i've just had more vacation time than i have since i got home...three days off in a row...i've been spending most of my time-off with kristin, it's nice to have her back around again...i won't say much more, but...


the other day we went and watched 'walk the line', it wasn't as good as i thought it would be, joaquin did a great job, the singing was right-on, but the story seemed a bit slow, i thought it could've moved a little faster and been a little more gritty, i guess, that's the word...


christmas was alright. i spent it in surrey with the family. i got a bunch of giftcards and spent boxing day afternoon spending the one at futureshop and scored a bunch of old bjork cd's, the jackass collection dvd and the new recut and extended sincity dvd, which i have yet to watch...i originally saw it in bulgaria, so i wonder if even just the north american version will include a lot more scenes...and maybe be a little more 'gritty'...




i did get to visit my old cat banky, whom i haven't seen in over two years now. she's living with my mom's friend. she's happy and fat and i don't know if she remembered me...(yes, rory pictures of cats...)


other than that, it's new year's eve...happy birthday soutthida, happy birthday giselle...two years ago i was almost crushed to death and burnt alive on the streets in seoul, last year i almost broke my legs climbing rocky driveways in the dark on koh tao in thailand, this year will be a lot different, a kegger in surrey...

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it was a year ago today now, christmas eve dinner at the fancy 'cliff' restaurant on koh samui just outside hat chaweng beach, we spent the night drinking at the 'green mango' and ended up with a few bottles of singha on the beach with some stray dogs, watching the moon rise and waves crash on the shore, not a night for swimming and bit ominous now if i think about it...


we moved on up to hat bang rak and spent christmas building sand castles on the beach under the giant golden Buddha and a nice dinner at the 'starfish cafe' looking out at the sparkling lights on koh phang-nan a few kilometers off shore...


sometime early the next morning something woke me up and i arose and looked around. even today, i couldn't tell you exactly what it was...but i was awake and everyone else was asleep, it was still quiet, it was boxing day morning on koh samui...i drifted off again and woke up later with everyone to catch the morning boat across to koh phang-nan for the 'full moon party'


it was fricken hot, we were sweating right out of the shower and hauled our packs to the dock at bo phut beach and waited for the ferry boat...a giant steel and wood monstrosity affectionately named 'the spirit of thailand'. everyone packed on, a handful of families, some old couples, a few thai people and a good hundred or so grungy sweaty backpackers...


the trip across was uneventful, mike and i scored some beers at the bar and met a group of canadian guys...i remember how calm the water looked, it was turquoise, the sun hung high in the sky and not a breeze in the air, just the mugginess of a mid-december day in the gulf of thailand...


we arrived on hat rin beach sometime in the early afternoon and bartered with a sawnthaew driver for a trip to the other side of the island, the only place where we had a chance of finding a room for the night...


we talked and joked with a swedish couple in the back:

"we're heading to phuket next..."
"no...you can't...."
"what?"
"big wave, big wave..."


and that was that...we had no idea, until we started seeing tvs in the cafes and bars around the small town...and that was the tsunami...and at first it was 10,000, then 30,000 then 100,000 and now we're looking at over 250,000 dead...and we couldn't believe our eyes...it missed us by two days, our hotel on patong beach, phuket, was booked for the 28th...


weeks later, on thanon khao san, just outside the police station were hundreds of missing posters, teary-eyed families in search of loved ones, graphic images of bodies, tattoos, jewelery found...this went on for months and everytime i left and returned to bangkok the posters grew in number and larger and in desperation...

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this is really getting annoying, sometimes it takes over an hour for me to find a wireless hotspot that i can log on to and even then it kicks me off after a few minutes because the signal's so weak...

it's pissing me off!!! ahhh!

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whoever was running the 'default' network around my apartment has decided to enable security on their wireless network and i've been kicked off!!!


finding another network has been quite a task, surprisingly most of the 20 or so networks floating around seymour street happen to be secure and i can't log on. i've been trying default passwords from a hacker website but haven't been able to crack the code yet...


so i'm on a low strength unsecure network and it sucks, the signal strength sucks and i feel like i'm on dial-up...until i get this figured out, you might not see too many posts...


i'll see what i can do...


oh yeah, and some bum broke into my bar cooler last week in the middle of the night and stole three $200 each bottles of dom perignon (even at cost, we pay $178 a bottle)...little bastard, saw him on the video, he spent a good ten minutes hanging out in there while my night bartender was closing, zipped up the boxes in his jacket and booked it out the back door...so if anyone tries to sell you dom for cheap on the streets of vancouver, let me know...i'll try and get the video and post it on here for everyone...

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IMG_0081, originally uploaded by the second layer.

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spent a good five hours today around the city trying to get some christmas shopping done...it was a successful day and i'm already almost finished...'caban' on granville at 13th, 'restoration hardware' on granville at broadway, 'ming wo' on granville at 12th, 'opus' on granville island, 'oscars books' on broadway and the cool antique shop off cordova behind 'club shine' are all some of my favourite shops in this city and i visited them all...

unfortunately, it was another foggy day in vancouver, dark and cold, so i didn't get too many new photos...

i'm supposed to be meeting christa tonight for dinner and drinks, she's here on a one-day stop-over between australia and ontario but she hasn't called yet...

kira, a girl i met in turkey at the treehouses of olympos, is here in vancouver tonight too, she's out for drinks at 'the cambie' tonight, but i have to get up at 430am tomorrow for work, i'll have pass....there's always tomorrow after my work manager christmas party, i guess....

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IMG_0073
Originally uploaded by the second layer.

my apartment building, metropolitan towers, at the corner of seymour and nelson

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IMG_0070
Originally uploaded by the second layer.

my living room...matt's 42" HD plasma TV...

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IMG_0081
Originally uploaded by the second layer.

granville street as the sun set tonight, the art deco vogue theatre on the left

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IMG_0080
Originally uploaded by the second layer.

canada place from gastown this afternoon...

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my first two days off in a row in a month...unfortunately they're fully booked, but it's better than nothing...


last night, went out with matt and mike and friends to 'the bourbon' and then 'tonic' and they both sucked. well, the bourbon wasn't so bad, but not what i was looking for and i had a crappy time. i can't do that anymore, just go to bars and get tanked and be stupid...i like places with ome atmosphere now, chairs, tables, talking, hanging out...anyways...


today i met up with my parents at white spot for lunch, then they took me to this new musical playing at the vogue called 'umoja: a spirit of togetherness' that traces the history of african music from tribal times through to modern day fusions of ancient african music with hip hop and techno...it even had nudity, breasts and a lot of them...it was interesting...the african drumming was really cool...


afterwards i headed out to start my xmas shopping. i picked up a book for a friend and then went searching for my $20 limit secret santa present for the work management christmas party on monday night. i could'nt find anything. i'm seriously considering buying a $20 earls gift certificate, which i think would be hilarious.


downtown is really cool this time of year, lots of people out on the streets, lights everywhere, i stopped in futureshop and decided to buy a digital camera...



my new toy...

i got a canon elph powershot sd400 for $379...it's a nice little camera with a 256mb card and 5MP. it's got all the goodies i was looking for...video capture, exposure and shutter speed adjustment, decent optical zoom and a bunch of other cool features i didn't even know that i was looking for...SO finally i'll be able to add some as-it-happens photos to this blog and make it a bit more interesting...


i'm spending tomorrow doing some more shopping around the city so i'll take some photos for everyone...

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we are berry sah-ri!

a japanese securities firm has lost over $225 million dollars because of a single typing error. the company tried to sell 610,000 shares of J-Comm, a communications company, for 1 yen each (less than a penny), when they actually wanted to sell only 1 share at a cost of 610,000 yen ($5000)...


simple human error...they even tried to cancel the request three times but were refused by the Tokyo Stock Exchange, who say that they don't cancel orders, even for mistakes...


and even worse, the securities company was going to post a profit of $233 million dollars this year, cutting out the $225 million (maybe more) they just lost, that leaves them with a measly $8 million profit, not even enough to cover their ceo's salary...


so watch what you type!!!

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i just found this little restaurant down the street called 'the submore cafe' or in korean 'sub-mo-ruh ka-pay' which serves all kinds of little korean dishes. it even has a pc bang at the back...yes, it was just like korea...


and so i ordered some cheese gimbap and bibimbap for take out...and i'm sitting on the couch watching csi and eating bibimbap after a day of work, exactly what i was doing just over a year ago today back in good ol' gangneung...



bibimbap



mmmm gimbap!


it even came with all the fancy side dishes....gimchi, miso soup and a big bowl of gochujang...


in korea, it would've cost me about 6000 won, about $6, but here on the other side of the world, it set me back more than double that...and the soju is $14 a bottle here...how i miss the 80 cent soju bottles at family mart...

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there's nothing like coming home after a long hard days work, knowing i have the day off tomorrow, with a couple of bottles of our dead stock red wines in a paper bag, a winning lottery ticket in my pocket....yeah, i only won six bucks and a free ticket but hey, that's better than nothing...


and here i am, sipping red wine out of a juice glass, listening to jack johnson and loving being home...


things have been good...the snow has ceased, i have money burning a hole in my wallet, my transition to my new position (sounds like a rap) is coming to an end and i've got everything pretty much figured out, people from my past keep showing in my life and blowing me away (figuratively) and i'm happy...and that's all that counts...


you've probably noticed i added a 'latest visitors' section in the bottom right hand corner...it's crazy...look at where they're all coming from, i can't believe it...at the moment of this post people are coming to thesecondlayer from:
jersey city us, prague, rexdale canada, woodside us, tai wo ping hong kong, aliso viejo us, lancaster uk, golden us, glendale us, stamford us, japan, london, columbia us, vancouver, and even vancouver washington state....it's wild! i can't even believe it and think that google map stats is just making it up. i don't know a single person from 95% of those places...so if you're from somewhere wild and crazy like that and here...leave me a comment dammit! don't believe it...


while we're on that subject, this is what people are using in google to find my site...the top 20 search strings...
1. fairytale castles (what the fcuk?)
2. psychrophiles (ok...from www.thesecondlayer.com/marine for my earth and ocean sciences class years ago...it's a good site, i think, check it out)
3. dubai (yep, went there)
4. india hottest (yep, india is pretty fricken hot!)
5. barophiles (see #2)
6. halophiles (see #2)
7. laos (yep, went there too)
8. mod- (i have no idea?)
9. ohrid (ahh yes, the beautiful lake in macedonia, went there)
10. plovdiv (the cool little town in the north of bulgaria, been there)
11. polly's kettle (shite, forgot about this cool drunkass bar in itaewon in seoul)
12. thermophiles (see #2)
13. amrit- (i guess for amrit-SAR in india???)
14. b- (um....?)
15. bangkok artwork for street vendors in new york (i'm clueless?)
16. big boss travels chennai (i've been to chennai, but big boss???)
17. bo-phut bea- (little fishing village bo phut beach, northern ko samui, thailand)
18. catholic attorney chiang mai (um...chiang mai in northern thailand, but CATHOLIC ATTORNEY???
19. christmas in jeju (interesting? yes, indeed i did spend chrismas on jeju island...)
20. concrete garbage can ashtray british columbia (seriously, what the hell? how do you use concrete garbage can ashtray to find anything let alone this???!?!?)


and yeah!

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