Tochi's Hut

NATO

2022-05-14T16:25:00.002-04:00

While discussing geopoliticial news that Finland was looking to join NATO:

Wife: "What does that mean? They have more allies if Russia attacks them?"

Me: "No, an attack on one means an attack on all"

Kid: "Like Power Rangers... FORM!"

贈劉景文

2021-10-18T23:05:00.000-04:00

New term of Mandarin class started for the kid this past weekend. Due to covid, all international language classes were virtual, and even the instructors did not find out their assignment till the evening before! Kid's teacher was expecting to teach 7th to 8th grade class, but got assigned to this group of younglings.

As such, the teacher shared the following poem, and asked the kids to memorize it in 45 min.

贈劉景文

蘇軾（宋）

荷盡已無擎雨蓋，

菊殘猶有傲霜枝。

一年好景君須記，

最是橙黃橘綠時

He immediately came to me for help... Good Luck kid!

To the kid's elation, we found out today that his teacher got reassigned for the coming weekend, and he has a new instructor.

Sojourner

2021-08-22T10:24:00.003-04:00

Kid noticed my Sojourner with 2362 days had 6x on it. He was trying to work out what that meant.

Me: How many days are in a year?

Kid: 360! (Onyx shows 360. lol)

Me: What?!

Mom: Dude, it's 365.

Me: So what's 2362 divided by 365.

Kid: Daddy says I play too many games... and he's been playing this for 6 years!!

That's insane!

2021-05-12T22:40:00.005-04:00

The F1 Spanish Grand Prix this past weekend featured a epic strategic masterstroke by Mercedes in surprisingly pitting Lewis Hamilton from second. On fresher tyres for his final stint, Hamilton managed to hunt down Verstappen and take the lead with 6 laps to go. The kid, who recently got the ability to iMessage, sent me the following:

It's so amusing receiving messages from him. :D

Mulan: Going to War...

2020-10-12T23:46:00.019-04:00

We watched Mulan as a family. During one scene where the Emperor gave the edict to require one male per family to join the war effort:

Wife: You know what that means for Mulan's family?
Kid: ....
Wife: The Dad has to go to war...
Kid: Oh.
Me: Good thing I have a son!
Kid: 😠

Later on, during the bootcamp training, I got lots of ideas to train the kid, and make sure he's ready for battle!

楚喬傳

2020-08-03T19:38:00.001-04:00

While watching the epic scene from 楚喬傳, we noticed that towards the end, tears had welled up in the kid's eyes. Then after the mom's sacrifice towards the end/start of the next episode, he was literally balling. Took about 20 minutes before he's able to calm down. Didn't realize a proper tragedy could evoke such emotions from the kid!

Greyhound

2020-07-19T23:24:00.002-04:00

Greyhound, starring Tom Hanks, came out recently on Apple TV+. We decided to watch it, and introduce a bit of WWII events to the kid. During the scene where the Canadian corvette, HMCS Dodge, codenamed Dickie, came up... the kid grinned and said: "Dickie? You know... " haha

Enemy Tank Spotted!

2019-09-01T14:00:00.000-04:00

We've recently picked up Valkyrie Chronicles for the Nintendo Switch, making our way through the various operations. Incidentally, kid and I were excited to see the Sherman Tank on display outside the Haliburton Branch #129 of the Royal Canadian Legion!

Me: "Hey, look at that!"
Kid: "Enemy tank spotted! It's the Edelweiss! No wait, it's not blue!!"

Good times! :D

Girl to Woman

2018-12-16T15:13:00.002-05:00

Kid asked me what 3 letter word makes a girl become a woman? It was a riddle for a game he was playing. Many possibilities here! 30 minutes later, he came back and said he figured it out. AGE! Makes perfect sense :)

Sphinx

2018-10-14T18:21:00.001-04:00

While at a travel agency, I picked up a flyer for a tour of Egypt featuring a photo of the Giant Sphinx. The kid knew the Sphynx through Super Mario Odyssey, as the NPC that moves around different kingdoms asking quiz questions to Mario. When he saw the flyer, he was astounded... "You mean this Sphinx is REAL!?!" Yes son, let's go visit the real ones one day.

F1 fan in the making...

2018-05-28T13:57:00.000-04:00

Proud Papa moment:

Had to miss the end of the F1 Monaco Grand Prix due to other commitments... so after the race, I decided to look up the results.

Me: "Oh look, Danny Ricciardo won the Monaco GP!"
Kid: "Did he do a shoey!?!"

My efforts at mentoring this budding F1 fan is finally paying off!

Border Crossing

2018-05-20T21:05:00.000-04:00

We took a day trip to Buffalo to visit the Eternal Flame Falls. At the border crossing, we met a friendly US border control agent, who spent a minute to warn us on the dangers around the Falls, especially given the rain the previous day. Afterwards, he wrapped up the conversation with: "Are you bringing anything to USA?" I answered: "Nope". Kid in the back, who was listening in on our conversation, said to our immediate horror "What do you mean?!? We're bringing something!" We had a car full of chips and snacks, etc. :D

12 x 5

2017-11-18T23:14:00.000-05:00

We had a dessert craving, so dropped by Cups for some Mango bingsu. While we were eating, kid requested we ask him what 12x5 was. After obliging his request, he promptly told us the answer was 60. He further explained that he know that was the answer because a clock has 12, and that's equivalent to 60 minutes. We were quite impressed!

He then requested we test him on multiplication by 5. Wife asked him 5x5, and again, he answered promptly with 25. I asked him 9x5, and again, 45! At this point, I thought this was too good to be true. He's pretty advanced in math, but not to the extent that he knew multiplication of 5 by heart yet.

Curious, I then turned around and saw that there was a giant clock which showed both clock face numbers, as well as the corresponding minutes!! What a cheat!! :D

Unown ran away

2017-11-17T20:07:00.000-05:00

After dinner, we noticed that there was an ultra rare Unown for the kid's favourite letter L. The location was a bit of a hike into a park, but we decided to brave the cold and grab this guy. There was a group huddled around GZ with flashlights by the time we got there. After some pictures, kid went on wife's phone to try to catch this Unown. After one throw, the Unown fled!!! WTF.

At a moment like this, there wasn't much conversation. Wife wasn't too pleased, and the kid felt guilty. Without a word, I gave my phone to the kid for him to catch. He fed it the customary raspberries, and threw a couple "Great" balls, but the Unown (it was a high CP one) kept popping out! After the 4th throw, the stupid Unown also ran away!!

This was the first time an Unown ran away from us. The next day, kid said he was the worst Pokemon trainer ever... Niantic grrrrrr!!! This was worse than the previous episode.

Club off the tower

2017-11-12T23:18:00.000-05:00

We recently picked up a Nintendo Switch along with The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild. We were barely into the game, just making it after the part where the Old Man shows us how to use the scope at the top of the Great Plateau Tower. We had clicked through the dialogue a bit too fast, and had missed how to activate the scope. So I started randomly pressing buttons and accidentally threw our one and only Boko Club off the tower. My eyes widened with horror, as you are pretty useless without a weapon in this game. I let out an OH CRAP!!! The kid followed up with a big DAAAADDDDDY!!!! I was like... SORRY!!!! Kid countered with a "YOU'RE STUPID!!!". I was half taken aback, half bemused. WHAT DID YOU SAY?!? Hahaha.

We reloaded from our last save point to get the club back. :)

Honey

2017-10-08T22:53:00.003-04:00

We visited Willowtree Farm today and picked up miscellaneous goodies you'd expect from a fall harvest: pumpkins, corn, beans, etc. During dinner, the following conversation happened:

G: Why did we buy honey? We have two big pails already?
D: What? We got honey?
me: Huh, I thought one of you put it in the basket, and so I just paid for it during checkout.
kid: It wasn't me, I put on the shelf, not in the basket!!
me: Duuudddee, next time, put it in someone else's basket, not ours!!! Is your throat hurting? I'm making you honey lemon water tomorrow. :)

After some laughter, and I went to find the honey bottle... 375g for $7!!! It is GOLD honey after all.

What state is Nashville in?

2017-06-30T23:27:00.000-04:00

On our drive in, we asked the kid what state Nashville is in... he obviously didn't know, so we sounded it out with him. Ten.... nes... seee. Kid goes, oh! Tennessee Racquet!! 😅

Sagrada Familia

2017-05-28T12:57:00.002-04:00

We saw a poster at a travel agency of Sagrada Familia yesterday. Since we were there last year, I wanted to see if the kid remembered. He was like yeah!! That's where there was suppose to be a Pikachu nest, but there weren't any Pikachus! I'm convinced he does. :D

On a real hill...

2017-02-26T23:47:00.000-05:00

Took the family to "real" skiing today... the kid has been training diligently at the local hill the past two years, cumulating in a step 3+ and tiger badge. We got go MSL late morning. The weather was perfect, and snow wasn't bad considering the rain from the past few days. We started with some early green runs as a group. The Sundance chairlift had a conveyer belt to easy the loading! First time I've seen anything like this... what a great idea. The kid didn't have any problems, so we decided to tackle one of the blue hills (Snowbowl, ironically also Kid's favourite hill at Uplands). As we took the express lift up, I showed him the two black diamond trails at the top of the lift. We even ventured up to the edge to see how steep it was... but before we put the kart before the horse, we needed to try out blue trails. I led the way with kid in tow, and to my amazement, he was managing to keep pace with me and "follow my tracks". He had to revert to pizza turns for the most part, but great control, balance and edge work!

After lunch, we went up as a group on the express lift. There was a short blue trail back over to the greens, which petrified mommy. Mommy decided to take a break, while we did a few more blue runs. We ended up going over to the Moonstone cross-over trail. Ironically, kid managed to survive all the steep parts, but then took a tumble on the flat section.... ski off and everything too! After an eternity for recovery, we made our way back over to MSL chalet.. much to a worried mom. To cheer the kid up, we decided to try the West Peak Black Diamond... kid wanted to do it.. Mommy was saying he should try it.... and me.. despite seeing his mastery of the blue slopes was quite petrified. I wasn't sure whether to lead or follow. Leading meant I would be useless if the kid fell, and Following meant the kid would be a bullet down the mountain. However, after getting the kid all hyped up, I wasn't one to disappoint, and gave him strict instructions to follow me. Bail out if you need to. We got to the edge, looked down, and went for it.

I made a few broad S turns, and every time I turned around, the kid was right there with his patented Pizza turns. He was struggling more to follow my tracks, but was still very much in control. Only one time did he yell for me to stop and wait for him to finish turning. CRAZY. At the bottom of that section, I asked him if it was hard, and got the classic: Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy. Damnit. The kid is surely going to surpass me soon.

Finished the day with a variety of runs. Mommy was doing awesome and managed to make it down the mountain a few times with much better control. Took the kid up for a final run on some Black Diamonds. He aced the top half, and fell on the second... but pulled himself back up quickly and skied the rest of the way down. I didn't even have a chance to start moving back up the hill. I'm so jealous of kids' flexibility. Finished the day at 6pm, and went to hunt some partychus afterwards. All in all, an eye opening day.

Lapras

2016-12-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

Lapras was one of two pokemons left in our Pokedex that we have yet to find (the other requires a trip down under). We haven't been too happy with the new tracker which only showed pokemons near pokestops... we were missing out a bunch of nearby pokemons. Also, with the corresponding migration, we lost our stream of Pikachus and Squirtles (replaced with Nidorans.. sigh).

Anyway, tonight, as we were stuck in traffic taking the kid to Chinese school, I happen to notice a LAPRAS on sightings. With the pokestop tracking (and my Ingress knowledge), I knew exactly where to go. After checking with the crew that it would be okay for the kid to be late for Chinese school, we made the 2 minute detour. Passed my phone back to the kid, and he got serious, and tossed Razzie and Ultra balls. Quickly nabbed the rare pokemon.

Wife, on the other hand, was having trouble. She spent like 10 pokeballs already, without luck. You run the risk of pokemon running away at this stage. Good thing kid came to the rescue. Another raspberry + curveball, the kid caught Lapras on his "FIRST TRY!".

Kid can't stop asking: "Can you believe we caught a LAPRAS?!?"

We made it to Chinese school on time too! :D

Dodrio

2016-11-06T17:15:00.001-05:00

Earlier in the day, kid and I saw a nearby sighting of a Dodrio... one of the remaining 12 pokemons we needed to catch. In fact, we've been walking Doduo for the past day, trying to gain enough candy to evolve one. Of course, catching one would be even better. Unfortunately, the earlier hunt was unsuccessful. After an awesome late lunch at Pasteis de Belem, we were waiting for tram 15 to Lisboa, when I noticed a new pokemon on my scanner! The infamous Dodrio!!! Kid and I have an agreement on who gets to catch pokemons.. the person who hasn't caught one yet would get first dibs. This being a new one, we'd take turns throwing one ball at time. I handed the phone to the kid, and his eyes lit up! He turned super serious, and dictated his game plan... raspberry then ultra ball. With a "GREAT" execution, the Dodrio popped back out.....

... and ran away. After one throw. WTF!!

The kid was stunned. I was stunned. He was like.... HE RAN AWAY!! I replied, "It's okay.. we'll evolve.. but you should have thrown a curveball." Kid rebuked with, "I did throw a curveball!"

We got on the tram.... saw another shadow of dodrio later on... but no real sightings... such a tease.

It wasn't our day. Kid asked me if I was sad... he obviously was disappointed. :(

An accident!

2016-11-03T05:16:00.003-04:00

This was bound to happen one day. As we were checking into our apartment, I was busy with the landlady when kid comes up to me with a quiet panic in his voice.. Daddy Daddy, I'm sorry, I don't know what happened! What do we do now?!? Apparently he accidentally activated a lucky egg! Since I was still preoccupied with the landlady, I had to tell him to wait, and he began to pace nervously around the room! Needless to say, in the long (more like 5) minutes for me to finish the checkin, kid's anxiety level went through the roof! We then immediately went and evolved whatever we can, which was hard since we were aggressively transferring crappy pokemon to get the 2x candy during this Hallowe'en event. Finished off with about 40k experience. Kiddo was so apologetic and promised to never let this happen again. I magnanimously told him it was okay. Just a game! A good learning experience all around. Then we had a blast the rest of the day in Porto!

Mr. Mime

2016-10-24T00:24:00.002-04:00

Okay. No question we like this Hotel. We found this quicker than expected!

And a wonder too!

Do you like this hotel?

2016-10-23T12:49:00.001-04:00

In a hotel on the outskirts of Madrid, I ask the kid if he liked this hotel... we are catching so many pokemons we don't usually see here! His reply: "What do you mean I like it? I LOVE IT!" :D

Lapras vs Kid

2016-10-21T22:41:00.004-04:00

Wife and I were on our way to pick up kid from Chinese school. I made the off-hand comment that if I saw a Lapras sighting (still have yet to catch or hatch one. :(), I would go and catch it first, even if I end up 5-10 minutes late picking up the kid. Wife obviously thought I was crazy, but I retorted saying... the kid wouldn't expect any less of me!! ---- On the drive home, wife asks kid... Daddy said he'd rather find a Lapras instead of picking you up. Kid was like.. WHAT?!? I was like.. hold on a sec. Let me re-phrase... "If I saw a Lapras shadow... do I catch it first, but then might be late to pick you up (5-10 minutes at most due spawn time) .. or should I pick you up on time and skip Lapras. Kid immediately reply: "CATCH LAPRAS REALLY QUICK!!" I rest my case.