Escaped the tedium of everyday life with a mini get away to Whistler this weekend. The snow at the end of this season is still tolerable, whereas previous seasons, dirt patches would have already been peeking out. H tried skiing for the first time, and while he stayed mainly in the learning areas, he still worked up a large appetite. 

We decided to visit The Wildflower for breakfast buffet on Saturday morning to recover all the calories that we all burned on the slopes the day before.

We arrived just after 10AM, and there were still a few other guests waiting for a table, so we got in line and after 5 or 10 minutes, we were invited into the dimly lit restaurant. The hostess lead us around the buffet area, showing us the fresh pastries, the mini cereal bar right across from it, the smoothie bar, the omelette station... etc.! We were drooling by the time the hostess seated us at our table, and did not wait for our server to introduce himself. 

Here's H's first plate of food, including pork belly, eggs benedict, English sausage, beans, mushrooms, and a bit of smoked salmon on the edge:

I need their recipe for their spinach and apple smoothie (see photo above). 

The smoked salmon was on point, and we probably ate the value of the $36 meal just in smoked salmon alone: 

The chef at the omelette station was still on duty by the time H was ready for his 2nd plate of food, and he chose to stuff his omelette with all types of cheese and lots of veggies. I'd suggest asking for no goat cheese or a small amount, as it overpowered all the other types of cheese that H chose to throw into the mix:

The highlight was their selection of pastries, which I saved for dessert at the end of the meal: 

Their chocolate donut reminded me of Honey's in Deep Cove. Other than these 3 pieces that I managed to polish off, they had many other cake options, including one or two that were already finished off for the day, such as the banana bread. I'll have to come earlier next time to see their full selection of daily fresh pastries, which are made in house by their pastry chef who trained in Dubai. 

I'm not waiting until the end to have the donuts next time, because they ran out of one of the flavors. Maybe this is a lesson in life, to not wait until the end of the meal for dessert, and perhaps the best things don't come to those who wait. 

We visited Ding Tea today after a 2 hour walk (I'm not going to call it a hike, because I don't think it really deserved to be called that...). There was a line up out the door, but after looking inside the little cafe, I realized that the line was just caused by the lack of waiting space between the order counter and the front door. 

I'm sure this whole experience could have been improved if we arrived at a better time. We started lining up at 2:56PM, and they were actually closing at 3PM to prepare inventory, then reopening at 4PM. The line up had to rediverted inside the cafe, instead of looping around the outside; there were concerns about the availability of standing space, but luckily we were all able to fit inside. I'm sure when the hype dies down a bit, and their BOGO ends, the service will speed up and the lines will move faster. If you're sensitive to waiting in line, don't go now. 

The worst part is that the wait wasn't really worth it for any of us. We had the Hokkaido milk tea and the regular bubbletea. The taro milk teas were complimentary. Their pearls are very fresh, but the tea was not smooth or milky enough. I'm starting to think that Chatime's roasted milk tea and Houcailei's Bull Demon King (brown sugar jelly in milk tea) have ruined normal milk tea for me... I can't say I'll be back anytime soon, and this really teaches me to line up, just because everybody else is waiting.

This streak of bad tea will hopefully pass soon (talking 'bout you, YiFang Coquitlam!) just like everything else, including bad days at work and low motivation. As #instafamous Jenn Im said in her recent talk, 

"It's not the universe's job to had you motivation everyday, like here, take it. It's your job to look for it."

 Going to go read a book now.

The beginning of a weekend with no plans.Woke up later than usual (9AM), and remembered seeing beautiful waffles in the display case, at the nearby Whole Foods Market bakery. Weather's nice today, so I went for a quick walk to pick some up for breakfast.

Note that the Starbucks cup in the back contains the Kickstarter smoothie from the Whole Foods juice bar. Pretty slow service today, but I wasn't in any type of rush to get anywhere. Hopefully the smoothie satisfies my vitamin quota for the day, because the waffles were just straight carbs. 

There were 3 flavors available - pistachio, chocolate with almond slices, and chocolate with round chocolate crisps. I chose the pistachio and the almonds to take home and snack on while finishing up the last season of Game of Thrones. These waffles are the soft kind, not crispy on the outside. For $3, can't ask for too much! 

This week has dragged on, and the weekend continues to drag. I couldn't even kickstart my mood (ha, ha, referring to the smoothie...)! Something's missing this weekend, but what?

What is the thing you do to make your day feel complete?

There were a few visitors to the office from out of town this week, and to celebrate our successes this year, the company organized an awards dinner at Brix & Mortar, on Tuesday. It was beautifully organized with plenty of wine, a fun ice breaker at the beginning, and lots of mingling before and after the delicious 3 course meal.

Starting off with the most balanced tomato and cheese salad!

Then, I had the perfect sirloin, asparagus and mashed potatoes on the side!

I'm using "!" because I'm getting excited just remembering how delicious everything looked and tasted.  It's really an ultimate dining experience, with the perfect level of service. The servers kept walking by to top off my glass, every time my glass looked half full (or half empty?). I can see why lots of weddings are hosted here.

In between, the main and the dessert, the awards were handed out, but I think the real reward was the milk cereal panna cotta:

What a funny looking plaque to commemorate the hard work of my colleagues who deserved the recognition...

When I look back at these dinners, it reminds me that really, life is good.  I have so many complaints all the time, and it feels like a struggle, but overall, living in this society is pretty convenient. Cars, fridges, grocery stores, and the Internet for all the information sharing you could ever desire! 

Also, we don't have white walkers lurking behind our gates... 

OK, back to catching up with all the episodes of Game of Thrones, before Season 8 comes out next month.

After Korean BBQ, we walked over to YiFang. I've heard so much hype about this place, especially the black sugar milk tea... 

I've heard of people lining up to try this, just because they only have small batches of the black sugar pearls made each day and other locations run out within a short time. It should have been a sign that this location of YiFang still had the drink available, because it was really not what I hoped for.



Where's the tea flavor? It just tasted like sugar and watery milk, and I'm sure I ordered the tea option, not just the milk, because I had a sip of M's black sugar pearl milk. Both were disappointing, in the flavour and smoothness category. The only positive feedback here is that their pearls were chewy and tasted fresh. The hype was not real here.

I've been holed up at home for most of today, and I could really use a milk tea from Houcailei.

After a brutal week, M, C&C took me to Arisu along North Road for some much needed food and drinks. This is one of the many Korean BBQ restaurants along the Burnaby and Coquitlam border, which has now become a high traffic area. Transit if you can... We had one of the BBQ combos, which came with a pile of meat, including pork belly and short rib: 

Pretty standard Korean BBQ meal, with the usual sides of kimchi, vegetables, and marinated potatoes. I would recommend visiting for the freshness of each cut of meat, the good portion size, the flavour. They had one of those bells to request a server, and the best part was that it actually worked! We had quick and efficient service, and while the servers were Korean and pretended like they did not understand might not have understood English, they were friendly enough. 

Also, it's close to other places for dessert and groceries, which just makes it a convenient spot to meet up.



Pretty late post for this section of Week 9, 2019. Almost forgot about it, to be honest, because of all the events of Week 10, the reunions and the new faces.

Do you ever have difficulty remembering somebody's name after meeting them a few times?

A friend told me that when you can't remember somebody's name, it's because that person is cheap.

Traveling for work as a sales person means working from coffee shops in between meetings. We were in the neighborhood of Ride Studio Cafe, and we love bikes and coffee, so this spot was a dream come true: 

They use locally roasted beans, and a La Marzocco machine, which was not a disappointing combination. The macchiato that I had was stupendously strong, yet still very smooth, a great beverage for sipping. It got me through the rest of the afternoon and a bunch of emails that came in while we were on the road.



There is ample seating on one side of the room, and the other half is decorated with bikes and biking gear. A full rack of biking jerseys and eye wear covered the back wall, and there was even a TV showing one of the latest road bike races.

It's places like these that inspire me to work towards having my own small business, where I can hire my own crew, and maybe build a respectful workplace. Most of my colleagues now are pretty awesome, but there are one or two... No, there's just one bad apple.

I'm not a feminist, or at least I don't think I am, but I do believe in equality. The alpha personality, maybe in combination with the different cultural background and 10+ year age gap, resulted in the use of the term "man talk" this afternoon by this person I work with. This older "man" talked about his experiences with another man (another coworker), and found enlightenment about the whole situation of working in our office setting, which then inspired him to apologize at myself and a colleague (NOTE: he did not ask for apology, he basically forced his apology on us). The apology was for yelling at us, on two separate occasions earlier on, after my colleague and I had provided feedback or raised concerns about his quality of work as well as ethics. This term was then used in the starting sentence of the apology; they were within the first 10 words he said to us.

Accident? Not sure.

Actually, I was so shocked to hear this term being used at that moment, in that small meeting room, that I stopped listening to the rest of his speech. I could not formulate a respectful comment to express my true thoughts and feelings, so what did I do?

I just kept my mouth shut to prevent yelling at this person for his use of these insensitive words. Also, there was no time to get into a further discussion with this "man", since it was the end of the day and I had no energy to waste. Perhaps, this term was used because he did not know what it truly meant.

Perhaps, I will send him a link to the definition tomorrow.

I will let it go now, because there's no point being bothered about this, but it is such a funny story that I just had to blog about it for the Internet and for future reference when I reread this post.