Monday, January 25, 2010

102. Grow a lemon tree from a seed

Now, officially, this is not a part of my list, but over the past few days I have become obsessed with this. The idea came to me on Friday as I watering the plants in my house and I thought to myself.. I would really like to grow something from scratch.. something edible maybe. So I ran over to the refridgerator and took a peek, just for some inspiration of course, and not to eat the last slice of apple pie sitting on the second shelf from the top. Purely an informative mission.

Suddenly, it hit me. Lemon! Most definetly, of all the citruses that I could grow, I wanted lemon. Or maybe lime? I deliberated the two momentarally, thinking that lime is better in lime-ade form, but lemons are so bright that they always put me in a good mood. "Lemons it is," I said to myself.

The next logical step was google. I typed in "how to grow" and scrolled through my options. Weed.. taller.. garlic? I had to be more specific so I looked for my specific query and said "how to grow lemons" and lo! One of the options that came up was lemons grown from seed, and immediately I thought that this option is much better than buying a pre-grown lemon tree.

As it turns out, lemon seeds are a very finicky bunch, and they can't dry out at all or else they wont sprout. So, conveniently my mother has just purchased a lemon. I took it out, with every intention of just potting my lemon seed right then and there! How dissapointed I was to find that my lemon had no seeds in it, an uncanny hybrid mix of what I can only assume to be regular lemon and seedless watermelon.

Weird, because whenever I usually use lemons, there are tons of seeds in them and they fall into my lemonade and irritate me to no end. And it takes between 3 and 5 years before a lemon tree... sprouts if you will.. any lemons, so really there isn't any time to waste.

To make a long story short, I need to buy some more lemons. And I will keep you informed on any progress.

P.S. Am I allowed to switch this item for another one on my list that I no longer want to do?

Saturday, January 23, 2010

46. Go to at least 10 different museums

In Korea, I went to 6 different museums.

-National Museum of Korea
This museum was really cool, and it has the largest museum in Korea. I was there for almost 4 hours, and I didn't see everything. There was alot of stuff about the period of the 3 Kingdoms which was before there was a unified Kingdom in Korea, and this was the most interesting of the museums that I saw, but only by a small margin, because many of the other museums I visited were very cool too.

-Korean War Museum
This museum starts off with the exhibit outside, which has many tanks and airplanes and cannons and other things outside! This place is cool, and of everyone I talked to, this is the one place where everyone told me I must go. It starts off with the 3 Kingdom period and shows how the weapons evolved and it just has so much stuff in it!

-Korean Hall of Independence
They had an exhibit on torture... It was beyond awesome! Huge place, out in the boonies, but worth it.

-Museum of Art
hey had an Andy Worhol exhibit, and I secretly took a few pictures. There was also an exhibit on modern sculpture that was a little.. hinky (in the words of David Letterman)

-Museum of Korean Pilgrims
This was just as boring as the title suggests. I didn't even know Korea had pilgrims. I hightailed it out of there as quick as I could. In fact, I only went into this museum by mistake, because when I asked someone where the Museum of Art was, they pointed in the direction of this building.

-Kimchi Field Museum
Kimchi is the national food in Korea, and Koreans eat it with every meal. Including breakfast, where you can just mix it in your rice. Very tasty! This museum showed the different types of kimchi, how to make it, the beneficial properties of kimchi, and the best part - a taste test. To be honest though, only one of them was really good, another was decent, but the rest of them were nasty.

I leave you with a picture taken at the Kimchi museum.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

57. Try 3 things that I would never think of eating when travelling

I cannot believe that I ate this, I have to write it down just so that I can believe it myself. While I was in Korea, I ate octopus! It wasn't alive but it was as close to being alive as you can get without it still swimming around in the fish tank.

So, me and T were invited out for sashimi by his dojo master, Master Shin. It was one of those restaurants that you sit on the floor. Suddenly, on the table appears these little arm/tentacles that have been freshly severed from an octopus, and they are still squirming and when you try to pick them up with a spoon they stick the the metal and it is so disgusting looking that I almost puked, and some of the pieces still have octo-eyeballs attached.

Everyone else was just digging in, but I took a few pieces but I waited until they stopped squirming before I ate them. The taste of them is not so bad, I actually couldn't taste them at all because I doused them in some sort of spicy sauce. It is the texture that is really what I didn't like, they are so chewy and the tentacles stick to your teeth and ughhh!

I guess as the saying goes - I tried, I conquered... but never again.

Friday, January 8, 2010

37. Watch at least 10 Cary Grant movies

I love Cary Grant. T first introduced me to him when he told me to watch The Philidelphia Experiment. After that I watched Loveboat and a few others. So, while I was in Korea I decided to watch a few more Cary Grant movies so I could get some more things on my list done. I saw North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief. I really liked both, but I think I liked North by Northwest better, maybe because I really liked the chase scene on Mount Rushmore.

Checking on IMDB, it turns out that he was in 73 movies, so I have lots of options to finish off the 10, but I think I will save the next movie for a rainy day.

Monday, January 4, 2010

39. See a shooting star and make a wish

A few months ago the Leonids were out. In Canada we didn't get the prime time for the shooting stars but I saw 4 shooting stars and was allowed to make 4 wishes. I don't remember what my wishes were, but I'm sure that they were for the betterment of mankind, and not something silly like "I wish for a million more wishes", although I do remember one of my wishes being wasted on asking for a Bahama...

Check, check and check!

I am slowly ticking things off of my list, and it feels really good