This quote from Ryan Reynolds made me laugh out loud from Entertainment Weekly:

Jon & Kate Plus Eight
MUST SCAPEGOAT FOR THE MORAL DECLINE OF MODERN SOCIETY
''I find that whole situation to be horrible and awful. Every time I see the headlines, I begin an inner hurricane of throwing up. I wanna see Jon & Kate Plus Eight, the Musical. Jon versus Kate. I wanna see four kids on one side, and four kids on the other, snapping menacingly to music as they walk toward one another.''

I rewatched 13 going 30 (still a cute movie). However, [SPOILER ALERT] it doesn't make sense when Lucy gets Matty to sign the photographer's release in order for her to get the pictures for Sparkle. Jenna (as an agent) for Poise paid for those photographs, and they are legally Poise's photographs regardless of whether Poise chooses to use them or not. When Matty signs the release to waive the photographer's rights in the picture, it doesn't make sense because he has no rights to begin with. The rights belong with Poise.  

• This book is aimed at women who have families, shuffling their children to multiple extra-cirricular activties, organizing fun theme days for the office, maintaining a clean house while having time to think about buying wrapping paper on sale. Phew! No wonder this intended demographic is "frantic" and it builds the expectation that all of this can be achieved. Maybe it can, but it's kind off putting that they don't even recommend getting help, except getting the family to pitch in. This book isn't really my cup of tea because even in my "aspiration" life - all of these elements that the authors throw in aren't me.

No Place Like Home: Staying In, Kicking Back and Living it Up by Michelle Kehm

• This book is intended for women starting out with their first home. Very DIY, which I'm not.  I'd rather go to the spa than mix my own essential oils to create a spa like environment.  She also recommends making your own cleaning solutions to be environmentally friendly.

• Reading this article and seeing the picture in the Globe and Mail makes me want to go to Florence again. Sigh
• I really like Ellen's commencement speech at Tulane

Wrote another letter to Edmonton Journal which got printed.  This time, I was responding to an article where high school students were complaining their provincial exams were worth 50% of their mark. Being a former law student who has written 100% finals, I had no sympathy and wrote this letter:

I disagree with the students who are urging Education Minister Dave Hancock to reduce provincial exams' weight to 30 per cent of the overall mark. Final exams provide good experience for dealing with university exams. The provincial exam provides practice in managing anxiety and helps students learn to condense a large amount of information in a small amount time. Some students will always have test anxiety, regardless how much the exam is worth.

Link here
 

Hundred Bar and Kitchen

Went down to Hundred Bar and Kitchen. I liked the atmosphere of it with the beautiful chandeliers, but still have a casual and elegant feeling with the elevated leather benches and chairs. Definitely a date worthy place. I had mcleod burger which is 7 oz. ground, aged cheddar & double smoked bacon topped, hundred sauce, lettuce, tomato, toasted kaiser with fries. The burger was *very* good because it was really tender.  While I knew about their $100 entree (to coincide with their name), they have a $100 cocktail which has Remy Martin Louis XII Cognac, Chambord Royal soaked sugar cube and Baby Piper Heidsieck Brut. I always maintained that I would love to order the hundred dollar entree so that it would be a good story, but a $100 cocktail definitely sounds more interesting.

Lazia

Went to Lazia (downtown) last night for dinner. Had the lovin' stuffed chicken breast - chicken breast filled with cream cheese apricot stuffing served with cheesy scalloped potato and red pepper sauce.  It was filling, I didn't expect the potatos to be topped with cornflakes in a dish.   For dessert, I had the chocolate overdose which was a chocolate mousse cake. The dessert was *so* good!

The Proposal

Went to see The Proposal because I adore Ryan Reynolds. He is naturally funny in interviews (recent appearances on Letterman, Today Show and Live with Regis and Kelly). It was the usual romantic comedy. Although, I did really like Sandra Bullock's wardrobe with tightly fitted pencil skirts, sky high Christian Louboutins, Louis Vuitton luggage and a Hermes handbag.

The Experts' Guide to Life at Home created by Samantha Ettus

From the same editor of The Experts' Guide to Doing Everything Faster, this is another book for mostly homeowners to make a house into a home with experts including Rachael Ray on How to Hold a Tailgate Party. These types of books are a brief overview on how to do things, but provide you with resources such as books and websites to follow up later with.

Organize Yourself! by Ronni Eisenberg with Kate Kelly

• Easy to read book with lots of bullet points and is family oriented.

• This advice was nothing different than reading Lifehack, Lifehacker and Real Simple.

I am going to read a lot of books about time management, productivity, organization and simplifying my life over the next 3 weeks.

Make Time: The Survival Guide for Woment with Too Much to Do by Pamela Allardice 
The advice is simple that you can usually read from any magazine, but it contains Australian resources.

Design Your Self: Rethinking the Way You Live, Love, Work, and Play by Karim Rashid
From a design oriented way of thinking, the book is pleasant to read because of the clear typography and bright colors. The advice is vague because there are no steps to implement it. I disagree with the advice that women should not wear suits. I think there are well tailored suits (Theory) that can make women look good. I also disagree with his advice to only carry one credit card when traveling. The advice is not sound when your only one credit card doesn't work or gets stolen. I do agree with the advice to save up and buy quality things, instead of tons of cheap things.

Last week I went to Cactus Club Cafe in West Edmonton Mall which is the new "it" restaurant in Edmonton because Rob Feenie of Iron Chef fame designed the menu and we even saw them there at lunch. I had the burger aged cheddar cheese, cured bacon, sautéed mushrooms, red pepper relish with sea salt fries. I had mayonnaise to dip my fries. Decent, but not necessarily any better than other casual dining restaurants.  I also split a dessert, the chocolate lava cake molten dark chocolate cake with tahitian vanilla ice cream. Really good, as the chocolate just spilled out once we split the cake mixing with the raspberry sauce.

• TED is a series of lectures by fascinating people. I've been watching a bunch of them lately. I am fascinated by the study of happiness and Dan Gilbert is an excellent speaker on how we fake happiness and don't even know it. Barry Schwartz who has written Paradox of Choice proposes that too much choice makes people unhappy, however Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink and Tipping Point) argues that variability (choice) makes people happy. Check out www.ted.com and listen to some lectures.
• Throw Out Fifty Things by Gail Blanke - is not your usual decluttering/organization book. While it does offer the regular advice of sort/toss/keep, it offers more self help and psychology such as throwing out self-limiting beliefs and to not be afraid to ask for help.
• Organizing Magic: 40 days to a well ordered home and life by Sandra Felton is the usual organization book but helpful nonetheless.

Today, I convocated.

There was the usual platitudes about ambition, life long learning and acknowledging the recession, and Dr. Suess quotes from "All the Places You'll Go".

However, two of my favorite graduation speeches were Conan O' Brien and J.K. Rowling. (I only embedded the first part of the speeches) These speeches really cheered me up last summer.

Tour Manager: Ryan Harding
Tour Driver: Peter Brown

The trip was really fun. I think I was lucky and got a good tour manager and tour driver, and overall it a good group of people. Ryan was an excellent tour manager, as he provided "Ryno in your pocket" which is a written down version of what he says when he points out things on the map for every city, so that one does not have to take notes.  Furthermore, if you google "Ryno in your pocket" - you will find other blogs about him and there is not one bad word about him.

He's been doing Contiki tours for 5 years now. It was the best way to see the most amount of sights in the shortest amount of time.  I liked that I didn't have to do research and the tour manager told us what we needed to know on the map with a bit of background about each place. It was hassle free. I liked that everything was planned for you, and you could just take things day by day which is a huge switch in philosophy for me.  I'm used to thinking, how pages of reading do I have do for tomorrow, how many pages a week do I have to write for my essay? It was nice not to stress about anything and not have to think for a month.

Optional Excursions: Highly recommended that you do 90% of them, because when you don't do them - you are left to entertain yourself because most of the group particpates in them. The hotels are often outside the city center, so it's a bit harder to make your own fun.

What I didn't like: that they bring you to places where you are supposed to shop i.e. watch center and perfume. If you aren't there to shop, it is very boring for you. When I shop, I like to do it a slow fashion and not in a frenzied Boxing Day madness. This is not specific to this Contiki tour. My Mom and Dad went on a tour of China with a different company and they also do that. I guess that's the drawback of tours.

Tips:
- bring a iPod touch. Everbody that one could access often free wireless from the hotels that we were staying at, and it was not as bulky as a laptop. The ferry back from Corfu was very boring because there was not much to do, and I would have loved to have an iPod touch or a laptop. From Vienna on, paying for internet was expensive 1 Euro  for 10 minutes.
- bring wet wipes. I was eating baklava in Corfu and there was honey, everywhere.
- bring Tide to Go Pen.

Note that this a Superior trip which meant we got to stay in hotels. While some hotels were an hour away from the town (Rome) or were pretty dodgy (Florence), I would hate to see what a Budget trip would look like. Also, I stayed in a Single room and payed $1000+ more. However, it was worth my sanity. I know that at the end of the long day, I just don't want to talk to anybody.  However, there are other things to consider:

- some people complained that their roommates woke up too early, or stayed out too late which awoke them in the middle of the night
- what if your roommate wants to hook up with somebody? (Happened on my trip)
- it's annoying to share bathroom time

By the middle of the trip, I'm pretty sure people were jealous that I had a single room. 

EDIT: The "Contiki cough" is very real due to the fact the air gets recirculated on the coach. By the end of Greece, Ryan remarked "The cough joins us for the second half the tour." We just could not shake it off. I lost my voice in Corfu from too much singing in the bars. The latter half of the trip, most of the coach was coughing that Ryan deemed it the Day Song on the last day in Amsterdam.  I'm *still* suffering from it, I went to the doctor and all she did was recommend an over the counter medicine even though the cough has been happening for 2 weeks. My ribs hurt from coughing too much. I took preventative measures such as by taking Coldfx with no avail.


 

Just got back from Europe and I had a blast. The Tour Manager was Ryan Harding and the Tour Driver was Pete Brown and they made for a really fun trip.

Spend your free time wandering along the canals, shopping or visiting famous museums such as the Van Gogh Museum and Anne Frank's House

This morning, Matty, Becca and I  went to Anne Frank House. I read her diary when I was 12 and you don't think at 26 that you are going to visit her house.  There were quotes from her diary on the walls, and it brought the diary back. There were really interesting video clips from people that knew her, including her father who felt after reading her diary that he didn't know her daughter very well. Got to see the actual diary.

Then went to the Van Gogh Museum and it was really cool to see Starry Night in person.

Voldenham Restaurant

Van den Hogen restaurant is located on the seafront of this quaint fishing village. It provides the perfect setting for a traditional ‘Old Dutch’ style meal and the atmosphere makes it a night to remember.

This was the last night of the trip. I sat beside Jess, Brent, Millie, Maddie, Kylee, Jeremy and Dan W. Dinner was good, We had soup.  The bread was really good because there was garlic butter. For the entree, I had the chicken which was okay. I loved the roasted potatos and fries with sour cream. After dinner, Pete drove us to take a picture by the windmill.

Canal Cruise

A cruise on Amsterdam’s world-famous canals is the perfect way to see this wonderful city. You’ll pass many famous sights including Dutch gabled houses, the Anne Frank house, churches and the Red Light District. The included beer, wine, soft-drinks and snacks will make your evening complete.

It was unlimited drinks, or the "booze cruise" which created a party atmosphere.  I sat with Becca, Matty and Robin initially. Then people started to meander as they got more drunk. After the cruise we went to the Three Sisters Pub, and the next bar was De Krone. I was there until 1AM.  There was another bar, Escape which cost 15 Euro to get in which I did not go in.  Andrea asked me if I wanted to leave, and I figured I should go before I *ready* to go because it's easier to arrange a taxi that way. It cost us 36 Euro and split it between three people.  However, when we discussed at breakfast with some people, the taxi ride ranged from 46 Euro to 51 Euro, leaving from the same place.

We follow the mighty Rhine River north into Germany. Take in the picturesque Rhine Valley on our included river cruise before learning how beersteins are crafted in the village of St Goar.

The river cruise was really soothing and there was pretty great views. There is a statue called Lorelei which Ryan deemed as the "sexiest statue ever".  The legend had it that Lorelei fell in love with a married man, but the married man ended up staying with his wife so she committed suicide by throwing herself off the rock and to this day she is a siren. To get her revenge, she gets men to crash the boats in the rocks.  Where Lorelei rock is located is the narrowest part of the Rhine, and it was required by law for a local to steer through that area. People bought beer steins and Birkenstocks in St. Goar. 

Tip: Pack what you need in a carry on bag and use that bag alone in St. Goar because the hotel has no elevators.  I was lucky and ended up doing that.  The others had to get their luggage off the coach, get what they needed and our Tour Driver repacked everything after we got what we needed. 

The hotel had *really* creaky beds. My sink was in the middle of the bedroom, adjacent to the bathroom. Weird.  However, another traveller didn't have a bathroom in his room and he had leave his bedroom to use it.  The meal at the hotel was mediocre. The soup was chicken and rice soup. The entree was two random pieces of meat with either egg or rice noodles with a buttery taste. For dessert, it was a chocolate cake with cranberries or cherries dipped into liquer with whipped cream.

There was the wine tasting optional that night, but I did not attend.