Raptors vs New York

I had a good time with Derek Yesterday. We had planned to see the Raptors vs Knicks for a couple months. He was visiting from England. We met up at Earls for Pre game Dinner and drinks and it was fun catching up. Next we go to the ACC for the game and before the game I couldn't resist challenging a kid to some hoops. I lost with my 19 points to his 20 :). Derek then showed me how it's really done by scoring 32 points. He's such a show off! But also a really good basketball player!

Next we go the arena and Derek teases me with my bragging I could get really cheap Rogers discounted tickets from the 300 level. He asks me to say how close I want to get to the floor, telling me to say when. And we keep going almost all the way to the floor! It was the best seats i've ever been to at the ACC. Great time!

 Raptors win!!!!

Thank you Derek and Megan.

On to Burlington Vermont

Got up and realized that 30 cm of snow had dropped on Montreal. i was not sure whether we would be able to leave to Vermont becuase the road conditions were so bad. Listening to the news didn't help because there were tons of reports of accidents and advisory to not drive. I was nervous that my rental Toyota camry didn't have snow tires (in Quebec it's the law to have snow tires in the winter) but since I got the car in Ontario that didn't apply.  I decided to try the drive for breakfast. I heard about Yagel Bagel which was a few streets away and i went to the car. I was really surprised to see the car buried under snow, I had to clean the car for about 5 mintues before I could drive..not looking good!

Montreal snow storm

The drive to Yagel bagel was slippery but i was able to manage with the car; it had electronic traction control and good anit locking brakes, once I figured out how to use that to my advantage, the drive was good. Yagel Bagel had amazing bagels, highly recommend it when you go to Montreal.  Came back to our host's place, had breakfast, helped cover a window with plastic and then set off on our trip. One little caveat, when I tried to back out from the driver, I realized the car was trapped with over a foot of snow at the entrance to the driveway. time to shovel!  Well this is part of the quebec experience. I put my back into the shovel and 10 minutes later we were able to leave.  

Once we left the montreal roads the drive was easy. We spent about an hour on the Quebec rural rodes on the way to the border crossing in Vermont. It was really picturesque and I was graeteful to leave Quebec. The US cusotms officer was very friendly, the wait time was 10 minutes and we crossed the border incident free...Bonus!

The drive through Vermont is very beautiful during winter: lots of Trees covered in snow; it looked very Christmasy.  We stopped at St. Alban, where I found a nice coffee shop and we had a delicious hot chocolate with a blueberry scone.. yum. 

My mom in front of the awesome coffee heaven in st. Alban.

Another half hour of driving and we reached Burlington. I didn't have a hotel booked but found a beautiful hotel at the city center, called Hotel Vermont. it was really modern and the room was spacious and luxurious. We had a great dinner there, the salad and gnocchi dinner was superb. My mom and i shared the meals and the portions were generous. (makes you wonder how a person is supposed to eat the whole serving). Prior to having dinner, I went to the gym at the hotel and did some running on the treadmill, it was good to workout after many days.  

After the meal, my mom and I walked through Church street in Burlington, it's one of the prettiest streets I've seen. It's quaint with interesting stores and beautiful to look at. It was very cold, about minus 18 so we only walked for half hour.  We returned to the hotel and had an awesome sleep.

Church street in Burlington,VT. One of the prettiest walking streets for shopping I've seen.

awsome day in Montreal - december roadtrip vacation with mom

yesterday we started at the biodome. It was -18 degrees and I froze my butt off. I forgot what -18 felt like back in my saskatoon days. It's really bloody cold! a minute without gloves and my hands were frozen.  Enough about the cold. The trip to the Biodome was about a half hour from where we stayed at in DDO.  Here is a pic of the Biodome, it's a great way to spend 2 hours in your day. The highlights for me was the recreation of a tropical rainforest and feeling like you're in a teeming with life and animal/insects diversity.  I also really enjoyed the different species of fish they had and watching the penguins do their thing in a cold environment was entertaining.

After the Biodome, I set the GPS for Shwartz's Deli, the food absolutely did not dissapoint. I chose the medium cut not the lean because I wanted the meat to melt in my mouth which it did! Beware though if you're going there at lunch time because there are long line ups. I went to the take-out place which took about 10 mins and then took the sandwich and ate a Thai restaurant that my mom went to down the street.  The service at the Thai restaurant was incredible and my mom convinced the staff to let me eat the smoked meat sandwich in the restaurant. Wish I had known that and I wouldn't have hid and eaten the sandwhich.  

After Schwart's it was time for a nap. I decided to go shopping at the Bay instead. I had to call my friend Anoop because I didn't know where there was a shopping mall in Montreal. We found a 5 story Bay on st.cAtherines street and it was a good time shopping and finding winter wear for our upcoming ski trip.  I took a snooze at the second cup in the mall attached to the Bay, while my mom went to buy gifts for her South African friends. She came back so excited, she found scarfs and winter hats for $5 each!  here is the pic of the Bay: (gotta love Google street view)

At 5pm we ventured to Old montreal. It was already dark and I drove around for about 45 minutes before I found the perfect spot.  Old montreal is filled with restaurants, very fine dining and I was really hoping to find a cafe.  I asked a local walking his dog and he said the area has gotten very touristy and he pointed me to the cafe which was a couple meters from us. It's called Muru Crepe and it was a fantastic place with nice ambience, great savoury crepe and fries and fantastic service. I supposed it helped there were only a few people in the place but the staff of one was a great guy who was very courteous and professional. I loved the moccacino and latte he made to perfection.  here is a pic of the restaurant:

the only downside to the day's experience was the ticket that was waiting for me after we left the restaurant!  I thought i would get away with it, who would want to ticket in -18 degrees :)
A great memorable day!

Suggestions for Blackberry BB10 UI change for Q10

I have been using a blackberry Q10 in the last couple weeks. While I love the keyboard and screen, there are a couple things Blackberry can do to make the Q10 small screen more usable. I would like to get rid of one of the bottom bars when reading and composing an email so that I have more screen real estate to view/compose my email.

here is a current email screen taken from a screenshot from the Q10 with markup on why the bellow buttons are redundant and taking up valuable Q10 screen real estate!

Here is a proposed fix and showing how more space for reading text can be added, without sacrificing the expanded menu (3 vertical dots) button.

I would like blackberry to consider having this hidden menu as an option in an upcoming BB10 software update. I think it will make the Q10 more usable and keep within the them of Getting things Done.

Happy 2013!! :)

I am spending my new years holiday in Mauritius with my mom. Its a beautiful island and I wanted too be by the sea to bring in the new year. On new years eve, we had a nice dinner while watching some Sega dancing (Creole music and dancing similar to hawaian) and then went to a hotel called blue lagoon to take in some good music by a live band. They played cover songs, mostly old english songs and mauritian music. When it was time for the countdown, we stepped onto the beach, had some champagne and watched a beautiful private fireworks display. It was a real treat. While we didn't know anyone else in the hotel, it was nice to be part of something special.
Happy New year!

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

my first radio interview :)

This morning at 6:15 am i was interviewed by Matt Galloway for CBC metro morning program. I was neerrrrvous!  The 5 minutes waiting for the interview to start (it was a phone interview) seemed like an eternity. A person named Gord called me up told me to be lively even though it's 6am and said feel free to call the interviewer Matt. I like Matt a lot i think he's a cool host and I like the fact that he stands for a lot of things I do. He's very pro toronto!  During the 5 minutes that I was waiting I was listening to the show and when it came time for him to talk to me I was saying a prayer and taking deep breaths because I was so nervous. It went by quickly. Matt pronounced my name perfectly and he asked me a couple questions about my being from south africa and why i didn't learn to swim and then switched back to the other girl in the studio. when he got back to me he asked what the hardest part of learning to swim was and then asked how I felt to finally learn how to swim. I'll post the audio clip when it becomes available.

A big big shout out to my swimming coach Sandra, she was great, she called me up yesterday afternoon and asked me to do this. I was hesitant and I had a couple nervous hours but it was totally worth it!  Off to my day job, stay tuned for the audio.

Here's the audio clip: http://krisen.ca/krisen.ca/metromorning_cbc_interview.mp3

I start at the 1:30 mark.

Cheers,

Krisen

Global warming?

With these record heat waves..( The last time it was this hot was 1930s) I wonder if this is a sign of global warming and more of this to come. How wasteful we as a species have become. Is it in our nature to be this wasteful and do things without thought of consequence. Maybe it is...I know that as much as I want to have less of a carbon footprint, I still want to drive my car solo to work and take flights where I want to do...and yes even buy plastic bottles and containers although this really does irk me at times.
I wonder what it will take for me, us to change? Maybe proof that by being less wasteful things will improve, polar ice caps will stop melting and crazy heat waves and smog will reduce...hmmm.