It's My Life

Reading Break! (Days 39 - 52 in Vancouver)

Day 39

Have been really busy these few days… planning for my upcoming trips during next week’s break as well as rushing out projects and studying for midterms.

During today’s wine science lab we had champagne, dessert wine and port. These wines were actually scheduled for later in the course, but our professor changed them to this week because of… Valentine’s day! We had dark chocolate to go with the port too… =P

I scored over 80% for the wine science mid-term, better than I expected. The average was well over 80% too… so it wasn’t a difficult paper in the first place. I just didn’t study hard enough (don’t see the need to since I’m on exchange). But really, I think I am going to screw up on the midterm I’ll be having on the first day back in class after next week’s break. I haven’t even finished reading the text once.

Oh, the repairman finally came over to fix our kitchen ceiling… now we don’t have a gaping hole staring up at the bottom of the bathtub anymore… we got a wooden board nailed over instead =|

Day 40

It’s a lovely, sunny day, a stark contrast from the past week when it was dark, rainy cold and gloomy all the time (so was my mood). I hope the weather would remain for a week more at least, so we can enjoy ourselves better with the clear skies and good scenery.

Day 41

Really busy day, preparing for PY’s arrival tomorrow, planning for the trip, and missed a class. Trying to make time to study for my midterm but seem unable to.

Day 42

PY arrived today after a 20 hr long journey including stopovers in NRT and PDX. We checked into the downtown hotel, then went for lunch at Go Fish! near Granville Island. After lunch, we took a walk around Granville Island public market for a while, then went to Metrotown to do some shopping ‘cos she had to buy some extra winter stuff.

We had dinner at Uncle Willy’s buffet restaurant which was just around the corner. The food was so-so (not very good actually) but was a deal at CAD 12 per pax.

Day 43

Started off the day with a walk from Canada Place to Gastown, then took a bus to Chinatown where we had a nice (for me) Chinese lunch at Hon’s Won Ton (where I forgot to tip the other time! I tipped extra this time to make up =)). A friend told me about an ice cream shop that had over 200 flavours, so we took a bus down since it was just nearby. We tasted curry ice cream (it was terrible – felt like overnight curry left in the fridge and eaten straight out of it)… and after quite a while finally decided on something more conventional for our ice cream cone – durian jackfruit. It was pretty good.

Next, we went to Stanley Park where we spent some time at the Vancouver Aquarium. They got good shows there featuring Beluga whales, dolphins and sea lions. But the rest of the exhibits were just like any other aquariums’.

Dinner was $1.25 pizza at West Pender & Seymour – not tasty but edible and filling. I prefer Megabites at Broadway any day – I love the sesame seed lined crust.

Day 44 (Sun)

This morning we woke up really early, checked out of the hotel and made our way to the bus stop to catch the hourly bus to the ferry terminal. We missed the bus ‘cos we went to the wrong bus stop, and to keep the story short, wasted an hour’s time. It was lucky that we decided to catch the earlier bus in the first place, because if we missed the next bus it’ll be terrible as it will mean that we’ll miss the 9 am ferry too.

So we managed to get to the ferry terminal 15 minutes before departure, got our tickets and boarded. The ferry was really huge and seemed rather well maintained, and it actually has a gift shop, a café, a restaurant, and a buffet place! We had breakfast on board at the restaurant, and the food was decent and at a rather decent price (like downtown prices). I hate it in other places when we get charged exorbitant prices for food and drinks at tourist attractions and airports… seems that it doesn’t happen here in North America.

The view on the ferry was really good – it was a sunny day and the sky was clear, there was plenty of sea gulls flying around. The ferry crew had an emergency drill halfway through the sailing, and we got to observe the proceedings.

It was a 1.5 hour sailing, and in no time we reached Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. From there, we took a bus straight down to the Butchart Gardens where we had a traditional English Afternoon Tea – the food and tea was fantastic and it was a rather unique experience for us – rather pricey though; at $26 per pax regular price… but we paid just $36 inclusive of admission to the gardens which usually costs $20 alone – for reasons we were to find out later.

After a filling meal, we proceeded to walk around in the gardens. It was apparently the wrong season to come, as there were no flowers in bloom at all – although the past 2 weeks had been rather sunny, but it’s still winter and all the trees and plants are still bare – that explains why they had discounts to entice people to come. Well, I actually anticipated that it’ll not be as nice as in spring or summer, but I didn’t know it’ll be that bad – totally no flowers. But a visit to Victoria would not be complete without going to the world famous Butchart Gardens… so that’s why we still went. I’ll probably come again in April when all the flowers should be in bloom.

After the gardens, we took the bus downtown where we checked into our hotel for the night – the Victoria Regent Waterfront Hotel – we got a huge room with wall to wall windows (though it was a city view room and not a harbour view one)… and the bed was soft and comfy – a huge difference from the stupid, tiny bed we were stuck in over the past 2 nights in Vancouver.

We went out to walk around – by this time it was about 5pm already, and it was a Sunday – most shops were closed or closing by now… it kinda sucks. The entire city seemed to be shutting down, and we walked and walked but couldn’t find much to see or do besides the nice and interesting Victorian style architecture of some of the buildings.

We got to The Bay Center, supposedly the largest mall downtown (actually I think it is the ONLY mall downtown), just minutes before it closed. It was quite funny. We were walking around, and suddenly a clock chimed at 6pm, and within seconds all the shops’ shutters were closed. Apparently the shops’ staff were on standby waiting for the clock to chime, so they can close and leave ASAP. How efficient. That’s so unlike Singapore, where employees would probably get a dressing down from supervisors or bosses for closing the shop on the dot because they can’t wait to leave (what’s wrong with that anyway, everybody got their own lives to live outside of work).

So we went back to the hotel after dinner at McDonald’s – it was the only decently-priced food we could find at that time. It seems that Victoria also has the same problem with homeless people like Vancouver – and there seems to be a lot of them for such a small city. It wasn’t a nice experience bumping into these people at almost every corner – some who seem to be disconnected from the world and ranting and raving to themselves while roaming the streets.

Day 45

We woke up to an excellent breakfast at the hotel – english style of course… with all the pastries. I personally prefer the usual type of buffet breakfasts we can find in most Asian hotels though – especially those with omelete stands where chefs prepare just the way you like it.

It’s quite strange that at a free breakfast where we served ourselves, we were expected to pay tips too. The staff left a card on our table and told us “Please sign on this card before you leave, just for our records purpose”. We looked at the card, and printed on it was “Complimentary breakfast valued at $17, excluding gratuities”. There were blanks left for room number, signature and tip amount.

Hmm. So much for a 4 star hotel (not sure how many stars it had, but it felt like a 3.5 or 4). We left a tip anyway, although we were already checking out and don’t really care… just because we were happy with the breakfast and didn’t want to challenge the social norm.

We walked around downtown a bit more, then went to the Parliament building for a guided tour of the place. It was really interesting, listening to the colonial history of Vancouver Island and the history about the building. They had a huge portrait of the Queen of England there, and it was really strange in that no matter where you stood in the hall, the queen’s eyes seemed to be fixed on you. Totally weird – that must have been some really good image manipulation involved. We were not allowed into the hall where they had parliament sittings because a session was in place today. However, we were invited to sit in the public gallery to listen to the proceedings. We chose not to, because we were short of time.

Following that, we took a bus down to Craigdarroch castle – supposedly one of the better attractions in Victoria – I felt cheated upon arrival – the castle was nothing more than a castle-like building in the middle of a residential estate – with residential houses beside and opposite it. It was nothing like the grand and huge place it was described to be on the leaflets. It was actually rather corny. It was supposedly built by the richest man in Victoria in the late 1800s. We decided to save our $30 and not go in – it should be quite stupid anyway. I rather visit a real castle in Europe with a longer history and more interesting stories than that.

Instead, we walked down to Government House down the road where the representative of the Queen in Victoria is supposed to live in, and also where the Queen stays in when she comes to town (like once in a blue moon). Public access is allowed, but only on the grounds and not into the building. We walked around the sprawling grounds for a while, then took a bus back downtown to catch a ride back to the ferry terminal.

We took a 5pm ferry back, and due to delays only arrived at Tsawwassen ferry terminal slightly after 7pm. As a result, we missed the bus (again!) which also happens to be hourly. We had to stand in the cold for nearly an hour before the next bus came that took us back downtown where we checked back into the hotel.

Day 46

Today we went to UBC to visit my residence as well as walk around the campus. In the afternoon, we went to Grouse Mountain and on the way decided spontaneously to get off the bus at a nature reserve that doubled as a reservoir, because of the beautiful view of the mountains in the late afternoon sun. We hanged around the park for a while, taking pictures, and then hopped back on the bus to Grouse Mountain.

Having tried skiing (and failing miserably) once, I decided wasn’t cut out for snowsports, so we just bought sightseeing passes and went up to look around. There wasn’t much, and it was a rather small place actually for those who are not skiing or snowboarding, so we went down after a couple of hours.

Day 47

This morning we checked out of the hotel at 7am and made our way to the Greyhound station to catch the 8am bus to Squamish, where we were booked on a flightseeing tour. It was a nice ride up the Sea-to-Sky Highway that offered good views of the sea and mountains. We had our 30 minute tour on a Cessna 172 plane which is also used for flight training purposes. Unfortunately it was a tad cloudy today, so we did not go by the itinerary we were booked for that was supposed to offer good views of mountains and glaciers… and instead just flew around the vicinity where there were less clouds. Nonetheless it was still a great experience that offered a bird’s eye view of the town and mountains.

After the tour, we went back to the Greyhound depot to wait for the next bus to take us up to Whistler, the popular ski resort that will be the venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Again, we did not ski or snowboard, so we just got sightseeing passes to take the Whistler Gondola up and down – it was a really long cable car ride at about 20 minutes one way. The view was good – the only regret was that it wasn’t snowing – so PY couldn’t experience snowfall.

We went to the Tube Park where we snow tubed for 2 hours. It was an idiot proof activity – just sitting on a float-like tube and sliding down snow slopes. It was really fun!

We were actually booked for a night at a hostel near Whistler, but we decided to forfeit our stay and instead go back down to Vancouver, since we finished exploring wherever we could go on foot and there was nothing much else to do for non skiers and snowboarders (besides expensive tours, sleigh and snowmobile rides). We slept over in my residence for the night.

Day 48

I went to the bank this morning to deposit a check. To my surprise, there was a sign at the counter that said something like “I am deaf. Please be prepared to communicate in writing if necessary”. A deaf person is not a useless person here, not like in Singapore where deaf people can only make a living in cheap labour or rely on charity and be a useless person because society cannot accept him and the government doesn’t do enough to facilitate.

On the bus today, we saw a rather young wheelchair bound guy board the bus with his wife. He was in a rather bad state – it seems to me that he is paralysed and cannot even move his head or mouth. However, he has a powerful motorized wheelchair that he controls by twitching his face. He needed little help from his wife in getting up and down the bus. His situation invoked a strong feeling in me – a feeling of hate for Singapore – someone like him would never be able to do the same in Singapore, despite our claims of being a first-world country with an excellent transport system. A paralysed man in Singapore can only lie in bed all day long and wait for death to come, because of the lack of accessibility options everywhere. Also, because of the lack of public healthcare insurance that would pay for an expensive, sophisticated wheelchair that would offer him a better life than just waiting for death in bed.

At that point, I remembered how my dad had trouble getting around in his wheelchair and as a result we had to take a taxi just to get to somewhere less than 1 km away. That also meant a lot of trouble in getting around, because we had to move him from the wheelchair into the taxi, then off.

Wheelchair bound people in world-crass Singapore are really discriminated against and disadvantaged because of the lack of support and concrete action from our government which is nevertheless still very proud of our world-crass transport system with only a dozen or so accessible buses… and accessible MRT stations that are just for show – how many wheelchair bound people actually use the MRT? Why the lack of users? Did transport authorities bother to think about it? How can wheelchair bound persons get to the MRT stations in the first place if they can’t even get out of their immediate neighborhoods because there are no accessible buses… or maybe even no wheelchair ramps out of their HDB flats?

We left for Seattle this evening on the Amtrak Cascade train. It was a comfortable ride on the upper deck of the train with huge windows, generous leg space and a restaurant car with a nice ambience. It was rather strange, because the train only had 2 passenger cars and a restaurant car – presumably because of low passenger numbers. We chose to travel by train because it offers a more reliable service, smoother ride and no worries about the traffic as compared to a bus ride. I would do it again, for the comfort and timeliness – especially since the price is the same for Amtrak and bus.

Stayed the night at the Best Western Loyal Inn in downtown Seattle (not really downtown location as it was claimed on the hotel website)… rather, it was on the edge of downtown.

Day 49

We went to the Seattle Premium Outlet stores today… which was actually located in Marysville, not Seattle… duh. Took us 2 hours each way to get to and from there. Well, there weren’t really many good deals around, with the exception of Coach handbags that seemed to be the favourite for everyone.

We had a buffet lunch at the Tulalip Casino which was just adjacent. It was a really good buffet for US$11.95 – I never had anything like that at this price, even in Thailand. I’ve always heard about how legendary casino buffets are – I know this isn’t Las Vegas, but it was really good… I think Vegas would be even more amazing… =P~ There was lots of Chinese food… and we understood why when BC-registered tour buses drove up and dropped off lots of Vancouver Chinese tourists.

For all the efforts we took to get there and back, I only bought a Nike hoodie at $17… which was a pretty good deal I guess. I didn’t buy it just for the price, but also because it was quite meaningful since it was a Seattle Niketown design. A good souvenir for myself. PY bought about $200 worth of Coach stuff that would have easily cost several times more in Singapore.

Well, the buffet lunch really made my day, after having lots of expensive and not so good meals in Vancouver. I would definitely come back for it if I am ever in the area again. The casino… and the land the outlet stores sit on… actually belongs to a native American Indian tribe. I read somewhere that Indian tribes in the US make their fortunes by running Bingo games and Casinos on their land, because in the past many states didn’t allow casinos and since the tribal lands were kind of outside the normal jurisdictions, they could build and run casinos there. So that’s what made them so rich that eventually one of the tribes could buy over Planet Hollywood. I also read that many tribes provide children with free education, even in overseas universities… and adults get paid thousands of dollars a month even if they do not work. Hmmm.

This evening we went back to the downtown hotel, collected our luggage and proceeded to the airport hotel that we will be staying for the following 2 nights.

Day 50 (Sat)

This morning we made our way to downtown and toured the Pike Place Market, which gained its fame because of the book Fish! that featured it. We went to the first Starbucks store and bought mugs as souvenirs for ourselves. I bought a pack of “Pike Place Blend” coffee too.

More shopping followed at Macy’s, where they were having a one-day only sale. I bought a Calvin Klein jacket for US$29, and a Nautica bathrobe for $10. I don’t usually go for branded stuff…but hey at that price, I can’t possibly go wrong I guess.

Day 51 (Sun)

PY left today from SeaTac airport and I took a bus back to Vancouver… after experiencing both Amtrak and the bus, I won’t hesitate to choose Amtrak again… the only drawback is its schedule – evening arrival at Seattle and early morning departure to Vancouver. Would be great if the schedules are reversed.

Got a midterm tomorrow that I haven’t studied for yet… oh dear…

Day 52 (Mon)

Midterm today sucked. Was average in difficulty actually, just that I haven’t prepared enough. Heck, I’ll just work harder in other areas I guess.

I’m on money saving mode this week after having spent quite a bit on vacation last week. I spent $15 on groceries today and am hoping these will last me for the week ahead. Time to start eating more bread, cereal and instant noodles. =|

© 2008 this lush garden within.