Well, once again it has been a little while since my last posting so I guess I should write another update.
A few things have happened in the last few weeks. First of all I had a somewhat unexpected encounter with the police. It all started while I was sitting in my lovely basement having a quiet night in. Andrew my flatmate came in and asked if I could go see the police, as he had to go down to Tacoma for a conference so couldn't go. I thought about it for a few minutes and then decided that I would help him out. In the past I have certainly not made any great effort to get to know the police, not because I dislike them but rather I was just never overly interested in them. After going to see them I now have a new respect for what they do, I found I actually recognized a lot more of their work than I expected to.
Another thing that happened last week was that I finished working. Yep that's right I am now officially unemployed again. That means that I have a week of doing not a great deal before Dad and Mum arrive on Sunday. I guess there are a few things I need to do, like sorting out how much GST I owe the tax department, and figuring out what I will do with furniture, but for the most part I am not doing a lot. I think I may pop down to Seattle on Friday for a couple of days, that should fill in a bit of time. I didn't get to see much of Seattle when I was there for a night a couple of years ago, I basically just made it to a cafe and then walked back to my hotel. From memory there was some Johnny Cash tribute concert on TV that night so I just watched that. The concert was pretty good, although I feel that my time may have been better spent trying to see a bit more of the city. If I do end up going on Friday I will be sure to take some pictures and update everyone. There are a bunch of coffee shops down there that I would like to check out, hopefully some of them sell interesting cups that I can add to my collection.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Brunch, Coffee and Rodeo
Well last Saturday was a pretty good day. I got up extra early for a Saturday, as I was meeting Roz and Reuben for brunch at 11. So after getting up at 9:30 and having a nice french press coffee I headed out for a gentle stroll to Feenies. Feenies is a restaurant owned by Rob Feenie, Iron Chef 2005 winning "Battle Crab". He also has been inducted in to the B.C. Restaurant Hall of Fame, quite an achievement I am sure. Anyway, I ordered the Salmon Benny, which was very nice, although I think it was pretty poorly named. It was a croissant with smoked salmon and poached egg, no hollandaise sauce. I also had a smoothy which I thought was rather nice although no particularly thick for a smoothy.
After brunch the day just got even better with a trip to the Elysian Room for a coffee or two. Reuben used to work with one of the guys who works at the Elysian Room so managed to score a nice discount and a free cup of coffee from the Clover. If you want to know what the clover is then just click on the link above, they seem to be becoming quite popular in the better cafes around Vancouver. The coffee they were brewing was a coffee flown in from the Yergecheffe region of Ethiopia by Nova coffee in Denver. It was one of the nicest brewed coffees I have ever tasted, on a similar level to the Panama I sampled at the Coffeegeek cupping session in January. I decided not to buy any of the beans though as I had just bought a pound of Kenya AA beans from JJ Bean on Friday so was well stocked already, also the price of $20 for 8oz was a little more than I have been willing to pay for coffee lately.
After coffee I had to run to catch a bus to Ryan's place where I was meeting Ryan, Mike and Kirsty to go to the Cloverdale Rodeo. This was quite an experience, I have never been in a place with so many cowboy hats before, I was even tempted to buy myself one just to fit in. There were a bunch of exciting looking rides there and lots of your typical carnival games where you can win big soft toys etc. There was also live entertainment in the form of Nearly Neil, a Neil Diamond impersonator. He was pretty good and his band was really tight, although after 3 or 4 songs I was feeling like I had heard about as much Neil Diamond as I cared to hear.
The actual rodeo started at 7:30 or so, so the light was getting a bit dark for photos especially given the quick movement. I did get a few shots of the early events that almost came out OK though so here goes.
The horses showed great athleticism, jumping really high.
In the bull riding, on of the cowboys got beat up pretty bad by a big old bull. I think he got his hand caught as he fell off and got dragged around then savagely attacked by the bull. He was carried off on a stretcher.
After brunch the day just got even better with a trip to the Elysian Room for a coffee or two. Reuben used to work with one of the guys who works at the Elysian Room so managed to score a nice discount and a free cup of coffee from the Clover. If you want to know what the clover is then just click on the link above, they seem to be becoming quite popular in the better cafes around Vancouver. The coffee they were brewing was a coffee flown in from the Yergecheffe region of Ethiopia by Nova coffee in Denver. It was one of the nicest brewed coffees I have ever tasted, on a similar level to the Panama I sampled at the Coffeegeek cupping session in January. I decided not to buy any of the beans though as I had just bought a pound of Kenya AA beans from JJ Bean on Friday so was well stocked already, also the price of $20 for 8oz was a little more than I have been willing to pay for coffee lately.
After coffee I had to run to catch a bus to Ryan's place where I was meeting Ryan, Mike and Kirsty to go to the Cloverdale Rodeo. This was quite an experience, I have never been in a place with so many cowboy hats before, I was even tempted to buy myself one just to fit in. There were a bunch of exciting looking rides there and lots of your typical carnival games where you can win big soft toys etc. There was also live entertainment in the form of Nearly Neil, a Neil Diamond impersonator. He was pretty good and his band was really tight, although after 3 or 4 songs I was feeling like I had heard about as much Neil Diamond as I cared to hear.
The actual rodeo started at 7:30 or so, so the light was getting a bit dark for photos especially given the quick movement. I did get a few shots of the early events that almost came out OK though so here goes.
The horses showed great athleticism, jumping really high.
In the bull riding, on of the cowboys got beat up pretty bad by a big old bull. I think he got his hand caught as he fell off and got dragged around then savagely attacked by the bull. He was carried off on a stretcher.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
My funny family
It has occurred to me over the last few days that the audience of this blog has started to grow, and not everybody who reads this blog knows who the other common readers may be. Furthermore, some of the readers of this blog prefer to read anonymously and don't post any comments, whereas other readers are more familiar with the whole blog thing and like to leave comments for others to read. I can categorise these two groups in another way too, friends and family from New Zealand (the anonymous people) and friends from Vancouver (the nice people who leave comments).
Tonight I decided to check the comments awaiting moderation and found two anonymous comments asking who Shannon was. The posters didn't leave there name but there was a clue from one of them leading me to believe it was a family member. Now those of you who are friends of mine from Vancouver are probably not so familiar with my family and there somewhat childish attitude when it comes to me and any female that I mention, somehow not grasping the concept that I have friends of the opposite sex, and that being friends with a girl does not necessarily indicate any more serious relationship or prospect thereof.
For those of you back in New Zealand, Shannon is a friend from University Chapel. She is in my home group along with her husband Lucas. They are from Missouri. Shannon plays the piano and sings very well. Lucas is a very funny guy, he tells great stories, like the one where he killed a snake and cooked it on the engine of his car and ate it, but he tells it so much better. To find out more about Shannon and Lucas, check out their blog here.
I think I will try and get some photos of some of the friends I have made here in Vancouver and a short blurb on each of them so that in the case that any of them feel inclined to leave a comment here in the future you will all know who the person is.
Oh and to answer the second part of one of the comments posted, yes I probably will introduce Shannon to Mum and Dad when they visit next month.
Tonight I decided to check the comments awaiting moderation and found two anonymous comments asking who Shannon was. The posters didn't leave there name but there was a clue from one of them leading me to believe it was a family member. Now those of you who are friends of mine from Vancouver are probably not so familiar with my family and there somewhat childish attitude when it comes to me and any female that I mention, somehow not grasping the concept that I have friends of the opposite sex, and that being friends with a girl does not necessarily indicate any more serious relationship or prospect thereof.
For those of you back in New Zealand, Shannon is a friend from University Chapel. She is in my home group along with her husband Lucas. They are from Missouri. Shannon plays the piano and sings very well. Lucas is a very funny guy, he tells great stories, like the one where he killed a snake and cooked it on the engine of his car and ate it, but he tells it so much better. To find out more about Shannon and Lucas, check out their blog here.
I think I will try and get some photos of some of the friends I have made here in Vancouver and a short blurb on each of them so that in the case that any of them feel inclined to leave a comment here in the future you will all know who the person is.
Oh and to answer the second part of one of the comments posted, yes I probably will introduce Shannon to Mum and Dad when they visit next month.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The week and a half since the last post
Well, in my last post I mentioned that Detour180 was in town, but at the time of writing I had not been to their concert so couldn't write much about how they sounded. That has now changed as I went to a gig on the following Saturday night. I had not heard the band play for quite some time, probably since parachute festival 2005 I think. Since then my cousin Daniel has taken up playing the bass and joined the band, I think in that order but the timing was pretty close from memory. Naturally being a bass player myself I was keen to see and hear him play. Talking with him after the show he mentioned that he had a few 'jazz' notes in their (a nice way of saying he had some wrong notes). He must have done a pretty good job at covering them up because I didn't notice any, the entire performance sound pretty solid to me. The rest of the band sounded very good too. Nice job chaps.
It has been a pretty good week musically for me. First off with Detour180 and then on Friday night I went to see a band I had never heard of called Mute Math. One of my friends Shannon knew a couple of the guys in the band from her school days, and managed to score free tickets for 4 of us plus a guided tour of the band's tour bus and dinner with the drummer, guitarist and lighting guy. Dinner was very nice especially given the price. We went to a restaurant downtown called Relish. They have a good selection on the menu, I finally settled on a yellow curry seafood hot pot. But I digress, back to the band. The band guys were super friendly and seemed to be really nice people from what I could tell in my few hours with them. The concert was very entertaining, very energetic. I think I mentioned a last year that Jamie Cullum was the most energetic performer I have seen. He has now slipped to second place. The drummer must have had a pretty much endless energy reserve, I have never seen anyone hit the cymbals so hard. I really hope he has some kind of endorsement deal with a cymbal manufacturer because I am sure he must have to replace them rather frequently. By the end of the show there were 2 big chunks missing from the ride cymbal. He was a really good drummer though putting laying down some very cool beats and fitting in some particularly tasty rolls. The rest of the band were also pretty good and multi talented too, with all of them at some stage helping out with the drumming in some way or other, whether it be the bass player playing the bass a crash cymbal and a giant bass drum at the same time, or the singer drumming on the balcony railing. Apparently a signature of Mute Math is to destroy the stage by the end of the concert by throwing the drums around and smashing fluorescent light bulbs over their knees. All in all it was an excellent concert although I don't think Mum and Dad would have enjoyed it at all.
Spring has definitely started now in Vancouver with temperatures at a very pleasant 15 degrees or so and much less rain. I don't know if I have changed or if it is just that I am walking more over here than I did back home, but I have found myself actually looking at the flowers around the place and even taking photos of them. This last week there have been a lot of tulips popping up all around my neighbourhood. With all the nice sunny weather we have been having comes tennis season again. I have had a couple of games with Reuben over the last couple of weeks. The first one was not such a great day for it, after being fine all day it started raining literally as I got changed in to my tennis gear. It looked like it was going to clear up so we played anyway but it was a pretty wet game. Saturday was a much nicer day however so we were able to have a jolly good game once we found a court that was available. That is another fantastic thing about Vancouver, there are loads of free tennis courts around and they are all in pretty good condition.
Well that pretty much covers what I have been up to lately, oh except for dinner tonight. I have been eying a recipe in one of my cookbooks for some time now, it is a very simple dish involving wrapping some big scallops in prosciutto and frying them in sage infused olive oil and butter and served with caramelized apple. As apples are not in season and I don't like old apples I substituted the apple for pear and it seemed to work quite well. The prosciutto flavour works it's way in to the scallops really nicely and the dish tasted fantastic.
It has been a pretty good week musically for me. First off with Detour180 and then on Friday night I went to see a band I had never heard of called Mute Math. One of my friends Shannon knew a couple of the guys in the band from her school days, and managed to score free tickets for 4 of us plus a guided tour of the band's tour bus and dinner with the drummer, guitarist and lighting guy. Dinner was very nice especially given the price. We went to a restaurant downtown called Relish. They have a good selection on the menu, I finally settled on a yellow curry seafood hot pot. But I digress, back to the band. The band guys were super friendly and seemed to be really nice people from what I could tell in my few hours with them. The concert was very entertaining, very energetic. I think I mentioned a last year that Jamie Cullum was the most energetic performer I have seen. He has now slipped to second place. The drummer must have had a pretty much endless energy reserve, I have never seen anyone hit the cymbals so hard. I really hope he has some kind of endorsement deal with a cymbal manufacturer because I am sure he must have to replace them rather frequently. By the end of the show there were 2 big chunks missing from the ride cymbal. He was a really good drummer though putting laying down some very cool beats and fitting in some particularly tasty rolls. The rest of the band were also pretty good and multi talented too, with all of them at some stage helping out with the drumming in some way or other, whether it be the bass player playing the bass a crash cymbal and a giant bass drum at the same time, or the singer drumming on the balcony railing. Apparently a signature of Mute Math is to destroy the stage by the end of the concert by throwing the drums around and smashing fluorescent light bulbs over their knees. All in all it was an excellent concert although I don't think Mum and Dad would have enjoyed it at all.
Spring has definitely started now in Vancouver with temperatures at a very pleasant 15 degrees or so and much less rain. I don't know if I have changed or if it is just that I am walking more over here than I did back home, but I have found myself actually looking at the flowers around the place and even taking photos of them. This last week there have been a lot of tulips popping up all around my neighbourhood. With all the nice sunny weather we have been having comes tennis season again. I have had a couple of games with Reuben over the last couple of weeks. The first one was not such a great day for it, after being fine all day it started raining literally as I got changed in to my tennis gear. It looked like it was going to clear up so we played anyway but it was a pretty wet game. Saturday was a much nicer day however so we were able to have a jolly good game once we found a court that was available. That is another fantastic thing about Vancouver, there are loads of free tennis courts around and they are all in pretty good condition.
Well that pretty much covers what I have been up to lately, oh except for dinner tonight. I have been eying a recipe in one of my cookbooks for some time now, it is a very simple dish involving wrapping some big scallops in prosciutto and frying them in sage infused olive oil and butter and served with caramelized apple. As apples are not in season and I don't like old apples I substituted the apple for pear and it seemed to work quite well. The prosciutto flavour works it's way in to the scallops really nicely and the dish tasted fantastic.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Easter and surrounding weeks
Well it has been quite some time now since the last exciting episode of 'The Blog of Paul Palmer', so I guess now would be a good time to write another update.
There wasn't much going on prior to Easter so I will not dwell on the period of time form the last posting up until Easter, other than to mention that I was quite well health wise. Work has been a little dull and doesn't look like it will improve much before I head home in June. The project I have been working on is in the testing phase at the moment, so no new interesting functionality to work on. On the positive side, the view out of my office is looking particularly nice at the moment, not so much rain.
Any way, I will now move on to more recent events starting with Easter weekend. It was nice to have a day off work on Good Friday, I think it was my first day off other than weekends since February. The weather was fantastic with temperatures reaching 18 degrees. I went for a long walk in the afternoon for about 5 hours (with a few short bus trips in there as well). I went to JJ Bean on Main St to buy a coffee however when I arrived there the line up was ridiculously long and there were no seats available so I turned around and walked back towards home again stopping to buy a gelato on the way. Cousin Ryan was having a BBQ at his place with a bunch of friends from church, so I stopped off at Granville island to pick up a steak on the way there. The steak was particularly nice although I slightly overcooked it so one end of it was bordering on well done. It still tasted pretty good though. It was nice being able to spend the evening outdoors again, I don't think there had been another night since early October that we could have been outside without freezing. Spring must be here at last.
On Sunday my home group had an Easter dinner. Easter dinner over here is remarkably similar to Christmas dinner and thanksgiving dinner. I was asked to bring an appetizer so had a great time looking through my cook books for appetizer ideas. I don't often get the chance to make appetizers, it always seems a bit silly making appetizers for one person. I narrowed down my options to 8 different appetizers and took a trip to Granville island to see which ones I could find the ingredients for. In the end I settled on a pretty simple yet interesting recipe for cantaloupe (rock melon) wrapped in Serrano ham and finished with a spiced vinaigrette. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of it so you will have do with a photo of the photo in my cookbook. When I made it, it looked exactly the same, but I arranged them in a circle on a dinner plate.
Before dinner we all went outside for a giant mini-Easter egg hunt, with over 200 eggs hidden for us to find. I really thought I was doing pretty well so stopped looking so hard so that others could find some, only to find that I was even in the top four.
This week has been pretty good so far. Detour 180 are in town so I took Wednesday off work so I could spend the day with cousin Sarah, Jono and cousin Daniel. Then we met up with Roz and Reuben for dinner. Game one of the Stanley Cup playoffs happened to be on at the same time as dinner, and I struck it lucky and had a seat that faced the big screen TV. Sorry Sarah if I looked as if I was looking straight passed you for much of the evening, I probably was, but I was listening to you. Anyway Vancouver won the game near the end of the 4th overtime, at 12:30 in the morning, the 6th longest NHL playoff game in history.
There wasn't much going on prior to Easter so I will not dwell on the period of time form the last posting up until Easter, other than to mention that I was quite well health wise. Work has been a little dull and doesn't look like it will improve much before I head home in June. The project I have been working on is in the testing phase at the moment, so no new interesting functionality to work on. On the positive side, the view out of my office is looking particularly nice at the moment, not so much rain.
Any way, I will now move on to more recent events starting with Easter weekend. It was nice to have a day off work on Good Friday, I think it was my first day off other than weekends since February. The weather was fantastic with temperatures reaching 18 degrees. I went for a long walk in the afternoon for about 5 hours (with a few short bus trips in there as well). I went to JJ Bean on Main St to buy a coffee however when I arrived there the line up was ridiculously long and there were no seats available so I turned around and walked back towards home again stopping to buy a gelato on the way. Cousin Ryan was having a BBQ at his place with a bunch of friends from church, so I stopped off at Granville island to pick up a steak on the way there. The steak was particularly nice although I slightly overcooked it so one end of it was bordering on well done. It still tasted pretty good though. It was nice being able to spend the evening outdoors again, I don't think there had been another night since early October that we could have been outside without freezing. Spring must be here at last.
On Sunday my home group had an Easter dinner. Easter dinner over here is remarkably similar to Christmas dinner and thanksgiving dinner. I was asked to bring an appetizer so had a great time looking through my cook books for appetizer ideas. I don't often get the chance to make appetizers, it always seems a bit silly making appetizers for one person. I narrowed down my options to 8 different appetizers and took a trip to Granville island to see which ones I could find the ingredients for. In the end I settled on a pretty simple yet interesting recipe for cantaloupe (rock melon) wrapped in Serrano ham and finished with a spiced vinaigrette. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of it so you will have do with a photo of the photo in my cookbook. When I made it, it looked exactly the same, but I arranged them in a circle on a dinner plate.
Before dinner we all went outside for a giant mini-Easter egg hunt, with over 200 eggs hidden for us to find. I really thought I was doing pretty well so stopped looking so hard so that others could find some, only to find that I was even in the top four.
This week has been pretty good so far. Detour 180 are in town so I took Wednesday off work so I could spend the day with cousin Sarah, Jono and cousin Daniel. Then we met up with Roz and Reuben for dinner. Game one of the Stanley Cup playoffs happened to be on at the same time as dinner, and I struck it lucky and had a seat that faced the big screen TV. Sorry Sarah if I looked as if I was looking straight passed you for much of the evening, I probably was, but I was listening to you. Anyway Vancouver won the game near the end of the 4th overtime, at 12:30 in the morning, the 6th longest NHL playoff game in history.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
College Basketball
During March every year there is a basketball tournament between a bunch of US colleges. This year I decided to join in the fun by participating in the 'fantasy basketball' tournament. Basically you just pick the teams you think will win and then get points for each win, with points increasing as the rounds of the tournament go on.
Not being a great basketball fan, and not really knowing anything about the teams I decided on a somewhat unorthodox method of picking my winners. First off if I had been to the city the team was from I picked that team to win, unless I didn't really like the town. Next, if I had been to the state that the team was from I would pick the team, with the exception of teams from California for no real reason other than that my time in LA was probably my least favourite time in my trip to the US a few years ago. Seeing as I have not really visited many places in the US yet there were a lot of games that these first 2 methods did not cover, so for those games I went for the team with the better name.
Surprisingly these selection techniques did not work out so well for me, and I am now totally eliminated from the tournament only half way through the 3rd round. I was looking pretty good after the first round, on 19 points but then only managed another 6 points in the second round and none in the third. The next closest contestant in the group I am playing in has 59 points, so I am hoping to finish with more than half of that person's total, all I need is for Oregon to beat Florida and I achieve this lofty goal I have set myself.
In other news, nothing much has been happening here. A new coffee shop opened last week half a block from work. It is actually more of a chocolate shop but also have a pretty nice espresso setup. They were giving out free coffee and hot chocolate all week so I had 3, 2 lattes and a hot chocolate. The lattes were not too bad, but I think the barista needs a bit of practice, still not bad for his first week. The hot chocolate was pretty good, not too sweet and not too milky. They sell coffee beans roasted by some decent local roasters so I may try them out some time in the next few weeks. Oh that reminds me, I bought some Bolivian beans from the Elysian Room this afternoon and my first impression was pretty favourable. Quite tasty indeed.
Not being a great basketball fan, and not really knowing anything about the teams I decided on a somewhat unorthodox method of picking my winners. First off if I had been to the city the team was from I picked that team to win, unless I didn't really like the town. Next, if I had been to the state that the team was from I would pick the team, with the exception of teams from California for no real reason other than that my time in LA was probably my least favourite time in my trip to the US a few years ago. Seeing as I have not really visited many places in the US yet there were a lot of games that these first 2 methods did not cover, so for those games I went for the team with the better name.
Surprisingly these selection techniques did not work out so well for me, and I am now totally eliminated from the tournament only half way through the 3rd round. I was looking pretty good after the first round, on 19 points but then only managed another 6 points in the second round and none in the third. The next closest contestant in the group I am playing in has 59 points, so I am hoping to finish with more than half of that person's total, all I need is for Oregon to beat Florida and I achieve this lofty goal I have set myself.
In other news, nothing much has been happening here. A new coffee shop opened last week half a block from work. It is actually more of a chocolate shop but also have a pretty nice espresso setup. They were giving out free coffee and hot chocolate all week so I had 3, 2 lattes and a hot chocolate. The lattes were not too bad, but I think the barista needs a bit of practice, still not bad for his first week. The hot chocolate was pretty good, not too sweet and not too milky. They sell coffee beans roasted by some decent local roasters so I may try them out some time in the next few weeks. Oh that reminds me, I bought some Bolivian beans from the Elysian Room this afternoon and my first impression was pretty favourable. Quite tasty indeed.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Oops my bad
In my last post I may have got a few of the facts a little wrong. It turns out that the plane was actually part of a movie set. So for those of you who were considering traveling to Vancouver, it is still very safe. Mum, you might want to mention to your travel agent that there wasn't actually a crash at all. Sorry about that. I will try to check the facts a little more thoroughly next time.
The movie that was being filmed was called "Passengers" or something, and stars Anne Hathaway. It is due out some time in 2008.
The movie that was being filmed was called "Passengers" or something, and stars Anne Hathaway. It is due out some time in 2008.
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