Yorkville, museum, ballet

Today turned out to be a really beautiful warm day, with blue skies and puffy clouds, such a nice contrast to the last 2 days. Ma, Shih Ay Yi and I went downtown for the afternoon. We started in Yorkville to wander around the pricey shops and boutiques. Lots more sales signs and empty storefronts than I saw at Bayview Mall. Maybe selling $500 spring coats is not such a great idea. After a snack break, we headed to ROM to check out their chinese collection. The museum has a new entry, designed by Daniel Libeskind (it pretty much looks like most of his buildings do, see photo). We weren't all that impressed with the new entry. It seemed kind of dark and barren on first entering. ROM has a very nice chinese collection, nicely displayed. There were some beautiful landscape paintings (spanning several hundred years) showing all kinds of techniques.

In the evening, we stopped for hot dogs and sausages from a street vendor before heading to see the National Ballet of Canada do Giselle. A very nice production, beautifully danced by the leads and the Myrtha (she was a little scary!) and I was impressed with the realistic 'acting/mime' of the background peasants in the first act. They were not doing the typical stage mugging I see so much in story ballets, it made the mad scene that much more affecting. The theatre is quite a beautiful place, a more vertical type seating arrangement. We were in a section behind the main orchestra, slightly elevated but almost 1/2 the price. Very good sight lines and still close enough to see facial expressions without binoculars. This was a great deal. I look forward to seeing more productions in the future, and Ma and Shih Ay Yi were both eager to do so as well.

Good food, good friends

Well the weather took a turn on Wednesday, it started to pour. We had mostly meals out planned for the day, so that was okay. Lunch was with some friends of my parents at a place that is called 'Chili Secret' in english, but something entirely different in chinese. (In chinese it's name means Half Acre Garden.) The food was okay, and the restaurant was quite noisy (all hard surfaces) but it was a relaxing time. After lunch we all took a nap. Almost too long a nap, making us late for dinner.

Dinner was with the Huangs and Yangs at Asian Legend (again, the chinese name is completely different, it's 'Wei Xiang Cun' or Fragrant Flavours Village). It was great to see the Huangs and Yangs. They never seem to get older. I'm not sure what their secret is. This restaurant was really good. They had 'xiao long bao' with green coloured wrappers, 'dong po' pork with a melt in your mouth fat layer, and a really richly flavoured chicken broth soup. After the main meal, we all wanted a little dessert so we ordered 'tang yuan' (like small soft hot mochi with sesame in the middle). Apparently the manager was familiar with our group and presented us with complimentary desserts: a really delicious version of green onion pancake but with red bean instead of onion, and a sweet soup. We actually ended up with 2 big bowls of the sweet soup because we were hanging around chatting for so long.

Today was raining again and foggy. It's also 'duan wu jie' or Dragon Boat Festival so we had zhong zi for lunch (they're like bigger, fatter tamales made with sticky rice instead of corn meal and wrapped in leaves of some kind). In the afternoon, Ba drove us down to see a big film production facility in an industrial district, and then to The Distillery (photo above) where there are shops, galleries and restaurants. Because it's such an old place, and with the weather being overcast, there were some great opportunities to take interesting photos.

In the evening, I met with some friends from Iroquois Junior Public School. That's Canadian for grade school! We all reconnected on Facebook! Most of the other girls had clearer memories of events from back then than I do, and some brought pictures. It was a blast to catch up and remember the drama that life seemed back then.

Toronto

I'm in Toronto paying a visit to my parents. I arrived yesterday and I went through Terminal 1 at Pearson. Quite a nice change of pace from the old Terminal. This one doesn't require a long walk to Customs, and the pathways are wide, and bright. This is my first trip using my new US passport.

We headed to dinner directly from the airport at Congee Queen (the Steeles Ave location). We had a huge bowl of congee ('xi fan') with all kinds of seafood, deep fried pork chop, baby 'bai chai' with mushrooms and a 'you tiao'. (Excuse my ping yin.) Delish! We ended up eating the left overs for lunch today. In the evening, I checked out the loot my parents brought back from their month long visit to Beijing and tried to read a children's story. I needed a lot of help with that.

Today was mostly quiet. In the morning, we planned a lot of the week's activities, including most of the meals. After lunch we headed out to Costco (an obligatory visit) and Bayview Mall. I noticed that the prices here are quite high and there didn't seem to be the extent of sales that I see in LA area malls. Dinner was at home, then we watched a DVD of the Olympic opening ceremony that my parents brought back from China. There were quite a few segments that we did not see on NBC. It's still rather amazing the second time.