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.

I was upgrading my internet speed from Shaw’s “High Speed” to “Xtreme-I” today, supposingly going up from 5Mbps downstream to 10Mbps. Also accidentally uncovered the truth behind my snail internet speed by connecting my PC directly to the cable modem instead of through a wireless network - an almost 4Mbps discrepancy. I was getting 6.3Mbps throught my wireless network connection after the internet speed upgrade while I was suppose to get 10Mbps, so I grabbed my Macbook and connect it directly to the cable modem, the speed jumped to 10Mbps - I was so mad.

So I have been using a SLOW router and USB adapter for about two years where almost 50% of my bandwidth was “eaten up” by them. I’ve been using a D-Link wireless G router and a Linksys G USB adapter and I thought that would have made a decent pair but in reality it sucked. So today I couldn’t wait but to get a new router/adapter pair from Futureshop.

I bought the D-Link Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Router (DIR-825) and the D-Link Dual Band N USB Wirless Network Adapter (DWA-160). I’ve been reading some reviews on both products online and they were greatly complimented. Tested them out and so far the speed is extremely fast. I’m downloading about 50 files from the EMule network, used to be getting about 100kb/s now I’m getting 300kb/s! I think I’m able to utilize my 10Mbps internet connection speed fully now, but I will monitor the speed/connection for a couple days more to see if it’s reliable.

Boxing Day today. Last night I was planning to goto Futureshop today but when I got up this morning, crazy snow again… but despite the snow I forced myself to go out as I really needed this Microsoft Wireless Laptop Mouse 3000 ($14.99)…so I went out without even shoveling the pathway at my garage. I stepped on the pedal pretty hard to back out from the garage onto the common driveway (did that couple times last week so I’m pretty used to that). It snowed harder and harder and when I got to Futureshop it was like some kind of snowstorm and I had to bring my umbrella as the walk from the spot I parked at was really far from the entrance to the mall (there were a LOT of people out there despite the snow). I finally got into Futureshop and thank God the lineup at the cashier wasn’t bad at all, so I hurried and ran to the keyboards/mice section to search for the mouse. I found 3 of them left after around 5 minutes of searching (as it was really messy there, flyers and products all over the floor) so I grabbed it and ran to the cashier before the lineup gets longer. It was pretty sweet that I’m able to get what I want and looked like everyone else did too as there were lots of people carrying flat screen TVs and digital cameras walking out of the store.

I then drove to Parker Place to get my favorite set lunch - garlic pork chop rice with cold coffee~ I was starving and that was the #1 food I wanted to eat at the moment….somehow I never gotten tired of eating it. Snow went on pretty crazily, I was actually a bit worried that my car won’t make it all the way back home so I drove really super slow and be ultra careful on the way back.

Oh, I got a Wii Fit controller board and a Wii Fit Mat from Wendy for my Xmas gift. It was quite fun setting up the thing and I did a little test with it and did some pretty hilarious games like hoola hop where you have to swivel your butt while standing on the board…and this other running game in while you place the Wiimote in your pocket and the you “run” at the same spot…lol.

It’s Xmas Day…feels like it’s the end of the year. I can’t even remember what I did on the same day last year…. I spent half of the day today trying to sell off my two extra X Japan concert tickets off Ebay, craigslist, and a couple other Hong Kong forums, hopefully can get rid of them soon. Last night (24th) I went to Alice’s place for some Xmas food: lamb chop, Greek salad, cream puff dessert, chips, wine….etc. and played a lot with Brandy (dog) and got both of my hands super wet from his saliva. I didn’t take any pictures but I do have some that I took on the 20th - same place but a different party with her friends:

Going to go for another Xmas dinner tonight with Benny and his friends in Downtown Vancouver. Tomorrow I might goto Futureshop to get this $14.99 Microsoft wireless laptop mouse for my Boxing Day gift…hopefully I won’t have to line up or anything.

Just because FutureShop was having this crazy sale, I decided to buy a second point-and-shoot camera since the Canon G9 that I have is kind of bulky to carry around. Went to FutureShop at 5pm sharp since they were having this 10% off almost everything sale. So I looked around and asked the sales dude what’s the cheapest Canon slim camera there and he showed me the Canon SD1000. It was a 7.1 megapixels cam and was only $161 after all the savings! ($20 instant saving off $199 regular price, plus the 10% off) I was pretty stoked about the price so I bought it without second thought (which kind of went against my usual routine of reading 8000 reviews online and comparing prices on 9000 websites before making a buying decision).

Took the camera home and played around with it for a bit. Turned out to be an awesome camera! Read a couple reviews on it and most of them were pretty good. There is a newer model (SD1100) that’s already out but it’s selling for $279 which gives you an additional megapixel (8.0) and an image stabilizer. The price tag doesn’t really fall within my budget so I didn’t really look into it. Overall I’m pretty happy with the camera, will of course take more pics here and there just to try it out.

Okay, so I went out on boxing day just like everyone else in this crazy city… Went to Futureshop and Bestbuy to check out some electronics/gadgets, lots of stuff were on sale, but it was so crowded that there was no way you could ever get a sales rep’s attention nor have the stamina to wait in line for checkouts. It was horrible. I ended up leaving after walking around in the store for a few times, thinking that I didn’t actually have anything in mind that I wanted to get anyway. I then drove up to Richmond Centre, and being unable even to spot a SINGLE parking space (in spite of driving a Smart car), I decided to give up and drive to London Drugs instead. Pretty crazy.

I was finally able to actually buy something at London Drugs Got two cans of Pringles chips, and got this “Got2bGlued” hair spray that was recommended by my friend. Both of them are “on sale”…I guess it’s mission completed and time to head home…lol