3 Steps to Correct Your Irrational Beliefs

The other day, I was reading a book about human behaviour. It said that everyone has something learned from a parent and believes and copies without giving much thought. Sometimes these things you believe are totally irrational but you never ask yourself any questions.
I studied mathematics and engineering and I want to think of myself as a logical person, but there are some things that I was told by my mother that I believed without any doubt. For example, about seedless fruits. My mother told me that they use chemicals to melt the seeds of the fruits, so these fruits aren't very healthy. For years, I never doubt this. I never looked up anything but I always took this as a fact. Then, once I told this to someone. She said that it should be done by genetic engineering, not by chemical.  I argued with her for a while, but then I thought she was right. It is more likely that it is done by genetic engineering than chemical. That was an incident happened long before I read the book, but I think that was one example of how you believe what was told by a parent as a fact.
I don't consciously follow what my mother did or said. In fact, I try to be different from her since I am very different from her, but still things learned from a parent don't go away without knowingly fixing them one by one. Another thing she told me was about boiled eggs. I love boiled eggs. I would love to eat as much as I could, but when I was a child, she told me not to eat more than two boiled eggs a day. She said that that would cause me a skin rash. So I never ate more than two eggs a day as a child. I never got any rash on my skin from eggs. When I became older, I dared to eat three boiled eggs. My logic was that if two eggs were O.K., then you could eat three small eggs and that should be about the same as two large eggs. I never got skin rash from that. Now I even eat three large eggs, but I don't go over that.
Not sure about the validity of two eggs a day limit, but I can see that eating a lot of same food isn't that good for your body anyway.
So how you can go about cleaning up your unconscious belief given by parents? I think following might help you.

1. Write down things you do and believe. --- This is quite difficult. You need to be aware and pay attention to what you do and think. For example, if you eat certain way, think if you were ever told to eat that way. If so, write it down.
2. Logically investigate validity of what you wrote in #1. --- You can check anything online in these days. If you were told "certain food" is "bad" because ..., then check to see if that is true. 
3. If anything you listed in #1 was found not to be true in #2, correct your behaviour and belief.

There are things that have no right or wrong answers, but knowing where your behaviour or belief came from will give you more open mind about things. You will be surprised to find how many things you believed because you were taught weren't really truth at all.

As for my eggs, I couldn't find any information online. So I still don't eat more than three, in case my mother was right.

Image by [puamelia] on flicker

Trip to Rona

I like visiting hardware stores. I don't really do much more than painting and simple fixing of the house, but it is very interesting. The reason I don't really do much more than that is probably I'm scared of accidents --- sharp objects and heavy tools make me nervous --- and I'm afraid that if I fail to do a good job, the place that I started working on will be left at worse condition than what was before. I also don't like the mess that comes with doing things. Having said all the negatives associated with home renovation and fixing, I still think it is interesting.
The reason I went to the hardware store today was that I saw the shower drain backed up a bit. When I was cleaning, I noticed water in the pipe. We used to plunge the pipe with toilet plunger and it worked very well for the first time. Then one day, my husband used that new plunger we only use for the shower for toilet. So I couldn't use that any more and I bought another plunger. That, too, I think one day my husband used it for the toilet, so I can't use that for the shower any more. We have three plungers and I can't use any of them for the shower drain. Then my husband bought another one, but it was different from the regular plunger.

Since this one looks different from other three plungers, I was happy that my husband wouldn't make mistakes any more, but unfortunately, this isn't a very good plunger. This doesn't push air very strong into the pipe. The part of the reason is that this doesn't stay like the rubber cup one. Each time when I try to push, it moves around and difficult to push strong air into the pipe. So after pushing water down with this a bit, I decided to go to the hardware store to buy yet another plunger. So in total, we have 5 plungers. Hopefully my husband doesn't use the new plunger for toilet.

I also bought "three hour shower ready"caulking. My daughter puts stuff at the corner of the bath tub when she takes a shower. It causes the caulking to be wet and moist for the whole evening. I told her many times not to put anything and always pat after finish taking a shower, but she forgets. Each time when she makes the corner of the tub wet and ruin my caulking effort, I have to do re-caulking. The brand I used to use doesn't dry very quickly. Even if it looks dry, doesn't stay well if she takes a shower. It says that at least 36 hours has to be dry but to me, it takes much longer and still doesn't stay well. So hopefully this new brand works well this evening.

There are many things in hardware store. Today, I went to Rona, but I sometimes I go other places. Since my husband doesn't like staying in the hardware store, and he only wants to "ask" question when he "needs" something, I can't spend time looking through. It is true that all these things are intimidating for someone who doesn't know much about any renovation, but it is fun to look and read. I should visit hardware store alone more frequently.

3 Ways to Become Unhappy

Most of us want to be happy, but it is quite difficult to feel "happiness" for long. People get used to things very quickly and lose the emotional excitement they once had. For example, if you really wanted to get a certain job and when you actually got it, you are really happy. Even if everything goes well for you at the new job, you will slowly lose the feeling of "happiness". It just becomes your life.

At least, if we know how to make ourselves unhappy, and if we could avoid being unhappy, we might be able to become "happy" even if we don't know it. So here's the list of things we can do to ourselves to make ourselves unhappy.

Comparing to others

There are lots of things you could measure. That's how we were evaluated at school and at work. However you are not some kind of thing consisting of various measurements against others. You are a unique human being on this earth and no one is like you. Individual's uniqueness is not something you could measure and evaluate. So, stop compare yourself to others. If you find you have less money than your neigbours, or if you are shorter than your brother, or your cousin has better job than yours, don't bother to think about it. If you focus on these comparisons against other people, that is sure to make you unhappy.

Stop feeling about things

When things get too emotional, that could distract your life. For example, if your boss gives you impossible assignments all the time and gives you hard time and embarrasses you in front of others, you might shut yourself down. You are physically there but not really listening to what was said and avoid your boss. If you are honest about yourself and start arguing, that will get you emotionally, so you shut yourself down. More or less, we all do this as we grow up to avoid feelings of being hurt, but shutting yourself down and stop feeling about things have consequences. When you do this, you don't feel nothing, including happiness. You think you don't feel "unhappiness" because you don't feel anything, but actually this will lead to emptiness and unhappiness eventually. It is hard to keep balance of being emotional and being in control, but try to let go of your emotion once in a while.

Feeling sorry for yourself

When comparing yourself to people who do better than you in some way might make you feel unworthy, but sometimes comparing yourself to someone less fortunate than you could help you stop feeling sorry for yourself. People often focus on negatives and "don't have" things, but never knew how much they "have". I have seen people who think that he is the most unfortunate person in the whole world. When you listen to his logic, lots of things are basically self inflicted or things he could have changed, or he can change, but stick to what appears to be the "right thing" and "cause of misery". For example, a single mother who cries over her financial situation never thought her "physical health" and "loving children" were something to be grateful. There are people who lost their children and will be glad to be in her shoes, or people with terminal illness who wanted to get back one more year of healthy life. Look around and find what you "have" in your life.


Image by quinn.anya on flickr

4 Ways To Buy Japanese Things in North America

There are lots of Japanese things ; food, character goods and others, and we want to buy in North America. Toys and character goods are so innovative and cute. You can't really find them from anywhere else in the world. First thing people try is to find Japanese stores locally and see if they have them. Some food items, traditional decorations and so on could be found in these stores, but other things, especially character goods aren't available in North America. Why?

Most of Japanese character goods have exclusive licensing within Japan. They don't want them to be spread around in other countries. The reason is that they see so many fake goods sold cheaply across North America, and they don't trust integrity of the market. I don't quite follow their reasoning but basically they don't want to have potential troubles in foreign countries and they are happy within their own. They are particularly cautious in North American market where people often sue companies and other people. They have a lot better relationships with their neighboring Asian countries. Asian countries are more into Japanese goods than people in North America, so they have better market and also they are physically much closer. Some of the character goods are licensed in Korea or Hong Kong. However once things go into these countries, there are ways that they will come to North America without proper license. Not sure how the licensing works but Japanese character goods sold in other Asian countries are much cheaper and they can be found in Chinese stores across North America. Many of them are actually different products from the ones sold in Japan, but you can see the same characters on them.

 So if you really want the goods, the same goods sold in Japan, what do you do? Here are the ways you can get them.


Local Japanese Store

First thing is to check out local Japanese stores. However character goods are hard to find. Sometimes they even carry fake imported goods from non Japanese countries.

Local Chinese Store

If you can't find them in Japanese stores, try Chinese stores. There are many things that are obvious imitation goods, but sometimes they do have them imported through Hong Kong. It is hard to find which one is real and which one is not, but look at them carefully by reading tags etc. Unfortunately, sometimes tags maybe written in foreign language that you can't read. You can also try local Korean stores, too.

eBay

If you can't find them in stores, you will need to resort to online. eBay has almost anything you want if you wait patiently, but it is also hard to see what is real and what is fake. Check the seller's reputation, and if the seller's location is in Japan, you are more likely getting real Japanese goods.

Japanese Online Stores

Or you can access online stores in Japan. However many online stores in Japan do not ship outside of the country. Some company offers virtual address within Japan so that your goods can be shipped there and redirected to where you live. This could be a bit more costly way to buy things, but you can be sure that you are getting genuine Japanese goods you are after.

Anything you are buying from a foreign country, you need to be aware that if it is a defect, it might not be that easy to get exchanged. If things are broken or it requires replacement parts, it could cost you a lot. Also if things are shipped from outside of your country, you might have to pay customs and broker fees. Food product has expiry dates so make sure to consume before that date. Any goods that require plugging into the electrical outlet, make sure the compatibilities of voltage, frequency and the shape of the plug.

Good luck in finding what you are after!

Image by Agathe B on flickr

3 Things to Think About in Cross Cultural Relationships

There are many people who go out with someone outside of their culture. This is really a good thing as people get to know different cultures and background and understand them better. However when the relationships become more serious, you have to ask yourself if you could live with this person for the rest of your life. Here are some things you need to be aware to avoid troubles in future.

1. Language --- If someone you really like speaks different language, that is not a big problem as long as both of you can communicate in one language, but is it? The language problem happens more when you are with your partner's family and relatives. It happens in some cultures that their older relatives (mother, aunts, uncles and so on) only speak their own language. When you are with them, they can't communicate with you, but not only that, your partner might join them by talking in their language leaving you alone perplexed and bored. If you don't want to learn their language, it is not your problem. It is not the family's problem that they don't speak your language, but can you tolerate once in a while gathering with these people? Can your partner pay a bit more attentions to your needs?
2. Religion --- Religious problem happens not only among cross cultural relationships but anyone with two different religious beliefs.  If both of you don't have very strong beliefs, that is good, but if at least one of you have a strong religious belief and follow traditions, will there be any problems in future? Sometimes one who doesn't have strong religious belief changes one's religion to follow his partner's, but this often doesn't work out so well. After all, religion is not related to who your partner is but it has to come from your mind to believe the philosophy. 
3. Food --- Food is a very important part of people's life. If you marry to someone, you will be eating many meals together for the rest of your lives. If your tastes are too different, how can you survive? Is there anything that both of you like and you can get away by eating them for the most of the time? This is actually a very important topic. Think about this very carefully.

Image by Qole Pejorian on flickr

Food Allergy

When I was young, I never heard about food allergy. I never met anyone who had peanut allergy or anything, until I found myself having a reaction to yams (mountain potatoes). This wasn't the type of food eaten everyday, so the first time when I had this, I was 6 or 7 years old. When I ate, I didn't feel anything, but later on, my skin became red and puffy. Every part of my skin that touched the potatoes became the rash and itchy. Since then, my mother never made anything with yams. The second time when I had to touch yams was when I was fifteen or so. I was visiting my aunt and she decided to make something with yams. I told her that I had an allergy and I didn't want to touch, but she didn't believe me and I had to help her shredding it. Soon after, my arms got red and itchy. In my case, I don't think I would die from this but the rash lasts for many days and very uncomfortable with itchy skin.
Not sure if more and more people are having allergic reaction to food, or if that is reported more and hear about it more, but aside from news and media, I get to know more people with food allergy. My husband has the eggplant allergy. This is actually quite serious and doctor warned him never to eat it because that could harm him seriously. My daughter notices that she does get tingling sensation in her tongue when she eats pineapples and she thinks she has an allergy. I do get a bit of tingling sensation when I eat pineapples, too but not sure if this is called an allergy.
Peanuts are banned from most of the schools because people could die from the allergy. Some people have sesame seed allergy, seafood allergy, mango allergy and so on.
I guess non severe allergy can be tolerated but I hope they can find a way to stop any severe allergic reaction to food. Children with peanut allergies often avoid birthday parties because they don't know what's going to be served. Parents of non allergy children can not always prepare a party considering all other children with allergies. With no one's fault, the children with severe allergy have to miss out social opportunities and getting together with others. It is really sad. My daughter's friend's baby sister has the peanut allergy, too. They didn't know until the baby had the first taste and became seriously ill. I hope medical community can find a way to cure this by the time she starts going to birthday parties.
 
Image by toddwickersty on flickr

4 Tips for Backpacking in Japan

I contribute some articles to Japanese blog site.They have list of themes that they want people to write about and you can grab whatever you want and write. When they approve, they publish your article on their web site. Yesterday I was writing about my first backpacking experience in the blog and thought that maybe I should write about tips for people visiting Japan as well. So here are some tips:

• If you can speak some Japanese and try practicing your language, try visiting a small city. People in the country side don't speak English. If you don't speak any Japanese, you should try stay in a bigger city, for at least first few days.
• If you just want to visit for a short period of time (say, 2 weeks at the most), define your theme for the trip. If you decide to go "traditional Japanese culture", then visit the area such as Kyoto or Kamakura. If you want to enjoy "nature of Japan", you are likely to go more into the country side. If you don't know Japanese, make sure that you have some language book that can be used to express yourself when you need to ask questions. If you want to enjoy "modern Japan", stay in a big city like Tokyo.
• If you don't have any predefined time period, but you want to wonder around Japan and may stay longer if opportunities present, you would like to go to youth hostels and cheaper hostels where similar foreigners gather. These places are cheap to stay and you get to know other travelers of similar interests and you might get useful information.
• For those of you who want to actually stay in Japan for a longer period of time, first research about some job opportunities through local JETRO, Japanese consulate etc. They often have programs for young people to teach English in Japan. If you are fairly educated to teach English to foreigners and if you were not qualified for any of these government programs, you can try your luck by going to Japan and ask English schools there to see if they hire you. Of course, research and reach out to them before actually going there if possible. 

In general, if you are in a big city, probably you won't have any problem finding someone trying to help you get your way around. Many of them are quite helpful and they also want to find opportunities to practice their English. If you find willing helper, it might not be a bad idea to let them show you around. You could get to many places you wouldn't know otherwise. 



Image by fishines on flicker

Unscientific Sweet Lime Experiment

The other day I wrote about the sweet lime I encountered at the local grocery store. (http://anythingbymaya.blogspot.ca/2012/11/sweet-lime.html) The lady in the store told me that it becomes bitter if you drink the juice 2 minutes after it is squeezed. So I guess this sweet lime changes taste when exposed to the air for long. So, I decided to do some experiment with this.

I cut the sweet lime into six pieces, then I sliced orange into six pieces. My intention is to eat each piece of lime and orange at different time and see if I can taste any difference.

Regular clock was used to time.

30 seconds later --- The sweet lime was slightly bitter, but nice and tasted like grapefruit. I had the orange slice after that and it tasted actually more bitterness in it than the sweet lime.

1 minute later --- The sweet lime didn't taste so good. It tasted like dish washing detergent. Not sure if this particular piece wasn't that good or if the time elapse had something to do with this.

1.5 minutes later --- This time, sweet lime tasted better than first two pieces. I felt orange pieces changed the taste as well. I think this was the taste I had at the store. Not sure if I tasted it 1.5 minutes after she cut the pieces.

2 minutes later --- Sweet lime tasted somehow lighter and good. It was about the same taste as 1.5 minutes slice.

3 minutes later --- Now I waited for another one minute instead of thirty seconds. Taste of this piece was still good. Somehow orange piece wasn't as good.

5 minutes later --- Now I waited for two more minutes to try the last piece. The last piece wasn't very good. It tasted like dish washing detergent again. Orange tasted very bitter and bad, too.

What do you think of the result of my experiment? If my tasting was accurately reflecting how the piece changes the taste with time, the best time to eat is between 1.5 minutes to 3 minutes. You can try your own experiment on this, too.

4 Tips for How to Get Rid of Sales Calls

It is very annoying to receive sales calls. When you are ready to go out, when you have guests over, or when you are cooking, or in a bathroom, they call. Is there any way to get rid of them? If you are in Canada, there is a way. You can register yourself at National Do Not Call List (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/telemarketing.htm) and calls are supposed to stop after 6 months (?) or so. If someone violates this, you can file a complaint and they get charged.

However there are some exceptions. You will still get calls from organizations that you dealt with before, news paper subscriptions, and some charitable organizations and so on. So fewer calls but still get calls. If you don't want to talk to them, you can just hang up, but usually you don't want to do that. After all, these people are just hired to make calls and they aren't exactly your enemies. So how can you finish talking to them as soon as possible without being too rude? Here are some tips.

1. News paper call ---- Just tell them you can get a free newspaper at your work. Tell them you are reading their paper every day.
2. Charity organization ---- You might want to donate to some charity organization, but it is a very bad idea to donate money to someone over the phone. This will put you on the list to call  of every charitable organization.  Once I received a phone call from a charitable organization and agreed to donate a small amount of money. From the next day, I received phone calls from different charitable organizations everyday for one and half years. When charitable organization calls, you will just tell them that you lost your job and don't have money. Usually they don't push more.
3. Research poll --- Unless you really enjoy answering survey for next 30 minutes, you will just tell them you have to go out and don't have time. They usually ask you better time to call, but don't answer the next time when they call. They usually don't call more than a couple of times.
4. Other sales calls --- If someone calls you to subscribe long distance call plans, tell them you don't make long distance. If they ask you to subscribe internet service, tell them you don't have a computer. If they tell you to subscribe TV, tell them you don't have a TV. Unless you really want to listen and compare prices, all you have to do is to tell them you are not their potential customer. This is the same for door to door sales. If they ask you to switch gas service provider, you tell them you are renting the place and the landlord is paying the gas.

Image by alanclarkdesign on flickr

How To Deal With A Difficult Person

I'm sure that everyone has experiences with someone who is difficult. If you can just avoid such a person, that would be great, but it is not always possible. Sometimes such a person is your relative, or even a parent. Sometimes such a person is your boss or a colleague. So how do you deal with him/her?

First thing to find out is that why this person is difficult. Does he have problems with you? Does he just want to show that he is the boss? Is he unhappy with other things in his life and releasing the stress on you? 

1. If this person behaves in this way to majority of other people:

• This person doesn't know he is difficult.
• This person is sad and frustrated because not many people become friends with him.

Probably this person doesn't mean to behave difficult to others, but lacks social skills. This type of person is actually not too hard to deal with. He often explodes when he believes someone did something wrong. Let him say whatever, but wait until he cools down. Once he is calm, if you did something slightly wrong to provoke him, just apologize. If you think you didn't do anything wrong, just explain. But in either case, you should not have any hostile behavior toward him. This person has a problem, not you. Be sympathetic and don't take anything personally, because they didn't mean it.

2. If this person behaves in this way to some people but not others:

• This person plays favorites.
• This person gives unfair favour to those he likes.

This type of person is better to be far away from, especially if you are not his favorite. There is no way to get along with him unless you turn into his favorite. If he is your boss, you are done. Only thing you can do is to avoid further problems with this person and move to another department or job. Or you will need to fight until you win and let the person go away instead of you. If this person is your relative or family, you might want to avoid contact as much as possible. This can be a bit tricky situation.

3. If this person behaves in this way only to you:

If this is the case, there must be a reason. You should have a discussion with him to find out what his problem is with you. Even if he doesn't tell you the reason, you will need to figure out what is happening. If the person is not unkind but maybe temporarily jealous or something, he will come around eventually. If he enjoys being mean, he might have had other victims before. In this case, you will have to fight.

Final thought

In my experience, most of the difficult people belong to #1. They are the type of people everyone hates, but in reality, they aren't as bad as they seem. Because of the lack of social skills, they receive hostility from others and they just reflect that hostility back at people.

#2 can be often found among teachers. I think because they have the power, they tend to behave that way. People who favours some and don't like others could exhibit different degrees of meanness. Depending on that, you should pick your fight.

#3 has two types. One type is temporarily difficult but comes around eventually. For example, if you are a new hire in a company and if someone else in the company wanted the position you got might act hostile towards you at the beginning. However if this person isn't really a mean person then he will come around. The worst type is the type of a person who enjoys making someone's life miserable. He would pick one person and does all kinds of mean things then moves onto the next victim. You will either fight till win or run as fast as you can.

Image by Tambako the Jaguar (Creative Commons License)

5 Reasons for Failing Diet

I don't say that I ever had a big weight problem, but very much like everyone else, I had some issues with my weight when I was a teenager. I tried starving myself, I exercised, tried yoga, squeezed myself in tight undergarments and so on. During those years (I think mostly between 15 - 21) of struggles, I was obsessed with becoming thin, and also food at the same time. Sometimes I succeed in not eating for a few days and become very thin. Then I buy so much food and eat them all in short period of time. When I start gaining weight again, I can't fit into these tight clothes that I bought and I don't want to see anyone. I skip classes and stay home and eat more. I drink lots of diet coke, black coffee and woolong tea to keep my mouth moving without consuming any calories. That was when I was obsessed with losing weight and food.

Now I don't diet any more. Sometimes I do get a bit bigger, and I will try losing some weight, but in general, I don't think about my weight any more. I am not super thin but I'm not fat either. When I look back the period when I was obsessed with diet, I can see how and why my diet was failing at the time.

1. Being unhappy --- I think this was the number one reason for over eating. When your mind is filled, it is less likely that you would fill yourself with food. At least for my case, this was a big reason for becoming obsessed with food.
2. Calculating calories --- For me, calculating calories of what you are eating and how to burn that much calories did make me crazy. Each morning, I would try limiting to 500 calories of food that day, but I often break it within few hours after waking up. Once when I break that in the morning, I tell myself that I would start from next day, so I will just eat today. Then I start eating so much, probably 4000 calories or more in a very short time. After that, I would calculate how much exercise I have to do and still that won't be enough to burn this all by tomorrow and make myself depressed.
3. Buying overly tight clothes ---  I think everyone has their own natural shape. Just because your size is larger than the models, it doesn't mean you are big. Some people are naturally fit into certain size and buying something too small for your natural size isn't a good idea. For me, my natural size right now is around 4 or 5. If I buy size 0, it is very tight. If I try hard to lose my weight to fit into that size of the cloths, that would cause me problems, because my natural size is much bigger than 0. Sometimes you have a friend who is the same height as you, but her size is smaller, but it doesn't mean you are big. If you look at your friend's bone structure or the way her fat is distributed throughout her body, it is different from yours. So don't try to be like someone else. Know your size and don't push yourself.
4. Thinking about diet all the time--- When I was dieting all the time, all I thought about was diet. Not much of anything else, or anything else that I thought about goes back to diet. For example, when I listened to my celebrity crush singing, I would think about meeting him but then I feel that I'm too fat and embarrassed to be seen by him. So I'll think about dieting again. It is hard to keep your mind off of diet when you are obsessed, but it would help having something that is nothing to do with meeting someone (this always goes back to diet) and something you do well and enjoy. Make yourself busy.
5. Starving yourself to get thin --- When I was starving myself for a few days, all I thought about was food. I even look at food pictures and kind of challenge myself instead of avoiding. Then a little thought crosses my mind. "Why don't I eat a little?" I challenge myself for eating a little but not much. What happens next is that I keep repeating this "little" bite and at the end give up on diet for the moment and eat like crazy. After eating too much and make myself full, I'm very much ashamed of myself eating that much. Starving yourself will make you think more about food.

I think "obsessing about diet" is a very common problem among young women and it is more of emotional problem than physical problems. I don't know what maybe the most effective diet, but understanding your natural unique shape, buying the right size clothes, stop calculating calories, stop thinking about diet and never starve yourself would certainly help. Look inside yourself and find the source of your unhappiness (other than your weight) . When you become happy, you will not suffer from dieting problems any more. Just a little bit of change in your eating habit and exercise will bring you to the right size without suffering from obsessive dieting.

Myelinated Retinal Nerve Fibres

I don't visit eye doctors very often. I visited this year after 6 or 7 years since my last visit. When I visited my eye doctor about 6 or 7 years ago, I was told that I have some type of rare birth defect in my eye. It doesn't affect eye sight or anything, but it is just there. I didn't ask what the name of the defect was but over the years, I got curious what this was called and if this really doesn't affect anything.

I have very bad eye sight. My eye sight has been getting worse and worse every year since when I was in elementary school. I didn't want to wear glasses as a young child so that probably caused my eye sight to go worse quicker than it should. It wasn't a very cool thing to wear glasses back then. When I was in grade 6, I couldn't see the black board at the front seat of the class, so that's when I started wearing contact lenses.

So what was this birth defect? When I visited my eye doctor this year, I asked him. This is a different doctor from the last doctor and he didn't even bother to mention it as it didn't seem significant thing for him. When I asked him, he wrote me down the name. It is called "myelinated retinal nerve fibres". He also said that this doesn't cause any particular problems for me.

I checked on internet to learn about this, but there aren't many articles about it and mostly written in difficult medical languages and basically they all say that this doesn't cause any known major issues. So I think it is basically like someone having a mole. It is not normal skin colour, but in general, it is just harmless and there.

But I still wonder if this actually causes minor things that I have, for example:

• Sneezing when looking at the sun
• Causing headaches when it is too bright

And I have a few other things that maybe more neurological like not being able to distinguish people's faces quickly and so on.

I guess it is nice to be able to blame on something. If someone says that "oh, you didn't notice me when I waved at you at the mall the other day" and just tell them "oh, I have myelinated retinal nerve fibres and bad eye sight, so that makes me difficult to notice someone among many faces". I do seriously have this problem of not noticing people in a crowd, or it takes much longer to notice them than others and they think I ignored them. Most of the time, I really don't see them. Anyway, "myelinated retinal nerve fibres" is what I have.

Sweet Lime

I found this fruit called "sweet lime" in a local grocery store. The left one in the above picture is the sweet lime. The right one is a lemon. Sweet lime looks very much like a lemon rather than lime. It is mostly yellow but some of them have greenish hue. The shape is round like a regular lime.

At the grocery store, a lady was promoting sweet lime and had cut out pieces for you to try. She also gave me juice. She said that if you don't drink it soon after squeezing juice, it becomes bitter.

I liked eating the pieces better than drinking it as juice. I thought it almost tasted like grapefruit, but when I tried it again at home, it was more like tasteless orange. I don't mean that this was tasteless, but it didn't have the flavour like orange. It has no real sweetness, but no sourness like lime or lemon, so it is easy to eat.

This fruit is high in vitamin C and good for health. I wouldn't say that this was my favorite type of fruit, but I will definitely be eating again in future.  I'm glad I encountered "sweet lime".

New Canadian Twenty Dollar Bill

This year Canadian bank notes are updated to polymer from the paper notes. They first issued a hundred dollar bill, then fifty dollar bill, and this month, they issued twenty dollar bills. It has more security features and they hope to eliminate counterfeit Canadian money. Counterfeiting of Canadian money is very high in international standard and increased six times between year 2000 to 2004. The security features of the new money are extremely difficult to copy.

A hundred dollar bill is mostly brown, a fifty dollar bill is red, and a twenty dollar bill is green. These are basically the same in old bills, but for some reason, my husband complained that he couldn't see the twenty dollar bill very well. He is colour blind. So there maybe something difficult for colour blind person to see this bill. So I removed the colour from the picture.

 O.K, it is slightly hard to see without colours, but I don't see that much difficulties with colourless version.
 What do you think?

Visit to Ikea

Sometimes I visit Ikea. If you don't know what Ikea is, it is a Swedish furniture store selling self-assembling style furniture. The store is often busy and it is hard to find parking. Their furniture is inexpensive, but they often resemble designer furniture so if you want designer furniture look on budget, this is the place to go. They also sell vases, candles, mirrors, frames, plush toys, plates, knives, plants, lights, bed linens and most of the things you need in your home.

Over the years, they did make some changes and some are for good, some aren't so good, and there are things that they should have changed and haven't. Here are the list of things that I am happy about, and I am unhappy about.

Good Things About IKEA

1. Price --- Most of IKEA products are inexpensive. I believe it comes from manufacturing and selling by the same company so there's no middle man (distributor) who takes lots of money.
2. Quality --- Most of IKEA products are reasonably good quality. They also exchange or accept returns if you bring back within the certain time period. However the exchange/return lineup is quite long as well. You need to expect to wait at least one hour to be able to talk to someone.
3. Restaurant --- Just like other things in Ikea, restaurant is inexpensive. It is convenient to have a restaurant in the large store like Ikea. I don't say that the food is very good, but it is fine.
4. Kids friendly --- Ikea has lots of kids friendly features. Like the railing on the staircase for kids, kids play area, and kids section of the furniture store is quite nice as well.

Bad Things About IKEA

1. Too Busy --- It is hard to find parking, hard to get through the restaurant lineups and hard to go through the cashier. Everything has very long lineups.
2. No bag policy --- They sell these horrible looking Ikea bags, but basically no bag policy. It may be environmentally friendly but I find it customer unfriendly.
3. Warehouse staff are too busy --- Often they are too busy to give hands to customers.
4. Hard to carry home --- Ikea has delivery service and online order with extra charge, but not everything is online. Lots of goods there are very big and heavy and it does require physical strength to carry them around and bring them home. If you are physically weak and can't carry anything heavy for any medical reasons, you can't shop at Ikea. Even with delivery service, they will basically dump things at your entrance, so you will have to move them to somewhere else in your home. This is a store for healthy and strong people.
5. Out of stock items --- Looks like they bring in goods to warehouse every morning but sometimes popular items sell out in the afternoons. Some customers can not always come in the first thing in the morning. If something is that popular, it would be nice to bring a bit more to the warehouse.
6. IKEA chairs are uncomfortable --- Not sure if this is just me, but every chair I bought from Ikea isn't really comfortable. It seems to me that these are designed simply by the looks rather than how it should support human body.
7. No more sausage --- Ikea used to have this very delicious sausage from USA, but they stop bring it in. They say that because it isn't Swedish food. I miss Ikea breakfast with the sausage.

Image by WikiMedia (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/IKEA_Store_Elmhult.jpg)

5 Worst Gifts

Holiday season is near. So this means that you will have to buy gifts to people, but you will also receive gifts. Here is my worst gifts list.

1. Dollar store goods --- Unless you are a little kid, you don't want to get anything from a dollar store for your gift. I would rather receive nothing than dollar store photo frame or vase. Dollar store maybe good for wrapping papers only.
2. Plants --- This may be good for someone who just wanted a plant in their house. Plants are very tricky, because unlike fresh flowers, they last long. It occupies your space and gives you a new chore of watering. Some plants need special care or makes mess around, or comes with small bugs. Unless you know for sure that they appreciate the plant you are bringing, don't bring plants.
3. Clothes --- This is a very tricky gift as well. Unless you know the brand the receiver likes and the style and colour that really appeal to them, clothes aren't always appreciated. If you give them gift receipts, they may bring it to exchange, but otherwise, it will sure to go to the Goodwill.
4. Large box of cheap chocolate --- This actually happens frequently. After the holiday season is over, I often have many boxes of cheap chocolate I don't know what to do with. They often sit at home for another 6 to 8 months and thrown away in the garbage. It is great to receive a small box of high end chocolate, but before you give away a large box, you should rethink twice.
5. Gift card of the store you never shop --- People think that it maybe better to give a gift card than giving a gift they don't want. Yes, that is correct, but if you are given a gift card to the store you don't like and never shop, what can you do? It is very likely that you will buy something you don't really like or need, or re-gift to someone else.

 What could be your worst gift list?

5 Tips for How To Become A Good Customer Support

I was often frustrated by customer support representatives on the phone. Some of them say one thing then the company does something else. For example, the Sears repair. We had the electric stove top broken in less than two years. It was the smooth top model that you need to order special parts. When we called, they sent a repair man who said that he didn't know what the problem we had and he can not do nothing but charge us money for asking him to come over. We were upset and called Sears again. They took the model number and took information about our problem then sent us another man. Again, this man claimed that he was not informed anything about our problem and he can not do nothing until the parts are ordered. After the third man did the same thing, we just left the stove as it is. We have broken stove top, but can't do nothing about it.

Then, there are support representatives who can't solve customer's problems. It often happens to technical support staff. I had problem with Sony wireless mouse using up batteries in less than a month. I wasn't sure if this was a defect or if this was supposed to be like that, so I called the support. I asked the person if this was normal. He didn't have no knowledge about the product and couldn't answer anything and got upset at the end.

Another type of frustrating customer support is to sell you something else. Like Royal Bank or Bell Canada, when you call them to ask something, they start talking about other products and services that you didn't ask. It is OK to inform me something new, but they often push you and make you tired. They don't mind talking on the phone for one hour advertising their new products or services. It makes me really hesitant to call them because the problem I want to resolve won't take more than a few minutes, but I have to stay on the phone with them for at least half an hour to one hour listening to their advertisement.

So these are examples of bad customer support, but what is the good customer support? Here are list of things that make you are good customer support.

1. Listen what the customer is reporting. --- This is often crucial for technical support. This goes true with e-mail support. Support person often doesn't read or listen the problem carefully so that the customer has to repeat the same information a few times. Even if something reported by the particular customer was never reported by anyone else or you have never seen something like that happen, listen very carefully why the customer is reporting this. Always think why the customer is making an effort to contact you for this issue. Is there a way that explains what the customer is saying? Before you say something back to the customer without thinking carefully, listen and think.
2. Don't say something you don't know for sure. --- If the problem reported is beyond your knowledge, just ask someone who has more knowledge than you. If you don't know, don't say bull and just tell the customer that you will call back, or transfer to someone more knowledgeable, or hold the phone and ask someone else. If you can't answer and no one else can answer, it is better to tell the customer honestly and guide them to alternative places that they might find information.
3. Take customer's side. --- It is often true that customer support won't have pleasant conversations with customers because customers are calling them to complain. The customers are often upset with their products or services. However the first thing they should do is to understand the feelings of the customer. I called some customer support once because things stop working and I was really upset, but hearing "I'm sorry that it is not working" made me feel much better. After all, things are not working is not because of the support person and the customer will understand that if you understand their feelings and give them true sympathy.
4. Try not waste customer's time. --- To get to the support on the phone, the customer often stay on line for a while. When the issue is resolved, don't push too hard on selling something else. After you introduce a new product or services, ask the customer if he/she has more time to listen about it. If the customer is truly interested, they will stay on the phone and ask. It is unpleasant for your ear holding a phone for more than 15 minutes.
5. Own reported issues. --- Not sure how each company works, but owning the reported issue is important. Like Sears support, who took all the information and assured us that the repair person would be informed didn't own the issue. She says so but it was not followed up. This type of disconnect within the company will cause customer distrust.

Chinese Flower Tea

A while ago, a friend of mine went to China and brought me some Chinese tea in a beautiful pouch. She said that these are very good expensive tea. When you open the pouch, there are lots of balls look like some dry vegetables. They don't look like regular tea leaves.
It turned out that these are quite tasty and very pretty tea. Each one of them have different colours of flowers and all you need to do is to put one in a tea cup or tea pot and pour hot water and wait for about three minutes.

Here's the tea ready to drink. How pretty it is! You can also find this in some Chinese tea stores. It tasted pretty good, too.

Dragon Roll

I love sushi, but I usually eat or make very basic sushi. I don't know names of different fish, and unlike sushi connaisseur, I don't like wasabi and I don't taste the difference between good sushi rice and bad sushi rice. So my favorite sushi were cucumber rolls, california rolls, sushi with sashimi on top and so on. Several months ago, I went to some fast food sushi place and ordered this thing called "dragon roll". I don't think I ever tried it before, but because I like eel and I started liking avocados in sushi, I wanted to try. Since that day, "dragon roll" had become my favorite sushi.

This particular fast food place is not the area I frequent, so I decided to make it myself. There are many instructions online. It is actually amazing to see varieties of these instructions. People use so many different ingredients to make "dragon rolls".

My favorite one is the simplest one --- using tempra shrimp, avocado and eel. Here are the quick instructions on how to make this sushi.

What you need:

• Sushi rice (sushi mixed with vinegar etc.)
• Seaweed
• Frozen eel (you can find in Chinese grocery store)
• Avocado 
• Large shrimps and tempura powder --- If you don't want to fry and make mess in your kitchen, maybe you could just take out shrimp tempuras from Japanese restaurant. Two large tempura shrimps would make one roll of sushi.
• Eel sauce (available in Japanese or Chinese grocery store)
• Lemon or lemon juice 

 How to cook:

1. First thing is to make shrimp tempura. Follow the instructions on tempura powder package.

2. Second thing is to spread sushi rice on top of the half size seaweed. Don't roll with the full sheet. That will make a giant dragon roll.

3. Cover the rice created in step 2 with plastic wrap. Then turn up side down. So the plastic at the bottom and the seaweed on the top.

4. Place shrimp temupras on top.

5. Roll it.

6. Cook eel as in the instructions on the package. Cut them into small rectangles. Also cut avocado into similar size pieces. Put some lemon juice on avocado to avoid the colour going brown. Then place pieces of eel and avocado on top of the rolled sushi.

7. Wrap the plastic and roll. Cut into pieces on top of the plastic and remove plastic wrap and place them on the plate. Pour eel sauce and dragon rolls are ready!

Metallic Cats

Christmas time is a fun time to look around shops. Even if you don't buy anything, there are many interesting things in stores. Regardless of the time of the year, I love looking around local LCBO stores. It is not that I drink lots of alcohol, but because they have many beautiful bottles. Yesterday, I found this cat bottled wine at LCBO. They bring cat bottles every year around Christmas time with different colours.

The Moselland cat bottled wine is produced in Germany. The shape of the bottles remind me of Egyptian cat mummies but when I looked at some collector's pictures, they look really cute. So this year, they decided on metallic sky blue and metallic orange. Because of the metallic colouring on the bottle, some of them in the store had scrapes. If you are collecting the bottles, watch out for the perfect face. 

I haven't tasted yet, but since they aren't expensive, I don't expect them to be something very special. This maybe a great gift for cat lovers as well. You can use the empty bottle as a flower vase.

Health, Wealth or Beauty?

Sometimes I wonder which one of "health", "wealth" and "beauty" is the most desirable. When you are young, you may say "beauty". You may think that "beauty" will bring wealth and all the success you need in your life. Like super models and actors are all kind of beautiful. You also notice that prettier friends seem to get away with more things than others. They get more attention from everyone so they get more opportunities.

But how about "health"? When you are healthy and well, you never think about it. You never notice how lucky you are. Like all things in life, you don't really think about what you have, and think more about you don't have. If you are healthy and don't think about any health issues, you might neglect keeping yourself that way. When I was younger, someone said that "how much exercise today will affect your life ten years from now". I don't like exercise of any sorts and I never had any health problems, so I never took such a comment seriously. I thought I wouldn't change that much in ten years just because I didn't work out. I think it might have taken more than ten years to notice deteriorating physical strength in my body, but slowly aches and pains that never bothered me before started becoming a bit of issues. So is "health" the most important thing?

As you get older, you may have children or elderly parents to look after. Even if you are healthy and beautiful, there maybe times that you don't have enough to provide them with what they need. If your parents need full time assistance because of some illness, it costs a lot of money to hire someone to look after them and if you are to assist them, you may not be able to go work. Or you might lose your job and can't find new one for a long time. How can you provide your children with what they need? Is it possible that the "wealth" is the best thing after all? If you are unhealthy and suffer and die at the end, isn't it comforting to have "wealth" so that those you look after won't suffer from your departure?

Sometimes I wish some magical being appears and gives me one wish to be granted. It would be nicer if more than one wishes were granted, but if I have to choose one, what should I pick? I was inclined to say "wealth", but then if he gives me horrible disease that I have to suffer for a long time instead, do I really feel happy about getting "wealth" instead of "health"? Until I meet such magical being, I probably have lots of time thinking about what to choose.

Which one of these three would you choose?

4 Decorating Tips You Won't Fail

There are many interior design books and magazines with lovely pictures. There are useful tips in them but people often fail to create dynamic result as seen in the pictures. Not everyone can afford interior designers and not everyone can afford expensive furniture or antiques. And not everyone has a talent for decorating rooms. Here are some tips for decorating a room you won't fail.

1. Pick a colour and stick with it.
 People often use so many different colours in a single room. That maybe fine for someone who knows what he/she is doing, but if you are not sure what to do to make your room pleasant, the simplest thing is to stick with one colour scheme. Once you pick a colour, everything in the room should be the shade of the colour you picked, or white. If you have to bring in something that has other colours, make sure that your colour is at least 60% of that item. For example, it is often hard to find a patterned cushion with white and the colour of your choice only, but if your cushion has 60% or more of certain shade, it does blend in fine in the colour scheme you chose.

2. Everything should be symmetric.
Modern design often uses non symmetric scheme to make the objects interesting, but here we are talking about simple decorating tips for someone who is not particularly talented in interior design. The best way is to try making your room symmetric. For example, if you buy a floor lamp at one side of the room, buy one more and place at another side of the room. Symmetry always gives pleasant effects on human eyes.

3. Unclutter your room.
Mess is the worst thing you can see in someone's room. If you have some mess, just hide it. Hide inside the closet, hide inside the drawers or whatever, but the room should be clutter free in order to look nice.

4. Take photos of your room.
People often see their own mistakes when looking at photos. How many of you saw your face in the photos and saw imperfections that you didn't notice in a mirror? Photos are the best way to judge your own rooms. Take photos and see what's wrong with your room. Improve your findings and take photos again. By repeating this process, you will make your room nicer.

These are my simple decorating tips you won't fail. Hope you can use some tips from this to create a nice room for yourself.

How To Teach Tricks To A Cat

People think that cats don't learn tricks easily, but it is not true. Cats are as willing to learn tricks as dogs are. My late cat learned three tricks I taught and never forgot until the day she passed away. Since I don't have my cat any more, I can't show you her tricks in videos or photos, but here are the steps to teach your cat.

What You Need
First thing you need is a reward for your cat. No animals would work with you if you don't give them a reward. The best reward for teaching a cat is a piece of seaweed. Yes, seaweed used for sushi. Cats love fish and seaweed is soaked with fish smell. Most of cats would love seaweed if you give them once.
For each reward, you can give them a tiny piece, so they don't get full easily and you have many opportunities to teach and enforce the trick. So get a pack of seaweed.


Teaching to shake a paw
When a cat is relaxing, grab her hand gently and shake. After that, give her a piece of seaweed. Repeat that a few times until the cat is willing to put her paw on your palm for a reward. Enforce the command by using the same word, such as "give me your hand" or something. Cat will soon learn that shaking a hand will get her a piece of seaweed. Repeat for half an hour or so for the first day.  For the rest of the week, ask her to give you a paw several times a day with the same command. Do this frequently for the rest of the month and cat learns the trick for life.

Teaching a cat to stand
Once the cat understand how tasty seaweed is, this is easy to teach. Bring a piece of seaweed near her nose and bring the seaweed higher until the cat stands up. Then give her the seaweed for reward. You should use a new command for this such as "stand!". Similar to shaking a paw, patiently work with your cat.

Summary
Seaweed, patient and repeated command will teach your cat any simple tricks easily. I also taught my cat to roll over. With the command and gesture, my cat did any of these tricks when I asked. Just don't forget the reward at the end!

3 Regrets After Quitting A Job

I was a master of job quitter when I was younger. I got my first part-time job at a restaurant when I was still in high school. I quit in less than two months. I was only working on weekends, so I probably worked only several days. What was my problem? It was too hard. The restaurant was very busy and they didn't train me what to do at different situations. I also couldn't remember what type of cutlery to place for different type of dish. Since that time, I worked many jobs, part time and full time, and quit many times. As I get older, I could hold jobs for longer period of time. At first, working for one year was the limit. Then went to three years, then I had one job for nine years.  Here are some benefits and regrets of quitting a job.

Great Things About Quitting A Job

1. You get back freedom. That's the first thing you notice when you quit a job. You don't have to commute in crowded train. You don't have to sit in the office when the weather is nice. You will walk around outside looking at office workers coming out for lunch and you feel the freedom. Only problem with this is that this feeling of revelation doesn't last very long.
2. You don't have to listen to the boss. There are many reasons for quitting a job but it is often because of your boss. You can't stand him. Even though you may say that you were not satisfied with the opportunities offered in the company or something of that sort in exit interview, often it was because the boss made your life miserable in the company. It maybe more than one of "them". Maybe colleagues who gang up on you and made things difficult for you. Now you don't have to ever see him or them again. This is a great benefit of quitting a job.
3. New possibilities. Many people quit their job after finding a new job. That is very smart and I'm not one of these smart people who does that. I often quit because I can't stand any more and just abruptly quit without much  notice. Those of you who have a new job can look forward to the better situation in new work place. Those of us who don't have another job may have to be unemployed for a while, but there maybe new opportunities you never expected.

Regrets After Quitting A Job

1. Didn't keep enough evidence for law suit. My job quitting is usually sudden, more like bursting out all the pressures and stress that I kept during my working life at the company. So there are some reasons that I am upset about the way I was treated. Mistreatment by the employer is underlying root cause of this. There maybe extreme pressure for non paid over time, unreasonable mistreatment and so on, and I should have collected all the evidence to support my claim if I choose to go that way. However I often don't think about it when I leave. Once I leave and start feeling better, I often realize that what was done to me was injustice, but now all my e-mails are gone with my account. 
2. Why didn't I wait until fired! My long working jobs were all terminated by myself. Not being fired. This means that I can't get any compensation like layoffs. No matter how long I worked for them, I get nothing. I should have acted more stupid at work and let them fire me so that I could collect some money plus benefit of leaving the work place.
3. No money. Obviously this is a large problem when quitting a job without planning. Unless you are financially wealthy without any income, you will get into a trouble eventually. I guess this is the main reason people stay at their job they hate. It is not exactly easy finding something else that may pay as much as you made in previous job.

 What are your thoughts on quitting a job?

Kenji Miyazawa; Japanese writer and poet

I like reading biographies. Not biographies of celebrities, but of authors, scientists and artists from long time ago. However it is quite hard to find any books like that in book stores. Biography section of the book store is usually filled with celebrity biographies and only scientist you could find may be Albert Einstein. When I was in college, there was one text book of computer science that had short biographies of mathematicians throughout the book and I really enjoyed reading them than studying the content of the book.

Kenji Miyazawa is a famous Japanese writer born in 1896. He had mostly written poems and children's stories. If you ever attend elementary school in Japan, you may encounter his story in a text book. Or at least, his stories are in the recommended reading list. He may not be that well-known outside of Japan though. He didn't write that many stories but most of his stories aren't translated in English. Since his stories are old, they are already in public domain, so anyone can choose to translate and publish it in any languages. Maybe I try translating some of his short stories in this blog in future.

He was born in Iwate prefecture, which is the northern part of Japan. In 2011, the largest earthquake in the history devastated in that area but he was born to this farming community. At the time he was born, there was another large earthquake in the area and he saw the suffering of people and farmers. He believed in Buddhism philosophy and studied agricultural science and worked as a teacher. He was not physically strong and passed away due to illness in 1933 at the age of 37.

His stories maybe difficult to understand without knowing the era and how people lived in country side of Japan at that time. Even the words he uses are not the type of words used today in Japan. He also uses large variety of ideophones (sound describing the situation, phenomime, psycomime) and phonomime (sound imitating the real voice or sound) and many of them are his own invented sounds. Another thing that makes difficult to translate into another languages maybe that the way he carries the story. There's special feeling that comes with the way he writes, which is probably not possible to translate into anything.

I am not a fan of poems and I don't really read his poems either. There is one poem of his called "Ame nimo makezu" (Not defeated by the rain) . This is probably the most famous poem of his and you will likely to find in the middle school text book in Japan. This is basically his ideal way of living as a human being based on Buddhism philosophy. My favorite thing is his stories. He has several short stories published before he passed away, but many of his unpublished stories and drafts came out and printed at later time. Many of his stories are dream-like and some of his expressions are very pure and clean. It also reminds me of traditional Buddhism stories that teach life lessons to children.

More information about him, you can visit Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenji_Miyazawa

3 Professionals You Can't Trust

It seems that there are some professionals that you can't find anyone who is trust worthy. I am sure there are good professionals in each field, but from my experience, I have difficulty trusting and believing most of them working in the following fields.

Bank Teller
Have you ever had an experience visiting the bank asking them to do some transactions and they do it wrong or give you an attitude? I have a bit of trust problems with various levels of bank employees. First of all, they charge you fees for everything. They tell you to open this account, that account and when you transfer money between the accounts, or withdraw, they charge you fees. Although they tell you that this type of account has better interest, but when you withdraw, the fee is way higher than any interest you earn from such account. The tellers are usually poorly trained at the bank. When you tell them something other than simply depositing money in your account, they don't know what to do and they even don't want to ask their supervisor and do things wrong. When you want to take out money from your account, they ask you reasons and try to prevent you from withdrawing. It is simply annoying.

Canada Post
I don't say that Canada post employees are as annoying as bank employees, but their jobs aren't often done right. If you want to send a package and ask the price for sending it out, it is different at each time by different employees. Their delivery is often not very reliable. Once I had a letter took more than one year to reach Germany. Not sure if it was the fault of Canada post or something happened in German post, but this wasn't the only time delivery was late. I often have problem sending express mail to the US.  It takes more than 20 days. That too, you can't blame Canada post alone, but the problem with post. I also had a problem of local delivery. I shipped a package that was supposed to arrive the next day but took 4 days. But in this case, you can request a refund at Canada post https://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/support/helpcentre/tracking/late_delivery.jsf
I notice that I usually don't get mails on Mondays or around the public holiday. Not sure if this is just a coincident or delivery is taking a longer break than the rest of the population.

Real Estate Agent
I have to say that the real estate agents are the worst people when it comes to trusting. If you are buying, they will push you to spend maximum amount or more and want you to buy after a couple of days of showing. If you insist looking more places, they will simply tell you there's no more and don't bother to work with you. If you get into multiple offer situation, they tell you to put more than asking price. They will just pressure you and tell you that you don't know nothing about the market and they knew best. If you are selling, they never call you when someone is coming to view your place. When offer comes, they want you to accept as soon as possible. Sometimes they tell you that they would pay you back a bit of fee, but they conveniently forget unless you press it. This profession even makes a nice relative and friends into a greedy monster. I have a very very hard time trusting any real estate agent.

Summary
These are my personal opinions about these professionals. I'm sure there are other bad ones that I don't frequently deal with. I would love to hear about other professionals you don't trust.

Coffee Maker Comparison

There are many different ways to make coffee. Since I really love good cups of coffee, here are my thoughts on different methods.

Automatic Drip-Brew

Currently I own Cuisinart drip-brew coffee maker. You need a filter and grinder (or you can buy ground coffee beans) to make a full pot of coffee in a few minutes. This particular type of pot keeps the temperature for a while, so it is good to enjoy with several friends. Of course keeping the coffee in the pot for a while would make the taste of the coffee go bad. After using this for a while, I noticed that the taste of the coffee isn’t so great and it gets worse as you use more. I tried changing filters, washing the machine using vinegar, tried washing inside the pot to remove coffee stains but still the taste wasn’t so great. The most effective thing was to cleaning the coffee stains inside the pot, but this is quite difficult. The way the pot is small at the opening and deep inside, you can not scrub hard at the bottom of the pot. Cause of the flat taste maybe due to the water not being boiled, or passing through paper filter. For the taste wise, this machine is B.

 

Tassimo coffee maker

This is actually great for one or two cups of coffee. I have used Keurig as well and they are both good for a single cup. You could also make cappuccino, latte, hot chocolate, specialty coffee etc. as long as you can find the disks. Major problem with this is that you can only make the types of drinks available in disks. I have to say that Keurig has wider variety of specialty coffee, but Tassimo is great for cappuccino. Making tea with this is actually a bad idea. It doesn’t taste good at all. Since I can’t seem to find great tasting coffee in Tassimo disks, I usually use it for cappuccino, latte, hot chocolate or espresso. For taste wise, this machine is A, but lack of variety makes this machine as “cappuccino machine” rather than coffee maker for me.

 

 

 

French Press

This coffee maker probably makes the best tasting coffee among these three methods. Adding freshly ground coffee and pour hot boiling water makes the best coffee ever. However this method is dangerous if you are not careful. Older version of French coffee makers sold in the market had issues with holding up the pressure. This causes unexpected splash of hot water when you are pressing it down. I had severely burnt myself twice in my arm resulting second degree burns. Since then, I was mostly using other methods of making coffee but recently I bought the newer version of French press that looked safe enough for me. I’m still very cautious using this machine and you need to make sure no children are running around when you are pressing this coffee. For taste wise, this coffee maker is A+, but not very safe to use.

 

 

Summary

If I were to live with a single machine, I will probably choose Tassimo, but if someone would make it for me, I would love to live with French press. Drip-brew is fine for serving many friends but I won’t use it for one cup of coffee.
As for the beans, you should buy whole beans and grind when you need. Even the best coffee beans don’t taste good if already grounded and not in sealed environment for a while.