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Discourse in colour

Colours make up most of our lives, and most of us can take it as a granted thing in life. Whenever I think of blind people, I immediately wonder what they think of colours. Most blind people are not able to understand what colours are, and most never will. Such a simple concept that makes up a whole lot of our lives. We connect colours to emoticons, changing our mood depending on what colours we see. Our skin colours defining who we are to others, a symbol of status, a visual history. Whenever we see people of different colours, we are able to relate to their history, their hardships and their origins. Pigments in our skin, cooking in the sun.

Which brings me to my main point, why do people enjoy tanning so much? The ultraviolet rays from the sun, penetrating into our skin, radiating the cells. Oh the thought of our skin cells melting under the heat of the sun sure sounds lovely, but I also get the added effect of looking like a different shade of colour? Count me out. What is so appealing about turning into a baked crispy brown, or if you're lucky, an even lovelier tone of orange? Yet people go through all the trouble to increase their chances of skin cancer, to achieve what? Maybe if you really wanted to be darker, it would be just as entertaining to work under the heat of the sun in the cotton fields, or the open pit mines. I may be a hypocrite since I'm pretty browned myself, but it's cause I've been out at camp in the sun, and working in the sun for the past 5 years. Nowadays I've returned to being a vampire and avoiding the sun as much as I can, like the computer nerd I am. I don't feel any reason to go out and sit in the sun, waiting for cancer to get me. Sure sunscreen blocks out some UV radiation, but there is still the chance that the angry kicking cancer will catch you. I'd rather not take the risk.

Do you miss it?

It's been 2 years since highschool, and I haven't looked back. There are those who dwell on the past, and want to relive those moments, but I'm just not into that type of business. Don't take me for a narcissist or a cynic, I had a great time in highschool, but I've moved on. There are people who haven't changed, and that is the main reason I don't ever want to see them. Might sound mean or something, but it has been 2 years, time to grow up. This isn't a post directed to anybody, it's more of just a rant, since I have nothing else to write about these days. Sure it'd be cool to have a reunion in 5 or 10 years, to see where everybody has moved on to, but I'm sorry, everybody is just so highschool. Are you able to look back, and say you've changed in the 2 years since highschool? Or are you still the same person, same highschool mentality?

India?

It's come to another point in my life when I have to make a big decision that may affect my education. I have a chance to apply to an exchange from Jan to Apr 2011, studying abroad at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. IIT-Delhi is probably one of the top engineering schools in Eurasia, with an acceptance rate of something ridiculous like 1%. Going on an exchange I think would a great experience for me, learning from a different perspective. But the thing is that right now with the Carl Wiemann science initiative going on at UBC, the quality of science courses is going up, and I really like the new teaching style being put forth. Studying at IIT, my room and meals would all be provided for, so all I pay for is the plane ticket there, and whatever spending money. That makes the exchange really cheap, and is a great reason for me to go. The main thing I'm worried about is all the smart people there, and how I might be really challenged to keep up with the learning. I am sure the experience will be great, but I don't think if its worth missing out on some courses. The courseload there will definitely be different, since at UBC my regular courseload will probably be like 6 or 7 courses, while at IIT, I'd settle for 5. Another issue that arises is that my 2nd coop term slated for 8 months from Apr-Dec might be compromised because I think it will be hard to find a job while in India. The courses there could be too intense for me, and it's possible I might just end up failing something, and that thought terrifies me.

Summer 2010

4 Physics, 1 Math. Hello summer!

Dine out Vancouver 2010 - Market

So the 2nd and last trip of Dine out 2010 for me was to Market by Jean Georges, in the Shangri-La downtown. I reserved tables pretty late, so the best time that I could get was at 5pm on a tuesday, although it seemed like a good time to have a drink then start dinner. Market is located on the 3rd floor of Vancouver's tallest skyscraper, the Shangri-La hotel, and you can easily access it from various locations.

This year was the first year for Market to offer the dineout menu, since it is usually known as a higher end restaurant, and not willing to conform to offering a cheap discount meal. The lighting in the restaurant wasn't as dim as in Chambar, which appealed to me as a photographer, since I don't like using flash in a restaurant. I started off with a sazerac, since I read that Market was more known for its amazing drinks.

And I can attest to that; the sazerac was perfectly made and i really enjoyed the drink. Since I was there with my family, my mom and sisters all had sodas. The sodas are all made in house, which may explain why it costs $5 a cup, but the sodas were exceptional as well.

There are reviews out there talking about the terrible service at the restaurant, but I found the service to be spectacular, and the waitress I had was very attentive. Since the dineout menu didn't have that many options, not enough that all 4 of us could try something different, I decided to order something off the a la carte menu instead of the dineout menu. For appys, the shrimp salad and pea soup came out quite fast, and looked well prepared.

My little sister really enjoyed the soup, and she said that it was really good. My mother and other sister had the salad, which had a few pieces of large shrimp in it. The salad was well dressed and it's taste wasn't overpowering.

Since I ordered off the a la carte menu, I decided to go with the sear scallops, mainly after all those seasons of watching "Hells Kitchen" with Gordon Ramsay yelling at the chefs for preparing the scallops poorly.

The scallops were prepared perfectly, and the taste of cauliflower as well as the seared scallops with the mixed sauce was really amazing. The price was $12 for those 4 scallops, so I can see where they are making money. There was also bread that came before the appys, but it was just normal buns with butter, nothing special. Throughout the night, our glasses of water kept being refilled, so no complaints about the service. The decor of the restaurant was quite nice, i opted to sit outside in the terrance but my mom wanted to sit inside. The little booths were quite comfortable and there was coat check offered. The entrees ordered were hanger steak, red snapper, and halibut.

The hanger steak was prepared medium rare, because "the chef prepares it that way." That sounded a little bit fishy to me, making it seem as if the steak was prepared beforehand and then reheated and served. It didn't really taste that way, from the piece that I took from my little sister. I've had better steaks, but it was by no means inferior. My entree of halibut was served ontop of spinach, nothing fancy.

The lemon sauce that was prepared was what made the dish though. The halibut ontop of the spinach mixed with the sauce created a dish that went well very smoothly, creating a fusion of lemon and then the unique taste of spinach, along with the halibut.

The red snapper was slightly smaller than the halibut, but it was equally well garnished. I didn't try the red snapper, but my mom liked the dish, but i did a taste of the sauce used, and once again it was made to perfection. The sauce was so good that my mom asked for extra bread just so she could wipe up the rest of the sauce.


The dessert was a simple chocolate lava cake with ice cream, with a piece of caramel over top. Simple dessert, but made perfectly, and the ice cream had a unique taste to it, even though it was just vanilla. The chocolate inside the cake was melted, and was a good consistency to mix with the ice cream.

Overall the dinner was a good experience for my little sisters to get a taste of fine dining. I only went because it was Dine Out, but after eating the a la carte menu, there isn't much of a difference in price. But the shining point of this restaurant was the drinks. The drinks menu is quite extensive, and the bartender knows what he is mixing. The service was what I expected from dining in such a restaurant, and I have no complaints about it. The food was made simple, yet the simplicity of the dishes made it that much better. The simple ingredients mixed together to create a fusion of unique flavours. And just the environment in the dining room was pretty great, although it would be better if the dress code was respected by all. I will definitely be back for more drinks, and maybe even another meal one day.

"Harrison Bergeron"

"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else." - Harrison Bergeron

Dine Out Vancouver 2010 - Chambar

So my first dine out of the 2010 year was at Chambar on a thursday night, which I thought wouldn't be so busy since it is a weekday after all. I made reservations anyways, and good thing i did. My reservation was for 8:45, and when I went it was still pretty packed. The restaurant itself is literally hidden, which seems to be pretty common for a number of fine dining restaurants in Vancouver. The Restaurant has no flashy signs, no boards directing you to the restaurant. When I arrived there, I wouldn't have even know it was a restaurant if it wasn't for the number of people going into it. The restaurant is located near BC place, and literally right beside Stadium skytrain station. The first part of the restaurant is a lounge/bar type of area where it was pretty much packed with people drinking and having a great time. I was brought further into the restaurant, where it turns into more of a dining room, with a pretty nice view of GM place. The atmosphere of the place was great, and all the tables were full. For starters I had the Carpaccio de thon grillee - Charred yellowfin tuna carpaccio, celery, daikon & citrus brunoix, pomegranate molasses, red shiso. My friend Jorge, had the Les Champignons de Kerala-Black trumpet, cardamom & truffle soup, roasted king oyster & curried goat cheese. I really liked eating the tuna, it tasted very fresh and smooth, and the mixture of the shiso and celery made it quite exquisite. I'd say of the best things about Chambar as that the service was great. Our waiter, Patrick attended to us right away, and even though we were sitting in a corner, it didn't feel like we were being ignored. Another highlight of the DOV menu was the wine selection they had for dine out. I had a glass of Torres ‘Viña Esmeralda’ ‘08 Moscatel, which is a white wine from Spain, since I ordered seafood as my entree. The wine was absolutely spectacular, and at that price I justified getting another glass of it. Jorge isn't much of a wine drinker, but he got a glass of red wine, and I think it was a local merlot, but I'm not too sure. For the entree, I ordered the mussels that people always talk about at Chambar, Moules-frites-Mussels cooked with white wine, butter, braised celery, leeks & coarse black pepper. It came in a fairly large pot, and eating all those mussels was definitely filling. It also came with some fries and belgian dip (chipotle and mayo?) Jorge ordered Tagine de Boeouf- Moroccan braised shortrib, chickpeas, zucchini, apricots, almonds & parsley, and the presentation of both dishes was very pleasant. All the food looked so delicious that I almost forgot to take pictures of them, cause I just wanted to start eating. The moscatel I was drinking went very well with the mussels, and the mussels were simply perfection. For dessert we both had the chocolate pecan cake, but i totally forgot to take pictures of the dessert, and when i remembered, it was all gone.

Chambar was simply an amazing experience, and DOV 2010 gave me the opportunity to try out such a great restaurant. I will definitely be back for more great food and drinks, and I would recommend this restaurant for somebody who wants some casual fine dining.

Mac fanboy?

I am now currently running 3 different operating systems on my macbook pro, and they are work quite wonderfully. I have Apple's Snow Leopard running, with a linux distro, BackTrack 4 running on a virtual machine within OS X. Then I have Windows 7 bootcamped, running on a separate partition. Bootcamping Win7 did not take 5 hours, or anywhere even near that. So far the only issues I have with it is the multitouch doesn't work, but I haven't fiddled around with Snow Leopard drivers yet. Here are the main steps involved in setting up Bootcamp for a Windows 7 install

1. Close all applications, then go to Utilities->Bootcamp Assistant and follow the instructions to set up a windows partition, you can partition as much as you want. Make sure you have the windows dvd in there, or correctly mounted
2. Begin the windows installation, choosing the bootcamp partition you just made. Make sure you select the partition, then click advanced settings and format it first.
3. Finish installation and install Windows updates, and use Snow Leopard dvd to install other drivers

Prankster

I really want to do an engineering prank before I graduate. Something legendary that would be remembered for all the ages to come...

Eat, drink and be merry

I think its time for another life experience, now that my long (relative to it's normal length) hair is gone, I need something different. The long hair was an interesting experience, but short hair in itself is just so much easier to maintain. So now I am going to cut back on any processed sugars, and grains. The diet that i want to try out is called the Paleo diet, and in a nutshell, it is eating what as the "hunter-gatherers" did in the Palaeolithic age. Unfortunately living at home makes it super hard to not eat whatever is placed in front of you, which is usually something like rice everyday. Sucks even more that it's impossible to stick to my diet while eating out.

Here it is

I was going to write a blog post, but then stupid iTunes decided to be retarded. I honestly hate Apple at times.

And you caught me off guard

And into the final month of coop we go! I cannot believe that the work term is almost over, and school is going to begin again. The entire experience at Canfor Pulp and Paper has been great, working in the Research and Development department, albeit doing stuff that has no particular focus with my major. Beginning in May, I have school for 12 months before my next coop work term in the summer of 2011. 12 months of attending classes everyday, doing homework, staying late at school doing projects. The only thing I'll have to look forward to is probably in August when I will get a month of summer vacation before going back to school. My robotics class will be the highlight of my summer classes, and I will make sure to take lots of pictures and videos documenting the evolution of my robot.

Row row row your boat

Late night photoshop

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away"

Cause I get a kick out of you

Unless most girls, I only own about 3 pairs of shoes. I'm just not a person who is a big fan of shoes and all about buying shoes. Like I currently wear a pair of adidas that I've had for around 3 years or so I think. That's quite a bit of money saved over the years, which is always a plus to owning shoes. The downside is that my feet almost always get wet whenever it rains, which is like almost everyday. Nobody likes wet feet, but I've just never justified having to get new shoes, until mine are all completely broken. Just like how I haven't gotten a haircut in like 8 months. That's like $100 saved, and the only thing i had to sacrifice was my dashingly handsome looks. But today I've ran into a pair of shoes that combine both functionality and good looks. The New Balance MTC580 Goretex kicks.



A pair of shoes with Goretex that will protect the shoes from the elements, as well as looking dam good. My mind is pretty set on buying these shoes as soon as they become available, even though it says July 2010.

There must be something in the air.

Would people ever do anything if there was no immediate benefit?

Do something.

Step out. Be different.

Gastown