Went to Aberdeen Centre tonight with Rachel for a countdown event. It was pretty shocking when I stepped into the mall as it was around 11:45 pm and the mall looked like as if it was during the day - lots of people…stores were opening…etc. Pretty amazing, and it further proved the fact Richmond was infested with TOO many Chinese….lol

Anyway, it took us quite some time to find a an empty spot which gave us a direct line of sight to the stage. Since it was pretty close to 12am when we got there, the stage performers are finishing up their tricks and we were basically standing there waiting for the moment to come. Finally they counted it from 10. After everyone yelled “ONE” out loud, a loud noise followed with huge amont of colored shiny stuff flying around the entire area, and some fire crackers. It was a pretty amazing view… at least it was free

Last night some crazy hailing was going on. It lasted not too long maybe for 5 minutes but it sounded really loud and it was pretty scary. And of course I took my camera out and took this awesome snapshot with the hail still intact.

And then here’s some gross stuff. Found two rather huge spiders crawling on the wall an hour ago. They are the first spiders I spotted in year 2008 so it worthed taking a pic. EWWWWWW I hate them. Not scared, just hated, especially their webs. So I did my usual trick with a glass cup, catch them and slide them down to the bottom of the cup so they can’t crawl out, and the throw them out of the house in a projectile motion. Score! Spiders gone, I’m happy again.

I came across the home page of a Japanese band “HY“. (It’s actually Mai’s favorite band…lol) Here is a link to their Wiki. I’m unsure of why but I got instantly, magnetically attracted by their style, their energy, and their talent. I like their kind of style! Hard to describe with words but it’s just my kind of style. I believe they must be pretty popular in Japan as they’ve even opened show with Linkin Park. Here are two of my favorite songs, “A.M. 11:00″ and “White Beach”. Enjoy.

Still in deep depression.. had talked with a couple friends, got some really valuable inputs, I guess I’ll be fine. I’m trying to put all my focus on work, to make sure that I’m busy enough to have a temporarily relief on my emotional stress. I’m going to buy lots of junk food, guess I should goto Candyland today.

Oh by the way, I am very happy to get to know that Mai (from Japanese band Ruppina) had mentioned about me in her latest voice blog!!! (About the email I sent her 2 weeks ago) She was hosting an event where all her blog readers would send her a message about a theme that she proposed. The theme was “What is the something that you must carry on with you everyday, otherwise without it you will go into a panic?” I wrote her a message in Japanese, and she actually read my message on the voice blog. I’m really happy as I didn’t expect she would receive it / read it…!

Anyway, here is the link to the voice blog:
http://ruppina.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/01/voiceblog_48c2.html

And you can listen to the voice recording here. Notice she mentioned my name Herman around 4:10 minutes in!

 

 Mai Blog #2 - Mai / Ruppina [11:52m]: Play Now | Download (253)

So I went to Aki Restaurant on Monday with Alice and Matthew. I didn’t bring my camera with me so I took some pics with Matthew’s cellphone. It took him a couple days before he sent me the pictures but anyway here they are It’s in downtown, 745 Thurlow Street, really close to Burrard. I liked the interior a lot, it had this “Japanese izakaya” feel, and the chefs were all Japanese. They had an open area where the chef grills stuff in front of you, really interesting. As soon as I stepped in I already noticed a lot of Japanese people sitting around so I kind of already knew that the food would be pretty authentic, unlike all those westernized Japanese food…

I liked the tamago appie a lot!!! Tamago is always my all time favorite, and this one came in huge! size of a brick Also had this tasty beef sukiyaki, ebi mayo (prawn + mayonnaise), chicken kidney, mixed mushrooms… Oh we ordered two of these Yaki Onigiri (grilled Japanese riceballs), they were super tasty!!! Both sizes were crispy, and had a salty miso taste. Also ordered grilled sable fish and Japanese rice cake. Both weren’t too bad. The ONLY bad one was the “shiokara squid” (salty raw squid). IT WAS SO BAD. It was extremely salty, and I mean it literally. Alice said that it was supposed to be that salty, but after one bite I was like….ewww…couldn’t take it anymore. We ordered a couple Heinekens, and were finally able to finish the dish…lol.