Went to niagara falls yesterday, part of a whole-day family car trip starting from toronto, driving by universities (waterloo, laurier, mcmaster), visited a farmers market near st. jacobs, (my first time seeing Mennonite / Amish cultural dress), then we visited a closed winery for dinner before heading to niagara falls. I've never seen the falls at night - its beautifully illuminated with multiple, coloured lights, which change every 10 min. or so. Seemed distant, dreamy with the mist. The colouring and the cloudy shape of the falling water made it look like something else- the spot where blue lighting fell, looked like cotton candy, the yellow/green lighting looked like it was polluted sewage water/mudslide, the white like it was vanilla ice cream...we watched for about half an hour. and the mist didnt drench on the observation area like last year, just lots of mosquitos. With no bug repellant I dealt with mosquitos by constantly moving/ lightly wiping face/forearms so that I looked like a highly irritated monkey but thats okay, it worked, no bites =p

and.. finally added the page to my website sharing quotes that i find super-inspirational.

okay, im so impressed by my pal Joe's cool hardware customization in his car, so much that im going to have to share it here :
http://www.thevboard.com/read.php?TID=2116&page=1

Joe (aka Xeuz, one of the students met at TQ Live) here basically installed his self-made mp3 player for his car - using pieces of wood, a cable that runs under the dashboard and carpet, a cool alphanumeric display board(see the dashboard), spare PC parts and quality audio hardware.

Very very cool.. even tho i dont know much about audio hardware/ electronics I still think it was a cool project. Im inspired now.. suppose I get a car one day (it would run on soy bean gas or some enviro friendly alternative fuel, of course) I'd probably do similar customizing myself... convert it to the gadgetmobile =p

many interesting things happened this week that I got back to work..

For one, I still can't stop thinking about a really nice girl I met while I was in Seattle, even though its been almost 2 weeks.

And I have sort of a faint cold, ever since coming back from seattle. I hope this thinking about her, and the presence of this cold are not related like a mind body thing, because I intend to continue visiting many places and meet many more girls and it would be bad if I had to have a cold corresponding to each one...

I saw Minority Report tuesday evening with a few co-workers and other people who all went to my high school, now everyone was an engineering student (except me, im the only liberal arts student in the group). Really enjoyable movie.

I really liked the cyber pimp character (Rufus Riley, played by actor Jason Antoon) who Tom Cruise visits to ask for help to download important memories from the pre-cog Agatha. The movie is set in 2050's but of course technology advances pretty fast, that VR technology might come sooner, so I can totally picture myself being a cyber pimp, being such a tech-savvy fun loving entrepreneur owning a cyber parlor somewhere. And if some disturbed fellow came into my parlor asking to experience the fantasy of killing their boss, I would politely ask them again just to make sure I didn't hear wrong, and then I'd throw them out too - just like Rufus did in the movie =)

On thursday there was a go-away lunch for one of the front desk receptionists, she was going off to be a teacher. Then, because another employee of the company was also leaving.. there was a sort of little reception event at about 4 pm where everyone had ice cream sundaes, and both employees that were leaving were given a chance to speak. The other employee seemed to be someone very important to the company, apparently had been one of the key starting members of our non-profit mother company, which explained why there was such a special reception organized..

There was sumo wrestling around lunchtime on thursday in the open grassy area of the Toronto Dominion Centre, where there was inflatable fat man suit sumo wrestling, but also featured several canadian sumo wrestlers and a real match between 2 professional sumo wrestlers, one small and the other really really big. Guess what i learned? even in sumo wrestling, the bigger one doesnt always win, the smaller guy, being shorter, was more stable and pushed the big guy easily out of the ring and won.

Today(friday) after finishing a huge report and the office hours were over, we (the young ones, 19-20 year old males) stayed behind and played Medal of Honor A.A. for 3 hours straight before breaking for pizza and continuing... We were hoping to also play warcraft III as at least 2 people had personally bought it, but didnt have time.. I got motion sickness by the time it was 9 so I left. Maybe they are playing warcraft III by now.

And at home, my sister's friend's 3 day sleepover ended so things are back to normal now.. we have enough chairs at the computer desk again =)