Today started off strong – had some amazing fishball noodles (魚蛋河) and tofu dessert (豆腐花).

魚蛋河 at 德昌魚蛋粉

豆腐花 at some oldschool restaurant in the North Point street market

More shopping at Causeway Bay in the afternoon. It’s definitely getting repetitive. Might have to scoot on over to Kowloon for those shopping tendencies.

Later at night, I met up with a couple more Waterloo-ers for some HK movie magic. We watched Toy Story in 3D and in Cantonese. Craziness! But what’s even crazier with HK theatres? The seats are marked! Marked and you can’t change seats. That idea is so foreign to me. I’m so used to if I want good seats, I’d just go earlier. But it definitely doesn’t work that way. They also don’t play a lot of commercials prior to the ‘feature presentation’.

Toy Story in 3D was pretty cool. After the first couple of minutes, the 3D became so natural that it doesn’t really stand out anymore. Good thing or bad thing? The movie was definitely longer than I remembered. Almost an hour and a half! The jokes were also quite different, since I’ve only watched it in English. I didn’t recognize any of the voiceover actors either.

For all the Iron Man fans out there, there were these life-sized Iron Man thingies outside the Causeway Bay theatres! They were still setting up that night… so we had a sneak peak!

PS. Hi Derek! <3!

Lee’s girlfriend, Enola, invited Derek and I to her birthday day-party at the Ontario Science Centre. I love the OSC because of their rock candy. mmhmm…. you can never deny the fun that is the Science Centre!

At one of the technology exhibits, we spotted this quote from Eminem.

“Fame hit me like a ton of bricks”

And it was right beside an Andy Warhol quote. Andy quotes, I get. But Eminem? really? I’m still trying to wrap my brain around that.

Speaking of brains, we also checked out Body World. WOW! I was so impressed with the work and effort the artists put in to make this exhibit happen. There’s SO much stuff in our bodies. Amazing. Definitely inspired me to keep my body in tip=top shape!

Today was a pretty long day. I drove into Waterloo for some quality house-hunting time. Bad idea. Baaaaaad idea. Turns out that it was Laurier’s homecoming football game that weekend, so kids were getting drunk left, right and center. At noon.

And guess where I was house-hunting? That’s right, right across the street from Laurier and close to the football field. Oh, and did I mention that mother nature wasn’t being very nice and blessed us with a horrible thunderstorm? ’twas a great day, indeed.

Thankfully, Jo was able to come out of her studying hole and we spent some time together. We grabbed lunch at our favourite local veggie restaurant, Lotus Tea House, before the house-hunting madness, and took pictures eerily similar to the ones we took last time we were there together. But during my house-hunting, never have I seen her get such a bad case of road rage! She had to drive my car around as I checked out the houses, since there was no parking spot around. Jo’s a trooper for being there!

After that crazy Waterloo morning, I headed back to the quiet peaceful Markham… until Derek came over with a box of fresh oysters! We shucked half the box and brought the other half to his buddy’s place. So yummilicous! (yes, I just said yummilicious. Deal.)

The one I bought wasn’t this kind… but it’s the best that I can get!

I got it for Derek as a souvenir from Boston. We tried it tonight… and it wasn’t that bad! It was bland (since there wasn’t any particular flavouring) but it had the smell of air-pop popcorn.

Obviously, one corn wasn’t enough… so we made the store-bought kind as we watched the premiere of How I Met Your Mother on the computer… we missed the actual TV premiere by about an hour. fail.

Derek drove me back to Waterloo tonight, but we took detours all over the place. Picked up car stuff and bumped into Big Steve in Vaughn. Picked up car parts in Milton. Visited Wendy at her new place in Oakville. Whoo! mini-road trip!

Wendy is fostering the two cats right now. The mini kitten is absolutely adorable. Like *sequel* kitty! adorable. She meows all the time. She’ll just look at you. And meow. And that’s all she does. I wish I can take her home. Such a cute fluff ball. The other cat, Lulu, is much calmer and she just kinda lounges around. The two puppies, Choco and ‘Nilla, are still as playful as ever.

We stayed for dinner at Wendy’s place for a barbeque tuna-and-salmon dinner. Super yummy.

Dinner was even more awesome than lunch, if you can believe it! I had a dinner date with Ori. Of course, girl talk is a must on a dinner date! We decided on going to the Boiler House last winter when we were across the street at Pure Spirits. There’s no picture (other than dessert) because a) it was quite dim in the resturant b) we were talking c) we were talking.

For appetizers:
Ori – Duo of salmon – tartar and smoked salmon, sauce gribiche, house made cilantro flat bread
Me – Watermelon and pink peppercorn gazpacho, gin chantilly
Mine tasted pretty much like watermelon puree… with peppercorn. It was quite refreshing though. Maybe it was the watermelon, but it’s definitely a summer dish!

For mains:
Us – Pan roasted fresh water striped bass, saffron braised fennel tart tatin, and sauce choron
We both had the same main, and it wasn’t that bad. It reminded me of those fried fish done in HK style. Yet it’s different here. I found the dish to be a tad too salty.

For desserts:
Ori – Citrus scented crème brulee, house made biscotti, seasonal berries
Me – White chocolate bavarois, dark chocolate sable with raspberry coulis
Two words: mmhmm delish. The desserts were really good. The creme brulee was citrusy, yet the flavour wasn’t overpowering. Plus, bonus points on the gooseberry!
Mine was really good too. The white chocolate portion was really creamy and the dark chocolate sable really complemented the taste of it. Bonus points on the happy face!