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March 27, 2010 // Away From Her
Boy meets Girl. Boys cheats on Girl. Girl spends her life worrying about Boy leaving her. Girl finally leaves Boy by forgetting him. & Boy helps Girl find happiness as her mind goes blank. If La Séparation chronicles the dissolution of a comfortable marriage, Away From Her portrays the dissolution of an uncomfortable one. In a positive manner. Through Alzheimer's. A little brain damage is all it takes to be happy.
March 26, 2010
Finally found my hair connection in Yorkville at Toni & Guy. Lots of layers at the top. Love it. Getting hair done by a guy named Dante feels very deep.
March 23, 2010
Friday, flew Porter to Newark. Lost passport! Ran to the Canadian consulate to beg for help! Dinner with Dan, Zoey, Brenda + Briyanta @ Boqueria. Truffled lentil was interesting.
Saturday, brunch with Neeta @ Cafe Gitane. Smoked trout + lentil salad was delish. Beautiful waitresses in pastel. First traversal of high line park. A restaurant within a greenhouse.
Sunday, brunch with Jeremy @ Plum. Citrusy 'plum' juice. Beautiful waitresses in plum. Zig zag through east village. Espresso. Tea ceremony. Vosges chocolate (which will always taste like Chicago) with Zoey. Bowery chocolate tour with Zoey. Okonomiyaki with Zoey. Ramen with Zoey. Yes, we are always eating :)
Monday, interview at the Canadian consulate to prove my identity. Running in the rain with Brish. Debating the meaning of life. Is it possible that Brish is more mature than I am???
Tuesday, pick up letter from the Canadian consulate. Allowed to return to Canada. Yay!
March 18, 2010
Wednesday, celebrated St. Patty's with Fei, Jess and Tushar wearing fluffy Guinness hat.
Thursday, lunch with Liz at Four. Love the chicken burger. One thing I miss about working downtown is smoked salmon sandwich at Petit Four. The salmon salad sandwich at Montreal Bread Co in Yorkville is good but ...
March 16, 2010 // One True Thing
I first heard of this film years ago in college and avoided it because the familiarity of the premise led to a certain discomfort. Growing up, my mother had much more respect for my father than my father for my mother. I managed to exacerbate this dynamic by having much more respect for my father than for my mother, because he thinks while she feels, because he makes so much more sense.
Results-oriented and good at math, I don't think I have ever been at risk of becoming girly. However, since reading 7 Habits in 2007, I have often asked myself, what would I care about on my death bed and the answers are closer to a typical woman's feelings than a typical man's thoughts. Perhaps intuition, rather than logic, is more likely to lead us to the optimal long term decision. Perhaps the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
Now, seeing Meryl Streep as a dying mother made me recognize my new appreciation for how underappreciated women are. They are almost invisible until they are gone.
March 15, 2010
Friday, dinner with Denise at Ame. Not so o my.
Saturday, served pickled herring with pomelo, wheat pasta with pesto, lamb chop, etc.
Sunday, tried new high fibre recipe for the oven: chicken tender coated in miso glaze and crushed bran flakes.
Reading: Michael Lewis: Junior Salesgirlieman. I guess market reflexivity 101 is not part of sales training.
February 26, 2010
Friday, dinner with Steven at Omi. O my :)
February 24, 2010
Saturday, preparing for the opening of the campaign office.
Wednesday, Attended lunch+learn featuring Peter Levitt, Manulife's Treasurer. I expected a methodical speech. It turned out to be an extremely entertaining experience. Yes, talking about cash settlement, collateral and rating agencies can be très excitant. Vendy gotta go back to Toastmasters!
February 13, 2010
Wednesday, social gathering for the campaign technology team.
Thursday, had to take a long call from the Pacific Rim during the Pacific Rim Club dinner. When my phone died, Steven offered his iphone. First extended encounter with iphone.
Saturday, tea with Tanya. After Nepal/Thailand/India, Ottawa is too much of a culture shock for her.
February 7, 2010
Friday, delish Korean dishes with Wei + Hong. Hong is trying out the small business route.
Sunday, Denise cooked eight dishes for my bday. Silk melon + shrimp is amazing. Wah :)
I can't believe that I've been blogging for ten years! When I first started, I wrote whenever I felt deep/depressed. I really believe that when you put a small thought online, it becomes larger than life. For a while, I curated the Economist, which is no longer useful now that everyone's on delicious. In recent years, I have been making a laundry list of things that make me happy. If this is an accurate reflection of my life, then my life is a laundry list, wrapped in an economic insight, surrounded by a deep thought.
January 27, 2010
Tuesday, lunch with Vikram who recently returned to Toronto and joined Manulife. We partied in NY when he first joined Lehman. With palpable enthusiasm. Much changed world. Us with it.
Wednesday, handing out donation forms at a fundraiser. First time seeing Forest Hill denizens up close.
January 23, 2010
Saturday am, tried out the Pussycat Doll Workout with Mum: the first dance (don't cha) involves a lot of 'poppin'; the second a feather boa. Now that I no longer work at BCE place, Flirty Girl Fitness is a bit too far. This DVD is a great substitute.
Saturday pm, cooked miso glazed tilapia and rice cracker dusted eggplant for dinner. Mum showed me how to turn rice cracker into powder with a rolling pin.
Sallie on Forbes: When I was in school I was a good student. I assumed when I got out I would be smarter than everyone else. No, that was not the case. But I found out I could work harder than everyone else. // I don't have a great work-life balance. I have a great husband, a great babysitter, great kids. It truly takes a village. I try not to let it all fall on me. I have also "helped" my husband realize that if a kid wakes up at 3 a.m. screaming "Mom!" that means "Parent!" If he goes into the bedroom, it's not like the kid is going to say, "No, I want Mom."
January 21, 2010
Wednesday, learning to make political buttons.
Thursday am, listened to Rocco Rossi's speech at Empire Club. I nodded at a number of comments e.g. city council needs to demonstrate more efficient management before demanding a new deal from the federal/provincial governments. I grimaced at a few e.g. he compared city insiders to arsonists. Politics. Sigh.
Thursday pm, met up with Denise for dessert* @ Le Gourmand + a Waterloo event @ Banana Republic. There were so many fashionistas that I wondered whether we showed up at the right time/place. Denise discovered that she looks amazing in purple. I found a free sample of Republic of Women**.
*dark dark chocolate mousse w/ hint of safron.
**osmanthus + bergamot.
January 16, 2010
Friday, Sheila's last day. Carlos came back from Boston to surprise her, rapping about Union Station and reconciliation.
Saturday, Albert's house warming. Too many favoured chicken wings. Funny People.
January 12, 2010
Tuesday, Ryan in town for business. Reminiscing Chicago stories from three years ago.
Bloomberg: CME Group Inc., the world’s largest futures market, began trading a long-term "Ultra" Treasury bond future to provide traders and investors a tool to hedge and speculate on fluctuations in the yields of longer-term debt. // "Until the recent explosion of issuance in the long end of the Treasury market over the last year, we really couldn’t construct a physical delivery contract that specifically targeted a very small basket of deliverables," Ross added. "There are now enough issues and supply out there for the deliverable basket so we could narrow the deliverable window to this 25 to 30 year bucket."
January 7, 2010
Economist: Canadian ministers, it seems, are a bunch of Gerald Fords. Like the American president, who could not walk and chew gum at the same time, they cannot, apparently, cope with Parliament’s deliberations while dealing with the country’s economic troubles and the challenge of hosting the Winter Olympic games. This was the argument put forward by the spokesman for Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister, after his boss on December 30th abruptly suspended, or "prorogued", Canada’s Parliament until March 3rd.
January 5, 2010
TorontoStar: Rocco Rossi was the first to formally file papers to run for mayor of Toronto on Monday morning. He was also the first to ruffle feathers at city hall, saying mayors should serve no longer than eight years.
January 4, 2010
Variable annuities and the art of marital compromise?
wsj: Though the retiree, a man in his sixties, wanted to invest for growth, his wife wanted security. "She was absolutely panicked because of the market," recalls Stephens. "She’s not a financially inclined person by nature, and she was feeling very insecure. Finally her husband said, "We need something she can live with and I can live with" — something with a floor, but also some upside in a good market. Well, the answer to that was an annuity."
January 1, 2010
12 amazing days in Mexico.
&a little brain damage is all it takes to be happy
&pickled herring with pomelo, wheat pasta with pesto, lamb chop, etc
&xmas 2010: san cristobal de las casas
&xmas 2010: agua azul
