Year in Review, Part II

So I spent just shy of 2 blissful, bourgeois weeks in Toronto over the holidays. By 'bourgeois' I mean waking up at noon (after 9-10 hrs of sleep), going for extended, luxurious dim sum lunches, getting driven around, and eating peeled sliced up apples (a Liu family thing). And dinner would be a revolving circle of Chinese food-sushi-Shanghai cuisine. I finally tried the 'sauna shrimp' which yes, sounds weird (they put the prawns in this steel-lined bucket which then releases a mass of steam so that the shrimps yes, cook in a sauna) and in my opinion wasn't so yummy, but I particularly appreciated the dim sum at Casa Imperial (a ridiculous name, but what Chinese resto isn't??) this time around. Their dumplings especially.

I also kicked back on the sofa and watched a lot of TV - Food network, of course - this craaazy big fin tuna battle on Iron Chef America! the tuna weighed nearly 100 pounds!! (you can see how intellectual my vacation was) the usual drivel on Muchmusic, and lots of movies - Step Up (a Le recommend - it was 4 am, I had nothing better to do), In her Shoes, The Break-up (which I must say, is a really good movie - the only movie with Jen Aniston that I've liked - Vince Vaughan is hilarious in it, and I love it for its non-sappy ending - although that tacked-on, post bad test audience reviews scene was awkward & unnecessary - I highly recommend) and, best of all: Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift (that one was on New Year's eve, at home, quite drunk).

So, year in review? It's been an up & down year. I've come a long way: in January, I was halfway through my articling year and beginning to really get down about it. I was stuck in a rut: went to work, subway-ed home, ate dinner, watched TV, didn't have a life. And I was plagued by these crazy sleep problems that rendered me grumpy & just all-round crabby. It wasn't a happy time - seriously, I hit a slump in March and there were weeks when I didn't want to do anything - I started going online to look up info about depression and was going to go on meds for it, but in the end I didn't.

Around this time I got accepted into Columbia which was amazing, but for the time being it didn't hit me yet - not until the summer, when maybe due to more sunlight, Justin being back in TO, things got much better. It's been a whirlwind - sometimes I forget I'm here in NYC, doing my LLM, with my own amazing apartment, wow. Because I don't think I'm a particularly globe-trotting, get up & go type - I like Canada, I like home, so moving around isn't me, but still these last 4 months have been terrific (see below).