Muse at the Air Canada Centre

Seeing Muse last night at the Air Canada Centre brought back high school memories of when I would listen to their music. Their new stuff has changed from what I remember, but reliving all their albums in one night was a lot of fun!

Milosz is a big fan and has been to their concerts before, so I was happy he asked me to go with him once his friend was unable to attend.

I made sure to text message my friend Tina before the show, who is also a big fan. She said the same thing as me, their new stuff isn't quite what it used to be, but it is still good.

Their opening band was this heavy rock band called Band of Skulls, who are from Ireland. Milosz and I came in the middle of their set, which isn't the kind of music I'd normally listen to. It was more of the thrash, rock genre; not my kind of music. They did well though for the ticket holders on the main floor. From my seat, I could tell they were having a lot of fun and enjoying the rock experience.

Since I am a sucker for classics, my favourite song was played during the encore part of their set. Before Muse returned to the stage, the audience knew what song they wanted to play. Everybody in the stadium turned their flashlights on their smart phones to make the whole stadium look like stars in the night sky. Yes, my favourite Muse song is, 'Starlight'. Definitely had a lot of fun last night =)

Mika at The Opera House

I actually scored tickets to Mika's sold out show! There were people selling tickets on stubhub.com and my guess was they suddenly couldn't make it to the show. I found $10 tickets! Stacey was happy to join me last night and we had a great time!

Max and Curtis (his band mates) DJayed beats to open up the show. They did that for about 15-20 minutes to get the crowd excited. Mika just put on a great show and he played straight!I absolutely love him, he is my favourite artist of all time him and Josh Groban are tied for number one). I call him my male icon... that's why I call him my guycon =P I feel like he needs to play bigger venues whenhe comes to Canada, but I understand he has a bigger fan base in Europe. It`s too bad he only did one date and is in Montreal today. If he did two Toronto shows back-to-back, I would've searched for another pair of tickets on Stub Hub!

This is the part where I tell you all that this Tuesday, I am going to *drum roll* see Muse! I only found out yesterday. My friend Milosz has tickets and his friend couldn't make it (I know what that's like haha) so he saw me and asked if I'd be interested. That's this Tuesday and I am so pumped for it! I'm doing a concert every week like a crazy person lol I can get used to this and make my life revolve around this.

New sweet spot downtown!

I met Maria last week while attending the Liverpool vs Toronto FC exhibition game (oh what a dream weekend that was!) We decided since we both want to try some new things in Toronto, why not do them together? After all, company is always fun to have!

We met downtown Saturday afternoon and decided to go to this place, NADÈGE Patisserie. I've heard of it through my sister earlier this summer, and once Maria told me she has been for their macarons, I HAD to go try them out! We had a lovely lunch there together where we ordered sandwiches. I forgot the name of what I had only that it was smoked salmon, cucumbers, dill and cheese all jammed into a croissant for a magnificent taste! If you know me, you know I love smoked salmon. Having this explosive flavour (as Remy from Ratatouille would explain it) on a Saturday afternoon was amazing. The ingredients defintiely complimented each other in the croissant and I have nothing else to say except I'm definitely returning soon. I'm so glad Maria brought me here! As for their macarons, what an amazing price for such delightful treats!

I am a big macaron fan and usually go up to Bay Street for them at MoRoCo. Now I have another place to go to! If you haven't been to this place, I highly recommend it. Prices seem reasonable to me and if you are a foodie like Maria and I, you won't have a problem making a trip here (we tried it at 780 Queen St. West, in the Trinity Bellwoods area).

We also went to David's Tea (the location is also on Queen St. West) to replenish our tea cabinets and find her sister a birthday gift. Her sister's birthday is tomorrow, and we ended up getting her a teapot, tea cups and saucer set with intricate coral flower designs on it. I think she'll like it, since we are all tea drinking enthusiasts. I've also purchased three tea flavours (Bamboozled, Organic Kanpe tea and Coffee Pu'erh *for the sister, I am not a coffee drinker*). I had trouble shutting my full tea cabinet, but I am excited to try these new flavours. I'm going to try them this week and will let you know how my energy level is after them!

We ended our lovely day with frozen yogurt at Menchie's =D

Need I say more with the picture?! It took all our upper arm strength in us to get the flavours we wanted (I think all the goodness in the machine was running low?). We had our red velvet, mocha, chocolate hazelnut, chocolate and a chocolate vanilla swirl thrown in both of our tubs =) Frozen yogurt isn't just for kids!

Happy New Year!

I didn't think I'd be back. I honestly didn't know if there ever would be a return to this blog, but as luck may have it, here I am!

The last four years flew by in a blur and I am grateful to be here. I haven't forgotten my fellow classmates and today I do stay in touch with a close group of them. Since graduating this past June, I've been trying to do a bit of soul searching along the way.

I never got the chance to do a lot of things (especially with devoting my time to my academics and saving up the money for school). Now that I'm finally done with that (along with paying off school *PHEW*) I feel I can spend more time on myself.

Things are going to change around here. I will be showing my creative side!! If I bake it, you'll see it here. If I knit something, I'll show it off. If I go on one of my 10k runs on a whim, you'll hear me ramble.

Hell, if I try out a new beauty product and absolutely hate it, I'll talk about that too. The point is, here I am back and uncensored for you all.

I want to have fun with this new year, so why not come along and join me? ;)

"A Million Ways" to do a Film Project

For the film project, Erin and I got brainstorming on creating a music video. When deciding on what song to use, I thought we should try for a song by an independent band and avoid mainstream music (and copyright issues). Erin found a French song “Étienne d'Août” by Malajube, and it seemed to fit our idea perfectly. We had a few ideas about how to film and the kind of shots we wanted to take. Our ideas required more people, so we decided to invite Josie, Katrina and Laura into our group.

We decided to begin the video, we should do something all out fun with parts of dancing. I told my group we should do something neat, like the backyard video the OK Go did for their song “A Million Ways”. I have known the dance for over a year now, so I took it upon myself to teach small bits of it to the rest of the group. Whoever said media students were great dancers? It was a lot of fun doing small parts of the dance, and we were able to do the whole dance with cutting inbetween. After that, we proceeded with some more choreography done on the spot at different angles. We also rotated each other around to take turns to film so everyone else could be in it (we didn’t exactly want to trust anyone else with the camera we rented from Humber).

We thought the footage we filmed was great, but after a while we decided to have fun. I played around with the different special effects features while filming students walking up and down the Guelph Humber spiral staircase. Imust say, the angle shot I took was pretty neat, and none of the students noticed me filming their feet for a good 2 minutes.

When we were done filming, we decided to upload the footage to Erin’s laptop using firewire. We tried to fiddle around with special effects and neat film designs, but when it came to saving the video, the file wouldn’t save at all. We tried to change it into pieces, but that didn’t work either. We concluded it was probably the size of the file that would not allow us to save with the amount of memory on Erin’s laptop, so we have no final product to show =(. I must say we did have a great time though filming, it’s just a shame we didn’t get to save it.

"Sex and the City"; Guelph Humber Version

I am sitting in the middle of Guelph Humber on the second floor outside of William’s Coffee Pub with a few of the most amazing women. I have had the pleasure to make friends with these three women throughout the duration of this course, and we have become close thanks to our activist project, Project Burma. Erin, Katrina and Laura are my new “Sex and the City” soul mates.

We just attended Mark Lipton’s lecture, where we discussed different technologies invented and even watched the first few minutes of the Zeitgeist movie. I watched it this past summer when my friend linked me to it, so it wasn’t as if it was something unfamiliar to me. I’m surprised that a lot of the people I sat with, including the ladies I am sitting with now have never heard of it.

I see Erin as the one with the thickest skin out of all of us, as she hasn’t seen the Zeitgeist movie before. Erin has a very open mind and is always willing to hear other people’s idea, which is what I like the most about her. One day, I was trying to find a seat in Mass Communications when she and I were only acquainted with each other. I didn’t want to look like an idiot and sit all by myself for 20 minutes before class, so I tried to find a spot where I could throw my backpack on the side to make it look like I was with somebody. She looked up and saw me wandering around the rows like the fat kid who doesn’t get picked for dodge ball. She was kind enough to push her jacket off to the side and welcome me to the seat beside her.

Katrina is a very gentle person, but when she saw the Zeitgeist movie, she decided to view some of it on her laptop afterwards. I must say, she was offended because she is Catholic and did not like some of the ideas portrayed in the movie. I told her it was just a movie, and she tried to put it at the back of her mind. I told her that if she was going into public relations like me, she shouldn’t be bothered and accept that there will be ideas she will not like but have to face, it is all part of the industry. She told me that I’m the ‘advice girl’ and felt better within seconds.

Laura has got to be the one I consider to be the one I bonded with the most at Guelph Humber. She and I coincidentally live in Mississauga, so we now go home together and talk about almost everything. When the Zeitgeist movie was up on the projection screen, her mood did not change at all. That’s funniest thing about Laura, she keeps the same face and until you actually talk to her, you know what kind of mood she is in. She’s not shy; she is just quiet and knows the right time to speak. To me, she is my ‘advice girl’ where I can always go to if I need her.

What have I learned from these three girls? I learned that we all agree we work the hardest in our Mass Communications class. I learned that we probably put the most effort into the same things. I learned we all have seen every episode of “Sex and the City” (except for Laura). I also learned I made new friends I can rely on. I always thought that university would be about studying and being a social hermit, but now I know I can relate to people experiencing the same situations as me; I am grateful =)

"Wouldn't you be upset if it were Bingus?" "..."

Circus animals? Seriously?! I feel like a jerk as I am typing this but I did not understand that group’s presentation. Bingus, formerly known as Bingo Falafel, even got a mention in their presentation. Mistreatment of animals in general could have been a broader topic for them, in my opinion. It was an alright pitch for the spokesperson that did all the talking, but I have no place to judge. I don’t even live on res so I won’t even see these posters put up.

We discussed technology today and went up to the white board to write down what our group feels to be technology today. The alphabet and the printing press were a couple of my ideas, and since they were recognized by Mark Lipton, it just gives me a tad bit more confidence in the timeline project I did with my group, WHOO HOO!

So we talked about distractions in our daily lives and how our ideas get interrupted. I get distracted by the slightest things when I am working; food, movies, music, and the Internet. Though like most of my peers, I resist from these distractions and hope to get my work done. This is why my school is priority number one and I am willing to bust my butt for what I want to achieve. Mark told us, “Unless you are going to work for it, you will not get it.” This is why I am attending university...I want a stable job, I want to make something of myself, and I want to finish school so I can have a future.