Category: Uncategorized

It’s almost mid-February and it’s still quite chilly out but the days are surely getting longer. There’s just a faintest bit of daylight still visible when I leave work now. A very subtle reminder that sunnier and longer days are ahead. It may not be much but it has made me feel better than we’re making steady progress out of winter. Some more sunlight in my life would be a welcome change.

I don’t think I’ve heard Andy Richter drop that many f-bombs in such a short time before. Actually, when was the last time you heard the f-word uncensored on Conan?

I’m really looking forward to doing my taxes this year. I almost have all my forms and documents ready. I feel much more prepared than I was last year and I am confident that I won’t be owing any money this time around. I’ll probably do my taxes later this month, just waiting for my T4 from work.

Overnight, it snowed a fair amount but not enough to justify not going to work. I was really disappointed. I think it was just on the cusp of being enough snow to cause real delays in transit and other methods of commuting. It was fine in the end. Now it’s been raining all evening so most of the snow has been washed away. A normal and boring day awaits tomorrow.

I went to bed way earlier than usual, almost an hour and a half earlier. I wound up waking up an hour before my alarm, couldn’t fall back asleep, and felt exhausted by the beginning of the evening. I’m going to try to go to sleep early again, hopefully it won’t lead to exhaustion again.

The above video is a short but fascinating four minute documentary on “pagpag“, leftover and discarded food, which is then scavenged, often cooked again, and then eaten. The practice was borne out of necessity, as some areas of the Philippines suffer from extreme poverty. Interestingly, some people have been able to carve out a basic living from selling pagpag. Not surprisingly, health officials highly discourage the preparation and consumption of pagpag. Having said that, I am somewhat curious how fast and badly I would get sick if I attempted to eat some pagpag. Given that my body has not encountered anything like this, I’m guessing I would vomit or get diarrhea within five minutes of my first bite.

I bought my very first exchange traded fund (ETF) last week. I am terrible at investing, so it’s taken me quite some time to dip into ETF territory. The ETF I bought deals with Canadian banks. Instead of buying shares in a particular bank, this ETF diversifies by having shares of all the major banks. I feel like if banks are gonna rip people off with fees, I should at least get in on that action. The fund has a dividend but there has been some volatility in its performance since 2017, having gone up and down like a yo-yo. I’m hoping it smooths out over the long-term and the regular dividends make this a good fund for income. Only time will tell if I made a smart choice with this one.

It dawned on me last week that I have to renew my mortgage in about six months. I’ve done the mortgage renewal once before and I am definitely going to use a mortgage broker again to find me the best mortgage for the next one.

Renewing a mortgage is one of these things you have to do because you’re an adult but it’s obviously very important. While it maybe a hassle, one of my motivations of getting this done is that I may get a better rate and save some money.

I had a filling put in one of my top right molars earlier this month and then just this weekend, I had another filling placed in one of top left molars. It’s not a pleasant thing to have two fillings done in a span of two weeks.

Before this latest procedure started, the dentist asked me a great question. She wanted to know if I often got food stuck in the area where she was about to work in. I excitedly said yes. The top left part of my teeth is a trap for food, especially meat. Whatever had gone on in that area, resulted in a large gap that allowed food to get into a space between two teeth but made it very difficult for the food to get out without flossing. I would sometimes come home from a dinner and immediately go floss out the area. I was often shocked at the amount of meat I was able to floss out of that space, just huge chunks of meat stuck right up in then. It was all very unfortunate.

So back to the dentist asking me about my food storage area between my teeth. She said that because she was putting in a filling in that area, she had the opportunity to reshape one of the teeth and close off that gap, preventing food from getting stuck up in there. She warned me it might not be perfect but it could be better than before.

The whole procedure went smoothly and quickly but I couldn’t tell if this filling had significantly changed the way I could eat going forward. I had to wait several hours for the freezing to wear off and then I had to go to dinner with my family for Lunar New Year. At dinner, I ate all sorts of delicious meats, some with a stringy texture that easily would have been stuck in my old teeth configuration. After dinner, I realized nothing had gotten stuck up there. It was such a relief to not have to pick at my teeth, trying to pluck half a steak from that gap.

This new filling was a minor life-changer!