After heading for the Grouse Grind and Third Beach awhile back, I haven’t been doing much. In between tha and nowt, there was a lot of snacks or fresh fruits. I took the liberty to take some pictures of the food. I’m thinking of starting a photo blog but I wish I had bought that dSLR last Christmas, they’re all so amazing, yes?
During this lame-o week, I have been watching a lot of baseball and reading a lot of tutorials. I’m excited to make my own layout soon, but dang, I need to reformat my laptop. I bought new RAM (up to 2GB now!) but it hasn’t worked out much. My twitter buddies told me that I have just too much stuff for the RAM to work. So…
QUESTION: Can you use any sort of Windows XP recovery CD as long as you have the geniune code underneath the laptop?
I guess I’ll delete all my Sims 2 stuff (or at least save the game files). I probably have 20GB of stuff from that game and I only have 1GB left on my HD.
I’m tempted to nudge mother to make more or buy more new food! Or just take a picture of all the food I eat. That’ll do some good.
Hopefully the weather cooperates this weekend (or at least Sunday) both Rio Tinto Alcan Dragonboat Festival and Krinos Foods Greek Day! I’m looking forward to heading out there and taking some pictures with my camera. And everyone knows that I need to get out of the house. Not looking forward to practice driving again. That’s probably the only downside to Vancouver – the necessity to drive anywhere.
First thing’s first – Home Sweet Home! I have been back for a bit over a week and there has not been a single drop of precipitation coming down at all. Either it has been cloudy or overall sunny. Way to go, Raincouver! A bit of catch up before I head into the actual blog. After arriving back in Vancouver last Monday at around 9pm (which was still sunny, by the way), Tuesday afternoon was my cousin’s convocation, followed by mine Wednesday afternoon!
Officially I’m a Bachelor of Arts in Geography (major) with Urban Studies certificate and History (minor)! Simon Fraser University Alumni ‘09! On the other hand, I’m unemployed, which means I’m grouped into the ‘looking for a job’ group. This will be interesting and hopefully I won’t relegate to a minimum-paid job because I get sick of staying at home.
Grouse Grind
A few days back Vancouver has been named as the most desirable (or “easiest”) place to live for 2009 which coincide with my experience of Vancouver on Sunday. (Of course I’m ignoring half my paper on why these rankings are bad for all the other cities and does not represent the actual city.) My friend invited to me to tackle the Grouse Grind in the morning. I have previously been told that the hike was pretty hefty and mentally I was prepared for it. The day even compiled with my plan as once we reached North Vancouver, it was cloudy with barely any sun peeking in.
Once I got there and 10 minutes in, unlucky for me, my ears began to hurt like mad. For no particular reason – unless it’s some elevation thing but then I can fly on planes. So 10 minutes in, my friends are already way ahead of me and I am just taking my time walking up. Considering my out-of-shape-ness, my final time wasn’t that bad, especially with my ear ache! But compared to the fastest male and female times, I’m way, way off. It is only a 2.9 km hike but 2,830 steps total!
I would like to thank my friends who all waited for me to finish before taking the gondola back down. At the same time, I’d like to say a “boo-hiss” to the same friends who all thought I had given up and turned around before calling me. At least they all called me to see where I was! Thanks guys, total overall thumbs up. As we waited for the gondola down, the mountain top was cold enough to see the breaths in front of us. And there was still snow (or ice by now) on the ground!
Cloudy with... snow?
After the awesome/awful Grouse Grind experience, we were going to grab some McDonald’s via driving back over the Iron Gates Memorial, but alas, we took the wrong route and realized we were actually driving over Lions Gate. By the time we got off the bridge, Vancouver was sunny again and as we passed by a sign for Stanley Park, we totally yelled “BEACH”! After de-de-deja vu-ing by turning to the same street twice (after driving into Stanley Park and leaving immediately, oh wrong road), we finally reached Stanley Park, not after driving for awhile to figure out where the beaches are.
We stopped at the first beach we saw, or called Third Beach, and found a map that told us the beach was pretty big. After walking away when we found a parking spot, I again realized we forgot to pay for parking! (Previously in downtown, again)
Third Beach
What a gorgeous day it turned out to be as the sky cleared up and all was left was the beautiful blue. This was the extreme opposite of the cold, gloomy and what-the-ice in North Vancouver and on Grouse Mountain. The Chinese in me is screaming “what am I doing here?” I put on sunscreen and the next day woke up to even darker skin. So… WHY?
Hello, Chinese people want paler skin (thank you, Hong Kong television for bombarding these commercials every second you can). Even though the sun is warm and the day is beautiful, the water is still cold. Or “cold” in my standard. We had our blankets and were already in shorts while holding onto our McD paper bags. What a Sunday in Vancouver. Snow in the mountains and sun at the beaches – the perfect Vancouver scenario. You can put that to those marketing brochures and testimonies! We have a real example at hand already.
To complete the deja-vu, we ended up getting on another wrong bridge (this time – Granville) but luckily found West Broadway and then we knew the right way home.
It's not that cold...
Thanks for the comments to my last post! I’m trying to figure out how to reply to them because I’ve seen blogs that do that. For now I can’t do that when I’m here since I can’t spend that much time on the computer – I’m still at my uncle/aunt’s house. Not counting today, I only have 8 days left in Hong Kong before I head back to Vancouver! Kind of disappointed that it’s ending so soon already. Luckily I’ve visited almost everywhere I wanted to go. Before I didn’t want to go to places because it’s way too hot (32C does that to you) and now it’s just thunderstorms and pouring rain. Great.
Since this trip, I have taken over 1,200 pictures and already filled up my 2GB memory card. Not to mention the 256mb of my backup camera because I forgot to charge the battery of my main camera. Thanks to my uncle who “lended” me his 8GB memory card, I can take more pictures in my last week here in Hong Kong.
HK Harbour (to Central)
On Wednesdays, the museums in Hong Kong are all free, meaning we all went to visit the ones that were interesting. And this meant us walking for 5+ hours non-stop until dinner time. While I thought it was worth it, my feet surely don’t. It’s getting bumpy down there and hurting too. We took the tram to Shau Kei Wan to visit the Coastal Defense Museum, had lunch, then MTR down to Tsim Sha Tsui for everything else. We went to the Science museum, History museum, Chinese Arts museum and Space museum (lame) while walking along the broadwalk of the harbour. This is the rare instances where the fog (or smog?) doesn’t overwhelm the view!
We're from Canada!
On Friday, we headed to Macau for a visit. I haven’t visited there since I was a child, so I was due a visit to Hong Kong’s neighbour – an hour boat ride via TurboJet. Luckily I still had Gravol from the cruise to Mexico of last year; I was too lazy to take them out, or you can call it just in case. The boat ride was pretty rocky for me – a easily motion sickness person. We were in luck because while the weather was hot, there was no rain or storm as predicted. Macau’s main revenue stream is of casinos and it has over 30 of them already and 3 more are opening next month. I’m not sure where all these people come from who have the money to spend like that. Or that one person and his family own a lot of the casinos and buildings in Macau. I even got carded once even though the adult age is 18… not 21 like in US. Yay for me looking young? We also went to the Macau Tower, which was definitely less scary when standing on the semi-glass floors since we already got frightened from the Shanghai one.
Bungee Jumper from Macau Tower
But this tower does hold the Guiness World Record for highest bungee jumping place ever. And several tourists did try it out, for a price of $2,100 (MOP/HKD) each and it lasts for 4 seconds. I’d do it if I had that kind of money to spend, and wasn’t wearing my glasses that day.
That’s all for now as I look into how to book our seats because now apparently you can only do it online and 48 hours before your flight. And since our flight is at 12:05am, where are we going to find a computer to do so?! This does not make sense. It’d be easier if I was travelling by myself and it was one seat! We’re figure it out, there are free computers at the MTR stations and the last train is way past midnight… so we’ll pay to go in and get out, I guess!
