End of the Year

 

It is almost the end of 2012. Lots of people make new year's resolution for the coming year, but I never really make any resolutions. Some people say that they try to learn at least one thing every day, and they look back at the end of each day to see what they learned on the day. That is amazing, but I could never do that. I admire people who live daily learning something new, or achieve things every year that they set a goal to. Sometimes I do set a goal and achieve something but I think I am mostly lazy.

I feel like I wasted another year again. I still have time to decide about new year's resolution. Let's see if I have something by the beginning of the year, or I'll just cross to the new year without any resolution like any other year.

Commercial and Reality

We all know that commercial is to promote the products or services to people but the contents of the commercial we see might not be real. I am not too sure if there's a law for how much can be false, but some of them are really misleading, especially for little children.
When I was small, I watched some cartoon which a girl in the cartoon can change herself into whatever she wants when she looks at her magic compact mirror and says the magic words. I saw the commercial on TV selling that compact mirror as a toy. In the commercial, a girl who has this toy would change herself into something else when she says the magic words, just like the girl in the cartoon. So I was very excited to use this compact mirror, however, of course, it doesn't work. As a young child, I was very disappointed that what they promoted on TV commercial wasn't true. For adults, it is obvious that this compact mirror toy is not a magic mirror, but for a child, it is a big disappointment. After several disappointments from those toys, I learned that I shouldn't trust the commercial.
Although I learned that for the toys, it is still hard to see if something says in the commercial is true or not. For example, some drug store brand of hair colour products were promoted by some famous TV stars, but do they really use such cheap products on their hair? It is the same for the makeup products. Does the famous TV star would really use $4.00 nail polish on their nails, or use $5.00 lipsticks? If they used someone not well known, no one would care if that person actually used the product or not, but using a famous star, it does raise a question.
Some other commercials use not well known people, but the commercial seems like testimonials from real consumers, but are they real consumers? Or are they actors just saying things they were told to say?
It is great that the commercial could show you what you didn't know about the products, or using famous actors to make it exciting, but there are many misleading commercials and we need to watch out.

Image by eshedg on flickr

Acrophobia

Many people have phobias of some sort. I have seen people who are afraid of chickens, cats, frogs among many other things. Probably the most common phobia is acrophobia --- afraid of height. I have this one. I am coping a lot better as I get older, but when I was a child, I had a lot of problem with it. I couldn't walk on the cross bridges to cross the street. I still don't like going on any kind of bridges and I will avoid if possible, but in general, I can handle better.
Phobia is very different from being just afraid. I am afraid of dark places especially after watching ghost stories on TV, but I don't have a phobia of dark place. When I'm on high place, I am O.K. if I am surrounded by high fences, but I can't go somewhere with low fences or no fence around. I just can't go to the edges. I think I'm on alert at the high place even if I was surrounded with high fences, but I don't go panic. It is a totally different feeling from just "don't like" or regular type of being afraid.
I also noticed another kind of fear watching google earth. Google earth is a program that will take you anywhere in the world. It shows the earth and you can quickly go down to wherever you want to go, but the way you look down from the high place and the speed of going down make me very scared. I think it is similar to being scared of height. Somehow these are related, but I get overwhelming feeling using google earth. I am afraid.
If you think about it, it makes sense to be afraid of height. You can feel that you might fall down from there, but being afraid of google earth is strange, but that happens. I know that I am not going to fall anywhere watching computer screen, but the sensation of moving on top of mountains and oceans makes me uneasy, especially on top of oceans.
There is a list of phobias online like wikipedia. When you look through the list, you might find more. I have a few more things.

Fear of butterfly --- Called mottephobia. I think I am almost overcoming this phobia. I still don't like real butterflies, but I don't have to run away so badly now.

Fear of human figure dolls --- Called automatonophobia. I never liked human shaped dolls like Barbies, but I was particularly afraid of Japanese dolls with kimono. Unless their face is made like cartoon, I can't look at their faces. If the doll looks more human, I am more afraid of it.


Image by Renato Ganoza on flickr

Ikura

Ikura is salmon eggs often used in sushi and other Japanese food. The name origin is actually from Russian. Ikura is very pretty. They look like little gem stones and they taste delicious, too. I haven't had it for a long time so I decided to buy some from Japanese fish market before the end of the year.
Last week, I was trying to make gunkan sushi, but couldn't make it nicely. When I cut seaweed, I couldn't cut it properly to make the right height and right length. After studying some YouTube videos, I realized that seaweed must be cut into 6 equal width from a sheet. That made the right height to place Ikura.
So finally my gungan sushi was ready today!

Boxing Day

December 26th is "Boxing Day", which is big sale everywhere in Canada. The malls are very busy and open earlier than usual. Even though I don't really have anything to buy, my family wanted to go to the mall, so we plan to arrive at 8:00 a.m. at Yorkdale mall, which is probably the one of the busiest malls in Canada. Even regular Sundays are so busy that if you arrive there in the afternoon, you can't find any parking spot. Unfortunately, we were late by 10 minutes today. The parking was already full and the sea of cars were coming into the mall parking lot. After going around a bit, we spotted a spot at the end of the parking. We were really lucky. That's how busy it was there.
Inside the mall was busy. Some stores have a lineup at the entrance to keep people waiting until inside becomes not too crowded. Big name stores were mostly busy, but some of them don't really have real sale. It used to be that they had the sign says "50% off" and "up to" in small letters, but now they say "Everything is 50% off" and saying "exclude some items" in small letters. When it says "everything" and "exclude some" sounds like cheating to me, but this might work better with people. There are many way to promote sales. Some says "Buy one and get another one for 50% off", which is basically 25% off if you buy two, but "50%" in writing could be more appealing to people. Sometimes they don't have anything special but says "2 for $20", so people buy two. They don't realize 1 is for $10. That often happens at groceries. They say "3 for $30" then says "$10 each" in small letters.  
After my family finished shopping, we saw lots of cars illegally parked at bad spots, which made more traffic as the cars have difficulty going in and out of the parking. Then, they now wanted to go another busy mall, Fairview mall. I told them there would be no parking at that time, but they didn't listen and drove there anyway. As expected, two or three cars were waiting at every isle of the parking lot, so we had to give up finding the spot. They had some cars parked on the grass, then I saw the yellow tickets on them. Not sure how much they are charged, but probably it wasn't worth parking there and ticketed. I don't think they got that much of a good deal.
Although I generally like to see and buy things at the store, I do prefer online than going to such crowded mall. After we came home, my husband went back to Fairview by subway.

Image by dahon on flickr

7 Tips on Selling Your House Quickly

When you want to sell your house, you want to sell it as quickly as possible. Sometimes you have to sell because you already bought another. It is also a lot of disturbance for your life as strangers come and go frequently, and you might have to leave your home for open house on weekends. I haven't bought many houses, but I have seen a lot of them. I guess I am very picky about where to live, so I have to look at many houses over many years before I could find one. I sold one house. First we sold it the day after we put it on the market, but the buyer changed their mind a few days later and we put it on the market again and sold it in a week. That was several years ago, but from the experience of looking at so many houses (I'm sure I looked at least 100 houses) and my own experience of selling, here are some tips for selling a house quickly.

1. Clean your house like you never done before --- Cleanliness of your house is only the surface and it doesn't give any extra features, but it is extremely important. Not many home buyers come in a mind of a builder distinguishing the cosmetic issues to fundamental issues. It also shows how you took care your house. If I see a very messy cluttered house with some cosmetic damages, I wouldn't buy it. Because it shows that the owner didn't take care of the house, meaning there could be something else major which the inspector can not find. For example, if the kids of their house constantly damage the house and if the parents don't stop them, who knows if they put some toys in the pipe, food in a toilet, bug infestation at the end of the closet. Unless pipe shows the problem when the inspector comes, you will not know until years later.
2. Fix cosmetic damages --- If you have holes in a wall, dirty paint, peeling wall paper, then fix them all. If the hole can't be fixed, hide it by hanging something from the wall. It is important to give the buyers good impression when they first walk in. Buying a house is very emotional.
3. Place the minimum furniture properly --- Some people can not imagine how to decorate the house without furniture. It is better to place minimal furniture at the right location. For example, if you are using the dining room as an office, you need change that to put dining room furniture and make it look like a dining room. Remove all clutters and wrong items from the place.
4. Use neutral colour and patterns --- Red is a great colour and I love red rooms, but this is not everyone's taste. If your house has strong wall colour, that gives the buyer a work of repainting as the first thing to do. It is always better to use soft colours that don't shout at people. It's the best if they don't remember the colour of the wall. Once I went to this house with self-claimed artist. The wall was painted with scenery. It was a horrible sight. That's the only thing I remember from that house.
5. Make sure your house smells good --- Once I went to this house in the evening. I believe they just had a dinner, but the smell of the house was so strong. I just had to leave.
6. Make sure your house looks clean from outside --- If you have garbage bins in front, move them to the back. The entrance of the house is as important. You have to have very nice curve appeal, but it has to look clean and nice enough. If it isn't winter, you can place bright flowers. If it is winter, make sure to clear snow before any potential buyer comes. Once we wanted to see a house and made an appointment but when we came outside, the house didn't look nice. We just skipped that house and didn't even go in.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone. Just sharing some pictures today.

No, this isn't turkey. Roasted chicken.

Mail man was working very hard this week. We got this delivered on Sunday. Yes, on Sunday.

 

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Grapple

Have you ever seen "Grapple" in a grocery store? These are apples infused by grape water. It has very strong fragrance that is like grapes, but basically nothing different from regular apple.

If you couldn't smell, you can't tell this is a special apple.

Inside looks the same, too. The taste of this apple is almost like a regular apple, but there is after taste of grapes. Not sure if this is worth to spend more, but interesting. I bought them as a pack of four for $4.99 + tax.

Blue Lagoon

I like looking at cocktail drinks. They are very pretty and fun. Most of them are quite delicious, too. The other day, I tried this blue lagoon. You can make by mixing 2 parts vodka, 1 part blue curacao, 6 parts lemonade with ice. It is very easy to make, easy to drink and pretty.
Recently my problem with drinking alcohol is getting headaches after drinking it. If I drink lots of water with alcohol drink, it does help, but that is not always the solution. If my headache persists, I have to take some medication and sleep. Probably it is not worth to drink if I have to go through every time, so I don't drink for a while if I get bad headaches after drinking it.
It is the holiday season and everyone has a chance to drink some alcohol, but be careful about drinking too much and have fun!

3 Ways to Wrap Your Gifts

It is the time of the year that we wrap gifts and give them away to people. You can put them in a nice bag with tissue paper, you can ask to wrap it when you purchase the gift at the store, but here, I'll show you three simple ways to wrap your gifts.

The left is how you can wrap using cellophane sheet. If the gift inside looks pretty, you can just show off the gift using transparent wrapping with ribbon to tie on the top. You can use coloured cellophane if that might look better for the gift. Coloured cellophane doesn't show off the gift that much, but you can just see through. Christmas pudding would look nice in red cellophane instead of clear one. If your gift is small, cellophane wrapping adds volume and makes the gift looks more impressive.
The left is Hello Kitty Christmas stocking filled with candies. It is fun to show off the candies inside. This would be a fun gift for a young girl.

The right is the wrapped gift with a little goodies with a sticker on the top. Sanrio stores used to wrap gifts like that and that made me really happy. Little extra gift on top of the real gift is a nice little touch.

Then, of course, very regular gift wrapping with ribbon. If you have multiple gifts for one person, instead of adding bows on each, you can put them together and tie with nice ribbon.

Happy gift wrapping to everyone!

Children's Math Tip: Don't Calculate Until The End

When I was teaching math to my daughter and her friend, I noticed that sometimes they work hard for a wrong answer. It is because they calculate every step. For example, take a look at


                                         10÷3×9

If you want to calculate 10÷3 , you get 3.33333... and my daughter would round that to 3.33. Then multiplying by 9, they get 29.97. If she would spend time looking at this, she could see that this is

So the point for her to learn from this mistake is that don't calculate until you see what you have to calculate as a whole, and cancel out as much as she could before doing any calculations.

Actually this is probably true for everything in life. If you don't see the entire picture before start working on it, you might be wasting your time working hard for the wrong result. Capture the whole picture first, then think what maybe the right way to go about, then find the best way to attack the problem.

It is easy to say it, but very difficult to get it done. I believe I am doing what my daughter was doing in my life just doing from the beginning without looking at the whole picture. It is easy to see in math, but for me, it is difficult to see in real life. There are many things you can learn from math.