Hush, my children and gather round for a university student's Halloween story...

I'm looking up jounal articles for a psychology research proposal. It is almost as bad as doing an annotated bibliography. But believe me, an annotated bibliography can be a lot worse.

How, you ask?

When you're doing an annotated biblography for a botany paper. More specifically, an annotated bibliography for a paper on a botanist from the 1860s.

That is when you must descend into the bowels of the U of T Gerstein library! Ask the traumatized few who have been to the Z stacks. It is as if a hundred years of students' despair has turned into ash and settled on the dimly lit shelves. Run your hands along the shelves and feel the residue of sighs, heavy on your fingertips.

The quiet is tremendous. You hear your heart beat.

Then, in the distance, a moan. Is it a ghost? Is it one of the ghosts of U of T?

You creep along the narrow spaces between the shelves, careful not to disturb the fragile pages, a hundred years old. Another mournful wail. Who is it?

It's a student dozing on and off on a stack of musty books. He has been in the library for the past 30 hours, willing himself to look through the yellowed pages. His brief rest is troubled. It is the weight of thousands of books bearing down on him!

The silence!

Oh, the horror!

Cooking Attempt #6: 무우국 (Beef and Radish Soup)

Ahhhh~ I had exams on Monday and Tuesday this week, so I wanted to make something that would last awhile and be yummy enough that I wouldn't get sick of eating it all the time.

Hence, the beef and radish soup. I thought it was turnip this whole time, but it turns out that it was actually radish. After much discussion with Josh and Robert, I will specify here that it's a Korean radish, which is white in colour with a slight greenish tinge towards the bottom end.

So anyhoo, the recipe here is for about 4 servings, apparently.

Ingredients:

Beef - 200g

Water - 10 cups

Korean white radish - about the size of a small fist, let's say

Garlic - 1 tbsp, crushed

Green onion - 1/2 cup, chopped

Soy sauce - 1 tbsp

Sesame oil - 1/2 tbsp

Salt and pepper

You can use whichever beef part you like. I had sliced ribeye from a Korean market. It shouldn't be too lean, otherwise it will end up being tough and you also want some beef flavour to infuse the water. You can cut it up into small bite-size chunks.

Put the beef chunks in the cold water in the pot and turn on the heat.

When it starts boiling, the oily parts will rise to the surface. Skim these off.

The radish should be peeled and cut into thin slices (5mm) so that they cook faster. Add these radish chunks to the boiling water.

Turn down the heat to medium and let it boil for 20 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Add the green onion and garlic.

It should cook until the radish pieces turn into a translucent grey. Then add the soy sauce and sesame oil. Stir and turn off the heat.

Now, this recipe might end up being a bit bland, but you can always add a little more soy sauce or salt to make it suit your tastes.

To eat it, you cook some rice and add the cooked rice to a bowl of the soup. Mix well and eat with kimchi. Yum!

Update: After this picture was taken, I went back and added some egg drops. You bring the soup to a boil, whip an egg and plunk it into the boiling soup. Give it a quick swirl and you've got egg drops.

McGill Cultural Revolution!

I always thought I'd be the one doing the brainwashing in pursuit of world domination. Who would have guessed that I'd be the one getting indoctrinated? I wouldn't have noticed that anything was happening were it not for this conversation.

Josh: Why "client"? Isn't it "patient"?
Judy: The McGill stand is that people don't have to be ill to receive nursing care, so it's more appropriate to call them "clients".
Josh: Why are they getting treatment otherwise?
Judy: A new mother doesn't have to be sick to get information about her newborn. It's a more holistic way of looking at health. "Client" can refer to an individual, a family or a community.
Josh: Ah. Do you have a little red book written by Chairman McGill?
Judy: Well, I do have a red book. It's not very little though.

And look at this quote from Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book:
"This army is powerful because all its members have a conscious discipline; they have come together and they fight not for the private interests of a few individuals or a narrow clique, but for the interests of the broad masses and of the whole nation. The sole purpose of this army is to stand firmly with the Chinese people and to serve them whole-heartedly."

If you replace "this army" with "McGill" and "Chinese people" with "clients", you have the basic gist of McGill model of nursing. Scary.

Join me, comrades, in the McGill Cultural Revolution (or is it Nursing Revolution?)! If you see me dressed in drab grey clothing, ominously muttering about the human condition and "transformation of the profession", please take me away to a deprogramming farm. Just don't bonk me on the head with a baseball bat.

A Juicy Lesson in Korean: #5 - Answers

Okay, so it's been awhile and the last lesson wasn't something that you could really use without getting a beating (or at least some flabbergasted looks of horror).

Here's a quick lesson on answering questions.

A) Yes. - 예 or 네

예 - Yeh.
네 - Neh.

Both are "yes". It doesn't matter which one you use. Don't think that just because one sounds like "Nea", it's a negative.


B) No. - 아니요

Ah-ni-yo.

Shortened form: 아뇨 (Ah-nyo)

This is pretty self-explanatory. It gets confusing when you're answering negative questions.
Example in English:
Question --> "Didn't John go to school today?"
Answer --> "No." (he didn't go to school today)
or "Yes." (he did go to school today)

But in Korean, instead of answering to match the negative or positive of the person's actions, you respond to the question itself.
Example in Korean:
Question --> "Didn't John go to school today?"
Answer --> "No." (you are incorrect; he did go to school today)
or "Yes." (you are correct; he didn't go to school today)


C) I don't know. - 몰라요.

Mol-lah-yo.
The two "l"s should connect the first two syllables so that it sounds like "mollah"

As in English, it's not very polite to answer a question with "I don't know." Imagine if you asked someone where the train station was and the person said, "I don't know" and walked away. So it's better to use D).


D) Well, I'm not sure. - 글쎄요.

Gul-sseh-yo.
Gul = soft k sound

This is a more polite (and less direct) way of telling a person that you don't know the answer to their question.

Ahhh! Four posts in a day! I took some pictures around campus last week. The weather was beautiful. Keep clicking to the right or view as a slideshow!

Cooking Attempt #5: 김치찌개 (Kimchi stew)

I've made kimchi stew before, but it was my first time using canned tuna. Chopped pork is best, but I couldn't be bothered to buy pork and chop it up, so I used tuna and tofu. You can also use spam.

Ingredients:
Green onion
Garlic (mushed)
Canned tuna (instead of pork)
Square of firm tofu (cut into small squares)
Kimchi (older, slightly sour kimchi is better than one that's fresh)
Sesame oil (just a touch)
Water

If you're making this with pork, then you cook it first on a skillet with some oil. When it's just about done, you add everything else. Water should be added until it just barely covers the kimchi. Stir it well so that everything mixes and let it boil until the kimchi is soft and the soup part is ever so slightly thicker.

Eat it with a bowl of rice and other 반찬. An easy way to use up leftover kimchi.

Thanksgiving in Toronto

I spent Thanksgiving holiday in Toronto. Not with my family, since my parents were in Wiarton and my brother had plans with his friends. We don't really do anything for Thanksgiving anyway. Koreans have their own version earlier in the year. Come to think of it, we don't really do anything for that one either. Our family really is apathetic about these things.

It was my first train ride ever in Canada. I was so excited. I had my bags ready and I got on the bus to go to the train station. There was a little kerfuffle about the bus running only during rush hour and me being momentarily confused about the 24hour clock on the bus schedule (15h does not mean 5pm), but it was all cleared up and I had everything planned out perfectly. I got to the train station, got my tickets and lined up for the track. I thought I was really far behind, but it was obvious later on that I was actually in the first quarter of the line, which snaked to the far end of the station and doubled back.

I got on the train with a countless number of other students who were all going home for the holidays. I looked around the car about an hour after we left and everyone was either doing readings or typing away on their laptop. Readings. They never end.

We arrived in Toronto around midnight, so by the time I got to my parents' condo, it was around 1am. I called Robert, took a shower and went to bed.

On Saturday, I went to visit Jenn's condo, the first time since she and Jon got married. They had kittens! Dizzle and Grace were oh so adorable and floppy and flatulent. Jon tells me it's the wet food they're eating and that I shouldn't squeeze their tummies, but how can I resist snuggling them? Jennifer and I had Thai food near her condo called "Thai Spoon". They gave us so much food. Urgh but yummy. After that, we hung out at her condo and I played with her kittens until Robert picked me up to have dinner with his family. I got to see Julie and Randal, who've just come back from teaching English in Japan for a year. We played Mario Kart.

On Sunday, I went to Josh's graduation party with Kevin, his father and Bryan. It was nice chatting about nothing and everything. (Everything and nothing? Nothing and anything? Anything and nothing? Ah, who knows.) Afterwards, Josh, Kevin and I had a sushi dinner near Kevin's place (NOT the Yonge Ichiban, which failed a health inspection some weeks ago). I hadn't eaten sushi for so long. Since Bryan was being a poopypants and didn't want to do the Traumathon (Korean revenge flicks!) with us, we watched Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance in Kevin's bedroom. We were suitably disturbed. They're violent films, but there's more to them than just clobbering people with hammers and shooting off people's hands. It makes one think more about pain and suffering and whether revenge can really be a catharsis to all of that. (The answer is: NO.) I liked Lady Vengeance better. It touches me more because it's somewhat more realistic than Old Boy. I really can't say anymore without giving out spoilers, so I'll stop here. We stayed up until 4am, talking more about everything and nothing.

Monday was Thanksgiving at Robert's house, with a giant turkey and stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes/yams and desserts. Oh so many desserts. Robert's mom, Lilian made pumpkin maple cake and two different versions of a dessert with chocolate cookies covered in whipped cream (one with lactose free Cool Whip and the other with homemade whipped cream). I brought Korean rice cakes, traditional cookies and Japanese chestnut snacks (none of them homemade, obviously). Everything was oh so delicious and I told myself that I probably wouldn't have to eat for three days afterwards. (Yeah right.) After dinner, Julie, Robert and I played Palazzo, a board game about building palaces. It was designed by the same person who made Princes of Florence, which I like (and also spilled a giant glass of water the last time we played). Then Randal came down to play Mario Kart with us, because we pestered him even though he was studying for a job interview.

My train left at 7am on Tuesday morning, so I took the first subway train down at 5:40am. It started pouring rain when I was right in between my parents' condo and Finch station, so I got soaked. It wasn't a fun train ride, trying to sleep with wet clothing on. When I got to Montreal, I said screw it, I'll take a taxi home (even though it was only 2km away). I told the directions to the driver in French, but when we got there, he spoke in English. Why do people keep doing that? I speak French well enough! Practice with me, goddammit!

It was sad that I couldn't see everyone this weekend, but there's only so much time. I barely saw my mother and brother. Hopefully in the Christmas holidays, I'll be able to see more people.

Oh, and this is a little wooden cat that Julie and Randal gave me. I haven't named her yet. She sits on top of my bookshelf in my apartment, ready to pounce on someone's head!

Cooking Attempt #4: Chicken penne

Okay, so it's been awhile. I made this on October 3rd, because I felt like chicken and I wanted to use up the red pepper and onion half that had been sitting in my fridge for a week. I'm terrified of anything going bad or mouldy in my fridge. The germs! The germs!

I bought some chicken breast strips and cooked them in a skillet with some oil and diced onion and red pepper. It reminded me of fajitas, except I didn't have any tortilla to go with it. So I cooked some penne at the same time. I love penne. They're small but not so small that they get smushed when you're draining it. I put some Japanese ginger dressing on it, because it was the only thing I had other than teriyaki sauce and it was yummy. Maybe I should try teriyaki sauce next time. And rice. Ooh...getting hungry just thinking about it. Oh yeah, the white stuff on top is mozzarella cheese. Cheese and Japanese dressing? It worked out. Fusion cuisine!

Un bon weekend!

Robert visited Montreal this past weekend with his brother, Jerome, and his mother. I was never good at inviting people into my home. You'll remember that most people have rarely been to my house, if at all. It makes me feel very self-conscious and exposed.

They were kind enough to schlep some stuff that I asked my mother to prepare for me. These items were:

1) a box filled with books (all my Jane Austen, all my Alexandre Dumas, whatever else I might like) and DVDs
2) pink autumn blanket
3) box of Korean instant noodles
4) package of Korean tofu soup mix
5) computer chair
6) stereo
7) a jar of kimchi (because no Korean can live without kimchi)

That's all I asked for. What I got was a car crammed with packages of meat, a case of soy milk boxes, a dozen Asian pears, several cans of tuna and a container of cream cheese on top of everything else that I asked for. (I noticed, with a small suppressed sigh, that the box did not contain half as many books as I would have liked. Dickens instead of Dumas. Ah well.) One pleasant surprise was a box of peanut butter cookies. I was complaining to my brother about being unable to find any in the nearby grocery store and he remembered! I know I call him a doofus, but he does have rare moments of thoughtfulness which is all the more touching when it happens.

So we brought all the stuff up and decided to go for dinner nearby. We walked down Le Parc and went into the Greek restaurant, because it was the first place we noticed after we remembered that we were actually looking for a restaurant. It was very yummy.

The next day, Robert and I walked to the condo where Lilian and Jerome were staying to help move his grandmother's antique icebox to the car. The icebox from the early 20th century, before they had refrigerators. Everyday, you would have a person deliver a block of ice to your house to be placed in one of the compartments, which would help cool the food stored in the other compartments. It was really interesting.

Afterwards, Jerome took Robert and me to a Tibetan restaurant that he used to frequent when he went to McGill. Then we went to see "3:10 to Yuma". I love me some Christian Bale, but have you seen the wrinkles around his eyes? The man has to take care of his skin, really.

We walked back home. Apparently, Jerome went to eat poutine without us. *shake fist* Next time, I'm determined to get some poutine. It's almost sacrilegious that I haven't yet tried poutine despite having lived in Montreal for over a month.

The next morning, Robert and Jerome had to return to Toronto, so we went out for breakfast at Cora's. It was my first time eating there. So yummy. Mmm, western omelette. I wish I could have practiced my French more with the waitress, but she switched to English when she noticed that we were conversing in English. I've noticed people do that quite often here. I still try to talk to my building manager and superintendent in French though.

Robert and Jerome drove away and I managed to walk to school without sniffling too much. It was nice spending the weekend with company and relaxing without having to worry about readings or assignments. *sigh of contentment*

Now to eat all this food...