- Food Review: Sabai Sabai -

Either I wasn't very observant or tapas places have been popping up recently. Small dishes meant for sharing and keeping the focus on table talk.

This particular tapas place served Thai dishes.

Unlike other tapas places, their menu was incredibly short - fitting on one page. Two pages if you count the vegan menu. I always joke to my friends that I'd like to walk into a restaurant one day, and order one of everything. At Sabai Sabai, I could legitimately order one of everything for a group of four.

We ordered the khao soi (noodle with coconut curry), crispy fish with tamarind reduction, grilled pork skewers and grilled angus beef salad. To our surprise, the beef was raw - similar to beef tataki in Japanese cuisine. The rawness didn't detract from the taste though, if anything it underscored Sabai Sabai as a place with unique flavours. The crispy fish was crunchy on the outside and buttery on the inside. I suspect they used black cod as the base.

We were still hungry after the four dishes so we ordered a basket of crispy shrimp chips. Easily the best shrimp chips I've had, though my comparison is the oily ones you can buy from Chinese super markets.

Food: 4.5/5
Service: 3/5
Value: 3/5
TL;DR: unique varied tastes and expensive for the portion

- Food Review: Solo Sushi Ya -

I decided awhile back that distance shouldn't be a consideration when trying out new eateries. There are so unique restaurants around Toronto, so why limit myself to Scarborough?

With that in mind, we made our trek all the way to Newmarket to try out Solo Sushi Ya. I suspect most people have heard of Newmarket ("404 to Newmarket") but few people have actually been. I found that most of Solo Sushi Ya's clientele are either doctors in the area or out-of-towners like myself. Makes sense considering their main draw is their omakase.

Omakase is fairly common at mid to high end sushi restaurants. Essentially, there isn't a set menu and you're leaving it up to the chef to create the courses, so what you eat depends on the chef's whims and ingredients on hand. A unique experience (compared to other cuisines), and also quite expensive. The omakase here cost about $60 per person - already on the lower end of pricing.

The restaurant itself was very quaint - literally a mom and pop shop. There was the head chef making the food and his wife was the server. Everything about the shop felt personal: knickknacks along the sill, different chopstick holders for everyone, menus with a plea to pay with cash or debit, wasabi that was true wasabi - liquid and slightly sweet. The chef would drop by and ask us how we liked our food and talk about how business was slow because of the construction work outside.

The food was fresh and delicious. There was the standard sushi and sashimi, but also steamed egg with clams.

Interesting appetizers and desserts. Two types of white tuna - a sweet and spicy one. The spicy white tuna was our unanimous favourite.

No doubt other people's experiences will vary; they happened to have a lot of white tuna on hand.

Food: 4.5/5
Service: 5/5
Value: 3/5
TL;DR: Super pricy, but worth going to for a special occasion

- Food Review: Nazareth Restaurant -

I've been wanting to try out Ethiopian cuisine for the longest time, so I scanned through Yelp and picked out one of the (presumably) best Ethiopian restaurants in the city.

Nazareth was conveniently located near Ossington Station and a short walk from a Green P Parking. Then again, most downtown locations are a short walk from a Green P Parking so that's not really say much.

So, what was I talking about?

Right, food!

The food itself was incredibly slow to arrive. Thankfully we got here early, because if we had gotten here past seven o'clock, we would have easily waited three hours before we could eat - no joke. It's a long wait to get in because the seating at Nazareth is smaller than my bedroom, and it's a long wait for the food because they make everything fresh.

Once we finally got our food, we were surprised to see our three dishes served on a single big plate:

And of course, there was no utensils. Instead, there is injera - a spongy, sour bread that you rip into pieces, and scoop up the meats with. Similar to naan for Indian cuisine.

The meats were soft and flavourful - they fell right off the bone. I wasn't a fan of injera though - I might not have scooped up enough sauce, because the sour taste stayed long after the dinner was done.

The bill came up to about $10/person which is fairly cheap, considering it's a highly trafficked downtown restaurant. However, call me squeamish, but I really miss using utensils so for me this will purely be a one-off experience.

Food: 4/5
Service: 2/5
Value: 4/5
TL;DR: Try it if you're interested in Ethiopian cuisine. Would not go again myself.

- augmented reality -

After playing with the 3D TV in our manager's office, I realized I'm not a big fan of 3D. Actually, I realized that after watching a few 3D movies and playing with the 3DS. 3D stuff doesn't make me feel like I'm immersed in some virtual world - it makes me feel queasy.

On the other hand, I found augmented reality (AR) quite awesome. The 3DS comes with these augmented reality cards. You could place one on the table and it would turn into a box. And a dragon would come out and you'd have to shoot it down. Of course none of this actually happens - you see it through the 3DS.

So when my rotation with my current R&D-style team started, I made a brief mention of my interest in AR to my mentor. He mentioned while the technology is interesting, there's not much there for telcos to look into.

In the meantime, more and more stores are using AR for marketing - like American Apparel. I really wanted to check it out today, but (1) there isn't an American Apparel store nearby and (2) I don't have an iPhone.

I'm sure AR will take off in the near future (especially with Google Glass!) I can already imagine a bunch of really cool uses like

• Being able to draw up someone's profile just by looking at them
• RPGs where you defeat monsters in your neighbourhood
• Blue lines leading you to your destination

To be honest, once you start merging the digital right into your vision, the possibilities are almost endless. Vision is the one sense we rely on the most, and the one sense that this world is designed for.

- Vocal Familiarity -

In just the last few years, you can verbally shut down Xbox Kinects and Samsung Smart TVs; you can ask your smartphone to point you to the nearest gas station is; you can compose text messages by talking it out.

The point is speech recognition is becoming more and more common. But I've found that the accuracy is still pretty bad. By "pretty bad", I mean not 99% accurate. If it's not at least that accurate, I feel that I might as well type it out. As a sidenote, I have the same issue with predictive keyboards.

Considering there are a very limited number of pronounceable sounds (phonemes) in English, shouldn't we be able to vastly improve speech recognition by asking the user to speak out every phoneme as set-up?

- Mini Manga Review: Zekkyou Gakkyuu -

There are two things I learnt after reading this manga:

1. 99% of teenagers are psychopaths
2. The smallest moral mistake will cause you to die a gruesome death

Every chapter starts and ends with a floating girl reciting some moral lesson. Sounds pretty tame and boring, except each lesson is typically demonstrated with schoolgirls murdering each other or getting murdered.

The beautiful drawings, the twist endings and the creeping tension: all of this keeps you turning the page and prevents the story from feeling episodic.

In a nutshell, Zekkyou Gakkyuu is Aesop's Fables. Except with crazy schoolchildren instead of talking animals, and ten times more horrific.

- true to yourself -

You know the old saying "Fake It Till You Make It"?

I always hated that catchphrase.

It encourages deception and acting, and worst of all, it works.

For the uncurious and the attention-deficient, the link talks about how you can change who you are by changing your body postures. If you take up space, if you open up your body, if you go into what she calls "high-power poses" - your bravery goes up and your stress levels goes down.

If your normally fearful and stressed, you adopt "lower-power poses" which leads to more fear and stress. And it becomes a vicious cycle.

So the idea is fake "high-power poses" in order to feel more confident and calm.

The talk addresses the lack of authenticity by saying you don't "fake it till you make it"; you "fake it till you become it". Through these changes to body posture, you come out as a different person.

But that still isn't good enough.

In terms of changing who we are, I prefer to go the route outlined by this ex-smoker.

The key point in that post:

You need to change your mind-set. You must change from being a smoker who is trying to quit to being a non-smoker. This is fundamental...

Previously, when I tried to quit, I marked the date in my diary and counted the days. The downside to this is that it's like holding your breath underwater - you know that at some stage you will come up for air. Furthermore, when you do eventually succumb and have a cigarette, you will feel like you have failed and will be disheartened when you have to reset the counter.

You need to accept that you will be tempted from time to time to have a cigarette and there will be times when your resolution will be weak (late at night, after a few drinks), so it's eminently possible that you will have a smoke or two or more. It does not amount to falling off the wagon or a reversion to the habit. You need to consider it as an aberration and no different to any other non-smoker who has a cigarette. It happens, move on.

This isn't a matter of faking it till you make it or faking it till you become it. This is simply being it. Being it until your behaviours line up to what you already are.

The difference may be a technicality to most people, but it's fundamental for me.

Now to make up a catchphrase.