Happy Egg day everybody. I know it’s been a while..I’ll try to work on that a bit more.

A couple of weeks ago I took a quick plane ride home to Manitoba. My parents were humming and hawing about coming out here for spring break. In the end they decided that they would fly me down instead. Good enough for me. Unfortunately my good Uncle Peter passed away the day I was leaving, so it was a sad little vacation. The good in all of it was that I got to see more family then I would normally have.

The Timmy’s run for the new car was in hiatus last week as I didn’t have any cash on me and the Timmy’s I go to only takes cash. I’ve been trying to save a little money lately as it seems from month to month the money going out is a little higher then the money coming in. I was looking forward to a decent tax return, but that was negated quickly last week, when I got a special “assessment” on my condo. There has been ongoing problems with the building, to which the Condo Board is suing the company, but for now, the tenants have to come up with the extra money to fix the problem now. Let’s just say all of my tax return is now going to the condo. Nice!

On Tuesday I went to my 2nd Flames game of the season against Colorado with some free tickets from Shaun. The guy who sang the National Anthems was apparently a well known Canadian artist by the name of Jordan Cook. (Don’t worry, I don’t think anybody in the Saddledome knew who he was either. He had an electric guitar, and lets just say he butchered the American anthem. It was hard not to laugh. You honestly wanted to boo him, but you couldn’t as he was “singing” the national anthems.

Thanks to the internet…you can view the performance in all of it’s glory!

And finally, I’ve entered myself in the annual MNP Calgary mustache growing contest. All of us developers at work are going for it so it should be pretty funny. There’s various aspects of the contest including plumage and style. There’s bonus points if you keep the same style for a whole month while you grow it, but all of us are scared to grow mustache’s from the get go, so it’s mostly beards until the final week of judging happening in May. I was trying to remember and the longest I’ve gone without shaving has to be MAX 5 days. I’m now on day 6 (minus the “manscaping” of the neard)

When this is all over, I’ll make sure to take a picture. I’m kind of scared I may look like Joe Jr.

-Kiazyk out

Well another birthday has come and gone in Calgary.

Last year was spent out for dinner and then a night at Yuk Yuk’s. It was good times, the only problem being was that I didn’t know what or who was coming. This year, I wouldn’t let that happen again and so I kind of planned my own party. We all headed up to Woody’s Taphouse on 17th for a little night out. Unbeknown to me it was Karaoke night (if I would’ve known, we would have went some where else). Needless to say after a “few” $2 (before 10pm) rye and coke’s I did my not-so-impressive version of “Baby Got Back”! It’s a lot harder when you’re up there then I realized.

Then on Sunday, some microwaved chocolate cake was had at Shaun & Dee’s house. Thanks again for everything, it was much appreciated as always.

And last Friday (my actually birthday for those of you who forgot!) I actually won a free cup of coffee at Timmy’s. Although I don’t really feel like I deserved it as I actually didn’t buy the cup of coffee. It was bought for me. But hey, it was my birthday, plus I’ll take what I can get at this point!

Does anybody else miss Ron Thompson - former CKX weatherman from Brandon, Manitoba? Ahh…the good ol’ days.

Easy does folks…and for now that’s the weather!

The picture to the right was taken last week at the Rascal Flatts concert. It was pretty good. Our seats weren’t the greatest, but it was fun nonetheless. I’ve never seen so many wannabe cowboys\girls in my life.

This past week has also been the starting of Roll up the Rim to Win contest at Tim Hortons. Now since there’s a new Tim Hortons that opened up on my walk to work from the Train Station downtown, I’ve been stopping in on my way everyday this week. And since its relatively new, it is still pretty quick. The Timmy’s on 5th Ave is just ridiculous on some days.

So as I seem to never win anything (and if I do, it’s a crap prize) I’ve decided to keep an official tally of sorts. Over in the upper left corner of the website, you’ll see how many cups of coffee I’ve purchased at Timmy’s and you can follow my quest to get a free cup of coffee. So far I’m 0 for 5, but according to the official rules, I still need to by 6 more cups before technically I should win a free cup of coffee.

Seriously though all I want is free damn cup of coffee…is that too much to ask?

This is a story about a package that was lost and was returned to it’s owner 6 months later.

First a brief history. Back in August 2006 I had sent Amanda a small tin of Tim Horton’s coffee and a birthday card for her birthday. I sent it on August 3rd, hopefully to get to her by August 30th so she could have a little taste of home. A couple of months passed and still the package had not arrived. I sent another birthday card in the meantime to which she received. We assumed because it was coffee that maybe the Taiwanese postal people figured it was drugs and it was kept. Either that or Canada Post lost it, which wouldn’t really surprise me.

Now jump to the present. On Friday when I came home from work I had received a delivery slip in the mail from Canada Post saying I had a package waiting for me to pickup. I hadn’t ordered anything lately and Amanda didn’t mention anything about sending a package to me. Of course the postal office closes at 6 pm so I had to wait till the next day to pick it up.

When I picked it up, I quickly noticed that it was my Tim Horton’s coffee and card being returned to me. I found it a little odd that 6 months later it would be returned even if it was rejected for whatever reason. But I also found it odd that Matt Kiazyk and my address was fully written out on the outside of the package and a Royal Mail stamp had been placed on the outside. Shaun was in the car so we opened it and found this note inside:

Hi Matt
My name is Paul I work at a book distribution centre in England. I opened a parcel the other day from Taiwan and found your parcel inside a parcel of books sent to us. I hope the coffee finds its way back to you so you can finally share it with Amanda. Confirm if you wish via email.
Paul

Somehow, my package ended up in England. And out of a random act of kindness, it was returned back to me. This guy named Paul in England spent the time and money to wrap the package back up and send it back to Canada. He left his email to which I have replied and said thank you. From what I can remember, that was my first time I was the recipient of a random act of kindness. Does anybody have any other stories?

And if anybody is wondering, I’m going to try and send the coffee again. This time, I’ll take it out of the can and put it in zip lock bags. Even though I think that looks more like drugs then me leaving it in the sealed can! We’ll see where it ends up this time!

I know it’s been a while, sorry.

The last day in Taiwan was spent going to a Thai Massage. (No it wasn’t a “Rub N’ Tug”). For a 2 hour massage, it only cost $1200 NT, which works out to about $40 a person. Now this wasn’t an ordinary massage. First of all the room had two beds. After we got dressed into some Thai garments, they washed our feet. After that they began “working” us over. A Thai massage is the type where they bend you in every possible position you can think of, all the while jamming their knees into muscles. A few parts were a little painful, but overall it was awesome and definately recommended. You feel so rejuvinated after it’s all done.

That night we just went out to supper to the Shabu Shabu restaurant. Sunday we woke up early and headed to the airport. We had to stand in line for a good 20 minutes to check in. After that we said our goodbyes and I went through a couple of security checkpoints with no problems. I had to wait around for another hour or so, then took a 2 hour flight to Osaka Japan. A few hours after that it was only a 8 hour plane ride to San Francisco. But this ride was sooo much better then the flight to Taiwan. For one it was much shorter, and secondly, we had TV’s at the back of the seat in front of us. The only bad thing was that they were showing the same movies going back as they did going there.

I got to watch the sunset from the plane and the sunrise. Seeing the sunset and sunrise above the clouds was a pretty amazing site to say the least.

Well now that I’ve been overseas, I don’t think I’ll ever really travel to the south for a vacation. Going to a country where you don’t speak the language and everything looks different is something everybody needs to experience. Yes you will pay more then if you went to Cancun for 2 weeks, but you can see hotels and beaches anywhere.