"Otaku Dad" Web Page

Before Ami (BA)

Yes in the year before Ami's arrival, I had much work to do. I mean, there is a lot of accumulation of stuff. Alot!

Date	Details
8/19/2006	Anime Evolution 2006, I had a dealers table there to sell off about 2 car loads of anime DVDs and manga. I also testbedded, my karaoke server that I was building.

After Ami (AA)

Yes, after a long period of government beaucracy, my wife (and our daughter) is finally allowed to enter Canada.

Date	Details
9/9/2006	She arrives at airport. Her flight was four hours late leaving Pudong/Shanghai.
9/10/2006	I showed them around the neighbourhood. This included the Renfrew Skytrain Station, my work place Rona, my mailbox at the 7-11 (and the home of the Slurpee), and the mostly Chinese themed First Avenue Market, which includes the T&T Supermarket. We went to have dim-sum. This kinda food is south China cuisine so it is not the normal for her. They seemed to like anything which was a meatball, thus shumei, hakkgow, and wonton dumplings. They also seem to like the crunch in egg rolls. We later headed to Metrotown. Of the many shops I showed her, one was CHQ arcade. I think I had throughly impressed her with my ability to play Drummania V. I also showed them to Crystal Plaza, which should help her reinforce the fact that there are many places that are Chinese here. We stopped in Red Robins for food. It seems they like the BBQ Whiskey Burger, Beef Quesidesa, and the Freckled Lemonade (lemonade with strawberries in it).
9/11/2006	A trip downtown to Robson Street, Granville Street, entrance of Stanley Park, and over Granville Street bridge. They found Slurpees to be refreshing on hot days like today, and humourous the that the blue raspberry stained Alexanderia's braces and tongue blue. We went for salads at Wendy's, the BLT, Taco and Manderin Chicken. The BLT was the clear favourite and the Seasame Salad dressing for the Manderin Chicken was their favourite and that Achipote dressing for the Taco salad was disgusting.
9/13/2006	Today was actually my first day back to work so nothing too exciting happened. However, I some free jelly donuts from work which went over quite well with Alexanderia. I guess she likes many things sweet. I think Ami really wants chocolate like I do, but my co-workers always pick them up first before I get there.
9/15/2006	A meeting of many of my friends. One was King who was from Taiwan who speaks manderin. The other was Elick's fiancee, Winnie, who to my surprise spoke Manderin as well as Cantonese. We went to Boston Pizza. As expected, Ami likes the lemonade, they do like all the meat on the Meat Lovers, and they love the crazy twist bread with the meat dip, but strangely they didn't go for the nachos. This was a good day, because this made Ami feel more at home knowing there is someone else she can talk to.
9/16/2006	Today is a kind of a landmarking day, in a sort of a bad way. Today is the first day we had our first domestic disagreement. It stems from the fact that I spend many hours using a computer very late at night, a night owl's time schedule. Of course, this would conflict with an average everyday person. In fact, so much it would be even harder to find a woman who also shared the same late hours. Now, I have grown accustomed to the 2:00am deadline because due to the time difference between Vancouver and Shenyang, 2:00am would mean about 4:00pm her time. So she comes down and observes me and Alexanderia using the computers. Alexanderia is doing what I would be normally doing, which is chatting with her friends back home since they are away from school. It is good because there is only such a narrow window that her friends are back home and internet capable. Now, I was cleaning up the hard drives of all the movies and files that were getting piled up. I had Chinese movies for my mom, I had movies which Alexanderia had me get for her. I had also just received an MSN message from my friend John, who had left my house an hour earlier and just arrived at home, speeding down the highway at 140 km/h. From what I gather is she saw me with the MSN on, which of course she assumes I am up at night for the same reason. Without a word she goes back upstairs and locks me out of the bedroom. Her reasoning is that the computer people are more important than her. I haven't fully grasped her emotion spectrum yet, but I have been told that if she does not say any words, I am to assume she is having a period (women's special days). So my reaction is this is one of those "special days" and I should leave her alone and let her be. Well, I was wrong. Apparently, there was some unwritten rule that I needed to be with her when she goes to sleep. Of course, this doesn't help me when she doesn't say any words before when she is going to sleep, not even a "good night". But like most problems, we have communicate to find and resolve the problem. Thus in the morning, I finally got out of her, this hidden rule about going to sleep. I thus need to change my night owl computing to daytime hour computing. As the saying goes, "same bad show, different channel, and we'll be back after this commerical break".
9/17/2006	After a rather lengthly day of being cold shouldered, Jack and King came over late night. I got Ami out of her ignore me mode by having her introduced to Jack when he came over. We decided to go to Tim Horton's for tea. Alexanderia made the excuse that she was tired to go to bed, however, she sneaked back out to watch more movies, in this case it was Lord Of the Rings. Ahhh, my bad habits are already rubbing off on her. Anyway, she does like the berry yogurt that Tim Horton's has. She also doesn't care too much about English Breakfast Tea but she likes the Peppermint Tea.
9/22/2006	Today was a trip to Richmond, the new Chinatown. With the numerous Chinese malls down there she felt a lot more at home. We went to Yaohan Centre and Aberdeen to do some shopping. Daiso and the Osaka Supermarket proved to be useful stores to buy things. For dinner, I decided to try IHOP since they really haven't had that kinda breakfast. Well, the meat skillet is popular although Ami hates the eggs. She seems to love the bacon. And since they both love strawberries, the strawberry syrup and the strawberry crepe was an instant hit, even though the pancakes were not that exciting. However, what made the evening exciting was the amount of incompentance at the Richomnd No. 3 IHOP. The Sprite pop dispenser ran out of syrup so it only pumped out carbonated water (Club Soda). The waitress dropped a Coke on Harvey's lap. The same waitress almost killed herself when she slipped on the wet floor. They were doing separate checks and they still screwed up who had what. However, in the alight of all these bad things, a good time was had.
9/23/2006	My first Saturday off in a long long long time. So like a true otaku, I had to go shopping at my favourite music spots Charlie's for tapes and Book Off for Japanese CDs. Well, the tape section of Charlie's was closed for renovations and Book Off had remerchandised the CD Singles so they weren't any on display. haha not my day. Anyway, we ended the evening with some Knight And Day. I let her try kalamari with tartar sauce. She seems to like that and the onion rings in that sauce too.
9/29/2006	Today was another Friday to walk around Granville Island and False Creek. I found the girls very attracted to the birds namely the seagulls, piegeons, ducks and geese. Probably because chinese people view them as dinner. Anyway, the nature friendly Vancouverites allowed these birds to be so confident with humans that you can almost walk up to them and pet them. I bought a bag of popcorn to throw at them for some good pictures. I noticed I should have dressed like a bum, and sifted through the garbage of the food fair to find things to throw at the birds for food. The guy found a huge bag of cut fat of I think beef. He poured the bag out on to the sidewalk and a whole flock of seagulls and other birds came swooping by to gobble the entire thing up in a matter of a minute.
9/30/2006	This is our wedding dinner party. It is a usual multi-course Chinese dinner. I tried to stick all the Manderin speaking people at the head table, and kept all my otaku friends away from my mother's friends. The popular present this year was money in red envelopes. It almost was enough to pay for the cost of the dinner. In a talk with Dylon and his wife Christie, he commented on how when they got married, he had to buy new everything. New bed, sheets, covers, sofa, etc... Well, I actually put together my own new bed, new sheets, new pillow cases that mom bought in Hong Kong especially for marriage. My sister bought us a set from Ikea the week she arrived as a present. Guess which one she liked? The NEW and FASHIONABLE one from Ikea. Yes, even though the other ones were brand NEW still in the package from Hong Kong and other linens from Bay, Zellers, and Wal-Mart were NEW bought last week. It was because my sister gave them to me a gift she has recieved them as new. Now, to an otaku, I say "who gives a shit". It is a bed; primary function: to sleep on. It isn't a fashion accessory that my friends or anyone else for that matter will see so who gives a flying fuck what colour the sheets are or what design or what style the pillows are. Especially at night when you turn off the lights, now how in the hell you suppose to see what colour it is? Pillow; primary function: Put your head on when you sleep. Yup my bed is functional, my pillow is functional; mission completed... Well... that assumes you are the only one using the bed... Sigh, I suppose this is a lesson to the rest of you, when you buy new linens and sheets for your newlywed wife, make sure to give them to a friend to give back to you as a gift so she gets the illusion that it is NEW and FASHIONABLE. Or else, you will be like me cursing, "FASHION? What a load of crock!"
10/01/2006	Today was a trip to the West End. It started with a ride over to Oakridge with Dan. Alexanderia is fascinated with watches, and unfortunately at Oakridge those are expensive watches. Then we went to White Spot for a Spicy Chicken Stirfry. Even doused in tabasco sauce, it still wasn't hot enough for them. It is about right for me but no where close for them, but she said it was good. I also learned today they have picked up my bad habit of MEAT. I had ordered a Triple-O Burger and both of them picked at my beef patty and skipped the bread and toppings. Hahahaha, and this is before they ever heard of a man named "Atkins".
10/3/2006	Today, we went out to Denny's with my native friend, whom I will refer to as Big Chief No Jerky. They have great banana splits and since she loves chocolate, she ate that all up including the banana which I usually don't finish.
10/4/2006	My friend Shaun takes us out to dinner at Knight And Day where it is Pasta Night. I picked the noodles Penne and Fetticine and the sauces I picked were meat sauce (beef is their favourite) and seafood sauce. As I figured, Alexanderia prefers the meat sauce. Actually, Ami comments that she would rather skip the noodle all together and just have the sauce...
10/5/2006	We have some kind of disagreement, I think. It is hard to say. My instructions were that if she starts to do strange things or go into fits of mood swings combined with no words, I am to assume "women's special day". Yea, as a man, I guess it is kinda hard to understand what women have to go through during their "special times of the month". So my instructions for this kinda situation is not to try to say anything back and not to take her actions too literially as she is being controlled by her "special day". So, as best as I could, I left my communication channel open and allowed her the chances say something in case it was not a "special" day. I never know, maybe I did something out out of the ordinary but I don't know.
10/6/2006	Well, after a day of having her mope around the house, I finally got her out for a walk to the 7-11 for a Coke Slurpee. She finally explained her problem. So it wasn't women's day, but indeed homesickness. She misses her home in Shenyang and she hasn't adjusted to her new home. She feels that the household still has that "guest" feeling. Well, the solution as I see it would be to slowly change it, together. Pick out new furniture and wall decorations and such so that we both have a say in it. So, let this be a lesson to the guys, don't spend too much timen or money guessing what your wife will like, just make it work, then you guys can choose something together when it becomes that time to change it.
10/6/2006	Ok, tonight we head downtown to Yaletown. We spent some time to clean up the house of some of my old outdated things like VHS video tapes and old audio cassette tapes and old novels. We met up with King and the four of us haulled 4 shopping bags of crap to be dropped off at the Wildlife Thrift Store, and the Public Library. So if you hurry you might find some good SMUT and anime down there. For dinner, we tried a Japanese restaurant, Sakana. It was your typically expensive Japanese place. Since sushi was not my palette, I ordered the beef okimiyaki and chicken teriyaki and the beef udon. Not that I was surprised, the beef was the most popular with the girls, skip the noodles, the flour and the vegatables.
10/9/2006	Alexanderia goes into my archive of movies and pulls out Happy Days, which quite enjoyed since it actually has good visual humour. The other movie she caught interest in was the new movie RV.
10/12/2006	Today was truly an sad day for my otaku habits. I went to a computer store to buy a new 250 Gig hard drive and a firewire enclosure for it. As par expected, the wife complains. So, she introduces her new "tax". She will now charge me 10% for all computer and electronics things I buy. She also proposed another one for tapes and cds and dvds but I think that one needs tweaking. OK, a little extreme, but I know what she is getting at. She is possibly concerned that she doesn't get her little bit of luxury spending and maybe thus I should have less. In contrary, our "personal" spending limits are both set at $100 a month, for now, I will let it slide, since it doesn't actually stop me from purchasing stuff, just less, maybe...
10/13/2006	A trip to Deep Cove today to show her what urban isolation means. Yea, a place that has pretty much all the services on one street. A place that has one bus servicing it. Saying as much it is nice and quiet, safe, surrounded by both water and mountians of trees and islands. Just far enough away from civilization to make it tranquil but not so far away that your cell phone doesn't have any signal. On today's menu is "all you can eat" sushi. Yea, why eat sushi again this week? Well, we are in Metrotown to meet up with someone. Strangely enough, once I am here, I bump into so many of my old customers from the store. It is eerie that I am as well known like the American Express card commerical. Anyway, aside from that, we tried Taisho for the Japanese food. I quite enjoyed the food, since I strictly avoided the sushi and went straight for the chicken and beef. My favourites were the kaarage, teriyaki, and the ebi sunimono, and since it was all you can eat, I stuffed myself. Of course, Ami complained that I was going to get fat. Her favourite fish was salmon and tuna.
10/14/2006	Today is Colin's Birthday party. Now, I had to work until 8:00pm and the dinner started at 7:00pm. So with many people arriving casually late, I figure most people won't be there until 7:30pm. Anyway, after riding the bus there and arriving about 8:40pm, everyone was just getting their food at Original Joe's. I wanted to try to the huge plate of nachos but it was too late for that. I just ordered her favourite beef burgers with some mashed potatoes. She tried their tabasco sauce, lame, and two of their bottled hot sauces, lame and lame. Hmmm... I kinda guessed that it wasn't gonna cut it.
10/15/2006	Today is a rare day in the last while, I actually got a day off on the Sunday. This means it is a perfect opporunity to go to the flea market to pick up some old records and tapes. I described the market as a building where people can bring their old things to sell. Now, you gotta remember the new generation Asian mind set is to throw away the old and buy the newest stuff. Well you gotta remember much of what we have in North America especially for old immigrants, the possessions we have are aquired only with the hard work, blood and flesh, with hand and foot. So the willingness to throw a 10 year old steam iron for a new one that only costs $20 is (to us) pointless since it still works well, paid for using you own hard earned cash, and enviromentally unsound as our landfills are getting filled with the crap of our "new" wasteful generation. I tried to keep the visit to the market brief but productive as I didn't want to bore her with standing around while I looked at boxes of boxes of tapes and records. We met up with King to have a nice chat at Starbucks over a Taizo Passion Tea. Good stuff but way to strong for me. Ami seems to enjoy the Black Tea over the Passion stuff. They spoke mostly in Manderin for most of the meet which is good for her.
10/16/2006	Today, I had a private meeting with King concerning issues brought up from our informative tea session. I sensed that translation and language barrier will be an issue in our marriage, so it was good that immediately introduced her to my Manderin friends as soon as I could so she can have an outlet to go to. Well, it turns out King became that outlet. She expressed many concerns which (to me) seems rather small issues but I guess in her eyes, are big issues. Anyway, it goes to show that I must remain ever patient not to over react or take anything too literally when dealing with this. Even has sensitive, yet head strong, and very short patient her mind set is, she will need time to come to terms with this and do the same because many of issues is not just problems with translation but also interpetation and popular culture.
10/19/2006	Ami travelled to the old Chinatown to the T&T Supermarket. With the reference of a Manderin speaking cashier she met, she got a job. It is a good thing because it will give her an idea how much work it takes to earn the money that she spends. Problem with Western culture is that everything and anything is obtainable. You can buy any clothes, foods, cars, houses, businesses, drugs, alcohol, guns, and etc.... The temptation is there, you just need time or money and maybe a little inclination. In Asian culture, your possessions are used as a metre stick to measure how successful you are. So thus, just because you can drive around in a Porche 911, doesn't mean you are rich in North America. You could have a guy who drives in a leased BMW M5, has a million dollar house that is mortgaged, 10's of thousands of dollars on credit cards and multiple credit cards. Does this mean he is rich? No, it means he is heavily in debt living a life he doesn't belong in. We call these people POSERS, which rhymes with LOSER.
10/20/2006	Shawn was gracious enough to take us back to Sala Thai for hot food. This time we jacked it up to 5 out of 5 for hot. It still was not hot enough for her. She calls it lame. Alexanderia was sifting through more of my DVDs and she came across a winner, Police Academy. This makes a lot of sense to her and the visual comedy really had her going. I had to borrow the box set from Victor which she will spend the next few days throughly enjoying.
10/21/2006	Today is a sight seeing day. Shawn takes us out to Lynn Valley to see the suspension bridge. Holy crap that thing is scary. It is not the height that I am scared of, it is the whole stability of the thing. Alexanderia has a fear of heights but she took it well. Ami also thought it was bad for her too. Funny comment was she was glad when her walk across it was over. Then I told her, she has to do it again, because there is no other way back over the ravine except over the bridge again. Haahaahahaa! We also went to Cypress Park but it was not a clear sky day to get a good view of Vancouver, However, it was good enough to show her that Vancouver is relatively flat. It is a good look out point on a clear evening too. Our last stop was Shannon Falls. Great spot to go to, however, because of the slightly colder temperature, the glaciers are already freezing up the water, thus the waterfall doesn't have as much water as it did earlier in the year. The other good thing about the cold is that it has killed off most of the mosquitos and flies. She did comment that the air was clean out here.
10/22/2006	After watching American Pie 1 and 2, Alexanderia has gained an interest in high school comedies. So she pulled back out the Happy Days TV box and began to watch all of season 1. She really got a kick out the episode that Ritchie and Potsie had to dress up like girls for a dance for a frat initiation.
10/27/2006	We try a steak restaurant called Brave Bulls. It looks like medium rare is how they like their beef. Ami has also grown fond of bacon bits for her potatoes.
10/31/2006	Halloween Day. Alexanderia got her dancing outfit from Superstore, and went out for trick or treat candy. Yea, they don't do this kinda thing in China. We quickly learn that certain parts of our neighbourhood are cheap bastards. But after an hour, she got a good bag load of candy so she has lots to get fat on.
11/02/2006	Off to the district school board to get Alexanderia registered in school. I think some of the ID requirements they as for is kinda bogus but like most government services, it is not about what is logical, just play along with their stupid game to get their free services. For example, my driver's license was not good enough to show it was me, they needed my passport. Oh great, I am sure if organized crime and terrorists could forge driver's licenses they couldn't possibly fake passports. They also needed proof of my residence, and the address on my driver's license wasn't good enough. They needed a property accessement or landlord/tenant agreement. HAHHA what a joke. Oh, I go and buy a condo or house near the school I want her to go to. Oh there is my property assessment. Or, hey buddy, I am your tenant and you can be my landlord, I rent a 1"x1" square in your house near the school for 1 penny a month. How bogus. Oh, the school might check... OH, yea. As if they have the extra effort to get a search warrant, to check that I am there. Oh by that time, after she is enrolled, I "could" be evicted, then what? You gonna kick her out of her school because the family got evicted out of their place to stay? Even more bogus. Last time I checked, harboring my own child what not a crime. Anyway, like most free government services, they are not perfect. They leave themselves opened to be scammed. It isn't in anyone's best interest to argue logic or principle about it, just use it or abuse it as you see fit.
11/04/2006	Ami asked me today how to operate the Xbox. I loaded the game Dead Or Alive Ultimate for her and Alexanderia to play. One thing I like about DOA was the fact that it was just a straight button mashing game. They spent a good hour beating each other up with the various characters in the duel mode.
11/05/2006	Today, I did a lot of clean up of the junk lying around the house. I weeded through a least of box of video cassettes full of anime to give away at the next anime convention. I also came up with 2 shopping bags of TV shows I don't need anymore. So today I will plan a trip to the thrift store to drop some of this stuff off. Like most pack rat otakus, you will end up with a lot of things which seemed like a good idea to keep at the time. Then years down the road, you realize that stuff is useless. For example, I have a non-SIM card Telus cell phone, useless. I found a box of DC-2000 tape backup cassettes and, I found a box of Atari 520ST diskettes both very useless to me now. I found a copy of MYOB for Mac OS 8, possibly useful, but with the ease of p2p, I won't have too much problems finding anything more recent, so junk it. So the result is a lot of junk I can now recycle (E-recycle) or in this case give to the thrift store to sell off.
11/06/2006	Today Alexanderia takes her evaluation exam for high school. She did, as I expected, quite well. The first test was a reading test in which she placed herself in about Grade 5 English. Pretty good, considering our Grade 9 French would probably cause us to fail Grade 1 in France or Quebec. The second test was in mathematics, she scored 9/10 for Grade 8, 10/15 for Grade 9 and 10/15 for Grade 10; very good but not quite good enough to place her in Grade 10 math. She will be put into Grade 9 math, although she should find it too easy. As for electives, we were allowed to choose 5 electives. Ami and I chose, Band (piano), Cooking, Keyboarding, and stage craft. We will let her choose the last one herself. When she saw cooking, she didn't want to take that one. She asked, "Who chose that one?" I said, "Your mother... too bad....". She has interest in being a fashion designer, however she didn't like any of the art classes or drafting classes or the textile class. In the end, she decided to sign up for choir.
11/07/2006	Today was Alexanderia's first day at school. The school was so anxious to have us register her and start her in the schedule, they called us yesterday at 4:00pm to tell us to come in at 9:00am today. Great... So an early morning visit to the Vantech councillor. We got her placed into Keyboarding 10 for her first class. She started class first thing in the morning, so she was thrown right into the thick of things. Next class was science 9, oh boy lots more vocabulary in Chemistry. The next class was math 9, the teacher said she knows the stuff and bumped her up to math 10, too bad for her... hahahaha. The next class was Physical Education 9 but she ended up using that for studying math. She also missed lunch because she could find the school gate to get out. So all and all, it was a pretty tough day for a first day at school.
11/22/2006	Ami tries for her Class 5 Driver's license. However, she still has that tunnel vision offensive driving habits from China. She hardly shoulder checks, leaves the gaps between cars too short, and of course speeding.
12/29/2006	Today, was probably the first experience that felt like Dead Or Alive Beach Volleyball in real life. It was that feeling that the day is going as planned, then with one moment, it all goes bad, just like when you think you got the characters in their best mood, it suddenly changes instantly when you try to gift them an embarassing skimpy swimsuit that they absolutely wouldn't wear. This day started like most others, I had to work early morning. My shift was to end at 2:00 pm and then we were to go to Lougheed mall to do some Boxing Sale Week shopping. I picked out some DVDs at Wal-Mart, she picked out some clothes from Fairweather. We had a great dinner at Red Robins, which gave her two of her favourite foods beef and strawberry lemonade. Sounds pretty normal, even better than normal. Then at 10:30pm, we were getting ready for bed, much like the day before and the day before that. So I tell Alexanderia to go to bed too, but she was told that she could stay up till 11:00pm. She was watch some F.I.R. music videos from the DVD player. Needless to say, she goes running off to mom to complain and thus begins a complete reversal. She gets mad at me for trying to effect some kind of curfrew. Sigh, this is where one could say, almost got some!
12/30/2006	After a rather late sleeping night of a tantrum fit, I guess some how the only words got translated (interpreted) correctly was the concept that she spoils Alexanderia. It is no surprise, when you think about the one child law in China. It is her only child so she gives everything to her. So, I guess she somehow got the concept that she is spoiling both of us. She told both of us to wash the dishes after dinner. After this, she seemed to be very content with the results. Hmm... I guess what ever the issue she had was, I guess she somehow deemed it resolved itself. Works for me. This is also where the make up sex comes in, and that works for me too. So it is all good.
12/31/2006	I have planned a pot luck games night New Year's Party at my place. It is a good opporunity for my friends to gather and chat and catch up on news over a relaxing game of something. My wife was surprised at the variety of food everyone brought. We had her favourite KFC, lasagna, Vietnamese spring rolls, Chinese sweet and sour pork, pork ribs, and more. We had the board game Settlers of Katan. Another group played Texas Hold'em Poker, and the wifes started a game of Mahjong. It was good, that some of the guys brought their wifes, since most of them could speak Cantonese to my mother and some could also speak Manderin to Ami. The extra bit of fun was when Victor and Joey had brought their 5 month old baby along. The women seem to enjoy handling babies. I would say that even my mom and Ami enjoyed themselves. As for Alexanderia, she was the social "stick in the mud" with her butt firmly planted in front of the internet computer chatting and reading Chinese stories. Even Jack who brought a co-worker Carol to the party, had more people interaction than that. Oh well, she is on the road to being an internet nerd (otaku).
2/2/2007	Today, I spent a good part of the day playing Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball for the 360. She actually sat and watched the opening movie which is all full of tit and ass. She already has come to the understanding that the stuff on TV isn't real. Which in this case, is a good enough generalization for me.
4/3/2007	The guys decided to come over for a major gaming night tonight. I was engaged in a big 6 player game of Settlers of Catan. I even let her roll the dice for me. Unfortunately, she didn't roll any resources that helped me. She does not like gambling since part of the problems that arose with her previous husband came about because of it. Then again, smoking and drinking and gambling are all common social things to do for men (and women) of China and I will hazard a rather broad generalization to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea too. Fortunately for me, I came from a circle of friends (kohei) that doesn't. Now the only thing she has a beef is that we tend to game a little late for her, but at least I am at home and not wandering the streets.
4/10/2007	Spring comes the time of cleaning up. My wife took a huge initiative to rearrange my living room. At first, I was a bit resistive but I already fore saw that I was going to need to let her change things to fit her personality and to let her feel more comfortable. Well, not in total disagreement since I do like organization. I was more concerned about how quickly she wanted things moved and changed and done. For example, she rearranged the orientation of my TV/stereo system/game systems and couches. Not a bad thing, but it took almost a week to extend all the wires from its old location to the new location. She was obviously pissed off that she couldn't watch any of her Chinese movies because the DVD player and TV didn't work for a few days. In the end, the room does look more organized and there is much more open space in the middle of the room for us to game in now, so that was good too.
4/16/2007	She now started to come up with ideas about my display cases which hold my anime figurines in the living room. Ok, sure, I am was pretty certain that a woman coming from a living room which was hard wood floored with a piano, Chinese vases, a rock fountain, tea ceremony sets, and an alcohol rack would find it a little hard to believe that a grown man has so many TOYS. I had these nice wooden IKEA wall units with glass shelves and a frontal glass sliding doors to hold my anime models, gashpons and figurines. She wanted them bubble gum pink. I thought that looked disgusting and wanted something darker to contrast it from the white walls, and something more natural like a dark wood stain. Well, after polling my friends about the idea, the majority tipped by the girlfriends/wifes, tipped it to pink. So I went to Rona and bought some water based stain that you mix yourself. Interesting thing was it comes in deep Raspberry red and white. You mix the two together to make the colour of pink that you want. When I mixed it, the stain looked bubblegum pink. However, when it dried it was shade darker. She insisted to paint another coat on, because she keeps thinking it is like latex paint but I keep telling her it is not a paint, it is like an rubbing oil. So she puts on a second coat which ends up making it even darker. So the end result was closer to deep lavender purple red than bubble gum pink, which actually contrasts well against the dark wall. So now, I will "redefine" my figures in the collection to be my "Chibi Girls Collection", since it doesn't seem very feminine to put giant robots like Gundams into a pink display case. Cute idea?
5/7/2007	My sister came and picked up the boxes of her crap that she left at the house after she moved out over 4 years ago when she got married. It is mostly old books, old handbags, old audio cassettes, and an old conponent stereo. You know, he basic SHIT you find at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I salvaged a couple of things that still had some use to me, one of which was a picture frame. Well, she got all mad that I "defaced" her "VALUABLE shit". Apparently, the picture was a limited lithograph of 1000 with some religious crap written on it. Yea right, it was a machine dupilicated print, the kind you buy from the $1.99 reject pile at Wal-mart. And apparently she spent $300 on a custom frame job for it. What?! It was a plain wooden frame with a thin front glass with the print taped to it using masking tape. If you believe that, hey I got some underwear with an "authentic" autograph of Wayne Grezky to sell ya. Well, let this be a lesson to you, if you add the word "valuable" to the word SHIT, only you will see it as being "valuable", everyone else will see it as SHIT. Oh sorry, since there was 1000 prints of THAT shit and there is 2 million people in Vancouver, thus 99.95% of the population think it is SHIT.
5/27/2007	Today I went to the mall to buy a gift for my wife for her 2nd anniversary. Now the traditional gift for number 2 is cotton. I am also thinking 2 of them, a pair. Get it? You and me, a pair? Yea yea, so I am getting a little carried away with the romantic crap. So I decided to try to buy a pair of cotton socks, or pair of cotton gloves or a pair of something you would wear. Well, guess what, now I know how hard women have it when they have to shop for fashion and not for function. God damn! I mean, I am a guy. When I need a rain jacket, I just go out and buy something cheap with gortex or something similar in it and I am done. Women, are worried about colour, feel, match and other fashionable crap. So here I am wandering around the mall trying to find a sock that is made of true cotton. Nope, it is all polyester, spandex, rayon, nylon and god knows whatever left over chemicals they got laying around. So the best I could do was 80% cotton sport socks from Puma. Ok, a Puma is not her animal, (tiger is her animal), but it is at least a cat. I gave it to her, and she was surprised that I remembered our anniversary. hahha Now isn't that ironic. It is usually the guy who forgets...
5/30/2007	Today is my birthday, and she gives me this little white box. It is a box that normally holds a small jewelery, but this one holds my birthday present. Well, in the evening, she tells me to open it up. What was it? It the white stick from a preganacy kit, it is positive.