Time Lapse Party

This is a time lapse of last weekend's party. Noted from previous post.

Thanks to Garry for bringing his camera, sharing his photos and building this video.

Free Concerts

Last night, I went to Nathan Phillips Square for Wintercity and a free Sloan show, which totally Rawked! What a great concept, get people to go out to enjoy what Toronto has to offer by having real big name Canadian acts to celebrate winter in Toronto. Gives something to look forward to during these bleak months.
I went down with Gord, and met up with Jorge and Susan and some of their friends at the square and checked out some of the ice sculptures they had there.







Next Saturday, I'm really excited about what they have to offer. The New Pornographers! I saw them open for Belle and Sebastian last year, and was totally blown away. In my opinion they're the best Canadian band!

Next week I'm gonna bring my DSLR so I don't have to take such shakey pictures, the Casio is a great little pocket camera for snap shots but it just handle concert photos like my trusty Nikon can.

Double post

Since it's been nearly a week and half since I posted (besides the one I just posted), I'll talk about my weekend.

Friday night, didn't really have any plans so I called up Gord, went over, and didn't have any plans when I got there either. So instead of punching each other until we got sore, I suggested we go hit a club. We went to visit an old haunt that we really shouldn't be going to anymore just cause we're really too old. It's so embarrassing that I won't even mention the name. So while waiting for a good song to cut the rug to, I felt a poke into my ribs, first maybe it was Gord, no, maybe some asshole who thinks he's funny, no. I run into a co-worker of mine. This is really embarrassing now, cause now I have to face her on Monday. Luckily we haven't touched the subject yet this week. I did get revenge on the poking thing though.

Saturday I pretty much layed low during the day. At night I was invited to my friends Andrea and Justin's house warming. The recently moved in together last month. Wasn't a huge surprise to see the place since I helped them move in. But it is a nice place in the Annex. Most of the guests were Vegans since most of the guests were friends with Andrea, and she's part of some Vegan cult, I mean group I guess. Interesting, somehow almost every conversation I got into was about food. I approached with an open mind, and to my surprise nobody was really vigilante about the subject either. There seemed to have been two types of people at this party, either vegans or worked in the film industry, which is good since I'm in that industry now too.
This was a weird one, I was chatting with this girl, asking what she did etc... she told me she works in design in Industrial design and graduated from OCAD a couple of years ago, well I knew a couple of people that studied ID. First name rang a bell but didn't really know. Second name struck a chord. A girl I dated briefly about 4 or 5 years ago turns out to be a former room mate of her boyfriend and also knew Justin. Small world, not that I'm hopping to travel back in time or anything, just kinda weird or interesting.
Overall it was a really fun party, I had a really good time, and met a lot of new people. I just wished I could have shown up earlier rather than fashionably late. I stayed til the end and caught the blue line home (gotta be resposible) unfortunately I passed out on the bus and the bus looped around, so we had to cab it from there, and didn't get home until 5 am.

Let's try this again

I've decided to quit smoking again, I think this is my forth or fifth try, I lost count. It's all good. The longest I did it for was about 6 months. I probably could have stayed smoked free 2 tries ago when I did quit for 6 months. I had gotten pneumonia and could barely breath, got checked by my doctor, and asked for a prescription of Zyban as well, it worked great until I cracked. My room mate at the time is a smoker, with no considerations for me as a non smoker, after a few months of this I cracked.
Well this time around, it's not a New Year's resolution, I don't believe in that nonsense. I'm doing it for me. I remember when I realized I was addicted to smoking my biggest fear was to be a smoker in my 30's, well it's almost been a year since I turned 30, and I'm still a smoker. It's time for change. So many other things in my life has changed for the good in the past few months, maybe kicking this habit will put the final nail in the coffin of my my previous life.

Hmm other reasons to quit. I rarely date women who smoke, I can probably count them all on one hand. If I have that standard, I guess the least I can do is return the favour.

My first dog died of lung of cancer at the young age of 8, I kept blaming myself because it could have been second hand smoke. I'd hate to see my current buddy Seymoure suffer the same fate, those of you who have seen me with Seymoure know how much I love him. He acts more human than dog.

I hate the idea that I'm being controlled, and I'm being controlled by cigarettes. I took coffee out of my life, now I drink coffee cause I want to, not because I have to. It made me feel really good that I was able to take away something that was controlling me, and now I control it. I'll only have one cup of coffee a week if that, usually a espresso, I just like the taste of it, and it actually has less caffeine than regular coffee.

The obvious health, I'd like to get back into shape, before I started smoking I was quite the runner, cyclist and practised karate. I get out of breath doing the simplist things like run down the block. Mostly I'd just like to build up some more stamina.

The worst thing I hear about quitting smoking is "Think of the money you'll save!" It doesn't mean anything to me, not that I'm rich or anything, I'm just not money hungry, materialistic, yes, but not obsessed with money. I could use it though.

I've been using a relatively new product on the market, it's called Resolve, a all natural way of quiting with no nicotine. The only thing I question about this product is that it seems almost to good to be true, it blocks your senses from the good feeling of getting nicotine into your system, or so it claims. There are no side effects, and it's like eating a breath mint. So am I just taking a sugar pills and paying a lot of money for the privillage? It says it kicks in the second week. but by then I will have bought 2 boxes of this stuff. There isn't really any info online about this product either. All the good reviews are of course on their website, and no independent tests. I'll keep you updated if it works or not.

Old Friends

Last night, Gord and I went out to the Drake Hotel. First time I've ever been there, and I must say, I was impressed, nice space. Well we went to go see an old friend of ours play. Ken Reaume, he's a very talented folk singer, a bit like Nick Drake. We surprised him backstage, he wasn't expecting us to show up. After the show we went elsewhere to have to drink and to catch up. The last time I saw him was back in September where I ran into him at a wedding, I was working so I didn't really have much of a chance to talk to him, but before that it was years since I last saw him. He updated us on his life, and we updated him on ours.
It was a good night, it's always good to see friends you don't see to often. Ken's the kind of person who doesn't say goodbye, and doesn't tell people where he's going, but he somehow just reappears.

There were other performers last night as well. There was a girl who performed solo, I won't mention her name, but I'll mention that she plays an Omnichord, and it's part of her stage name as well. But she was really bad, I'll give her credit for trying, and I think I know what sound she was going for, but she just didn't have it. I mean as soon as she started to sing, I was questioning why she was up there, she was completely tone deaf! It was that bad, and she's trying to pitch CDs, and tellling the audience that she plans of having a album produced. Her original songs weren't good either, really badly written lyrics that could have been written by a 12 year old.

The act that come on after her was just as bad. A little better in the singing department but not an improvement to get excited about. Also another bad song writer. The song was so predictable. He kept mentioning things that he had quit, and Gord and I were sort of saying to each other “please don't say it, please don't say it!“, and He said it. Can you guess the line? Think of a love ballad and think of one thing you can't quit!
We left as they started their next song, so no more commentary on how bad they were.
On the way home, Gord and I were discussing the importance of constructive critizm, don't take what you're friends and family say about you too seriously, they may tell you that you're good at something, only cause they don't want to offend you, take it with a grain of salt. Otherwise you just look like an asshole in front of strangers. This reminds of a lot of people in my own life, they hate it when I speak my mind since I'm not praising them, and giving them my honest opinion that what they did sucked. I mean I would never just say it sucks, I'd back it up and give suggestions on how to improve. Positive feedback needs to be earned.

I'm digressing too much.

It's a New Year

It's been a few weeks since I posted, I'm mostly recovered from New Year's Eve. Like to wish everybody a Happy New Year. With the New Year will hopefully bring new oppertunities. I've been in work mode for too long, almost forgetting about weddings. But as I try to build to this business, I'm letting people know, and I probably do have some lined up, gotta do a lot more networking, find more clients. I've registered a website, and will go live soon. My sister told me she'd build one for me, since my web building is not my forté, in case you're wondering it's gonna be www.vincentwongphotography.com. Nothing there right now, I can't even figure out the FTP thing, and I've been using FTP for years. But when it does go live, this is where I'll post it first. So keep checking.

So how did you spend your New Year's? I didn't have any hard plans until maybe a week before. I got invited to house parties and stuff, but really didn't want to spend it that way. I wanted to go out and mingle. Well I started the night by going by Gord's place to pick him and Serena up, they made a fancy dinner, and they had to wrap it up, and bring it over to my friend Flutur's boyfriend's place, so after picking them up, went back to my house, got changed, and dropped off the car (you gotta be responsible!) and transited down town, he lives in the student ghetto, and they ended up having quite a few people over. We had dinner, had some drinks, and headed out to Stone's Place, a Rolling Stones inspired bar, reminded me of this club I used to go to but closed down called Vox Lounge. Nicely decorated with 60's furniture.

Ran into my scooter friend John who I hadn't seen since the summer, so that was nice. Had a few drinks, took some pics, but a few hours later, we were getting paged to go to Embassy Lounge where we were suppose to meet up with some more people. It was still early which had us wondering why was there a lineup for the coat check, so Serena and I are in line, and this guy comes up to us and says I'm gonna cut, I told that's fine, but go behind me, some more words were exchanged, and he started to push Serena around, I thought it was joke at first and didn't do anything, but then I realized how hard he was pushing, so I had to step in. The guy was not tall, but built, and Serena is not a big girl at all, I grabbed his arm, and told him to stop it and told him it was not cool what he was doing, he puffed his chest at me, but I just stared him down, and he ran to back of the line. We got our stuff, and took a cab to Embassy where we met up with Grahame and Tiffany.

Grahame was suppose to be djing at 1, but he ended up playing early, so we missed his set. After this, things got blurry, had a few more drinks here, this was also when the alchohol kicked in thanks to doing DR.Pepper shots, double fisting on the beers (again).

Overall with just one incident, we had a good night. Didn't spend a lot of money which is always a good thing. Saw a few friends, and got to dance to music that I like.