Went out last night with Becky and Dave and Gill for drinks at the El Furniture Warehouse on Granville. Beers, and pitchers, and a Super Fantastic Amazing Happy Platter of appies as we talked of the good ol' days and those we've lost and found along the way. Gill and I went out for some nightcaps to our drinks at Ouisi Bistro back uptown before going home.


Gill plays for the thronging masses in Indonesia.
Gill was just back from a whirlwind American tour with her band The Flairs and a few shows at a 90,000 attendee festival in Indonesia. Their new album "Shut up and Drive" recently out in stores. There, in Indonesia, she drank warm wine from bags, $1 beer bintangs paid for with stacks of rupia, had personal body guards and rocked it to a mish-mash of cooked spicy veggies, carefully avoiding asian mystery meats on sticks.


The Flairs: Dawn Mandarino, Jen Foster, Ryan Hanna, Gill Hanna play Monday September 4th at the Buffalo Club
On recent tours closer to home, she recounted stories of blood spattered hotel room ceilings, stained mattresses, poo filled toilets and throwing televisions out of windows while sharing giant bottles of red wine with back-stage crack whores. This is the life of a rockstar.


Becky and Gill at the Furniture Warehouse.


Dave ponders ordering another beer...

Becky works as a medical assistant for a naturopathic physician who treats her early morning hangovers and aches and pains with a series of pins stuck in her ears, called Semi Permanent Auricular Acupuncture, they pierce acupuncture points around and in the ear making her feel much better.


The carefully placed pins.



Egad! She pulled one out!

In other news, we had our Grand Opening VIP party at Figmint last Saturday. It went off well with about 300 people showing up. There were lights flashing, media personalities and some beautiful people. I'm in this weeks WestEnder in Catherine Barr's Cat's Eye, page 30. Here's a shaky photo of the paper, I don't have a scanner, but you can get a better idea from the website.


"It isn't hard to imagine having a good time at the new Figmint Lounge thanks to Mike Montgomery (left), Myanh Ng and Kiran Parghi."

Booya!

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It was a day much like this, with gray clouds spreading out across a blue sky. It felt as though it could rain at any moment, and lonely people passed by as I sat and drank my latte on Granville, feverishly filling out the day's crossword. A girl approached and asked to sit with me.

"Can I ask you a question? It's sort of personal."
"Sure."
"If I were to ask you right now, could you tell me your saddest moment, your happiest moment, those moments that make up your life?"
And I thought. "No, I guess I couldn't."
And she smiled, stood up and disappeared.

That was a moment, one that I'll never forget. It made me think about all those moments, and now I could tell you, if you asked me, my saddest moment, my happiest moment, any of those moments that make up my life. Not because they happened after this encounter, but because after her, I see that basically life is just made up of all these fleeting moments that mean nothing unless someone remembers them.

So, the other day, I asked a friend if she could tell me her saddest moment. And she did, and I'll share it with you here, only because it really is that sad.

"One morning, I remember, I think was nine...and my dad came upstairs into my room. I shared one with my sister. And he sat on my bed, while she slept, and told me that my mother had left. And he didn't look any different, and I don't think I really understood what he was saying. And he left and went downstairs again. I climbed out of bed and sat on the staircase looking at him in the kitchen, he didn't know I was there and he was leaning over the counter crying tears. I had never seen him like that before."

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So it's been a long busy week with work and diving. I haven't had much time to post.


Misty and her man at Ouisis.

Last Sunday, I met Misty (from my days in Korea) and her boyfriend for breakfast at Ouisis on Granville. They were in town for a wedding. Misty now lives in LA with him, taching pilates and chilling on the beach. It was weird seeing her here, and we talked of the good ol' days back in Gangneung, crazy party nights drunk on dondongju and sake in Seoul and the Glynster.


Melvin at Ouisis.

On Wednesday, I met Melvin (also from my days in Korea) for a late lunch at the same place, Ouisis on Granville. It's my new nighttime haunt on the side of the bridge, a nice Louisiana style jazz restaurant, with a copper-topped bar, fancy murals, live music and a quiet outdoor courtyard. Melvin is doing well, still living in Gangneung and spending as much time as possible floating on an inner-tube at Gyeongpo or Anmok haesuyokjang. He was back in Vancouver for a short while, visited a friend in Hawaii, hung out with the family and headed home yesterday to start teaching again at Kwandong Taehakkyo. Melvin I miss those days with co-lo-nuh and ajummah selling nasty mayo sandwiches and sand and the pop of a beercap with a lighter...talking to him made me dream of traveling again, stirred up the little bug in me, made me want to return to Korea, to the Land of Morning Calm...

I started my Advanced Open Water Diving Course last Thursday. It was a couple of hours in the pool at St. George's learning the ins-and-outs of our dry suits. Up until then, I had only dove with a wetsuit so we had to practice tweaking our buoyancy and weight distribution. It was pretty easy and nice to get out of the water and be warm and dry.

Saturday, I headed up to Porteau Cover for our Peak Performance Buoyancy and Wreck Dives. The first dive was just to fool around with being neutrally buoyant in the ocean (saltwater is more buoyant than freshwater) and then did a nice swim around the wreck of the tugboat Granthall around 40-50 ft.


The Tugboat Granthall above water.

The wreck was amazing, too bad the visibility wasn't so good. We came around the left side, looking at giant starfish and anemones, a few huge ling cod and then to the front of the ship. Up and over onto the deck and towards the back. There were a few holes along the deck so we peeked in at rusted ladders and doorways. Near the midpoint of the wreck, everyone descended fairly quickly leaving me in a cloud of bubbles. I lost orientation and couldn't really tell whether I was ascending or descending or floating neutral, by the time I checked my depth on my SPG, I had ascended about 20 feet, and suddenly surfaced. A divemaster came up with me, the dive was credited, I breathed the whole way, and all was good.

Too bad though, because I still had 1900 psi in my tank which would've given me at least another 15-20 mins of dive time.

On Sunday, we all went to Whytecliff Park for our Deep and Navigation Dives. We moved all our gear onto the lawn and started suiting up, just as a firetruck pulled in, then another, then an ambulance, then four cop cars. The police said we had five minutes to get our gear off the lawn as a helicopter was about to land.


The chopper approaches.

We weren't quite sure what had happened. Our instructors ran down to the beach and asked around. Apparently, a girl was diving around a hundred feet. Her regulator fell apart (the thing she breathes from) and instead of grabbing her alternate (you always have two) or her buddy's, she panicked, inflated her BCD and rapidly ascended.

This is one of the most dangerous things you can do when diving. Once you pass about 80ft, you must make mandatory decompression stops. Diving at depth causes nitrogen to seep into your tissues. You must stop at certain depths and wait to allow the nitrogen to work its way out of your system, otherwise it will form a gas upon ascent and bubbles will become trapped in your blood system giving you decompression sickness, aka the bends. This is a very serious condition, treatable only by quick transport to a hyperbaric chamber which can simulate the effects of depth, giving the nitrogen time to come out of your tissues without forming a gas.

Another problem that can occur form rapid ascent are lung overexpansion injuries. If you breathe compressed air at depth, then ascend without breathing (while holding that compressed air in your lungs), it expands and can actually cause your lungs to burst or to force bubbles of oxygen gas into your tissues. This is also very serious. It's why the most important rule of SCUBA diving is to "NEVER HOLD YOUR BREATH!"

Anyways, the helicopter skipped out on landing on the grass and instead landed right on the beach. A tremendous feat as there was only about 20 feet of sand available and there were a lot of overhanging branches. The pilot came down to about 5 ft turned the helicopter in mid-air and came in slowly under the branches.


The helicopter at Whytecliff.


The paramedics at work.

Here's a short video clip of the helicopter taking off.



So, after that, needless to say, everyone was a bit shaken up, especially because we were doing our training deep dive that day. We decided to do it anyways...until! About 45 minutes later, after we had reviewed our dive plan, along came the firetrucks and ambulances and police cars and helicopter again. And this time we had two more bent divers. A divemaster and a trainee. The trainee had some problems with air during a deep training dive and shared air on her instructor's alternate. They ascended too quickly together and both got bent. The instructor should have let her go at about 30 ft and then ascended by himself more slowly. It's better to have one diver bent and the other okay, so at least he could have helped her but something must've happened. The pilot (now well experienced at the beach landing) returned and took them both away.

Our instructors said that in all their years of diving they had never seen the helicopter land, or heard of three divers injured in such a short time period at one place. In fact, someone died at Whytecliff on Friday. Everyone was feeling uneasy and so we called both the dives (postponed them) packed up and got out of there. The ocean didn't want us that day. Anyways, we are all safe. I'm doing my night dive on Tuesday and the deep dive and navigation dive will be rescheduled for some time later in the month.

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Went to the Red Bull Flugtag yesterday afternoon. The first Flugtag was held in Austria in 1991. Since then, aspiring pilots from all over the world have created home-made flying machines and launched them into bodies of water in (usually failed) attempts at flight. The 15th flugtag, sponsored by Red Bull, took place in Vancouver yesterday in the waters of False Creek by Science World.


The Launch Ramp

The top prize was a $7500 pilot's training course won by the "Big Shooter" from Vancouver. The crafts were judged not only on distance flown, but on creativity, originality and showmanship.

Amanda and I made it down for the first launch at 2pm. There were a total of 32 competitors from all over Canada. There were about 30,000 spectators, a lot more than I had thought would come. It was hot, hot and the sun was blazing. Some of the flying machines were just for fun, ie: they had no hope in hell of going anywhere but straight down, but others were carefully engineered crafts. We only stayed for about an hour, mostly because it was way too hot. It was a fun outing nonetheless.


Nice that I found a syringe in the rocks where we were sitting, stupid heroin junkies leaving their crap lying around.


The Ice Hockey Team


And the Ice Hockey Team doesn't make it far...


This was an exact replica of the DeLorean (sic?) from Back To The Future, again, didn't go very far...


This glider actually looked like it would fly...


But it didn't and it was left to sink in False Creek.


The guy standing in front of me had this ghastly yellowish-white zit waiting to burst and I was dry heaving...


She's going to be pissed that I posted this photo, but I think she looks nice...


Just a nice picture of False Creek and Granville Island from the Burrard Street Bridge on the walk home.

And that's it...more pictures and details can be found at www.redbullflugtag.ca

I'm going out for breakfast with Misty (from Korea) this morning. She's here for a wedding and I'll be meeting Melvin (also from Korea) for lunch on Tuesday. Tonight is my first night of real work, we're doing a trial run at the restaurant for the next three days with friends and family. Kind of scary...

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well i've got a job. weird because my horoscope today said:

You have had your time off and now it's time to get back to work.

this is true...it's been almost three months since i've worked.

i went for an interview on monday. the interviewer was an old boss of mine from about 8 years ago at earls guildford, so it quickly turned from an interview into a visit with an old friend. i'll be bartending at a new upscale dining restaurant/lounge near city hall. the space is great, it's union, the food is contemporary european and incredible. should be good. we open on august 28th. so far it's still under construction. for now we've been going through training, tasting all the food.


Fatty Duck Liver - Foie Gras De Canard

yesterday, i tried duck foie gras for the first time. smooth, fatty, creamy, but not my bag baby.


Calf Thymus Gland - aka Sweetbread

i also tried a sweetbread and asparagus ravioloi. sweetbread is the undescriptive name for cooked calf thymus gland. to be realy gross here, it comes out as a membrane covered bag of brain-like chunks...interesting that people eat this. it tasted like chicken with the texture of hard cottage cheese.

back to training again this afternoon, and a lot more shifts this week and next week. it's tough learning a whole new menu and new list of drinks, as well as a whole new level of service (it's a little bit more classy than earls). but i'm sure it will all work out. i just don't want to end up working too much, especially with school coming up soon.

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as i walked to club monaco this morning, i looked up and saw david duchovny, fox mulder, the zoolander hand model walking across burrard. yesh, it was him. and he had all these weird freckles on his face, which i guess he usually gets covered up.

my celebrity encounters...

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One of my favourite stores on the South Granville strip is caban. It's a division of Club Monaco selling higher end clothing, and household items, limited collection unique pieces such as hand carved chairs, low profile high end couches, bed sheets, lamps, towels, picture frames, etc. I don't actually buy anything there because it's way above my budget (like $1000 for a plastic chair or $280 for a vase), but I like to wander around and look at the stuff. The whole store is designed like a loft apartment, with kitchen items being sold in the "kitchen" and living room items being sold in the "living room" and so on. Anyways, caban is closing. They are shutting down all their stores across Canada and having some sort of a sale (like $1000 chairs reduced to $800, YAY!).

The other day Becky picked me up a piece of this high-end, high-fashion lofty life from caban for a house-warming gift. We had seen this together shopping there awhile ago and thought it was hilarious. And at $17 a bottle, you better be either crazy or rich to use it.



IRONING WATER! IRONING WATER? What the hell is Ironing Water? Can you believe that somewhere out there, some dude spends $17 a bottle, with this non-concentrate water to pour in his iron. The back label reads, "We were inspired by our European friends' simple way of adding extra care to everyday ironing. The Laundress Ironing Water classic scent will freshen every item ironed or steamed." I guess it's a neat idea, and would be nice, but it's fricken expensive and I'd go through a bottle a week. Ironing water...ha!

Amanda brought over Season 1 of Prison Break the other night. I really liked it and can't wait to see the whole thing. We only watched about 4 episodes together. I was sneaky and watched the next three without her last night. She's already seen them though. A man is convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. His younger brother, commits a crime in order to be put into prison so that he can help his brother escape. He's a structural engineer who did work on refitting the prison, so he knows the ins and outs. He has 30 days before the execution. I swear that my friend Brendan Penny, who plays AJ on the CTV show Whistler (I used to work with him at Earls) looks exactly like Wentworth Miller who plays Michael Scofield on Prison Break. What do you think?


Brendan Penny


Wentworth Miller

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Yay! Post number 300!

I was up early this morning to visit the doctor. I've been having some sharp pains in my left ear and I'm diving Whyte Islet on Tuesday so I wanted to make sure everything was okay. She said I have some minor inflammation at the top of each ear drum, probably from a forceful equalization the other week, but it's not a big deal and should go away before I dive. Just be more careful next time. I signed up for the Advanced SCUBA course at the end of August. There are five ocean dives, where we'll focus on night diving, wreck diving, dry suit diving, peak buoyancy control and underwater navigation. I had to buy a bunch of extra gear for the new course, so I spent a couple of hundred dollars on dive knife, a primary and secondary light source, some new gloves and a signalling device.

Amanda met me at noon today and we went down Davie Street for gay day in the gayborhood...the Pride Parade. There were all kinds of wild characters, transvestites, grown men with moustaches in leather butless chaps and greased up boys dancing on sparkling floats with multicolored flags. A good time was had by all. It was the first time I've seen the parade and we got there a bit late, so I didn't get too many great photos...

(BTW: This is not meant to be mean...)


gay...


gay sign with poor punctuation...


gay child...


gay synchronized dancing...


gay ?


gay flag...


gay nuns...


really gay...


gay parade host...


Afterwards, we walked down Denman to Stanley Park and around the Seawall. Then for dinner at the Spanish La Bodega on Howe, damn those patatas are good. Then back to my place for a movie. We had fun, maybe she's reading this now...I like her because she asks me good interested questions, and I can't lie...no, actually it's more like I don't want to lie. Looking forward to seeing you again...

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I'm back on track. Looks like I've got free internet and cable right now! Unfortunately, I just got a postcard from Shaw in the mail saying that my cable's still hooked up to help with the moving transition and if I call them within the next two weeks I'll waive the $30 connection fee, otherwise they'll cut it off. So I guess I'm going to end up having to pay for it anyways.

This week has been tiring. I had a 16 hour move on Monday, followed by two long days of setting everything up. I went to Ikea and spent a good $500 buying some new shelves and other household items: cutlery, dishes, a rug, etc. I bought my couch second-hand and had to make the trip all the way into Surrey to pick up all the furniture and boxes that have been sitting in my parent's family room for the last 3 years.

Here's my new bachelor apartment as photographed from the Kitchen.



So far, for Vancouver's Symphony of Fire or Celebration of Light, whatever it's called these days, I've seen every show. Last Wednesday was Italy, then China on Saturday (who were in my opinion the best yet) and the Czech Republic this Wednesday. Tomorrow, Mexico does its thing. I brought my new camera, tripod and remote down to Vanier Park to get some pictures. It was harder then I expected. I had to anticipate the light levels from the fireworks beforehand, and adjust my aperture and shutter-speed to compensate. I couldn't really make too many adjustments once the show started because I would've been standing up in people's view. I really would have liked to have been able to change the settings as the show went on and tweak them. Some of the blasts were brighter then others and so there were a few shots that were completely blown out. These are the best. I'm not sure if I'll try again on Saturday, for Mexico, because I'll be down with my parents and their friends and it might be a bit awkward lugging around my tripod. Another problem was the amount of smoke generated by the blasts that looked really bad in the background. I'm not sure how to work around this.

The best settings seemed to be an aperture around f10 with a 8 sec exposure time. I would open the shutter as the firework exploded, hold it and then release the shutter as it fizzled out.















And for any of you who are wondering, things have been going really well with my new lady friend and I'm happy and looking forward to whatever may come.

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