Author Archives: Torontonian

Wow – it’s really cold out there!

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We might be saying goodbye to 2017, but not to the extreme cold weather enclosed Toronto. Recently, Environment Canada has issued an extreme cold weather alert for the Southern Ontario area.

There are quite a few warnings: “A multi-day episode of very cold wind chills continues. Windchill will reach values at or below minus 30 again tonight into Tuesday morning. Extreme cold puts everyone at risk. Cover up. Frostbite can develop within minutes on exposed skin, especially with wind chill. Check on older family, friends and neighbours. If it’s too cold for you to stay outside, it’s too cold for your pet to stay outside. Extreme cold warnings are issued when very cold temperatures or wind chill creates an elevated risk to health such as frost bite and hypothermia.” For more info about your specific location, please visit the Environment Canada website.

Frostbite doesn’t sound fun. So I try to dig up some info about that. How to spot, prevent and treat frostbite? Most cases of frostbite include the following symptoms: skin feels numb, skin is discolored, pain around the exposed area. More severe symptoms are like blisters on the skin, skin turns black, joints and muscles are stiff. To prevent frostbite, limit time you are outdoors, dress in multiple layers of loose clothing, wear a hat to cover ears, wear mittens which provide better protection. For first aid treatment, do the following: seek shelter from the cold, place hands and feet in warm water, avoid lamps, fire, or heating pads, those can burn frostbitten skin, drink warm drinks.

Easy Roast Lamb Recipe

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The benefits of eating lamb

Lamb is a kind of red meat that comes from young sheep. Not only is it a rich source of protein, it is also an outstanding source of vitamins and minerals, including iron, zinc, selenium, niacin, phosphorus, and vitamin B12. Because of this, regular consumption of lamb may promote muscle growth, maintenance, and performance.

Almost 40% of the fats in lamb come from oleic acid. This is the monounsaturated fat best known in the Mediterranean diet which is good for reducing the risk of heart disease. Lamb is also one of the best known sources of creatine, taurine, glutathione, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

Roast leg of lamb recipe

1 whole lamb leg, 1 tsp rosemary, 1 tsp thyme, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper

– Preheat oven to 450F, combine rosemary, thyme, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper and rub on lamb.

– Roast lamb for 20 min, then turn to 350F for 1 hour 30 min or until desired tenderness.

– Transfer lamb to cutting board, and wait for 10 min.

Bing Rewards in Canada

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I always wonder why it takes so long for Canada to have its own Bing Rewards. In the past, when non-US people want to participate in the Bing Rewards, they have to think of all sort of ways to sneak in, like finding a US IP address to sign in, etc. Now those days are gone, we can proudly sign in and join as Canadians.

There are 2 levels in Bing Search. For level 1, you get 3 points per Bing Search, up to 30 points per day, and 1 point per $1 spent in Microsoft Store. For level 2, you still get 3 points per Bing Search, but you can get as many as 150 points per day. Additional features include exclusive Level 2 Microsoft Store bonus offers, and 10% off when redeeming rewards from Microsoft brands.

I suppose most people would want to know what kind of stuff you can redeem. Few months ago, I only see contest entry offers, Xbox membership, Skype membership, and various donation options. This month I finally see something more interesting, i.e. Esso Gift Card, Cineplex e-Gift Card, Starbucks Card, and Dining Card. The Dining Card is offered by Cara Operations, they operate several restaurant chains including Harvey’s, Swiss Chalet, Kelsey’s, Milestones, and Montana’s. Hey, I like that one, I’m going to set that as my goal. 🙂

Best Cure for Gout – Coconut Water

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Gout, also known as “rich man’s disease” or “the disease of kings”, mostly affects the joints at the base of the big toe, other foot joints, knees, ankles, wrists, or even fingers. It has been associated with high living and obesity. But in reality, gout is a type of arthritis that’s caused by defect in the kidney’s ability to excrete uric acid.

Foods that should be avoided are those with high level of purines, foods with a moderate level of purines should also be limited. That include mushroom, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, beans and peas, whole grain, wheat bran, and alcohol.

During an attack of gout, even the slightest touch could be unbearably painful. The average gout attack ranges from few days to a week but for some a gout attack can be stubborn and last for weeks. Foods that help healing are water, fruit juice, teas, and vegetable soup.

An acquaintance of mine, who used to work in hospitals, told me that coconut water is the most effective cure for gout. And our old folks at home tried that, it really works. You can find fresh coconut in supermarket, the heavy ones tend to have more juice. Those in carton package would also do.

Christmas Mail Order Experience

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Last weekend, I visited a huge shopping outlet in the middle of the day, there were still plenty of parking spaces around, I even grabbed one real close to the mall entrance, I guess online shopping has completely changed the way the world used to shop. In the past, shopping malls used to be crowded with shoppers during holiday season, now more and more people are doing their shopping online.

Nonetheless, online shopping seems way too convenient, it is easy to order, but how soon you will receive the package is another matter. Generally speaking, the smaller online stores seem to do better than the big ones. Even for overseas purchases, most would deliver within a few days. For the big ones, obviously holiday business is really too good for them, so it takes weeks or more than a month to deliver.

We ordered a TV from BestBuy, and it has to be delivered by the end of Jan next year. We can’t complain, it’s a great deal. We ordered some stuff from Amazon, no idea when it will come. Even today, the product description still says order and get it in 2 days, LOL. It’s a complete lie. Well, there are always a few bad apples in the basket. Among all the stores, Ikea is one of the best. When they give a shipping date, that’s exactly the date we received the package, that’s some happy shopping experience.

A Cure for Alzheimer’s?

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The current issue (Dec 2017) of What Doctors Don’t Tell You magazine has an interesting article – “How I beat Alzheimer’s”. It’s about a person who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. After taking a natural remedy for a few months, his Alzheimer’s symptoms are completely gone. He continues to take scans, but his doctor says that he must not have had Alzheimer’s to begin with. It sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Can this natural remedy really reverse early signs of Alzheimer’s disease? I guess it might work for someone but probably not everyone.

So what’s this natural cure? It mainly consists of coconut oil and turmeric. Mix a heaping teaspoon each of coconut oil and turmeric powder in boiling water, stir in cold milk with a little ground black pepper. For a better taste, you can add honey, cinnamon or cacao. For better result, also drink 1.5L of silica rich mineral water like Volvic or Fiji, exercise or take a sauna till you sweat. For the details of how and why it works, please refer to the magazine.

Money Making Ideas for 2018 (I)

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1. Transfer all domains to Namecheap

Saving money is making money. My current registrar charges me way more than Namecheap, and there is one thing that’s really annoying – they still do cold calling nowadays. It’s hard to believe any Internet companies would still use cold calling to get business, and strangely enough, this is one famous domain name registrar. So what happen is that, these sales people would call every now and then, pretend they have something really important to tell you. Oh well, can’t they use email or sms. Rumour has is that if you don’t co-operate and answer properly, they would consider your domain contact as incorrect, etc and require you to follow further instruction. So I decided to transfer all domains away from them, a few a day.

2. Start a Shopify store using Oberlo

Many people want to start their online store, but have no idea where to find suppliers. Oberlo just solves this problem. I bet your must have heard of Shopify, i.e. the shopping cart e-commerce plaform with payment processing and everything. Oberlo is the plugin that can help populate your Shopify store with products of your preference. All you need to do is to select products you like, add them to your store. When your prospective online customers purchase from your store, the product will be dropshipped from the supplier, either from Oberlo Marketplace or Aliexpress. Here are the costs. Oberlo’s Starter plan is free, they don’t charge you till you receive 50 orders a month. For 50-500 orders, that’s $29.90 per month. Shopify offers a 14 day free trial, you need the Basic plan ($29/month) to work with Oberlo. I guess the Shopify Lite ($9/month) won’t count. So, with Shopify and Oberlo, you got everything and you only need to find customers. Is it something worth trying?

Rail Nation Browser Game Review

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I have been playing this game Rail Nation for quite some time, so I thought I would like to write something about it. The game goal is to deliver goods (they call it required goods) to the city, the city need to accumulate certain amounts of goods to level up. The best city which delivers the most, will win the game. All sound too simple right, well, the difficult part is how you deal with your fellow players in the local city.

50% of the players would do their own stuff, don’t care about levelling up. Initially I don’t understand why these players behave like this. After a while, I being to understand that those players are simply too bored to follow the basic game goal. So they do their own stuff, deliver whatever they want, help whatever city they prefer. You have complete control of how you want to play, cool eh? Players can have different play styles, you can sign in once a day just to have some fun, or you can stay online all day trying to earn more prestige by doing more stuff like joining competitions, it’s all up to you.

If you have the patience to play this game for 3 months, you will have the opportunity to try the endgame after era 6. The endgame is usually messy and fun. It’s messy because you have to deliver all 48 goods to the city, it’s fun because you have no ideas how your fellow players will react. At the end, only the city with the most cooperative-minded players can win the game. Here is a little strategy, if you are a serious player, and your city could not get into top 10 during first or second era, it’s time to connect to other nearby city for a better chance. If you are a casual player, I guess you just don’t care, you might just want to play for fun, gather more career points for your special engine, or save up more gold for later rounds.

Overall, this game is fun to try, you can play at your own pace, and players can’t destroy your base like other hack and slash games.

Christmas Eve Turkey Dinner

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Many families like to make turkey dinner during christmas eve, and there are tons of turkey recipes laying around. Most recipes only tell you how to prepare the bird, but I think turkey brand is also important. Some brands are too dry or tasteless. Over the years, our family have tried a number of different brands, and the one we really like is Butterball, particularly the one without stuffing. Not every supermarket carries Butterball, this year we bought ours from Walmart. Just around 10lb, not really a big one.

The recipe we use is from an old cookbook called The Good Housekeeping Cookbook, you can still order it from Amazon. With a little modification, we follow the “Traditional Roast Turkey” recipe, and the turkey turns out pretty tasty. Instead of making the traditional style stuffing like using cornbread and buttermilk, we stir fry few kinds of vegetables like carrot, celery, onion to make the stuffing. Of course, those few are the basic ingredients, you can add whatever vegetables you like. For a 10lb turkey, it takes roughly 3 hours at a temperature of 325F.

Well, I guess it’s about time to check out the turkey! Merry Christmas everyone!