Chicken Under a Brick

Finally stopped being lazy and decided to update with a summary of the Florida trip. Despite there being thunderstorms for a variable amount of time each day, the trip was pretty amazing. It started off somewhat eventful - our trip with Air Transat (or rather, delegated to Canjet for Florida flights) was supposed to depart at 6:20am on Sunday May 30. This ultimately turned into a flight with Miami Air International departing at 8:45pm on the same day.

There weren't any major initial problems with the check-in and security. After spending lots of time waiting, either for customs to open up or in front of the gate, we boarded the plane and I was surprised at the plentiful room available. The plane was barely filled with passengers, and our seats were all along one of the emergency exit rows, which meant extra leg-room. The seats themselves were surprisingly comfy too. The plane then began taxiing down to the runway. After 5 minutes of movement, we found ourselves looping back to the airport gate, and due to "a malfunction with the steering equipment" we were forced to disembark the plane. The flight was delayed for another hour...then two hours...then... Yes, it was cancelled.

The flight that almost happened...

So close... Tempers flared among some other passengers when we were further forced to wait in confusion to reclaim our luggage. We were given the option to either have a taxi take us home, or if our residence was far enough away, get to stay at the hotel in Pearson. Luckily we managed to get the hotel option, and were given vouchers for lunch and dinner. Ended up being a pretty sweet deal. We mostly fell asleep in the hotel room between the meals at "Mahogany Grill". In the end, Miami Air International was recruited to save us from being stranded in Pearson, and we boarded a much less-impressive and significantly dustier plane to Orlando.

View from the Sheraton Gateway hotel room in Pearson.
After procuring a Chevy Impala from National, we drove to Summer Bay Resorts and settled in. Was quite late, so grocery shopping had to wait until the next day.


Chevy Impala, which probably has a higher top speed than an actual impala.
Now for a photo dump~

On the first day, after breakfast at Denny's (you could feed two Canadians a hearty breakfast in under $6 there) and grocery shopping at one of those ubiquitous Walmart superstores, we embarked to Animal Kingdom as the first theme park destination.


Animal Kingdom - because this was the only day of that week it opened until 8pm.


Stone structure in the middle of the lake may contain primates.


Statues spotted while moving ahead in the queue for Kali River Rapids.


The monk whose office we thoroughly trampled through in the queue for Expedition Everest will brb.


Flamingos really just don't care about the humans gawking at them on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride.


Mirrors, such as the one in the line for Primeval Whirl, are somewhat useful for self-taken group shots in lieu of a tripod.


Disney seemed to have changed the FastPass system so that now there is even a delay between getting FastPasses for different rides, greatly limiting their use. I'm not sure if it was like that the previous time I went. Later on that day, it was further reinforced how absolutely dirt cheap fast food is in the US after take-out from Chick-fil-a. Speaking of which, these two flow charts could possibly have been useful had I found them before the trip.

Throughout the trip when we didn't immediately collapse from exhaustion upon returning to the resort, we often indulged in some Dokapon Kingdom, a multiplayer game featuring a Mario Party-style game board with RPG elements. If you can properly recruit a bunch of friends to play this regularly, it quickly gets intensely addictive.


Dokapon Kingdom: the so-called "friendship-destroying game." Ironic, because it really requires a bunch of friends to play it regularly due to lack of online multiplayer and an unbalanced AI system.

EDIT: At this point I left the rest of the post for another day, which eventually became never. (natch) Instead I'll just post up the photos I had previously cropped here and you can visually guide yourself through the vacation without more of my dry narration!


Entrance to Epcot. Don't ever be fooled by the beautiful Florida skies and think that the weather will be nice for the next few hours. It lies.


Look it's that obligatory shot of Spaceship Earth when visiting Epcot!


A taste of Canada, as part of the International Showcase. Surely the tourists all recognize our iconic landmark, the CNChâteau Frontenac! ...Right?


Got to see a lot of those performances around the International Showcase, such as taiko drumming, belly dancing, and even a bar entertainer. (She was a real hit with some students from Iowa.)


It's Universal Studios! I don't remember why I took all these back shots.


The new roller coaster with a vertical drop. Unfortunately we didn't get to try it due to the risk of being electrocuted.


Visited Upham Beach, left with mild sunburn.


This infamous sign from Upham Beach. We dutifully abstained from clambering onto any groins of any kind while at the beach.


The new ride in MGM based on Toy Story. Line wait time was still over an hour, even though it was less than 30min to closing time. Disney attractions are serious business.


This picture is entitled "The Pole".


And of course, we rounded off the trip with Magic Kingdom to see the fireworks show. The fact that it was isolated from the rest of the attractions and accessed via a monorail ride led to insane lineups after the fireworks show.


Pirates descend upon the castle! Instead of shooting cannonballs and incendiary devices at the stronghold, they shot fireworks into the sky. It didn't work too well for them, but the tourists enjoyed it.

D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-duel

I received the deck of Hanafuda cards from Club Nintendo, which are a type of Japanese playing cards. The cards we're used to has numbered and face cards (13 total) divided via four suits. The hanafuda cards are instead separated via the twelve months instead of numbers and face cards, with each month represented by a certain type of plant, and also containing four cards.

However, the four cards of each month aren't just separated into one of four suits, but into a more complicated configuration. Some of the months are unique from the others. Each month has at least one Special card, which features another element like an animal. The Nintendo deck slightly redesigned most of the Special cards to feature Nintendo characters. Pretty nifty. :)

The Special cards from the hanafuda deck. Some months have more than one Special card so there are more than 12 in total.

There are also Ribbon cards which have a ribbon shown in the picture. Of these there are red, purple, and poetry ribbons. The poetry ribbons look like red ribbons but have writing on it. (see the Jan-Mar cards) The remaining cards are considered Normal cards.

The full deck of Club Nintendo's hanafuda deck. The left column from top to bottom is Jan-Jun, the right column is Jul-Dec.
January: Pine [Matsu (松)]
February: Plum Blossom [Ume (梅)]
March: Cherry Blossom [Sakura (桜)]
April: Wisteria [Fuji (藤)]
May: Iris [Ayame (菖蒲)]
June: Peony [Botan (牡丹)]
July: Bush Clover [Hagi (萩)]
August: Chinese silver grass [Susuki (薄)] (Nintendo has it as Pampas grass)
September: Chrysanthemum [Kiku (菊)]
October: Maple [Momiji (紅葉)]
November: Willow [Yanagi (柳)]
December: Paulownia [Kiri (桐)]



Case the hanafuda cards came in.

They do look much nicer than regular playing cards, and it requires you to familiarize with the deck to remember which cards belong to which month. I'm still trying to learn the rules of the game Koi-Koi so I might be able to get someone to play these cards with. :D

"I'll add you to my travel partner list."

Halfway mark! Unfortunately this semester is much busier than the last, and I'm already worried about some of these courses from the first lecture. I'm also going to the lab in the mornings now so I'm actually taking the GO train. Not used to waking up so early again =_= However, it still feels better at the end of the day when compared to staying at the lab after classes until late. Hopefully my PI will give me a break this semester due to the workload and restricted lab resources...

This Christmas was such a needed break from everything. I tried to indulge in as much gaming as I could to clear some of the backlog before spring semester presents itself. Managed to get some Ogre Battle 64, Ouendan 2, Pokemon Rumble, Band Hero, and Nostalgia. Band Hero's subdued difficuly level is pretty good for GH/RB noobs like me who can only last on Hard difficulty, maybe eke out a few of the easier songs on Expert. Plus the songlist is less boring. Of course, I'm lucky the game supports the RB drum which is the one I had. Somehow I think the RB drums feel a lot better to play on compared to the GH drums.

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New Year's wasn't spent anywhere special, but was enjoyable nonetheless. Have a great 2010, a year which we can finally pronounce again as two two-digit numbers!

First thing eaten in 2010: Turtles chocolate (again, seems to be a theme)
First thing drunk in 2010: Some Chardonnay wine from Pelee Winery
First thing played with in 2010: Band Hero (I didn't manage to get drunk, probably would have been more fun that way)
First thing resumed in 2010 after celebrations: UTAMA foruming, I think

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Just today I finally found a frame for the piece of artwork I got many years ago from Epcot in Florida's Disney World. I think it's called Oriental Letter Art, where you can have someone's name or a message written out in fancy oriental characters which consist of various symbolic elements. They paint using this cool flat-tipped sponge and bright watercolours. I'm pretty sure this purchase was fueled by the tourist's souvenir frenzy but I don't mind having it around. They simply ask you for your name, then you go walk around the park while they paint your name and you can come back to see how it turned out later.

I thought the stand was personally run by the artist herself, but it turns out they have a website where you can even order art online.



There's the design. (Click for larger image) According to the brochure they handed out, the symbols mean:

Sun: hope, faith, and love

Dragonfly: dream

Bird: peace

Ship: perspective (K)

Rainbow: promise, love, hope, and peace

Crane: longevity and noble mindedness (E)

Cactus: patience and hope (I)

Mountain: perseverence and stoicism

Dragon: honour, credit, bravery and pride

I definitely like the birds and the mountain, and I like the Japanese-y vibe of the dragon. My sister actually got one of these done even longer back when we visited Victoria, BC. Her name sports other symbols like dolphins, lighthouse, shrimp (a rather ornate one at that), and some tangle of flowers which I think are orchids. Unfortunately she lost the symbol sheet so we can't know for sure what dolphins are supposed to stand for.

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I'm dismayed to find that BPT is still down for the count. In the meantime I've assembled a few quizzes on Sporcle, and I'm still trying to get some iSketch in whenever possible.

Escarpment

Another photo dump of the nice overnight trip to Niagara Falls shortly before school started. I was happy that I got to go somewhere this summer, and it was pretty fun and at a nice pace for once. Stayed at the Embassy Suites hotel and had dinner at The Keg in the hotel, which surprisingly was also the site of the breakfast morning buffet. Hot breakfast to-order + The Keg seating = very nice. Some generic falls pictures out of the way first:

The Falls

View from Embassy Suites hotel room


American Falls


Horseshoe Falls


Maid of the Mist


Niagara Scow (center right) - the old ship that's now stuck upstream of the Horseshoe Falls


View of some hotels on Canadian side - Embassy Suites at center left


Horseshoe Falls as seen from the Maid of the Mist

Bird Kingdom


Free-Flying Aviary - it's like the Toronto Zoo pavilions where you get to walk around inside where the birds are flying, and there were surprisingly a lot of birds there.






Bearded Dragons and Turtle - Bird Kingdom also had a reptile section where they had a LOT of large snakes and lizards.

Niagara Falls Botanical Gardens



Castor Oil Plant


Tomato Garden - they had a large vegetable garden with squashes, pumpkins, cabbages, rhubarb, carrots, hot peppers and such growing at the time.


Lantana Camara - actually an extremely invasive species and known as a "noxious weed".

Butterfly Conservatory - Part of the Botanical Gardens



Owl Butterfly - seen from the top - the namesake owl eye pattern is seen when the wings are closed up










Butterfree used Gust!

Early

Last year I made this post where I commented on finding a bird's nest in my front yard. Well this year it turns out that the nest became occupied (or a new nest was made in the same place) by a family of robins. Unfortunately we were too late to catch seeing the eggs, but we were able to observe the robin mother as she was brooding until the eggs eventually hatched, the babies developed into fledglings, and then left the nest. When I read up about the nesting habits of robins online, it matched rather well with what I observed happening with the robin in our front yard. Since they decided to reside in the lilac bush right beside our window, we were able to spy on the nest frequently, probably to the chagrin of the birds as they often stared at us when they noticed our presence.

Initially, we mostly saw the robin mother sitting in the nest, so we suspected that she had eggs in the nest. She sat there for most of the day, always awake with eyes open. I admired her ability to do that without getting insanely bored. During this time I never really saw the robin father come to the nest. The mother is shown in the hidden nest here:

Soon after the eggs hatched to yield three babies, and the mother began to make occasional trips to find food. The babies were still really small and most of the time were covered by the tall sides of the nest. Only when the mother returned would they immediately pop up from the nest, straining their necks to get at the food. This is a shot of the baby birds shortly after they hatched.

Eventually the babies began developing some plumage. Their characteristic red bellies began to show too. At this point the mother was still brooding during the day and especially during bad rainy weather. However, the birds eventually grew larger, to the point where it was almost comical since the chicks were all barely wedged into the nest. By then I rarely saw the mother near the nest again, except at night. However both the mother and father showed up at various points in the day to feed the fledglings.

The mother sitting on the fledglings:

Fledglings when mother was absent:

After about 2-3 weeks fom hatching the babies will have developed enough to be able to start learning to fly. Eventually they will leave the nest out into the world, mildly assisted by the parents as they try get independent at flying around and finding food. This matched with what I saw on the day when the fledglings finally left the nest. It was then when I was able to actually get a good look at their feathers.

Fledgling perched beside nest, ready to leave:

Fledgling on the front porch as it was leaving:

I was a little saddened when the robins were gone, and hoped that they would be ok. The survival rate of robins in the wild is understandably low. I was glad that all three chicks survived long enough to be able to leave the nest, at the very least. I managed to get some shaky camera footage of one of the fledglings that was perched beside the nest on the day they left the nest. Two of the fledglings left the nest around noon, but this one in the video stuck around until 6pm. Not sure why it did that, but I hope the parents didn't forget about it.

Apparently robins may nest twice in a single year during the summer, but at two different nesting sites. I found the robins in our front yard in mid-July, so this was probably the second time in the summer, if it had nested before. I'm glad I was able to observe something like this so closely, and it reminds me of the duck family that also lived in our front yard a few years ago. I guess there is just something about the front yard that birds really like? The website I read states that robins mainly determine their nesting site by judging the ability of the spot to support the nest from below, which is why they often nest at the base of places where branches fork out. It also explains why the robin I saw last year at Wonderland would nest immediately below the tracks of The Bat. There sure is a lot of structual integrity there, but I would still think sitting under a roller coaster all day would be detrimental to the robin...

Most info I read about was from this site: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/robin/

Early to bed, early to rise
The future is for those who get up early
He who arrives first, stays better
Morning time has gold in its mouth
He who sleeps doesn't catch any fish
The early bird catcheth the worm

Esculent

In the past while I've dabbled in a bit of baking, mostly as a way to kill time. None of them are really all that impressive, but for things I just made for the first time they turned out pretty good. Luckily, they were all at least edible, some were even delicious! Most of them came from the same dessert cookbook so there are a lot of 'chocolate' recipes, not too much variety.

Chocolate Almond Cheesecake
The first cake I ever baked, it was actually pretty simple to make. Unfortunately since I didn't know the nuances of cheesecake-making, the cake came out of the oven looking wonderful but as it cooled it developed a humongous gaping hole across the middle. My sister then decorated over said crack using the almond whipped cream. It tasted good, in the end.

Neapolitan Cheesecake
This one was a bit of a failure. Although it tasted ok in the end, it was supposed to have three distinct layers on top of the crust. The bottom pink strawberry layer failed because I didn't drain enough water from the strawberries and the puree was too watery. This caused some of the layer to leak out of the pan when it was baking. The crust was also much too hard due to the recipe calling for the use of cocoa. If I ever attempt this again I'll use a crust from another cheesecake recipe.

Chocolate Amaretto Cheesecake
This one is my favourite of the cheesecakes I've made. It tasted the best and was probably the most easy to make due to the fact that it doesn't involve baking. It uses gelatin so after you blend everything together you simply let it set in the fridge. I hijacked the almond whipped cream from the Chocolate Almond Cheesecake recipe. Since I didn't have a pastry bag of any sort, I just dabbed the cream over the cake. It might've looked a bit neater if I had piped it instead.

Choco-Almond Fluff
The recipe for this one was really short, but strangely involved a lot more effort and surveilance than I expected. Admittedly it was supposed to be a Choco-Orange Fluff, but I couldn't be pressed to spend $5 on a tiny bottle of orange extract which I would probably never use again. I just used the almond extract we already had from making the previous cheesecakes. Not much variety to be had, but again it tasted ok, and was indeed fluffy.

Collector's Cocoa Cake
I decided to move on to a cake that was not a cheesecake! And luckily it still turned out ok, none of the sticking-to-the-pan problems I've heard of. There were two choices of frosting you could make in the recipe, this one being a 'buttercream frosting'. I was afraid the frosting would be too sweet but it was fine, and the cake ended up being pretty tasty. The cake didn't seem as fluffy as other cakes, but it might have been because the recipe called for baking soda instead of baking powder.

And here's a close-up on the frosting. Yum...

The cake slice reveals how the cake layers weren't very flat, but it definitely turned out better than I was expecting.

Cupcake Bouquet
My sister did most of the work for this one, as a Mother's Day gift. I just assisted with making the cupcakes. She then arranged it into a bouquet and hand-painted the pot. Turned out looking really charming. The cupcake frosting was actually pumped out via a Ziploc bag with a hole cut in the corner, again citing the lack of a pastry bag.

Ham and Spinach Quiche
This is not a dessert, but a quiche. Again, rather simple to make, with all the work coming from the prep where you have to cut up the ingredients. The recipe originally called for celery and onion only, but I found the celery didn't flow with the texture of the quiche so the next time I replaced it with mushrooms, and added ham and bacon too. If I ever feel particularly adventurous, maybe a homemade pie crust next time...?

Other undertakings included a pasta pie, chili con carne, and gazpacho.