Soul Searchings

Elaine and I spent the past weekend across the border. It wasn’t exactly the ideal time for this excursion, seeing as how the Canadian dollar had fallen by a whopping 15% in the previous two weeks, down to just 84¢ to the American dollar, but we had this outing planned since two months ago. Back in August, Super 8 had a 888 promo, where starting on 8/8/8, for 8 days starting at 8pm EST each night, the first 800 reservations made online to any of their motels would only cost $8.88. I decided to try my luck, and was fortunate enough to nab a reservation for this past Saturday.

We took to the road at 6am Saturday morning and got to the border half an hour later. By this time, the lineup was about an hour long. After getting through, I drove down to Bellingham where a station there had gas for $2.89 per gallon, which works out to be 76.9¢ USD per liter. What’s interesting is that many of the gas stations down in Washington State, including all the Arco stations, do NOT accept credit cards! When I first found that out that they only accepted cash or debit on my previous trip, I was bewildered. This time, I went prepared with cash. Some stations do accept credit cards, but they generally cost about 30¢ more per gallon.

Our first stop was the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. As I’ve mentioned in the past, my memory is notoriously bad, so I can’t even recall when was the last time I had visited a zoo, or if I had even been to a zoo at all. Whatever the case, it took almost four hours to finish our tour of the facilities, and it was quite enjoyable overall.

Our next stop was Southcenter Mall, which after the completion of a large expansion in July, became the largest shopping center in Washington State. It’s a pretty nice looking mall, and the first that I can remember having carpeting in the mall corridors.

We checked into Super 8 after that, and the plan was to head out to GameWorks later that night, but I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover that the lineup of TV channels included one that had a feed for CBC - meaning that I was able to watch the Canucks game on Hockey Night in Canada, down in Seattle! I’m pretty glad I watched the game, because it was a doozy, where we came back from being down 3-1 to defeat Calgary 5-4 in overtime. There’s something about this year’s Canucks that has a distinctly different flavour about them, where even when they’re down a couple goals, you get the feeling that the game isn’t over yet. This was something that definitely wasn’t true the previous couple years. Anyways, Elaine actually ended up falling asleep while I was watching the game, so I decided to skip GameWorks for the night and go tomorrow instead, which ended up working out very well.

On Sunday, we were up by 9am, and after a quick complimentary breakfast of cereal and pastries, we headed out to the Japanese Gardens. Because it was quite chilly outside, we decided to skip it. Instead, we headed downtown for GameWorks. Parking is pretty bad in the area, worse than downtown Vancouver. Most parking lots in the area were charging $7 for two hours of parking, even on a weekend. Fortunately after circling around a couple times, we found one lot near 6th Avenue and Pine Street that had a flat rate of $7 for weekend parking, and it’s a good thing I did.

One of the main things I wanted to do on this trip was to play Ferrari F355 Challenge for the first time in about five years. Back in the day when I was playing often and got my world record lap times, I had always wanted to record myself playing, but never got the chance to due to lack of equipment. I finally got my hands on a camcorder a couple years ago, but by then all the F355 cabinets had disappeared locally. Over the years, I had posted a couple videos on Youtube of races I had done on the Dreamcast version of the game, but they were nowhere close to what I did on the arcade version. On numerous occassions, people called me a liar because they could not believe that the lap times I claimed to have done were possible, despite the fact that I had pictures of the lap times as evidence. This was my one chance to get some proof that I really did accomplish what I did in the game.

I didn’t expect to be able to match my old records, and I knew that there would be a re-learning curve to my nazodrifting technique, but I didn’t anticipate it being as difficult as it was! I ended up playing for almost four full hours, and after all was said and done, I was still nowhere close to my previous records. I was about three seconds slower on Monza, and five seconds slower on Sugo. However, it wasn’t a complete wasted effort, as those laps would still be considered very impressive by most, and at the very least it’ll help to prove that at one time, I really was as good as I had claimed to be. For my efforts, I walked away with a strange feeling of both disappointment and satisfaction. I also walked away with six blisters on my left hand from all the nazodrifting.

One definite positive was that this endeavour cost me a lot less than I would have anticipated. Back in the day, the local machines started with under 80 seconds on the clock for driving mode on Sugo, with extra time given for passing checkpoints. I was fast enough that my lap times were almost the same as the extra time given, so on average I was only losing a couple seconds per lap. The longest game I played was over 28 minutes long, where I was on my 22nd lap - pretty good value for a dollar. However, on the machine at GameWorks, it had a ridiculous amount of time on the clock to start, about 240 seconds, or three times as much. Theoretically, if this was back in the day, I’d be able to play close to 90 minutes and do over sixty laps, all on one credit, which is only 75¢. Alas, that was then, and this is now, and I was struggling to find my form. Despite having many terrible laps, each game still lasted fifteen minutes or more, so all in all I only spent about $7.50 for the four hours I was there.

After that, we headed back north to Lynnwood, where we did some more shopping at Alderwood Mall. For dinner, we went to Claim Jumper, where I had gone with the guys a few months ago. I had forgotten how big their portions were, and I got epically owned. Elaine decided to get the appetizer platter, and I went for the full rack of beef ribs. The appetizer platter was monstrous, with buffalo wings, mozarella sticks, potato skins, cheesy potato cakes, and an absolute mountain of onion rings. We were both full with half the platter still remaining, and we hadn’t even started on the giant plate of beef ribs. We ended up only eating one rib and packing all the rest up to go. We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott for the second night, which cost about US$100 through Priceline.

On Monday, we headed north again to the Seattle Premium Outlets for round three of shopping. I was more interested in going to the Wal-Mart Supercenter after that. They have so many unique foods that aren’t available here, and Elaine and I just love getting new snack foods and drinks to try. I decided that we’re going to start a gallery of interesting food products that we come across, just for fun. Finally, we continued north and stopped at Bellis Fair where we did the last bit of shopping and did more household shopping at Target. All in all, we bought about $800 worth of merchandise, of which only about $80 of that was mine. There was no lineup at the border by the time we got there at 11pm, and we were waved through without incident. That concluded a very enjoyable weekend!

Things change. Sometimes you don’t realize it until well after the fact.

While reading over some of my previous entries, I was amazed at how much different this year has been compared to the last.

Sports have always been a big part of my life, so let’s have a quick recap of the year:
Mountain Biking: Last fall around this time, I had just gotten into it with my coworkers, and while all of them are still around, there had been no talks whatsoever about doing rides this season. The summer has come and gone, and my bike continues to sit dormant in the storage room.
Tennis: This spring, I had been anxious to play again, so I got an earlier than usual start on the season, but it ended earlier than expected as well. I’m not sure why, but I lost my urge to play by early July, which was still the prime of the tennis season.
Softball: In the spring, I had signed on to play on my coworker’s softball team as a fulltime member. I had expected to get better as I gained more experience, but that was not to be the case. I don’t know if it was a sophomore slump or what, but overall I performed quite poorly this season. I felt less confident in the outfield, and my hitting had deteriorated as well. It got to the point where I ended up being put near the bottom of the lineup. Our team as a whole didn’t do very well either, and we took our fair share of tough losses. All in all, it was a pretty bad season, and even if they want me back for next year, I don’t think I want to be a fulltime member. At most, I’d want to be a sub if they need me.
Poker: Ever since Elaine came back from Kamloops, I had pretty much stopped playing poker completely. I may have played the odd Sit and Go, but the days of spending hours playing online have come and gone. As I mentioned, I mainly liked playing because I enjoyed it, not because of the monetary factor, and it got to the point where there was a higher likelihood of getting frustrated at bad beats than feeling satisfaction from winning a nice hand, so the incentive to play was greatly reduced.
Bowling: I was once a decent bowler that could average 150, with a high game of 209. Now I’m just a hack who struggles to break 100. I guess the problem with being a spin bowler is that it’s harder to get back into a rhythm compared to a straight bowler after an extended absense from the game. Last Thursday, we had a company bowling event, and I couldn’t believe how bad I was. I couldn’t aim for the life of me. I was actually trying that first game, and I scored a 78. That’s right, a 78. I don’t think I’ve EVER bowled that badly in my life. The second game was no better. After five frames, I think I had a score of just 41, so I gave up. I started doing my freestyle bowling with the between the leg shots, the kick shots, and the bowling from the seats shot. I finished with a score of 51, which actually enabled me to win the pity trophy for the lowest score. Me, winning an award for the lowest bowling score. Now that’s ironic.
Soccer: Our company has only played one match in the past year, and that was a month ago versus UTStarcom again, the team that I almost got into a fistfight with the last time we tangled on the turf. We played them to a narrow 2-1 victory, to bring our unbeaten record to 6-0-2 all-time. It’s pretty impressive when we usually play against companies with staff numbers that greatly exceed our’s.
Go-Karting: The last time I had gone go-karting was over five years ago. That was when my buddy Adam was working there. We had met while playing F355 Challenge in the arcades. A few months ago, we had a company event at TBC, and it was a blast. We each had two races, and the fastest overall lap time determined the winner. I expected myself to win, and would have been very disappointed with any other result. How could I honestly believe I had the ability for real competitive racing if I couldn’t even beat my coworkers? Fortunately, I did manage to win the title fairly convincingly. For my birthday, I organized another go-kart event, and it was a blast. I’m now planning on making this a yearly event…

I had talked about F355 Challenge back in Chapter 8. For awhile, I think back in 2001, Adam and I were competing to be the best at the game. I persisted at the game longer, and eventually learned my nazodrift technique to became world champion. However, I’m the one who now ultimately looks up to him. Adam was very similar to me, a young Asian kid who believes he has the talent to do well in real racing. The difference is he had the vision and determination to actually do something about it, whereas I just let my dream fade away. I think it was in 2003 when he went to attend the well known Skip Barber Racing School down in California. As you can well imagine, racing school isn’t cheap, with each weekend easily costing $4000, whether it’s for classes, practice, or racing. I haven’t followed his progress very closely, but it sounds like he has had some success, but not to the point where he has made it as a professional racer. He finished second in the Western Regional Championship Formula series in 2004, and it seems he is now running in the National Championships. I have no idea how much it has cost him so far to realize his dream, but I would have to assume it’s well over $100k.

The most serious racing I’ve ever done was just a few autocross events at Boundary Bay, back around 2004. The events were fun, but it just wasn’t worth it to spend an entire Sunday just to get in a few quick 30-second runs through the cones. I was still driving the Camry then, so certainly I couldn’t be competitive, especially when they had the Mini Cooper in the same vehicle class. One of my goals in life is to one day go to racing school and get some real racing experience. It may be too late to be a professional racer, but never too late to get behind the wheel.

Finally, there’s volleyball, the sport that has been the most impacting and has helped shape my life since high school. This past Friday was the first time I had played indoor volleyball in over half year, and I had only played grass volleyball a couple times total this year. I felt so incredibly rusty and had a difficult time reading the balls. I was quite sore the next day, evidence that it has been far too long since I last played. I’m going to try and go to Bonsor regularly again.

I can’t believe it’s been over ten months since I last wrote. I have no idea where the time went.

After reading back on some of these old blog entries, I realize that there really is value in these memoirs. They provide a much more detailed glimpse into events of the past, certainly a more vivid rendition than I would be able to recollect based on memory alone. It’s fun to read back on these entries, and in a way I feel a small sense of reliving them.

Now, what has happened in these past ten months? Certainly there has been some significant changes, and the one that would stand out is Elaine and I moving into our own place. I think it was early last December when I started to consider whether it was time for the two of us to finally move out on our own. I was financially stable at this point, with no financial burdens, having paid off my Yaris and all, so short of just putting my money into investments, I thought maybe it was time to make a bigger purchase - an apartment. I wrestled with the idea of renting instead, but I just didn’t like the concept of paying a grand or more per month with nothing to show for it at the end. I eventually realized I was looking at this too much as a black and white situation. Even if purchasing a place and assuming a mortgage, the interest portion of the mortgage payments would essentially be the equivalent of paying rent. However, I still did prefer purchasing instead of renting.

I’m pretty much a homebody. When I’m comfortable in my surroundings, I don’t like to change. While I had entertained the idea of getting an apartment out in Richmond, my main intentions were still getting a place closer to home, and the only place that really fits the bill is King Edward village (KEV). This development was supposed to have been completed by middle of 2007, with Phase I scheduled for occupancy at around the beginning of 2007. But as was with many other real estate developments during this time, it was severely behind schedule, and even towards the end of December 2007, they were finally just getting units in Phase I completed. Phase II was still months away, and this was the building I was more interested in.

I started learning about the whole real estate business on the Real Estate Talks forum and it proved to be an invaluable resource for me to learn about all things I needed to know to get myself ready for purchasing a new apartment. Given the prices of real estate in Vancouver, I decided that we could only consider a one-bedroom apartment for the time being. I didn’t have many other requisites, but I wanted a north-facing unit with a balcony. Given the way the Phase II tower is laid out, there actually aren’t too many suites that fit this bill, perhaps only about 20 total.

When I started looking at the listings, there were none that were to my liking. There were a bunch of units available that were on the Knight Street side, facing west. From what I had read, west-facing is a bad idea because the apartment will turn into an oven with the sun shining directly in during the afternoons, especially during the summers. I looked at the MLS listings everyday, hoping a suitable unit would eventually be listed. Towards the end of December, I found an attractive listing that fit exactly what I was looking for - a one-bedroom unit on the Kingsway side with a balcony. The listed price for the assignment was approximately $306,000. After a little deliberating, I decided to make an initial offer, although I guess it was pretty much a lowball at $278,888. The realtor handling the sale told me that the price was too low for his client to entertain. After thinking it over some more, I made a second offer for $288,888, which was met with increased attention. The realtor presented the offer to his client, and they decided that if I was willing to bump the offer up slightly, we may be able to reach a deal. I made my third and final offer for $292,000… and they accepted it. However, of course there were still conditions that needed to be satisfied, such as proving that I had enough to cover the initial amounts due immediately, and was financially sound enough to assume a mortgage for the remaining balance owed to the developer upon completion.

I’ll briefly explain how an assignment works. Purchasing an assignment just means you’re taking over the pre-sale contract from the original buyer. It doesn’t mean you actually own the listed apartment yet. When the unit is completed, you still need to close the deal based on the contract with the developer.

The original purchase price for my unit back in 2005 was $222,900. I paid $292,000 for the assignment. The increase in price is the “lift”, which comes to $69,100. This amount goes directly to the original owners of the unit, due in full immediately. I also had to come up with another $22,290, which was to replace their original 10% deposit. So all in all, I needed to come up with $91,390 up front, of which I gratefully had my parents’ help with some of that. The remaining amount I would owe upon completion is $200,610, which would be 90% of the original price of $222,900.

There were a few reasons the original owners were willing to let it go for $292,000, which is almost $14,000 off their originally listed price. First of all, the original owners had actually bought three presale units, and all of them had identical layouts, except two of them were west-facing and had a layout that was a complete mirror of the third one, which is the unit I took off their hands. Since they were holding on to so many suites, they may have been more willing to let the first one go. As of now, they still have one unit that remains listed and unsold. The second reason is that I ended up negotiating the deal myself, without bringing in a realtor of my own. I didn’t really intend on doing this, but that’s how it worked out. If I had brought in my own agent, they probably wouldn’t have accepted an offer lower than $297,000, and I’ll explain why.

In BC, the typical commission on a real estate transaction is 7% of the first $100,000 and 2.5% on the remainder. So on a $300,000 house, the total commission would be $12000. Generally, this would be split between the agents of the seller and the buyer. If the buyer does not bring in his own agent, then the seller’s agent does not need to split the $12000 commission. However, if there are not many offers made to the seller, and the only offer is lower than what the seller is willing to let it go at, the seller’s agent can make a deal with the seller to rebate back the portion of the commission that otherwise would have been paid to the buyer’s agent. For example, if the lowest the seller was willing to let the unit go at was $300,000, he would receive $288,000 and the agent would receive $12000. But if the lowest offer is only $295,000, the agent could agree to only take $7000 commission, which ends up leaving the owner with the same $288,000. The agent also ends up with the same amount that he would have if a buyer’s agent was brought in. So the real winner is the buyer, who pays $5000 less, the amount that otherwise would have gone to his agent if he had hired one.

Of course, doing things yourself does present some risk, in that you would be much less familiar with all the contractual terms, conditions and options. If everything is approached with caution and due dilligence, it may well be worth it. In my case, it worked out really well, but there was one detail that I missed, and it could have cost me severely.

I ended up finalizing the deal on the assignment in February, and then the waiting game was on for the unit to be completed, which ended up being several months later. There was a period of brief anxiety when several other developments in the lower mainland went into receivership, and some of the owners at KEV were concerned of the possibility of it happening to us as well. For example, the Sophia just off of Kingsway down near 12th Avenue was one such development. Construction was already 85% complete, but due to the delays and skyrocketing construction costs, the developer determined they could not afford to finish the remaining 15%. At that point, construction was halted, and the owners were hung out to dry. They determined it would cost almost $10M more to finish construction, and to raise the money, the owners would have to pay a lot more for their units than originally agreed to on their presale contracts. Even now, I don’t know what the status of this is, but for several people, the ones that bought units there on assignment, the situation is much, much worse.

There were stories of two people that had bought assignments. The difference is one of them had the lift and deposit payments held in trust, contingent on the unit actually being completed and the contract being executed. The other paid the lift and deposit up-front direct to the seller. Now, despite the fact that he may no longer be able to execute the contract he bought, he is still out his lift and deposit payments. This is what could have happened to me if KEV went into receivership, and this was one detail that I didn’t pay enough attention to. I guess when I purchased the assignment, I didn’t consider this to be a possibility. Fortunately, the group behind the development of KEV is the Acquilini family, who owns the Vancouver Canucks, and they have a much longer history than the developers that couldn’t complete. Also for their reputation, they probably couldn’t afford to abandon construction on KEV, although they did all they could to reduce costs.

We had our first walkthrough - the first time we had seen what our future home looks like - in early May, and there were still a lot of deficiencies, such as doors that hadn’t been put in, and electrical outlets that hadn’t been completed. However, the view was spectacular, and we have a 180° view of everything to the north of Kingsway, including downtown and the North Shore mountains.

We took possession of the unit at the end of May, and even then the unit had not been cleaned whatsoever. You’d think when you take possession of a brand new apartment that it would be cleaned up, but there was still construction dust everywhere. From that point on, we slowly made the 596 sqft space into a home. This involved many hours of cleaning, many hours of shopping for just the right pieces of furniture, many hours of getting everything into place, and many hours of setting everything up. Not everything worked out exactly as planned, but all in all, I’m pretty happy with the end result. We made the most out of our little apartment. 

After about two months of slowly getting things ready, we finally officially moved in on July 26th.

With the CAD-USD exchange rate reaching an all-time high of 1 CAD = 1.10 USD last week, a bunch of us decided to head down south to do some shopping. Instead of going to Bellis Fair or the Seattle Premium Outlets, we decided to do it right and go all the way down to Portland for some tax-free shopping! With the additional fact that it was a long weekend, we knew that the border lineups would be crazy. In order to beat the rush, we figured getting to the border at 6am would probably be ideal. Even the early people heading to the Seattle Premium Outlets shouldn’t be at the border before 7am, since the mall opens at 10am. We planned to leave at 5:30am, but things didn’t quite work out as intended. The original plan was for Thi to drive all of us in his minivan, but while he was cleaning it out for the trip, he realized that the insurance papers were not there. The vehicle itself had current insurance, but the papers were nowhere to be found. Deciding to not risk driving without the papers, we went to plan B, and that ended up being me driving Thi and Kent, and Chanh driving Clara, Gary and Mimi. We headed out at about 6:30pm, grabbed some Timmie’s, and got to the border shortly after 7am. Even this early in the morning, we were treated to a full 90 minute lineup. It definitely could have been a lot worse, as the lineup grew to an estimated three hours by 8am. We inched along and finally got through at around 9am. We drove down towards Seattle, and decided to make a slight detour east to Redmond to have lunch at the Todai there. We arrived at about 10:30am, but the problem was it didn’t open until 11:30am, so we wasted away the hour shopping at the Macy’s and perusing at Borders. This was only the second time I’ve been to Todai, the first being a year and a half ago with Elaine at Las Vegas. The weekend lunch price is $16.95, and most of us assumed that it included soft drinks, but we were mistaken. I’m pretty sure the one in Las Vegas did include it, but alas, it ended up being a $19 meal, not including tax and tip. I definitely didn’t get my money’s worth this time, and felt unsatisfied upon leaving. I didn’t feel especially hungry to begin with, and it failed to live up to how I remembered the Las Vegas location to be. Asides from the inclusion of drinks, the Las Vegas location had endless prawn tempura, and chocolate mousse for the made-to-order crepes. The Redmond location only had mixed tempura with some prawns thrown in, and no chocolate mousse! Going by what what I ordered the last time I was at Todai, you know how much I love the chocolate mousse!

After our meal, we continued the long drive down to Portland. Kent took over the driving duties for awhile, because I didn’t think I would have been able to drive the entire five hours myself. I ended up driving again after taking a short nap in the back seat. Even though I was not supposed to drive in our original plans, I had decided to try and get ample sleep for the trip down, but it didn’t quite work out as planned. I went to sleep especially late on Thursday night, so that I would be tired on Friday night and sleep early. That part worked fine, and I was tired enough to go to sleep at 11pm. I fell asleep pretty quickly, but for some reason it was not a deep sleep. After the episode of The Simpsons that I had put on to fall asleep to finished, my brain kind of woke itself up and realized that the show was over. Of course, I tried to continue sleeping… but I wasn’t able to. It was as if I had just taken a power nap for 15 minutes. I got up and went to the computer to put another episode on, when I got a strange message on MSN from Ken, with an attachment purporting to be an picture. It didn’t take me long to realize that he had a virus, so I ended up spending the next hour or more trying to help him get rid of it. It turns out we found something even more scary on his computer, and that was a remote desktop software called eMando disguising itself as svchost. It seems like this particular trojan has a relation to poker, as I read that someone else might have gotten his poker account looted because of it. Fortunately, it looks like Ken never got hacked though. I managed to help him get rid of that, but his MSN virus remained. Anyways, I tried going back to sleep afterwards, and just couldn’t. I would lay there for a half hour, go back on the computer for a little bit, and repeat that cycle several more times. Before I knew it, the time was already 3:45am. I went back to bed one last time and finally managed to fall asleep, but only for an hour and a half before it was time to get up.

We finally arrived at the Woodburn Company Stores a little after 4pm. Initially we were concerned we wouldn’t have enough time to shop there before it closed at 8pm, but our fears were soon alleviated. I’m not sure whether it was because we got there late or not, but we were all highly disappointed with what we found there. Almost all of us left the mall empty-handed. I had anticipated picking up several items at the Nike outlet, but couldn’t find a single thing worthy of purchasing. We were done by 6:30pm and headed off to Fry’s. For those that haven’t been to Fry’s, you can think of it as having the layout, size and feel of a Costco, except it only sells electronics like FutureShop. Our morale was boosted significantly after arriving. There were many good deals to be had, and most of us made purchases there. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but ended up picking up a Canon SD750 digital camera for my dad, and a set of two Panasonic DECT 6.0 cordless phones for the house. The SD750 had a sale price of $227, and that included a 1GB SD card. The best price in Canada is $280, and the regular price in the US is $250. With no taxes, I got this camera for the equivalent of buying it here for CDN$185 - quite the deal. The cordless phones were the most unresearched significant purchase I’ve made in as long as I could remember. I knew nothing about this model, and didn’t know what the going price was, but for US$80, I figured I couldn’t go too wrong. In the end, I’m quite happy with the purchase, as the reviews look quite positive.

After Fry’s, we grabbed some cheap food at Jack in the Box. I left there feeling much more content than I did from Todai, for a fraction of the price. We headed to Safeway to pick up some liquor, but unfortunately we found out that only liquor stores carried the hard stuff, and everywhere else only carried beer or similar. We checked in at the Marriott Residence Inn after that and just chilled out and played drinking games. I brought along the 100 mini-dice that I got from DealExtreme for less than two bucks shipped. Before long, we were all out of beverages, so Chanh and I headed out to the Shell station to pick up some more. In the end, I probably consumed about three Budweisers, a glass of some 8% Hurricane malt liquor, a cooler, and a Stella Artois. As most would know, I’m not much of a drinker, so this was by far the most I had ever drank. I was definitely tipsy and had trouble focusing, but not to the point where I was passing out or getting sick, which is something I’ve never done and don’t plan on doing. We turned in around 4am.

We checked out at noon, and headed first to a really large motorcycle dealership, and then to CompUSA. Next, we headed to Washington Square, which is a regular mall in the Portland area. They may not have had outlet prices, but the selection was much better. I was all ready to buy a pair of Nike Air Max Moto+5’s from Foot Locker, but they didn’t have any in my size. The price in Canada is CDN$129, while the price there is only US$89. It would have been perfect, since I had my Foot Locker gift card with me, and it can be used at US locations. I had even worn my really old pair of Nike Air Max Moto II’s down in anticipation of throwing them away and wearing new shoes back, but it was not meant to be. In the end, I only picked up a Hollister hoodie for Elaine and some See’s candy. It was already 4:30pm by the time we were done there, and I still really wanted to go to the Nike Factory Store, but was unsure when it was open until. Fortunately, when we arrived, we found out it closes at 6pm, which gave me ample time to shop. Upon entering, I was intiailly disappointed, as it looked exactly like the Nike outlet stores, but it wasn’t before long that I found out the selection at this store was much better, and I ended up buying a bunch of items.

We went to Target afterwards to waste away some time, before going to Red Lobster. I didn’t remember going to Red Lobster before, but apparently I had gone before with the volleyball team back in high school in Edmonton. Whatever the case, they still had their Endless Shrimp promotion going on, and at $16.99, most of us went for that. They had five different shrimp options to choose from: Garlic Shrimp Scampi, Hand-Breaded Shrimp, Shrimp Linguini Alfredo, Crunchy Popcorn Shrimp, and Buffalo Shrimp. I got it with mashed potatoes and a Caesar salad. It was a very satisfying meal. We left at around 10pm, and went to 7-Eleven to grab some coffee for the long drive back. I finally filled up for the first time since Blaine. I was getting record-breaking mileage in my Yaris. Previously, I had never gotten more than 600km on a tank, the closest being around 580km. However, driving a constant 110-120km on level highways yielded close to 700km without refueling.

I started driving on the way back, and after about an hour and a half, we stopped for a washroom break, and I let Thi take over the wheel. He actually ended up driving the remaining three plus hours to Blaine, where we topped up the gas. We got back to the border at about 3:30am, and at that time, there wasn’t a single car at the crossing. We let Chanh’s car go first, and they got waved through in about 10-15 seconds. We pulled up, and this was the exchange:

I hand over our identification.
Him: How long were you gone for?
Me: 2 days (technically true, although we had technically only been away for ~42 hours instead of the 48 hours required for $400 exemptions each)
Him: What was the purpose of your trip?
Me: Shopping down in Portland.
Him: What is the value of goods coming back?
Me: About $940 CDN.
Him: Any alcohol?
Me: No.
Him: Any cigarettes?
Me: No.
Him: Take the far exit on the right.

Lovely. That was the easiest crossing ever. He never even looked at our ID.

All in all, it was a fun trip, and with the dollar suddenly falling again today back down to 1.035 USD, the timing couldn’t have been better. Hopefully my purchases on plastic are going to be posted at the weekend rates!

Just like that, it’s been another month. I’ve got to admit I’ve definitely been feeling less motivated to post nowadays. I think a big part of that is my lack of enthusiasm with Friendster overall, and I don’t think this is out of the ordinary. I think a significant portion of the people have made the migration over to Facebook, and I’m definitely one of them. I hardly log into Friendster anymore, but I check Facebook routinely. While I’m not about to abandom Friendster altogether, my participation is definitely on the decline.

Let’s see what I’ve been up to…

Several weeks ago, several coworkers started talking about mountain biking, and eventually decided to head up to Burnaby Mountain on the weekend for a ride. I was definitely interested in participating, but the problem was I had no bike to use. As I’ve mentioned before, I used to bike all the time when I was younger, but it’s been over ten years since I last rode for any significant duration. This was the incentive I needed to finally get another bike. I think it was more difficult for me to choose a bike than it was my car. There are so many things to consider - type of bike (full suspension or hardtail), brand, price, components, size, new or used, etc. I decided that since I wasn’t likely to use it all that often, I wanted to spend about $300, and no more than $400. At that price range, it was either going to be a crappy new bike, or a decent used bike. I chose to go with the second option, so I started looking on Craigslist and PinkBike. After a few days, I saw one attractive listing for a 2006 Kona Blast with a 16" frame for $400. Brand new, the price is about $750 plus tax, so for roughly half price, this was quite the deal, since it seems like good, quality mountain bikes do not depreciate very much over time. I tried my hardest to buy this bike, but in the end, I was too late, and someone else snapped it up before I got the chance. The following week, I saw a 2005 Kona Stuff with a 17" frame for $400. This bike is a year older, but more rugged. The 17" frame might have been too big for me, but for the price, I was wanting to check it out anyway. Once again, I contacted the seller right away and tried to arrange to check it out that night. But apparently someone was so eager to buy it from him, that the guy picked the seller up during his break, treated him to lunch, and bought it on the spot. When I received the email from the seller about it, I was contemplating whether I should even bother writing back just for the heck of it, and in the end I did… and it turned out to be very useful. I was saying how this was the second time in the last week that I’ve tried my hardest to buy a Kona bike, but someone always beat me to the punch. I mentioned how the other bike was a 16" 2006 Kona Blast. He emails me back saying that maybe this is fate, but he had just been in the elevator with his neighbour, who was looking to sell her bike. When he went down to the storage room to take a look at it, he saw it was a 2004 Kona Blast with a 16" frame and front brakes upgraded to disc. The asking price was $380. I arranged to take a look that night, and it looked decent, except the front brake cable had not been attached yet. I decided to let him take it in to get fixed up, and ended up taking it off his hands for $350 the next day. It just barely fits in my Yaris, but thank goodness that it actually does fit. I took it for a test spin that night, and unlike swimming, where I totally lost all my skills, I was still perfectly comfortable riding the bike. I rode it to McBride, and managed to ride up a set of four steps, and jump down the same, which I was quite happy with.

Two weeks ago Saturday, I went on my first ride on Burnaby Mountain, and it was quite the blast. I didn’t know we’d have to climb uphill for over half an hour first though, so that took quite a bit out of me. But the downhill portion was fun, and I managed to handle all of the easier runs without a problem, but it was still challenging enough for my first time. I’ve got to say that I’m glad I had all the biking experience back when I was younger. For real beginners, this would not be easy at all. This last Saturday, we went up again, and this time we chose some more difficult runs, and there were some parts with significant drops directly into tight switchbacks that I was not ready to attempt at all. I was scared I would go flying over the bank and fall down the mountain side. But all in all, it was great fun, and I’ll definitely continue riding when I can.

Elaine is all moved back to Vancouver now, so this means big changes in lifestyle once again. Drove up on the 30th with the big cargo van, and helped move everything back on the 31st. Got stuck in the rush hour traffic heading back into town around Abbotsford, and I’ve got to say I don’t know how some people can put up with it day in and day out. It was so frustrating having to crawl along for two hours for most of the stretch until the Port Mann Bridge. I’m glad the only heavy traffic location I have to commute through is the Knight Street Bridge, and I’m also glad I go to work after 9:30am and leave after 6:30pm so that I avoid most of the rush hour congestion.

Yesterday, played my first session of tennis in about two weeks, and it wasn’t the best. Played a doubles match with Ken against Gary and Kent, and we got beat pretty soundly. I definitely wasn’t playing my best, and just couldn’t get much of anything going. The first set featured all of one service hold, by Kent, and that was the deciding margin in a 6-4 set. The second set was the opposite, and surprisingly we managed to hold serve all the way until 5-6, but couldn’t continue the streak on Ken’s serve, and losing the set 7-5. Just like what happens in the pros, after being down two sets, you’re pretty much deflated, and we went away quietly, getting bagelled in the third. My serve was gone, as was my backhand. Even my forehand was a lot worse than usual. All in all, a very poor outing to be forgotten. I think it’s the first time I’ve actually lost any type of real match in years, if you can believe that. Somehow I always seem to find a way to win, whether it’s singles or doubles, but not this time.

While stinking up the court at Gladstone, Federer was marching towards his fourth straight US Open title, and 12th Grand Slam title overall. I set my computer to record the match, and tried my hardest to not find out the results until I got a chance to watch it later that night. After eating over at Elaine’s and then driving Ken to the ferry terminal, I finally got to start watching it at almost midnight. Even with the ability to skip commercials and fast forward in between points, it still took me until about 1:30am to finish watching the match. I couldn’t believe how Federer managed to win this match the way he did. Fighting off five set points in the first to take it in the tiebreak, and then warding off another two set points in the second to take that tiebreaker as well. Novak Djokovic - or Dchokavic - really gifted him the match. Regardless, I was still glad to see Federer win it, and take another step closer to breaking Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slam titles. I also hope he does finally win a French Open, so solidify the claim to being the GOAT - the Greatest of All Time. Granted, with Nadal around, it’s going to be a very difficult task to accomplish, and with Federer already 26, and some young guns like Djokovic rising quickly, I think the days of Federer completely dominating the field is coming to an end. I still firmly believe he will easily surpass Sampras’ 14 slams, but I think we will not see Federer win three slams again next year. I’d be more than happy to be wrong about this though!

Wow, I can’t believe I almost neglected to mention I finally got a new computer. After living with my AMD XP2000+ for the past five years or so, the machine started having stability issues, and one of the hard drives starting to fail was the last straw. After the new Intel Core 2 Duo CPU’s with 1333Mhz FSB came out, I promptly purchased all the parts to build my new rig. The specs are the following:

• Apex TX-373 mATX Mini Tower Case Black 2X5.25 1X3.5 4X3.5INT
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz Desktop Processor - 2.66GHz - 4MB L2
• Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R mATX LGA775 G33 Motherboard
• OCZ Platinum XTC REV.2 PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL4-4-4-15
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB
• Thermalright ULTRA-90 775 Heatpipe Cooler LGA775 Heatsink
• NMB-MAT (Panaflo) 92MM High Speed Cooling Fan 2950RPM 56.8CFM 35DBA
• Scythe S-FLEX SFF21F 120MM Cooling Fan 1600RPM 28.0DBA 63.7CFM FDB
• Sapphire Theatrix Theater 650 Pro PCI NTSC TV Tuner Card

Altogether, it cost me about $1000. Amazingly, after having worked with computer hardware for so long, I had never overclocked any of my machines until this one. I bumped up the stock 2.66Ghz to 3.32Ghz and it’s running perfectly stable. The difference in speed between this new machine and my old one is tenfold. When encoding a video, it would take almost an hour with my old machine, whereas the new one churns it out in about four minutes. That’s sweet.

I’ll admit that not everything is perfect with my new rig though. For one, while the Theater 650 TV tuner is significantly better in terms of video quality, I’m actually disappointed with not being able to use the ATI Multimedia Center for watching TV anymore. I just can’t seem to find software that is a suitable replacement for it, and K-Player is the closest that I’ve found. It’s the only software that will change channels in a timely manner. For video recording, I’m using BeyondTV, and the quality with that is very good, so I have no complaints in that regard. Another annoyance with my machine right now is that it doesn’t seem to know when it’s idle or not. It will never put my MSN as being Away, even if I have left the computer untouched for hours. Also after I have watched a video file while going to sleep, it refuses to activate the screensaver or go into power save mode. I think that might be a codec problem or some issue with the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack but I haven’t yet had a chance to mess around with it just yet.

To finish this entry off, I’ll briefly mention something that happened to me several weeks ago. I was playing grass volleyball after dinner out at Memorial Park, when my stomach started churning. Diarrhea was coming on, and every now and then the pain would come and after a few moments it would subside again. This has happened to me many times in the past, so I thought I’d be able to handle it, and just continued playing. As time went on, it just got worse, and the pain got to a point where I knew I had to find a washroom, and quick. There used to be a washroom right where we were playing, but to my dismay, they got rid of it for some reason. Whatever the case, let’s just say I didn’t quite make it anywhere. If you want the down and dirty details, you’re going to have to ask me about it in person. =P

It’s back to the grind after another power packed weekend.

Last Thursday, the stereo system in my Yaris suddenly stopped working. It was fine while I was driving home from work, and after I picked up my stuff to head back out for grass volleyball, something went wrong with it. The display was still functioning, but nothing would come out of the speakers no matter what I tried. Neither the radio nor CD player would work. That was no good, as I was planning on driving up to Whistler, and having nothing to listen to would have made the trip quite monotonous. It turns out it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, as somehow I ended up driving a full car load of five people, and there was no way I was going to be able to fit everyone plus their luggage in my Yaris. Instead, I drove the Camry. It’s been almost two years since I last drove the Camry, and I had forgotten how it drove. Even though the Camry has 133HP compared to the 106HP of my Yaris, the extra weight and perhaps the wear and tear of the engine made it feel much more sluggish and unresponsive to the throttle. However, it got the job done.

Left a bit after 7pm to head up to Whistler and arrived there before 10pm. There were about 20 people between our two suites. I don’t even remember how we wasted away the time, but it wasn’t until 3:30am when most people went to sleep, even though we had to be up before 8am because we had to be at the field by 8:30am. This was the first reverse 4’s volleyball tournament I’ve played in, and it doesn’t really suit me too well. I’m not very effective coming out of the backrow, and can’t set very well either. All I was good for was passing. Along with Ron, Blessy and Stephanie, we managed to win two out of our six round robin matches. We were placed into the lower recreational division for the playoffs, which was a good thing. In our first playoff matchup, we got slaughtered 25-7 in the first set, but managed to win the second set. On the third and deciding set to 15, we were in bad shape, down about 13-8. Somehow I managed to run off six points in a row by serving tough to the girls on the left and right, and suddenly we were up 14-13. They did win the next point to make it 14’s up, with the next point deciding the winner of the match. Unless my recollections are mixed up, we received the serve and I got the set and managed to put it away to take the upset comeback victory. After that, we managed to win the next two matches fairly easily, which placed us into the finals in the winner’s bracket. We faced a very good team and lost, but there was no shame in having done so. We were then relegated to the backdoor draw, where we found ourselves facing off against the same team we had upset in the first round of the playoffs. It was one set to 25, and history almost repeated itself. We were down about 20-16 when I again managed to reel off six points on serve to take a 22-20 lead. We got the score to 23-21, before we finally collapsed and lost 25-23. It was still a very good showing by us to finsh 3rd, even if it was in the lowest division.

Out of all of our teams, we made it the furthest in each of our respective divisions, so everyone else was done by the time we finished, so we packed up and headed back to the hotel to get freshened up before dinner. It turns out that soon after we left, it started pouring, so those that were playing in the finals got stuck playing in the rain.

By the time we headed out for dinner, the rain had basically stopped. Finding a restaurant to eat at in Whistler is not the easiest task, and in the end most of us decided on going to the Keg again. We got there at about 7:15pm, and were told it would be about a 45 minute wait. We came back around 8pm, and they were not ready for us yet. Apparently the table we were waiting for had already gotten their bill, but they were just sitting around and in no hurry to leave. We sat around in the waiting area for almost another hour before they finally were able to fit us in. Because of the lengthy wait, they actually took off $100 from our bill of $240, which roughly works out to be a 42% discount. Not bad.

After that, we went back to the hotel, hung out, played some drinking games, and went to sleep at about 4am again. I was really glad I was not playing the reverse 2’s or men’s 2’s on Sunday. For the men’s 2’s, apparently because it was not widely advertised, there were only a total of ten teams signed up - eight who were advanced, and two who were recreational, with the two teams being Will & Gary, and Tony & Ron. They ended up having to play all of the advanced teams, and of course, it wasn’t very pretty. I got to sleep in a bit, until almost 10am. We cleaned everything up and vacated by 11am. Headed to Four N Twenty to grab some pies, before heading to the field. Since I wasn’t playing, I helped record a lot of game footage for them. In the afternoon, since there were tennis courts right there by the field, a few of us hit around for a little while. It actually helped me a bit, as I figured out I need a lot more drive in my backhand, because I was trying to uppercut too much to put spin on the ball.

We were done by 5pm, and we packed up to drive back to Vancouver. At the parking lot, I put my bags down on the ground behind the car, and then forgot to put them in the trunk. I started to back up, and even though Chanh honked me several times initially, I didn’t know what he was trying to signal to me, until I finally figured out I was running over my tennis bag. Fortunately, it had only run over the compartment with the tennis balls. While it didn’t run over my racquets, it put enough stress on the bag that it busted out the seams on it. Oh well. We drove to Squamish and stopped off at Tim Horton’s to grab a coffee, and then at KFC/Taco Bell for some dinner. It wasn’t until about 7:30pm that we left, and we got back into Vancouver at about 8:30pm. I dropped Blessy and Stephanie off, and then headed home. Decided I would drop by the triple birthday beach party of Ken, Ed, and Ash just to say hi. Got there when it was already pretty dark, but a lot of people were still there. A bunch of the volleyball people had decided to still go for late night sushi despite having had KFC/Taco Bell just a mere two hours earlier. Ken and I dropped by there just to hang out for a bit afterwards.

On Monday, we managed to get in what seems like our annual doubles game, with Ken and Gary against Ed and I. Nobody was playing that great this session, but Ken and Gary were both volleying exceptionally well. Gary’s serve was terrible though, and Ed and I managed to take the five-setter victory 7-5, 7-5, 2-6, 6-1. They definitely had their chances, especially in the second set, where they were up two breaks and had three set points with the score at 5-2, before we stormed back to win that and the next four games. I was serving quite poorly as well, despite having felt quite good about my serve this past month. Something just didn’t feel quite right yesterday. I think I will need to go out and have another dedicated serving session sometime soon.

To my amazement, while I was driving to tennis yesterday, after being inoperative the entire weekend, my car stereo inexplicably suddenly started working again. It’s still working as of now, so I guess if it’s still working by tomorrow, I should cancel the appointment I had made to get it fixed.

I don’t feel fully recovered from this weekend just yet. I think I should get a long night’s sleep tonight to compensate for it.

This past weekend has been pretty crazy. A whole bunch of us went to Kelowna to play in a Coed 3’s volleyball tournament. While most headed there Friday night and stayed at the Comfort Inn, I opted to take the Greyhound to Kamloops to stay at Elaine’s place for the night instead. Saturday morning, we woke up bright and early just after 6am and drove the 210km or so south to Merritt then east to Kelowna. Wow, I just found out at this moment that there is a shorter route, at about 165km, which is going east from Kamloops to Vernon, then south to Kelowna. When doing a Google Map from "Kamloops to Kelowna", it recommended the first route with an estimated travel time of 2:22. When doing a map from "Kamloops to 1800 Parkinson Way, Kelowna", which is where the tournament was taking place, it recommended the second route with an estimated travel time of 2:23. Interesting.

Being so early in the morning, there was very little traffic on the highway, and I drove at around 140-150kmph regularly in Elaine’s RX-8, and going down a long hill, took it up to 208kmph, and that was not even trying very hard. That’s the quickest I’ve ever driven a car, but had taken my motorcycle up to 220kmph before. That was on the night before my road test, on the Alex Fraser Bridge going home from Action.

It was incredibly hot at the field, and even at 9am, it felt like a regular hot afternoon. By the time noon came around, it felt like we were in a giant outdoor oven. Had to reapply the sunscreen multiple times to prevent burning - but at least I was successful in that regard, unlike last year where I ended up a crispy critter for the next week or two. Our team consisting of Ron, Gary Wong, Blessy and myself did not fare very well. In fact, we lost every single game we played. We had our chances, including one where we were up 23-20, but then somehow managed to lose five straight points and fall 25-23. In the first round of the playoffs, we ended up playing Gary, Will and Mimi, and we put up a very good fight, and were up a sizeable margin in the first set at about 15-8, but then lost something like 21-19.

After going back to the hotel and getting cleaned up, we went out to eat, and a few of us went to Montana’s for meat, while the rest went to East Side Mario’s for Italian fare. After that, we went back to the hotel and played some drinking games. I participated in the first game of Kings, which I got through relatively unscatched, and opted to sit out the next one, which was a great decision. People got absolutely plastered on that second game, because of the added rules - you’re not allowed to say anyone’s name, and anyone sitting next to the primary drinker also needs to drink, leading to exponential consumption of alcohol. Later on that night, I played some dice games as well, but I hardly had much alcohol at all, and didn’t feel much of an effect. However, I did stay up until almost 5am, and didn’t get much of a restful night’s sleep.

Checkout was at 11am, and we were planning on going to IHOP to eat, but because it was jam packed, we ended up going to White Spot. After eating, Elaine and I started the trek back to Kamloops, while the others drove in a convoy back to Vancouver, with some detour stops in between. While driving back to Kamloops, I was driving around 130-140kmph mostly, and then got to a downhill and started accelerting, eventually getting up to about 175kmph, before Elaine said there were cops up ahead. I quickly stomped on the brake and got it down to about 135kmph, but didn’t decelerate any further because I still couldn’t see the cops… until I suddenly did. Damnit, a bunch of them in the median with radar. I braked a little more and just coasted at about 110kmph looking at them while I got nearer, hoping they wouldn’t step out… but they did. Fuck. I should have merged back into the right lane well in advance of him stepping out. That way he may have just deemed it unsafe to try and stop me and perhaps may have just let me go. I was expecting the worst, and I’ve got to say I felt a huge sense of relief when he told me that he clocked me at only 133kmph. He went to write me up, and gave me the lowest speeding ticket, which is $113 (if paid within 30 days) and 3 demerit points, which should be for those exceeding the limit by less than 20kmph. That’s a hell of a lot better than what I would have got if he trapped me at 175km, as I would be paying about $400 for the ticket, receiving 6 demerit points, which will cost another $300 for ICBC. So I guess instead of $100, I may have needed to pay $700. I’ll count my blessings on that one, and now that I know this, will definitely be more careful in the future. Three or less demerit points in a 12 month period, between about 17 months before your birthday and 5 months before your birthday, means ICBC won’t charge any premiums. That means from now until next March, I will have to be especially careful not to get any further tickets. The last ticket I received was probably about three years ago, when I got caught by radar at the bottom of Knight Street Bridge, heading to Richmond.

The reduced fine wasn’t the only thing I was thankful for. As I continued to drive along, I started to get really tired. From my past entry #48, I had mentioned how I had fallen asleep at the wheel once, which resulted in a minor accident. However, driving along at 120-130km and falling asleep could have much greater consequences. I had already decided that I would want to stop at the next pullout to switch with Elaine, but the highway continued on and on without any good stopping location. I was having serious difficulty keeping my eyes open. At one point, I swear I had dozed off for a couple moments, snapping awake just before a soft bend. There’s no telling what would have happened if I didn’t come back into consciousness. That was enough of a scare. I stopped at the side of the road soon after and let Elaine take over. I’m a little upset at myself to have even let it get to that stage. I guess I really should have just pulled over immediately as soon as I knew I was having trouble staying awake.

So I guess overall, even though I got a speeding ticket, I’ll consider myself to have been very lucky on that drive back to Kamloops.

We made it back before 4pm, and went down to the casino because Elaine wanted to play in the slot tournament. Yes, it’s a stupid game with absolutely no skill involved, just endless mashing of the spin button for 10 minutes. She actually got me to sign up for the final 48th spot as well, but somehow the organizers screwed things up and in the end I couldn’t play. Oh well, at least I got $15 in free signup money, and some useless momentos for it. Elaine wasn’t doing very well in her first round early on, and through the first eight minutes, she was not amongst the leaders. Out of each heat of eight, the top four move on. She went on a roll in the last two minutes, and got to about 4300 credits, which was good enough for a solid third place… until her buzzer beating final spin, which yielded the second highest winning combination, yielded a huge 3950 credits, rocketing her to over 8000 credits, easily more than the 5000 or so the second place finisher had. In the next round, she had no such luck, and found herself in a tough heat where the top four all had over 6000 credits, while Elaine only managed less than 4000. It wasn’t as bad as another heat, where someone rang up a solid 7200 round, but yet didn’t even make the top four! I feel sorry for that contestant, as 7200 would have been enough to finish FIRST in the next heat. The highest overall round was a whopping 11000+ credits. That person must have hit the jackpot of 6000 plus a few other huge spins as well.

All in all, she had fun, and we left to pick up dinner at KFC/Taco Bell before heading home. Could you believe the KFC ran out of chicken that was ready, and people were told they had to wait half an hour for their order? Unbelievable. I just ordered Taco Bell stuff, so I didn’t have to wait nearly as long. After eating, we were both really tired and took a nap… all the way until 2am. My Greyhound back to Vancouver was scheduled for 3am, so I packed my stuff up and headed to the depot. The bus was supposed to be a regular one that made stops at all the major points like Merritt, Hope, Chilliwack, Langley, etc. and was supposed to get back to Vancouver at 8:30am. Fortunately, there was another bus there that was a direct bus to Vancouver, and I ended up arriving much sooner, at about 7am.

What a crazy weekend.

Just like that, it’s been another month since the last entry. Can’t even remember most of what I’ve been doing since then.

I’ve continued playing softball, and I’ve made significant progress there. I’ve played in about 7-8 games now, and am starting to get more comfortable. I’m hitting fairly decently now, regularly getting base hits through the infield or line drives into the outfield. Haven’t connected for any monsters over the outfielders yet though. Best I’ve done so far is a triple. I’ve also been active in the field, where I’ve only made one error so far, and have had a few decent running catches. We’ve started to win more games as well, which is cool. During the last game, I was running hard to beat out the throw at first base, and stepped on the bag with too much force. I expected the base to have some support, but instead it was more or less like a sponge that offered up no resistance and my heel basically slammed hard into the hard gravel, and I injured pretty nicely. For the next couple days, it hurt like hell to put any way on the back heel. Hopefully it’ll be better by this weekend, when I intend to go play at the volleyball tournament in Kelowna.

I’ve also played some tennis here and there. Some sessions, I feel like I’m playing than ever, and some sessions I can’t control the ball whatsoever. I spent one night just practicing my serve, and served up over 400 balls. Towards the end, I finally found my rhythm. Before that, I never even knew exactly where I should be tossing the ball up, and where to contact it. I finally figured that out now, and I can fairly consistently get my serves in, albeit not an overpowering serve. Played one match so far this year against Ken and won 6-3, 6-4.

Speaking of tennis, watched a lot of Wimbledon over the weekend. Was disappointed I wasn’t able to watch more during last week, because the live action was on starting from 3am. On Saturday, watched Federer win routinely over Gasquet, and that led to a finals rematch of a year ago with Nadal. Woke up at 6am on Sunday to watch the match, and it didn’t disappoint. I expected it to be a tight match, but never expect Nadal to put up that much of a fight. In fact, I would say that Nadal had the momentum for the majority of the match, and that Federer could have very easily lost the match. But instead, Federer found a way to win his fifth consecutive Wimbledon title, his 11th Grand Slam overall. He trails Pete Sampras by three for the most ever, and I think it’s only a matter of time before the record books are rewritten. It can very possibly be as early as next year, but if not, more likely than not within two years.

The last week of June, spent a couple days in Sechelt relaxing with Elaine. We stayed at a beautiful BnB called A Place By the Sea. It’s a 40 minute ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale, and then a 30 minute drive after that. It’s a nice place to stay to unwind a bit.

These last few days have sure been scorchers. We had our company BBQ last night, and there was so many leftovers that we had plenty to do another BBQ today for lunch. I’ve eaten so much meat the last two days… almost too much. Who am I kidding, you can never have too much meat!

Tonight, I played in my first "real" competitive indoor soccer league match as a sub for a team that a couple of coworkers play on. I expected it to be a lot tougher than the corporate games I have played in the last few months, but was not prepared for what transpired. Asides from all of the players being a lot better, the play was almost nonstop. We played at 8 Rinks in Burnaby, where the field is basically a hockey rink, with boards all around. There is no "out of bounds" unless the ball touches the netting, so you can use the walls to your advantage. That also means much less stoppage in play, so players have to go all out and keep the shifts short. We played two halves of 25 minutes. After the second shift, I knew I was in trouble. I couldn’t believe how terrible I felt already. My legs felt like lead weights, and not only was I out of breath, I felt disoriented and my body ached. It was a major struggle just recuperating enough to go for my next shift, after which I felt progressively worse, to a point where I don’t recall ever being as exhausted and beat up from playing sports. Overall, I did "okay". I wasn’t a major liability, but I also didn’t do much to benefit the team. We lost by a score of 4-3, and I think I was only on the field for one goal, which was against. I was a physical wreck after the match ended. I was so disoriented afterwards that I needed to rest 20 minutes just to get to the point where I was okay to drive home. I was literally still feeling out of breath almost an hour after the game ended, and in general just felt like shit. After taking a nap for a couple hours, I finally felt a lot better.

I’m questioning whether it is worth it for me to play in a game such as this. That was quite possibly the most torturous event I had ever taken part in. Not that I expect they would want to ask me to sub again, but even if they do, I’m not sure that I would want to. Frankly speaking, I don’t feel like I’m good enough - and I KNOW I’m not fit enough - to compete effectively in this league. I feel a lot better physically and emotionally from playing lower caliber games like the corporate games where I can be one of the big dogs.

Speaking of corporate games, we had a rematch against MDSI (now called Ventyx) last Friday. We romped them the first time 7-2, but this time around  they provided a much more competitive game. With the score tied at 1-1, I scored the game winning goal with less than five minutes left to play. Out of the four games that we’ve won, I’ve scored the game winning goal three times, and provided a beautiful setup for the fourth. That’s the kind of feel good stuff I like.

After that game, I also played in my first competitive softball match ever. Our team was heavily outgunned, and we got absolutely beat down. We played a double header, and we had to throw in the towel both games due to the mercy rule, because we would be down like 16-3 after five innings. I played in right field, and actually didn’t get very much action at all. I fielded three or four ground balls, but not a single fly ball. Even the lefties kept hitting opposite field for some reason. I was not very productive at the plate either. Out of four plate appearances, I only got on base once, and even that was on a fielder’s choice. I definitely need to work on my hitting. Back in late elementary, I used to always go out to Gray’s Park during the summer, where we would sometimes play baseball. I recall I had complete control of my hitting back then, and could direct my hits at will. I remember I used to even like swinging way early or way late to foul off balls on purpose. I can’t see why I wouldn’t be able to do this again with a little practice. It looks like I’ll get a chance to do just that though, as the team as taken me on full time for the rest of the season. I’m looking forward to it.

Yesterday, I also got the worst beating in my life for poker. It was the first time I had played in over two weeks, and within five minutes, I was down about $170. After 20 minutes, I was down $270. After the 90 minute session, I finished down almost $300. Without going into the details, here are the main hands:

1.) AA, AJT flop, other guy has KQ. Board doesn’t pair.
2.) AA, J98 flop, other guy has 88.
3.) 88, 876 flop, other guy has T9. Board doesn’t pair.
4.) 76, 543 flop, other guy gets a flush on the turn.
5.) AK vs KK all-in preflop (where I’m actually "only" a 70/30 underdog). Didn’t hit an ace.

I couldn’t believe the kind of setups I was getting. Flopped top set two times, only to someone else’s flopped straight. Flop a straight, someone else gets a flush. Seriously, what am I supposed to do?!

I guess I’ll never be a high-stakes poker player. I don’t like even dropping $300 at the $100NL level, so I don’t even want to know how much worse I’d feel dropping several times that. Oh well, I know it’s just short term variance, but it still sucks when I think of how I’m now down $300 and have nothing to show for it. I could have had so much more fun blowing $300 on other things, but I guess it doesn’t work that way.

I miss playing a wide selection of sports. Since high school, the only two sports that I have played with any regularity is volleyball and tennis. While at times I have felt the want to play other sports again, it wasn’t until recently that I realized how much fun it was doing so. A couple years ago, I joined an ultimate team, and although that was my first real experience playing this particular sport, I had a really enjoyable time with it. As mentioned in previous entries, in the past few months, I’ve been playing soccer again in the corporate setting, and that’s been a blast as well. Today, a coworker had me come out to join his softball team practice. The last time I played softball had to have been three or four years ago, and before that, all the way back in high school. I have made great plays in most sports that I’ve played in, but the one feat I’ve never done is to make a great catch - a full out diving catch in the outfield - in baseball or softball. Today, I finally managed to accomplish this during batting practice. I tracked down a long fly ball in right field and the ball met the glove just as it reached the grass with my body fully layed out sideways. I’m actually pretty proud of that. =) While my inexperienced definitely showed, with many of my throws being errant, I think I fit in pretty well, as I think my natural skill was fairly evident. I may be subbing for their team for some games, but that remains to be seen when. I think I would like to buy a decent catching glove, batting glove, and baseball cleats if I intend on playing more than a couple times.

Following up on my previous entry, we indeed did defeat Mobidia in our soccer match, by the slim margin of 2-1. They were definitely a formidable bunch. Apparently I may have had a hand in breaking some guys ribs during the match. We didn’t even know until the following week when one of their guys, who used to work for us, told us of the fact. Apparently it happened when he went up for a header and got sandwiched by two guys, and from the video that we recorded, the only such event that matched that description involved me as one of the sandwichers. It doesn’t even look like much of an impact, so I didn’t even include that bit of footage in the Youtube highlights video.

A couple weeks after that match, we played a game against Citadel. In keeping with the tradition of every team being tougher than the last, our winning streak finally ended, although our undefeated streak did not. After about 40 minutes, we held a comfortable 4-1 lead. Unfortunately, our team completely disintegrated after that, and they came roaring back with four unanswered tallies to take the lead at 5-4. We managed to notch the tying goal to salvage our dignity, but it was still a disappointing result.

Last weekend, the annual Asian Invitational volleyball tournament took place again. As I said previously, I would actually be quite happy if we managed to finish even as high as we did last year, which was 3rd place in the lower tier. This year, the experience was absolutely terrible. On the first day of play Saturday, we got off to a decent start and won our first set, but then proceeded to lose the remaining 11 sets. Granted, out of the six games in the round robin, we did play what proved to be three of the top four teams in the tournament. On a personal level, I played absolutely terrible as libero. I shanked way too many serve receptions, and even managed to pass some free balls errantly. Completely unacceptable. However, as the record would indicate, the rest of the team wasn’t doing much better. That night, I actually got called for a work emergency, and I ended up having to go downtown and move three servers from one building to another and install and configure the systems. I did this remarkably quickly, and it only took me about 2.5 hours until 2am to get it done. On Sunday, I felt I played much better as libero, but we still did terrible. We lost our first match, and got relegated to the backdoor. We managed to beat the first team in the backdoor draw, but then lost a heartbreaker in the next round. It was one set to 25, hard capped. We led the entire set, and got to a score a 24-23. But, the other team won the next two points to take the victory. Ouch. So out of 9 teams in the bottom tier, I think we finished 8th.

Honestly speaking, our team is not quite in the same league as most of the other teams. We’re pretty much a bunch of high school friends playing together, while other teams bring together players from all over the lower mainland and beyond. The best teams even have a bunch of collegiate or university players. We’re never going to be able to rise to that level. In a way, I feel priviledged to actually even have a chance to play against these high caliber players, but the bottom line is we’ll never be a formidable opponent for them. But I think that’s okay.