Rice Porridge

I bought a jar of of preserved tofu flavored with plum when I visited Jiouxi the last time. The preserved tofu does not taste extremely salty like regular ones, but contains a very tangy fragrance that I cannot describe. It goes with rice porridge very well, and I think I've found my best recipe.

Ingredient: rice: 80ml, water: 4 cups, ground pork: 100g, cabbage: some, salt: some.
It is hard to describe how much cabbage is needed. I did not measure it. More cabbage means less water when it is done.

Boil the rice in the water. Turn the stove to as low as possible when the water boils. Put the lid on and boil it for another 10 minutes.
Add ground pork and cabbage and some salt, and boil it for another 10 minutes, and it is done.

Of course I added some preserved tofu, and it simply melts in the soup, and adds so much depth to the rice porridge. Yummy. But for some reason the preserved tofu looks a bit like shxt on the photo...

Canadian Immigration Change

I was quite curious of the immigration progress that R has, since I think she filed the application a long time ago. Even I filed mine more than a year ago already, and she had filed long before I did. Got her response this morning. She said there has been a change, which happened in February 2008 and I did not know . The change is that only people on the list of 38 professional categories would be eligible for immigration as skill workers to Canada. Click here for the list.

Of course nether R or I is affected by this new law, as we filed before the law was introduced. However, the Canadian government will expedite the application of the new 38 categories, and fast track for others means longer wait for us. I do not have particular need for the immigration, but R has her professional plan, so I really want hers to be process as soon as possible.

It is interesting to look at the categories, and know that Canada is a quite a different country from Taiwan, with much more natural resources to hire petroleum engineer, etc.

But wait. Plumber? Welder? Maybe for those who would like to immigrate to Canada, it is time to drop the college education, and enroll in vocational school instead, or find a ‘master’ to learn those necessary skills after junior high school to be a plumber and welder, and become one of those attractive plumber as shown in the photo, Mike Delfino, the plumber from Desperate Housewives.

And wait! Financial manager? I thought we are having a financial crisis across the globe now…

Valentine's Day

It's St. Valentine's Day today. Spent some time on the game. Someone brought fireworks to the raid tonight. Of course, there is celebration for this special occasion. See, the fireworks is the shape of hearts.

Nax

This is the game from last night. There are 2 phases in the battle. In phase 1 I have stand on the platform. In phase 2 the boss will transport to the platform, so I have to run. The area for running is divide into 4 sections. Lava come out of 3 section, so only one section is safe to be in. We just have to run and run.

I am the cute tree in the center of the screen. I am a healer.

Spammer

This is the spam I've been getting recently on a daily basis. When I received this notice the first time, I did not know who that was, so intuitively I clicked deny button. Then after that, every time I log on MSN, I get this popup window, then I realized this is a spam. No one will manually request to add me every time he gets rejected. This is really annoying, but I cannot find any option to set up my MSN account, so only those on my friend list can contact me.

Something to Complain

Both my mom and dad are the eldest kid in the family, so kids in my family are quite old among the cousins. Both my sister and brother are the eldest in both mom's and dad's family, and I came in 3rd in my mom's, and 4th in my dad's.

Some of them are significantly younger than we. By saying significantly, I mean they are around 7 or 8 years younger. My mom used to take care of them all the times when my uncles and aunts were busy with their study and career. I saw them grow up, and for some reason I always see them as kids. And when someone is 7 years younger than I am, I consider him/her too young.

Why am I saying this today? One of the cousins in that age group is getting married today. Parents went to the ceremony, so I probably need to find my own dinner tonight. Last night mother and I gossiped about their age, what kind of condo they bought, you know, things that come with numbers. We are just boring adults detested by little prince.

TOEFL Test Score

I took a TOEFL (Test of English as Foreign Lanuage) back in October. Attached is the score.

I have never taken any English test (aka, TOEFL, GRE, ISELTS, TOEIC, etc), so never knew where my English ability stands, Since I did not have much to do, I just decided to take the test, for the fun of it.

All the preparation I did was to download the sample test from the official website, and did it twice. That's when I realized there is no way for me to enhance my ability in a short and extensive way. The test is divided into 4 sections, reading, listening, speaking and writing. In reading, listening, speaking, all kinds of topics could be included. It can be astronomy, chemistry, physics, literature, and so on. In speaking and listening, it can be an instance that happens on campus, for example, a discussion in the class, an inquiry at the library, etc. I was sure I could understand it for the most parts, and should be able to capture 80% of the score. The most tricky part is the speaking, when there is a 45 seconds or 30 seconds of time limit when I could respond the have my responses recorded into the computer.

So this is what I got. The full score of each section is 30, so I think I did it fairly well.