it's cholesterol don't-cha-know

So Saturday I went to ex-coworker FK’s house for dinner. FK used to work at the fish tank but quit last year. We still keep in touch and go out for lunch or dinner once in a while. Before he quit FK made a bet with us. FK is overweight. Okay he’s downright fat. He likes to eat, a lot, especially the stuff that’s bad for you. So when we were eating lunch one day it came as no surprise when FK mentioned he had a cholesterol count of 7.2 (6.5 to 7.8 mmol/l is moderately high, ideal is below 5) and was taking medication for it. Being FK, he said he could lower it any time he wanted to; just that he didn’t have time for exercise lately. Okay whatever. So we finally made a bet that if he could lower his cholesterol to 5.2 (without taking medication) within 6 months, we would buy him dinner; if he lost he would have to buy us dinner. The dinner limit was $300. Okay so we made a $300 bet on the guy’s health, but we would have been more than happy to lose the bet and have to buy him dinner.

All that was February of last year. October came around and he was to busy to go for his checkup. Finally February of 2006, he got his checkup, 5.5, close but no cigar. So Saturday was our celebratory dinner. With these guys it’s the usual hotpot. And with $300 for seven people we went nuts. There is this little live-seafood shop where we bought lobsters, prawns (live!), eel, scallops, and geoduck clam. And then we bought thinly sliced beef, mutton, pork; beef and fish balls; tripe, pork skin and casings. Yes, all the unhealthy, high cholesterol, artery clogging meat stuff you can eat. All thrown into a pot of boiling broth, eaten with whatever dipping sauce you want to mix together (in my case soy sauce, fried onions, sa cha sauce and hot sauce) and a cold beer (in my case a cold green tea.) Crap, maybe I should go get my cholesterol checked.

It was good times even though I got a stupid parking ticket. We agreed to meet at FK’s house early so we could take one car and go together to buy all the food. So I left my car at FK’s house. When we came back there was a slip of paper flapping in the -16ºC wind on my windshield : a lovely $35 parking ticket issued by the town of Markham. It was alleged that I, acksee, did park to obstruct the sidewalk. WTF?!! Okay my little mini was occupying about 75-80% of the sidewalk. Now I’m not saying that I’m not guilty of the crime. I clearly was obstructing the sidewalk. I’m just questioning why a police car would be in a wealthy, upper middle-class suburban neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon. Nothing to do but cruise around the rich folk’s neighborhood looking for illegally parked cars and those of their poor guests (I don’t live in Markham, I live in Scarborough in the projects; FK is the rich-ass.) Although if anyone should be ticketed for parking illegally, it should be them Markham rich folks. And Markham sucks because when I went to their official town website to pay for the damn ticket, the link to the online payment didn’t even work. So be warned! Don’t go obstructing sidewalks in Markham!