Happy Canada Day

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We celebrated Lea's first Canada Day by taking her to the festivities in Kanata and then after some debate on whether to wake up our sleeping beauty, we went out again for fireworks at night. I feel a bit saddened not to celebrate Canada Day downtown with Connie as per our yearly tradition, but with a newborn, I was a bit frightened with the crowds and I just wanted to go somewhere where we could go in and out with relative ease. 






We were afraid that by waking her up from her deep sleep, she wouldn't fall back asleep. Lately her wake up schedules have been 2:30AM, 4AM and 5:30AM and every 5 minutes after that until 6AM, and then finally again for her official wakeup at 7AM. Let's just say it has been frigging exhausting.

She fell asleep around 10:30PM last night and put her down when we got home from fireworks. Mike and I made a plan where he gets all the wake-ups before 5:30AM and I get everything after 5:30AM. But something magical happened. SHE SLEPT ALL THE WAY TIL 6AM. Mike woke up naturally (btw we thought waking up naturally was something that went extinct once our baby was born) and woke me up somewhat frantically not knowing what to do. Was our baby okay? Was she breathing?  Did this just happen? Did God bless us with some sleep?

The night before, we read this sleep website and apparently the #1 reason for babies waking up early (early meaning between 4AM and 6AM) was due to sun light creeping in. We bought temporary black out blinds from Ikea and hung them loosely and thought that was enough to do the trick but apparently if you can see your hand in front of your face, it wasn't dark enough. So I told Mike to seal the windows with duct tape to make sure absolutely no sun would trickle in and it seemed to do the trick. Every day is such a wildcard, but let's see what tomorrow brings. One step towards sanity.

My Holiday at a Glance

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Dec 24 - Drive home with Sana. I ended up meeting a fellow FI at StatsCan who knows all the DND FORD people. I cannot stress this enough: the finance community in Ottawa is small. 

Dec 25 - Crazy family Xmas dinner prepared by moi! It was a long night, but great time to spend with the kids. Regarding their parents though, let's say some things never change. 

Dec 26 - Drinks with the boys + gf at Coopers. I always wondered what these guys would look like in relationships, and I must say it's pretty adorable. 

Dec 27 - BBT with Candy. She's been through a lot since the last time I saw her during Thanksgiving, but it was great catching up. I've never known anyone more honest with their feelings. 

Dec 28 - Engagement day! (more on this later). Hung out with Steph, visited her condo, shopped downtown and met up with the happy couple for dinner at Kinton Ramen. Ran into Mike & friends and ended up going for drinks and Korean fried chicken afterwards with them. 

Dec 29 - Annual dim sum brunch with Thomas & friends at Emerald. Went to Lisha's party at her downtown condo. We played pervartistry and girls won, even though we were outnumbered 6-5. Fun!


The Remainder of My Holidays...
- Lunch at Panera Bread with Becky
- Coffee shop time with Denbo
- Downtown NYE's party with Charis, Seth & friends
- V time
- Hang out with Jacey & Mike downtown
- Drinks with Kevin at West 50
- Maybe Ripley's aquarium with my parents & my youngest brother's family
- Seth's bday at Etsu and karaoke at BarPlus
- Become a beggar on the street after spending too much, become obese from all the delicious food consumed, and pass out from exhaustion. 

The Resolutions

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It's nice to see that I've managed to stick with some of my older resolutions.


  • Read the bible every day
  • Go to the gym at least 3x a week
  • Take guitar lessons (have I been saying this for the past 5 years?)
  • Do not watch TV episodes more than once
  • Read more
  • Give CMA all you got
  • Be less attached to my phone
  • Accept every compliment someone gives you

Happy Bagel 2013

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Sparkling champagne, bruschetta, boardgames and Nelly Furtado's big fur hat. I couldn't have asked for a better New Year's. Okay, maybe one where I get a kiss but that time will come in time.


Memorable Moments of 2012

3 Workplaces, 3 Locations

  • Rothsay (Hamilton) - The commute was long. Their ERP system looked like MS-DoS with a black background and green text. All their files were stored in banker's boxes. The entire accounting staff was over 50. It was a short but memorable two weeks
  • IHMG (Toronto) - I miss working these weekends
  • Kraft Canada (North York) - 2 hour daily commute in the most aggravating traffic of your life on the 401. How can I complain? My dream job working for my dream company, getting free stuff and getting fat off trying new products. I learned so much in so little time. If the work environment weren't so intense, I would have stayed
  • Government (Ottawa) - If someone asks me where I work, I should only technically say, "the government" and if someone asks me what do I do, I say, "work for the government" (even if I am just a janitor). I packed up my bags and headed to Ottawa, the world's coldest capital. Safe, small, slow - three things I love in a city! 

 Hair changes.  Long orange curly hair to black to all chopped off. Why is this an item?

New car! Not technically new, but I finally got my first car and it was the one of my dreams: a Hyundai Elantra

Chicago. What an architecturally beautiful city. Korea reunion with some of my favourite teachers/travel buddies and the start of a yearly tradition

Party on a Boat 2012. Never again. I had fun, but never again

CMA Case Exam. By the grace of God, I PASSED!!!

Melo. July 5, 2012 brought this beautiful cat to the world. 

CFB Petawawa. How many times in your life can you visit an army base, wear army garb, fire a shot gun, C7 rifle, and howitzer, drive a tank and have people jumping off helicopters 10 feet from you?

Ottawa. Visits from friends, board game nights, FMI PDI, awesome co-workers, drinking with the FORD young'uns, Albion crew lunches, movie nights and "Baghuul"

Just when you think, "where did my year go?" you look back and you remember, "holy crap that was an amazing year." I love home but I love a change in environment. I am so blessed that I was able to find my own in Ottawa and meet some pretty incredible people (despite everyone being white in Ottawa). I ate my bagel. The world didn't end. So this means only good things to come.

Happy Halloween

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I'm exhausted from a very long week of work with 11-hour days and only Sunday (that, being today) off. It will be less hectic but I'm now going to be working almost full-time hours until February... so I'll hold off on getting back onto Sims 3 for a while. I'VE BEEN WAITING SOOOO LONG.


On Halloween, I took out the babies to go Trick-or-Treating by myself. Many of the houses on my street had lights on but it was dead, no kids were coming our way. The babies were scared of almost every house (the ghost figurines, the mist, the noises...) they refused to go. They were soooo shy when saying "Trick or Treat" and I'm like... you kids love to scream and make noise all the time but when I want you to be louder you won't. My goal of filling up two garbage bags was kept unfulfilled, but they still got a lot of candies and boy they were cute...... I'll post up a picture later, but Mercedes was a doctor and Marcus was a cow. SO CUTE.

Happy Belated Birthday Priscilla!

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Exam tomorrow... just wanted to quickly update.


I went home briefly for the weekend for Priscilla's birthday and we hung out at TJ's for a while before going for KBBQ. I never really truly grasped the fact that we are all leaving once summer is over. Priscilla is going to St. Catharines for her Master's, Ginny is going to Calgary for her Master's (TODAY),  Charis is going to B.C. for dental school and I am going where I am going. Future Marilyn's problem...

For Canada's day, I wanted to have a beach gathering with a nice BBQ, volleyball and some fireworks but had to be scrapped due to the inclement weather. I was just going to relax at home but Ira really put some effort into getting my ass out of bed so we ended up at Jacey's house, watching some movies followed by fireworks show at Columbia lake.

Anyway like I said, I have an exam tomorrow... so bye

Birthdays Birthdays! Father's Day!

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Ira's bday dinner at Sushi Star and then celebration at our house with cake and presents (we got her a camera!)...

Birthday girl and her Birthday Cake

Stees's Angels - for you, Ira

Adding to the monkey family


Ira doesn't believe in entertaining her guests


Ira's lady friends

Ira's other lady friends (why is everyone in the corner wearing aqua?)

Justin's bday after and I made un gateau...

final product (it's a cheesecake underneath the fondant)...kinda ruined because my horrible writing. It's HARD! Writing took me 2x amount of time to make the spiderman

Then... father's day weekend...full of caring for babies

Saturday we went to Spring Rolls and I ate this nasty pad thai. Sunday, brother brought over shrimp and snail to eat. Yumm.. Weekend went by pretty quickly =( Back to school... two exams. I gave Ira my Sims 3 disk to hide away from me until then!

Where's Marilyn? Part 2

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School Starts:
Taking Tax I and Advanced Tax concurrently is hell enough. Add: Advanced Accounting and Auditing - just kill me.

Mother's Day:
Frankie's Tomatos in Markham for Italian Buffet. Blegh, I hate buffets.

Afterwards, BR with friends for bubbletea (and other ulterior motives...). Dennis spent the night taking random ass photos with his new DSLR. P.S. Upload photos please

Next afternoon was Mother's Day and my parents drove me back to Waterloo. We ate the best meal ever at King Tin.

Jackie's Birthday! Lilian and Ira baked Jackie a diabetic cake with a big "J" on it and made delicious cupcakes with everyone's last names. Again, people, upload your photos! The next day, we met up again on his actual birthday and went out to Morty's. We stayed up late Rock Banding at his house and all I can say to Hendry and James: you guys, omg.

Movies. Howard gave me a ride home Friday morning. Charis called to say goodbye in the afternoon, as she was already at the airport on route to Peru. HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY, see you in two weeks! At night, we stayed up with a Europe psych-up movie marathon night at Richard's house. The next night, we all went out to watch Angels & Demons and it was good!

Blue Jay's Game. I went downtown to pay for Party on a Boat deposit. It was A LOT, so you people better come (Justin, Ira, Mike Murakami, Michael Lee - RSVP! You know you're coming, why prolong the inevitable). I took a picture of a boat, but yeah, it's pretty dinky. I was quite disappointed. Go on the site and look at the photo gallery. This means I should stop hyping it up as one big crazy party. 

After, I met up with Lilian and the gang to watch the Blue Jay's Game against White Sox. It was amazing!!! I had a great time, and it's not nearly as boring as that time I watched it when I was a kid. We didn't get our Alex Rios bobblehead (I WILL FOREVER BLAME IRA) but Lilian won free passes for Terminator: Salvation and a hat, and we all get free Pizza! After, we ate at Loose Moose Bar & Grill because Cyrus and Kurt wanted to watch Lakers. Fun day. Again, UPLOAD PHOTOS!

Okay I'm all caught up! I beat you, James.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, I think.

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Happy be-St. Patty's Day, friends. I hope yours went well because I barely remember mine. Just kidding of course. But seriously, I got kicked out of The Spur because I drank a little more than I could tolerate at the moment, and I puked in the bathroom sink. I use the term "kicked out" very loosely, because the girl was very polite and I sincerely obliged, even though I didn't really know what was happening. I even asked Justin, "Why are we leaving?" and he lied to me and said it was because we finished all the food and beer and I believed him. I didn't know, so for that, I am sorry.


It was a pretty alright night, I think - Lilian was happy. She said I was "hilarious" last night, so as long as I didn't inadvertenly offend anyone, it was all in good fun. I enjoyed the walk home the best, I think. Cyrus was kind enough to take an incriminating video of my incessant drunken ramblings. It would've been better if certain events played out better so that Ira, Jacey, Jackie and James could've got in when we did but it was all okay in the end, I think. No green beer though, but massive hangover yes =(

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

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I spent my actual Chinese New Year's at Morty's with Justin, James and Jackie. The original plan was to have hotpot at Leng Yue at 10PM but there were some discrepancies with SOME people. So yes, instead we ate wings and drank beer. 


I went home for the weekend for my dad's 73rd birthday. On Friday night, a bunch of us RHSS-ers went to Sweet Avenue and the rest of us ended the night at Michael's house playing Mad Gab. The next night, my entire family came out to celebrate my dad/mom's birthday at Miga. 

Sunday, I took my brother to Westside with me and at night, me and my parents had a Chinese New Year's feast! No not really, but we ate dinner together and pretended it was a feast. We don't really celebrate. Mike kindly gave a bunch of us a ride back and so my hectic week began.

I was at school all day yesterday from morning to night after a 4 hour nap the night before, and all I had to eat was a croissant so by 10PM I was exhausted. But for the sake of Chinese New Year's, we had to go out to Mortys! I woke up at 8am this morning after literal 1 hour of sleep and now I'm in class falling asleep... Happy days

My Christmas Break

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RHSS Christmas Party

Check out the video I posted up of the party. Basically, me and Tania ran around Jenny Lai's mansion taking a video of people and it primarily consists of me acting like a dumbass and making a fool of myself haha. Enjoy!



Christmas Eve @ T.J.s House






Ottawa/Montreal Trip - Day 1



The trip there was pretty good considering the very foggy Silent Hill-esque travel conditions. We drove to Ottawa to meet up with the rest of Michael's friends, and explored Chateau Laurier (a fancy hotel apparently where the Queen stays when she is in town) where this Cuban janitor started taking pictures for us, giving us a tour and telling us ghost stories.



We had dinner and then headed to Montreal where we checked into our sweet hotel, The Hyatt. We played this board game - drinking game style and everyone (minus me) was basically tipsy to drunk and was acting funny until like 5 am in the morning.


Montreal Trip - Day 2



We woke up and walked past the Notre Dame Cathedral to Old Montreal where we visited Creperie Chez Suzette - the quaint place that we found last year. We briefly went to an Art Museum in front of our hotel and then walked around for a while. We had dinner at this French restaurant where I wasted 28 bucks on stupid 6 scallops and a morsel of dry pasta in the corner - disgusting. We went to W hotel where Matt & Julie were staying, drank and headed back to our hotel.




Montreal Trip - Day 3

Our last day! We had breakfast at Mike's and checked out. We spent the entire day "shopping" aka walking around all day until I couldn't walk no more around St. Catherine and St. Laurent's. We had a drink at this nice little bar, and ended the day at one of the best restaurants I've ever been to: Pintxo.



On our way home, I bought $50 worth of Montreal smoked meat at Schwartz (YUM!!!). Michael's GPS just decided to stop working, so we got really lost trying to find the highway, ended up going to opposite direction and that's when the winter storm started. We had to go to Ottawa to drop off Bob and even though the GPS told us to take the local roads, we stopped listening to it. And thank god because Mike realized the GPS was set on "walking mode" - DOH. Basically we left around 11pm, got caught up in the worst possible storm EVER (it was the scariest thing, I never want to drive under those conditions again), and by the time we got to Mississauga, it was 7:30AM on December 30th. Time to prepare for my New Year's Eve Eve party LOL.


New Year's Eve [Squared]

On 4 hours of sleep after a hectic tiresome week, I pulled off a party for 40+ people, and stayed up til 7:30AM single-handedly (with aid from Charis) cleaning it all up to perfection. It was super crowded, but I hope everyone had themselves a good time. More importantly, THANK YOU FOR DRESSING TO IMPRESSING =)







HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE!




New Year's Eve

I woke up at 3pm and me and Becky had a long lunch at Picklebarrel =) and I dropped her off. No one wanted to go to Nathan Phillips (first time in years since I haven't gone), so we celebrated at Richard's house. We had drinks, watched a movie, I ate a bagel, had a crappy countdown because it was kind of rushed, and then crashed soon after. It's good to know that I'm going to spend the rest of my year like this. Happy New Year

** Updates in the photo album!

Christmas Rundown, Part Deux

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Where'd we leave off?


Tuesday - Christmas Eve Squared. Annual RHSS Christmas Party @ Jenny Lai's freakin humongous mansion near Mississauga Road. Friends, billiards, table tennis, rock band and a ton of food = GREAT PARTY. How am I going to top that?! Remind me, I have this hilarious video I took at the party that must be posted once I get the cable for my camera to upload. 

Wednesday - Christmas Eve. Me, Charis and Priscilla went to Oasis for bubbletea and had an intense game of Trouble hahaha. Charis is a sore loser! T.J. invited us over to his place so we went over at 1 a.m. and played this wicked fun game for the Wii called Samba de Amigo, foosball, air hockey, DDR (he has METAL mats like in the arcades!), had a jam session with the guitar/piano/drums which I aptly named "Real Life Rock Band" and then karaoke until early morning. What a way to spend Christmas Eve! 

Thursday - Christmas Day! Tony & Lilian, Quang, Marcia and the kids came over and prepared a non-traditional Christmas dinner for my parents: bisque followed by prime rib steak. Not turkey, but it still tasted amazing. Also, I FINALLY - after one arduous week - finished the movie of my parents' trip to Vietnam. Me, Tony and my parents stayed up until late together watching the movie and I was happy that they really enjoyed it. As my dad says, "Success!!!"

Friday - Boxing Day - Boxing Day hell as I woke up at 11 and scrambled out of my bed to get to Guess Outlet with my brother before the sale was over (at noon). When I got there, the jacket I wanted was sold out. I went home and then I went out again this time to Sherway Gardens where finding parking was kind of hellish. We went to Maki Maki after at like 5 and then I came home and forced down another dinner afterwards with my parents.

What comes next? Well, Charis is going to New York tomorrow even when we were supposed to go on our Blue Mountain Trip... so I guess I'm going to Montreal instead for a couple of days. Then, 

NEW YEAR'S EVE SQUARED!!!

I'll give you the rundown on my Christmas break so far.

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My parents came home from Vietnam early and I came to see them for the three days prior to my last exam (you can say I had a three day extended holiday). On my last day, I hung out with Becky and did the majority of my Christmas shopping at the Laurier bookstore. I bought my niece and nephew these cute boy/girl Laurier sweaters, and got my parents mom/dad Laurier mugs. What? They already have their GPS, coffee maker, expensive items, etc. from me. What can I say, I have no $$$ this year.

I drove back home and then watched The Day The World Stood Still with Howard and friends. Since I've been back, I've done minimal shopping - I just checked out the new Dollarama and bought some Christmas tree decorations. I stayed at home with my parents, doing chores, shovelling snow, I put up the *explicit deleted* Christmas tree, and I spent the majority of my time working on this *explicit deleted* 300-clip, 3 hr long movie of my parents' trip to Vietnam on to a DVD. I guess you can say that is my true Christmas gift to them (they definitely will appreciate it). 

Friday, as we all know was the catastrophic winter storm that screwed us all over. Saturday night...was stupid. Sunday night, me and my dad went to my oldest brother's house for Christmas dinner and we ate hot pot and I hate hot pot. I spent most of the time playing with the kids and playing Wii sports (eew, I can't believe I wanted one of these). My mom didn't go because she was sick, which she now passed down to both me and my dad so excuse me if I look a little crapalicious for tonight's annual Rick Hansen Christmas party. 


Speaking of parties,
I've realized a very important, and almost dangerous issue.

How am I going to fit 33+ people in my house?

oh, Halloween

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I am so jealous of kids who get to go out Trick-or-Treating. Not for the costumes... the free candy. Sure, we have tons left over since kids don't go Trick-or-Treating anymore and my mom likes to stock up. But she always gets the Allen's lollipops, the tootsie rolls and caramel squares. Where are the Nerds? The Wunderbars? The "cool" candy?


I was so pumped to give out candy to little kiddies but by the end of the night, I realized that I don't like kids. I praised a kid for their scary costume, and some other kid got jealous and started bitching at me. One kid went up to me and said, "SUCK MY CANDY!" Highschool punks are reaping free candy even when they're past their prime. Half the kids aren't even dressing up anymore, unless their Baby Phat gangster get-ups are considered a costume but I really don't think so. Parents are now driving their kids around the neighbourhood. What happened to the spirit of Halloween pre-Anthrax scare, the one I remember when roaming the streets of my Jane & Finch neighbourhood?

Highlight:
This kid is walking around with a plastic knife stuck in a cereal box.
Me: "Why do you have a knife stuck in a cereal box?"
Kid: "Because I'm a... CEREAL KILLER."

the month at a glance

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Thanksgiving weekend. I had a nice weekend at home. Right after my Thursday night class, Justin drove us home and then I had a nice night out. On Friday, me and Vanessa watched Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (it was cute) and spent the afternoon taking weird Mac photos at the library. At night after dinner, the whole gang went out to Sweet Avenue, this new dessert place in Mississauga which pretty much sucks. It was a great night of catching up with close friends.  

On Saturday, me and my mom spent the day preparing a Thanksgiving dinner, after my mom spontaneously went out and decided to buy a turkey. Keep in mind that we are not a conventional family and have never celebrated Thanksgiving before. We've never eaten a turkey either. So I spontaneously decided to make turkey stuffing. I've never eaten stuffing before except for the little sidedish they give to you at Swiss Chalet during holiday times, muchless have ever made stuffing - but I was confident that I could pull it off. How difficult can cooking be? Nevertheless, the turkey, the stuffing, the pumpkin pie, the entire meal turned out wonderful. The next afternoon, we had a second Thanksgiving meal when my oldest brother and their family came over. My youngest brother and his wife roasted lamb, made butternut squash, spinach salad, and yams - how Western are we? By the time everything was wrapping up, it was time for me to go back to Waterloo with Cathy. 

Jason Mraz @ Massey Hall. To get downtown for the concert, there was no choice for me but to rent out a car. I got Michael to drive me to Enterprise, but they said I needed insurance so I lied and said it was under my parent's name. They told me I needed a document for proof so I told them I would go home and try to fax it to them - and we left and never came back. He then drove me to Discount, which was SO difficult to find because it is hidden at the back of a hotel, but first you have to go through a restaurant to get there. Fortunately, these guys didn't even ask me for insurance so I was good to go. Me and Cathy drove to Mississauga first to pick up Ira, got McDonalds on the way and headed downtown.

Massey Hall compared to the ACC is a tiny place. It was amazing how close we were to the stage. The concert itself was fantastic. Jason Mraz is a God when he's out on stage performing - his voice, his talent, his energy - it just gets the entire crowd pumping. This concert definitely beats out Spice Girls and all the John Mayer concerts I've been to, in my books. He is just plain awesome. 


Oktoberfest weekend. I had a Management Accounting assignment due Friday afternoon, which me and my group members stayed up all Thursday night working on. Of course, we started working on it Thursday at midnight so it only makes sense that we worked on it non-stop until 10AM the next morning. I woke up around 4PM on Friday, took a shower and got ready to go out for Oktoberfest with Becky and friends. 

Oktoberfest - which none of us have been to, was fun and money draining. The entire night, was let's say... interesting. The Heidelberg house was playing pure country music and there were old people line dancing - talk about being out of place. We went to Symposium in the end for desserts and that was our night! I uploaded photos in the photo album.

STUPID, THANKSGIVING

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maybe i just shouldn't go home!!!

stupid people making their stupid plans without me. its funny because while everyone (who all happen to live in Mississauga and all happen to live in the same area as me) has a ride home for the weekend, i am going to end up spending more than $20 taking a greyhound, go bus and transit at the exhausting cost of 4 hours of my life, just to get home. 


father's day

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...was a whole lot better and less dramatic than mother's day (overall).

charis and vanessa went with me to get my dress back from dixie mall. i am finally relieved i found something to wear for the wedding after this endless and futile search for dresses.

my dad was drunk so he spent almost the rest of the night napping it off. my brother got me a camera from fuji:



it's an updated version from my black camera (finepix z2) and it's pretty cool

here are some pictures from yesterday, aka father's day for only the luong family:


my mom pretending to eat and posing while i test out my new cam-cam


my dad acting silly before he disappeared to take his night-long nap


me, baby and brother


me and mercedes


me & mercedes, my mom & marcus


my brothers

if you want to see more pictures, check out my new photo album which i linked to the side. happy father's day everybody