So I'm sitting at my desk at work right now and just 10 minutes ago there was an earthquake! What's up with that??? This is Toronto, the ground doesn't move here. I guess it was relatively minor as there doesn't seem to be any damage, but it sounds like was quite widespread, being felt in Montreal, Ottawa and upper New York State.
Update: The U.S. Geological Survey has a detailed report available now.
The G20 Summit is coming and as a resident of the "outer security zone" I have to say, I'm getting the heck out of Toronto for that weekend. It is interesting to see all the fencing going up though and it's amusing the number of police and security personnel patrolling the streets. We went for a walk tonight and I took some photos of it all.
Despite the 32C heat and the relatively difficult terrain, I survived the 10km Great Wall hike and it was amazing. The mountains all around the wall are super cool and the wall itself is most impressive. Back to Canada the day after tomorrow, then I'll write up a real trip journal in the usual place.
I finished up my work stuff in Shanghai on Friday and now I'm in Beijing checking out the city and relaxing before my flight back to Toronto on Wednesday. Tomorrow I do a 10km hike along a really cool section of the Great Wall. Should be fun!
I'm going to China tomorrow! I'm both excited and scared. I'm sure it will be great though. I'll definitely have lots of cool photos to post here in a couple of weeks!
Last weekend Kim and I joined Rob, Janet, and Matt at Chris and John's place for another awesome BBQ! This time we had yummy sausages with sauerkraut, cucumber salad, and an amazing Mexican Salad with Creamy Avocado Dressing brought by Janet. For dessert, Kim and I brought chocolate ice cream, made in our ice cream maker, which was served on top of brownies also brought by Janet. It was so good and rich! I think the key was using good cocoa powder (Valrhona) and good dark chocolate.
I've added a search function to my blog! Rob was looking for something the other day and was upset to find I didn't have a way to search my posts. So I've added one. You can access the search field in the menu, between the random quote and the random photo.
Implementing the search was super easy! Apparently MySQL has built in full-text search capability. You can mark text columns in your tables and they will be indexed. Then you can add match conditions to the "where" clause of queries on the database. It works really well and returns results sorted by relevance. It's awesome!
It's been too long since my last update but I've been busy and stuff. In addition to preparing for my trip to Shanghai we've also been going out to look at houses fairly often lately. Other things I've done lately include going home home to London, climbing, playing the original God of War remastered for my new PS3, drinking delicious Kellerbier, cooking stuff, creating a search feature for this blog (unfinished), being angry at the rain and the cold and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. Foods I hope to cook soon include this and this.
Last night Chris and John hosted a BBQ on their brand new patio with their brand new natural gas BBQ!! They made delicious shish ka bobs and even had a cake for Kim's birthday (which is next week). It was lots of fun and it was great to be outside and see the leaves on the trees in the park. Summer is almost here!!
