Broth

I started making a chicken broth this morning from the bones and bits of the roast chicken from a few days ago. After a few minutes of cooking, it started to smell so delectable that I was compelled to take a picture:














What? You say you can't smell it?

UPDATE: This is how it looked a few hours later:

Mmmm.

Countries I've been to

*sigh* I guess I've still got a ways to go ...



create your own visited countries map

Wisdom tooth-less

Today, I got my fourth and last wisdom tooth removed. I've been getting wisdom teeth removed for the past three months or so. The top two were not too bad, it was just like getting a regular tooth removed. The bottom two were impacted, so it was a bit more complicated. It involved more numbing, more time, more dentist tools, including the one that makes the whirring chainsaw noise. The previous one (bottom left) took significantly longer to heal than the top ones, so I'm guessing it'll be the same for the one that got taken out today too. Since this was the fourth time, I knew more or less what to expect. I don't really know what the dentist is doing in my mouth though, because I can't see or feel anything. So I occupy myself in the dentist's chair trying to guess what he's doing. "Hmm, what's he going to do with that hook thing?" As far as I can tell, he seems to have sliced my tooth apart using the whirring tool (releasing a pungent smell of burnt tooth?) before pulling it out today. I'm rather interested in how it was done, but I didn't want to know beforehand - the less you think about it in advance, the better. But I may ask at my next appointment. Seb told me last week that you could see what's happening in your mouth reflected in the dentist's glasses. I didn't want to see - I'm sure it was all rather bloody, and it made me quite thankful for local anesthetic.

So I will likely be on a steady course of Motrin every six to eight hours for the next week or so, if it's anything like last time. Thank goodness for ibuprofen.

Changing the time

When I got this laptop - oh, just over 3 years ago - I was spending several months in Japan. My first time living in Japan as an adult. Naturally, the clock was set to Japan time, or GMT+9. When I returned to Montreal, I didn't change the time. When I went to Switzerland, I didn't change the time. When I arrived here in Philadelphia, I didn't change the time. Until today. Just now, I set the time zone to GMT-4 (due to daylight savings time). So for the first time in 2.5 years, my laptop is showing the correct time.

Update: Damn. One reason why I changed the time on my laptop is because blogger keeps giving an incorrect post time for all of my posts. I thought this might fix it, but apparently not. As far as blogger is concerned, I'm still in Europe. So unless I fix the time manually, you should mentally subtract six hours.

Update2: I found it. In blogger Settings -> Formatting. So now you should be mentally adding six hours to the times for any previous posts.

Washable sofa

We bought our off-white IKEA sofa second-hand. While the colour is not ideal (it shows dirt - any dirt), it was the only comfortable sofa in the used furniture store that wasn't covered in grotesque flower patterns. Fortunately, all the cushion covers are machine washable, so whenever we get something on it (chocolate is a frequent culprit) I throw all the covers in the washing machine. After several washings though, a new problem is becoming apparent. While the cushion covers are becoming whiter and whiter, the rest of the fabric covering (which did not look particularly dirty to begin with) looks dingier and ... much less white in comparison. This is unfortunately most apparent where cushion meets rest-of-sofa.

"Do you see a difference? I see a difference."

I suppose an upholstery cleaning is in order.

My laptop is dying: a profile in procrastination

My laptop has been dying for the past nine months or so. Our apartment in Geneva was pretty dusty (you should've seen the mounds of dust that came out when we opened the desktop), and my poor laptop choked. The fan sounds like it's stuck on something. Like, try imagining how it would sound if a semi-large insect flew into a small fan. Yeah, like that. So since then, I have tried various remedies, mostly temporary in nature, from aerosol dusters to ice packs, to holding my laptop at just the right angle, to using a laptop cooling pad. These have offered a temporary respite from the cringe-inducing fan choking noise, but it always comes back. You may be tempted to say, ah, the solution here is simple: just open up your laptop and clean it out. Well, I tried, several months ago. My laptop, which is a Toshiba dynabook C9/214LDEW, opens from the keyboard. There are a few screws in the bottom that I took out, I snapped out the plastic cover just above the keyboard, took out the screws holding the keyboard in place, lifted out the keyboard. To the left were some slots for extra RAM, and screws all around the base of the keyboard. I took them all out, being careful to note where they came from, and then ... nothing. I could not get any further. I could not reach the fan, despite it being only half a centimetre away. So I put it all carefully back, and have been living with temporary solutions ever since. Opening it up and cleaning and/or replacing the fan is likely the only permanent solution. The worst is that each temporary solution eventually stops working, and I'm forced to look for something new. But each time I find something that works, I am lulled into a false sense of security, thinking maybe this time it will keep working. And so I put off backing up the important stuff on my laptop, so I can open it up for surgery again, putting it off and putting it off, oh it'll be okay for another little while, until ... the fan has another asthma attack. And I immediately feel guilty for not having backed up my stuff because after all I KNEW this was coming, and then I have to look for a new solution. Rinse and repeat. So what does this tell us about human nature, or my nature at least? (Well, I tend to procrastinate a lot, but we already knew that.) I don't feel like coming up with a pithy moral for the rest of you, but I can't help but feel the force of procrastination, to the point of destruction. How is it that I know that I should do something, and that doing it will bring positive consequences, and I know in addition that NOT doing it will bring very negative consequences, and yet I still don't do it? And when I get a temporary reprieve, why do I STILL not do it? It's pathological and self-destructive.

Anyway, today I finally copied over my photos, my work, my music, and various other odds and ends onto Seb's shiny (relatively) new 500 gig hard drive. With the fan squeaking and sounding like it was going to die the whole time, I gritted my teeth and was determined - DETERMINED - to open my laptop up and fix it damnit. After hitting it on the rear though, it went back into remission. So once more, I feel the tug of "oh, it'll be okay for a while now, I'll just go surf the web for a little bit..." At least this time my stuff is backed up.

Oh boy.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/16899220.htm

http://cbs3.com/topstories/local_story_072172732.html

"Police are searching for a suspect who shot a man in the head on board a SEPTA bus in North Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon. Authorities said a 45-year-old man was shot twice in the head while riding the Route 33 bus near 22nd and York at about 5:00 p.m."

The Host

Today I saw "The Host", a Korean monster movie. I don't watch many movies, and almost none that could possibly be tagged "horror". But this movie wasn't gory, wasn't too scary, and there were several ridiculous/funny moments that made me laugh out loud. Overall, it was a good movie; it was well-made and I liked it.

Watching this movie, I was struck by the cultural similarities between Korea and Japan. The setting, the family interactions, the body language, the character archetypes, the cultural norms. The one discordant note might be the ease with which guns were obtained, but that's about it. With the sound off and no korean signs in the background, I would believe you if you told me this was a Japanese movie.

Dear Philadelphia Gas Works,

Was is really necessary to start drilling down the street at a quarter to 8 this morning? Really? Was it really so urgent that it couldn't wait an hour?

Oh, and thanks for stopping just after I was fully awake.

Seen on craigslist

From an ad offering to pick up any of my junk (emphasis mine):

I reuse, remake and/or rebuild practically anything and everything! Let's help save our Earth by recycling and reusing...(Must be able to fit in my SUV.)...

Today I am sick

That is all.

Collision course

Our apartment here in Philly has a single, albeit large, window in the living room. Early this morning, I was awoken by a loud THUMP from the direction of the living room. "Eh," I thought sleepily, "someone must've thrown a snowball at our window." And I promptly fell back asleep. Later, after getting up, I realised that (a) there is no snow on the ground, and (b) our apartment is on the 4th floor and thus not readily accessible to snowball throwing. Curious as to the source of the thump, I started to look closely at the window. In one of the panes, I found a bit of a greasy spot about the size of my palm, in the middle of which was stuck ... a couple of small feathers. I think an unfortunate bird flew right into our window, and pretty hard judging from the sound it made. I hope it was okay.

Not okay.

A lot of people got shot in Philly last year:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/16722878.htm

"Like the city's homicides, the shootings were most numerous in North Philadelphia, West and Southwest Philadelphia, and parts of South Philadelphia." Which leaves what part of Philly...?

Philly.com has a helpful interactive map of shootings in 2006. While I'm at it, here is the interactive map of homicides in 2006.

Ninja squirrel

Rittenhouse Square: A squirrel, chased by a little girl into a garbage can, takes a heroic flying leap from the rim to the trunk of a tree over five feet away with nary a loss of altitude. Landing on all four paws, it quickly scrambled to the other side of the tree trunk, where its little head could be seen spying on the enemy. The little black ninja outfit and the miniature shuriken were perhaps a figment of my imagination.

Road work

There is apparently a piece of road work so urgent that it must be done at 10pm on a Saturday night on the corner of the street where I live.

La Fille Sur Le Pont

Love this scene!

On homicides in Montreal and Philadelphia

So far in 2007, Montreal has had 7 homicides, of which 6 are street gang related. This has fueled a slew of articles about street gangs in Montreal in the Canadian press, and speculation of a gang war quickly quashed by police (links from the montreal city weblog). Just to say, 6 gang related homicides in 6 weeks in Montreal is considered newsworthy, and is considered to be a serious problem.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia has had 47 homicides (this comes out to roughly one homicide per day this year). I've gotten used to seeing the phrase "no arrests have been made, and police are still trying to determine a motive" in these articles. There is a general acknowledgment that Philadelphia has a high homicide rate and that this is a problem, but nothing much seems to be happening to deal with it, other than people talking about it and saying how it's a problem.

For comparison purposes, the population of the city of Montreal is around 1.5 million. The population of the city of Philadelphia is also around 1.5 million. (Note that the Philadelphia metropolitan area is more populous than that of Montreal.) Sure, Philly is a big city, and big cities often have lotsa crime, but this is inexcusable. I find the violent crime rates here in Philly put a serious damper on the quality of life. One big reason why I still pine for Montreal. I'm still looking for violent crime stats (ie. not just homocides) for both cities, and hopefully will post something on that later.

Wine in Philly

Buying wine in Philadelphia is a dicey proposition. In Geneva, or in Montreal, there are fairly knowledgeable people employed by the wine shops (or even grocery stores), who will recommend you a good bottle of wine if you ask for advice. Here, not so much. We were very lucky in that there was a very good guy at the wine store down the street who knew a lot about the wines and recommended some excellent ones at good prices. Then about a month ago, he quit his job. At the time, I did not realise the extent of the tragedy.

Today, I went out to buy some wine. I plan to make a Boeuf Bourguignon tomorrow, so I was looking to buy some bottles of red Bourgogne. I asked the cashier if they had someone who could make wine recommendations. He pointed to an employee walking down one of the aisles. I asked her if she could recommend a couple of bottles of red Bourgogne. She took me down the aisle of domestic wines and pointed out to me the huge 3 litre jugs that are labelled "Burgundy"! Okaaay, I said, maybe we could take a look at the French ones ...? She took me to the section of French red wines, where she picked up a bottle of Côte-du-Rhône and started reading the label to see if it came from Bourgogne! At which point, I realised that this was an entirely useless exercise, thanked her for her help, and told her I would just browse the wines myself.
Not such an easy proposition, you know. The french wines were not grouped by region, so I had to look at each bottle individually. And I discovered that they had very few red Bourgognes in that store - lots of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Bordeaux though. But hey, does it really matter? It's not like anyone cares - except the occasional wine customer. Sorry, I'm becoming a Pennsylvania wine cynic.

Honk if you're happy Italy won!

Beep-bip-beeep-beep-beep-beeeep-bip-beep-...

Yep, that's the sound of happy football fans. It's 1am in our quiet residential neighbourhood, and the we still hear cars honking like mad. I never realised until this World Cup how crazy the fans go. And by "fans", I mean the general population.

Chocolate milk for diabetics

Ideal for diabetics. Only in Switzerland. (I'll bet it's pretty good, too.)