Unmarried people (children...usually) receive these red envelopes, known as 红包 (lai see, cantonese) from the married, i.e. parents, aunts and uncles and the like. It's considered good luck to give these, and the red is to ward off evil spirits. I've also heard that it's supposed to be something like a wish for future prosperity.

My house is multilingual. The...children (most of whom are over the age of 14) primarily speak English, while the adults speak Cantonese, Vietnamese, English as well as at least one other Chinese dialect (my mom speaks Hakka chinese). Since my family runs a Vietnamese restaurant, we usually just go with the Vietnamese new years greeting: Chúc mừng năm mới!

Anywho, excuse me while I get some sleep.

 This arrived just in time for Christmas. Amazing. Ordered it last week from Songbird Ocarinas, and it made it in a week. International shipping usually takes like 2-3 weeks, but this one made it in half the time. For those who can't tell what it is (sorry for the bad photo), it's a replica of the Ocarina of Time, in the epic beginning of the Legend of Zelda series. It's sitting on a very nice looking wooden stand.

 Christmas party at the folks' restaurant. I'd call it a Vietnamese Christmas party. Decked out with Hainam Chicken and rice and many other delicious delicacies. It was coupled along with obnoxiously loud karaoke (in Vietnamese) that came along with an even louder score screen.

We headed to my cousin's place for the night after getting deafened by the karaoke. He's got a small house that he rents along with a few other friends, but it's really nicely decorated. The stairwell up to the second floor is adorned by his guitars, which hang from the walls, and various posters and pieces of art.

The living room centers around the TV, which doesn't have cable apparently. My cousin's massive blu-ray collection graces the shelves, while the combined games of his and his friends inhabit the two shelves on the side. They've got two PS3's in the house. Could've been three, but the third person left theirs at their parent's place. We jammed with Rock Band 3 all night (not all night, but for a good while).
My cousin's two friends collect records. In the left box were some older songs, while the right box had some very classy orchestral music; like Bach, Brahms and many other classical and romantic works.
And this is where those records are played. The one of the bottom plays it. The two things on top are the controllers for DJ Hero. 

 So apparently, a friend of his (who works as a caterer) did a meal for Douglas Coupland, the author of books like jPod, Microserfs and the man who coined the term 'generation x'. Some of the ornaments on the rather bare tree were made by Coupland. He also gave my cousin's friend some works of art that he did.

Christmas dinner today. Stuffed turkey, tuna, some veggies, leftovers from yesterday's party, and a whole whack of other stuff. There were a few more dishes behind me that I couldn't get into the shot. The bowl in the middle is gravy.

It's Labour Day here in Canada and the US of A, and school starts tomorrow for most kids and people. I haven't gotten any emails yet, so I guess my classes start on Wednesday. Anywho, I figured I'd let put up an extra feature for the long weekend.






A nice little summer song to make you remember all the goods times you had, and make you feel like crap knowing that it's over and that you'll be stuck at whatever you usually do.

Title: Sunshine
Artist: Atmosphere
Genre: Hip Hop, Rap
Single: N/A
Album: Sad Clown Bad Summer Number 9
Vintage: 21/08/07 ddmmyy

Kenn's Comment:  Atmosphere is one of the most successful long running independent hip hop groups in America. A thing I like about this song is that it doesn't have the drugs, alcohol, whores, crime and what not that rap and hip hop has more or less been plagued by in main stream music.

It's a very summer-y song. The lyrics really paint a picture of a nice summer day, one you probably won't see until next year.

Day 1 of the Powell Street Festival.This is the 神輿 (mikoshi) of the festival. I didn't see it being carried because my mom was so unimpressed by the festival we left within 15 minutes of getting there.


Another thing. Not sure how this was moved, but it's got a drum up there, so obviously someone was supposed to stand there and drum away.

An unpainted and undecorated..mikoshi? Not really sure because I didn't read the info blip paper beside it. Sure looks like a scaled miniature version of a very elaborate and big omikoshi though.

A better shot of the top of the mikoshi. Lots of things there. They basically serve as portable Shinto shrines, so they've got to be good enough for a god to take up residence in.

Some really big paper cranes that hung from trees around Oppenheimer park.

A shot from today. These blackberries grow along my path to the bus stop for the 20. You could probably eat these, but I'm not quite too sure about their ripeness.

Most of these ones are probably ripe, but they're really low to the ground, so I wouldn't take my chances with these guys. I'll leave them for the Ratatas and the Zizagoons.


A lot of greenery along the way. I was half expecting to have to battle a wild Pidgey or Ratata. Fortunately (or unfortunately) nothing came out. Good thing too, because I didn't have any of my Pokemon or Pokeballs with me.


If there was one thing I hated about walking to the 20 stop, it'd be the hill. The hill is a bit more than uncomfortably steep, and makes short work of me. Going down it on a rainy night is probably one of the scariest things you can do. It's steep enough that on certain sections of the sidewalk, they've stuck little concrete rungs into the sidewalk so you don't slide down the concrete. The houses are really nice in the area though. Equally expensive too.

Day 2 of the Powell Street Festival. I think there were more people there today than yesterday. Or maybe it's just because I was there later in the day compared to yesterday.

Speaking of dolls, this lady makes wooden and sewn fabric dolls. They're pretty cute, and the wooden dolls are traditional Japanese dolls called kokeshi dolls (こけし). They're at the far right of the photo. If you still don't know what they look like, they're the basis of the Mii's, the character avatars of the Nintendo Wii.

Bought myself a nice Kamen Rider 1 character mask. It's made out of some pretty sturdy plastic, and actually fits me, unlike that black robotic face mask I bought for a dollar off the internet.

A pretty cool effect, huh? This is what it more or less looks like when you're looking through the mask. I took the photo by sticking the camera behind the mask.

There were a few martial arts demos today. First was an aikido demonstration, and then there was a shoriji kempo demo. Both demos had senior practitioners all the way to new beginning disciples (most of them children). The senior practitioners had chest plates which looked pretty cool.

The food tents were probably one of the most popular area. The line up was absurdly long.

I was supposed to meet up with Izzy today at one. Yes, I guess I did tell her I'd be wearing my beloved horse mask, but I didn't have the guts to run around in public wearing it. So I sat and pulled it out, laying it out beside me. I got enough weird stares like that. She didn't find me, and about an hour and a bit later, I found her in the line up for the food stall.

I don't have any photos of her though. Stuff came up on her end so we couldn't hang, so you can go complain to her over at her blog. She had a Plusle character mask. I think my Kamen Rider mask was cooler by leaps and bounds.

Though my plans were as good as spoiled, I stuck around to watch the musical performance of Haagen-Ryuzen, a fusion of electric music and acoustic Japanese flute instrumentals. I really liked all the flute parts, and it was awesome when he started swinging around the didgeridoo. Didgeridoos sound really funny.


He looked pretty funny playing it into the mic though. The bass coming from it could be heard from quite far away. Sounded kind of like a dog barking.

A shot of the empty stage.

Some traditional Japanese dance by Otowa Ryu. I was wondering what all the girls and women in kimono were standing behind the stage were going to do.


Also a dance involving fans (which are always cool).



A mask I got for my brother. I think it's Kamen Rider V3, but I'm not sure. The mask is a tad bit smaller than my Kamen Rider 1 mask, but I didn't want to get two of the same. Didn't take a shot from behind the mask with this one.


Shots from my walk home. Fruit trees line the streets, but I've never been able to tell what kind of trees they are. The fruit of the trees is the middle picture, and obviously the photo on the right is a picture of the tree itself. The fruit is supposedly very sweet and tasty, though I've never been able to find one that hasn't been either squished on the ground or dried up and picked at by birds.


Closing with a video of our overly-excited dog. The moment he smells food he goes insane.

KAMEN RIIIDE!!