An "I-need-a-break" post

Has anyone taken a look at the Sponsored links in Gmail? By signing up for Gmail, you give Google permission to scan your emails for keywords, and 'relevant' ads are displayed on the side depending on the words used in the conversation. These are often completely irrelevant to what you are discussing, but I bet you could weave a pretty good story together from them (this must be how Hollywood does it). Some sob story about two hard working parents saving up to pay for both a camera, and a miracle cure for their son's skin condition.

Anyone keen to guess what I was conversing about?

Top n reasons why Indian weddings are awesome

(where n = the number of reasons I can think of in the next k min (where k = 3))

1. Foooood: Breakfast, lunch and dinner served. Fantastic, even the stuff that I couldn't identify. The groom was a meat-eater so we had nine dishes of meat, including a turducken made by a friend!
2. Dancing: Indians love to dance. Love love love. There were about 250 people at the reception, and 240 of them were dancing. Younger, older, doesn't matter. And it's very inclusive and communal. You don't really dance with one person but with everyone.
3. Colour: I've never been to a more colourful wedding. The gowns at the ceremony and the saris at the reception were absolutely beautiful. Great for photos.
4. Formality and informality: At the beginning of the ceremony, the two sides of the family exchanged some ceremonial items. Uncles passed to uncles, aunts to aunts, etc. Within these formalities they did some really fun things, like trying to lift each other up for photos. It was funny when it didn't work.
5. Inclusiveness: Everyone was very inviting, courteous, answered questions, and provided thoughtful explanations.
   

Eating rights

Speaking of losing weight, I have to admit that I've been doing the same lately. I checked my weight yesterday, I am embarrassing light for my height (any guesses??). My dragon boat coach keeps warning me not to let the girls on the team paddle harder than I do... AWKWARD.

I think a big part of it has to do with my diet. I've been trying this new kind of food that I've only tried a couple times before... the name eludes me now. Hmmm, I think it ends with an 'E'....

HELLTH-EE food? Helthii? That could be it.

This new eating craze is good for two reasons: 1) More energy, less junk in my body... ya ya whatever. 2) Exercising the right to gorge on crap for a short period of time. Eating bad can feel so good in short bursts! This past weekend at the Montreal Dragon Boat festival, I had burgers, fries, and smoked meat, without a single leaf of lettuce in sight. YES!

Nigel spotted!

I was in the elevator with Nigel yesterday! With my sunglasses on I made it a point to stare at him knowingly... excellent.

Fruits of the Digital Pictobox's Labour

I've always wanted to get into amateur photography, so I recently took the plunge and bought a dSLR camera (dSLR is short for Mac-n-cheese-for-a-month expensive). My camera enthusiast friends were really great in helping me pick up one, and I've started posting some favourite photos on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/asoungyee1/

I'll add some photos from time to time. Feel free to check it out, or hit that RSS feed!

Weight loss is the new fake-nose-and-stache

I met up with an old roommate JK (Kooper) recently, whom I hadn't seen in over two years. Since the last time I saw him, I heard that he lost a considerable amount of weight.

I started to wonder how long it would take me to recognise him; I mean, how different could he possibly look? It's weight loss after all, not a boob job. But still, losing mass everywhere on your body can really change someone's body shape, especially after not having seen the guy for a while. Maybe I should be looking for a guy I don't recognise anymore??

Well, we finally met up, and he looked pretty different. I could have easily passed him in the street if I didn't know it was him. The fact that he was wearing sunglasses really threw me off too. As soon as he took them off (as per my explicit request) and started talking, then I finally accepted that it was him, and not some skinny impersonator with a bad boob job.

So maybe weight loss should be used as the latest spy tactic. Super model thin spies could be deployed anywhere and eveywhere, slithering around à la Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment, literally slipping through cracks in the pavement. Bond would be forced to eat a Big Mac at gun point, only to escape by squirting the 3000-calorie secret sauce in his captor's eyes and using his Coke to melt the titanium handcuffs.

By the way - any votes for Ronald McDonald as the sickest Bond villain ever?

Third is the new first place

Bronze medal - Division G!