Happy New Year! Welcome to the first post of 2012.
The holiday season seemed to absolutely fly by. I guess that's the way it always is if you're in the retail industry, as most stores now only seem to close for Christmas Day and possibly New Years day, so you're more than likely going to be finding yourself at work. Thankfully I did manage to get a couple of days off myself for some welcome relaxation. I hope Santa brought you everything you hoped for!
In summary, my holiday season was filled with eating and drinking a-plenty. My sampling of all the different types of cuisine Vancouver has to offer continued in a big way, starting with Malaysian at a nice place called Banana Leaf in the West End with Sookie and Rita after work on the 23rd. Good food and good company after my last working day before Christmas.
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| Pretty spectacular lights outside St Paul's Hospital en-route to Banana Leaf |
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| Malaysian Beef Curry - went down a treat |
Shortly before Christmas I had an email from Gran Jo wishing me an enjoyable Christmas - "Vancouver style, whatever that is". That got me thinking. What exactly was a Vancouver Christmas? I decided that it would probably be a vegetarian dinner, a mountain hike with an intense yoga session at the top, followed by an ice hockey game with the family. Unfortunately I wasn't going to be able to complete all of these things but I was able to tick one of the boxes as Rita kindly invited me round to her place on Christmas Eve for a vegetarian Christmas dinner and drinks with her and her friend, Matt. So I got to try my first Tofurkey (a tofu turkey) and it was actually really nice. Rita is a good cook! I was absolutely stuffed afterwards but I'd left enough room for a few glasses of wine and an interesting shot of a Chinese spirit called Red Star (56% vol!). I've never seen a more pained face than Matt's as his did that shot! Hilarious!
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| Rita's all-vege Xmas dinner |
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| The offending Chinese alcohol - Merry Christmas, Liver. |
Christmas Day was kind of strange as it was the first time I've been away from my family in my whole life! Luckily (for me) Dan had to cancel his trip to Kelowna so I wasn't on my todd for the day. I was also happy that I'd received a couple of gifts so I had something to unwrap in the morning.
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| Gifts! :) |
In the evening I went with Dan for a gathering and meal at his colleague's apartment in downtown Van. Any kind of meat cravings I may have had from the night before were well and truly sated as the guys had cooked up an absolute stormer of a Christmas dinner. If I recall correctly there were 5 different meats in the turkey and all the trimmings were done to perfection. Turns out it's good to have chef friends!
Plenty of food and plenty of drink later, everyone was crashed out in front of that classic Christmas movie, Die Hard. Awesome times. Thanks to Taylor for hosting!
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| The beast! |
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| Awesome Christmas food. Great effort, guys! |
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| Wish I could taste it again! |
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| The sound of silence as everyone tucks in. |
After Christmas it was back to the grind at Hermes. Nothing too exciting to report here but I did manage to get another nationality was ticked off the food list one lunchtime - Korean. No, it wasn't dog before you ask.
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| Spicy Korean broth |
New Years Eve soon rolled round. I had been hoping to go to see Tiesto and Garth Emery, who were DJing at the Vancouver Coliseum, but I was too indecisive and tickets got super-expensive a few days before. I thought that it would probably be wiser to save the money for travels rather than blow a huge amount on New Years Eve. I know it would have been an awesome night but decided to head downtown instead. I met Dan at the place he works, The Corner Bar, to get some food, get the liquor flowing and watch the Canucks game. I ended up staying the night there after Dan left to go to a houseparty elsewhere, meeting a few random crazy Canadians and a little later bumping into Adam and Armin who had been at Taylor's Christmas meal. Had a great time and didn't spend too much. Perfect.
I set myself a little New Year challenge of trying to eat Vegetarian for the month of January. It's mostly to see if I feel any difference and it also seems to be one of Vancouver's 'things' (when in Rome, etc). It's gone fine so far and I've managed to stick to it. I haven't gone hardcore and straight to veganism, sticking with Lacto-ovo vegetarianism for now but I haven't felt too much of a difference to be honest. I'm going to stick it out anyway! I've been hitting the gym hard since the turn of the year also so I've kept my calories and protein up in other ways, so I haven't lost any weight. Mum seems to think I'm looking terribly thin on Skype but I can assure you I'm still up at 210lbs+, so I can't be that bad!!
Talking of Skype, I finally managed to catch up with a few people from home in the past couple of weeks. Aaron, Nick, Mark Step, even Malin and Maria who were visiting home from Sweden. Good to see a few familiar faces!
Boney took me for Dim Sum at the Victoria resturant for lunch earlier this week. Super stuff. She goes there so much she's basically a VIP and always gets super service and loads of free dishes! I'll have to return for the meat-eaters version in February! I'm a real whizz with the chopsticks nowadays I can tell you.
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| Vegetarian dim sum |
So, yea, that's about it! The winter is getting a bit dull and I'm looking forward to the spring and getting involved in the outdoor acitivities Vancouver has to offer. We've had some snow and it looks like more is forecast. Unlike home a bit of snow doesn't shut the whole country down. Oh, and it looks like Dan and I are finally getting a new flatmate. Will keep you posted on that one!
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| We had 3-4 inches of snow the other night in Edmonds |
Catch you soon,
Simon x
