Today it was snowing and wet, so I thought it would make a great day checking out some exhibits at the Vancouver Art Gallery…I haven’t been there for a while afterall. I was surprised that even though the weather was pretty depressing people weren’t really staying home. The gallery was full of people, especially kids and students. Anyway, Wendy and I checked out the “How Soon Is Now” exhibit which was a collection of I’d say contemporary sculptures and demos. Mostly 3D, some of them were shown in flatscreen TVs with audio. I was pretty impressed by this ceiling deco/sculpture that was made with tin cans, kitchen ware, and all softs of metallic objects. Also there was this “office space” that was made with scrap/salvaged wooden boards and beams. It was constructed in a way that the doorways were really small, and consisted with all sorts of tunnels which eventually led to arrays of office spaces, bedrooms, meeting spaces….etc….really interesting. Another cool one was an array of convex metallic lens being laid out on a 3-story high wall painted in white. I wansn’t really sure what it meant but it was very cool. Also checked out another exhibition “Enacting Abstraction”, a collection of abstract paintings and sculptures. It wasn’t as mind-blowing as the other one but it did show off a wide range of colors and patterns which hopefully would feed my mind some creative juice. Overall it was a nice experience.

We was starving and cold and we stopped by the Olympia Greek Restaurant on West Broadway. We had the Moussaka and the Chicken Souvlakia. Two pieces of huge breads came at our surprise - two different kinds of bread, very crispy and fresh, with garlic butter. The moussaka was very tasty, with zucchini, egg plant and grounded meat - just like the one we had in Greece The chicken souvlakia wasn’t bad, with sour cream, rice, and greek salad. Both were very tasty and we were very satisfied and full. I want to go back to try their pizza…!

Started working on my tax return at last. It’s boring, repetitive, time consuming. I took out a couple boxes of invoices, bills, notices, statements….that I collected for the entire year. Piles of papers of different sizes, and I had to go through every single piece of them. Spent about 5 hours today, I think I’ve completed about 60% of it and should be able to finish it up by tomorrow.

Looking at all the bills and invoices, I noticed a few things that I wasn’t really aware of:

• I spent almost $6500 CAD on my last trip to Japan/Korea (shit)
• There were over 100 invoices from the above trip
• I spent close to $6700 CAD on getting computer, camera and other hardware
• My Smart car took on average just $50 a month for gas
• I paid close to $9800 just for the interest on my mortgage (shit shit shit)

It was pretty crazy.

I got an exercise ball for $8.90 yesterday. I’ve really been looking for a ball for a while trying to figure where to get it cheap. Not even sure how I’d come across this store but I bought it as soon as I saw the nice price..

On the other hand, I have a feeling that I’m in some sort of luck. I have been lucky for that I was able to reunion with my cellphone that was lost on the mountain, and that yesterday when I went out with Wendy, I almost bump into a van when I was backing up in a mall but I didn’t. Things seem to be going pretty smooth for me these days

Today I went to a gym with Wendy at her grandmother’s apartment, for free of course. It was a pretty simplistic gym, but I was still able to get myself exhausted. I’m still thinking how often I want to work out at home versus going to the free gym. The gym doesn’t even have barbells, but it does have a few treadmills and some cable machines. I guess I’ll see.

I made this pizza for lunch today. Seriously I’ve never had a home-made pizza before in life. Kind of strange but yea. So I thought it’s kind of mandatory to document it. It was a veggie pizza I got from the Capers market (overpriced market that sells all kinds of high-end food). Anyway, preheated the oven to 425F, took about 10 minutes, then placed the pizza into the oven for about 13 minutes. It was pretty easy even though I thought it really took quite a bit of gas, i.e. quite expensive for making just a pizza…..but it was tasty, so I guess it’s ok…

Happy:
Went up to Cypress to snowboard yesterday with Wendy (first time in two+ years), Kedding, his girlfriend Maggie, and his other friend Alex. I got there with my Smart car as usual, putting two boards to the trunk while having one end sticking out the soft top. I went there with Wendy and Kedding with his friends, in seperate cars. It was a perfect day! Great powdery snow, occasional blue sky with comfortable warmth from the sun, snowed a bit (snow got pretty heavy for a short period of time)…etc. Got all sorts of weather condition but overall it’s great since there was fresh snow! Since Wendy and Maggie were beginners Kedding and I did the teachings at the bunny hill (flat/less difficult slope for beginners) Since I was mostly staying on the easier runs, I was able to spend huge amount of time practicing my balancing and turning.

Sad:
When I was about to leave, I noticed that my Blackberry cellphone wasn’t in my jacket’s inside pocket. I was quite freaked out and headed to lost & found to ask around, nothing was found, and I dropped my name. I thought the phone might have slipped out of my pocket (forgot to zip up the top part of the pocket) when I was snowboarding inside the tree/shrub area and got rammed into a tree (I was totally upside down). Went home feeling pretty unhappy as the phone was my work company’s property…etc.

Happy:
Today I woke up from a call. A guy called me saying that he found my phone..! I met up with him in Whiterock where he lives, and got my phone back. He said that my phone’s alarm clock was on and was playing some loud music, and that was how he spotted the phone. This is undoubtedly one of the few miracles that has ever happened to me. I’m still finding this very hard to believe. Anyway I’ll try to take better care of the phone….

Went to this overpriced market called Capers on Cambie street last night with Wendy. First heard about it when Janet brought some dessert cakes she bought off Capers to our last gathering. I’ve always enjoy strolling around markets, I guess partly because of the vibrant colors of all the goods and produces, and also the fact that I really enjoy delicious food and love discovering new food products and flavors.

It wasn’t as enormous as Superstore or Safeway, but you can tell the differences right off the bat. Products and produces were neatly organized (very very neat), the floor and shelves were clean, the “organic” produces looked super fresh (I saw some mushrooms that were 3 times the ones that I usually buy) I saw a lot of exotic food products like spices and sauces that I’ve never seen sold anywhere else in Vancouver. Their bakery was so yummy! I found lots of my favorite cookies and pastries plus some never-seen ones with interesting names and shapes. Too bad they were all overpriced otherwise I would have bought much more than what I did. I ended up spending around $50 (I usually spend around $20 on a grocery trip) which was really over my regular budget, BUT I did get some stuff that I really liked, such as these super large pieces of peanut butter cookies, a pack of natural/cholestral-free chips, a nice looking frozen pizza, some sweet popcorns, and a few other interesting items. I will go again for sure just to check out their bakery