I don't like cilantro. It's tastes like gross and immediately pops out at me from any dish it's in. Even the spiciest curry or the hottest salsa. A single leaf of cilantro ruins it all. I had heard that there was some research indicating that some people have a genetic predisposition to thinking that cilantro tastes like awful. A quick search on Google revealed nothing conclusive, but it did bring up the site, ihatecilantro.com, dedicated to connecting cilantro haters all around the world. There are even haikus written by the members to express their distaste. I think the haiku is one of the most effective form of expression. Much better than ridiculous limericks.

Kim is visiting her sister in Texas this week so I was on my own this weekend. It was pretty quiet and I spent most of today catching up on Dexter. I'm now all the way up to date (unless you count the episode that aired tonight). It's definitely a good show.

Saturday I went to Burlington to participate in a bouldering competition (local Tour de Bloc event) at a brand new climbing gym, Climber's Rock. The route setting was great and I had a really good day. I feel very happy with my absolute performance although they haven't posted the scores yet so I don't know how I did relative to the other competitors. But for most people (myself included) climbing is not really a competitive sport so the relative performance doesn't matter. I'm just trying to do better than I've done before.

After the competition I went to Matt's house for a birthday celebration which involved the eating of much sushi and cake. The sushi was from Sushi Xtra on Queen street and it was pretty decent. I'd definitely get sushi from there again.

Update: I came in 13th out of 26 competitors in my division at the bouldering competition. I'm pretty happy with that.

I've been a bit busy lately, but I don't want to let last weekend go without a blog update so I'm doing a quick one now.

Thursday night Rob made Pad Thai for myself, Kim, Patrick, Toni, and Matt! It was delicious without a doubt and I learned how to make it so that I can do it myself!! So fun!

On Friday I saw the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, with Patrick, Toni, Chris, John and Alex. I liked the movie, although I don't think I liked the fact that it was a direct continuation of Casino Royale. James Bond movies should stand on their own.

Saturday I went shopping with Kim, mostly just wandering around and stuff. Then we went to Patrick's place for a party with lots of fun happy people! The party was organized by Rob without a specific purpose, but I like to think of it as a going away party for him since he left for Fiji the following Tuesday (does Fiji have good Internets Rob?). We had yummy Indian food from Trimurti for dinner and we had drinks and lots of fun.

Sunday I went climbing and I also watched a bunch of episodes of the show Dexter. I'm almost caught up to the current episode now and it's really good!

Did you know you share your birthday with Leon Trotsky? Does that make you a communist? I'm no political scientist, but I suspect it might.

A short summary of Trotsky's life courtesy of Wikipedia:

Leon Trotsky was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin. During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo.

After leading the failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing bureaucratization of the Soviet Union, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union. As the head of the Fourth International, he continued in exile to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, and was eventually assassinated in Mexico by Ramón Mercader, a Soviet agent. Trotsky's ideas form the basis of Trotskyism, a term coined as early as 1905 by his opponents in order to separate it from Marxism. Trotsky's ideas remain a major school of Marxist thought that is opposed to the theories of Stalinism.

I didn't put much planning into it, but my birthday turned out great anyway. It fell on Tuesday last week so I co-opted *wing* night for my own purposes. I selected Mengrai Thai which many people claim to be the best Thai food in Toronto. I have no way of judging Thai food (since I have never been to Thailand...you should have been there Rob!) but it was damn tasty. Patrick, Adam and myself all got the fixed price, four-course menu and it was amazing! Everyone else (Kim, Toni, Jen, John, Chris, Jeremy, Matt and Jeff) all ordered single dishes off the menu and had to be jealous/hungry while we ate our starter courses.

My meal started with a selection of four appetizers, then moved on to pumpkin curry soup with lightly breaded spinach (almost like tempura). For my main course I had the #54 Red Curry Chicken which is one of the restaurant's most famous dishes. It is served in half of a scooped out pineapple and has lychee fruit mixed in with the curry sauce and chicken. For dessert I was given a mini crème brûlée with a single candle. The waiter started singing happy birthday, thus forcing everyone at the table to join in. Good times! The food was all totally amazing, and despite being really full I was glad I got the fixed price menu.

The owner of the restaurant was also really awesome. He came out and talked to us because he recognized where I worked from the caller ID when I made the reservation. He even knew that although I work for Autodesk, it's really Alias and Autodesk just bought us. He was super friendly and although the service was slow, I still felt like he was very attentive to our needs.

After dinner we all headed back to my apartment for birthday cake from Dufflet! I got the Chocolate Raspberry Truffle cake and yes, it was totally glorious. We also had Pumpkin Ale from the Great Lakes Brewing Company and hot chocolate with Bailey's. Eventually everyone went home and I went to sleep.

Oh, I almost forgot the most important part! Presents! Jeremy got me a present!

It was a small golden/platinum coloured heart (it's an alloy) with three "chocolate" balls inside. On one side the heart had the word "Glory" along with Japanese characters and on the other it had a sad/angry face. I think I know why. The "chocolate" was not exactly what you would call "good." Jeremy, Patrick and I each had one; mine tasted like poo, Jeremy's tasted like dirt and Patrick's tasted like petrol. Um...awesome?

I also got some good presents from other people. Kim got me a gift certificate to Henry's (awesome camera store and source of most things I want at the moment), my mom got me a subscription to Maclean's magazine which I love and Jen made me Chocolate Frangelico Cupcakes with Nutella Swiss Meringue Buttercream on the weekend. Patrick and Toni got me a selection of random beers and Matt got me a wind up squirrel! Eeee!

Me with my #54 Red Curry Chicken

Chocolate Frangelico Cupcakes with Nutella Swiss Meringue Buttercream

After at least a year of wanting one, I finally got around to buying an awesome leather shoulder bag for carrying stuff with me when I go about my day to day business. Yes, it's a man purse and yes I'm OK with that. When walking is your primary means of transportation it's nice to have something to carry stuff in. I'll be using it every day to bring stuff like my lunch to work and also to carry around useful items like an umbrella and sunglasses.

Another thing I keep in it is a reusable shopping bag for groceries. I tend to stop for groceries on my way home from work and I never carry reusable bags with me (because I don't have anything to put them in!). Now I can stop killing the environment by consuming so many plastic bags. Unfortunately, today, my first day with my man purse, I was a massive failure. I went to the grocery store and got some stuff and as I was checking out I prepared my happy reusable bag. Then for some reason I kinda spaced out and suddenly it was all done and the cashier had already put my groceries in plastic bags. I couldn't really ask her to take them back so I put away my reusable bag and went home. Sigh, maybe I'll succeed next time.

I got the bag from Roots, and it's pretty awesome. It's actually based on the bag that Indiana Jones carries around in the movies and so it's even more cool. I love it!

Raiders Bag in Vintage Tribe Leather

Raiders Bag in Vintage Tribe Leather

Raiders Bag in Vintage Tribe Leather

Last weekend was fun! But I was slow to blog about it. Not much is happening this weekend so I'll blog about the last one now.

We hung out with people and watched movies and we relaxed around the house and I also went climbing. But the most exciting part was going to a camera show with Patrick and Toni and Matt on Sunday. We got up bright and early, had breakfast at Cora's and then headed up to the conference centre near the airport. The show was put on by Henry's and had tons of booths from all the major manufacturers. It was primarily focused on digital SLR cameras but had a little bit of stuff for point and shoot cameras too. The best part for me was getting to try out all sorts of fun lenses on my camera. And by fun I mean potentially expensive. Stupid lenses look so nice.

Anyway this post is shorter than I intended but I'm tired so I'm going to stop.

It's snowing a little outside...[HIBERNATION MODE TURN ON]

Not much has been going on in Matthew-land lately, thus the lack of blogging. However there was the Canadian election recently. My riding is Trinity-Spadina where NDP candidate Olivia Chow (wife of NDP leader Jack Layton) won again. I found myself very conflicted this time around because I didn't want to vote for anyone. I didn't want the Conservatives to win, but I didn't feel that anyone else was fit to win either. I ended up voting Liberal, but I sort of regret that now. I knew that my riding would go to either the Liberals or the NDP regardless of my vote so I think I should have voted Green in order to increase their share of the popular vote. More votes equals more funding for future campaigns and I feel that the Green Party had a generally positive effect on the whole process.

Overall though, I am one disenfranchised voter. Blegh.

This past week was pretty random for me. I spent Monday through Thursday in King City attending a leadership training course for work. There is a huge conference centre there that includes a gourmet restaurant and fancy hotel. It was pretty fun and interesting but they kept us super busy. The days started around 8:00am and lasted until 11:00pm at the earliest. We were fed extremely well however and the rooms were quite nice.

On Friday I went in for a half day of work to catch up on email and then left early to get a wisdom tooth removed. I'm not sure that the procedure was necessary because the tooth wasn't bothering me in the slightest but my dentist seemed to think it was doing whatever it is that wisdom teeth do that is a bad thing for mouths. Anyway, when I arrived he suggested that he might as well take the other wisdom tooth on the same side while I was there since it would all be frozen anyway. I agreed mainly to reduce the number of future wisdom tooth-related visits to the dentist. So I now have two fewer wisdom teeth and I am spending the weekend recovering (ie. popping Tylenol 3 like there's no tomorrow).

The procedure itself was super quick. One of the two wisdom teeth was already exposed so once I was frozen he was able to yank it out in under a minute. I was super surprised when I heard it fall into the tray. I was all like, "was that it??" and the dentist seemed a touch offended that I thought so little of the procedure he just performed. The other tooth was not exposed however, and so it took a bit longer. Once the dentist exposed it (with knives I assume) the tooth still refused to come easily and the assistant had to hold my head down while the dentist yanked at it. I half expected him to plant a foot on my face in order to get better leverage.

Anyway, I think I'm recovering nicely. Sleeping was hard last night but I think I can stop taking Tylenol 3 soon and switch to regular Advil. I guess I have to keep taking antibiotics for a while though.