Hakuna matata!

Enjoyed a wonderful summer weekend spending Saturday visiting Ames, catching the newest rendition of 'The Lion King' at the theatre closest to her place. This was a really nice theatre where the seats could recline back so we watched the movie with much comfort! :) My review of the movie? I enjoyed the realness of the animals in the movie so much more than the Disney version! Plus it really helps knowing that Beyoncé is voicing 'Nala'!

Thanks to Wikipedia, "Hakuna matata" (pronounced [hɑˈkunɑ mɑˈtɑtɑ]) is a Swahili language phrase from East Africa, meaning "no trouble" or "no problems". (The word "hakuna" means "there is no/there are no", while "matata" means "troubles" or "problems".) This phrase is translated as "no worries".

After catching the movie, we tried to go to the 'Spaghetti Factory' but due to long wait times, we decided to go over to 'The Keg' where I had the delicious Keg burger with fries.

Sunday was spent going for a late catch up lunch at Ten Ren's Tea with Purple and Rebecca where we shared three different combo meals of pork cutlet, crispy chicken and beef ribs. The combos included sides, drinks and dessert.

It's always nice to catch up with past convexE2 coworkers, as I had such great times there when the company was still around. Even though the three of us had a great time eating, drinking tea and catching up, I hope that we can try to meet up again with more coworkers in the near future!

Being a flâneur

What a good way to learn about exploring Toronto through listening to a podcast. It's another way to learn about areas of our wonderful city!

Considering I was born and raised in Toronto, I find that too many people are stuck in their habits of simply going to work or school and then back home. We don't normally take the time to leave our routine and explore the many faceted areas of our very integrated city. There are actually so MANY different and wonderful parts of our city to explore on foot, literally right in our backyard! The best part of walking is that you don't need to rush around and can go at your own leisurely pace. (MY style ;p)

Toronto has some really nice areas to walk around in, I particularly like walking in the distillery district, st. Lawrence market and Kensington market areas to name a few. They're really good areas to get coffee and shop around in for little niks and naks.

You can listen to the Toronto Library Podcast called Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto here Focusing on being a flâneur and their love for walking around in the city of Toronto, this is a interesting talk between Toronto Star columnist Shawn Micallef and my SMCSU friend, wongie.

"The more I have walked, the more I have discovered that there's more to walk and understand." -Shawn Micallef, Toronto Star columnist and noted flâneur To listen to other different types of podcasts, you can check it out here.

This is one of the past-times that I love to do...walk! It's a really good stress reliever and type of exercise, just by being out and active.

Unsuccessful at multi-tasking

Note: please refer to my note on watching the Oscars from two posts back...I HAD finally finished re-watching the 2019 Oscars.

Kind of...I'm currently watching the Oscar after party while trying to blog at the same time. I say kind of because I know that I am the most horrible example of someone trying to do two things at the same time. Main point is that I CANNOT. The long and short of this point is that it takes an exceeding long time to finish this blog while I'm watching the after award-Governor's ball interviews with the happy actors.

Actually, what I've finally smartened up to doing is blogging during the commercial section (that I had been fast-forwarding) so that I can pay attention to this task...ish...

Considering I am taking advantage of the summer, weather and all, I've been pretty actively out and about this week. I started off the week with obtaining a new bank card (as I had seemed to have misplaced my debit card) after determining that it was me and not having had it stolen.

The rest of the week's events centered around eating out...a dinner with Louie, Tuesday evening at Donburi Japanese Restaurant...finishing off the lovely meal with a first time Toraro (rice milk tea - Louie's recommendation) at OneZo Tapioca. Dinner at Touhenboku Ramen Wednesday evening with Winnie, before attending her Eglinton-Yonge Toastmasters again because I enjoy the relatively smooth/flawless way the meeting commences (due to the fact this club has been in existence MUCH longer then my (MSIT) club. *minor detail that I actually have not attended my own club since the beginning of the year, even though I've paid for the year...*. Finished this week off with having Moto sushi lunch updates with Grace and Alice today.

This week also happened to be the same week that Jennifer Lopez celebrated her 50th birthday with Alex Rodriguez. Gosh, she does NOT look even close to this age. Just someone to look up to as a model for myself. hrm…

In closing, I've realized the biggest mistake I've made, ESPECIALLY as I'm multi-tasking...I shouldn't have made the decision to blog so late in the evening...when I'm at my most vulnerable time in terms of thinking...oops! Anyway, signing out for now. :)

The green-eyed monster...

is trying to claw out of me and I'm trying desperately not to let my imagination go wild.

I had recently been receiving alerts that a close university friend (whom I've since lost touch with) from mostly my first and second year has started a wedding and event consulting business.

What stings is the fact that in our past days on SMCSU (st. Michael's college student union), our roles were as the communications commissioner (her role) and officer (my role) and after we had graduated our under grad, one of my first steps was to study wedding planning. I ACTUALLY am a certified wedding planner....but this came to no use as I never did anything with this certificate. Although, this was a stepping stone...as it eventually led me into studying communications where I would have succeeded in my goal had life had not intervened with different plans. *minor detail*

So due to curiosity, I looked into her website and then looked into where she was in life...she's married to the guy she was dating back in university and has a child! ***disclaimer, THIS is where my green-eyed monster started to try to crawl out of me...it's sickening...

The long and short of this post is that even though I am so jealous that my girlfriend seems to have fulfilled a lot of what I may have secretly been trying to fulfil in life, I'm actually pretty proud of knowing that we had (mine have now veered onto a different path but this is besides the point) such similar goals in life. GREAT minds DO think alike!!! That we spent some fabulous times of our lives together and mainly that I can remember that time!

Even better is that I know that there's still more life in the future for me!

So THERE green-eyed monster!!! I HAVE overcome YOU.

THE END

Now moving on...

What an exhausting weekend....but it was a GOOD kind of exhaustion, the type where you have a really restful sleep thus waking up to a new day!

I spent both mornings with a really nice & long aerobic walk in the little stretch of park walkway through the neighborhood as the sun was rising. This is the best time in the morning because the sun hasn't fully come up so the air is still slightly cool enough to walk with a rain breaker (in case it is cool or has drops of rain) as the heat has yet to gain it's full strength (and it DID both days). I love waking up with the birds chirping and the squirrels fighting over food! My favorite routine is after my morning walk, I cool down with breakfast before showering and getting ready for the day.

Saturday was spent visiting my really good university friend, Alicia and family. I'd brought some really cute types of colorful pasta as a gift for their having me over. It was really nothing considering they had me over with a wide selection of food, including blueberry pancakes made from scratch! Sunday involved no less food as I had afternoon tea (it's been some time since I'd last had afternoon tea!) with two abbeyite friends, Fayewood and Romz at T-buds off of Yonge, between Wilson and Lawrence. This is why I maintain my exercise schedule...not to lose weight but really to MAINTAIN my weight!

Normally this is where I chime in that come tomorrow morning, I'd go to work to gain back a 'normal' schedule...I'm not worried though. I have plans for this upcoming week. We'll see how this goes...

Now I'm off to catch up on Oscars (yes, this was back in February...don't judge!) before I catch some zz's!

Ambitions

As I've been unemployed again for 3 weeks now, I've been taking the time to catch up on tv (note, it will never happen) and on the side I'd been re-reading my old posts. I've realized that my blog used to be a very good calendar-eske indication of what was happening in my life from back in the day.

Considering I like to write how I think (which to some may be considered garbage...lol), I appreciate my own writings as like a diary of some sort, keeping account of what was happening in life back in the day. As I've been reading my old blogs, I have been mentally patting myself on the back because I'd been in a sense helping myself keep track of life for over a decade.

Therefore, I've decided that I'm going to try to blog more regularly again, keeping account of what's been happening (well, other than my planner, which I've got like nearly a decade of those) and try to be more in depth and descriptive again. Who knows, I could be re-honing my writing skills again but in this sense, this is more like an online thought process into my mind/imagination. Again, it can be scary but I will try to keep it at bay (as duh, I recognize this IS online and ANYONE can come across this....especially if they know me...plus plenty of people used to know this existed. Just may or may not know it will be revived).

Besides, I LIKE reading my writings and remembering what's happened. Who knows, this could help in my memory in the future. But of course, this means I will need to go out of my way to post more regularly. We shall see how this goes...for now, I will get ready for the weekend!