It was a nice day, Wendy and I decided to do BBQ at my newly renovated patio. I tested my 10+ year-old gasoline grill in the morning with the really old full size gasoline tank and it worked! We bought our food at Fo Tan (火炭) BBQ supplies, including chicken fillet, BBQ pork, and chicken wings, all marinated and ready to grill…and two corns as well. Also got a whole bunch of veggies at T&T supermarket like portobello mushroom, peppers…etc. Oh, also got two pieces of grilling plates from Daiso ($2 store) which worked quite well with the grill. Rest of the photos here

I was doing the grill most of the time, while Wendy would do the cutting and de-boning for the cooked food. The food were really tasty, especially the BBQ pork. Wendy also made garlic butter bread even though I overcooked a few of them and part of them turned black They were tasty though The portobellos were really juicy and huge, while the onions were sweet. We had great fun for about 2.5 hours and we almost finished all the food except for two pieces of bread!

Went to Silvercity after that in hopes of watching Star Trek but it was impossibly packed - when we were there the show was almost sold out, so we decided not to squeeze in but to watch it tomorrow.

My mom left today and she’s now back to Hong Kong. It will take time for me to get used to it, probably a week or so. Wish she stayed longer

Can’t really believe the fact that I’ve turned 29…sounds old enough…but somehow it seems to have been a rather long period of time since I was 27…did time fly? I’m not sure, maybe, but it went slower last year, than a few years ago, somehow.

Anyway yesterday was the first day on my 29th year. I was so happy that Wendy was here to stay with me for the day (she wasn’t in town for my past 2 bdays). I’ve received cute gifts from her as always - got a bday card, a pair of Japanese style “Koi Windsock” plushed dolls, and an rabbit shaped eyepad with a lavender scent in it (see pics). And then today I’ve received a full plate of cookies painted with colorful icings, they are so cute, and I didn’t really want to eat them..!

Last night I went to an Italian restaurant called La Quercia in Vancouver, with Wendy and my mom. I had high hopes since the reviews were great, plus it was recommended by Benny, so I was feeling really excited to go there. Turned out to be a let down. The place was NOISY, and the table was tiny. These were already some huge turn-offs. The service wasn’t bad, waitress was patient explaining all the dishes they had and also the specials (even though she spoke quite quickly that I missed a few of the items). We got two glasses of reds, they were good even though the glasses were tiny. The appetizers were good, but no surprises. We got a sablefish, an Italian stuffed pasta (rivoli or something? can’t remember), and a regular pasta. For the mains we got a halibut and a duck breast. Strange enough the side veggies were actually tastier than the mains! The halibut was overcooked (or maybe it was the ingredient?) as the meat was dry. The duck breast was bad. It was tender for sure but then it doesn’t really have any taste in it, and the skin wasn’t flavoured at all. I kept thinking about the awesome duck breast I had at Benny’s restaurant…lol. Anyway, the dessert was okay, it was a chocolate mouse, taste pretty good but again nothing extraordinary. It ended up at around $130, which wasn’t bad at all I think, even though the food was just mediocre….or was it just that I was expecting too much? I don’t think I will be going there again anytime soon though.

Went to the Richmond Night Market with Wendy after I got all my work done. We decided to have our “dinner” there since every year they partition a huge area for food/drink booths and usually there is a huge selection of different kind of food. We started with a roasted corn, it was really fresh and crispy (and sweet). The guy cooked it in a weird oven which I think cooked a dozen or so of them at a time. We then got a vietnamese drink (not sure what they’re called, the one made with ingredients of multiple colors). It was super tasty as well and I almost wanted to get another cup when I finished it. Then we got a “siu mai”, Chinese pork meatball, tasty as well as usual (they have this every year). We also got Shinjang BBQ skewers of beef, chicken, and lamb. They were SO tasty, especially with the spices. Last but not least we got a fried sweet potato skewer which Wendy didn’t like a lot so I had to finish 3 out of 4.

Didn’t really buy a lot this time, actually I’ve never been buying a lot from the night market since most of the stuff are cheap and uninteresting. I got a King Boo plush doll for $21 which I’ve been looking for SO long. Also got a pretty decent looking waist bag for $8, should be something handy for when I travel. Wendy got five pairs of socks with cute characters. I’m thinking to come back for at least once more just to try out some other food/drinks.

Went to Stanley Park for biking yesterday with Wendy. We rented a “tendam”, a bike that sits two people. We were skeptical at first but it turned out to be really easy to ride and lots of fun! We spent a good four hours at the park, biking and stopping for pictures…etc. I brought my two SLRs that I just got for test shots. They are actually quite easy and fun to use, as I enjoy manual focusing a lot. I was using the Olympus OM-1n camera and Wendy got the OM-10. I was fully prepared for the worst, that the pictures would turn out real bad as I had never used SLRs before, plus these are 30-year old cameras… It turned out that the OM-1n was perfect, photos turned out to be very sharp, though overexposed a bit probably due to the fact that the 1.5V battery installed had a higher voltage than the recommended 1.35V and therefore the light meter was a little off, well at least I know how to calibrate it for next time. On the other hand, shots taken by the OM-10 were ALL blurred Not 100% sure why but I think it’s because of the focus screen not held level inside the camera - I was playing with it the other day, maybe it was loosen after that. I’ve calibrated it a bit hopefully it’ll turn out good for the next time.

All in all, it was a great day for bike, and a great experience to use the SLRs! It was just a perfect day.

Recently I’ve acquired the Cokin filter adapter, two Hi-Tech ND Gradual filters, and s Hi-Tech Star 4 filter from 2filters.com (They’re quite pricey, whole package came to about $200 USD). Actually not until very recently did I get to read about these ND gradual filters and their usages. They turned out to be the missing piece of my photography puzzle! I’ve always been wondering how people take these amazing “surreal” kind of landscape/waterscape pictures and these filters turned out to be the thing that make it all possible. They basically work by darkening the sky (without darkening the ground) so that longer exposure can be used during daytime. So far I’ve tested them out twice, with pretty good result. I’m very stoked about owning them and I’ll make sure to keep them handy wherever I go…

Today I went to the Iona Beach in Richmond to try out the filter with Wendy. I figured that the best time to make the best use of the filters is at around 9:30pm which is about 10 minutes after the sun has fully gone down. The 1.2 ND filter gave me the best result, as it gets darker, the 0.6 ND filter will do the trick.

Did a lot these few days, not sure where to start…I went to Alice’s place to BBQ and I had some best lamp chop I’ve ever eaten, and some really tasty grilled portobello. I sold my Canon SD1000 digicam for $100. I bought a camera bag at London Drugs for my new Panasonic ZS3 digicam, the same bag that I bought for the SD1000 but a bigger version of it since I like how it has a clip at the back and also the magnetic cover. I finished the last demo for my client today, no more demos at least in this month! I bought two SLR cameras and two Olympus OM lenses (did I already talk about it in my last post?) and they were delivered today but I’ll have to drive to Point Roberts to pick them up, maybe tomorrow. I installed a flower basket at the window of the basement and planted some really cool flowers there…

Except for that my mom’s been here for just about 4 days and been nagging me all day long, for the past few days I’ve been looking at the Olympus OM vintage SLR cameras a lot, mostly on Ebay. I’ve been wanting an Olympus OM 50mm f1.4 lens for quite a while (and the 50mm f1.8 as well even though I want the f1.4 more), and due to the fact that most of the auctions usually come with both the lens and the camera, I was exposed to the names of a few of Olympus’s vintage SLR cameras like the OM-1, OM-2, OM-4, and OM-10. Apparently the OM-4 was the king of all SLRs but then it costs almost $400 USD to get a nice quality one. On the other hand the OM-10 is cheap, costs less than $30 USD. But anyway the one I really want is the OM-1, which is a fully mechanical camera, meaning the camera operates fully without a battery! The drawback is that you’ll have to manually set the aperture and exposure, whereas the rest of the models all feature Aperture Priority therefore the camera can do all the settings for you. I still want the mechanical OM-1 though, just because it’s one of the oldest and greatest SLRs, and the fact that it doesn’t require a battery - really cool. I’ll probably be getting the OM-1 plus the 50mm F1.4 lens, if I’m lucky enough to come across one on Ebay…