Okay, so for some crazy reason the Gravlax salmon is being sold at Ikea again..! It was totally surprising to see loads of them being sold at Ikea, cause I went there just to get some light bulbs and didn’t expect to see the fish at all. This is after like a year of waiting for the fish to come in stock again… I instantly bought 5 packs of them and finished a whole pack the first day (as seen in the pic). So tasty…~~~

Another big happy is that the Kalimba that I bought from Amazon.com arrived. I had to go to Point Roberts to pick it up, but it was well worth the effort (even though I later realized that they sent me the Huge Tracey Treble Kalimba instead of the Alto Kalimba that I ordered) I played with it for a couple hours after getting home, and a bit more the same evening - it really hurted my thumbs…lol However the sound was really nice and almost haunting. It’s hard to tell how nice or not nice a sound is but all I know is that it’s the kind of sound that I really like. Tried to play some simple song, while trying to remember which tine correspond to which musical note - it wasn’t easy at all. I have to wait for my nails to grow back in order to play it properly - you’re supposed to play it with a bit of the thumb flesh and mostly the nails. Holding the instrument on hand gives me a very magical feeling, knowing that it was made in Africa and that the African actually plays on it during rituals and stuff like that. I know I will be playing on it a lot the next couple weeks.

So apparently my bar was really dark and it was begging for some sort of lighting system. Since I couldn’t really run wire through the ceiling without some massive destruction of the drywall, I went to Ikea and bought the Norrsken wire lighting system for about $80 plus two hanging lamps for $20 each. It was pricy but I thought it’s cool and fun to set up a cable system.

I knew it was going to be difficult but really it was worse than I thought. It took me 2 hours just to do the measurements (while watching Olympics on TV), and 6 hours to do the installation. At one point I sort of screwed up one of the wall anchors and was so freaked out, as you really only have one chance and if you fail to install it properly you’d be screwed forever. Somehow it turned out okay, I think it the anchor was 20% screwed but I was able to screw it in quite tightly. There were a total of I think 1 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 10 wall anchors that I had to install, and the measurements had to be 95-100% accurate otherwise it’d look like shit later. It was scary drilling the holes for that reason. After all the measuring and hole drilling, I got the wire system installed and the wires tightened up. It was a “wall to ceiling” set up which was not recommended by Ikea apparently as it was not noted in the manual - one end of the wire was set up on the wall, and the other end ends on the ceiling, in a 45 degree angle. I saw a picture online of the installation so I thought it may work with this Ikea one.

Benny and Janet came over to my place for some snacks and wine last night. I was trying to get the Jackson-Triggs White Merlot (rose) that I really enjoyed at Alice’s place last month, but then liquor store didn’t carry the regular sized bottle. There was this 1.5L version of the same wine, I pondered a little about getting it or not, while this salesperson was like “You’ll drink it up eventually”…lol. So I got this one, and another one that he recommended “Woodbridge / White Zinfandel” from California. We had fresh oyster, gravlax salmon, dessert cakes, and wine of course. The oysters was average, not too bad but wasn’t too impressive, had to eat them with tabasco where usually you can eat them without so that you could get a genuine taste of them. The gravlax was super tasty though. Benny added sesame oil to it which I thought was a great match with the gravlax itself. I’ve home-made gravlax last year too but then it wasn’t tasty at all for some reason (Here’s my post about it) Well maybe I’ll try making it again but I have a feeling that it’ll end up being the same…maybe I’ll just get them off Ikea (these guys) After the gravlax we had dessert cakes (3 different kinds I think) that Janet bought from the Capers market (that I really have to check out later since apparently they sell a lot of high-end food products and I love high-end stuff). They were pretty tasty, like I didn’t know it was a carrot cake until she told me after I finished it (I usually hate carrot cakes 99% of the time).

We played some Wii Fit after the food, and also played Left 4 Dead on Benny’s Alienware laptop (fastest laptop on earth? huge and heavy though). More photos can be found here.

I’m finally freed from all the fever and cold I had last week, and also my garden is finally done. The contractor was surprisingly nice, I had a great communication with him, and he’s done a fantastic job in merely two days. There was some problems during the brick paving like the ends of the last row of bricks weren’t touching the fences so they they might slide around…etc. and the guy spent all his time cutting individual bricks to make sure a tight fit. Overall I think it was a $650 well spent. I already have ideas building a small water pond with bricks that can hold some water plants, but that seems to be a pretty tough job after looking up some info on Google..

Anyway, I’ve also finished building version 2 of my custom made light box for taking photographs of small objects. It uses 3 Ikea desk lamps ($9.99 each), bunch of gift wrap tissue paper ($0.5), a carton box (free), and a lot of work. I have filled up the inner surface of the box with white paper so that the brown color of the box wouldn’t be reflected onto the objects being photographed - this wasn’t in place on the first box I made. I think it’s looking pretty good now I will take a couple test shots later on when my headache goes away…:(

Got a new 5-head projection ceiling lamp from Ikea last night for $60 to replace my current 3-head one. Have been wanting to do this for quite a while since the ambient light wasn’t bright enough and I often found my eyes getting tired after work. I was thinking whether to get a floor lamp or a new ceiling lamp and ended up getting the ceiling lamp since I thought it would evenly give more light to the room. Got them installed today and my room is now nice and bright~

On the other hand, the guy that was suppose to pave my garden came here for just 5 minutes telling me that the stone I chose wasn’t in stock so I had to choose another one. He said he would send some guys to do the digging today in the afternoon but ended up didn’t show up….I’m starting to feel skeptical about this guy now, hopefully he’ll come tomorrow and get the work done.

Time to change my 2.5 years old beddings~ Got a pack of duvet cover/pillow cases and another pack of fitted sheets/pillow cases from Home Outfitters today. I’ve been buying these off Ikea since the past (the really cheap ones), never tried out any of these normal ones. I had a pretty hard time telling apart terms like “fitted sheet”, “flat sheet”, “duvet”, “comforter”, “sham”…etc. since I’ve never bought these stuff before here in Canada (the ones from Ikea were illustrated so I could easily tell what they were for) I hope I’ve gotten the right stuff….I’ll see how they will fit on my queen size bed and if they will match with the rest of my room. If they don’t, return is always an option here in Canada~