1/16th Violin

Kieran had his 1st violin recital on Father's day. It was at the Church/Condo at Bathurst and College. And it was also Taste of Little Italy.
This is Dorothy his teacher, she plays for the Toronto Symphony.  And her daughters also are talented musicians and help with camps and teaching.  They are super nice.  The husband however is the decorated one with Grammy's and other music awards.

I'd always driven by this church on those days when Tresa does her cardio early in the mornings waking up late and in a high heart rate state.  Making me sweat as well with my eyes still shut with goop, to bring her to work on time.
There's a condo that's part of this building.
It's one of the first retro condo building in Toronto, I think, don't take my word as fact.  I'm just pulling stuff out of the air from what I've heard or something.

There was a whole program for the kids and which order they go in. The whole group started first, then one by one the kids did their solo.  I asked Kieran if he was nervous, he said he wasn't.  He didn't look nervous, he was mostly staring out into space.  I think he was hungry and the sugar gastank was on fumes.
Anyways he did fine.  A few mistakes but you should have heard the little girl before him.

Dorothy said that Kieran is doing really well.  For a kid that doesn't always practice or practices half-heartedly at times, I was surprised.  But he likes it.  He doesn't want us to take it away.  I think it's something he's embraced as his skill.  Kind of like baking.

I wasn't sure what to expect.  My expectations were actually non-existent. In the end I was suprisingly impressed, with all the students.  From the little ones like Kieran just starting out, to the teens that have been with Dorothy since they were little.  The performances go longer and more complex as the recital went.  And the way the senior students could make their violin sing was amazing.  Something to look forward to.

Max was also there hobbling up the stairs with his broken ankle, so were his mom, Marika and his sister Anna. Who's ball hockey birthday was a blast (for me).  I hadn't played ball hockey in probably 10 years.  My feet and back were killing me.
And Max's girlfriend.  Who I didn't get a picture of...dang it.
Kieran wouldn't sit for a photo op.

I didn't realize that this group was mostly girls.  The ratio is like 4 to 1.  Probably a good thing for Kieran since if there was another boy his age in his group.  There'd be broken bows and time outs.

Violin recital photos

High Park Zoo Bake Sale

Many of the zoo's in TO are in financial trouble and the city is planning on moving the animals, to some other city's zoo perhaps, in order to make plans to shut it down, if they can't figure out how to pay for the zoo's operating costs.

But people are rallying to try and save the zoos.  Even the kids.

We had made some rice crispies to donate to the bake sale some kids at school were having to raise money to save the High Park Zoo.  But Kieran was going to miss it because of an asthma clinic appointment.  So I'd made a batch that afternoon and put a sign saying High Park Zoo bake sale - 10c each square, so that he at least had something.

He then decided he want to bake muffins for his own bake sale.  But we made cookies instead since we had a roll.  But the next day he and Tresa made muffins from scratch.  And he set out to sell his wares on the street.  I'm not sure why today, there was tons of fluffy stuff floating in the air.  I said it might not be a good day to sell food on the street.  But he was busy making his sign and putting his table out for all the passerby people on our dead end street.  So we got the saran wrap out and wrapped each square, cookie and muffin so it wouldn't get any fluff on it.

His table sign is a little difficult to make out, but it reads:

 "Fun goods, in the morning and afternoon"

Afternoon was spelt "afterns" but I understand my son's phonetic code.
Yahvi's sign is much easier to read and spelled correctly.

Instead of waiting for people to come by, he, Yahvi and Samatva quickly targeted people on the street and with Yahvi's sign they would pitch the sale.  I thought hey, this is better than the lemonaid stand he and kuya did a few years back.  Maybe they'll do it again this year.  But with more products.

Then when they saw the other kids down the street, the 3 of them took off to do their sales pitch.  Then there was a small mob.  And they bought most of it.  Glad they bought the muffins.  They were kinda chewy.  I didn't want to have it with my coffee the next morning.


A lot of times the table was unattended.   Samat was suppose to sit there and guard the food, but he took off with them too.
I was saying to Sonal, that I would never have done this as a kid.  These are skills that will be important down the road.  The initiative, the execution, the public speaking.  These are life skills that need to be developed in a way that is fun for them.

They sold everything.  It was impressive.  Auntie Jessie donated $5.00 to their cause.  I think they raised almost $15.00.  That's cause I paid him $5.00 for a cookie that morning.  It was cheaper in the morning.

Kieran brought in his bake sale money to school the next day.  And since he and Yahvi did this together, his teacher said that they deserved the Save the High Park Zoo sign that the class had done.  I'm just glad people ate the muffins.

Save the High Park Zoo Bake Sale

JDM LGT conversion

My trusty ol Sube, had some tired eyes.  The headlamps have been getting cloudier and cloudier.  No amount of cleaning was restoring these.

I was noticing that driving at night the headlamps weren't lighting up the road like before.  I could either replace the lenses with the same reflectors or the other option was to install JDM's.  These are Subaru factory headlamps for the Japanese Domestic Market.  This is what they installed on the Japanese version of the Subaru Legacy.

I'd been reading and following threads on this conversion on various Subaru LGT forums.  Trying to evaluate whether it was worth it to do or not.  The headlamp themselves ended up being about $100.00 cheaper.  I've seen photos of what folks have done and it just looks way cooler than the old two piece reflector version.  It made the car look newer.  Since most new cars have projector lights.

So I ended up ordering a pair of headlamps off of ebay.  They came from Japan. It took two months to arrive.  I thought I had been screwed.  But I contacted the seller and he said the package was still sitting in the post office.  Finally it was on it's way and it took a week from when he finally shipped it.  This was the end of Feb.  They were so clean, it was like getting new head lamps.  It even had the harness and bulbs.  It was then a matter of waiting for warmer weather.

I then had to figure out the wiring of the JDM's and mate it to the North Amer version of the LGT.  Based on what others had done.
My first attempts were flops.  I couldn't get it to work.  I thought the wiring was straight forward, but it wasn't working, like it's supposed to.
I scoured the S-I forums for wiring info.  I found one.

It then took Mel and I tracing the wires back to the harness to know which wire lead to which light.  Whether it was low beam projector, high beam reflector, or the LED city light.  To really know how to wire it up.

But once we knew, it was easy peasy. It was matter of soldering the wires together.  Soldering wires with only two hands can be pretty challenging (not to mention burning hot), especially trying to rewire the signal light harness.  But I had rigged an old bike wheel spoke so that I could free up my hands. And it worked. And it looked so cool.

Driving at night is so much better.  I've noticed that signs are easier to see.  In the city there's so many lights so it's hard to tell if the road is lit up better, but I'm sure it is. I may have to adjust the projector beams a bit more.  I know I have to adjust the high beams still.

I had to do a bit more work.  Tresa said I should use my original signal lights, since they have a 2 filament bulb so they are lit when on as well as flash when signalling.  The JDM signals only flash.  It's just better to have more of the car lit up, for visibility.  With the LED city lights, the front end just looks cool at night.  I even restored my fog lights using one of those off the shelf light restoration kits to remove the oxidation on the existing fog lamps.  Now it looks complete.
Too bad I can't see it.  Since I'm behind the wheel.

It feels awesome when projects come together.  I know this car is old, but I like this car.  It's been so reliable for me.  And I like being able to work on a car, versus having so much electronics that I can't do the work on the car.  This car is simple and it works well.

It's also nice not having monthly car payments.

West End Kids of Steel 2012

The day wasn't looking very good, it was chilly and it was June 2nd.  May was more like June than June was.

Tresa took Kieran to the East End KOS race this morning.  I just couldn't get the strength to go.  I was debating on doing this race too, good thing I didn't.  I would have missed this one as well.  There is always next year.

Kieran finished 11/31 in the KM6-7 group 12th in his age category
Xander finished 17/38 in the KM8-9 group 23rd in his age category
Rachel was 9/32 in the KF10-11 group 20th in her age category


KOS 6-7 Swim 25m, Bike 1.5km, Run 0.5km

12    91 Kieran Garces       15:30 KM6-7     11/31

KOS 8-9 Swim 50m, Bike 3km, Run 1km

23   152 Xander Chin         20:50 KM8-9     17/38 

KOS 10-11 Swim 100m, Bike 6km, Run 2km

20   233 Rachel Chin          28:47 KF10-11    9/32 

But Jinn did it and came 2nd overall (2/20 males 2/36 adults overall) in the Adult Try-a-tri.
Swim 200m, Bike 9km, Run 3km

2   333 Ki Jinn Chin          29:58 ADULTM     2/20

"Super fast" should be added to his shirt.  Bet you didn't know "the Flash" was Asian.
I also reviewed the video of the swim.  And that guy was in the lead already by nearly 1/2 a length on the first length, so he did finish first out of the swim.
No foul.  Probably needed the lead, since you caught him anyways.

West End KOS Photo gallery