Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Been so busy coordinating my schedule for Dine Out Vancouver that I totally missed the Hot Chocolate Festival . It's still on , but sadly ends the day before Valentine's Day. DUH!

Happy to say that I made it out to another Dine Out Vancouver 2011 venue on Sunday night, this time to Al Porto Ristorante ( dine out menu ). If you've never been to this restaurant, it's in Gastown near the Steam Clock . Duck down an alley to the entrance, go down the stairs just to your right, and VOILA! Suddenly you're in a sort-of-rustically decorated old world cellar restaurant of surprising proportions. Presently, it is decorated with a fabulous number of high quality hand-painted reproductions of famous masterpieces from Revival Art (and a bit of a shame they didn't have any business cards for Revival Art handy), but if you get there pretty early and have a look around before the restaurant gets busy (not till 6pm, probably), you will also see some beautiful murals on the walls of the restaurant. We ordered insalata Caprese (vine tomato, bocconcini , arugula, olive oil), Tuscan liver parfait (liver pate, gherkin, crostini, and a heck of a lot of dijon mu...

This past Wednesday night saw my first (of hopefully three) Dine Out Vancouver 2011 restaurant visits. I went with a dear friend and excellent dining buddy to NU (reinvented, apparently, into Greek-themed Nu Aegean Cusina) at her suggestion, in turn based on an article she had read recommending NU's Dine Out menu as being one of the best in bang for your buck. If I had known they started Dine Out Vancouver on the 13th , I might have gone earlier to beat the rush -- At 6:30pm on Wednesday, the place was packed and by around 8pm some diners had to wait at the bar. The "official" Dine Out menu doesn't make a big fuss over the complimentary pita and homous you get after placing your order. It's basically a Greek version of fresh bread and butter while you wait. What they don't tell you is that you get a really generous portion of freshly grilled pita, still piping hot when it hits your table, and dusted with sea salt on the surface for that extra zing. There...

You may have seen my post on the Taste of Yaletown Wrap-Up or gotten an e-mail through Facebook for it. I managed to get out to it that Wednesday afternoon, and was very surprised by the offerings and the generosity of the servings. You can see shots from the event on the Yaletown Business Improvement Association's Flickr photostream . The setup in the limited space had each of the three restaurants presenting offerings for one hour each, and CIBC holding a draw each hour to give away gift certificates. Other than the awkwardness of basically asking die-hard foodies to hang around for three hours, the setup was actually rather nice, with Fuse Pan Asian Express offering a light refreshment (Honeysuckle Chrysanthemum drinks) and appetizers (bite-size portions of Thai Chicken Salad and Sizzling Green Beans); followed by Society offering a small plateful of lunch (one small corndog, one gyoza pan-seared on-site, and a chunk of wine-braised beef with generous jus for a scoop of...

Saw this on a newsletter I got from ING Direct ... Every Tuesday and Thursday - The Vancouver Cafe has partnered with YYoga to offer free yoga classes from 5pm to 6pm. To RSVP, please e-mail vancafe@ingdirect.ca .

My mom received a Chinese New Year card from a distant relative in Singapore. Square pink envelope, red card inside. There was also a very long slit in the envelope -- certainly long enough to have a look at whether there were anything sandwiched into the card. A cheque or red packet , maybe? Sigh.

Got this from Taste of Yaletown on Facebook... The CIBC Yaletown branch is at 1096 Homer Street (at Helmcken) Enjoy a one day extension of Taste of Yaletown with Presenting Sponsor: CIBC Yaletown Following the Taste of Yaletown’s 2010 success, CIBC and the Yaletown Business Improvement Association are hosting a one day extended Taste of Yaletown event with some of the most tantalizing tastes of Yaletown’s finest restaurants. CIBC and the Yaletown BIA are inviting you to come out and enjoy complimentary canapés and beverages with us at CIBC’s Yaletown branch on Wednesday, January 26th from 11:30am-2:30pm. Each of these Yaletown restaurants will be featured for an hour: Fuse Pan Asian Express , Hub Restaurant and Lounge , and Society . Come out for lunch and bring your colleagues! Also, don't forget business cards - There will be a chance to win gift cards to the participating restaurants through our hourly business card draw!

You may have read yesterday that my gaming laptop recently died . I was reflecting on my gaming experiences on the laptop over the last few years, and thought I'd put them down on this blog... Play today's game next year Or maybe three years from today. Chances are, your computer is two years old. And maybe it still meets the recommended specs, but that's just marketing. You will probably not be able to have the graphics sliders all the way up or run it at the maximum possible resolution on your screen -- So trust me, you're missing out. Also, if the game has mods, let the game mature for a while and let the mods catch up. Games like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion were completely overhauled graphically by the modding community to high-res graphics that would probably have run the game like a slideshow at the time it was released. Playable, yes. But it didn't look as good as it could have. And there were some events in Oblivion's main quest that were so proce...

Well, not exactly. The video card on my Dell Inspiron died on Monday. But since it's integrated with the motherboard, the laptop is a write-off. Naturally, I had no idea at the time I bought it that there was an overheating issue with the Inspiron 9400s . There were other early issues with the laptop as well, such as a faulty hinge. How something simple like a hinge can be faulty in this day and age is beyond me, but it was forcing the casing of the laptop to crack open, and in the end had to be sent back to Dell. The warranty had expired, naturally. Things only got worse when it came back: There was a clicking sound from the fan, and shortly after, the screen started to go bad with columns of dead pixels. I called up Dell to talk to them about it, but they wanted to charge me money just to bring up these post-repair issues. I was so disgusted I hung up. Around this time, the video card started getting hotter and hotter. The external laptop fan (the type that your laptop sit...

From a very shy student at King George International College (KGIC), where I was a teaching assistant/conversation assistant between 2002-2003. I recall trying to keep in touch with her through e-mail, and there may possibly have been an e-mail or two back and forth, but things fizzled out -- as they often do when there is a great physical distance between acquaintances who didn't bond into close friends before going their separate ways. I don't think I ever did ask her about the Korean dollar and coin. I'm actually not 100% certain that the coin with the "lucky cat"/Maneki Neko is the one referred to in the letter -- a side effect of putting all my keepsakes in the same box. She struck me as a very gentle person. I wasn't sure whether she had a crush on me or just felt safer to try to be less shy around me. In any case, her time at the school was soon up, and off she went. Shyness is definitely a disadvantageous trait for an overseas ESL s...

In one particular way, my time at KGIC (King George International College) was a very sad and depressing one. Here I was, surrounded by a lot of bright, fun, friendly, and often very beautiful women -- and I couldn't date any of them. Sure, I was "just" a teaching assistant, but it still meant that I theoretically had influence with the school, so all of them were off-limits. Trying to nurture friendships after they were done with school was a tricky business as well. I think a lot of them come to realize that their time in Canada is done, and their time with their fellow students, especially those from different countries, is over. Sort of like how friendships with people you meet on vacations, in school, or at work can sometimes vanish when you finally go your separate ways. One student I knew had pursued another quite ardently, and I think there was some reciprocity (how much, I'm not sure). She finished her studies sooner than he, and left. Just a couple o...