610. Recent Life

I can't believe it's already December!! This year flew by way too fast. I still remember celebrating New Year's last year like it was just yesterday..
I feel like I post the same photos of Christmas decorations around the city every year hahah. The city is already so festive but I'm not fully in the Christmas spirit yet. I think it's because we still didn't get snow. I actually wish it would come soon though so I can wear my new Moon Boots..also I'm waiting until the first snowfall to visit our Christmas Market which I am super excited for.






New Moon Boots. I got navy blue this time (my previous ones were shiny black)


I love this!


Love the white coat as well. I am looking for a ski style white coat this year..I have a specific look in mind (similar to one I was going to get last year but they didn't have my size). I wonder if I'll go (attempt) skiing again this year..





New Bearbricks! From my boyfriend on his recent trip to Japan.







My dog has a pretty tough life




Finally satisfied my craving for dim sum yesterday/lunch with my mom






My detox smoothie from yesterday. I am also drinking today's/the same right now as I make this post.

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575. Recent Life | Financial District Explosions

A few days ago, at a building right across the street from where I live, there were a series of hydro vault explosions. That day I had contractors over working on my place and it was very rainy out, so I stayed inside for most of the day (luckily). I didn't even hear about the explosions until over an hour later when people started texting to check in on me. So I decided to go out for a walk around to check out the situation. A couple of the streets/blocks around my building were closed off.

I was just observing and taking photos of the scene and then I had this amazing photo taken of me!! lol. I didn't know it was being taken. Then the guy came up to me and was like "check out this really cool shot I took of you"..so we started talking and when he told me his Instagram username, I immediately recognized him (bora.vs.bora - go follow him!)..since I follow a lot of city photographers and he is one of the best from Toronto. It was so cool to have met one of them. Instagrammers/Youtubers are like celebrities to me hahaha.

Looking through my photos later I realized he is also in one of my shots (though mine is horrible quality and obviously not as good as the one he took of me):

In this photo you can also see my building (it's the glass one that's kind of oval shape at the top). The smoke was literally right at my front door.



This whole section of the street was closed off which is pretty crazy because that was right at rush hour, at one of the busiest intersections of the city. All the streetcars down the street had stopped, all in a line. It felt like we were frozen in time. I didn't go outside the "closed off" area but I could just imagine it must've been extremely hectic and congested on all the other streets because of this incident.

So an interesting thing I noticed: There was a bunch of us standing at the middle of the street, observing and taking photos of the scene. It was very obvious all the streets there had been shut down for cars. Yet as people walked by and arrived at the intersection, they still stopped and waited for the light to cross the road. I guess it is their natural instinct to do so, because the only ones who just walked freely onto the middle of the street didn't do so at the light/crossing. It's only when people walk and arrive at the light, they feel the need to stop and wait for it to tell them it's safe to go.

They worked on this all through the night and most of the following day. Now everything is back to normal. Here are some more photos from the rest of my week:



We had like a half day of summer last week, when it was warm enough weather for a few hours to wear a dress!

I almost forgot to mention - my renovations are finallyyyyyyy done now!! Well, the construction part is done but I still have to finish buying some more furniture. I will post some photos of my place in a future post. But now that my kitchen is done, I'm so excited to start cooking!! Here is some breakfast I made the other day. They are chia puddings with chia seeds, flax seeds, maple syrup, almond milk, vanilla extract, cinnamon (for the blueberries one), cacao powder (for the strawberries one), topped with some coconut chips. Really good and fun to make. I'm excited to start cooking with my oven. I have a couple recipes lined up and will also be getting a cooking lesson from a chef (from a restaurant we always go to heheh)



Last weekend my friend & I went to our usual Library Bar..& it turned out to be such a fun night. We were lucky we got a good crowd that night because everyone was so into the music and (drunkenly) singing, dancing, & requesting my favourite songs lol. The musician ended up staying over an hour longer than he was supposed to because everyone kept wanting him to stay and play more. My favourites that night were: Wonderwall (obviously), So Happy Together and Sweet Caroline. I definitely spammed my Snapchat/Instastory that night.



My friend brought me to this little ice cream shop called Sweet Jesus which I never even knew existed before!! There was a long line up that day and apparently it's always busy there, thanks to their cool instagram-able ice cream. I got this birthday cake one which even came with a lit candle.




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570. Quick Update

I went for dinner with a friend tonight and we were talking about how the key to happiness is to keep progressing and making at least one improvement per day. Or something like that. I completely agree with this. In my "professional life" I'm actually a pretty hard worker and work all hours of the day. But then I sacrifice time for personal interests and hobbies and things I don't "have" to get to yet.. For example I'm very behind on reading all my magazine subscriptions (I subscribe to like 10 different magazines and every time the new issues come I get stressed about having to read it lol), putting up my aurora lights, doing yoga, ordering my last pieces of furniture, planning my summer vacation, keeping up with my blog and other blogs, finishing with my Asia trip blog posts, setting up some appointments etc. I can't believe I've been so stressed about all this recently..all good problems to have I guess. I'm aware there are bigger problems I could be having but I still think I should keep a healthy balance of work and personal life. But recently I've had quite a busy social life and my actual work has been extremely busy so I haven't had much time for anything else. My renovations are still not done yet..hopefully by the END of next week, my kitchen will be complete. After that is all taken care of I can focus on putting together my place again and re-organizing my life..and better manage my time.

I didn't mean to ramble on so much in the paragraph above..the only point I wanted to make was: when my friend and I had that conversation earlier about doing at least one thing per day to progress, I thought it was finally time to make a new blog post, no matter how short. Because the more I put it off, the more stressed I get because I don't like to go so long without making a new post..even though I do this as a hobby and don't "have" to keep regular updates, I actually want to keep it fairly active. Blogging is also a nice form of stress relief for me. I don't have time at the moment to edit all the other photos for a full post so here is one of my favourite shots from my birthday week last week!! This was from the afternoon my friend and I went for an afternoon tea at the Royal York Hotel. We then had a tour around the hotel and we took the time to take photos instead. I really like this shot because it was semi-candid and only taken with my cell phone camera but I think it turned out pretty nice.

As some of you may know, my birthday was a few days ago (March 26). I never celebrate my birthday but this year I did quite a lot for it! I will post all about it in my next post..but it was a lot of fun and made me very grateful to have the people in my life that I do now. Even with all the current "stress" I have, I'm actually at a very good and happy place in my life right now. I don't know if it's because of my birthday just passing but I have been thinking a lot about this recently. I feel I've grown and learned a lot these past few months especially and I became more self aware.

My other goal this week is to put up my aurora lights by following the rule of doing at least one step per day. Again, the longer I procrastinate putting them up the more unnecessarily stressed I get. I did step 1 yesterday which was setting up the ladder at the correct spot hahah. It was pretty hard work believe it or not. After I finish this post I will do step 2 which is to open up a box of the lights and figure out how to mount them. Then tomorrow onwards I'll put at least one up a day (there are 18 panels total). I hope I will get them done by the end of the week..well I'd have to, since my contractor comes back next week and will be taking his ladder back. ----- if you don't know what my aurora lights are you're probably very confused by this paragraph.

Anyways, I will end this post here. It's 2:30am and I know late at night I tend to write too much. I do feel more productive now that I finally got around to doing an update here.


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