Had a barbecue at home with Wendy, with my new barbecue stove. It’s so cool to be able to enjoy grilling at the comfort of my own home! We had steak, veggie, prawns, portabellos, chicken wings and cheddar sausages. The stove turned out to be really hot and unfortunately it was my first time grilling (I did a test grill a week ago but that doesn’t count), I overcooked one piece of the steaks and also half of the chicken wings Well I’ll do a better job next time. But what really sucked was that when I was pouring the red hot burning charcoals out of my chimney into the grill, some of the small pieces of burning charcoal fell out and landed on my newly installed floor tiles and left marks on quite a few of them! Sob…

I got my new Smart car, finally, after a full month of waiting. It’s the 2010 Brabus Convertible, fully loaded with most of the features that you can add to the Smart. I really like how it looks especially the huge wheels and the nice skirts all around. The leather heated seats are nice too. The new gas engine is more powerful than its diesel counterpart on my old Smart Passion, but then somehow I find it harder to control, like when I accelerate there is this lag that was a little annoying..etc. Nevertheless, nothing is perfect and I think I’ll get used to it soon.

As I’m typing I’m actually watching the Celebration of Lights on ctv.com. Today is Spain and I think it sucked, nothing really special that caught my attention. I’ll probably go to my cousin’s house next Wednesday to watch Mexico’s show, on his oversized balcony.

I got the rest of the patio tiles cut and installed, trying to make it look professional by making sure that they align properly and also wrap nicely around the wooden poles and corners. It was tiring as my handsaw was so crappy (probably older than I am) and some teeth were missing. I cut my finger as well, even though it wasn’t too deep. The result is pretty amazing! Can’t wait to head out more and maybe do some barbeque there!

2 days ago suddenly came into mind was the NHK Kouhaku. I was checking out the 2009 one and was *shocked* to realize that I haven’t watched it yet..! I’ve been following it since many years ago and for some reason I haven’t watched the latest one. I might have been too busy… Anyway I downloaded a HD version of it (32GB total!) and the quality was super good. Watched it on my LCD TV, so perfect.

This year’s show was awesome, and of course the CM would be Nakama Yukie and Nakai Masahiro - they are probably the best CM in Japan so far. Saw quite a few talents that I haven’t seen before and they were so good. First one came to mind is the 11 year old girl Sakura Mayu who sings enka like how a 60 year-old does. So shocking.. and then Susan Boyle, everyone knows about her and I’ve surely watched her video on youtube 100’s of times, but to see the performance again one can really see what true talent means - I was getting goosebumps every 5 seconds. And then this super old enka singer Akimoto Junko, looks like an average mom but when she sings her song “Ai no mama de” I was completely stoked. Such an awesome enka song! (and the violinist Emiri Miyamoto was good too, and young) Perfume put on a good show as well with their most popular song “Disco”. Saw them on youtube tons of times but never seen them in Kouhaku. Then it’s the every so popular Arashi (first timer). Of course I like Jun and Nino as they both do amazing in dramas, but what made me happy was the song they sang which was the theme song for Hanayori Dango, one of my favorite drama! I’m missing that drama now. Then it’s Ayaka’s usual super great performance, but it’s her last show since she’s gotten Grave’s disease and will be retiring from the scene…what a huge lose =( SMAP put on a Michael Jackson memorial dance show this year, and Kimura was very impressive with his dance move, lol.

Of course I have to mention Fukada Kyoko being one of the judges this year! Good to see her there I always love her dramas. In fact I just watched drama Massugu na Otoko that she starred. I was a boring drama though. I just downloaded another J-movie Kimikaze Girls starred by her and Anna Tsuchiya, looks interesting to watch.

Today is the worst day ever. Work for the entire morning from 9:30 to 3:30 nonstop. Didn’t even have a chance to take breakfast. Had a headache, and almost a heartattack due to the nature of the task. It’s still not over, have to work on that stuff more tomorrow, I suppose. Life sucks..sometimes.

Good thing I bought these Eon Balcony and Deck Tiles at the Canadian Tire today. They aren’t cheap but they certainly look good! I was planning on doing some barbeque at the patio or maybe just hang out more often maybe to work or to relax, the original cheapass vinyl flooring just wouldn’t do it - it collects so much dust/dirt since due to the coarse surface, and it also looks really dated. I seldom want to get out just because of the dirt on the floor, I can imagine with the new flooring I can spend more time out there! I got 80% of them installed, but the last row of the tiles couldn’t be installed without chopping off a portion of them in order to fit. I’ll be doing that tomorrow.

On another note, I’m having fun posting pictures to my flickr account and posting them to award contests to not only get more views, but to receive more comments and have more exposure to the pros - maybe one day some pros will contact me and hire me as a protographer for the National Geographics! I know I’m dreaming. But it’s fun to see comments and suggestions from people and friends.

I’m on call tonight midnight-4am… no time to take a nap now I guess I’ll just tough it out…

Wendy and I went camping on Saturday at Gold Creek. I think we stayed last year at the same camp site but as always, the experience was very different. Weather wasn’t so good when we got there, drizzling but not too wet or anything. I tried to set up the tarp with ropes, tied up stones to one end of the rope, threw it all the way up so that it would catch some branches high up on the tree. The trees were fairly far apart but we ended up making a pretty nicely tilted tarp set up. Setting up the tent was a breeze, but starting up a fire wasn’t. Splitting the firewood wasn’t so hard but we had a hard time starting up a fire - tried using some smaller pieces of dried wood as the tinder, which didn’t work, they just wouldn’t burn for more than 10 seconds. Luckily we bought a fuel tablet which helped a LOT. It would keep burning for maybe 5 minutes straight which got most of our firewood started burning. The little electric fan that I brought helped a lot as well to get the fire going. Next time I’ll try dried leaves and dead tree twigs… We had a fun time barbequing all the beef, chicken wings, saugages…etc that we prepared, kept eating non-stop until the sky turned dark.

The next day we hiked the Lower Falls Trail, which was a 6km round trip easy hike. We stopped over at various scenic spots, checking out the clear looking water and river rocks. At the end of the hike it was a very pretty looking fall, actually one large one and a few smaller ones. The weather was so nice and sunny, which made the falls look really nice. We climbed to the top of a huge boulder to have some lunch, before heading back to Richmond. Overall the trip was a great one and we had a lot of fun doing quite a few different things.

On another note I got a refurbished Kitchen Aid 4-speed blender at New Country Appliances for $69. It works magic! I tried chopping ice with it it literally chopped up 12 icecubes in less than 5 seconds! So far I’ve successfully made coffee frap and chocolate frap with it, the size of the ice granules was perfect, tasted just like those in the cafe. The blade component at the bottom was a bit loose though but I was able to tighten it up with a crank. Now there is a very minor leak when it’s blending but it’s not really noticeable. I’ll see if I can further enhance my fix.

I’m busying packing for the camping trip this Sunday. We will camp at the Gold Creek for one night and then do the Lower Fall Trail. Looks like it’s going to rain, not sure if we’ll be able to set up a camp fire etc, hopefully even if it rains it doesn’t get too wet - I hate having to pack up the tent stuff when they are all soaked up. Please don’t rain too hard… I bought an axe this time hoping to do some wood splitting and some camp fire action…never done it alone so it’s going to be exciting.

Wendy and I had a delicious dinner at the Tramanto Restaurant on Wednesday night which was inside the Riverrock Casino. There were mixed reviews on dinehere.ca but the food was actually really fresh and delicious! The rack of lamb and the lobster tail were very fresh and nicely cooked, the rib eye wasn’t perfect but still pretty tasty. After dinner we watched a dance show performed by some girl that I’ve never heard of, she was okay not super good. Oh well it’s free stuff so can’t complain.