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.

These days, I tend to do my blog posts the following day, just cause I usually work till really late and don’t have the time to prep for the image that I wanted to post. I guess it’ll get better when my project (due in June) is done.. Anyway yesterday I had my favorite Chirashi Don (mixed sashimi rice bowl) at Ichiro Tei Japanese Restaurant with Alice for lunch. I finally remembered to bring my camera with me so here’s the picture of the awesome food.

But the main thing for the day was that I finally got a flash for my E-3 DSLR. I had been wanting the bigger version of the flash (Olympus FL-50R) but it was too pricey plus I’m not always doing flash photography so I decided not to buy it. These days I tend to take quite some outdoor photos for Wendy so I figured I should really get a flash, maybe the smaller version (Olympus FL-36R) of it (Olympus has 2 flashes, big and small). Peter was able to get it for me at Futureshop for a much cheaper price since he works there, so I decided to go for it. Ended up being about $200 + tax, which is a pretty good deal. I’ve actually never seen a real digital flash before, when I looked at the user manual I was a little overwhelmed by the complexity of it, like all sorts of different settings, and tilting the flash in different angles would give you totally different results…etc. Oh and I also tried the wireless function of the flash, you can actually place the flash somewhere else, and then wirelessly trigger it through the camera….it’s so cool…. I guess I have so much to learn now but, it seemed to be quite an interesting thing to know about….and hopefully will also help in other areas of photography that I take, like macros. See the picture of my flash with my camera body, it’s so frigging huge!

At night I had cake at Berry Good with Wendy. I tried their Black Forest cake (which is one of the kinds that I always asked my mom to get for my birthday parties), it was pretty good. I kind of forgot how it’s supposed to taste since I haven’t had it for so long, but I liked the one I had. Wendy got a Strawberry Shortcake, which even though I wasn’t sure what a shortcake was, tasted pretty good. Berry Good remains one of the best places for late night dessert cravings.

Went to Japadog finally, a Japanese style hot dog stand in Downtown Vancouver. I first heard it from Andrew since he worked close to there and he often had it for lunch. I didn’t really have a chance to actually check out the stand as parking was quite hectic there and it was quite far from where I live. Anyway Wendy and I drove by it again last week and I finally decided that I must check it out ASAP. It wasn’t too busy when we were there, even though there was a “line up here” sign on the ground there wasn’t really any line-up (there were maybe 3 or 4 people either eating or waiting to order). It sure smelt good though, with a strong scent of Japanese okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise~ We quickly ordered two dogs: The Misomayo and Okonomi. The ladies at the booth served quite quickly and we got our food in less than 2 minutes. They were tasty!! The sausage was HUGE, the bun was grilled nicely and it was crispy. The sauce and toppings were great - the radish sprouts tasted refreshing on the Misomayo dog, while the okonomiyaki sauce and cabbage on the Okonomi dog tasted just like okonomiyaki, not a surprising taste but still very tasty. We’ll definitely go again to try their “chilli” dogs

We went to the Yavis Club Cafe at night, which was a dessert/cheesecake cafe in Richmond. We were stoked to go as we were curious how this place would compare to Berry Good. It was packed, we had to wait outside for about 10 minutes. The menu was pretty huge, with a variety of cheesecakes. The special ones were the “glacier” cheesecakes…. Wendy ordered a Mango Cheesecake and I got a Sesame Glacier Cheesecake. The mango one was pretty tasty, without the super strong cheesy taste which I dislike. The sesame one was very nice and it was a brand new thing for my tastebuds - kind of like icecream but tasted like cheesecake at the same time, with a nice sesame accent - very nice. The drinks were tasty too, I got a greentea milkshake (tasty!!!) and Wendy got a iced coffee. This is definitely another “must go again soon” type of place.

Was sick for the whole week. I’m not sure if I’ve caught a cold or if it’s my regular pollen allergic reaction during Spring. Felt so bad for the entire week, didn’t do much except work (a whole lot), sleep, eat. My room is so messy as I didn’t have the energy to tidy it up.

Yesterday I felt a bit better so I went out and did a couple things. Went to downtown to get my Easy Park sticker as I’ve applied for the “Very Efficient Vehicle Discount Program” which gives me 50% discount at any Easy Park parking lot =D Of course the program is not available for most vehicles except for a few, and my Smart car is one of them. Got a sticker from the Easy Park office for my windshield.

I also went to Mercedes Benz to redeem a gift that was given to me free for the 10th year celebration of Smart. Nice little paper package with a notepad in it, several pins with Smart related prints on them, and a miniature 1:87 Smart car model enclosed in a display case. Smart periodically hosts events and gives away gifts for free, it’s a really nice (like this event where I won a Smart jacket.)

At night I went to the Maurya Indian Cusine restaurant with Wendy. I actually went there with Davinder last year and I recalled that it was really good, and this year they won some awards at the 2009 Dine Out Vancouver event so I thought it would be a good place to eat. On par with my expectation, the food was really good. We ordered two Starters (Kararlari Prawns, Shyam Savera), and a Main (Chicken Chettinad). All of them were very good, as well as the complimentary papadum (crispy bread) and naan bread. I liked the flavor they have in all the foods, very distinctive but not too strong. I also liked the fried herbal leaves in the Chicken Chettinad, they were so crispy and full of flavor… I will go again to try their lamb racks and dessert…

Went to this new (or maybe not, looked quite new though) dessert place “Berry Good” with Wendy in Richmond. It was a tiny little cozy place with nicely decorated interior, stylish wallpaper, color matched table and seats. After we seated I checked out their fridge near the counter where they have a demo of a variety of dessert cakes. I ordered a Noire Blanc chocolate cake, with a Iced Hazelnut Freddo coffee. Wendy got a Mango Cheesecake and a Hot Caramel Macchiato. The cakes came with nice plates and the drinks with nice swirl art on top and a cute stir. My chocolate cake was pretty tasty, not too sweet which was really good. I liked the way they laid the cream at the top, it’s like an array of creamy hemisphere. The Mango cheesecake was good, it tasted more like moosecake to me though. Prices were right, a tad under $9 for cake + drink. I will definitely come back to try more of their cakes, especially the Chiffon cakes which I was almost going to order!

Benny and Janet came over to my place for some snacks and wine last night. I was trying to get the Jackson-Triggs White Merlot (rose) that I really enjoyed at Alice’s place last month, but then liquor store didn’t carry the regular sized bottle. There was this 1.5L version of the same wine, I pondered a little about getting it or not, while this salesperson was like “You’ll drink it up eventually”…lol. So I got this one, and another one that he recommended “Woodbridge / White Zinfandel” from California. We had fresh oyster, gravlax salmon, dessert cakes, and wine of course. The oysters was average, not too bad but wasn’t too impressive, had to eat them with tabasco where usually you can eat them without so that you could get a genuine taste of them. The gravlax was super tasty though. Benny added sesame oil to it which I thought was a great match with the gravlax itself. I’ve home-made gravlax last year too but then it wasn’t tasty at all for some reason (Here’s my post about it) Well maybe I’ll try making it again but I have a feeling that it’ll end up being the same…maybe I’ll just get them off Ikea (these guys) After the gravlax we had dessert cakes (3 different kinds I think) that Janet bought from the Capers market (that I really have to check out later since apparently they sell a lot of high-end food products and I love high-end stuff). They were pretty tasty, like I didn’t know it was a carrot cake until she told me after I finished it (I usually hate carrot cakes 99% of the time).

We played some Wii Fit after the food, and also played Left 4 Dead on Benny’s Alienware laptop (fastest laptop on earth? huge and heavy though). More photos can be found here.