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.

H and I met up with D and A for dinner in Coquitlam. They tempted us to travel out into the Tri-Cities with promises of Korean fried chicken, paired with grape flavored soju at OZ:

The seafood pancake and seafood soondobu soup came out first. Well, the soju came out first (side note - apparently, grape soju tastes like communion). The seafood pancake was impressively crispy, but lacking a bit in flavour, sort of boring without the dipping sauce. The spices in the soup were sneaky; they'd creep up on you a few seconds after finishing a spoonful, and it would be pretty spicy. 

Then, came the platter of chicken... 

This was the platter with 4 flavors of chicken, the padak (ie, spring onion and sweet soy sauce), the "snowing" (ie, a really sweet powdered parmesan cheese), sweet chili, and regular fried chicken with the mustard dipping sauce in the bowl. Perhaps the spices from the tofu soup numbed my tongue, but I didn't think the chicken itself was very flavorful without the flavoring and dipping sauces. The variety was very interesting though. General consensus was that the padak was the best flavour, but the chicken needed to be drenched in more of the sauce. The "snowing" and sweet chilli flavors had a strange artificial sweetness about them.



Overall, not a bad place to hang out. Check out the funky wall paper:

We went to fly our drones before getting food, and missed the true sunset by about 15 minutes. I scrambled to get the drone in the air, the propellers were bent from the mini crashes in Iceland. Eventually, I did get 3 shots, and caught the end tail of the light:

Sometimes, it's difficult to rise above the chaos. For the rest of the year, I'm making a conscious effort to stay organized and not let the the schmucks at work get to me. :)

H’s birthday this weekend, and we went for some good ol’ birthday brunch at Denny’s:

He had the Grand Slam, which has pancakes, 2 sausages, 2 bacon, and 2 eggs. I had the one with the cheddar cheese melted into the scrambled eggs, which you can see above. Coffee was a must. Also, milkshake as a birthday treat. I don’t mind Denny’s, they’re a pretty decent chain. Good greasy food for a well rounded diet… Potatos are vegetables, right?

We spent the rest of his birthday doing what he loves best – garage sale shopping and eating more. He surprised me with a record player; I brought out the Lionel Richie records that I’d been hiding from him for a month:

Today was a scorcher.

End of the month hike at Sasamat Lake with P+M and young P, which turned into a much longer adventure to find the views at Buntzen Lake Ridge:

This was a pretty steep hike, and we weren’t prepared for it as we had not packed enough water and food.  I had Hardbite chips (Jalapeno flavored, $2.50 a bag) and a few cherry tomatoes. In this 31°C weather, we barely made it back down to the car. When we did get back to the vehicle, where we had our cooler stashed, we sat right down on the grass next to the car, and started stuffing our faces with the cheese, pita, hummus, and rice balls we were saving for after the hike. No shame.

Despite P hitting my car, I think we’re still on good terms. Despite older P leaving, among all other changes, I am still enjoying my time here. I can't help forgiving, forgetting, and moving on, there are more beautiful things out there to enjoy:

:

Got bored, went out for a drive and ended up at Choco Coo for some late night dessert. Getting fat will plump out my wrinkles.

From Left: Chocolate Cake, Hazelnut Cake, Tiramisu (in the cup), Matcha Mousse, (the tassel on my bucket bag made a cameo)

  

From left to right, top to bottom: Mint Dark Hot Chocolate; Tiramisu, Hazelnut Cake, Matcha Mousse

The matcha mousse had a waffle layer and was by far the best choice. Don’t bother with the Hazelnut or Chocolate Cakes, they’re not bad but also not that special. I’d come back to get the matcha mousse again if I'm in the hood, and try their other desserts, if I felt like going for a long drive again some day.

Sun Run today and I finished the 10km in 1hr8min. I blame my runners that gave me a HUGE blister for not being able to finish it in under 1 hour. Also, not enough cardio in the past few months. I think I’ll start training or at least doing more cardio.

Bonus picture: cat wants to go out.