Category: Home

Karen and I finally finished the last piece of our fence, the gate!  Now our lawn is no longer the public access shortcut for kids, and curious pedestrians can no longer peek in to observe our featureless yard.  Unfortunately it also prevents the cute bunny rabbit from entering and feeding on the dandelions, and it offers little protection against the curious black kitty who uses our yard as a big litter box.

Not that it was all easy.  While we were trying to install the gate, I had to hold fifty different items with my hands, feet, neck, etc. At one point I dropped the drill, and when I grabbed it, it got tangled on my shirt and started drilling!

Pushing it away only made it go faster because I was holding on to the handle, where the accelerate button happened to reside.  Somehow by the miracle of God I ended up with only minor scrapes, which appears as a tiny little red dot in the lower-left hand corner of the rip in the picture.  Consider it a battle scar to show for this valiant fence-building effort!

Special thanks to Allan and Wes for helping with setting the posts, and Erick for pulling out a huge boulder and hacking away at a root that just wouldn’t go away.

Let’s just hope it holds together…

Back in January, we purchased a sectional from Macy’s to take advantage of their tax-free sale, but what we got more than we bargained for.  When the couch was delivered, this was what we got:

As you can see, we got the aesthetically displeasing mutant sectional.  After many angry phone calls to the salesperson, a $35 gift card, and a slight (6 month) delay, the real parts were finally delivered!

Now that’s more like it!

How much TV do you watch?  Karen and I watched… just a few programs in the past..  Karen had her 7th Heaven, Full House, Everyday Italian, Trading Spaces, While You Were Out, Clean Sweep, Makeover Story, Ambush Makeover, McGyver, Fear Factor, Perfect Proposal, and more that have escaped my mind at this moment.  Now those were just her programs.  Together we also watched Smallville, American Idol, The Apprentice, America’s Next Top Model, and Project Greenlight.  Yes, that’s quite a bit of programs thanks to TiVo!  😐

After reflecting on a sermon by Elton about cutting out the busyness in our lives, we conducted an experiment by suppressing our carnal desires of watching TV for an entire week!  Yes, I literally yanked all the RCA cables and the power cable from the rear of the TV!

Every night, we sat at the dinette glaring at each other during dinner, which I suppose is a positive thing.  Then from the extra few hours we gained back each day, we’ve been going out to the mall, the bookstore, or the coffee shop!  Wow…  what a difference!

A week later, we missed TV, so we reverted back to old form.  We do watch no more than half an hour of TV a day now, but I suppose the lack of good prime time television and the scarcity of new Full House episodes may have something to do with it.  However, since we have joined Netflix, the time simply shifted from TV to movies.  Oh well, we’re bound to run out of movies at some point, right?

By the way, it turns out that I was the only one without TV that week.  I later discovered that Karen had cunningly reconnected the TV while I was at work!  And I thought disconnecting all cables from the TV provided a large enough hurdle!  Looks like next time, I’ll need to hide the cables too.  😛

Looks like we need to conclude our bean journey.  No, the bean hasn’t withered and died yet from lack of nourishment, but it seemed to have assumed its final form.

As we can see, one side has:

And the other side has says:

Contrary to what I was told, the leaves didn’t have the Chinese writing:

So at this point, it would seem like we have closed the chapter on the development of the Magic Bean.  There’s nothing magical about it…  just some cheesy bean with patterns etched on.

Hey, to look on the bright side, I no longer need to worry about toxic containment of the genetic mutant.  Time to return that Space Suit (by Mattel) back to Walmart!

The writing on the bean can now be clearly deciphered.  I’ll let you be the judge of what you see here…

Also there appears to be an image on the other side…

More to come…

The bean seems to be growing quite a bit these couple of days!

There’s activity!  We’re starting notice the protrusion of the Mutant Bean.

It’s making its way out of the can, folks!  The growth may be accelerated from this point forth, so I will update accordingly.

I’m sure you’ve been anticipating the can-opening ceremony.  Well, there’s good news and bad news.  The good news is that we’ve cracked open the can, but the bad news is that we haven’t seen the beans yet.  The can was designed such that the entire top pops off (like cheese dips), and the bottom pops a hole (like soda pop) for drainage.  Here is the mysterious interior:

 

If I didn’t know better I’d think it was feeding material for Grace’s Cookie.  I expected some beans that we needed to plant, but turns out that the entire can functions as a pot assembly!  The directions indicated that we’re supposed to divulge the ecosystem like Noah’s Flood, so we acted accordingly…

Once it started to drip from the bottom, we replaced the bottom lid on and voila!  The magic bean biological clock has been started.  We placed it on our island, and hopefully we won’t stumble into a jungle kitchen tomorrow.  I’ll keep you posted on the development of this scientific experiment.  If you think about it, Jack’s mom was fortunately enough to have thrown the beans outside, or they may have ended up with a very large skylight installation.

On another note, I’ve posted my pictures of Erick and Phoebe’s Wedding at the Happyfish picture gallery.  Enjoy!

My brother-in-law just came from Taiwan and brought us an interesting gift…

Magic Bean?  At first glance, it may look like a can of stuff that gives you gas, but further scrutinization reveals a different beast.  Remember the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk?  Let me see if I can…

Jack and mother were poor.  Jack went to market to sell beef, a.k.a. cows, but Jack somehow had a craving for produce and exchanged for the magic beans instead.  Went home.  Mother had a cow and spilled the beans outside.  Over night, the plant erected into the sky.  Jack climbed into the clouds, found the castle, had some private time with Giant’s wife, steals the hen that lays golden eggs and goes home.  Later he went back up and stole two more bags of money. Then when he went back up again, the magic harp woke the giant, who chases Jack the Looter.  Jack raced back down, chopped the beanstalk, killed the giant, and lived happily ever after.

Hmm, now that I think about it, doesn’t it strike you as a peculiar bed-time story for kids?  Poor giant!

Anyway, this package is supposed to yield some sort of plant that has Chinese writings on it!  Weird, huh?  It requires 7-14 days, 80% sun, 50% shade, 15-30 C.  Oh, and it’s got a label saying it’s from some botanical research facility… scary.  As much as I’d like to open it and reveal the secret interior, we will have to save that for another day.

Carol my sister-in-law, who had just returned from a business trip to Vancouver, excitedly handed me two bowls of ramen.  “Oh you got to try this!  It’s very delicious!”  Promptly Karen and I altered our lunch plans from dining at Canlis to eating these bowls of ramen at home. We anxiously boiled some water, and with the whistle of the kettle, deluged the styrofoam bowls with steaming water and sealed the bowl.  After waiting what seemed like an eternity, we lifted the lid.  If you’re expecting mouth-watering, delicious fragrance, think again.

It stunk.  Like the gutter.

A closer inspection of the packaging revealed the words, “AQ Stinky Stinky Pot”.  In which part of the world do companies intentionally use the word “stink” to describe its own product as an advertisement?  And where do people line up to indulge in fermented, foul tofu flavored with Chinatown dark alley aroma?

Only in Taiwan.

Now personally I enjoy the Stinky Tofu, but this Stinky Ramen didn’t meet the bar.  To be frank, it just didn’t stink enough, as the weak smell seemed more like an afterthought.  A word of advise to AQ: Next time you advertise something, take it all the way.  Don’t wimp out and give us some half-baked aroma thinking that the consumers wouldn’t notice the difference. That nasty stench needs to permeate through our mouth, nose, and pores with each bite to attain the highest level of satisfaction.

Only then can this stinky culinary product be complete.