I hand-made some snowflakes as preparation for the Smart Car gathering event where every owner will have to “dress up” their Smart Cars - I’ll put snowflakes on mine.

It wasn’t really too difficult to make - took me about an hour to make two large and 12 small flakes. I started with printing the paper mold (that I created in Photoshop) and cutting them out. Then these molds were taped onto two piece of styrofoams (that I collected in the past, now sitting in my garage). I used a heat gun with a super hot blade to melt/cut them into shapes. I did it underneath my stove fan since the fume created by the burning process was super smelly and poisonous. For the big flakes, I cut two of them at once….and for the small ones I cut 4 of them at once. The hardest part would be to make sure the blade doesn’t melt too much of the foam since it melts on contact. Also I had to keep the blade at 90 degree angle to the foam at all times, to make sure all the pieces of foam will receive the same shape. All in all, it was a really fun process and I love how they turned out!

Just got home from Active Network’s annual Xmas dinner held at the Renaissance Hotel. It wasn’t too bad, free food and two free drinks. When I got there I soon realized there were wayyy more people that work at Active than I thought - the reception hall was totally packed, and NOISY since everyone was trying to speak to their loudest volume in order to be louder than person next to them…etc. Well I got a free champagne and free photographs (taken by some dude that was smiling so much at us right at the entrance), and then people started to be seated so I just grabbed an empty seat and sat down. Soon my boss and his wife came and we chatted a lot about their son Zacky and some other random stuff.

The appetizer was some artichoke salad and apparatus, which was pretty sour but tasty. Then it came some regular bread and after that the main course, which was some sockeye salmon with some Risotto-like rice - it was just so so, had to put loads of salt to make them a bit tastier. Dessert was pretty good, a chocolate brownie/fudge kind of thing with creamy vanilla sauce on top.

There was a raffle at the end of the party but I didn’t stay for it as we were told that the raffle wouldn’t start in a while…actually I waited for about 30 minutes before decided to leave. Overall it’s a pretty fun dinner and … what else could have been better than a free hotel dinner~

Just another boring day….worked during the day time, had dinner, watch TV, had snack, and then I’m writing this post. I guess the best thing I did today was being able to eat this tasty Yaki Chicken Don for dinner, which I got from a small take out restaurant opposite to Richmond Centre. Also I finished Akihabara@Deep (Japanese drama) which had a fantastic ending…will try to review it asap. Nothing much else really..

It’s Active’s (my work place) X’mas dinner tomorrow night, which is going to be held at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown. Hopefully I’ll go home with some prizes…lol. It’s going to snow tomorrow, hopefully the roads will be okay…

I’ve been so busy these few days (not giving an excuse for not updating the blog, I’m really busy)….have been working not stop literally on this cool thing for work which does automatic application builds and deploys, hopefully it’ll help saving everyone’s precious time not having to do those few times a day manually…

Other than that I wanna talk about this rice pudding that I bought. IT’S SO GOOD PERIOD. I’ve never had something that good for a long time. It’s milk flavored (actually I think it’s real milk as it says on the cover), semi-sweet rice pudding. I have always been a huge pudding fan, used to eat merely mango pudding, caramel pudding…etc. This new flavor and texture is just unreal…the milk tastes soo fresh and the sweetness is just perfect….not sure how to describe its greatness, I just have to get more of them before they stop selling them…

On the other hand, I’ve been quite frustrated about these little flies that fly around my room…they are super tiny little black flies called “Fungus Gnats” (yea I looked them up) and they are super super super annoying. They usually fly around my food while I’m eating / working in front of my computer…they really like to hover near my mouth/nose area and I wonder why…maybe it’s warmer there I didn’t really want to kill them but they are too annoying I just don’t know what else I can do other than catching them with bare hand (I’m really good at it now after having to do it at least 5 times a day) and squeezing them to death.. Google says that these flies grow around potted plants…I do have two of them but I wonder if they were the cause and I don’t really want to place them outside at the balcony maybe they will freeze to death…. not sure what to do

Another medical doctor movie? No. This one talks about emergency doctors that takes helicopters to get to places where accidents occurs needing immediate attentions…cool enough. This 11-episode drama “Code Blue” was shown in Japan from July to Sept 2008, and received an average viewership of 15.6%, which is pretty good (the first episode received 21%!) Well it’s got to be getting this high viewership with the appearance of Yamashita Tomohisa / ????. I really like him he’s not just good looking but he did really well in a couple of previous dramas that I watched, including Kurosagi and Nobuta o Produce. There are two of the hottest actresses in Japan as well, namely Aragaki Yui / ???? and Toda Erika / ?????. Aragki..I’ve seen her in Papa to Musume no Nanokakan (My Review here) where she really shined. In this drama though she is a quite/intelligent/serious kind of girl, and I was a bit surprised. On the other hand Toda Erika is probably one of the prettiest actress in Japan among teenage guys. I haven’t seen much of her performance either but somehow her face looks really familiar, guess she’s been appearing in a lot of Japanese TV shows. I think I last seen her in the drama Liar Game, in which her performance was just so so. She’s pretty good in this one, very natural and just…acting right. The only nurse in the drama, performed by Higa Manami / ????, was a pretty role too. I actually visited her blog, and she’s pretty cool as she’s posted a lot of videos on her blog which none of the other Japanese celebrities have been doing as far as I know.

Anyway, the story is about a group of young trainee doctors that hope to become flight doctors, having to go through some harsh real-life emergency trainings in order to build up their experiences and also to establish their roles in the emergency centre/hospital. Working under guidance of a couple experienced flight doctors, they soon grew to become tough and strong-minded in order to fulfill the needs from the dying patients. The storyline itself wasn’t anything too special, but it’s really refreshing to me to see these otherwise handsome looking actor/actresses all dressed up in uniforms, performing some serious and mission critical tasks. The helicopter looks cool too, and everything that happens around the emergency centre looks very professional and real-life alike - I really like how the Japanese people put so much attention to very small details, which are what made this drama so cool and worth watching. Their immediate “boss” performed extremely well as well, he actually outperformed all the pretty guys/girls and he was one of the actors that I was looking forward to check out every episode.

All in all this is a great drama with lots of medical terms, professionalism, semi gross scenes (during the surgical operations), and a whole lot of pretty faces. It is definitely a highly recommended.

The ending theme song “Hanabi” (fireworks) was really really good, sung by Mr. Childrean. The lyric fits the story perfectly…I wonder who wrote them. Here it is:

Original MTV: