Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

We had the Canucks game planned for weeks and the day finally came around last night.  Joel had organized to have a group of us attend the game together.  To make it even better, we found out that the Washington Capitals and Connect2Canada (a network set up in Washington DC to keep local Canadians connected) was holding an event at a nearby bar.  So basically, an hour before the game, they were offering up an open bar for one hour prior to the start of the game.  Penn Quarter Sports Tavern appeared to be a Canadian run establishment.  They had a giant Canadian flag hanging outside.  Pretty cool.  Well, right away, I knew it would be a fun night.  I walked in and everyone was in a genuinely festive good move, smiling and saying hello to all of us.  Typical Canadians eh?  So there was free beer being poured and they were also handing out samples of Canadian Club.   I ordered a crab cake sandwich and some of the other guys tried out their poutine.  The sandwich wasn’t too bad, and the poutine wasn’t very geniune (shredded cheddar instead of cheese curds), but what do you expect from bar food really?  It was time to go and we were ready to pay for our food when we found out that the food was on the house too!  Wow!  Awesome!  I tipped our waitress and we headed out to the game.

The game was great.  We shelled out $85 for sweet lower bowl seats near the goal line.  We were about 10-12 rows up which were perfect.  I was hoping that a puck would fly over the boards and hit someone so I could grab a souvenir, but it didn’t happen.  Most of us were wearing our Canucks jerseys or Canucks t-shirts and like someone said, they worked like magnets.  There were a lot of Canucks fans and a lot of Canadians in attendance.  Every time one walked by, we exchanged friendly cheers.  We paid special attention to the females and there were quite a few cute ones.  Marty, what happened to you and that chick from Calgary?   Anybody spot us in the crowd?  We were a loud group and we had a great time.  It really helped that the Canucks won.  Pyatt’s first goal was lucksack bullshit, but the rest of the game was pretty good.  We plan on going to some more games; probably when another Canadian team comes into town.  I wanna go to Toronto so I can boo the shit out of them, but I don’t think anybody wants to waste their money to watch them either.  Ottawa or Montreal are starting to sound good though.  The account manager that set up our seats actually came by to say hi during the game.  Apparently he can get us cheaper seats next time around.  Good stuff!

Earlier today, I went to Rockville.  It was supposed to be the new Chinatown area from what I had heard.  It was quite nice and you could see that it was developing quickly.  They were actually holding some kind of grand opening event for the new downtown area.  I didn’t see any Asian markets nearby so I walked a few blocks away and finally found a Maxim Supermarket.  It was great!  This is the first time in 9 months that I had walked into an Asian market since I got here.  I picked up some great food and some other great stuff that I had been missing; real potstickers (not the bullcrap ones at Costco), chinese sausage, chinese pork and veg buns, sticky rice wrap, a steamer rack, and a big ceramic bowl.  I had so much other stuff to buy, but I figured I wouldn’t overdo it.  Next time, I’ll pick up some beef balls, pastries, and bbq pork. 

As I am typing this up, I needed a snack and I fished out a thing of yogurt that was passed it’s best before date by two weeks.  I opened it up and it smelled and looked okay.  I tasted it and it tasted fine.  In fact, it was pretty tasty.  Green tea mango from Lucerne.  I think I will get some more of it and not let it sit this long next time.  Let’s hope it doesn’t give me the shits.  I’ve also been watching the 40-Year-Old Virgin HD-DVD the last few hours.  Man, it has tonnes of extra footage.  The bonus material is ridiculously long.  I think I am nearing four hours of outtakes, raw footage, interviews, commentary, deleted scenes, audition videos, etc… It’s an impressive collection though.  Alright.  That’s it.  I’m done!!  There’s actually more meaning to that, but I’ll wait until a little later to expand on it.  Peace!

Thee weather here has been spectacular.  It’s barely rained and the weather’s been cool or warm.  The temperature is about 70-90 degrees (approximately 20-30 degress Celsius).  It’s been so nice, I haven’t minded walking around town lately.  I hear it’s been pissing rain back home.  That sucks!  It’s been pretty nice here.  I guess that’s one positive thing about this neck of the woods.  Case in point, last weekend, it was a beautifully gorgeous day and there was an event in my area called Taste of Bethesda.  Picture this: the annual Nibbles and Bites event in Richmond, but a venue that is 10x bigger, stretching across multiple blocks.  The city basically shut down all of the streets in the Woodmont Triangle area.  The best part about this is that it was basically in my back yard.  I saw the posters for it the day before and I dragged my ass out to check it out because the website listed a bunch of decent restaurants, including Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and Morton’s.  The concept was the same as N&B; buy tickets and exchange them for food.  Tickets were $1.25 a piece and none of the food offerings were supposed to be more than 3 tickets.  It seemed reasonable, but a lot of the items were priced at 3 tickets and a lot of the offerings were a rip off.  Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s were offering up tiny steak sandwiches and as much as I like them for their steaks, I just didn’t feel like getting a 1/4 sandwich for $3.75.   There was a local restaurant with a huge pan of paella.
Check out the picture below.  I started off with a crab cake sandwich.  It was pretty good.  I wish it was a little hotter, but it was pretty good.  Lately, I had been craving sausage rolls.  They don’t really sell them here.  I haven’t found them at Safeway, and I am too lazy to trek out to Giants to check if they carry them.  Anyway, I saw someone order these Irish Sausage Rolls and the 4 pieces they handed him looked so good.  So I ordered it too.  Well, I guess the guy earlier had ordered 2 orders, cause they only handed me two measly pieces.   Two tickets, for two bites.  I’ll give the restaurant credit though.  They were awesome!
Next up, I found a place that offered up a BBQ platter.  It was the best value in the whole event.  Ribs, pulled pork, drumstick, coleslaw and a biscuit.  It was pretty good too.  I bought some more tickets just to get a bottle of water and I was pretty full by then.  So I had 3 left over tickets and decided to get a cupcake.  Let’s preface this by saying that there’s a place just a couple buildings over from my apartment called Just Cakes.  I’ve always wanted to go in and take a look, but I always feared that I would walk out with too many sweets.   So this was a perfect time to try out their cupcakes.  I was going to get a regular cupcake for 2 tickets, but just as I got up to the booth, they had run out, so I bought a fancy 3 ticket one which was supposed to be a deluxe type of cupcake.  Wow!  It was fantastic!  Wes and Lisa, when you come visit, I’ll be sure to get you some from there.  A total ripoff for a cupcake, but it was damn good and a perfect way to end the afternoon.  If I’m still here next year, I cannot wait to attend the event again.

This weekend, a bunch of us went out to Buffalo Billiards.  It’s a huge ass sports bar near the office with a lot of pool tables, dart boards, and shuffleboard tables.  We decided to play shuffleboard.  It ’s not the one you play on the floor with the flat discs and  sticks/cues.  This one’s played on a long ass table with these weighted pucks that look like mini curling stones.  It’s pretty fun.  If you spot one in Vancouver, you should definitely give it a try.  In fact, someone should buy one of those instead of a pool table.  It takes up less room and is easy for anyone to play.  You just slide the pucks down the table and try to get it as close to the edge as possible.  The closer you get, the more points you score.  It’s actually very similar to curling, cause some of the rules are the same.  It’s neat cause the pucks glide down the table with ease.  I look forward to playing it again soon.

Last night we went out to lunch at Pho 75.  Service sucked ass, as expected, but the food was pretty good.  Their ice coffee was good too.  The menu was pretty basic.  In fact, the first 4 items sounded identical except for slight variations on one meat item.  We hit up the mall for a few hours, then we went to Dupont for some dinner.  We had our sites on the Afterwards Cafe, a restaurant in the back of Kramerbooks on Connecticut Ave.  The wait was too long so we went to a huge Italian restaurant called Buca di Bepo.  It was an hour long wait too, so we settled on fast food at Five Guys.  The burgers are pretty good and if you get french fries with your order, they’ll give you a generous amount.  After dinner, we chilld out Gazuza’s for some drinks and hookah.  I had never tried hookah before but I was curious to try it out.  They have one of those Hookah places on Davie I think.  Hookah is the flavoured tobacco water pipe thingy.  We ordered the double apple and it was surprisingly pretty nice.

I’m so glad hockey season is back.  I intend on winning as many of my hockey pools as possible and I’m really looking forward to watching the Canucks on October 26th out here.  There are over 20 of us going to the game that night so it should be pretty fun.  I just finished watching Saturday Night Live from last night and Bon Jovi was the host.  He sucked big time.  I think he was so bad, he was only in 4 skits.  Don’t quit your day job Jon.  Earlier today, I watched Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.  I had no idea what the movie was about, but it was quite entertaining.  I highly recommend it.  Anyway, no hi jinx or anything lately, at least nothing I can think of, so I’ll sign off for now.

Hello hello everyone!  I am alive and well.  So where the heck do I begin?  If anyone’s noticed, I’ve been procrastinating quite a bit and I haven’t updated this blog in quite some time.  Part of it is because I’ve been out of town on a couple of occasions since August.  In a nutshell:

• I’ve been to two weddings
• I spent two weeks in Vancouver
• I attended the Justin Timberlake concert in Vancouver (go Timbaland!)
• Watched my first ever Major League Baseball game
• Went on a one week cruise to the East Caribbean

It’s been a pretty fun filled September.  I’m already looking forward to my next vacation. Before my cruise vacation, I was already looking ahead to the future, so I booked a flight to Barcelona for the US Thanksgiving long weekend.  I’m gonna hang out in Spain with Gladys for a few days.  I was contemplating a trip to Toronto that same weekend, but considering a flight to TO cost the same as a flight to Barcelona, I thought I would go somewhere I had never gone before.  Plus I’ve been itching to make it out to Europe.

Anyway, that’s the future.  I was having a fabulous time in Vancouver; half working and half vacationing.  I think I picked a great time to go.  The weather was fairly decent and most of my friends were in town.  I had a blast!  I even got to go to this year’s Nibbles & Bites event in Richmond.  Too bad it sucked donkey dick this year.  The restaurant participation was terrible this year.  There were literally half the participants compared to previous years.  I don’t think I’ve missed one of these over the past 10 years and this was by far the worse one.  Not only were there fewer restaurants/food to choose from, they raised the price of the tickets to $1 each.  For those that don’t know, N&B is an annual gathering of local restaurants at Thompson Community Centre (Richmond) where people go to sample various cuisine.  It’s typically awesome, but not this year.  Half the vendors?!?  Come on… thumbs down!

I extended my Vancouver stay just so that I could watch the Justin Timberlake concert.  For all you haters, I have to admit that I think he’s quite talented, albeit a little fem/girlie.  The guy can sing, and he’s had two of the best SNL episodes in recent years.  His acting isn’t anything spectacular but he’s obviously more talented and entertaining than a lot of the other celebrities (cough Lindsay Lohan cough) out there.  Anyway, enough defending of that decision.  The concert itself was nothing special.  Considering his success and clout, I was surprised that the performance and production of the concert was not more spectacular.  They had all of these annoying screens that went up and down, and most of the time, they partially blocked the stage.  It was kinda neat, but mostly dumb.  Whoever designed that stage should retire from that profession.  It was a friggin long show too, and by the end of it, I was kinda bored.  Timbaland made an appearance, which made things way better.  Apparently he didn’t make it out to the Seattle show a few days later.  Boy, was Allan and Jen pissed about that.

Mike and Mel’s wedding was a lot of fun.  There was good company and great food.  So all in all, it was a pretty awesome day.  I was able to use my new camera (a Canon is850) for the first time.  I didn’t really know how to use it that well, but managed to get some half decent shots.  Remy Martin’s VSOP is a lot better than I had anticipated.  My cousin Steve’s wedding was great too.  He finally got married to Carol after dating over a decade.   Andy Woo, get cracking.  I hope you saved enough some money from buying that rear projection TV.  You should have bought a LCD/plasma.  Anyway, it was good to see my aunts, uncles and cousins.  I have seen them less and less over the last few years.  It takes weddings to bring us all together now.

Upon my return to DC, my company’s event committee held a Nationals baseball night.  Free baseball!  How could I refuse?  Since I had never gone to one before, it was a perfect function to attend.  It was a pretty good game.  The Nats kicked the crap out of the Mets and contributed in NY missing the playoffs despite a huge lead earlier this season.  I saw a couple home runs, a stolen base, some fireworks, and I even had a ballpark hot dog and beer.  If my memory serves me correct, I think the final score was 10-4 with the Nats coming from behind to pull out a win.  I had a pretty good time, so I hope to watch another game next season when the team moves to the new stadium.  On a related note, I’m more stoked about the new NHL season.  A bunch of us transplanted Canadians have already purchased tickets to the Caps/Canucks game on October 26th.  We shelled out $85 to get lower bowl seats along the goal line.  Awesome seats at an awesome price.  The same seats in Vancouver would cost at least $20 more.  Go Canucks!  I really like the new jerseys too!

I just came back from a cruise to the Bahamas.  I had a superb time!  I don’t think I have been away from a computer/internet for a week in a long long time.  Strangely, it was the best feeling ever.  It was probably a huge factor in my enjoyment of this trip because I was really relaxed and disconnected with the real world.  It’s basically what a vacation should be.  We ate and ate and ate.  Sadly, the food sucked monkey balls, but that still didn’t stop us from chowing down a few times each day.  I like to think that I was just sampling the food to try and find the best stuff to eat.  The 24 hour soft serve ice cream machines were great and I liked the pizza too.   We discovered that the room service food offerings were pretty decent too.  The nightly dinner we had in the dining room was alright.  I don’t have too many complaints about it.  Don’t get me wrong, the food still sucked, but I always looked forward to having a nice and proper ’sit-down’ meal.  Being served is better than standing in line for the buffet.  We gambled a lot on the boat.  There wasn’t a whole lot to do or anything that was overly interesting on our boat, so we spent a lot of time playing various versions of blackjack and slots.  Surprisingly, most of us had pretty good fortunes there.  I think we won more times than we lost and the slot machines seemed to be nice and loose.  I managed to win $500 playing bingo too!  Woohoo!  I posted up a slew of pictures on Facebook.  Check it out if you’re interested.  I also attended an art auction on the boat.  I bid $9000 for a tiny Renoir piece.  Really, I did.  The auctioneer did tell us ahead of time that he’d tell us when we got closer to the actual price he’d let it go for though, so it was just bidding for fun.  I could go on and on about the cruise cause it’s fairly fresh in my mind, but I’ll save the stories for another day.  Let’s just say that I had a great time and hanging out with Hank, Lina, James, Karen (not so much her.. :)  j/k), and Chris was a lot of fun! 

We’ll end it at that.  Take care til next time!  Over and out!