Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Canada Trip #3 - Tuesday

The past two days have been uneventful (boring) at work. I'm still mostly doing my regular FP&A job from Markham which means I'm only 50% productive since the network connection is so slow. During lunch yesterday, I went to First Markham Place with two engineers. It's another Chinese mall, nicer than Pacific Mall, and it has a bigger food court.


Place where I got lunch on Monday. There was a pretty long line and most were white people which should have tipped me off. Even worse, I got a lunch special on the English only menu (sign on right) so it didn't taste that good. Should have ordered from the Chinese menu.

For lunch today, I decided to try my luck again at the food court. This time I picked a "Shanghai" place and had their stirred fried rice cake dish. It was a bit better than yesterday but not by much. I think I'm experiencing the same cultural bias as in China, except this time it's in Cantonese. Markham is full of Chinese people but most are Cantonese. At every restaurant/food court vendor, they would talk to me in Cantonese. After seeing my blank stare, most then switch to English, grudgingly. Some are pretty persistent though with the Cantonese which I don't get since they manage to speak English to all the white people. Sigh...


"Chef" making my rice cake lunch. The lady at the counter asked if I was from Taiwan since I ordered in Mandarin. I told her I was American. She replied that a lot of Taiwanese people order the stirred fried rice cake dish. Then she asked me whether I like the US or Canada better, to which I replied that the weather here (Canada) sucked.

I just got back home after visiting my cousin Alice in Markham. Each time I visit, it seems like she has another baby (4 in total now). Her father is staying with her currently; this is the uncle I met during my first trip to Chengdu last year. My cousin (she is a nurse) noticed my cough and gave me some Tylenol w/Codine and it seems to work. She told me to break the pill in half; I was too lazy so I took the entire pill. Not sure how many milligrams that was. On the way home, it started snowing again. It's supposed to accumulate 15cm (6 inches) tonight. Good thing I'm only staying for two more days... how did I manage to grow up here without freezing to death?!

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