Can you get carpal tunnel from driving too long? Yes

There’s a small town of 75 000 people that exists at the western edge of Ontario called Kenora (around 2:53 of the video). I am lucky that I made a detour to grab a Tim Horton’s coffee, otherwise, I’d never have seen it. It gives a feeling of a fishing village, except there are no fishing boats because the village surrounds a lake. The town center spans two blocks and one street, while the rest of the town are mostly residential area with red tile roofs. The lack of the usual big name discount retailer’s presence along with the high class houses dotting the street, tells me that this is more of a vacation area than that of a normal city. I will return to this place one day.

Winnipeg

The moment I cross the line to Manitoba, the mountains disappeared. The whole province seems to be flat. Surprisingly, Winnipeg with a population of 600 000 has a more developed downtown than that of Ottawa, perhaps even rivaling Montreal. Or maybe, I am just not used to seeing low density business districts since everyone wants to be crammed onto the island in Montreal.

The architecture here is interesting, the city doesn’t have a grayish feel to it compared to other major cities I’ve been to. Perhaps because of the stones that they used, or the simple fact that most of the construction materials are still new. Or even better, low pollution?

In any case, Winnipeg is a major hub, located in the middle of Canada. A lot of heavy industrial complexes with railroads everywhere. Might explain why gas here is so cheap. Why else can a city in the middle of nowhere get gas cheaper than any other city without producing any?

I touched the clouds today. Can you say you say the same?

Gas $37

Motel $53

I had no idea that the great lakes are situated on such a high elevation. I took a mental note to one day return to Terrace bay and maybe retire there for a year or two during the summer.  I mean, who can resist a pituresque lake where you get to enjoy a quiet day fishing shrouded by clouds.

Thunder bay is a city of 110 000 with a small downtown that reminds me of a surfer’s vacation city. No sky scrapers with a peaceful feeling… except for the Walmart and big corporation invasion in the new part of town. According to Terry, the Motel manager, Thunder bay is the biggest producer of amethyst and gold in Canada.

One thing that is new for me are Indians. At first, I thought they are Asians, but there are subtle variations in their facial features that made me doubt my decision until I asked one of them. It make sense though since this is the most logical place in Canada to be untouched by western society. At least, I don’t stand out like the only colored person within a white soup.

Tomorrow Winnipeg… Oh yeah and I made this video out of time lapse video every 5 minutes. It seems to have turned out ok. I will try a finer grained time lapse tomorrow since the memory card and battery seems to be able to take it.

Motel: $56

I made good progress today, drove 762km in about 10 hours. The weather is cooler and Lethe is quickly adapting to life on the road or in her case, life in the car. Here’s her sleeping comfortably behind my head rest on the old carpet from my frosh year that I decided to keep. After 12 years, there’s just too much emotional attachment to it (The first major purchase I ever bartered for). I guess my cat agrees, since it’s her favorite piece to sleep on as well as her favorite scratching pad.

2 hours, is how long Lethe Meowed before she shut up. This morning, she’s a little bit better once I let her out of the cage and roam freely in the car when we are away from civilization. By the end of the day, she only does that when the road is too bumpy, or if the car went from motionless to moving. I guess it made her remember that she dislike a moving car.

There really isn’t much to see once you get past Ottawa. I can only imagine all the bored college kids and the regrets that they might have when they reach this stretch of Canada. Trees and farms, just tress and farms… oh yeah and it’s white people all around, as far as the eyes can see. I wonder if I am a rare sight in this part of the country. In any case, tonight, I have a room to myself, hot bath and AC. Lethe will have a good night’s sleep and I will have a good night’s sleep. You really appreciate the smaller things in life when you are on the road.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the most scenic stretch of this trip as I circle around the great lakes. I’ll try to take pictures, but I still haven’t gotten the hang of driving manual with one hand while taking pictures.

Gas: $20

Goodbye Montreal

Been a while since I’ve written anything, but being on the road pretty much brings me right back into in every time. My journey started at 4:30PM Tuesday July 20th 2010 when my agent told me “You shouldn’t be here to wait for the buyer” and proceeded to convince me with the most profound reasoning. I agreed and left the premises of my condo immediately without waiting to hand over my keys to the new owners. Sure enough, my agent called me while I was in traffic, asking where the microwave is. The conversation is something like this:

“Microwave? That wasn’t part of the deal. The only appliances included are stove, oven, dish washer, washer dryer so I gave it away. In any case, they inspected the place 2 days ago and didn’t raise any question about the Microwave.” This is exactly why, my agent suggested that I leave with tail in between my butt cheeks. The closing of the sale deserves its own post and is a well of knowledge that I wish I knew before but alas, if every first time home buyer/seller knew them, the industry would go bankrupt.

I considered visiting all my friends a final time to say good bye, but decided against that option because closing the deal took longer than usual. On top of that, I believe I’ve said my proper good byes throughout the past two months already. Why destroy it with a hasty 10 minute visit? So off I went, knowing that I will see them again, just not as often as I’d liked. With Facebook around nowadays, the regret is not as profound as the heart wrenching goodbyes said when I immigrated to Canada. Back then, that was like a death sentence to relationships.

First night Ottawa

With little day light left, I only have time to drive the 2.5 hour drive to Ottawa and stay in the famous haunted jail hostel. Let me tell you something, the hostel and backpacker scene in Canada, is pretty much a rip off nowadays. Actually, you can probably say this for any established hostel that shows up in lonely planet or any established guide book in 1st world countries. For $70 dollars, I get a small jail the size of my old queen sized bed with no air conditioning, one parking spot and no wall plug for electricity. They don’t even allow my cat inside so I had to constantly check back on Lethe in the car throughout the night.

This is what my jail looked like:

This is what I woke up to:

The one thing I did enjoy was walking around the Ottawa university campus and reliving all the memories I had. As I walk past each piece of familiar landmark, a random insignificant memory gets triggered and tears welled up inside. These memories will be forgotten because I will probably never come back again.

There’s that monument where we met for our first date during the frosh year when I still couldn’t tell east from west in the city. A bit further, we have the Thompson residence where I spent most of my time while I was in school. Buried within the maze of interior corridors is the international house and the big space in front where we practiced dancesport every night. I thought I’d shed some tears here, but I didn’t. It was not as emotional as I’d thought.

I retraced our usual route back to the bus stop, where you’d snuggle underneath my long trench coat while we wait for the bus, to steal my warmth on a cold winter night. It was pretty convenient arrangement I am exothermic and you are endothermic.

The journey ended with the SITE engineering building. “It still smells the same.” was my first thought… “Poor engineering students” the second. As expected, the engineering building is the only building where students are still lingering about cramming and pulling all-nighters. All other buildings are empty in a hot summer night in the middle of summer. I was reminded of the time I did in this prison like existence.

Oh nostalgia. Why do you taunt me with lives I can never relive?

Western chicken is like a blank canvas to which you can draw and meld all the big flavors you want. Due to the genetic selection and the stale diet feed in the chicken farm, you cannot expect chickens nowadays to taste as delicious as it once did. Therefore, exotic techniques need to be applied to make it appeal to demanding palates. Chicken, the most used ingredient in cooking therefore, the hardest to excel at because everyone knows how to cook chicken. I recently came upon three huge chunk of chicken breast for $4.50, an opportunity too stupid to miss once locked on by my Asian cashdar. Henceforth, I present to you my 3000 calories a day 3 chicken meal.

Breakfast: BBQ pulled chicken

The story

Sizzling chicken dipped in succulent BBQ sauce with pan fried lemon to change the flavor in mid course. The altered flavor profile of a pan fried lemon is the perfect catalyst that can mix and morph the BBQ sauce. So in reality, this is actually two meals in one. To eat this, biscuits and milks are added so that diners can wipe their taste bugs cleans each time they take a bite out of the BBQ chicken. Strongly suggested if you want to switch the flavor profile by adding lemon juices. Also to the heavy handed approach I used in making the BBQ sauce, I took care to only put a small portion of the chicken for breakfast. What’s shown in the picture is enough to last you for 5 hours, I know because it did that to me.

The chicken is first pan fried, then oven baked to harden the surface and put into a slow cooker with the sauce. The BBQ sauce is a combination mixture of chili, ketchup, molasses and black pepper vinaigrette reduced over 8 hours of slow cooking along with the chicken in order to avoid the usual dryness associated with cooked chicken breast.

Lunch: Pan fried chicken with citrus-coconut sauce

The story

The lunch dish takes after the idea of having a good Spanish siesta where I will be out and having a good beer with a couple of co-workers. The chicken is pan fried for a long time and then oven broiled with the BBQ sauce to melt and crystalize the sugar in the sauce, making the surface crispy in the process. Fries and beer are served along with a special mixture of citrus-coconut sauce that I made specifically for this type of cooking.

Despite its small foot print on the plate, the coconut sauce is actually the star of the show. It is made by reducing a mixture of coconut milk, thai chili, indian curry and lemon zest in a pan until creamy. Giving it a strong and refreshing flavor. A contrast and much needed relief from the heaviness of fries and chicken.

Dinner: Beer sous-vide chicken

The story

Go ahead, take a bite out of the chicken. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the supple tenderness that is overwhelming all your senses in your mouth. A special trait of any sous-vide dish is the even tenderness in the meat cooked by this technique.  Soft juicy beer spiced chicken with a dijon sauce derived from the same beer marinade it was cooked with. If you click on the image for a bigger version, you can actually see that there’s a slight pinkish glow in the chicken, showing the crossover point between raw and cooked.Nothing can be more serene than being hit by the surprise that is in this chicken. The whole time I was chewing, I was craving for some red wine mushroom gravy sauce. Sadly, I had none on hand to try what the combination will do. And before I knew it, I’ve already finished the plate.

The homemade crispy hash brown is the perfect contrast to the chicken, along with a small cup of steam rice and tea to bring back the memory of certain Chines dish: Boiled chicken in alcohol. That is why the garnishes for this dish has an Asian feel to it. By the way, this is how hash brown is supposed to be. Not those greasy patties that you see in school cafeterias.

In the past, I’ve talked about this division in my mind before. That my full consciousness is a hive mind that harmonizes all the opinions in the individual personalities that exists. In psychology, I believe they call this, multiple personality disorder, a naming that I am most strongly opposed of. Let me just take some time to vent my beef about psychology. Which is the fact that they focuses on categorizing things as a disorder or disease instead of trying to fully see a special way to utilize the human mind. Psychology, is a study on how to force the human mind to think normally. In the most acceptable fashion. A feat that has been nagging me until recently once I rejected that whole part of academia, my outlook on life is much brighter.

Here’s a simple truth that I am going to state to hopefully one day make them realize. That other people’s belief in what you are has a great influence on what you are. Glass is half full, glass is half empty. Your base emotional response is different.

Now, back to this energy draining process that I went through last night. Ever since I started delegating simple addition and subtraction task to my subconscious and treating it as a human being, it has evolved into a kind of a group of sentient advisors that co-exists with me. At the moment, they haven’t developed into active voices and aggressive personalities that tries to take over me yet (as often depicted in movies) but they’ve been able to bring my attention to different details that stand out as odd. (And in the stock market, provide an instant estimation on mathematical calculations.) I nurture them by specifically giving them a function and something to do and I ask their opinion on certain subjects as if they are a respectable person. Of course, the interaction is not as grandiose as what you see in movies. The replies are mostly in feelings, or replays of imagery of certain details I missed. I am not sure if they can speak human languages yet.

The reason I am doing this is simple. I need different specializations that can process and give me feed back fast because I know that a logical mind cannot work through a problem fast enough in the real world because our thoughts are single threaded and are done in the speed of sound. (We think logically using a language). I’ve done some studies in the history of multiple personality disorder and discovered finding which indicate that in most of the cases, the multiple personalities are created by the psychologist. By giving name to a special set extreme behavior that is unexpected from the person and relating that to some other name than the person’s name. The psychologist created the disorder in the process of trying to cure the person from what originally was a mild case of mood swing. Record shows that disconnection from the psychologist lessened the personality switch but the damage is already done.

So you see what I am doing here? I am going through the same process, but in a more guided and loving manner. You see, I actually want to co-exist with my mentat side, who’s life’s joy is “more data”. My emotional reader who gets a kick out of reading body languages and the thrill of bartering. As the negotiations drag on yesterday, I was made aware of statements of behaviors that goes out of the norm. During the negotiations, I didn’t have the time to properly analyze what it is, so I only know enough to steer in the opposite direction of where the conversation is going, but after analyzing the specific event myself and talking about it with people more experienced in buying and selling condos. I was able to understand more clearly which tactics the buyers were trying to use on me to goad me into the direction that they want to go. What they didn’t understand though, is my ability to believe myself to be innocent and gullible. They lost, the moment they stepped into my front door. More on that later once the deal got the blessings of the notary.

Before that point was reached, I’d spend every second of my free time working on something. Edit some photographs, write some code, read up on new technology and just generally gain more knowledge. I did not want to become a couch potato, or someone who just mindlessly take whatever the pundits on some media decides to shove down my spinal cord.

My mental resolve broke

I simply couldn’t go on anymore. It was a moment in my life where I just thought: “Why so serious?”. So instead of the usual “what should I improve on next?” the question I ask myself became: “Which vice do I want to indulge in today?”

I am sitting here typing and I am thinking about how this impacts my life. At first, I didn’t think it’s a good place to be at but on second thought, who says this is bad? I’ve only known hard work all throughout my life, maybe that’s exactly what’s wrong. Why am I working hard through effort when I can achieve the same conclusion through some smarts added to the effort?

The period of doubt is like an old fling that you’ve gotten well acquainted with. Every time she leaves you you tell yourself no more, but your emotions swirls out of control every time you see her at your door. The only thing keeping you sane is the stone cold fact that you are married with a wife and she’s watching you from the kitchen.

Except I don’t have a wife.

“THIS IS HUGE!” Fred told me over the phone, not sure if he is in Vancouver or Montreal, lots of siren in the background. I think I made some feeble attempt to try and make it seem less exciting, I was still in that stage of denial where things haven’t hit me yet. In fact, I had such a huge headache during the weekend that I don’t think I was thinking much if at all.

There were certain things that I did and regretted due to the roller coaster of emotions and doubts, but this time I am mature enough to go back and apologize. I understand that people will understand. This time, there will be no regrets, no hurt feelings. This time I am going to do it MY WAY!

I know this feeling. I see you and you me. Let’s make things happen.

The financial disaster only served to delay the inevitable by a year. Originally, I was shocked into self preservation mode to stay on the job but as time went by, it became increasingly obvious to me that I can no longer work on a job where I can’t see any hope.

Hope: The deep rooted desire to be always improving.

When going to work is as easy as spreading peanut butter on toast, it is time to change. I’ve done similar things throughout my career, completely quit before I found the next job in the ladder. The period of intense change and rapid fire action always seems to bring out the best in me. My true character only reveals himself during periods of intense duress And before that moment, I am just average.

This time around is very different from previous rounds of quitting. You see, I am out of the rat race. Meaning I don’t need to work to support myself anymore. It doesn’t mean that I am extremely rich, just that I am richer and that I have the skills to deploy those money to support myself while earning more. It is a very well thought out event, I am not rage quitting nor did I get sick and tired of working (well a little bit of this).

To be honest, I did look for jobs throughout the year, the most notorious of which was a 3 days event with Intel which took me one month to prepare for. I had three interviews to get into the final 2 candidate and then they flew me down there for the final interview all expenses paid just like in those movies about hackers. Of course, I wasn’t good enough for them, it is the great recession after all and I was up against industry veterans that has 10 or more years of experiences. It was a position with their new pet “Larrabee” project that eventually got canceled. I am glad though that I didn’t make it, otherwise I would’ve been out of a job by now. This trip deserves a whole entry on its own and i am glad that I can write about all these now that all the NDA I signed will be annulled (As well as the Matrox ones).

What’s next?

There are two possibilities, both of which will finally allow me to focus purely on programming. 1. is to develop the automated trading platform and fine tuning the existing one so I can continue earning the rewards that I am earning from my investment. 2. is to get the team together and get started on making my game.

Before any of these gets done though, I have to sell my condo and all its contents as well as move to Vancouver. These are the things that are definitely going to happen. Quebec’s real estate is pretty much in a bubble. With the recent tax increases and a 60% debt to GDP ratio, it didn’t take me long to realize that Quebec is now locked into the financial death spiral. The beginning of the burst will be the rise of interest rates. I don’t want to time the peak, nor do I want to wait around for that. It just so happened that a lot of different factors coincided together for me to be able to finally say “Fuck it!”

Why Vancouver?

The choice for Vancouver is made after having been to most of the major cities in Canada. Vancouver is a place where I can shine the brightest as I have all the skills that naturally pushes me ahead of the herd. First of all, they speak English. Secondly, there’s a huge Mandarin speaking population so my mother tongue is actually a benefit instead of a hindrance in Vancouver. You remove the language barrier and you remove the biggest frustration that I face in Montreal.

At my age, it is no longer about developing skills against adverse environments or fitting in. It’s about deploying existing skills in the environment that favors me.

Whereas before, there used to be a very big disconnect between the characters that I was when I was in different circles in dancing, working and school. Nowadays there is only one character in all circles in terms of stature, financial stability, decision making and likability.

Notice the use of the word character. I kept the word from my first draft because that is the most fitting description of how I think I am right now. Character because who I am is a deliberate creation of who I wanted to be in the past. After “THAT” particular event, I only had a vague understanding of what was wrong with me. It was enough to allow me to take my first step in rounding out my rough edges. Asking people didn’t help, I had to fumble my way around a bit to be able to see my problems. Character, because I am still not sure if I am a creation of my old self or I am actually me.

It’s still work in progress, but what I set out to change about me in personality are: Competitiveness and criticism. These two came too naturally for me and I had to “act” the opposite of what my natural tendency is at the beginning in order to get a feel of the opposites. Once I did that, I am then able to take over with my logical mind to decide what to keep and what to leave behind. It is a different way of being and there were a lot of mistakes made, I only hope that one day, I don’t have to control my natural tendency because the natural response is the way I want to be.

That is the plan for inner harmony. For the outer harmony, I set about very concrete steps to improve my finances and expand the network of people I know. These are more measurable improvements that gave me strength as I see the finish line cropping closer. What seemed like an impossible and desperate task just a few years ago now seemed almost within grasp.

Now when I walk onto the dance floor. I no longer have to pretend to be an alpha male. I am one. The difference is, I can be one without being aggressive against others. Rather, being the magnet that draws people who wants to lean on the strength of someone strong and solid. THAT is the difference between real dominance and fake ones.

I am here, where I wanted to be, instead of always having to fake who I think I ought to be.