One of the best dishes in Vancouver for less than $10

Last night, Holly and I ate dinner at a little Japanese restaurant in town called Aki. This is a place that serves wonderful food, but whenever we go, unless we have been going often, I usually get my favorite dish. It's what I would consider one of the top dishes to eat in Vancouver for less than $10. That's a pretty tall order in my opinion, but the beef curry at Aki lives up to it, in my mind.

It's a little strange ordering beef in gravy on rice at a place known for good sushi. It also takes a while for them to prepare, but it is oh so worth the wait. Meanwhile, Holly ordered a rice bowl that was covered in various sushi that she seemed to also enjoy, although since it was assorted sushi, there were one or two pieces that she offered to me instead. While she is not a fan of octopus, I can attest that it too was delicious, assuming you like that sort of thing.

While I really like the beef curry, I also know it's not the kind of dish my dad would ever try. It has the word 'curry' in it, and that puts him off, even though it's nothing at all like Indian curry, which is what he is thinking of. Having said that, it does have a bit of spice to it, but not in a burning hot kind of way - more like 'a lot of different and subtle flavours exploding in my mouth with each bite' kind of way. Oh well, his loss, my gain. Even though I'm not hungry right now, I'm salivating just at the thought of this delicious dish.

A nice Wedding and some Cross Border Shopping

So Chris and Amy got married. We were in attendance and had a great time. Amy's dress was beautiful (as was she) Chris and the boys were looking sharp and everything fell into place for a great time. It was a long day but there is no way we would have missed it.

Anyhow, congratulations you two, and thanks again for including us.

Both Holly and I had to behave ourselves at the reception because we had rented a car for the weekend and planned to use it for some cross border shopping the next day. On our way into Washington we noted that even the Nexus lane was pretty busy and that they did something unusual this time: they allowed TWO lanes for the Nexus cars and shunted all the other regular traffic through ONE lane, where they queued up cars to have the dog run by and sniff. It made for a long wait to get into the US on this rainy Sunday afternoon.

We made it through though, and managed to get our snacks at Taco Bell, among other places. There were some deals to take advantage of but really this was a small trip with very little coming back. But it was a nice drive in the rain.

Red Robin wins on service

For my birthday supper we planned to dine at Red Robin out in Langly, with our friends Bill and Colleen (and baby.) As usual when it came time to order our drinks, I happily ordered a Guinness. Our server came back shortly to inform me that they didn't have any, so I was to choose a different beer for the night.

Soon after taking delivery of a Rickard's Red beer, we had a change in servers. Our new guy, Ryan, quickly took our food orders and basically did his job.

Part way through our meal Ryan came back, asking if we wanted another drink. I had declined, as I wasn't drinking the beer I had in mind, and that it was okay. Ryan then asked me if he could find a Guinness, would I want it, to which I let him know that I would, but that others had searched before him and they didn't have any in stock. He left and I thought nothing more of it.

Ryan eventually returned, with a freshly poured Guinness in hand and the rest of the server crew in tow, to sing me a happy birthday song. It turns out that he left the restaurant to go get some Guinness just to be able to serve me the beer of my choice on my birthday. This then became the most appreciated Guinness I have ever had.

All in all, it was a pretty fantastic birthday with an unexpected touch of kindness from a complete stranger. Yes, he was only doing his job, but he did it far better than most. When I look back on yesterday I won't really remember that Red Robin was out of Guinness on my birthday so much as I will recall Ryan stepping out to fill my drink order.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a customer satisfaction survey to fill out.

I am the new 40

Lordy Lordy, look who's... yes well it isn't a surprise. I look the part, feel the part and my wife hopes that one day soon I'll even start acting the part. While some might not consider me to be old (your numbers are dwindling daily, I might add) I also can no longer be considered to be young.

I'm in the purgatory of age brackets.

Oh and apparently I'm now old enough to be called a 'mamil' which oddly, I'm okay with. Speaking of biking, I was up this morning for a leisurely ride around Stanley Park this morning and I have to say it was fantastic. There was another truck coming through the infamous intersection I had my accident at today, but I was already braking properly and there was no drama involved. I even wore my favorite cycling jersey, a green and black one from a shop I used to frequent when I lived in Aldergrove. The shop is long gone but the jersey still fits (barely).

My old bike is still holding up, mostly thanks to the work I had done on it two years ago in preparation for the Ride to Conquer Cancer. It is developing some new mystery creaks and the shifting is getting sloppy but somehow it continues to carry me over each hill, or at least down to the pizza shop and back on those evenings when ordering a pizza is just easier. I continue to lust after new rides but after a solid year I haven't managed to do much about that. They say we procrastinate against not only the things we don't want to do but also against the things we really want to do too. I'm a classic example of that I guess.

One of the things I hoped to do last year was to learn how to ride a fixed gear bike. The closest I came to that was to sit on one once at a bike store, so that goal will have to roll over into this year instead. Part of the problem is that I don't have a bike that is easily converted to ride fixed gear. The other part of the problem is that I don't want two bikes, so whatever I end up with should be convertable. I don't care if it is because it is a road frame that has horizontal dropouts or a track frame with cable stops for internally geared hubs. Boy, am I ever getting off track with this post.

For years I have asked Holly for a leather jacket, be it for my birthday, or other gift giving holiday. The problem has always been in finding something that actually looks good on me. Two days before my birthday Holly and I are out shopping and while I'm waiting in line to pay for some things she stumbles across something she thought might work. It turns out the one she picked was too tight for me (see the link above) but we were able to find a size larger that fit me correctly.

Today is only partly done, but already it has been better than good. Just about everyone at work has wished me well and I've heard from lots of friends and family. That's pretty much what it is all about, right?

Ad-supported dreaming

So last night I had a weird dream. I was in some futuristic setting and was using one of those fancy new computer interfaces like what made the film Minority Report so famous when all of a sudden it happened: my user experience was interrupted with a commercial. I don't recall the commercial being brand-specific in my dream, it was more just the notion that it's increasingly more of a norm for us to be interrupted by advertising. At least, that is how I interpreted the dream that I had.

But it's interesting too - aside from a few movies like Robocop, not too many future depictions include the adverse side effects of all this marketing and advertising. I mean, how many 'free' services do we currently have that are ad-supported? This is a fact of life for the modern computer user and I don't see it going away anytime soon, except maybe for those willing to pay for the privilege.

Anyway, it was a weird dream that I hope doesn't repeat itself. For my sleep at least, I'd like it not to be ad-supported.

BBQ Salmon

The other day we decided to cook up a nice salmon fillet on the BBQ. It wasn't going to be for dinner that night, but it was already thawed out so it needed to be cooked up. I fired up the grill and Holly wrapped it in foil, along with whatever other cooking magic she normally does. We put it on the grill and promptly forgot about it.

I went out for a quick errand and when I got back I asked Holly about the salmon. Her face went from surprise to resignation pretty quickly as she responded "Well it's gotta be pretty burnt by now! Let's go check it." She was surprised that she hadn't been smelling burnt salmon though.

Once out on the patio it became clear: luck was on our side that day because the grill ran out of propane shortly after cooking the fish to perfection. Sure it was cold by now, but it was going in the refrigerator anyhow. To make matters even better, Holly confirmed that it was actually slightly under cooked, which meant that it would be just right when she heated it up later.

Of course, filing this blog post serves to remind me: I need to refill the propane tank for the BBQ now.

Bird Crap

As I was walking home last night a seagull was kind enough to crap on me. I felt the droppings hit the back of my head but the 'bulk' of his load landed on my thigh. While it was pretty gross, there really wasn't much I could do until I got home.

So naturally, I made sure to purchase a lottery ticket on the way home.

Yeah, it's a little superstition but it did make my evening a lot more enjoyable. Instead of fuming about being shat on I was feeling 'lucky.' Having said that, the shower I took when I got home felt pretty good. I was happy to be cleaned up.

Weekend explorations along Robson Street

Ah, the weekend. This was a slow one for us, which was quite nice to be honest about it. We stuck close to home but did manage to get out to a couple places. One of those places is a little coffee and desert bar called Chicco. We discovered it in the KLIP coupon book that Holly picked up on our most recent stop in to Konbiniya.

Okay, let me explain all that a bit. My wife has been learning to speak Japanese, so naturally we will sometimes stop into Konbiniya as it is basically a Japan-styled convenience store. For all I know, that might explain the name but really I have no clue since I'm not the one learning the language. But they do make tasty dessert crepes on-site there, so I say the store is good. One of the things that can be found in the store is the KLIP coupon booklet. It's like a free, very thin magazine. They have both English and Japanese versions and we discovered a while ago that there is usually a 2 for 1 coupon for Waves coffee. I'm somewhat surprised that the staff at Waves don't know us on a first name basis yet. (Interesting note: I wrongly guessed at the url for waves and entered waves.ca, which led me to a website for a religious group in Vancouver, BC. No word yet on how good their coffee is.)

So this weekend, my wife suggested we try a couple of the spots that were advertised in KLIP, which we did. Chicco cafe was the first, where I had a Red Beans and Soy with coffee drink and Holly had a Red Beans and Soy with Green Tea. These were some mighty fine drinks. They were kind of like a bubble tea, and the red bean added sweetness to the drink. Since I normally prefer my coffee unsweetened, it was a nice mix as the bean never got too sweet. We will most likely be back to try more of their menu.

I can't even tell you the name of the other place we tried last night. It used to be called Blueberry World, right next to the McDonald's on the corner of Robson and Bidwell streets. I think it's called something like Fresh now. They sell frozen yogurt but unlike most other places, it tastes like they actually use yogurt. It was very refreshing and I preferred it over the 'no difference from regular ice cream' variety of frozen yogurt.