Geocaching!

Who knew there were so many treasures stashed away, waiting to be found, around the city? Armed with Robert's GPS unit, he lead the troop comprised of Jamie, James, Sigrid, Norman, Sue-Laine, and I on a scavenger hunt, that is geocaching. It's a novel idea in which people stash trinkets of goodies like CDs, plush toys, magazines, books, cheap jewellery, and the likes inside a tupperware container or a magnetic key storage box and hide them all around the city. The location of these treasures are then posted on geocaching.com using GPS co-ordinates. Big caches with goods of greater value are a little harder to find, and usually come with a riddle to decipher and require mathematical skills in calculating the distance and the diameter of the radius, in addition to the co-ordinates. The stipulation: we must replace anything we take out of the cache with something of equal value and log an entry of what we took out/replaced on the log book inside. It was with great amusement flipping through the pages of logs made by people the world over who found this cache in the past. It was like looking through a guest book!

Our group of seven collectively found a dead animal in a bag, magazines of pornographic nature, and an unopened tube of KY Jelly, among others. After our great hike around Coal Harbour and the West End, we treated ourselves to dim sum at Hon's on Robson.

Eat! Vancouver Food Festival.

I went to attend a seminar at the "Eat! Vancouver Food Festival" on how to pair the right cheese with the right wine and put on a successful wine and cheese party. The informative, engaging, and entertaining seminar was hosted by a representative of the Dairy Farmers of Canada. Taking a small chunk of cheese and melding it into my palms, I learned the first of many ways of identifying the characteristics of cheese. Cheese is best under room temperature, and by melding it in my palms, I was letting the aroma out and feeling the texture at the same time. Like swirling wine in a wine glass and looking at it's colour and swishing it around my mouth for its fruitful flavours, I could come to be a cheese connoisseur too! And there's nothing cheesy about it!

In the beer garden, I was surprised to meet Alex and his representatives exhibiting his Austrian wines at his 19A Wine Company booth. I introduced Norman, Tanya, Jamie, and James to him and invited them to taste the reds and whites from the "Weingut Frank" label.

Other highlights of the festival was seeing Rob Feenie giving a cooking demonstration in front of an audience. But because we were in the back row, we didn't stick around to see what he was cooking up.

So Yesterday.

I spent Victoria Day reading a novel by Scott Westerfeld titled "So Yesterday" from cover to cover. It was a definite page turner. I also found it to be an easy read and by how each chapter was only but a few pages long, it helped me get a sense of how quickly I was progressing though the book. Getting away from the disturbances at home, I found myself in Campbell Valley Park in Langley for some quiet time alone in my truck while the rain poured down outside, looking out to the equestrian course ahead.

Apartment Hunting II.

After dropping off my brother, his friend Taka, and my cousin Mickey and his wife Mikoto in the west end, I went about hunting for apartments. At the end of the day, I had scoured nearly every block making inquiries and checking out places, popping in and out of more apartments than a full-time hooker on any given night.

My exhaustive effort in search for a place was less than fruitful, however, as many of these places didn't quite meet my standards. I hate carpeting, so hardwood floors or laminate was a must. A nice view of English Bay would be nice, but that usually came with a higher monthly rent, so I was willing to compromise, but not to the point at which I was looking out to the bums picking garbage in the complex dumpsters from the living room window on the second floor.

I got together with Alan for lunch and found a nice shady area under a tree to eat along the beach. We were just shooting the breeze, checking out guys who walked by. Chillaxing.

Pier Pissing.

I was slightly intoxicated when I drove Janelle and Aaron down to White Rock beach tonight. I wasn't drunk. I was in an euphoric state of mind just happy to be with my close friends on this beautiful night walking down to the beach and along the long pier. I don't remember a lot of what we did, however, I do remember needing to relieve myself pretty badly. After reaching the end of the pier, I whipped it out and urinated into the waters and let out a satisfying sigh of relief.

This was a first for me, urinating in an area not designated or designed for urination in the presence of the public. Janelle was impressed. Aaron was amused.

Walking back along the pier, I did an almost successful attempt of five full cartwheels in a row, but my finish was less than stellar as I hit the side railings. My head was spinning.

Amy's Party | Visitors from Japan.

Went to a birthday party for Amy at the Jupiter Cafe this evening, along with Jamie, James, Jay, and a host of new faces including one rather attractive guy whom I suspect might me flying the rainbow. He kept going on about his childhood obsession with He-Man and his phallic object which he kept "whipping out". He was describing He-Man's sword, of course. He was a bit odd in that he had a very child-like manner about him, and though he told us that he had been proposed to many times before by other guys on the street in his youth, he has never been to any gay bars and gay clubs here in the gaybourhood. Apparently, when he wants to dance, that's what he wants to do and doesn't want the distraction of other guys hitting on him while he does his thing on the dance floor.

We moved on to Balbazar's down the street for more drinks and dancing.

My cousin, Mickey and his wife, Mikoto, flew in today from Japan for their honeymoon. I will be busy entertaining them during the week they are here.

VSC: French Night!

Continuing with our cultural nights with the VSC, tonight's focus was on France and all things French. Of course, when you think of France, fine French wine is usually the first thing that comes to mind, and we had several varieties of it. My memory from here gets to be a little hazy because I had 'sampled' all of the wines (including one Italian wine someone brought) to the point of getting a little past tipsy. At least I laughed a lot as the incriminating photos and videos proved. Amy the shutter-bug snapped some photos of me passed out on the floor and draped over Jen with a big grin on my face. The few things I do recall from this night was the laugh-fest Jamie and I participated in. For some reason, I started laughing hysterically at Jamie, which provoked her to laugh hysterically with me. This continued until tears started flowing down our eyes while we curled up in a ball clutching our stomach in pain from all the laughter. I also remember making a rude comment to Jen about getting "Always with Wings" when she spilled some red wine on her white work trousers. Perhaps that's where my hysteria started.

I was in no condition to drive myself back home at the end of the social gathering, so J&J offered me their place for me to couch surf for the night so that I'll be well rested for the class I had the next day.

International CouchSurfers!

Jamie, James, and I (along with the VSC) welcomed 6 international couch surfers to Vancouver this evening with a night out to Tanpopo, a favourite sushi restaurant of ours.

Among them were students from China, France, Switzerland, Czech, Finland, Danmark, Australia and the Netherlands who met each other while attending university back in the Niagara region. As the school year came to an end, they decided to come out to Vancouver for the west coast experience before splitting up. Jan Kopkas, a couch surfer who had sent out the email about their plans to the Vancouver Couch Surfers group, had a very out-going personality. Joost de Konig, hailing from the Netherlands, was just as adventurous and social. In fact, when we moved on from having sushi at Tanpopo's to the SoHo pub across the street for some drinks, we had a lengthy discussion about the world we live in today. And through that discussion, we realised that we had a lot in common about our field of study: human geography and marketing. That discussion spawned recommended readings of "So Yesterday" by Scott Westerfeld and "No Logo" by Naomi Klein.

Another interesting fellow I had the pleasure of meeting this evening was an older gentleman named Robert Shaw. With a full beard to go with his bushy grey quaff, he resembled a mountaineer who lived up in a cabin in the mountains. He had taken these international students snow-shoeing just the day before and were showing me the spectacular pictures on his little digital.

Now I have more contacts to add to the list of couch surfing friends. I hope they enjoyed their stay here in Vancouver!

Welcome to the Gaybourhood!

The Fab-Five got together this evening to go shopping for sex-toys in Vancouver. The first obvious street to stroll through was Davie Street, Vancouver's Gaybourhood, distinguished by it's colourful rainbow flags that line that street from east to west. In one store, I came across a double ended eighteen-incher and thought to myself "ffuuuucckk, that's gotta hurt!". But I don't think this double ended dildo is meant to please a single person, but of two individuals. Not only was this phallic object long, but it was quite heavy too. Another curious toy Kayla found was a silicone mould of a large human arm with all five fingers together to form a point. I was gawking.

My affectionate ABF Kyle held hands with me as we walked along Davie, which we both enjoyed. I don't know about that Kyle, but I enjoy his company. I feel loved.