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Warren Shea

Archive for February, 2011

Accomplishments #4.5 – Mid February 2011 Edition

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 at 12:01 am

Terrible 15 days of unproductivity. Terrible. Terrible. I should punish myself but that does not sound like it is in my best interests so I won’t.

Shows / Movies

Books & Manga
Street Fighter: The Ultimate Edition Book 2 – complete

warrenshea.com
Finish my Social Network post….you stupid procrastinator (by you, I mean me). – in progress

Gaming
Finish Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) – to do

Web Development and Design
Object Oriented Book (Finish?) – to do, have not read anything in 15 days
Start HTML5 and ASP.NET book – to do

Other

Notes
I partly blame the pain I’d been experiencing since Feb 4. Man, has it been 11 days already? I’ve missed 2-3 days of work outta the last 5 as well as missed today because I went to UWaterloo. Falling behind in work. >_< Right before a big deadline. I need to get my ass in gear but I find I'm just so terrible unmotivated/distracted with other things lately. Playing a LOT of DOTA in my free time. Z's gotten pretty good lately and we've been playing a lot together, working on our teamwork in game as well as real life.

I’ve realized that I’ve had the OOP book open, on my desk for 15 days, w/o touching it. I’ve got good intentions but…you can’t get anything done with simply good intentions alone!

Because of the recent health related issues, I’ve been blogging more which is a nice side effect. I was worried from January that this blog was on the death bed…but maybe I just needed a bit of a break. I notice as my web development reading went down, my blogging (as well as my DOTA) went up. Sorta as expected. Well, except for the DOTA. Without the health issues, I wouldn’t have so many posts though. I haven’t been walking to work lately. The pain in my abdomen is aggravated the more I walk so I definitely did NOT walk to work this month. I totally, now that I haven’t walked to/from work in so long, really appreciate and love that walk to work. Getting my brain going to write/blog/think, etc. Like driving alone…your head just….wanders off to a nice place. I can’t wait until it’s warm and my pain is gone and I get back to normal.

I Pikachoose You! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Monday, February 14th, 2011 at 5:30 pm

I Pikachoose You!

Lee – Winterlicious – Dinner

Saturday, February 12th, 2011 at 2:36 pm

Susur.com/lee

$35 Dinner plus taxes and gratuity

Cheese burger spring roll – Pickles & smoked chili mayo in lettuce wrap
Szechwan hot & sour soup – Shredded vegetable & Chinese doughnut fritters
Peking Cucumber salad – Crushed cucumber, roasted sweet onion red pepper, mint, feta & Asian vinaigrette

Fresh Ground green curry chicken – Sweet pea polenta, butter almondine, sundried tomato jam oven dried pineapple, chili mint chutney
Pan roasted Salmon with spicy Chinese sausage – Winter melon broth
Spiced Slow Braised Beef – Romano bean puree & daikon puree

Crème caramel
Panna Cotta
Tong Yuen


FOOD: Overall 8/10 (Click on the pics for larger pics)


Warren Zena

Cheese burger spring roll

Pleasently surprising considering its name and immediate WTF thought. It is advisted to eat the Spring Roll with your hands, after wrapping it in the lettuce. I ate some of the roll w/o the lettuce and it tasks exactly like a cheeseburger, it was great. Wrapping it in lettuce makes it taste more like a cheeseburger even. A cheeseburger with a nice crunch. Very tasty.

Peking Cucumber salad

This salad was pretty good as well. Though I’m not a great salad evaluator, to me it was a salad with a thai/peanut buttery vinaigrette. It was pretty good though, definitely not a fusion I would have expected.

Spiced Slow Braised Beef

This was pretty good as well but I’ve had better entrees (and the portion wasn’t great). The puree was great but I just may not be a fan of braised anything. As I ate this, it felt similar to the Braised Lamb I had at Didier. I mean, the meat was incredibly tender and soft, it just didn’t do it for me.

Pan roasted Salmon with spicy Chinese sausage

While this wasn’t what I had chosen, this was exceptionally good. The taste was spectacular, mixing salmon, chinese sausage, and turnip…turned out to compliment each other incredibly well. Even if you had the salmon and sausage, without the turnip, its a completely different taste that combining the three together. I wish I had ordered this.

Tong Yuen

Not knowing what this would be, it was a nice surprise. For about 1 or 2 seconds upon putting this in your mouth, it feels like a soft oreo. But as you bite in, you get an incredible number of different flavours, sesame seed, oreo, coconut, peanut…the taste changes every moment but it’s an overall a great dessert.

Crème caramel

This was really good, a liquidy caramel on a soft custard. Very refreshing itself, or with the whipped cream it came with. While I would order this, I think I made the right choice with the Tong Yuen because it’s less likely to get something like that elsewhere. At least, the fusion version of it.


Overall, out of the 6 items, I thought all of them were good, worth getting or trying. I think I found 4 to be exceptional though (not the salad, or the slow braised beef). I would definitely like to come back and order some of those again.

SERVICE: 7/10
Waiter wasn’t great…I dunno. For what we were paying, I would have expected a little more…professionalism? No…courtesy? I dunno…just seemed a tad unwelcoming. I think the appetizers came in at 6:40, even though we were seated at 6:00. And I don’t believe we took that long to order. Also, our table was really close to others, beside us. Like, it was tough NOT hearing 2 other conversations. One of the best parts though is that with every dish they brought out, they described exactly what it was, and often provided tips on how to eat it (Cheeseburger Spring Roll). I don’t think I’ve been anywhere that does that…when the food comes, I just wanna eat it so it’s tough waiting that 30-45s for them to talk about the dishes. But it’s good to know…I enjoyed that. Extra marks for that.

COST: 8/10
35/person = 70 + Tax/Tip was about $95. Damn, I just realized that we put a 22% tip…because I calculated tip based on the total (cost+tax = 79) rather than just the cost (70). Damn, I miscalculated. I was thinking that for a 70 cost, before tip and tax, 95 was a lot…Well, if I did at 18% tip, it woulda been like, 92 so not that much different. Ah well. Compared to other Winterlicious places, the cost to food ratio is good. At least for Z. For me, I think I was still a bit hungry after…I woulda enjoyed being stuffed like Wildfire rather than looking for McDonalds after (which is sorta what I did except I didn’t get anything). But I mean, this was one of the cheaper Winterlicious places so again, that ratio was accurate.

warrenshea.com rates – Lee – Winterlicious – Dinner – 7.5/10!

Life Update

Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 3:43 pm

Update: Outta the ER with some meds. Docs still aren’t 100% sure what’s wrong with me, the symptoms I have aren’t quite textbook, but seem to touch a bunch of things. Anyways, they have an assumption of what I have, which is an infection and I have some antibiotics for that. To be honest, maybe the best news I heard. As far as things to be wrong with me, that really is one of the best…provided it does no lasting damage. I was getting worried it might be kidney stone (what the Docs thought it might be) or abdominal cancer or something. Seems more unlikely at this point but it’s a possibility still I guess.

Whew, not a kidney stone. I would not be looking forward to that. The thought of it makes me squirm in pain.

You know, I had a post in my drafts for about a year. It’s titled “Warren goes to the hospital for nothing serious”. In it, I describe my first time going to the hospital, which turned out that I ate too many sour cream and onion chips at my parent’s party one night, my stomach hurt all saturday and sunday, until I went to the hospital, threw up, and felt better :S I was pretty young, early grade school or even before grade school. In 2nd grade, I had 6 stitches to the forehead for playing around and falling on the corner of a school door. I remember opening my eyes, my friends all staring at me, and blood, dripping down onto the ground from my head. I never saw the wound tho…which may have been a good thing.

I don’t recall going to the hospital again for myself since then. I’ve been there for something Z had for a while, I’ve been there to visit my Grandmother shortly before she passed away but to my recollection, I don’t remember the hospital that much. Which is a good thing. I really hate the hospital. All these people with stuff wrong with them. It may be partially that I’m a germophobe but I just feel….death and despair around a hospital. To me, it’s where bad stuff is happening. I mean, people are there to get better…but it means something is wrong in the first place. The place itself is fine, just the thought of going to the hospital…and visiting someone there. To be honest, I feel like Dexter in the way that, I don’t know how to act. I’m not sure to act sympathetic, or be light-hearted or…what. I can’t really do what comes naturally because….I don’t really…feel anything. It’s hard to describe, but as I’ve said before, I’m kinda dead inside or psychopathic in some ways, “abnormal lack of empathy” can often describe me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. “Empathy. I lack it.”

Anyways, this post was just to combine to the “Warren goes to the hospital for nothing serious” post. It seems that I have, again, dodged the bullet with my health. While something is definitely wrong, it’s not terribly bad. It should be fully recoverable. Even now, I’m at pretty minimal pain. As I get older, I do notice more stuff wrong with me but so far, I’ve still felt relatively…invincible, a way of thinking when you’re younger.

Not to jinx myself though. Last night, I again prayed to the God I believe in when I’m really desperate for stuff, and whether he heard the call and did something or whether it’s coincidence or whether that’s just the world and fate/destiny doing what it was always going to do, I feel like….everything’s okay.

And no, I don’t believe in God. I feel that people who believe in religion or the unexplainable by science are weak minded. But hope is not a scientific thing and while I don’t believe in God, I do find it reassuring to pray to him when I’m really desperate. I don’t see how it can hurt. And even by doing so, I believe that it’s because of a moment of weakness on my part. And that’s perfectly fine. It was.

Anyways…my plan for the foreseeable future is to rest and not to do anything too active. So basically, live my life exactly as I’ve been living it my entire life -_-;

Dun dun dunnnn

Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 12:45 pm

As I write this, on my iPhone, I’m headed to the ER. Although I feel more or less fine despite the pain in my abdomen which, after antibiotics showed no improvement and which the doctor couldn’t seem to identify (which is why I’m headed for the ER), I find myself less worried with what’s wrong with me as I am worried about a lengthy stay at the hospital without my computer, comics, hamsters, bed, etc. Whoa that’s a long sentence. Even blogging now seems incredibly cumbersome compared to my regular keyboard. Sniff. The comfort of your own home is not something to take for granted. Maybe that’s why I hate to travel.

Anyways those that read the blog, please keep everything quiet. If people ask, say you don’t know. Lie for me cuz I can’t :S That includes you GS, CG, DF…I hate all the attention. Hate.

When I compare how I feel to other people I see in the ER, my stuff seems like such a joke. Definitely not a big deal. Hopefully not a big deal.

I miss my bed. So comfy. I wish I could just sleep all day.