jchu.

My friend Michael Knott came to visit for a few days. He’d been booked for a private party in Oakville. This guy Jamie wanted to surprise his wife for her 30th birthday and her brother for graduating from university, and as Michael is one of their favourite artists, he arranged to fly him up from Orange County. This was exciting for Michael and I because we haven’t seen each other since 2003, and after a few tours in very close quarters, people get to know each other very well.

Michael arrived on Thursday night (June 14) at around 1am, without any luggage (it arrived the next day at 5:30pm). We hung out with Eddy on Friday afternoon and then with Sh/Sh, Dave, Jarkko, Marta and Catriona on that night. We had dim sum with my family in Scarborough on Saturday. The performance was on Saturday evening - Jarkko and Marta were very kind to drive us and my sister Irene came down from London. After the show I came back to Toronto for Brandy’s 30th party at Bar Volo.

photo gallery is here

Michael returned from Oakville on Sunday afternoon and Lora came by for a short while to hang out. Jamie and his wife came to pick him up on Monday (June 18) at 2pm to take him to the airport. Michael came and left like a hurricane.

It was a long week! Monday I went to Lora’s - she made an awesome salad and we watched The Science of Sleep. Tuesday was Duff’s with Geoff, Seana, Jarkko, Marta, Eddy, Ronnie and Christie and then rehearsal with Ronnie/Christie/Seana. Wednesday I went up to Dave’s after work and had Vietnamese food before our China Jean rehearsal. Thursday, Ian came over and I made dinner and we watched Slither and The 40 Year Old Virgin.

On Friday, Barb, Brandy, Margaret and I went to have a drink after work at The Brasserie. There were supposed to be more of us but … there weren’t. That bar was really annoying and I was really tired and cranky. After leaving there at around 7:30 I got Hosu takeout for Ian and I and i went over to his place. We ate, played some video games and burned some CDs. I started to get really sleepy and proceeded to totally crash… I woke up at 2:30 in the morning and Ian was still playing video games! I took a cab home and of course was wide awake again.

Yesterday, Saturday, I was a bit late meeting Auntie Alice for yum cha, which was a bit earlier this week as she, MahMah and Uncle Peter were going to watch Geoffrey in a dirt bike race or something. I spent a few hours with my parents and did a Costco-Canadian Tire-Future Shop-Canadian Tire (yes, twice) run. Mom got a little boombox for her ipod and I bought an electric shaver. They dropped me off at York Mills and I subwayed back downtown to Eddy’s and then we went right back up to Markahm to the T&T at Warden & Steeles. Gosh what a beautiful grocery store… and so many free samples!

Anyway, Lora and I had plans but we combined them with what I was doing with Eddy. She came over to his place and we spent the evening eating and watching Golden Girls and South Park. Eddy’s getting ready for his dinner-fund raiser so he made a bunch of food: deep-fried chicken wings with homemade hot honey garlic, and curry-tofu spring rolls. In T&T I mentioned that I like hot and sour soup and Eddy took his cue to teach me how to make it, as well. It was really good… and so were the homemade fries!

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We ended the evening by going to Woody’s where Eddy proceeded to be a contestant in their weekly Best Legs contest. He was hoping to use it as a vehicle for fundraising but never got a chance to say anything!

Today I slept in a bit and then hung out at home. At around 5:30 I left to go pick up my forgotten ipod from Eddy and then turned around and went to Barb and Dave’s. I was nice enough to invite myself over to watch the series finale of The Sopranos and they were nice enough to throw in a bbq dinner of steak, baked potato and asparagus. Oh, and beer. When I arrived, their dog Ridley took the “I’m excited to see you” thing a bit too far and bit a hole into my shirt! Anyway, it was a great meal on their newly completed “Patio Phase 3″ and at 9pm we tuned in to TMN to watch the last ever episode of The Sopranos.

I’m just about to go make my salad for tomorrow and then hit the sack. I really want to go to the gym tomorrow but we’ll see what happens…

Sunday was a little gathering for Shannon’s birthday (which was on May 31). We went to Sushi Inn in Yorkville… Felix and I used to go there but I haven’t gone for a while. It’s not my favourite but it’s pretty good. There were 11 of us and it was pretty fun. It’s kind of pathetic in a way but it was a bit of a challenge for me to be there by 1pm! I’d been up late the night before and didn’t get to sleep until after 5am.

After lunch we walked down to Sharon and Shannon’s place. (From here on, Sharon and Shannon will be referred to as “Sh/Sh”.) They had some nice desserts and stuff and it was a really fun afternoon. I don’t see them as often as usual, but it’s always great when we do actually get together. Here are a few photos of some of us:

photo gallery is here

Anyway, I got home at about 8pm. All that nerdy film-talk with Doug made me really itch to see a movie. Then I realized that I had 2/3 of Day Watch left to finish and that certainly hit the spot!

Last night’s gig at The Horseshoe was a lot of fun. We had nothing in common musically (or in any other way, I’m sure) with the other bands. We had a pretty good crowd, including a bunch of people from work, so that’s cool. After the show I hung around and spent time going from person to person. I ended up next door on Gorilla Monsoon’s patio with Ian, Daryl, Lora, Chris Price and some stranger named … gosh, all I remember is that it ends in “xxx”.

We closed out the patio and I decided to crash at Ian’s instead of walking all the way home at 2:30am. Charles was still up and started pouring us all of these shots of weird alcohol… well it wasn’t all weird but some of them had crazy high percentages. The one that messed us all up was this snake stuff from Cambodia or something. I have no idea what it was but we ended up having this one twice. Then Daryl starts taking his clothes off and dancing on the table. It got a bit crazy and we partied until after 5am. I had to throw up before bed, yuck! I haven’t thrown up from drinking in two or three years. Anyway I woke up at 11:30am with a crazy headache. I went downstairs to get the Advil from my bag and Daryl was nowhere to be found. I spoke to him later and he apparently got home at 6am and was still super smashed. He doesn’t know how he got home, either…

Finally I got up at about 2:00. I had slept in Ian’s bed, Ian slept in Charles’ bed, Charles slept on the floor in the living room and Daryl had crashed on the couch. I felt better and Ian was ok. We went to eat on the patio of Java something on Queen West at around 4pm. Our waitress and I totally recognized each other and it took a while before we realized that the company she used to work for was a regular customer at BMO and I was her teller.

After our afternoon breakfast, I half-TTC’d and half-walked home. It was so hot and gross. I got home and thankfully Tanya had the AC blasting. I sat on the couch for a while and then had a shower. I was supposed to go to that ROM thing but the idea of the humidity and the huge crowd of people was becoming less and less appealing. Eddy called and asked if I wanted to help him put in his AC unit so I went over there at about 7:30pm. (He said he went to the ROM at about 2pm to see how long the lineup was for the free timed-entrance tickets… apparently the lineup went down into Queen’s Park!).

Now it’s 11:30pm and we’re still trying to put the damn thing in! We obviously didn’t make it to the ROM but that’s okay. Eddy’s windows are’t ideal for this unit so he had some plywood cut but we’re not sure if it’s 100% stable for the heavy unit to be leaning against. We’re both a bit scared that it could fall… which would obviously be bad. He’s out wandering around his building right now, trying to find something that we can put on the outside ledge to support it a bit from the bottom (one of his ideas was to put a few cans of tuna underneath it… haha).

I thought that a plank of wood would be good, but where does one find that in the middle of the night? … believe it or not, he found some wood which he proceeded to use a chinese cleaver on cut to size. Anyway, we finished the whole thing by about 1am or so and pretty soon the place was nice and cool.

photo gallery is here

Tomorrow night China Jean, the band I’m in, is playing at The Horseshoe. I thought I’d take it easy tonight by staying in and maybe going to bed early, but it looks like I’ll be hitting the sack marginally earlier than normal. At least I got a couple of loads of laundry done.

I didn’t even eat dinner - Brandy and I went to Aroma Indian buffet for lunch today. I really can’t help myself: butter chicken is evil! We promised each other to not go there ever again, and then revelealed that we’d both made that promise before. It’s bad to not eat dinner but I really haven’t felt hungry since lunch, and we were back in the office at about 2:30pm. That can’t be good for me…

This weekend could end up being pretty busy… I’m going to Shannon’s birthday lunch at 1pm at Sushi Inn, and then back to their place for cake or something. On Satuday is the opening ceremonies of the ROM “Crystal” - that’s going to be crazy packed.

You can get these free tickets into the ROM but they’re timed and I guess you can end up getting any time between Saturday at midnight and Sunday at 6pm. I haven’t been to Scarborough for Saturday dim sum for a few weeks and I’d like to see my parents, but the gig will definitely go late and it could be difficult waking up. Anyway, those timed tix for the ROM are only available starting at noon Saturday and I expect there to be a lot of people there. So I’ll probably sleep in a bit, skip dim sum and then probably meet up with Eddy to get tix since you can only get 2 per person… they must really want a massive line-up…