X’mas dinner~ yay! Went to this French restaurant named Cassis Bistro with Alice and Matthew around 6pm. It was not packed when we get there but we could see that people were gradually coming in. Okay let’s get right to the food…well maybe talk about the atmosphere for a bit first…it’s a little noisy, but the decor looks nice and cozy, with accented colors throughout the place. Candle light on every table, dimmed lightings, at least gave me an above average high end feel. We ordered a lotttt! A bottle of wine right after we were sitted. We ordered this one from Chile called “Casa Lapostolle Cabernet Sauvigonon”, it was awesome, better than we expected. We aired it for a while and it tasted even better. Very full body but not too strong, loved it Each of us got a French onion soup, which was really tasty and it’s got a HUGE piece of SOLID cheese in it~ kinda crazy imo.. but well it was good. There came a complimentary “mush room paste” that was also pretty tasty.

We ordered some starters like the “Fois Gras Mousse” and the “Dungeness Crab Dip”. The fois gras was superb, especially for the bread as they were cooked so well that they remained crispy when served…and the fois gras tasted great…

Okay, that was the best part..lol. Followed the fois gras was the crab dip. It came with a bunch of corn chips, but the dip didn’t have the “crab taste” in it, pretty plain, and I made a joke that I’d rather put salsa on the chips…:( The main courses were….pretty bad. I got the “Paella”, which was a spanish rice with seafood. The rice wasn’t cooked long enough I suppose and it was very hard and dry. The mussels and fish pieces were also overcooked. Alice got a “Bouillabaisse” which was some seafood braised in a tomato broth. I tasted it a bit and it was pretty plain tasting..the shrimps were OK. I didn’t try Matthew’s “Daube De Boeuf”, but he said that it didn’t taste very good either…

We were expecting some nice dessert to balance off our insatisfaction. We ordered a “Banana Split” which was basically banana + vanilla icecream. It was okay, like pretty standard. We also got a “Chocolate Fondue” which Alice insisted on getting~ It was a disappointment as the “Fondue” wasn’t even close to the real chocolate fondue with chocolate dripping down from the top…it was just a metallic bowl with some melted chocolate and a candle placed below. The chocolate tasted like those cooking chocolate blocks you get from Safe on Food, pretty bad tasting actually Oh well, we were full, and we felt ok. We wouldn’t come back though, even though the prices were pretty good. (paid $160 for three people, tax included)

Just got a trial account for World of Warcraft and started playing it last night…. it’s a realli nice game with nice graphics (I topped up all the settings) and awesome music~ I’ve always been wanting to play the game since Andrew has been sending me all these cool screenshots taken at various cool moutains/rivers…etc and also mp3s of the cool in-game music. I’ve always been a big fan of games with cool music! Anyway finally got a chance to get a trial account invitation from Andrew so I installed and played with him for a while. Completed a couple “quests” which we basically had to do some supposedly annoying tasks like “kill 10 bears and 20 bats in the Northern part of the city”…haha but it turned out to be lots of fun! I was trying out some crazy commands like /mourn once typed you will start to “mourn” someone death and you would cry and stuff, or type /dance and you’ll be like dancing hardcore metallic style non-stop~! It was pretty hilarious!

Finally made up my mind to buy myself a snowboard jacket, pants, and boots… I’ve been (for a year) reluctant to get them due to them being highly overpriced, but then I figured it’s something everyone here in Vancouver should own~ I got a waterproof jacket from Ripzone, pants from Columbia, and a pair of Burton boots (MOTO series). They’re well over $500 in total but oh well, I just don’t feel like paying for the rentals anymore… besides, I can sell them off later on if for any reason I want to get rid of them… I guess. I’ve bought a used Burton snowboard + bindings as well last year but didn’t have a chance to use them! Guess I’ll be off to the mountains this weekend to try them all out, and hopefully it’ll welcome me with some nice fresh snow..! Haven’t decided which mountain to go to but most likely will be off to Cypress.

Sooooooooooo awesome! It’s just 2 hours after getting home from Bon Jovi’s concert at Vancouver GM place. The show was packed, Karl and I got there late (since I left my wallet in the car and I didn’t realize it until we were at GM place so I had to like run back to the car) Anyway, the show was opened by a local guest band “Hedley“….they were actually pretty good. When Bon Jovi came in, the crowd was so high and everyone just stood up and yell. They first performed the songs in their latest CD, followed by some of the best hits in the 80’s like Bad Name, Runaway…etc. And of course, everyone was so high and all yelling and whistling~~~:) Here’s the complete play list.

They performed a couple more songs after the encore, and Santa actually showed up giving away presents to people sitting in the first couple rows~ By the way we sat really far away but I was still able to take lots of great pictures and videos with my Canon G9 + 6x zoom The show ended with the song “Treat Her Right”, and everyone was clapping like nonstop. Thanks Jovi for making up my awesome night! (I wish they had played songs like “These Days” and “My Guitar Lies Bleeding In My Arms” which are two of my all time favorites!)

Click here to see more photos

Just got back from the bandroom~ I haven’t been there for a longg time since I quitted the band 2 months ago, the room’s been changed a lot, new posters, new sofa, and new…CATS~ we’ve got 5 cats now (every person’s got one)… so my first thing up there was to play with them…for about half an hour. They’re cute, very tiny (I think they’re like 2 months old, other than Joe’s cat which is 6 months old) The cats would play with their own mates, they were playing hide-n-seek at one time~ I then picked up a stick with a hanging ball to bug them and they seemed to like it a lot (all 4 of them gathered around to play with it) except Joe’s cat who hid under the sofa at all time (not sure why)…

We played some drinking games (15/20 & Bomba Jija), which was a lot of fun. Then we jammed as usual. They played me their latest version of the new songs that they are making (I was making one of them as well before I quitted), they sounded awesome. I tried to add in some keyboard sounds into them but didn’t seem too cool or anything, lol. We chilled a bit at the end talked about our next camping dates and destination, and called it a day. Got to sleep soon, otherwise I’ll be feeling tired at the Bon Jovi concert I’m attending tomorrow night at 8pm~~~~

Argh….. job comes in like crazy. Have been working since 10am and now it’s 3am (yea 15 hrs later) and i’m STILL working… >< Stuff I’m working on is fun…no doubt but it’d be cool to have less work so I can take rests more often. Working on this website right now, client wants to add a couple functionalities to their site… I guess it’s all good as long as I get paid for all the effort…. let’s see… when should I goto bed tonight? @_@