Trip to the SunBanque

SunBanque Island Tanning

I had to go uptown today to drop off a few photo CDs from the New Year's party. While up there I dropped by the local FutureShop to see if there were any Nintendo Wii units available. For the record I despise FutureShop. It's a computer/electronics store chain that is known for the majority of it's commission driven salespeople to outright lie to you when asking them questions.

I remember trying to get a monitor cable and the sales guy told me they don't make those cables anymore and I should buy a new monitor. After that experience I took it upon myself to educate other customers after they were given some fictional sales pitch by the same sales guy.

Another shopping experience occurred while looking for a printer. Futureshop had one of it's "on sale" printers left. At first I was happy as the price was reasonable and the printer was half decent and not used (so I was told). The sales guy went to the back to get the box. When he came out the box had badly placed duct tape on it, a clue that it was opened. Having been burnt by other computer stores before I asked if I could open the box to see the printer. The sales guy said sure while insisting that there was no need.

The printer was crammed in with the custom foam, foam that was broken into pieces. Whoever put the printer back in the box didn't even care that the printer was put back in the foam properly. It looked like they just shoved it in. Then I noticed the ink cartridge in the printer! Looking very wary I asked the sales guy what was up with that. He told me, without batting an eyelash, that it was standard procedure to put the print cartridge into the printer to test the printer before the customer gets it. The nerve of these guys.

So why go to FutureShop? The low prices attract me. Plus I usually just avoid the sales people and previously opened boxes. If I have questions about the product I'll check on-line. I will never talk to a salesperson unless they're in my way or spewing some crap to other customers.

As for the Nintendo Wii, I've been intrigued by the motion controllers since first reading about them. I missed purchasing the game cube with it's version of MarioKart so, I figure, now would be a good time to jump back on the Nintendo band wagon. As Mario would say "Letsa go!"

I was told that there are no units available for purchase until march, april or may. They weren't very specific. How can they say they sell a product when it's not on the shelves until March? It's odd you can buy the controllers, the software, even a stand for the console, just no console.

As a gaming alternative I took a look at the Blizzard game "The World of Warcraft". It's only $25 to buy but to play you also have to buy credits that cost about $20 a month. I opted not to buy that game as I didn't want my life to be taken over by staying at home in front of a computer. Not that that would really change much.

New Year's Day

Cheap Dim Sum is yum yum.

Woke up today exhausted, thinking about the girl. Had dreamt that I was emailed a letter with a URL to a self help e-book title and a small explanation of why we're not together. I can't remember the specifics, I just remembered that it depressed the crap out of me. Luckily I was transported out of the web surfing nightmare by my phone ringing and waking me up.

The helium balloon I managed to appropriate yesterday, or earlier this morning, had started to shrink, floating down toward the ground and was hovering at about eye level. It startled me. For some reason I thought it was the head of a person trying to wake me up. Did something happen at the new years party? Did I bring someone home? Did someone break in to my apartment? Was I even at home? Is it safe? Is... it... safe? Scenes from the Marathon man came to mind. Despite having a foggy brain a whole load of scenarios ran through my head in the minutes that it took to wake up. No animal's head on the bed. That was good. I obviously didn't get enough sleep.

Highlights today consisted of meeting up for dim sum with Marc (that was the person who called), bumping into my cousin Darcy who I haven't seen in years, and picking up my new TTC Metropass. Other than that New Year's day was pretty average and low key.

New Year's Eve

A bunch of bubbly for New Year's Eve.

To help take my mind off dating, at least I thought it would, I worked Joel's New Year's Eve party taking pictures. The DJ was the same guy that played the boat cruise back in August. I liked his selection as the songs he played actually had lyrics.

The party took place on the second floor of the Intercontinental hotel, on Bloor just west of Avenue road. Along with the coat check there was a large room with round tables, a dance room, a small quiet room in the corner, and a large hall where, for the most part, a lot of people hung out to socialize, meet people, and see who showed up.


There were some familiar faces in the crowd, some of the people I had met at the Balmy Beach Club, but for the most part it was a large unknown crowd. Aside from the happy new year thing, the highlight of the evening, actually there were two, the first while I was walking toward the door to the room with all the tables. I witnessed a guy coming out of the room followed by a fist attached to his head. This caught me off guard as I was stuffing my face with a sandwich at the time. A few minutes later Police had shown up looking for the instigator. The party had taken a surreal feel to it.

The second highlight of the part occurred when a guy asked his girl friend to marry him. She said "yes" by the way. They made a cute couple. It made me depressed. Surrounded by people but alone. Wow, new years sucked at that particular point. I was on automatic, shot the DJ doing the countdown and the party favours exploding in high pitched squeeks, plastic clackers, people hugging and kissing each other as they sang "Auld lang syne". It all seemed like everything was happening in slow motion.

The hotel lights abruptly came on and the cleaning staff marched in to the dance room to clean stuff up. The DJ a bit annoyed played one last song. It was Donna Summer's Last dance. I managed to take a few more shots of dazed party goers being subjected to bright light and dancing anyway. We were herded out by 2:30am where by I managed to snag one of the left over helium filled balloons and made my way home.

Rocky 6 is BagelHot

Testing the lights for tomorrow's new year's eve party

For those that are thinking "How could they make another Rocky movie after the last bomb?", I have to tell you that I thought the Rocky 6 movie was great. Perhaps it's just a story of a guy being dealt an average to crappy hand and dealing with it. It could be that it touched an emotional nerve.

I started off by going into the theatre with obvious reservations. What is Stallone doing? Hasn't the franchise taken enough beatings? The lights lowered. You hear "Rocky! Rocky!" being chanted over the familiar theme music. Reminiscing value at it's best. Still, I was dubious the story would be any good.

Although the story is a simple one, by the end of the movie you can't help but cheer for Rocky. "Kick that punk's ass!", "Move, damn you move!", I found myself ducking and weaving with the movie, like that would help Rocky get out of his predicament. When's the last time a movie got you that emotionally attached to a character? That's some great movie magic. To Mr. Stallone, "Thanks for making that picture".


Skating at Nathan Phillips Square

After the movie I made my way downtown to join others for a light show which in the end never happened. I suppose there was a miscommunication in ads and as a result many people that travelled down to Nathan Phillips Square hauling their kids were disappointed.


Michiho happy skating alone

We watched Michiho, the only one to bring skates, skate around the rink a few times before calling it quits and going to the local Tim Hortons for hot drinks. Kyoko who showed up with Chris was plastered from beer tasting, or was it wine tasting?, and had trouble standing up by herself.

While we wobbled over to the coffee shop across the street, she told me the story of how she met my parents downtown about six times. Drunk people are funny.

Congee Queen

New menus at the Congee Queen

If you have found that there seems to be a theme of eating this week then you're right. I've been pretty much keeping to myself for the most part only popping out to grab food with friends. So much for the saving money and eating at home. I've pretty much fallen of the wagon this week.

Today was no exception. For dinner, Marc and I travelled up to Don Mills and Lawerence and one block west to eat at the Congee Queen. I had visited this place before, usually with my grand mother (father's side). The congee is great here. There's a whole menu of various flavours. Usually I'll order the salmon or the pork with "golden egg", I've always wondered what kind of egg the "gold egg" was.

If you're not into congee, the other dishes they have have pretty large portions. This made a great choice for stuffing your face and forgetting about the rest of the world.

Friend and Pho

No, Kyoko is not demonstrating the latest advertised sneeze technique, she's trying to hide from the camera.

Today's outing was to a local Pho restaurant, Vietnamese food, located on Gerrard just east of Broadview. Originally we were supposed to meet up with Rick but he had a cold. The day had started off with Kyoko dropping by with her new laptop. The goal was to install virus software and to see if it worked on the wireless network. Check on both counts.

Taking the Streetcar down to Broadview and Gerrard also had two purposes. The first was to eat lunch and the second was to visit my cousin at Carbon Computing to pick up a $5.00 laser mouse, a left over deal from Boxing day.

Go Away

Marc "drags" me out to dim sum

What part of "I don't feel like socializing with anyone" do people not understand?

I received a number of phone calls today from friends seeing if I was alright. I used the "I am sick" speech to get out of Christmas activities. It wasn't a lie, I started feeling a sore throat coming on. It just so happened that I was depressed as well.

Eventually I succumbed to eating out and grabbing some dim sum with Marc. It's hard to feel like crap when there are friends around trying to make you feel better. Some offer advice, some will relate stories of pertinence, and some will just listen. Marc is the later and a very good listener at that.

Even though my dating life seems pathetic I am grateful to have friends that will listen to the misadventures of my life, even if it is to get a good laugh because it's not happening to them. You bastards. :->

Boxing Day Blahs

The new retro red illuminated keyboard

I hadn't moved out of bed since the phone call the day before Christmas. I was depressed and emotionally felt like crap. Having your heart put into a blender before Christmas did have it's advantages however. Being the gloomy gus I had cancelled all my Christmas plans. Cupcakes Christmas eve dinner, a lobster Christmas eve dinner with Juliet, and Christmas day dinner with Kyoko, Chris and family.

The good news... as it turned out, a lot of people that went and ate at Cupcakes dinner were sick on Christmas day. Upchucking into empty yogurt containers on Christmas day were the highlight activities for Cupcake thanks to a thing we call food poisoning. Sometimes it helps to stay in and not venture forth into the unknown and this was one of those times.

My deep dark pit of despair was tempered with a bunch of Christmas DVD watching. What's more depressing than watching movies that have sappy endings where everyone else is happy? It puts more emphasis on stuff you don't have. Perhaps that's why Christmas is among one of the highest suicide days of the year. (note: to friends and family... I was depressed but not enough to end my life. You can put that straight jacket away now.)

Up until this point the most depressing Christmas' were the ones where I was at work working away on a project when everyone else had taken a holiday. There were at least five times that I could think of where I sat alone in an office programming some such thing to be delivered the night before new years only to have it delivered in time to receive revisions and have to work new years as well. I eventually put a stop to that nonsense.

Although sad, I did get paid for working those days. Being at home because I felt gutted by the woman I was in love with was a whole other level of feeling sad. I would have to find some way of dealing with it. As today was boxing day I was called by William. William the enabler, as he's been nicknamed by some, as he encourages the spending of money even if I don't have any. This year he didn't have to goad me much as I tend to like to spend money on myself when in a depressed state. Stores just loooove me.

Picking up a new gadget, DVD, or food, seems to give me a sense of immediate gratification and a false sense of happiness. Even if it's for a short time it seems worth it. A lot of "falling off the wagon" had to happen today to help get me out of this low. Purchasing a Nintendo Wii would have been the ticket if the stores weren't sold out of them. Now I was really depressed. I was looking forward to having tennis elbow or finger fatigue while whacking some poor cutsie cartoon character into submission.

I started the day by gorging a few McMuffins at McDonalds. I ordered Will to a McDonalds before the shopping bonanza would begin. Stuffing your face with comfort food is the first convenient way of dealing with feeling blue. Not so good for your waist line, but who cares, it's not like you're dating anyone that'll notice. You're not dating anyone. Maybe you'll regret shoving food into you later, but right now is now and we have to get through now now to get to later later.

The second act of recklessness was to buy things to make me happy. That was taken care of by visiting the local camera store. The first main purchase were some barn doors and honeycomb attachments I had ordered back in May for my visatec studio flash. They initially arrived sometime in July but were sold by accident to another customer. They didn't show up again until today, which was great because I got a 15% discount off them for being boxing day. Woo hoo!

After that the only thing I really needed to buy was a new power cable for my computer. For some reason I've been having problems with my computer losing power. Through experimentation I found that the contacts on the plug, because it was made from cheap plastic, lost connection every now and then. The plug had to be replaced with one made of rubber.

I picked up the new cable and shortly after bought a new keyboard with illuminated red lit keys (seen in the above picture). Not that I need anything to encourage my being a shut in or working in the dark but convinced myself that it would be helpful when I'm too lazy to move to the other side of the room to hit the light switch. Being depressed I become more slug like, the bed becomes my friend and making my way, way across the room to my computer becomes a huge task.


The new big ass tree in the Eaton Centre

We spent a lot of time looking for a car adaptor and camera cable for Will's iPod. William is one of those guys (he blames his asian genes) that can spend hours searching for that perfect bargain just to save a few dollars or find those specific features that may or may not exist. Therefore when you go shopping with him make sure there's stuff that you want to look at.

During our camera shopping part of the expedition I was fine. I had all sorts of camera gear to drool over and decide whether or not that particular gadget was worthy of my impulse purchasing or not. It wasn't until we started looking for Williams iPod stuff that I started thinking of the girl and how she was thinking of getting a new iPod. It would be so cool to buy some iPod accessories for her, not just because they were on sale, but it would be something she would actually use and be happy with.

The thought of purchasing an item that she could use but wouldn't want from me made me sad, miserable and insignificant feeling. My eyes started to tear up. I walked out of the store with people staring at me, probably thinking I couldn't get some boxing day special. From an Apple store? Yeah sure (insert sarcasm here). I was a blithering idiot.

We ended up at the usual boxing day restaurant. Chung King, the one on Spadina just south of College located on the second floor, not to be confused with the restaurant by the same name located on College just west of Spadina. It was perfect timing for another stuff your face binge fest.


William the enabler

We ordered the trademarked crispy beef along with some other dishes, one of them being a tofu dish that I always seem to forget the name of, but we seem to be able to always pick it on every visit. I stuffed myself. It was the first real meal, other than the McMuffins, that I ate since the dreaded phone call.

The day was fairly short and we finished shopping in record time. I was dropped off at home in time to go meet up with the parents for the annual boxing day dinner but wasn't in the mood for any socializing of any kind, family or friends. An answering machine message told me that the family gathering had been cancelled. With a sigh of relief I crawled into bed with the new glowing keyboard attached to the laptop and began my continued watching of sappy Christmas fluff.

She's just not that into you

Around 11am I called the girl after reading an email posted regarding dim sum. The result being that the girl does not want to be in a relationship with me.

Today was a bad day.

Flirtygirl Fitness

The Flirty Girls: Dana, Katie, and Michelle

If my editor from Juicy Stuff could get a gold star, today would be a good day to get one. Getting out on an assignment where the object is to take pictures of girls pole dancing is pretty incredible. Seeing fit women doing acrobatics is always a challenging task. I say this with all sincerity. Not only do you have to get the action shot, freeze the moment where they look good, but you also have to make sure they look good. That is to say their body is placed in a good compositional space and their faces aren't contorted while performing the stunt.


Dana wows the crowd with her clinging to the pole with only one leg.

I find it interesting that when you talk to most women about pole dancing you usually get a negative response with the word "slut" or some other negative reaction. Clearly it's because pole dancing is usually associated with men's clubs, stripping, and women with fake boobs. When's the last time anyone thought of Gene Kelly swinging around a lamp post or Danny Kaye in White Christmas?

If you put a pole 15 meters into the air and had it as part of a circus act, maybe throw in a sword or two, would pole dancing have the same reaction? Well maybe if the women, if they were women, were flinging off their clothes while performing.

I not trying to skirt around the fact that there's something sexy about a women dancing and doing acrobatics with a pole I'm just saying that it doesn't have to be dirty (unless you want it to be).


Here's a nice "Smile for the camera" shot


Katie with her arms of steel...


...makes this form of acrobatics look easy.