Hmm, I think Liza and I are becoming domesticated (merely a month after moving in together!) It’s Saturday night and here we are, enjoying a quiet night at home. She’s studying a little and I am blogging.
So tonight we attempted to make Chinese steamed fish. To begin, I bought went to the fish shop across the road from our apartment this afternoon. I asked the fishmonger what would be a nice fish to steam Chinese style, and she asked whether I wanted one with a “heavy” or “light” taste. I chose the latter, and she recommended an ocean perch (aka “redfish”). They scaled it and gutted it on the spot for me.
Then I called Dad to check the ingredients of the sauce: finely chopped garlic, shallots and ginger, mixed with a bit of vegetable oil and nuked for 2-3 minutes. Meanwhile I steamed the fish for 8 minutes. When that was done, I drained the excess water from the fish, poured the sauce on top, added soy sauce to the sauce mixing bowl to collect the remaining oil, and poured that mixture over the fish too, as per Dad’s careful instructions.
The result:

Mmm, pretty good, and so FRESH. The sauce was particularly tasty. I might try other types of fish next time, since this one didn’t have that much flavour.
In other news, I bought myself a road bike (this time with gears) – a Specialized Allez Sport 2009. I was proud of myself for getting this one for a ~30% discount. I also got clipless pedals and shoes (so that you can put power in the pedals pulling up as well as pushing down), and some spandex cycling shorts and shirt.
Liza already has a nice road bike (as well as her fixie… we each have two bikes now), and we are trying to ride as much as possible before winter arrives. It’s amazing how far and fast you can go effortlessly with a nice bike (and spandex, of course). Two weekends ago we did a 100km ride with a couple of other friends, stopping in the middle for lunch. Last weekend and this weekend we’ve done ~65km afternoon rides out of the city to check out the beautiful autumn leaves. Here are some photos of this sexy machine.

Of course, kudos go to Wei for training for the Oxfam Trailwalker – a 100km fundraising walk in November! Wei, are you going to blog about your training?
(By the way, I’ve stopped skydiving because I don’t feel like spending the money on it any more, and because I felt guilty about its carbon footprint.)
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Some random Sunday photos of the apartment. Liza studying in the bedroom (she sometimes prefers the low stool over her desk in the right photo) and reading the Sunday paper in the living room (we started a weekend subscription to the New York Times). Then two photos from our study / bike room. We are careful about our hot bikes to the point where we lock them together even indoors.

View from the bedroom window.

We are at the corner of Lambert and Cambridge St. You can see a few of the shops we have conveniently located around us – the pub (Pug’s), the fishmonger where we bought the perch above, and a liquor store – woohoo! We also have a huge supermarket conveniently located 3 minutes’ walk away (down Lambert St) and an ice rink (5 minutes’ walk). Across the road from the fish market (not in photo) is a butcher named Fresh Killed Poultry.
The right photo is the first photo I’ve tried to stitch together using Canon’s Photostitch software (came free with my camera) and it seems to work very well.