The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Normally, my coworkers at Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team are scattered across the country – many of us are here in Accordion City, but we’re also in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal. Twice a year, we get together to have a two- or three-day long “offsite meeting” where we get a lot of work done, but we also get a lot of play done.

Yesterday, once we’d gotten through all our planning meetings, brainstorming sessions and other assorted business, we made our way to Cirillo’s Cooking Academy where we were split into two teams to compete in an cooking competition. I was the leader of one of the teams while Rick Claus led the other. The dishes were:

• Three types of tapas: chorizo and onions, calamari with olives and tomatoes and a vegetable casserole
• Chicken breasts stuffed with red peppers and rice
• Molten chocolate cake

In the end, my team was the first to complete their assignments, but Rick’s team edged us out on flavour (they weren’t shy with the salt) and getting their cakes to rise a little higher. Perhaps I should’ve done my Gordon Ramsay impression and yelled a little more (NSFW, swearing).

My coworker Julie James took some photos; they’re in the slideshow below and well as in this Flickr photoset:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I also shot some photos — they’re of my team putting together their food. You can see them in the slideshow below or in this Flickr photoset:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I had a great time and great food with great coworkers, and yes, I broke out the accordion. Even Gladstone Grant – he’s the Developer and Platform Evangelism Lead – took the accordion out for a spin:

As this College Humor video shows, some things are best not shared on the internet.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

The snowstorm that hit us overnight has been given names like “Snowpocalypse”, “Snowmageddon” and my favourite, “Snowtorious B.I.G.”, but I think the better name is “Snownoyance”. I don’t think we got more than 10cm (4 inches), which is something that anyone in Canada who’s been through a winter or two should take in stride.

My trip this morning from home in High Park to Microsoft HQ in Mississauga wasn’t terribly challenging; in fact, it was quicker than usual thanks to the number of lightweights who were scared off the roads and didn’t bung up Highway 401. The reaction of a lot of people in Accordion City to the snow reminds me of the Snow in Toronto segment from Rick Mercer Report from a couple of years ago.

Both my parents are Asian doctors (as are my sister, brother-in-law, and a good selection of aunts, uncles and cousins), so I have more than passing familiarity with the whole “Tiger Mom” mindset. I chuckled when I read the controversial excerpt from Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which the Wall Street Journal gave the headline Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.

As expected, the internet, which is teeming with Asians and Asian fetishists, was bound to respond with a LOLmeme, and it’s produced some real gems. You can catch them all at Tiger Mom Says, and if you think you’ can come up with a better one, the Tiger Mom Meme Generator awaits your creative genius.

The Tiger Mom meme has a less successful predecessor: High Expectations Asian Father.

It caught on for a while, but unlike Tiger Mom, it wasn’t buoyed by a controversial book.

As for Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua, you might want to watch this video, in which she responds to the uproar about her book:

Photo courtesy of Certified Bullshit Technician.

Mine was pretty nice, and nothing like the pic above: just dinner at Madras Masala followed by drinks at The Rhino with my friends Maria and James.

Despite the cold, there were lineups aplenty outside many establishments on Queen west of Dufferin, which Accordion City long-timers should find a little surprising. Only a few years ago, that stretch of Queen Street was a ghost town after dark.

If you’re looking to fatten up your music collection and you don’t exist solely on a diet of top 40, check out the Best Songs of 2010 list at the indie/alternative MP3 blog Said the Gramophone. It lists what they consider to be the 100 best songs of 2010 and for a little while longer, you’ll even be able to download them (they won’t stay up forever, so download them – and yes, buy them eventually – before they expire).

You can download the complete set of 100 songs in two parts:

• Songs 1 – 50: here or here
• Songs 51 – 100: here or here

I listened to this collection while laid up in the hospital earlier this month.

Yes, it’s likely that you’re not familiar with many of the artists in the list (although they did include a couple of pop baubles such as Cee-Lo’s Fuck You, a song so incredibly catchy that it melts even the most hardcore of indie sensibilities) and you’re not going to find much in the way of jump-on-the-table-and-make-the-devil-sign anthems, but you will hear good music. And you’ll most likely discover a few great artists you’d have otherwise overlooked.

Do check Said the Gramophone from time to time. They update regularly with new songs, and it’s one of the places I go to discover new music.

For the past few days, my street has become the new home to a gaggle (or perhaps a few gaggles – I can’t tell one from the other) of Canada geese. At certain times of the day – typically in the morning and mid-afternoon, you can see them, just hanging around.

Fun fact: Gaggle is the term used for a flock of at least five geese not in flight. A flock of geese in flight is called a skein.

It’s not unusual to see geese in nearby High Park, where there’s plenty of greenery, the lake is nearby and car traffic is low. It’s considerably more so to see them wandering about on a residential street and in driveways:

Here are a couple of shots of them walking down the street, Reservoir Dogs style:

Their visits might have been brought about by people feeding them. For the past couple of days, I’ve noticed that someone’s been dumping piles of bread crumbs near High Park subway station, and the geese have taken to dining and even lying down there: