Tag: life

Reading break begins!

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Hey all,

One week off. This is probably what every university student looks forward to once the Winter school term starts. Sadly, most of my profs decided to put a bunch of midterms and projects due for when we get back on the week of the 23rd. No worries. I guess I’ll just have to juggle studying and taking a break. In terms of reading, am I doing any actual reading? Not much academically, though I eventually will have to. But I have been consuming a lot of graphic novels– mainly due to me taking a graphic novel writing class at UBC. I had to take it for my creative writing minor, and I originally thought we’d only have to do the “written” parts of the graphic novel. Turns out we’re telling stories through pictures. That does not bode well for my D+ in visual art that I got back in high school. comics-lady-killer Anyway, I’m more than halfway through Watchmen and I’ve been reading it for maybe two days during my spare time. I also picked up this visually amazing graphic novel called Pretty Deadly. It revolves around the daughter of death. How is that not cool? I started reading Lady Killer, and am dying to get my hands on a physical copy of the first issue. Sadly, all the copies I see for sale online are super expensive (and everywhere else is sold out). It’s a very interesting comic. Self described as “Betty Draper meets Hannibal!”

I’m actually currently in Whistler right now and will do a separate blog post for that later on! Snow’s disappointing this year, but having some time away from Vancouver withe the boyfriend is not!

– Karen

Valentine’s is a scam

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…So we decided to just stay home, make our own food, and watch movies for the day. I mean calling a day “Valentine’s Day” and then making it so that restaurants can charge a LOT for a meal, and everyone can capitalize on branding something as “Valentine’s” themed is a scam. But I still believe that setting a day aside for your loved ones, whether for a significant other, or even just for your friends or family, is still important. So I’m all about the idea of Valentine’s Day!

I remember last year, I spent $60ish on a Valentine’s meal and although I did get pretty good food (salmon, steak, scallops etc.) it’s so much cheaper to do it yourself. So instead of a couple spending $120 collectively on a meal, this year, me and the bf spent around $45 instead! wpid-received_10155327540990643.jpeg Our Valentine’s dinner was quite reminiscent of our first time we cooked together back when we first started dating. Steak and potatoes, except we also threw in lobster tails this time to be fancy. And then minus-ed the veggies. We also spent a good chunk of time trying to make macarons…which didn’t quite work out.

We tried.

We tried.

We stayed in bed till almost 5PM. We cooked till 11PM. He made me watch Groundhog Day, I made him watch Music and Lyrics. There was hot chocolate. It was the best Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had 🙂wpid-20150214_235118-1.jpg – Karen

Play all the games!

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Hello y’all,

I built my own PC! It took about a year of planning and gathering parts, but it’s finally done!

A lot of the rush came from looking around for deals on the parts that I wanted. I would first compare parts and then when I decided on something, I’d be on the lookout for when it goes for cheap (or just cheaper is fine). The process took quite a while. I bought my SSD almost half a year ago and it was the first piece of my new PC that I got. Then came my CPU about 2-3 months later. As you could see, I was in no rush….

That was until last week when I went to pick up my RAM from NCIX(8GB for $58!!). I was only missing my motherboard, power supply, and case at this point and my boyfriend convinced me on a power supply, and we ran to get the case I had wanted at Lansdowne Mall (they had 1 left). On the 10th of January, I finished buying my parts and started building the PC.

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Luckily, my boyfriend built his own computer so he gave me plenty of pointers. Mainly, it was a lot of watching this video and following along:

All the steps are broken down, and of course, just skip the steps that don’t apply to you. I’m not going to lie and say I loved the process, and there were quite a few times when I had to undo all the hard work I had just done leading to much frustration (I think I said “Kill me” at least ten times during the process). I was also sure that a part would not work and I would have to send it in for repairs. But miraculously, we finished building it that night. At around 1AM, I finished downloading League of Legends and I played my first game on my PC! The whole process took around four hours? That included installing the OS and such.

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Wish it would assemble itself

The whole thing felt very rewarding, and it feels nice knowing I paid for the whole thing. Makes my summer job seem less of a chore when I see the rewards!

My parts list below.
Solid State Drive: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB
Central Processing Unit: Intel Core i5-4690K
Hard Disk Drive: Western Digital Green SATA3 2TB
Video Card: ASUS Geforce GTX 770 1110MHZ 2GB
RAM: G.Skill Ripjawsx 1x8GB DDR3
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X-SLI ATX LGA1150 DDR3 Xfire/SLI USB3 HDMI
Power Supply Unit: Corsair CX Series CX750 750W ATX 12V 80 Plus Bronze
Case: NZXT H440 Blue/Black (I will add blue LED light strips to this at some point to give it an underglow. Need to install them but I didn’t want to open up my case again T.T)

And I bought two LED monitors so now I have a dual screen setup!

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A cellphone pic of my setup, thus the quality

If you’re looking for parts, I’d suggest giving it time so you don’t overpay. Look out for deals. Everything goes on sale at one point or another. The only thing I bought full price on my list was my case because I wouldn’t settle for anything else and it was a limited edition case sold at one place. They probably won’t be putting it on sale in the near future. Also, if you find a cheap Canadian retailer price, just go to Memoryexpress or NCIX to price match! That’s what I did for quite a few of these parts!

Funny how I told myself I’d cut down on gaming in 2015.

– Karen

LA for Christmas! Pt. 1

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Hello all,

I do realize it has been a while since my last post, but Christmas came along and I realized I was not at all prepared this season. It was a mad scramble to get passable gifts for my loved ones, and then I also went on a spontaneous trip with the boyfriend to Los Angeles!

We left on boxing day, really early in the morning since we got our tickets for cheap off Expedia. The trip to LA should take about 2.5 hours if we took a direct flight, but instead it took more towards 8 hours since we had layovers and such. We went to Phoenix first, then down to LA. Weird flight route, I know.

The first day was all travelling, so it passed by in a blur of naps in weird locations, and switching between modes of transport. Once we got to LA, we got on a shuttle to take us to Anaheim. We were visiting Disneyland for Christmas!

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We spent one day at California Adventures, and one day at Disneyland. It was really busy in both parks due to schools being let out and everyone wanting to see Disneyland in its Christmas form. But seriously, Sleeping Beauty’s castle was amazing with the Christmas lights.

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It’s funny how we all pay hundreds of dollars to line up for hours on end at Disneyland, yet still leave feeling like we experienced magic. Disneyland was definitely a LOT more busy than California Adventures. At least at Cali Adventures, I felt like I could walk around without constantly bumping into a wall of people!

One thing that I loved most this visit was Cars Land. I had forgotten they had added a new section to Cali Adventures, and when I walked by the road that lead down Radiator Springs I actually cried. I wish I was kidding. It looked so much like the movie that it really was magical. We ended up eating dinner at Flo’s and it was the most satisfying meal of the day!

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Another thing that stood out to me was Dole whip. Here’s the thing: I’ve never heard of a Dole whip. I saw it on instagram, then realized that there were a million pictures of the little mountain of pineapple flavoured soft-serve ice cream. What the heck was this and why is it so popular? I was very hesitant to get it, mostly because it was cold at Disneyland and there was a lineup. There was a lineup for soft serve. I had enough of lineups. But nonetheless, we waited about 30 minutes in line and got our Dole Whipe Float. It tastes much like pineapple flavoured soft serve, except there are little chunks of pineapple. It tasted tart, which I quite liked. It was a very good soft-serve, but I still didn’t get all the hype that surrounded it.

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By the end of the Disneyland visit, we had spent a small fortune on foods at the park, and also severely lacked sleep as we would always leave at the last possible moment, then arrive as early as possible. So worth it!

Next post to be on Los Angeles itself 🙂 (Hopefully, it won’t take 2 months for me to post)

– Karen

Automatic updates enabled. If only.

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Hey all,

Don’t you wish you had an update hub so everyone can just be filled in with what’s going on with your life instead of you having to repeatedly tell people or different groups individually? But then again, I guess that wouldn’t make for much conversation or seeing each other I suppose.

Not being in school this term was a big change for me. Never have I ever missed a term of school and done something else, but here I am doing co-op while I see pictures of everyone back at UBC. Do I miss it? Yes. But at the same time, it’s a nice change. Plus, work is letting me get a glimpse of the real world— it’s not the most exciting and makes me wish I can stay in school forever, but it’s manageable. Or maybe I’m still waiting to find something I’m uber passionate about.

Working also means that I’m no longer just seeing my friends randomly around classes or on campus, and I realize it meant that I had to reach out in order to see people. I’m glad I realized this sooner rather than later, because I’ve got many dear friends that I would hate to lose contact with! The past few weeks have been me filling my schedule up so that we could check in on each other’s lives and also just talk in general! It also meant that I got to try out lots of new food places 🙂 It’s Vancouver and it’s currently fall/winter time. If you’re not at the movies or in a restaurant, where else would you be?

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I finally tried Gyoza Bar with my friend Amy. Heard about it over the summer when it first opened, but never got a chance to go! I must say, their ramen broth really is something else! It’s thick and really flavourful! The egg isn’t as good at Marutama Ramen’s, but everything else was quite nice! We also ordered their special which was a chickpea karaage. It was very interesting since the chickpea was soft and warm on the inside, with its crispy karaage exterior.

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Carmen showed me this dessert place near where I used to live in Marpole. It’s relatively new and it’s called Doolami Dessert. The mango pomelo sago was delicious and my friend got the durian one. It’s not easy finding Chinese dessert places in Vancouver, especially in the Vancouver West area, so this was great to know about! This place also makes their own pints of ice-cream (I know it’s winter, but hey, ice cream) with interesting flavours. Carmen got a pint of durian ice cream and I was contemplating the blueberry lavender. But apparently, the blueberry overpowers the lavender and I’m more for the lavender.

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I also met up with my ex-supervisors from work (they had both moved on to pursue other opportunities!), and we went to Bella Gelateria’s new location in Yaletown! I ordered a meat-filled pizza (I remember salami on it, but don’t remember its fancy name), and one of the other girls ordered one with eggplant. I never liked eggplant, but thinly sliced then stone oven baked made it delicious. This may be a turning point between me and eggplant’s relationship. Overall, the place is kind of expensive, but you can get away with sharing 2 pizzas between 3 people.

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Doesn’t this look super artsy? A shot from the interior of The Greedy Pig. My hand shook when I took the photo and it blurred. So pro.

Last but not least, I met up with C, a fellow blogger here! Well, technically no longer on WordPress since he actually has his own domain now and blogs from there, but it was through WordPress that we had met. Talking to him made me realize that we had actually known each other for three years. I had first started my blog when we came across each others’. He had also moved away from Vancouver for a while, but now that he’s back we managed to meet up and chill. He had suggested this place called The Greedy Pig. Sadly, my appetite was crappy that day, but their mushroom soup was still good! C chowed down his mac and cheese fairly quickly, so I’m going to assume it was good. I’ve been by that place before, and was even going to eat dinner there once, but the line up was so ridiculous my friends and I ended up going elsewhere.

Of course, there’s other updates in my life. Another first for me was updating my Facebook relationship status. Never done that with a boyfriend before, so he’s something special 🙂 But that’s probably another story for another time.

– Karen