My Diary #260

Life

Probably the most important happening this week was that I finally got around to doing some of the adult things that I had mentioned needed doing on my blog three weeks ago. I still haven't done that computer cleanup thing, but all the others saw significant progress on Thursday and Friday this week, so let's start there.

On Thursday, I took the day off of work and went down to the Edmonton City Centre Mall to visit a registry company called Accu-Search.

There, I checked off the first of the three items that I did this week, which was to change the address on my Alberta Identification Card to reflect my new address (as of two years ago). While I was there, I also renewed the card, as well as applied for the new-style card which combines both my Alberta ID card as well as my Alberta Personal Health card. I had to surrender that health care card for it though, even though I didn't receive my new ID card on the spot, they said the old one had to be shredded. And unlike my current Alberta ID card, which I got to keep, I couldn't keep my old health care card. Boo hoo. Instead, they gave me a temporary receipt with my Personal Health Number on it in case I needed to use it in the ensuing two weeks before the new card would arrive.

I also learnt while there that it was illegal to have both an Alberta ID card and an Alberta Driver's Licence at the same time, as well as that the end date of the ID card always coincides with the user's birthday. Interesting. So they added five years to Thursday's date and then rounded it forwards to the following February for the expiry date.

While I was there, I noticed that they had notary services, and I had most of the papers with me that I needed notarized for the Singapore Renunciation process anyway, so I inquired how much it was. $24 CAD per document, they said, and unlike the ID card renewal, which they only accepted cash or debit for, that one accepted credit card payments as well (though I ended up using the debit card in the end). I decided that since I was there, it was probably better to just do it all at once even though it wasn't a free service, so I said I had four documents to notarize. The lady's eyes lit up and she sent me over to another desk where a male colleague of hers awaited with his notary stamp.

The problem was that I only had "most" of my documents with me. Three of them needed to be photocopied and certified as true copies, which he did, but the fourth one was a form that needed to be printed out and then filled out. Not to be deterred, the notary, Mr Amari, said that I could just email him the link to the form and he'd print it out for me to fill out. He duly did that, and then I duly did that, and then it was soon duly stamped with his seal as well. Even though I technically just needed a Commissioner of Oaths stamp for them and not a public notary stamp, he said he'd do both anyway just to be safe as part of my $24 per document, which was nice enough.

So that was Thursday's proceedings. The next day, Fri Nov 06, I filled in the entire online renunciation form, and then went down to the Southgate Centre mall to post my duly notarized documents to Singapore. I ran into this though:

Seriously. Come on. The jovial clerk said that it could be up later that day, or not for a couple days, he had no idea when. As of the writing of this post, Saturday afternoon and 24 hours after I took that picture, there's still a blue bar with a generic downtime message on the Canada Post website (local), so I assume it's still not up. Basically he said that they could accept generic parcels and letters if tracking was not needed, but their tracking system was down, and the instructions on the renunciation website (local) specifically requests the documents to be sent by registered mail (and it would make no sense to not do that regardless of the instructions), so I couldn't actually send my documents off on Friday.

I did at least buy the document mailer envelope that I needed for it though, so I can just deposit the entire thing at the post office next week when I visit the mall for my usual grocery shenanigans. So that one is on the verge of completion.

Friday evening found me still feeling rather industrious, so I also went online to do a third item from the checklist, the Canadian passport renewal. This one was more straightforward, although I had to message two of my workplace colleagues to ask them for permission to list them as my references for the renewal application. I don't know how often those are actually ever used, I was asked to be the reference for one of those two people a couple months ago for their own passport application (not renewal), and I was never contacted about it anyway.

But anyway, I also duly finished that online application and duly submitted it, and that act of submission apparently immediately invalidated my current passport with slightly less than six months left on it, so I'm now not legally able to leave the country until my passport arrives in a month or so. Let's hope the world doesn't implode in the next 30 days or so, at least not to the point where fleeing the country is necessary but border control is somehow still a thing. I expect that both of those documents will arrive in the mail soon enough though.

Now for all the other things that happened this week! Since I just mentioned my workplace colleagues, I'll start there. Amanda, a colleague from another team at work that I have worked with closely for years, reached out this week to say that she was leaving in a couple of weeks, and this made me a bit sad since she's been a stalwart member of the admin team for sooooooo long. So many years. She's taking up a similar role in another department on campus though, and we exchanged a bunch of nice goodbye emails. Fair winds, Amanda.

In other work news, while I had requested both the week before (Dec 19-24) and the week after (Jan 04-10) our automatic paid Christmas break (Dec 25-Jan 03) off for vacation, my request for the week after was accepted but the one for the week before was denied, because too many other colleagues decided to take it off in the end. I don't usually take the week before Christmas off, this was a case of me having too much vacation time banked, but I also kind of like to have a lot of vacation time banked, so even though I had booked that time off before some of my other colleagues, I had also said that if too many of them requested it off, I'd cede that booking instead.

And in the end the slower members of the team did request that time off, and thus I ended up ceding it since otherwise he'd only have one person covering that last week before Christmas. So I probably will get to keep my vacation time, while working some of the slowest days of the year (though if some big security issue breaks out again, which has happened in the past, then it can turn into one of the busiest periods of the year since we'd be short-staffed), and looking good while doing so. I even secured an IOU from my boss so that I can take my next vacation whenever I want with priority over whoever else, not that that's ever really been an issue except around Christmas.

Speaking of which, I have been feeling in the mood to plan out a new vacation soon. I don't know when yet, and it will probably just be a Japan/China one with the chance of a third country that isn't Singapore this year, perhaps South Korea, and it'll tentatively be somewhere in the middle of 2027. My continued work on the scanning project and finally digging into the mountains of paper that I brought back from my last trip has rekindled the wanderlust in me though.

Closer to home, after a wintery previous week, the sun came out this week and eradicated all the snow on the ground:

This rejuvenated outside world beckoned to me and inspired me to do trips outside the apartment (not counting any days that I might have gone out for work) on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday this week.

Tuesday was Safeway's monthly Customer Appreciation Day, 15% off purchases over $50 and all that, so it's also when I get a bunch of purchases that I don't immediately need. One of these purchases are, or were, those Allegra pills that I have been trying out for a couple months now, and that may or may not have helped with my occasional itching flareups. This month though, the pharmacy racks did not have that product on sale at all, they only had the 12-hour variants instead of the 24-hour ones and I didn't want those since they're annoying to use to begin with -- I can't eat or drink anything other than water 2 hours before or 1 hour after eating them.

I remembered from a past interaction with Gemini that I should try asking for Blexten/Bilastine from the counter directly, since I had them as a prescription in the past, and when I went to inquire about that, I got referred to the pharmacist on site who then asked me to try Reactine first and see how I, well, react to it. Fair enough, and Gemini agreed with this, saying that although there was a potential side effect of drowsiness from taking the pills, the "trial" was necessary so that if I did get side effects from it, they could then note that down and use that as a reason to prescribe the stronger Bilastine or something like that. I did end up getting the Safeway generic version (Compliments Extra Strength Allergy Relief Cetirizine Hydrochloride 10mg) instead of the name brand Reactine though, since it was cheaper.

And so I started chewing on those pills twice daily instead, one in the early afternoon and one just before bed. Except when I'm going out for work or something, those days I just take one of my remaining 24-hour Allegra pills instead. The new pills did make me really drowsy in the afternoon for the first couple days, but that might also just be an aftereffect of staying up way too late some nights. I still have no idea what my skin might be "allergic" or reacting to as well (besides possibly some heat, which doesn't happen in the winter months), and I don't know that I do need to take these pills continuously, so some experimentation will still be needed over the next few months to find out, but at least I have a variety of weapons to try out against the rashes now.

I had noticed that the Watson fishballs that I had found and celebrated back in October, and had since bought eight or so packets of, had been missing for the last couple of weeks, and this week again they were nowhere to be found. I flagged down a passing employee to talk about it, and this employee, Tyson, turned out to be the assistant manager of the store. Here's a picture of him from later on in my rounds when I bumped into him again.

Anyway, back at the frozen section, he helped me look for it, then thanked me for the feedback and said that he was coincidentally the right person in the store to talk to anyway. He made a note of the product and said he'd go see what he could do about it, and even briefly discussed where in the freezer he would probably have to make room to put it. Nice guy, very pleasant chat, and we'll see if what he promised actually comes to fruition. Bring back my Watson fishballs!

I also took a few additional photos of the mall on that Tuesday run, one being some close-ups of the vending machines in the "Southgate Town Square" area which I had highlighted last week.

Another was of this Santa event sign... he's apparently arriving Nov 14 this year. I guess he has to get his public appearances out of the way early so he has time to prepare for his round-the-world trip. The square that he usually sits in is covered with black drapes for now.

On Thursday, on my way to the registry to do some adulting, I came across this sign:

Cool! This reminds me of the Tobidachi-kun's that I had seen all around Japan, especially around Kyoto, on my previous trips there.

On Thursday, on my way out from the registry where I had done some adulting, I came across this sign:

Not so cool. Dad would call these people Hallelujah's, using the term as a proper noun that describes evangelists. This guy is apparently a fairly nasty one, a somehwat infamous (local) mentally-unwell guy named Dale who yells lies on a megaphone about sinners repenting, but I guess every city has one. There was a black guy standing diagonally across the street from him too, and that guy was at least smiling and friendly-looking so I took one of his flyers home to scan.

It's still nonsense, but at least it's archivable nonsense.

Behind that second guy was the Stanley Milner Library, and I wandered in while waiting for the train to look around. I hadn't been in here in well over a decade and at this point it was completely unrecognizable to me.

When the train arrived, I took it one stop east to Quarters LRT Station, where I was going to treat myself to a lunch at one of my favourite restaurants, even though I hadn't been there for several months. Double Greeting Wonton House! And my favourite dish from them, Shanghai Noodles!

And then on my way back home, back at Southgate LRT Station, I saw this uh... interesting anti-fascism sticker? Display? Does this count as public art? I don't think so, right? What's the story here? Is the smasher and the sticker placer the same person? Or was the sticker placer walking around the city looking for smashed windows to paste those stickers onto?

Also, the local David's Tea/DAVIDsTEA store in Southgate is finally open! Again!

I did immediately end up buying some tea there, and when I asked the lady behind the desk about the store, she said that they had just opened that day (Thu, Nov 05 2026) -- and that they had actually been scheduled to open two Fridays ago before that, but some stuff or other cropped up and they weren't able to reopen until then. She said that she had been the manager of the other store in the city, at West Edmonton Mall, for the past 6 years, and that although David's Tea had closed down some of their stalls like their previous Southgate one due to COVID, they were now starting to reopen more brick and mortar stalls again, which was something a number of their walk-in customers at the West Ed location had requested as well. Hooray.

She then poured out some chocolate macaroon tea for me into a can -- even at half price, this 194g can cost a whopping $27.16, and I bought a $49 tea sampler box on top of that which I then turned into a storage box for all the loose odds and ends on my computer desk once I got home. Since I spent over $50 there, I also got a free tote bag.

I will probably still make another online tea purchase at Harney & Sons at some point between now and the end of the year to get their Lunar New Year tea can, but I did skip my annual Jolene's Tea House purchase (from nearby Sunterra or from the flagship Jolene store in Banff) this year, so my stocks were pretty low anyway. And the chocolate macaroon tea is pretty great, although it does kinda just taste like cocoa -- I was hoping for some of their coconut oolong tea, which was a flavour on my S-tier tea list, but they apparently no longer made that one, and this one was a replacement she had suggested.

Lastly, my Thursday trip to the mall was much shorter but I took pictures of some aisle stalls that have popped up recently, one being this Florans Flower Shop one that is basically an unattended vending machine, and which is interesting because there's already another flower shop, Bunches Flowers, in the mall.

And here are two pics of seasonal stalls that pop up at around this time every year, Santa & Me and Hickory Farms.

Within the confines of my apartment, I bought a SHAREWIN clear floor mat (local) from Amazon for my computer desk. I was tired of the stupid foam tiles that I had tried a few months ago. Those things were basically in tatters already, especially the tiles on the corners. This one is much more comfortable, however it's also a lot noisier, since there's no sound dampening at all between the plastic caps at the bottom of my chair, this clear PVC mat, and the wooden floor beneath. Sorry, downstairs neighbours. Gemini suggests some foam caps or similar to paste at the bottom of the chair legs. We'll see. At least I don't have to rearrange the foam tiles in frustration every time I get up anymore.

I also tried to buy another Tigey-like from eBay this week, but despite putting in the order for it and having it accepted, it was then cancelled about 7 hours later because "while we were trying to locate the item to fulfill your order, we discovered that it had already been sold onsite." Like what the heck. The item was posted Oct 01, and then they offered me a private discount for it on Oct 06 at 2:21 pm because I had added it to my cart. It was a 4 hour discount, so I accepted it at 3:30 pm. But then the cancellation notice didn't come in until 10:39 pm. So in my eyes, it was likely that they sold the item to someone else after I had bought it. (Or gave me an offer on an item that was long gone.)

This bugged me a lot, but at least they did send a somewhat speedy apology and owned up to the mistake (out of stock) in the eBay resolution too, so instead of leaving them a negative review, Gemini eventually convinced me to leave a neutral review instead. It was probably the correct decision in the end.

Amusingly enough, due to currency fluctuations, I ended up losing 3 cents on the refund anyway even though the "original price" was refunded. Oh well. I ended up purchasing a different Tigey-like that cost about the same, and I have my eyes on a couple more I might move on this weekend.

My Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra phone updated to OneUI 9.0 this weekend, and what a piece of garbage. Besides forcing me to reset a bunch of my user settings again, there was also a bug that forced my phone to reboot every time the lock screen came on. In the end, some prudent Googling (local) revealed it was due to a setting called Always On Display, which never worked properly anyway, but turning that off eventually fixed the issue -- after the phone forced itself into Safemode and wiped a bunch of my settings. AGAIN.

In other miscellany this week, my computer timezones finally seem to be fixed after a reboot AFTER Nov 01, so I'm no longer getting wrong timestamps across various programs. I still have a couple items stuck from last week in the Internet Archive's queue, the support person I spoke with was so laissez-faire about it all. "Parked tasks can be ignored. They do not prevent you from launching new tasks." "They should eventually be removed or run."

Come on, man, I already said a different version of the task already ran, so that task can't run anyway and I just need it cancelled. Why don't we have a cancel button for our own tasks anyway?? And why are view counts for uploads stuck at 0 for weeks and months? The IA architecture is so rickety.

I also changed my provenance file, which was a text file listing dates and locations which I use to track where I collected my paper ephemera from, into a markdown file on my computer that's also hosted inside of Obsidian itself this week. Hopefully I don't end up regretting this decision.

And finally, I changed my humidifier filter this week because it was starting to smell a bit (and possibly starting to give me a headache, although that might have been coincidental). Unlike the original one, which lasted something like two months of use plus three months of non-use, this aftermarket one lasted about three weeks only. The cost might still be worth it though, but I'm not sure -- I'll need to tabulate numbers to see which way I go after this pack runs out. In the meantime, these blog notes will help me track how long they lasted.

For my recreational schedule for the next week, I've been watching the League of Legends World Championship on Twitch during the day, and although that is soon coming to an end, the November basho for sumo is about to start this weekend as well. That will take me until Nov 22 or so, and then it's only a week and a half from there to the launch of Petit Planet!

Games

I spent a fair amount of time poking around on various gacha games this week in between my scanning duties. Genshin Impact (archive) was one of those games, although I was mostly on that one just to collect rewards. Another MiHoYo/HoYoverse game, Honkai: Star Rail (archive), had a little more time invested into it, as I wandered around my galaxy train, poking at new features that had come out since I stopped playing eons ago. All the Hoyo games tend to have a lot of minigames, and I played around with some of those, while reading over stories involving characters I had never heard of and probably never will obtain or see.

I also tried another live service gacha game on Steam called Stella Sora (local), and I actually quite liked it. The main criticism levelled against the game by the community seemed to be that players run out of content to do after a while as updates are slower and less bombastic, and I was like -- hey, wait a minute, that's an advantage to me. Games like Genshin and HSR have waay, waaaaaay too much content for someone coming back to the game to ever catch up to without making that game my only game for months!

Plushie of the Week #253

I'm out of plushies from Kel's place and from my recent trip to Asia, so now we roll back the clock further for this week's Plushie of the Week! Back to the Jan 30 2022 collection for starters, and the pictures I had taken when I went to my parents' place for a Chinese New Year celebration.

This week we have a colourful fish that is definitely from Canada, since the tag has both an English and a French version. Where or when exactly we got this I am not sure, and Google image search comes up with no exact matching source for this one, but I do remember seeing it back when we were in Edmonton 4012, so sometime in the mid noughts, I guess. 200X.

Side:

Other side:

Tag front:

Tag back:

Dreams

Nov 03 2026

• I was on a team defending a house, whose layout was similar to the Edmonton 4012 house but much larger, against another team of invading NPCs. We were split into four groups who defended different areas of the house, and there was at least one group in the basement and one upstairs. The game was turn-based, and focus would shift to one group at a time, with all the players and enemies there taking their turns to move, before focus shifted to the next group.
• The other groups were made out of 2 people each, and the enemies they fought were also largely groups of 2 or 3. My group had 4 people and was located in the backyard, just outside the door that led to the kitchen. On our left was another door that led into a different building that wasn't fully cleared of enemies yet.
• We also started with just 2 enemies to fight, however a large UFO miniboss then came along and hovered over the backyard, spawning six more human minions in suits below and controlling them all at once. Thankfully they all had a terrible shot, and while they would often get to go two at a time and target the person with their shots, most of their shots would simply miss even from close range.
• However, once we had gotten the spaceship to low health, which took about two turns of focus firing it, the door leading to the kitchen burst open and a woman wearing a nurse costume and holding a gigantic syringe about the size of her elbow to fingertip stepped out. All in the same turn, she walked up to WingBenny, who was standing nearest to the door, and reloaded her syringe with a liquid that would have either incapacitated or mind controlled him.
• We all complained about how unfair that was, seeing as though she still had enough movement points to actually complete her attack too, with basically no chance of resistance. However, she fumbled her reload, causing some of the liquid to splash onto the grass, and more importantly pushing her attack back a little further on the timeline battle graph.
• This meant that her syringe attempt overlapped into my turn, and I found that I was just quick enough to move over to WingBenny as a reaction, using my sword to beat away the tip of the syringe from his arm as she tried to poke him, and then finishing my turn by defeating the nurse. Everyone else then continued focus firing on the UFO to take it down and cause six of the minions to despawn.
• Other players were complaining that our group's turn always took the longest, but it wasn't our fault since we had to deal with so many enemies, so we just ignored them. I calculated that this was only the fourth round of combat in the entire game, and was surprised that we already had to deal with so much.
• In between turns, we could leave our fighting characters in place as ghostly figures, and walk around the main explored areas of the house to chill out. While we were doing that, the doorbell rang, and I saw a delivery worker peek into the front window. He then left and walked back across the front yard to his van by the side of the road, and as no one else had answered the doorbell up until that point, I went up to open the front door and look out.
• There were six workers by the van, which was labelled Watson's, and I realized that that was a health care company that WingBenny had ordered some medical supplies from at some point prior to the game starting. I waved at them from the front door to try to get their attention, while calling WingBenny over to go out and grab the delivery before they decided to drive off instead.

Nov 04 2026

• I was barricaded in a 10th floor apartment, with Jon in baby form sleeping inside a bedroom. There was a pile of furniture surrounding the front door so that the door wouldn't be able to be swung open from the outside even if the door was unlocked.
• I was seated by the door, inside the ring of furniture, when there was a knock on the door. Peeking through the door's peephole, I could barely see the top of Mom's head, so I pushed some of the furniture back and opened the door to let her in, before shutting the door and restoring the barricade.
• Upon entering the apartment, Mom went to check on Jon and admonished me for letting a firefly into the house. She pointed at the firefly, which was perched on the blanket covering Jon. I said that it must have flown in through a window, and Mom shooed it out of the bedroom window.
• After that, Mom pointed out some foil cards that were lying on the ground below the apartment that she could see through the window. She said that there was an event happening downstairs and if I wanted to go check it out and try to retrieve the cards, she would take care of the barricade. I hesitated for a bit but then agreed and left the apartment, after confirming with Mom that the cards were southeast of our apartment and southeast of the elevators.
• Outside, the corridor leading to the elevator lobby looked like a bridge connecting two buildings, with other corridors connecting them several levels above and below my level's corridor, and all at different angles. I reached the elevator without incident and rode it down to the ground floor.
• There were a lot of people down at the void deck, and a silent dragon dance exhibition without music was just wrapping up as I fumbled for my phone to try to take a picture, but failed.
• There were many other little groups of people attending exhibitions all around the void deck. I went towards the southeast to try to look for the cards lying on the ground, but I could not see them anymore, so someone in the crowd must have picked them up while on their way to another nearby attraction.
• I took a motorcycle out for a spin around the block to scout it out, and part of the path took me along a main road, where I had to stop at a traffic light and wait for a right turn. I wove my way in between some of the cars, then felt a bump on the back of my motorbike as one of the cars nudged me while coming to a halt. I raised a hand to tell the driver that it was fine.
• Driving back into the carpark and dismounting from the motorcycle, I started to walk back towards the elevator lobby again. At this point, I saw Zixiang and a few other people I knew sitting at a table in the void deck. He saw me too and waved me over, and we said hi and chatted briefly. I invited him upstairs to my apartment and he said sure, so we went to the elevator lobby together.
• We entered the elevator together with a number of other people, but once the door closed, the elevator did not immediately start moving. Instead, according to the digital panel that usually showed what floor the elevator was at, it "scanned" the floors above it, starting from the top level and going down to the ground floor.
• It then confirmed that everything was clear, thanked us all for using the elevator even after a recent incident where there were six deaths when an elevator broke, and then finally started rising up to bring us to our correct floors. I was a little nervous at that proclamation but knew that we would be safe.

Nov 06 2026

• I came down from my apartment building to join some school friends in a big tent for an event, even though I had been away from the school for some time. I wandered in through the back entrance to the big tent, and joined my friends around a large, round table, but because I was late and wasn't expected there in the first place, my usual spot was taken and I had to sit across from it on the other side of the table.
• I then went to the food tray table to grab some food for myself, and while there, some organizers approached me and signed me up for the event in exchange for my participation fee, which was somewhere around $27 or so.
• They also took away my passport to process. In return, they also gave me a slip of paper that showed my name, birthday, height, and weight, which technically was on the passport they were taking but I was surprised they already knew what the numbers were, especially the height and weight.
• While I was seated and eating later, another organizer lady came by the table to take everyone's receipt slips, but this was a different slip from the one that I was given. When she came to me and I showed her my slip, and told her that I never received the other receipt, she frowned and said that that was weird and that maybe the earlier organizers were actually scammers and had stolen my passport using social engineering.
• I said that I had no reasonable way of knowing that, especially since I had come in through the back entrance of the tent since I lived nearby, and that the only clue I might have had was that slip of paper where they somehow already knew my personal details. But that was conceivably information that the organizing school might have too. After reviewing all I knew about the two people, I concluded that it was more likely that they were just inept or forgetful organizer staff than actual scammers.

Nov 07 2026

• I was based in a classroom near the bottom of a large megastructure area, and we received a device, similar to a game controller or handheld console, that allowed us to leave the classroom and explore it. I went off with Allen and Zixiang as we clambered around and over some walls and down some passages, exploring the areas around the classroom.
• At one point we ended up in a small, populated market area and I checked out the supermarket and the fresh produce in there. At another point my group turned into me and three other girls from our class as well as we tackled some puzzle or quest, with the boys nowhere to be found.
• Later on we realized that the next class was going to start soon, so we started to head back to class. Allen was ahead of us so he took a regular path back, whereas I had figured out a shortcut that involved moving onto some huge water pipes and then dropping down into a huge room with doors leading to washrooms set into its walls. Going out eastwards from that room led us to a wide open area outside our classroom. Allen applauded me for finding the shortcut when he arrived back, a little behind us.
• Once we were back in class, Yaoxiang asked for the device and I handed it off to him, and he spent some time trying to reverse engineer it so that more copies could be created for our classmates.