Feeling refreshed after spending lots of time with friends and le BF, combined with night skiing at Cypress yesterday:



…and drinks after work on Thursday at the Irish Heather:



They don’t skimp on their alcohol here. This bright red negroni just melted all my stress from  Thursday (end of quarter, beginning of long weekend, loads of work). We were a bit too late to get food there, because their kitchen apparently closes at 9PM, but I guess it all worked out because I’ll save those food calories for the carbs from all the alcohol in their drinks.



Pretty good vibes here for catching up with friends who are actually about to leave the city… Goodbye, R! I can’t believe it’s already been 5 years since we became friends. It’s impressive that she spent about the same amount of time in a long distance relationship with her fiance. It’s so important to spend time with your partner, but it’s even more important to spend time apart and become an even better version of yourself. Sorry H! I know you’d like to spend every minute with me, but space is NOT just a word made up by someone who’s afraid to get too close (channeling S and Nick Jonas).

I think this was a weekend for revival (no religious associations intended). It felt like I actually restarted relationships with skiing, my friends, who I don't get to see a lot. Took some great naps, and replanted some dying aloe in my house.

This weekend, I made plans for next weekend, while sharing a few meals with a couple friends. One of those meals was at Sawasdee Thai:

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. We had the pad thai, deep fried tofu that came with a delicious honey sauce, red curry with chicken, some more chicken and basil stir fry of sorts, and a seafood stir fry of sorts with squid. I didn’t really help out with ordering, left the others do all the work. Can’t forget to mention the coconut rice. Always get the coconut rice, because it’s just the perfect combo with the curry sauce.

The whole meal came to about $80 only for all 6 of us. Afterwards at home, I chugged a whole 2L of water, probably because of all the MSG and salt, but hey, it was delicious at the moment and I have on regrets.

Also spent the weekend reading all of Startup by Doree Shafrir instead of going out. I borrowed an eBook from the library and zoomed right through it, pretty easy read. It’s like Gossip Girl for the Tech world. I’ve never been part of a Startup, but I can totally relate to the themes of the book (ie, females in the Tech workforce, information in the Internet age, office life, etc…) Would recommend.

So about those plans for next weekend... I'm excited, and you should be too. 

Once in a lifetime events – birthdays, weddings, bridal showers… Reasons to splurge and have a good time!

Last night, we were at the Homer St. Café for J’s staggette:


The meal was family style, just like at Nightingale for B’s birthday. We started with the appetizers – olives and cheese, salad, a dip of some… fish, hummus:



Gnudi, with oozy stringy cheese:


Beef cheeks, super tender:



A pile of potatos and coleslaw, pitcher of gravy:



We also had the lingcod and chicken, cauliflower and brussel sprouts. The portions look small on the plates, but we were more than stuffed!

I forgot about saving room for dessert – chocolate pudding, peanut butter cookies with nutella cream, and in the photo at the very top, a cheesecake with apple compote. I could eat that nutella cream all day.


The food was good, and I hear the happy hour and brunch meals are delicious too. I don’t think I’ll come back too soon on my own for no reason, just because it was quite pricey (about $100 with drinks and tips). Food was good enough, so find me another excuse to visit again soon and I'll be there.



Great time with some great girls, J has good taste in friends. I think I’m too old now for a “wild night” out though. Sometimes, I just want to stay home, watch Netflix (Kim's Convenience, as recommended by M), and watch my houseplants grow:



Got rid of most if not all of the spider mites on the plant, and after 2 weeks, I see signs of growth! See the little leaves sprouting from the old leaves?

Yes, I'm a real homebody at heart.

H and I visited North Noodle House right before watching Black Panther:

Above is the Zhajiang Pork with Cucumber on noodles, the lamb skewer, and the pork dumplings in sour soup. Honest opinion was that this place is not worth sitting down to eat at. Get the dumplings to go, and don’t bother trying to get comfortable in the cramped sitting area. It’s not even the servers that make this place hard to eat at, but it’s just the close quarters with strangers, who may or may not be rude (they were rude that night). I’ll give it a 4 for the food.

After all that food, I fell into a food coma and slept through 90% of the movie.

That was last week. I think I’m much happier this week.

I’ve heard that everybody has a default mood, a base happiness (or sadness) level that they revert back to no matter what happens. I’m sure there are some habits that happy people have, which make them default to positive, like eating better food or getting outside more or being surrounded by certain people. For some people, their whole life might be about figuring out how to elevate their mood, and there are different formulas for different people. I can’t make you happy, that’s up to you!

After all our hard work this week, H and I thought we deserved a treat. H has been working 12 hour days for about 5 or 6 days a week. I’ve been working probably a bit less than that, but hey, who’s counting? We ended up at Dazzling Cafe:



We arrived right at 6PM, which is the end of their Happy Hour menu (starts at 3PM, I believe), but the server was nice enough to let us order from there. Each dish was under $10, with a drink that could be customized with an increase in cost. I had a milk tea with pearls (+$0.50) and H had an iced longan tea (+2.00), which he said was pretty good. The pearls were decent, but not Gongcha level. We ended up ordering the pesto chicken spaghetti and a mussel risotto. Note that the dish with the mussels in the photo is not risotto.



The nice server punched in the spaghetti by accident, but oh well, no point wasting it. He gave us $2 off our bill instead. The mussels were actually cooked perfectly and very delicious. I will go back to get the mussels with the risotto, during the happy hour, and hang out at this faux French style restaurant.

Did you know that China has a replica Eiffel Tower?

PS - Good luck tomorrow, friends. Another Monday...

We went to cozy, old school Gotham Steakhouse on a rainy Thursday... 

Almost everyone had rib eye, but I wasn’t feeling a 20oz slab of meat, so I had a manageable 10oz filet:

I had my steak rare, and it was perfectly rare. I wouldn't consider myself a connoisseur of beef, but take my word for it that this perfection is not easy to find. We had a selection of sides, including Gotham’s hash browns, onion rings, brussel sprouts with chorizo, creamed spinach, spicy beans (SUPER spicy), and the bread. Honestly thought I would prefer the mashed potatoes, but the hash browns were pretty gourmet. 

Top it off with a good Old Fashioned. No complaints here.

Rare, and perfectly done. There has been lots of talk about equality lately and I keep seeing this theme. It’s rare to be seated at a the table with half men and half women in this industry. The genders at the table was perfectly 50-50. The nationalities were Canadian, but it was the most Canadian it could get, with some Asian genes, some French, some Australian, and some just a random mix. Not that it mattered, because I just realized all of the above, as I’m writing this post, and the conversation and mutual understanding was made it perfect.

Finally, we had a sunny Saturday in Vancouver, where I was free to go for a bike ride and explore coffee shops. C and I met up at The Narcissus at Powell and Commercial:



I had the cortado, and a chocolate croissant (they didn’t have the almond ones available). The pastries obviously were not baked in house, so I asked the barista where they were actually from. The Korean barista took a few seconds to undestand my question, and replied in broken English, “Cadeaux, downtown.”



The coffee shop was fairly empty at 1030AM, very quiet, with music playing unobtrusively in the background. The coffee was made from beans roasted by Agro, and it was very flavourful. The croissant was fresh, and I’ll be back to check out their sandwiches (there was a prosciutto one). They even serve beers from 33 Acres! This would be a great place to work and be inspired to work.



I really appreciated the peace and quiet today, after all hell broke loose this week in the office. It's just another rock that we'll jump over though. Will Smith said it best:

“It don’t matter whose fault it is that something is broken if it’s your responsibility to fix it.”

When there’s a problem, there’s no point in pointing fingers, laying blame, but at what point does it become a liability to keep throwing bandaids at the cut? Let’s just fix the problem. Let’s nip it in the bud, get rid of the root cause. Let’s MacGyver the shit out of this.