583. Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day!!! I realized today that I never fully celebrated a Canada Day before. I love my country and I feel I am patriotic, but I always try to avoid big holidays because I don't like huge crowds. Today was different though..I was out almost the entire day and had such an amazing time.

It seems as if all of Toronto went to the harbourfront today. That giant rubber duck arrived on our lake so I guess it attracted more people. I never experienced the area quite so busy before. It rained on and off for a bit but stopped by the evening which was great because we got to see the fireworks! The forecast had actually predicted thunderstorms and I was so glad they were wrong about it, as usual. So far this weekend I did the exact opposite of what I talked about in my previous post (about no new friends lol). I went for a walk around the harbour with a new friend and it was super packed. We wanted to go somewhere for a drink but the wait was like 2 hours..so we ended up just walking around..then it started pouring rain so we went into Pawsway to watch a dog show. Then I came back home. At that point I was feeling so tired and almost decided to just stay in for the rest of the night.

Luckily I didn't and ended up going out with my friend and some new friends we just met to watch the fireworks by the CN Tower (see photo above). After that we just walked around and made our way to the harbour again in time to catch a bit of another fireworks show (this one was even more amazing). We just continued walking around and trying to decide where to go next. The amount of people and cars/traffic was crazy. We decided it was best not to take a cab and just walk somewhere...so in the end we went to Earls for some drinks and food. & that was my Canada Day!

Here is the Canada Day decor in my lobby. They also had a plate of Canada cupcakes which I resisted:



The world's largest rubber duck, which cost the city ~$200k. I remember seeing this in Hong Kong (in photos only). I think it would be nicer if it was on the middle of the lake to look like it was swimming.



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582. Recent Life | "No New Friends"

Yesterday I went to dinner with a friend of mine who told me he recently got the idea to narrow down the number of friends in his life. He was trying to decide whether or not to keep up to 5 or up to 10, but reassured me I made the cut lol. The point of this is to build better quality relationships with who you do have in your life and enable you to focus more on what's important in your life to become successful. I thought about this and I probably have four "close" friends now who I talk to or see on a daily basis. I also have a lot of secondary friends who I talk to or see less often. & then I have countless acquaintances/casual friends I guess. I find that the older I get, the less time I have to meet new people/friends and I don't really care about it as much as I used to. I still like meeting new people though but I wouldn't purposely try to. At this point in my life I am mostly focused on building a successful future for myself and improving my own life which takes up quite a lot of time. It's a bit ironic because this week I actually made plans every day of the week (only my Thursday is still open for now in terms of social activities)...with all "new friends". Well, half new and half casual friends. & here are some photos taken recently:




Over the past few weeks I realized I went to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) a few times. A couple times I went to their Friday Night Live events and another day my friend and I had lunch in the area and dropped by. I have a membership there this year so I want to try to go more often.


I love the animal exhibit. This lion is so beautiful. My ultimate dream in life is to see the Serengeti Migration and see all these animals in their natural habitat.


This reminds me of Age of Empires (my sister and my favourite computer game growing up lol)







A few weeks ago my building had our annual owners meeting. I rarely come to the meetings because everyone is so much older than me and I feel awkward going alone..I've gone a couple times before just for the food though lol. But this time a friend of mine who also lives in the building was available that night so we went together. I'm really glad we did. The food selection was really nice this time hahah (buffet style) and we also had to vote for a few new members on the Board of Directors. It was also interesting to hear how the hotel is doing (the building is a condo-hotel and the owners collectively own the hotel side as well). So for the vote, my friend and I volunteered as "scrutineers" so in the end we helped to count up all the votes. It was a fun night. It was nice to meet some other owners and the board members as I realized I never met them before.




Went to watch the Sound of Music with my family a couple weeks ago





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581. Recent Food | Cooking & Eating Out

Ever since I got my newly renovated kitchen, I've been cooking a lot. I won't say "a lot more" because back then I literally never cooked lol. Cooking is actually pretty fun. There's a lot of recipes I want to try but not enough time...and well, I can only eat so much in a day. I really like baking. I want to get a nice blue (or bright pink) Kitchenaid stand mixer. So far I've been mixing everything by hand and I'm not that good at thick mixtures..or kneading dough. So here are some things I've recently cooked, as well as restaurant meals mixed in. I've had several failed recipes (gnocchi from scratch, apple pie from scratch, etc) that I decided not to take pictures of lol.

Shepherd's Pie! Half eaten. It was my first time making it and it actually turned out really really good. Probably one of the best shepherd's pies I've ever eaten. I am not just saying that because I made it myself (I can admit most things that I make don't taste that amazing yet since I'm a beginner cook hahah). I want to make it again soon but it takes a lot of time.


Nachos from Against the Grain


Another dinner I cooked - roast chicken thighs with potatoes and peas, cooked in white wine.

I made WAY too much of this. & I didn't really like it. It was pasta with chicken, spinach and tomatoes. Actually it would have tasted really good if I didn't put so much cream in there because it was way too heavy/filling for me.


My sister came over one day and we made a shrimp scampi pasta for lunch. It was soooo good. I never used to eat shrimp when I was younger but now I love it, and it's so easy to cook. I've made this a couple times already.

Strawberry Kale Salad at Amsterdam BrewHouse. This place is awesome during the summer for drinks at the patio (it's beside the lake) but the food isn't the best. It was a hot day so I wanted to get something light and cold so I went for a salad. They really skimp on the strawberries here lol. It's supposed to be a strawberry kale salad but there was literally only three thin slices of strawberry. So not even a full strawberry. Also three thin slices of apple.

Preparing my apple slices for an apple cake. The apple slices were tossed in lemon juice, brown sugar and cinnamon. I ate a few slices just like that and they were so delicious! Here was the final product:

In terms of cakes, so far I've made carrot cake, apple cake and banana bread/cake. Banana is my favourite. I've baked each of those cakes a few times each already so I've kind of "perfected" the recipes by now. The banana one is a bit annoying to make because you always have to wait until the bananas are super ripe. So you always need to plan ahead on when you can make it.

The most delicious apple pie at King Edward Hotel! I love how the pie crust was in the shape of an apple. I wonder how they made it like that. Now that I'm all into cooking, whenever I eat out and like something I always want to try to make it myself. This was what inspired me to make my own apple pies (which I failed at).


& Royal York Hotel's version of apple pie..

Also now that I've been cooking, whenever I eat out at restaurants I try to order things I cannot/wouldn't want to cook myself. This was a dinner at Pearl Diver where I got a burger and a side of garlic shrimp. When the shrimp came I immediately thought..I shouldn't have ordered it since I could've just made it at home lol. They were good though. But I actually thought the ones I made with the shrimp scampi tasted better..

& finally this was a dinner one night with my family at Pizzeria Libretto (again!). As appetizers we got calamari as usual, and arancini balls which didn't taste as good as I had hoped they would. But they are one of my favourite places for calamari in the city.

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