food. You can't have a proper party without food. I had brought a brisket of smoked meat down from Montréal and pressure steamed that. Then I made some bean burrito filling and chopped up some toppings. That's when people started showing up so I sliced up some sandwiches and started filling the burritos.

For a party that moved to a different location, we had a pretty good showing. Doug showed up, and I haven't seen him in a long time. So did holdenk who brought along two friends. And Tor, who was originally supposed to host the party, showed up after his exam. And musicdieu arrived on his way between two other parties. Too soon, it got late, and I crashed on Tor's couch.

Tonight's party has switched locations!

Stefanus, Ashley, and Noel are pleased to host the festivities. You should come because Noel is the most adorable thing ever.

Where:

42 Park Street in Kitchener.

Date:

Tonight! Friday, 9 December 2005.

Time:

20:00 or 8 PM.

I know it's further from the university. But it's right close to the Kitchener Bus Terminal, so take the bus down here. If people need rides to get home after the party, I would be happy to oblige.

__        ___  _____      /        _ 
\ \      / / \|_   _| __ ___  __ _| |
 \ \ /\ / / _ \ | || '__/ _ \/ _` | |
  \ V  V / ___ \| || | |  __/ (_| | |
   \_/\_/_/   \_\_||_|  \___|\__,_|_|

So what does a Montréal fire hydrant have to do with the party I'm throwing later today?

Fire hydrant
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Absolutely nothing!

Nevertheless, you are still invited to what promises to be a most thrilling party and a wonderful way to kick off your finals. I took a day off, got on a train from Montréal, and will drive to Waterloo in the morning just to see you.

C'mon. You feel special now, don't you?

So, I urge you to show up to this event. I've packed my pressure cooker and three pounds of genuine Montréal smoked meat in my backpack, so you will be in for tasty treats. And I even brought my laptop full of music, because I'm still telling myself that I'll get some hacking done this weekend.

It's your job to make sure that I don't.

The relevant details:

Who:

You and your awesomest friends.

Where:

42 Park Street in Kitchener. B3-04 at 280 Phillip Street. WCRI.

Date:

Tonight! Friday, 9 December 2005.

Time:

20:00 or 8 PM.

Catalysts:

You should bring at least one of: francophones, foodstuffs, tunes, games, drinks, B-list celebrities, parlour tricks, funny stories, Spirits from Beyond, organic and inorganic compounds, et cetera.

I still don't have a mobile telephone, so you should probably leave a comment below. Or just crash the party, because that's excessively fun!

I picked up some train tickets today.

One pair of those tickets are for going to Waterloo next week. I'll be arriving on late Thursday night and will be staying until Sunday afternoon.

I'm a little tired from this heady lifestyle of mine, so I figure I'll throw a potluck party on Friday night. My plan is to take over someone's house, put on some good music, invest in some drinks, and make something simple to eat. Then anyone who shows up with refreshments and munchies and a good sense of humour gets let in the door.

Then, on Saturday, I can go about hanging out with people that don't like big parties. There are a few of you I really do want to see, so let's make sure to get together. I figure on maybe cooking something for dinner at someone's house. Because I always go to Waterloo with a huge knife.

Sunday will probably involve some early dim sum so that we can beat the rush. I wonder what Cameron's would think if a big block of us took over their dining room? Good things, I hope. Then it will be away to Montréal again, before I miss my train.

If you would be happy to show up to any or all of these events, please leave a comment below.

P.S. Some of you are expatriates of Montréal. I'm planning on bringing some Schwartz's smoked meat and some tortillion down. I can be bribed, at very reasonable rates, into bringing other rare and exotic comestibles. Let me know.

It is becoming more and more likely that I'll be coming to Waterloo on the night of 8 December, and leaving Sunday afternoon. I would leave later, but the sleeper train doesn't run between Toronto and Montréal anymore. Does this make anyone else sad?

Anyway, if this is a bad weekend for you, then please change my mind by voting in this fun poll. I know it's right at the beginning of finals, so this puts a little hamper on the festivities. However, it is right after final assignments are due, so perhaps this isn't so bad.

I have the hankerings for hosting a party, because I am now certifiably insane. What this means to you is (a) more FIGlet on your friends list, (b) tasty food to consume, and (c) a fun way to procrastinate during the exam period. What I do need is a place to host this party, so people with lots of comfortable floor space should volunteer.

Because you should always volunteer for awesomeness.

At the beginning of the term, I said I would visit Waterloo. I do truly miss the place, as there are still people there that I'd like to see. So here I am examining my calendar, trying to decide when to take the train down. Also, I have this extra vacation day floating around, so this would be a good time to use it up. I am definitely looking forward to seeing people, chatting about interesting things, cooking dinner, and partying. Leave a comment if you can help me with one or more of these things. Also leave me a comment if you have a place for me to crash. Since I also have a paid-up LiveJournal account, I'm going to let you people decide which weekend I should spend in Ontario:

So later this morning, pphaneuf will stop by my place and pick up Timin. They'll be travelling to Waterloo, where Timin will be reunited with Julie. I think she's looking forward to that. Meanwhile, Timin is still oblivious.

Timin on the couch
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I'm going to spoil him tonight. Wild salmon, fresh cream, and hugs. I've taken care of him for so hard and so long that I've grown accustomed to his face.

Goodbye, Timin. I'll miss you.

Edit at 12:28: Pierre showed up, we loaded the Linux-mobile, and now they are riding west together. Safe journey.

I've woken up on a couch at Tim's place. The social was a great success! We consumed a ridiculous amount of strawberries and people kept on bringing more as the night wore on. Actually, it's kind of worrying how many leftovers there are. The fridge is still completely full, and there's a large sinkful of strawberries, ice, and dishes.

Let's back up a bit. After a while of sitting outside, I decided to try Tim's door again. I knocked, and this time the door was unlocked. Tim and I decided to go out shopping, so we made a run to the Kitchener Farmer's market. They've moved it and it's a very nice place. It's bright and airy, the place smells good, and families were there doing some shopping. One food court place called Casa Salsa served me some very tasty molé; I was pleasantly surprised. After purchasing a full load of goods, we took the taxi back and I started cooking.

The food I made went over very well. There was a propane grill at this event, so I roasted a spatchcocked chicken stuffed with dill and chevre. I also baked two strawberry rhubarb pies, served with fresh whipped cream, that seemed to go over quite marvellously. I note that kat_feed's homemade strawberry ice-cream was simply divine.

Here is a recipe for a some very tasty pie. I recommend using handpicked strawberries that are sweet with sun, and farm-fresh rhubarb that's crisp and red. Strangely enough, that stuff is probably cheaper than whatever you'd get in the supermarket.

Strawberry rhubarb pie

Ingredients

• 300mL Canadian all-purpose flour
• 1mL salt
• 50mL unsalted butter
• 50mL vegetable shortening
• 15mL lemon juice
• 45–70mL ice water

• 1L rhubarb, chopped
• 500mL strawberries, hulled and sliced
• 250mL sugar
• 45mL cornstarch
• 2mL cinnamon
• 1mL ground ginger
• 1mL salt

• 150mL Canadian all-purpose flour
• 125mL sugar
• 1mL nutmeg
• 50mL unsalted butter, melted

Preparation

1. For the crust, use a whisk to combine the flour with the salt. The crust must stay cold, so please try to handle it as little as possible.
2. Using a pastry knife, cut in cubes of the butter and the shortening until the mixture is an even crumble. Make sure the butter and shortening are very cold. Stick them in the freezer if you must.
3. Add the lemon juice and ice water and incorporate until the dough just sticks together. Do not knead!
4. Shape the dough into a rough disc, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. I stuck mine in the freezer and kept an eye on it.
5. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
6. On a floured surface, roll out the dough to fit a 23cm pie tin.
7. Line the tin with the pastry, trim and crimp the edges. Put it back in the refrigerator.
8. For the filling, toss the rhubarb and the strawberries with the sugar, cornstarch, spices, and salt. You will probably need a very large mixing bowl for this.
9. Once coated, line the pie shell with the fruit.
10. For the crumble topping, whisk together the flour, sugar, nutmeg, and salt.
11. Rub in the melted butter until the mixture is crumbly.
12. Sprinkle this mixture over the fruit pie.
13. Bake the pie on a cookie tray at 200°C for 20 minutes. It might overflow a bit, so the cookie tray is there to catch spills.
14. Reduce the heat to 180°C and bake until the filling bubbles, which takes about 40 minutes.

Serves 8 to 10 people. Makes one 23cm (9in) pie.

Travel beckons once more. I've just booked a train ticket to Toronto for Friday.

As the third time's the charm, I shall make it a point to see serendipity_wpg and her show, S.M.I.L.E. while you D.I.E. (Can someone tell the Toronto Fringe festival to make their website better?)

After that, I shall hop on a bus to Waterloo to attend a strawberry social. Or something to that effect. If halfwitted has picked enough strawberries, we can probably bake a pie. I haven't had strawberry-rhubarb pie in a very long time.

I'm back in Montréal after a grueling two-days of interviewing. I was pretty sleep-deprived, but I seem to have survived. I did, however, crash for a while in Toronto before getting on the sleeper train here.

We were pleasantly impressed with a large number of the candidates we've interviewed. The ranking forms have already been submitted and now it's up to a big computer to crunch all the numbers and match students. It's like a dating game, but where brains count.

I spent some time in Waterloo seeing people, but was regretfully too tired to meet all the people I'd have liked to. Ah well, I understand that halfwitted will be holding a party sometime this term, so this will give me a convenient excuse to go down and visit.

I didn't sleep last night.

My entire weekend was filled with geeky things. On Saturday and Sunday, I did the following things:

1. Get ALSA working properly on my television
2. Get XVideo working properly on my television
3. Get BitTorrent working properly on my television
4. Do all of my laundry
5. Compute my Federal and Provincial taxes (yay refund!)
6. Get monitor mode working on my Orinoco wireless card

Actually, that last one was much harder than it should have been. It took several attempts before I finally git a set of kernel modules that would (a) load and (b) work. Now I can finally scan for available and open wireless networks. Which is very useful if you're stuck in a bus terminal hoping to read your e-mail.

By the time I was finished, it was about 4:00. So I packed things into my giant backpack, fixed up some food and water for Timin, and then headed out the door. Which is good, because the bus wasn't running yet, so I walked to the train station. In my groggy state, I picked up my train tickets at the teller but accidentally left my umbrella there. (It was drizzling this morning.) I shall have to see if they've got it when I return on Wednesday.

I arrived in Toronto by train, then in Waterloo by Greyhound. The trip was uneventful, mostly because I was unconscious most of the time. The people on the train were very nice and left me to snore peacefully. The bus was surprisingly comfortable as well. I must have been quite tired.

I got off the bus at the Kitchener bus terminal and was assaulted by a wave of heat and pollution. I waited in the bright sun for the 7D to arrive and noticed that my chest was constricting because of the poor air quality. I miss Waterloo a lot, but some things are best forgotten. Anyway, riding the bus was pretty interesting as I got to see all sorts of people. People that you rarely see in Montréal: white suburban teenagers trying to look like inner-city gangsters, vastly overweight men who take up two seats, and lank scrawny vampires who only get cathode-tube tans.

The bus stopped outside the CECS building and I thanked the bus driver and I got off. I walked inside to find dcoombs walking up the staircase with a co-ordinator. I hurried after them, calling out Dave's name. We gave a little presentation about the job, where Dave spent most the time speaking, and I spent most of the time staring into nothing. Mostly because I didn't know what was on the slides, and also because my brain was half-functioning.

After the presentation, Dave and I went to the hotel. (Where I'm typing this, incidentally.) I checked in and got the room right beside Dave's. I took a little nap, then it was off to Ben Thanh for UltimateSpringRolls. Which were still very very good. There was so much food that we brought some back to stick in the mini-fridge in my room. This will be so much better than the "continental breakfast" they serve here.

I came back to discover that Sarge had released over dinner. Hurray for everyone. Unfortunately, it seems like everybody is too busy to actually celebrate this fact. Come on people, it's not like Debian releases every year.

I suppose the only thing to do is to run a nice bath, soak in it for a while, and get some sleep. Tomrrow will be a day where I will have to ask tough questions and expect to get good answers. I should probably collate the résumés so that they are in the correct order and then acquire a pad of lined paper.

Debian sarge is released. I want to attend a release party.

Oh Waterloo, do not disappoint me now.

Got to Waterloo.

Group session. Introduced NITI. I should get a more active role in the presentation.

Meeting up with sailorfrag at 18:15 for dinner. Should be fun.