Into the New Year

Happy New Year, btw :)

For NYE, I attended a party at the Marriott Pinnacle downtown. Every year, A helps out with the event-planning for this company that organizes a big bash every NYE (among many other events throughout the year). Unfortunately, she had to work until 11:45 (though she was supposed to be off at 11) helping host and deal with people who wanted to buy last-minute tickets, but I got to hang out with her lovely coworker, Judy, for a bit. The party had a snow theme with the colours white, silver, and blue. They had bubbles and foam coming down from the ceiling to look like snow and they even had a couple snow cone machines where you can choose the alcohol. I tried Baileys for the first time. It's really good in snow cone form! Btw, now I wouldn't even say that I have a tolerance for alcohol. I don't know why, but after a few sips of wine or a shot of Soju etc., I get really red! I'm not affected mentally, though.. but being red is embarrassing enough... and then I get pale.

Anyway, there were a bit over a thousand people there - I would say a great mix of ethnic backgrounds and almost everyone was super Westernized. Mingled a bit - everyone was over 23 ('cause that's the min) except for us and maybe one other... there were some older people, too, which was interesting - they just sat and ate large quantities of dessert. Oh yea - it was a dessert buffet but I didn't end up getting any, and there were 3 rooms to party in. The first, main, and largest room was the typical club scene spinning top 40's, dance hits, and r&b etc., the 2nd room played older dance classics, and the 3rd one was a Jazz lounge with a Juno nominee singer and someone playing the bass or something. A and I loooved the Jazz lounge. We knew almost all the lyrics to the songs she sang. Country rooooooadddddd taaaake me hooommmeee and the atmosphere was just so relaxing and different from the other two party rooms. The singer was pretty darn good, too, and engaging.
Me (with a pearl face goin' on + can't keep eyes open), A, and Judy. Surprisingly the only picture I took that night!
haha I wore the same thing as I wore for Xmas w/ the family 'cause I wanted to get max holiday use. I wore it w/ a long thick strapped tank I got on the streets of Korea.
Bumped into Emily -- this is a neat pic w/ the "snow" coming from the sky and getting into my drink :)
Anyway, for the countdown, A and I snuck behind the DJ table along with other staff members and got a great view of everyone cheering :) A was given a hotel room at the Marriott so her and I slept over night there and ended up sleeping around 4AM, I think. The next morning, A woke up at 8 and we went downstairs and ate the hotel's buffet breakfast. It was quite pricey, but the food was actually quite good - especially for "breakfast" food I usually don't prefer.

Finally wore my Shu Uemura lashes for the first time. I really don't care for them. They're way too heavy and way too long for my small eyes so they make my eyes look so much smaller (as seen above) and I look sleepy. Plus, at $25, they're ridiculously expensive so it's a good thing I won't be wasting anymore money on them. Daiso lashes are good for beginners, but I find that they look a bit too plastic up close. I want to try out MUFE ones + I think MAC has some nice ones, too.
At around noon, A got picked up and I went to PC but it was closed 'cause it was NYday so I stayed at Starbucks for 2 hours doing nothing but drinking my Vanilla latte and some tazo tea thingy lol - I was half asleep. Nad and Dims picked me up and we went to the Polar Bear Swim down at English Bay! It was partially raining before and we were a tad late so we missed the big hype of everyone rushing into the water almost naked but there were still tons of people we had to weave through when we got there. This was the first time and I was too chicken to go all the way so I changed into my PJ shorts and went up to my hip. Nad dove in! She's a seasoned polar bear now ;) You can pick up a PBS pin after, but I didn't feel like I deserved it, haven't had gone in all the way.. but I said next year I will haha
Going in together :D
It wasn't as cold as last year, but when you go in the 2nd time, it's COLD I could hardly feel my feet when I got out!
haha Nad looks like she's trying to chase me out so I'm like gotta get away fast!!
I don't wanna!! Don't make meeeee! It's coooooldddd!Then, like it wasn't already cold enough, Dims drove us to La Casa Gelato known for their 235? flavours of ice cream and sampled like 8 diff types including Chai, Wild Fennel, Purple Yam, Apple Cheddar, and Mango Crystalized Ginger (I think) and I ended up getting Lavender. Nad and I thought that we'd be the only ones there that looked so scrubby, but there were actually another small group of ppl in their bathrobes ahha

I got dropped of at M's house 'cause she invited me over for a Greek, tomato lamb dinner (they don't make that style of lamb often) and I didnt know her whole family would be there and I looked like a salty, drowned rat so I wanted to change into something I threw in the overnight bag but then it had a gaping hole in the back so M's mom fixed it for me right before dinner and so phew. Then I played stuffed animals for a bit with her niece and I went home and then M and B came over to play games but we only ended up playing one game and watched a bunch of Korean Youtube videos of 2PM (kkk good looking bunch) and Bern slept over!

The next day, I was super hungry and ate a lot for breakfast/lunch. B left around... can't remember, 3:30-4? And then I got my stuff together and M gave me a ride to Nad's get together at her house where I made my mushroom orzo, this time, following the recipe perfectly and it turned out 10x better than the 3rd, 4th, and 5th time I've made it. Everyone seemed to like it :) I would say that it could easily become my signature potluck dish haha but it's super rich with the wine and butter and chicken broth.
Nad made a tiny turkey! haha it almost looks as small as a chicken! She wrapped it with bacon mmm lol and made this corn souffle that was yummy.
I also had fois gras for the first time in my life and I like it almost just as much as pate except pate has a bit more flavour. Fois gras is buttery smooth, though. We played this group card game called "Hearts for Everybody" (maybe they made that title up) - it's fun. We also all brought a gift worth $15 for the gift exchange game and I ended up going home with a nice red patriotic Olympic scarf. I contributed a $15 gift card to the movies and hid it in a phone book and got M to wrap that up lol. Other prizes was a red, Starbucks travel mug (also nice - I opened that intially but it was stolen from me), a Snuggie (looks like something Cookie Monster would wear when he got cold), and the game Clue. For dessert, we had meringues (didn't know they took 3 hours in the oven to bake!) and had Reisling (yumm). Btw, I'm absolutely terrible at foosball!

Had work on Sunday night, which was excellent.

I've been home for almost 45 min now and I feel like it's almost 5PM haha even though it's only 12:30PM. Had my first day of school - well, only 1 class - my 400-level Geography "Cultural Geography" at 8:30AM. Sounds interesting and quite harmless (ie, only 1 presentation (mine is the class right after Olympic break), 1 final paper worth 40%, 1 article to read per week, and 2 mini assignments). The prof is one of the best in the Geography department and he's funny too. I took Social Geography with him in 2nd year but I did not like Social Geo... I don't think I was mature enough for it at that time - that level of thinking. Human Geo was super new to me and I didn't really start grasping the whole point of it until last semester where I did fairly well. In first year, Physical Geography (weather, climate, earthquakes, natural disasters and hazards etc.) was the "fun" course 'cause it was pretty much a repetition from Gr 12 Geography, but as years went by, Physical Geo became the enemy 'cause it was full of GIS and soil science and cartography so most people switched to Human Geo. So many people expressed their hate for Physical geography this morning during introductions lol People also complained about having to explain to other people what Geography is all about. So many people think that it's about memorizing the capitals of all the countries in the world which is what a monkey could do.. and when we Geographers try to explain to them what it's all about, they get so bored haha 'cause 1. it's hard to explain 'cause it's not concrete and 2. we don't really understand what we learn, too. I think I'm finally getting at what Geography is about in my last term. Broadly, it's about understanding and analyzing interactions, changes across space, time and society, mapping the produced, contested, embodied, emotional, and representational spaces while considering socio-economic and politial dimensions (gosh I sound like a textbook). You see how ppl can tune out? The discipline is soooo not interesting to explain, but the content is interesting. One good thing about Geo is that the themes are super recurrant throughout all the courses with just a bit of a twist. It's quite a good discipline, you can apply it to almost everything you do and observe, and it makes you much more aware of how things came to be and of concepts and approaches to things but it's not necessarily easy to verbalize. They're training me to think a certain way, which is arguably how they teach almost all disciplines, except I think it's quite different, too, because others seem to be much more applied with their own terms and formulas.

Slowly starting to pack - got ride of all my old YM from 2003 and LOULOU magazines from 2005. I am keeping my 2007 Wish magazines 'cause they have some pretty good quality, timeless info in them and I trust their opinion regarding products. And I'm keeping all my Japanese ones, of course. I love Japanese magazines - I wish I could get yearly subscriptions to them!

Found out that one of the first friends I made at SFU during orientation in first year will also moving to the same neighbourhood I'm moving to! Her move date is 5 days before mine and I think she'll be around 5 blocks away. She's in Taiwan right now on exchange and is coming back in about a week and her parents bought the house while she was gone haha neat! I was trying to figure out how to get to school by bus... gotta start learning how to drive. I guess a good goal for 2010 is to get my N license lol.

Craving salmon sashimi from Sushi Town...