My last weekend of 2007

My Christmas was boring. Everything restaurant and mall are closed for business. Christmas is a time for the Canadians to hibernate at home with their family. Kind of like Chinese family having reunion dinner during Chinese New Year. True, I agree that family need to spend time together. Especially for the whites, most of them moved out of their parents house before they hit 20. But one thing I don't understand is that why close everything? Family time can also be like going to a nice restaurant for dinner etc.

So to compensate for my miserable hibernating Christmas, I had a wonderful weekend at Vancouver. I felt privilege to be invited by Mike and Ivy to the place over the weekend. Let me tell you the highlights of my weekend.

28th Dec

MEC
I took the afternoon bus from Chilliwack to Vancouver. I got there at 430 pm and headed to Mountain Equipment Co-op to see if there's any year end promotion going on. If if there isn't, I still love to go to MEC. The store is gigantic, as huge as the total floor area of Causeway Point Foodcourt on the 5th level. MEC has almost every outdoor gear that you can think of- trekking, biking, climbing, snowboard/ski, kayak and more. It's an adrenaline-rush experience being in the store, looking at all the cool gears and stuff. www.mec.ca

Laksa for dinner
Yap, Ivy prepares Laksa for dinner. It was tasty, yum yum. The 3 of us had a great time chatting over dinner. Mike and I also plan a trip to the mountain to try out snowboarding.

29th Dec

Snowboarding
I like snowboarding even though I've never done that before. Showboarding has some similarity to skateboarding and surfing. The learning curve for snowboarding is rather steep, unlike skiing. Most people can almost maennourver on their ski within much coaching or help on their first try. We signed up with the drop-in lesson. It's a 2 hours lesson starting at 10am. For 100CAD, I think it's money well spend. That includes area pass, rental of equipment and the 2 hours lesson.
It's hard to describe my snowboarding experience. All I can say is I enjoyed it a lot. The snowboarding season is open from Nov to late feb. If I stay in Vancouver, I would really consider taking up snowboarding. It's only 45 mins drive from Vancouver. And that's the amazing part of staying in Vancouver.

Hotpot AKA steamboat
We gather at a sister's place for steamboat. Same concept as what we have in Singapore. Raw meat, fishball, noodles, vege, golden mushroom. All you need to to dump everything into the boiling soup. 1 thing different is they don't drink the soup. We scoop the food from the soup and dipped it in some traditional Taiwanese sauce. A little bit like 虾米辣 (in hokkien)

In the house, there is a room for pool and table tennis. No I am not kidding you, the house is big enough for a pool room. Mike and I had a good game of table tennis.

30th Dec

House church at Andrew Nyugen's place
Church service is not at the usual Justice Institude of BC, so we meet at Andrew's place. Again, a big and beautiful house. On the 3rd floor, there is a view of Fraser River and overlooking the city. It's hard not to adore Vancouver.

After service, I went to Mike and Ivy's place for lunch. I wanted to get back to Chilliwack early so I took the 230pm bus. On the way I was entertained by Hindi songs played on 93.1. Yah, I am a fan of Hindi pop.