I worked hard this past weekend to meet a Monday deadline for my magazine. I sent the files to the printer here in Toronto. This is the culmination of just about 4 months of work on U&I Magzine. Since the inception near May and my actual administration and production, I have come a long way. My next hurdle to come is to sell this magazine to the people in the Toronto area. My first order of 200 magazines should be coming by the end of this week or the beginning of next week. At $20 a pop, I am hoping it will sell well. Of course, for everyone else living outside of Toronto, you will soon be able to buy your copy online from an American printer and distributor. More details on that to come as soon as I have things set up.

It’s quite exciting as this is part of my new venture, media Smaku. I hope to do well in this industry and this is only the beginning.

Since I have finished working on my magazine, I found myself finally being able to relax a bit after work. I actually spent 2 hours tonight in front of the TV watching the season premier of The Amazing Race: Family Edition. It was quite the roudy experience with family members yelling over each other. What else is new?!

It’s an interesting show and is probably the only reality TV show that I make an effort to watch. However seeing as I usually work late on Tuesdays, I’m not quite sure how many episodes I will be able to see altogether.

I just came back from the monthly Flickr meetup group meeting. We all met up at the Spirit Bar and Grille out on their patio. It’s been a while since I went to anything Flickr but all I can say is that I was more than happy that I chose to go today. It was like going back to the good old days when you meet up with old friends and talk about anything and everything.

I only met most of these people at the start of the summer and I haven’t seen many of these people in a long time yet I felt as if I had known them for ages. They’re a good crowd. Since not all conversations revolve around Flickr or photography – as a matter of fact not many do – it’s a good escape from the world I live in.

I did get a chance to promote more of U&I Magazine and many are very enthused about it being published. I have so many supporters here – and they haven’t even seen my portfolio. I’m quite surprised and am happy at the same time. These are a great bunch of people.

Nachos were half price at Spirit so that’s what most of us had. They weren’t bad. For $5, you got a huge plate of nachos… I had a Stella. Mmm…

Backtracking…
I woke up at 7am this morning and decided to goto work early for a change. Early, as in 9am early. I typically start anywhere from 10-10:30am but since I had some work to do this morning, I decided to go an hour early. It was a good feeling. For once, I came in to work at a regular time when most others come in. It was a different environment as I was able to chat about with some people that I normally don’t since they are already busy at work by the time I get in at 10am.

Ideally, I’d like to go to work at 9am and leave early but my job just doesn’t cut it that way. Too bad indeed.

On another note, in today’s Toronto Star, there was an article on women kickboxing. It caught my eye as one of my colleagues is a kickboxer. As I read the article, I came across a familiar name. The article said that she was part of the Muai Thai kickboxing gym in Toronto. I had to think for a while since the girl I knew with the same name would be the last person I would think to actually enjoy kickboxing. She’s quiet in demeanor and just not your fighting type. I guess I was wrong. Asking my coworker, it turns out that she is indeed one of my ex-classmates in university. She happens to go to the same gym as my co-worker too. A small world we live in, isn’t it?

Now that it has been a fruitful day, I can go to sleep happy.

So many things to do now and even in the foreseeable future. I’m not sure where to draw the line. As time goes by, new things come up where I want to get involved in. If only I had more time. I would be able to expend more energy to each of those things. Right now, however, I’m getting both anxious and nervous as I am slowly nearing my self-imposed deadline for U&I. A little behind schedule, I had mistakingly put a little too much work on myself lately. I had to put production of U&I Magazine off for a few days as I settled another freelance job that I couldn’t even finish on time. In fact, I didn’t even finish it at all. How about that!

Nevertheless time keeps ticking away. I think I need to lock myself in my room and not come out until I’m done my magazine… and my site. I haven’t had the time to even advertise my magazine anymore, which is something I am in dire need of since… well, it’s word-of-mouth advertising that I’m counting on here in the T.O.!

Thanks for all the emails everyone! And for those of you who are new to my site, don’t hesitate to drop me a line either. It’s always nice to know who lurks behind those monitors!