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My neighborhood kills the environment

My neighbors water their lawns constantly. When I say constantly, I mean that they’re watering their lawns nonstop. When I say non-stop, I mean that I require fins and breathing gear when I take Java out for a walk past their houses.

I could really care-less about my lawn as I hate all plants because they are the main cause of all my allergies. However, my elderly neighbors like to hold on to the idea of a beautiful house and lawn which directly equates to constantly using their water sprinklers. Here are the published regulations for lawn watering in my neighborhood:

Lawn sprinkling regulations are in effect from June 1 to September 30. Lawn Sprinkling is allowed only from 4 to 9 am and 7 to 10 pm on the following days:

Even-numbered addresses: Wednesday & Saturday
Odd-numbered addresses: Thursday & Sunday

The regulations restrict lawn sprinkling during the summer months to manage demand for drinking water. The lawn sprinkling regulations have been in place since 1993 and are part of the regional Water Shortage Response Plan that mostly outlines measures to reduce demand for outdoor use.

MetroVancouver website

The following are our neighbors’ rules:

The MetroVancouver website’s rules and regulations conflict with having a beautiful green lawn that frame your house. If you’re interested in living in a home with a visibly green and healthy lawn; please abide by the following regulations, actually these are more guidelines than regulations really. So fuck ‘em all and water to your hearts content.

Every single fuckin’ day: 5AM – 6AM (before everyone else wakes up)
Every single night: 12midnight-2AM (so your neighbors won’t catch you)

10:30 am 1 Comment

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ok, I understand that this isn’t a cooking blog. There are also enough cooking blogs out there with a great ideas for recipes. However, today I want to share with you the best ever chocolate chip cookies. I’ve claimed them as my own and this will be the only time that I will admit to getting the recipe from somewhere but here on end I am lying through my teeth and saying that it’s a recipe passed down from multiple generations of Macapinlacs.

The reality is that I first tasted this recipe when I used to work for Rouxbe. It was a hectic afternoon of coding and feature building when Dawn came in and surprised everyone with cookies from the shoot going on in the kitchen. Yess, score! I was on a diet at the time but I remember that it was the most amazing chocolate chip cookie EVAR! Once the diet was over I attempted the recipe in our own kitchen and the rest, as people say, is history. Ooeey gooey history (and 20000 calories later)

A few comments about the recipe itself (trust me with this):

• The recipe itself is simple. If I can follow it, then it is, by definition, simple.
• You have to use the correct salt, it makes a world of difference. Table salt is still too rough and umm, salty. Fleur de sel is less but you’re still able to taste it as a contrast to the sweetness.
• Don’t smush the cookies down before baking. Make them into balls when putting them on the baking sheet but leave them as balls. A tiny bit smaller than a tennis ball but bigger than a golf ball is good (anywhere in between really).
• I like to add some crushed walnuts. When I shop of the chocolate chips, I go to Superstore and buy the milk chocolate chips and the crushed walnuts are usually right beside it.

How can you go wrong with this?

10:00 am 0 Comments

Swimming and Tennis: The new routine

It seems that during spring and summer, my mind gets filled with ideas of achieving a better physical fitness. It’s probably the fear that at some point in time that I would be asked to attend some social function at the beach or pool where it would be impossible to hide my gut. Along with my habit for procrastination, this equates to a need to get fit during the spring and summer season. This year, I chose to come back to roots: swimming and tennis.

Swimming has always been 2nd nature to me. I was practically born in the water so it was a pretty logical choice. Especially since I’m a big pop culture whore and it was around the time that Michael Phelps started becoming popular. I saw an interview that he ate an insane amount of junk food because he trains 8 hours a day in the pool. Who the heck can argue with eating as much junk food as you want, so swimming it was.

Recently, I also rejoined tennis. Although I also re-discovered that while I didn’t really lose too much of my ground strokes that I was getting out hit by little kids with better rackets. Granted that my rackets are about 10+ years old, I love them to death and making the decision to start looking for new ones was a painful decision to make. It’s almost like cutting off a limb or sacrificing your first born (ok maybe not the latter). *cue violins* The good thing is that a new racquet is like a new toy and I like getting new toys.

So watch out for new blog posts about tennis training and the hilarity that ensues from me trying to throw around a medicine ball.

10:30 am 0 Comments

This would never happen with surgeons

Let me illustrate a scenario. Let’s say you’re a junior resident in cardiac surgery (for now let’s call it doctor level 5). Let’s also say that you’re working in a pretty big hospital. Let’s say that this case where a heart transplant comes in and while it is mainly a heart transplant case there are little issue where there is also a needed kidney replacement and a finger amputation.

Now let’s say that your team of doctors is ready to go in and do work on the patient except another ward who hired an external podiatrist says, “Wait guys! Use a swiss army knife to perform the surgery because it has a knife, a corkscrew, a toothpick and these freaking awesome stainless steel tweezers. And also, because we’ve been given the swiss army knife for free and I’m a podiatrist (which is also a doctor) which makes me an expert in cutting people up in surgery. Might I also add that a swiss army knife is trying to be the best tool for cutting and so we should look at the future of swiss army knives and what they want to be in the industry of cutting patients up.”

In which you reply, “Huh?! Really?! Am I being Punk’d?” *sigh* I don’t think I’m making any friends in IT.

1:00 pm 0 Comments

Ritchie vs Transformers 2

Ok, so I went to go see Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen with the wife and wanted to write a quick review of the movie. Let me put some context around this post. (1) I didn’t like the first movie. I thought that not having Bumblebee as a VW beetle should’ve automatically stopped production. (2) I had really low expectations because usually sequels are worse the original and (3) I consider Michael Bay the douche of movie making (right up there with Brett Ratner). You know the douche type: Oakley sport glasses while wearing a suit, with Nike runners, and the haircut like one of the male leads of the Gossip Girls.

Ok, so let’s start off with the things that Ritchie didn’t like. Bumblebee is still not a VW beetle. There is a character called The Fallen (and I keep wondering why my friends and family stop me from being known as “The Ritchie”). 3 years passed between this movie and the last. You would assume that the human characters would’ve gotten better weapons. You know weapons technology, DARPA, and all that junk. It also bothers me that hating this movie makes me talk in the third person.

And the following are the things that Ritchie liked about Transformers 2, in point form:

• An unnecessary amount of transforming
• Megan Fox running
• Megan Fox running in slow motion
• Megan Fox running in the dessert
• Shia LaBeouf Megan Fox running through the city
• A decent amount of action (even though the action looked like Bad Boys with robots)

So if you like the above point form list, then I predict that you will absolutely like the movie.

11:40 am 0 Comments