runaway nose, never going back.

dear mr. ragweed,

when we first met you looked so harmless with your green leaves and 'branches' (which seemed to reach towards the sun and scream "hug me!"). at first i thought maybe we could be friends, but now i know it just wouldn't be possible; over the years, your true colours have shone through your little facade. portraying an innocent looking plant. ha! you should be ashamed of yourself.

i have come to realize that beneath your leaves and seemingly innocent demeanor lies an ugly monster whose main goal is to wreak havoc on the lives of others. i mean, this morning i woke up to find my nose packed and on its way out the door. you see, my nose had decided to run away thanks to you. sure there were times when i managed to calm it down and had convinced it to stay awhile, but then you showed up and i found myself back at square one again.

mr. ragweed, at the risk of being too blunt and abrasive, i feel it is in your best interest that you know that no one likes you. with that in mind, i suggest you stop trying to pollute my neighbourhood with your pollen, pack your bags, and get move on outta here before everybody's noses start dripping like leaky faucets. thanks.

sincerely,
sharon

p.s. you owe me money for kleenex.

chinese lantern festival

yesterday adrienne, gloria and i went to the chinese lantern festival at ontario place. we were able to get cheaper tickets thanks to my mom, so we went down with my parents, wandered around with them for a bit, split up, and then met up with them again at the end of the night.

i didn't really know what to expect from the whole thing to see on our way down. i was a little nervous that it would be super cheesy (i.e. a whole bunch of lights on strings in a parking lot or something ), but fortunately i was wrong. haha. it was actually pretty good, although it looked a lot more impressive when it was dark.

we watched two films at the cinesphere (one of the first emperor, and the other on panda bears), walked around taking pictures of all the exhibits, and learned more about chinese history and myths/symbols thank to the info cards that went with the exhibits and the films. the night ended with us watching the symphony of fire fireworks (yay!) from the lantern festival while standing on a bench under a tree which, minus the rain and the blaring traditional chinese music that at times sounded like a haunted polka house (haha), was the perfect way to end a great night. thanks girls. :)

story of the night:
so somewhere in the middle of the festival there was a cool chinese archway that was lit up that we wanted a picture of with the three of us. in order to make this possible, gloria asked a friendly-looking woman to take the picture for us. she said okay and took it, but it was obvious from her shaking and ("aghhh"s and "ohhhh"s) that she didn't feel comfortable doing it. as she turned to go she said, "usually people ask him not me" while pointing at her husband. turns out her husband was the guy standing there smiling at the whole situation while carrying around an SLR camera. darn, he was probably a good photographer.

anyway, since gloria's camera was a film camera there was no way to tell how good (or bad) the woman's pictures were (she took two "just in case".) we still wanted a picture of us and the archway, and a good one at that, so i scanned the crowd and saw a guy carrying an SLR camera AND a tripod. needless to say, i made my way over and asked the guy if he would take our picture for us. (i figured anyone carrying a tripod had to be good, because normal people taking photos just wouldn't.) so the guy took our picture, looked at the picture in my camera screen, and smiled at me as i thanked him and he gave my camera back.

as i was walking away i looked at the picture he had taken and let out a loud "WHAT". the picture that the guy, the "professional photographer", took totally SUCKED CRAP. i had set my camera to automatic flash, but i guess because the archway was so bright it didn't go off, and you couldn't see us at all because we were too dark. the guy wasn't a professional at all (or else he would have known what to do, yeh?) what a fraud.

so moral of this story (which has somehow become way long) is: just because someone carries around an SLR and a tripod doesn't mean they know how to take a picture. posers suck.

oh well, it was still a fun night. pictures can be found here. :)

east coast 2006



last friday we returned from our trip to canada's east coast. i've visited western canada before, and i live in central canada, but this was the first time i had ever been to the eastern side. we flew into halifax, rented a car and visited three provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) in eight days. despite the fact that the all the maritimes provinces we visited were really boonie (even the bigger cities), there were still a lot of things to do, and a lot of things to see.

i don't know why, but for some reason i was really surprised at how many trees there were there. as we were landing in halifax i looked out the airplane window and, i kid you not, all i saw were trees. so. much. green. so. much. nature.

even though at times some maritimers were on the verge of being annoyingly slow (not necessarily dumb, but they just did things so slooooowly), most of them were really nice and friendly. we met a few people who were from ontario as well, and saw license plates on vehicles from all over canada and the states. there was even a biker posse from BC which had rode, literally, across canada.

one thing i really respect about maritimers is their need/desire to be environmentally friendly. seriously, they put toronto's green bins to shame. almost everywhere (including fast food restaurants) people are expected to separate their waste into compost, recycling, and trash, and while there are those kinds of things going on in toronto, people in the east actually threw their things in the right places. haha. :P as a result, everything there is generally much cleaner; the air is cleaner, there isn't as much garbage everywhere, there's minimal to no litter in the atlantic (that i could see)...the list goes on. even the hotels are in on the whole green power thing; they asked you to reuse your towels twice (although i'm not sure if its because they want to be environmentally cautious, or if they're just cheap. haha.)

anyway, this trip was a great trip and i had a really good time. yah i miss the beatiful huge eastern skies and sunsets, and the fact that you could see the ocean out the car window, but at the end of the day there's no place like home.

highlights of the trip:
- going to cavendish, PEI and seeing the REAL green gables (omg. i looooove anne of green gables)
- seeing Anne of Green Gables the musical in charlottetown
- going to my first (and second) ceilidh in cape breton. awesome, awesome music.

...there were a lot more things that we did that i liked, but those were my top three. :)

pictures from our east coast trip can be found here.

so easily distracted...



the other day, while liz was attempting to clean her room (and i was sitting on her bed watching her clean so i could procrastinate from cleaning mine), we found this huge shopping bag with a screaming/super excited little boy on it behind her door. she was holding it up trying to figure out what to do with it when i got an idea, took the bag, and told liz her to get her camera. the next 5 mins were spent laughing our heads off running around trying to think of other funny poses we could do with the bag.

i think our mom thought we had gone bonkers.

...and this is why it takes us forever to clean-up our rooms. bah hah. :P

the Land Downunder.

ahhhhh, Australia.

i've always told myself that i'd go and visit the country, which is also it's own continent, at least once in my lifetime, but lately the thought of going has been on my mind more often than ever before.

i'd love to jump around with the kangaroos, eat bamboo shoots (ermm, and by eat i mean drink bamboo juice from a chinese 'vitasoy-like' juice box) with the koala bears, listen to someone play a didgeridoo, visit the sydney opera house, visit the perth observatory, see a running dingo, put my feet in the ocean, and see the world from australia's point of view...

but most of all, i really love the fact that right now in australia it's winter, which means i'd be getting away from the brutally hot and abnormally humid canadian summer of 2006. :P