CHNL by Chanel

Va va voom

Chanel — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:51:38 +0000

Celebrity sightings: Two mass murderers

Chanel — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:04:29 +0000

My dad (the very same one who wanted me to tell my readers he was “dead, or something”) has always preferred to have fish as pets over any other animal. Don’t ask me why. Personally, I prefer to have pets that won’t be assisting the devil in eradicating the human race during the apocalypse, but that’s just me.

A couple weeks ago, my dad’s outdoor fishpond was raided. He had about eight fat, orange goldfish in it. One morning, he woke up to check on his pond, only to find the headless bodies of every single one of his goldfish strewn all across our patio.

That’s right. HEADLESS GOLDFISH. ALL OVER OUR PATIO.

Are you reading this before bed? So sorry. Maybe you should listen to this instead:

In case you’re wondering, the only reason I’m here writing instead of sitting in therapy right now is because I didn’t actually see these headless goldfish at the time. Unfortunately, my dad missed one headless goldfish which had fallen behind the pool, and I had the great misfortune of noticing it when I went outside with my tray of grapefruit a week later.

(Needless to say, I couldn’t finish that tray of goldfish-colored fruit.)

We know for a fact that raccoons were responsible for this mass murder. Specifically, the two raccoons who are always in our yard at inappropriate times, driving our dog nuts just as we’re about to enter the deepest level of sleep around 4 a.m.

Have you ever wanted to see the face of a mass murderer? Here you go:

Look, don’t be fooled by their big eyes, chocolate button nose, long whiskers and teeny paws. Raccoons are cute, but they’re also jerks. They have no sense of decency. Who steals someone’s pets, noms off their heads and leaves the rest behind for the pet owner to dispose of? RACCOONS, THAT’S WHO. Heartless wankers.

Among my many talents, I can also speak Raccoon. Here’s what transpired between the three of us while I was busy taking photos of them…

Raccoon 1: “What is she doing?”
Raccoon 2: “Beats me. What’s that thing she’s pointing at us? Think it’s dangerous?”

I kept taking pictures until the leader of the troublemaking duo, George, started getting snippy with me. He was mumbling something about having to call his agent about an unsolicited photoshoot until I shut him up good with a HELLO JERKFACE, YOU ARE ON MY PRIVATE PROPERTY SO I CAN SHOOT YOU ALL I WANT, KTHXBYE. I don’t think he was too happy with my response though, because he began to climb down the tree, puffing up and hissing at me as if he was going to come down and kick my ass.

Hehehehe, do you think I’m scared?

(I went inside and googled if a raccoon had ever attacked a human a human before, just in case. Then I came back out. You can never be too safe.)

Raccoon 1 to raccoon 2: “Fred, I’m outta here. This is totally not what I signed up for when I agreed to stay up all day with you.”

Fred and George were not available for further comment.

Day 365: Grace In Small Things

Chanel — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:38:44 +0000

Getting a good, early start to the day.
Falling in love with Evgeni Plushenko because of this. SO MANY LEVELS OF AWESOME.
Figure skating drama. Love it.
HOCKEY. Oh my god, I have gone from having zero interest to being riveted by it in the span of one game!
Finishing my Grace In Small Things project! It’s done!

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

Day 364: Grace In Small things

Chanel — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:32:56 +0000

Pushing myself & doing something outside of my comfort zone by joining the Learn To Run Faster group instead of the Learn To Run group in the SunRun inTraining. This means nonstop running instead of running + walking in my training. Today = 44 minutes nonstop. Insanity!
Back to back labs. Feels good to get them over with.
Having a near meltdown over approaching exams (and not having enough time to be prepared for them), and responding by clearing my head, approaching the calendar once again to calculate that I’ll actually have just enough time. Thank you God!
Having friends that share my school panic and actually care enough to converse for over an hour about our respective directions in university study (or lack thereof).
The walk of shame to buy a chocolate bar after a run. I literally went out of my way to avoid running into another member of my run group on my way home with my stash. It’s like I’m a relapsing drug addict or something! hehe

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

Of the olympic torch relay, canadian patriotism and oh yes, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER!

Chanel — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:20:24 +0000

It’s finally here.

In 2003, Vancouver won the bid to host the XXI Winter Olympics. I didn’t really care. I had never really followed the olympics before so it didn’t really excite me. I also didn’t realize the magnitude of this event. In fact, nothing Olympics had really phased me until I went downtown for opening day of the games and realized two things:

(1) HOLY COW WE’RE HOSTING THE WORLD.
(2) HOLY COW THOSE SEVEN YEARS WENT FAST.

So it begins. I have no tickets for any of the olympic games that are happening MINUTES AWAY FROM MY HOUSE because I had pretty much forgotten this would happen until up until maybe, two weeks ago? when they started closing off roads. I also thought I didn’t care about sports, especially winter ones since I pretty much detest snow, but apparently, Canadian pride changes your taste in things.

Internet, I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but… I AM SO STOKED FOR THE HOCKEY GAMES. (And P.S., Canada? YOU BETTER NOT LOSE. I don’t even know the first thing about hockey, but I do know that I want you to kick the world’s ass. No pressure or anything.)

One of the things that definitely got Vancouver hyped up for the Olympic games was the Olympic torch relay; the longest ever in Olympic history. (Canada is big, in case you didn’t know. Like majorly big.)

On Thursday it went through my neighborhood and past my dad’s shop…

Kids from the nearby elementary school lined the streets and sang “Oh Canada” while the torchbearer rang by. We live in a very multicultural (read: asian dominated) area so it was especially touching to see people of all races and backgrounds uniting as a country.

People from other countries may not be able to understand this fully because there may be a much stronger sense of patriotism there (like in the United States, for example), but in Canada I don’t think this is always the case. With so many immigrants who are often especially proud of where they came from, I feel like the sense of uniting as one country is often lost. It was heartwarming to see that isn’t so.

Crowds on 4th Avenue eagerly awaiting the torch.

People running with the flame.

Two torch bearers after one passed the flame to the other.

Quachi! He’s one of our Olympic mascots. Back in 2007, I accused him of being a bad role model. But three years has softened me, and the mascots have definitely grown on me.

But back to the torch…

On Friday, I woke up before the crack of dawn to see Arnold Schwarzenegger carry it.

There were a lot of people.

All of them had cameras. In the mad dash to get closer and closer to Arnold, I heard people were actually dropping $4,000 SLRs. (In other words, it was a small piece of mayhem. And very exciting.)

Reportedly, a lot of people turned up to this event and didn’t even get to see Arnold’s face…

…. I wasn’t one of them!

It was definitely a neat experience. I’ll be going downtown later this week to take more photos of all the crowds and excitement and free events going on down there. Meanwhile, tell me:

Did you watch the opening ceremonies? Have you been following the winter Olympics at all? If you have, what has been your favorite parts so far?

Also,

GO CANADA GO!

Day 363: Grace In Small Things

Chanel — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:27:31 +0000

Getting stuff done I’ve been putting off since forever.
Watching a video of my recent dance competition. I didn’t cringe to death, but I did realize that my legs are NEVER. STRAIGHT. at any given point in our cha cha routine, which is like the #2 biggest mistake. But at least I can see it now!
Dancing barefoot. (Granted, the circumstances – having a blister develop on my upper heel mid practice – were not something to celebrate, but it gave me an excuse to dance barefoot regardless!)
The dying sting of a wound to my pride every time I see you. Somehow, it makes me chuckle.
That amazing feeling of crawling into bed after feeling absolutely dead on your feet.

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

Day 362: Grace In Small Things

Chanel — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:18:31 +0000

Getting a massive amount of work done in one day. Way to kick off the week!
Pilates. Have you ever tried this? Because holy crap, MY ABS. Intense.
Doing adulty things like paying bills and responding to calls.
Catching a little more Olympic fever.
Writing so much I get hand cramps.

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

Day 361: Grace In Small Things

Chanel — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:12:53 +0000

Canada’s first gold on home soil!
Drive, walk and dinner with the family.
Getting surprised by a box of chocolate. For meeee!
Not celebrating Valentine’s day in any way or form (besides eating chocolate, which did not come in a heart-shaped box). I don’t particularly care either way, but after a string of odd Valentine’s days, I like having an uncomplicated, average Sunday one.
Figure skating! Eeee.

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

Day 360: Grace In Small Things

Chanel — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:07:58 +0000

Canada car flags everywhere. GO CANADA GO!
Having an afternoon to myself for once.
Going for a run in the cold evening. 20 minutes straight!
Getting into (watching) olympic sports, like woman’s moguls!
Lights off by 11:15 p.m. Developing a habit.

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

Playful

Chanel — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 05:53:15 +0000