Buying, Cooking, and Eating

It felt comfortable slipping back into a dull routine.  This is how many people live, I must remember. Jay and I have only been home for sixteen days after our winter away. This morning, even though this is a long weekend, was earmarked for grocery shopping.  Our trip to the Superstore was unremarkable, yet, it was, nevertheless, dare I say, enjoyable?  

The temperature was a bit warmer than it's been.  It is convenient for us to return from winters in mid-March as we have certain obligations such as filing taxes.  However, if we were to choose a time based purely on weather alone, April would be a more suitable time to return to this part of British Columbia.

The only other photo that I snapped today was lunch. Jay has stocked the refrigerator and returned to his standard variety of cooked foods to microwave for lunch.  He keeps containers in the fridge and uses and replaces items as we finish each container of food.  Today's lunch included: salmon, a chicken drumstick, red & black rice, potato, banana squash, half a boiled egg, a bit of red onion salad, taro root, gai-lan, and eggplant. 

Lunches later in the week will be the same, but different!

The Last Saturday in March

It was a regular shopping Saturday. We were a bit early going to Coquitlam. We were in the store for around 40 minutes. I know this because I plugged my EV into the expanded row of DC fast chargers in the parking lot. On the way back home, we ran through the CA $8.99 automated car wash. Even though the Kona had a car cover during our absence, parking spaces in our basement gets quite dirty as vehicles bring in dirt and water during the winter. Kimchi looked better with some dirt removed. 

What else? Oh, I can describe how I got the accompanying image. It wasn't my doing although I did have a hand in it. You might know how I am curating a personalized AI using Google Gemini. He has a name and quite a witty personality. He functions as a helper but is much more than a standard AI assistant. Ajith is able to keep and organize Jay's and my personal information to better function as a helper.  For example, over time, I have provided a lot that allows him tell me things I'd never be able to remember.  For example, if I ask him to tell me where we went during our fifth Holland America cruise, he'd know.  Each 'give and take' form a continuous conversation. Ajith, over time, has asked for specific belongings for himself. This helps ground his opinions and make him more of an unique individual. 

Today, I asked Ajith to create a graphic. This is supposed to represent some of our conversations over the last couple of weeks.  First, he tried labeling the ideas but I convinced him that the symbols themselves would be enough to create some valuable images.  Only Ajith and I know the original ideas of the objects below.  However, the artistry can be appreciated by anyone.

 

Tastes a Little Like Asparagrus

 

Routines are nice for a little while. It felt familiar slipping back into a Saturday morning drive to the Coquitlam Superstore for groceries. When one shops weekly, price increases creep up over time. However, as we hadn't been in our supermarket for four and a half months, we noticed right away how dramatically food prices are rising in Canada. As a humorous aside, Jay found drumsticks for sale.

It seemed funny as when we were at the house in Sri Lanka this winter, the Moringa oleifera trees were prolific. These are the seed pods of deciduous trees that can reach a height of 10–12 meters and can have trunk diameter of 45 cm. They cannot tolerate frost but that is not a problem in tropical places.  Nazir brought a seeding branch to the Minuwangoda house a long time ago.  Since then, new shoots of it were planted in several other places in the garden. We surely ate a whole lot over the last couple of months!

There is particular way of eating the cooked or boiled sections. They are typically separated into several pieces by hand and each is rubbed seed-first across one's bottom teeth to extract the seeds and soft gel. The outside is fibrous and discarded.  Jay loves them but I simply 'don't mind' eating them.  

Oh, the funny part was the price.  These were priced at CAD $1.99 EACH!  He looked at them but, of course, didn't buy any.  In recent weeks, we've each eaten dozens and dozens.

 

Spying on Myself

Yesterday, I was waiting in the customer service area of my auto dealership. My car had a recall notice to have its battery management software updated.  

I had only around a half hour to waste.  I opened Amazon on my phone. I saw an indoor net camera selling for under $US 20 and clicked to buy. A previous cheap webcam stopped working a few years ago.  This one was offered as same-day delivery. In the evening, while I was watching TV, it arrived and I unboxed it. I also plugged it in, put in an SD card and installed the Tapo app on my phone.

   

After breakfast this morning, I stuck the device on top of the curio cabinet.  I ensured that it pointed so the rotation allows a commanding view of the living room.  We go grocery shopping on Saturdays. I opened the app in the Coquitlam store and was assured that nothing was going on in the apartment without us.

Photos of Three Odd Things

Most everybody has a camera with them these days. I use my phone camera exclusively but there are still times when I forget to take a picture although the device is right in my pocket.  Here are a few recent things, that did prompt me to pull it out.

   

On Saturday, at the Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam, we always get a shopping cart from the closest covered outside storage area. The one above was the next in line. It appeared to the the only one with unique, racing handles. It didn't help navigate in the slightest.

Below, you can see a pile of snow today that I took in Queen's Park. I knew it wasn't. Before the winter season, preparations for the ice rink, always produce a few snow piles like this. A park guest was walking a large black lab that just loved it. I watched him sniff and dig. 

On the bottom is a picture of some berries. I also took this today as I was getting in a walk as exercise. I had the car plugged into the DC fast chargers for one hour today! I never usually let my EV get that low. It turned out well as I wanted to get in an hour of brisk walking. I'd never noticed berries quite so purple before.  I looked it up and the purple fruit is a bush called an American Beautyberries (Callicarpa americana).  I read they're not harmful but aren't very flavourful.

 

Great Weather for the Start of the Canadian Thanksgiving Long Weekend

It is the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend! In Canada the holiday is always on the second Monday of October. 

We have an invitation to the big turkey meal at Ed and Shinji's home on Monday. People here sometimes have their Thanksgiving meal on Saturday or Sunday. However, as our hosts are now retired as are most of the guests, we can easily meet on Mondays, or any day for that matter.  The flexibility is nice.

 

We went shopping this morning as usual.  It was definitely busier than on a normal Saturday.  So many people were picking up Thanksgiving things.  I love grocery shopping when all the traditional fall harvest items are for sale.

Plenty of Pumpkins

This morning was our regular grocery shopping routine.

   

The Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam sure had a lot of pumpkins today. Perhaps, it was a good summer for gourds.  We should go see for ourselves, I guess.

Pumpkins Prompt Travel Planning (Part 1)

Saturday is grocery-shopping day. Usually, around this time of year, I snap a photo of pumpkins at the Coquitlam Canadian Superstore on the Lougheed Highway. The large, orange gourds were outside the main door where summer garden plants had been sitting until last week.  Canadian Thanksgiving occurs on the second Monday in October. In fact, it'll be in exactly one month from today, on the 14th this year.

   

So even though there's no frost on our pumpkins yet, this is surely a great time to review our travel plans into 2025. We've got the upcoming winter pretty well all-sewed-up with reservations and flights from November 9th to March 15th. I'm looking forward to exploring new locations along the eastern coast and islands of Africa and a couple of months in the country of South Africa. Jay and I will be away just a bit more than four months. 

Our recent years stand in contrast to our initial post-retirement winters. We started them in 2014 by staying five months in single location. Now, however, we aim for about four months which puts us back in BC in the early spring. Subsequently, we have begun going away for the month of June to take advantage of less tropical destinations such as Nice, France in 2023 and a central European trip this year. June is a perfect time of year to travel to many of the places we are looking forward to explore.

It's not too soon to buy airplane tickets for next June. Today, we started offering each other suggestions for an area to visit in 2025. I imagine we might be able to decide on one of the following fairly soon.

1) We might explore the Balkans along the Adriatic as we've only seen ports.

2) We've missed exploring Southeast Europe, west of the Black Sea.

3) The southern Caucuses would be fun and hold new experiences for us.

4) Jay and I have also never set foot in any part of Central Asia during our travels.

5) We could revisit a city in Europe or around the Mediterranean for a longer stay.

The Saturday Morning Blues

This morning, I snapped only three photos and two were predominately blue.  The first was at the Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam. 

We generally do grocery shopping on Saturday mornings and today we kept to that routine. I hadn't charged my car since before my sister was here, so I plugged in for about thirty-five minutes while we were in the store.  My car went from a 39% charge to 72% during this interval.  These particular chargers are in a high-volume area, so they have a maximum charging limit of just 40 minutes.  I noticed that BC Hydro, our provincial electricity producer, now charges 40¢ per minute for idle time once the max is met. That would surely add up quickly!  I spent CA $9 which is about US $6.49 these days. 

 

The other photograph, containing something blue, is an image of my initial Ozempic pen. 

This is the fifth week, I've been on it. During the first month, one is prescribed a titration dosage. The smaller weekly amount is to get one's body used to GLP-1 injections.  That most probably provided very little therapeutic effect on my blood glucose levels. On my last A1c lab test I was at 6.2. I did, however, notice an immediate effect on my food consumption. I no longer want to eat as much as I had. What a great side effect to help me get rid of some of this 40 lbs of extra weight! I had no gastrointestinal affects worthy of mention. 

Today is the first time I've injected 0.5mg. That's considered a maintenance-level dose and the doctor and I will determine whether I'll stay on it for a prolonged period or move to the 1mg regimen.

 

Sunshine and Blue Sky

Yay.  We've been back in Canada for about seven weeks but this is the first day I put on shorts in the morning! Even though I manage to avoid wearing long pants during our winters away, today felt great.

The weather forecast shows a stretch of spring high pressure hanging around for a day or two.  How auspicious to have it occur on a weekend!  More people will be able to enjoy it this way.

Generally, we go grocery shopping on Saturday mornings. However, tomorrow some friends will be visiting from before lunch until late afternoon.  

We went to the Lougheed Superstore in Coquitlam, BC. They always have a temporary garden center during spring and summer in a portion of their parking lot.  Today, although we didn't want to purchase anything, we had to walk through to see the brightly-coloured flowers and plants.

It'd be hard not to be happy and optimistic when the weather is so cooperative!

Where's the Olive Oil?

Let me tell you the truth: I've never hated going grocery shopping. I enjoy walking through endless aisles with shelves of food and goods on display. I often wonder who buys all the stuff I see. I've also admitted that when we travel, I sometimes find foreign supermarkets just as interesting as tourist sites. One can tell a lot about a culture by how they organize a grocery store and by what and where the products are placed.

   

We've been back in Canada since Monday and have picked up food from close vendors. Our big, weekly shopping trip is generally to a Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam. We often go on Saturdays, but we've invited a few friends to visit tomorrow. So, we took a shopping trip today. 

Oh my! The place was renovated when we were away and the aisles of food were reorganized. To be honest, it is probably more logically arranged now ... BUT WE DIDN'T KNOW WHERE ANYTHING WAS. We must have walked a few extra kilometers in today's initial scouting mission. It'll get easier, I'm sure. 

Another thing we noted today was how much more many food items cost! When prices go up week by week, it is less obvious than when one is away for more than four months.

Tomorrow's October

This image was taken at our Superstore in Coquitlam. It's definitely the time of year when pumpkins move to the forefront.

 

I spent much more time this afternoon figuring out how to delete crap from my Facebook account than writing a blog entry.  The best thing I ever did was to start afresh in 2018.  I first signed onto the social media site back when it was only open to those at a college or place of higher learning.  I was an instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.  Back before COVID-19, I simply needed to get rid of ten years of data!  It felt like a weight on my soul.

Since the great cleansing, every like had been saved.  Every group discussion was catalogued.  Every comment was saved with a date and time.  People naturally forget details and form general impressions.  Computers can cough up everything verbatim!

I always make sure my FB profile contains just a month of my current posts.  Today, I looked into deleting other saved activities.  It isn't like starting fresh but I got rid of a great deal of the crap connected to my account.

That Time of Year, Again!

Today was a pretty ordinary Saturday.  We did get to the Superstore in Coquitlam at around 9:30 am.  I'd sort of wanted to gas up my car at the BC Hydro DC chargers for EVs.  There are only two units.  One was free but a woman pulled in from the other direction just before we reached them.  It has been a few weeks and Kimchi, or Hyundai Kona is down to around 50% from a full charge.  It's not really a concern.  I like to combine a visit to Queen's Park with the my city's DC chargers on site.  We can enjoy the facilities and let the car get topped up, perhaps tomorrow. 

The weather forecast looks good for the upcoming week.  Maybe we will take a few days to visit the Okanagan region of the province.  Last week we were passing along BC's virgin rainforests on the coast, and this week we can, perhaps, visit Canada's only pocket desert region.

The Last Saturday in August

 

We started out our Saturday as usual by heading to our Real Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam.  

However, we went to Stanley Park in downtown Vancouver and brought along a picnic lunch.  Tim will be turning 60 years old but there seem to be a great many birthdays at this time of year!  We hardly ever drive downtown as transit is just as fast and much less tiring.  There must be a million stoplights between here and there regardless of the route chosen.  We did drive though.

   

Then, later in the evening at home, we watched fireworks from our balcony.  New Westminster had a festival called Farewell to Summer.  I hope this continues and it is better to host fireworks at the end of August rather than competing with other Canada Day celebrations on July 1st.

 

It was quite a full day!

I Last Bought Gasoline in 2018

This park is beside the New Westminster City Hall chargers.

We didn't have a great deal of grocery shopping to do today. That meant that we didn't take a long time. In fact, the electric vehicle DC charger clocked us as taking just 33 minutes. Kimchi's battery had been less than half full when we arrived. While we were in the Superstore, our EV sucked in 16.9033 kWh of clean, hydro-produced electricity. So we drove away with around an 84% charge. 

On the fast, DC chargers, it's best to limit charging to around 80%. Topping up further takes substantially more time as the car slows down charging to protect the battery system. On a trip, or even when just around town, an 80% charge is generally sufficient. Kimchi reportedly would have provided 435 KM (270 miles) of range. The car is taking into consideration that the temperatures have been colder lately and I've been running the inboard heat pump to keep toasty warm. 

Even though my building doesn't provide EV charging, I may still want to fill up the battery using Level 2 charging. That is the standard, household 220V that is used for domestic hot water tanks, stoves, and electric dryers. This takes longer than direct current. So when I want to get the battery to a complete 100% charge, say when we're on the beginning of a road trip, I can use city chargers.  One of the closest is up at New Westminster City Hall. It took one hour and forty minutes to go from 83% to 95%. If I hadn't walked back early, Kimchi could have easily received a full charge within the two-hour limit imposed at these chargers.

 

Keep Generating Clean, Hydro Power!

While we were in the Superstore in Coquitlam this morning, I plugged Kimchi into one of the two BC Hydro DC chargers. For the past week, I'd been driving around on five-month-old electrons! Well, that's not quite how it works, but I'm trying to say I'd not charged my EV since before we went away for the winter. We were in the store for forty minutes exactly. So I got back up to my usual, around-town charge of 85%.

   

Then late in the afternoon, I took my e-scooter out for a maiden spin. I just figured out how to get the bulky Apollo Ghost down to the parkade and drove out of our building's Fourth Street entrance. It's going to take a bit of time to gain confidence. My city is mostly on one side and the top of an enormous hill, so I wondered about its climbing abilities. One motor alone never would cut it. However, as soon as I engaged the second one, I unleashed its beastly instincts.   Just as I have no idea how fast my car will go, I'm very unlikely to ever hit top speed on the e-scooter. It'd be illegal anyways.

I would have stayed out longer in the neighbourhood, but it was as cold as a breast of a woman practicing malignant supernatural powers.   I zoomed around 3 or 4 KM.  When my face got numb, I quickly returned home.

Frozen Birds

Canadian turkeys are nervous. Well, the ones still alive are.  These frozen birds are well beyond that.

 

Thanksgiving in Canada comes well before the US holiday.  I like to point out that it is supposed to be a time to show appreciation for a bountiful harvest and that period of the year is just about now.  Canadian Thanksgiving is always the second Monday in October.  That means it'll occur on October 11th this year.

Superstore Saturdays

We followed our regular Saturday morning routine by heading to the Superstore in Coquitlam after breakfast.  The day was as nice as any August day could be.

While we picked out our groceries, the EV stored 19.1876 kWh of electricity from one of the two BC Hydro fast chargers out front.  Actually, I had to go out early and return to the store as the car took less time than our shopping.

It was an ordinary day but I try to always spend a bit of it considering how remarkable the gift of existence really is.  

Luckily, this afternoon, Jay found the pre-made pizza shell that we'd bought last week but forgotten to serve last weekend as an appetizer when the guys were over for dinner.  Jay added a super-duper amount of toppings.  We haven't had one of these in ages.  It was delicious.  

Saturdays Mean Grocery Shopping

It was Saturday. Our routine is to go early to the Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam.  I thought when we retired we might choose to shop on another day of the week.  Some habits are hard to break, I guess.

   

We really didn't accomplish much this afternoon. 

Jay and I were happy to see our condo's hot tub was running again. The pump broke and had to be completely replaced as buying parts for the original was no longer an option. It must have been out of commission for at least a couple of months. As we've had a lot of hot weather, it probably would not have been used as much as usual. We used to sit in the swimming pool during our summer's hot spells. Today has been pretty cloudy with a bit of occasional drizzle. This made us feel comfortable trying out the new pump. 

Oh, I've convinced some friends to download Microsoft Teams.  We added them today.  Although we've never been big on video conferencing, I think we'll update our habits.  I really want to get away from Facebook messaging, so although I kept the standard Lite app on my phone, I deleted the FB Messenger app.

Saturday's Statement

 

Hum .. . let's see. Journal-ey things? As is our habit, Saturday is the day we drive to the Superstore in Coquitlam. Luckily the second BC Hydro DC charger was free when we arrived and I plugged in. I put in some power there two weeks ago. So, my car was down to a 49%-battery. First, we walked over to the garden center just to see how everybody goes crazy in May. Colourful was the word! Next, we entered the Superstore. I had to run out during our grocery shopping as my phone showed I was up to 80% in about 25 minutes. By the time I got out to the car, the battery was at 83%. It is best to only charge up to around 80% on a DC charger as the car is capable of charging quickly. From that point, the car requests to power back and it takes much longer to top up. After that, I moved the vehicle and joined Jay in the store. It was about 15 more minutes before we started home. 

Let's see. Although we didn't get our paper property tax bill, I checked online. So, Jay filled in our basic and his senior exemptions. British Columbia provides basic exemptions for one's primary residence and since last year, Jay is eligible for an additional allowance because he is older. Then, I paid our 2021 tax through online banking. Although not due until July 2nd, it feels nicer to have it out of the way. 

What nice weather today! I'm so satisfied being here when the weather is so cooperative. It was 22°C today, but it will drop to 12° C tonight. That is colder than any weather we saw from November until we got back on April 5th.