Month: December 2009

Despite being over the age of thirty, I bought a pair of skinny jeans at Gap a few days ago. I hadn’t planned on buying a pair that day. I was just casually looking around when I decided to try a pair on, just to see what the kids were wearing these days.

The first pair I tried on had a waist size of 32″. Normally this is just about fine for me and since these skinny jeans sat low on the waist, I didn’t think this would be a problem. I was right, the waist wasn’t the problem. What was a problem were my legs. Being a dude of Asian origin, I have typically large calves even though I don’t really workout at all. Combine my large calves with the skinny jeans and I had recipe for discomfort and tightness. I managed to get them on but sitting down was really not working. Walking was tough too.

Just for fun, I decided to get a pair with a 34″ waist. Now normally, any pair of regular jeans or other pants at a 34″ waist would be ridiculously oversized for me. I was prepared for a hilarious pair of clown-like pants as I pulled them on. To my pleasant surprise, it wasn’t all that bad. The waist was sure roomy but the jeans weren’t falling down. My calves weren’t compressed like a flight suit anymore but they weren’t swimming in material either. With a fashionable dark wash and a decent fit, I thought this would be a good purchase.

If you see me with my new “skinny” jeans on, get out of my way because I’m going to be listening to Menudo or whatever band skinny jeans people listen to. If you’re interested in reading more about skinny jeans on men phenomena, click here.

I took a taxi home from work this evening. I’ve done it a million times before when we used to work downtown but this was my first time from Burnaby. Since we’re in the middle of nowhere, the security desk has to specifically call a taxi for us. In better times, we’d just saunter over to the taxi stand outside the Pan Pacific Hotel.

Since it was Sunday, the wait for the taxi was no more than five minutes. Instead of Vancouver Taxi, the Burnaby location is serviced by Bonny’s Taxi. After an uneventful ride, the fare came to about $23. It probably would have taken another $20 had I been coming from downtown.

Let’s hope I don’t take too many taxis home before the project is over.

After watching the Canadian dollar go up and down, I finally just jumped in and bought Mythbusters: Season 5 on DVD. I ordered it online on Sunday but it didn’t actually ship until just two hours ago. The total with shipping came to about $60. Meanwhile, the Discovery store put the exact same DVD set on sale today at 40% off. I wasn’t able to cancel my original order and re-order with the new price. If life were fair, the people at the Discovery store would have given me the discount in light of the four day wait.

Maybe I’ll buy some American Chopper DVDs next. It’s sure entertaining when Paul Jr. and Paul Sr. get into arguments. Wait, what? Junior got fired from OCC? When did this happen?

Another product of attending last evening’s strata council shindig was that I found out how to get a copy of my apartment’s home warranty. In a bit of an oversight that I take full responsibility for, I did not get a copy of the warranty when I bought my place. Since my apartment is new, I have one year to get a list of deficiencies reported to the insurance company and the builder. Not having a copy of the warranty, I wasn’t really sure when my one year was up.

Talking to the strata council president, I found out who to call to get this info. This morning, I made the call. It turns out my one year date is next Tuesday. I was lucky. I cut it real close. This also tells me the previous owner, who never moved in, took possession one year ago on Tuesday.

I now have to spend the next few days going over my apartment to make up a list of deficiencies so I can send it out on Monday. Luckily, I don’t think I’ll have anything major to report. My fear is that I’ll overlook something major because I don’t know any better right now. I guess it’s time to do some research on the Internet now.

I left work today at the relatively early hour of 7pm to attend a small get-together organized by my apartment building’s strata council. The event was not technically a strata council meeting where official business was conducted but more of a social gathering. My reasons for going were several fold. First, since the last strata council meeting was just two weeks ago and I wrote my first letter to strata, I wanted to know if my letter was read and what they thought about the subjects I raised in said letter. Second, I wanted to talk to the various strata council members about things that might not come through the correspondence to the owners. I’ve been told that if you own an apartment, it’s always a good idea to be friendly and communicative to council members. Third, I wanted to meet other owners in the building.

Within ten minutes of arriving at the event I found out my letter was indeed addressed but the property manager was just taking his time in responding to me. I spoke to the strata president directly about my issues. In short, no one cares if I want to change my blinds. Also, no one has any problems if I want to rip out my fireplace. Though it was only verbal confirmation, I essentially have the green light to start ripping stuff out. If I do decide to go ahead, I’d get rid of that damn fireplace before my blinds. I want that thing gone.

While I was talking to another council member, I found out something that took me by surprise. In no less than two months, everyone who has been assigned reserved parking spots in levels P1-P3 will be reassigned spots in levels P7 and P8. I had just gotten used to parking in my spot and now it won’t matter anymore. The reason for the move is that P1-P3 will apparently now be designed for commercial parking as the construction is beginning on the shopping centre part of the development. Parking in the new level necessitates entering in a completely new entrance and up this sketchy two-way spiral. It’s been decades since I’ve seen a parkade with a spiral and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one that had two-way traffic with no divider between the cars!

Last but not least, I’ve learned about the seedier elements about my building. When my building first opened, there were some pretty sketchy people that moved in as renters. I have learned that there have been drug dealers, grow-ops, and even prostitution in my building. According to strata though, the majority of these people have been evicted. I think that’s actually true. There used to be this one guy who used to loiter in the front of the building with his “crew”. Everyone knew he was up to no good. I don’t see him anymore so hopefully he got his ass evicted. Strata seems to be taking a real pro-active approach to getting rid of the douchebags in the building.

I’ve been a homeowner less than a year, so I’m still learning many little details of owning an apartment. My suggestion is, get to know your strata council. They’ll tell you all sorts of useful things.

If you’re interested, apparently the brothel in my building was on the 35th floor.

Welcome to another fascinating installment of the “Did You Know?” series! Did you know that I have not adjusted the time on my wristwatch since daylight savings time kicked in over a month ago? Yes, that’s correct. Despite changing the time on every single other timepiece in my apartment, I somehow forgot to adjust the time on my watch. When I first noticed the problem, I simply subtracted one hour from my watch’s time to get the correct time. For whatever reason, I’ve been doing that ever since.

I wonder if I’ll get my watch on the correct time before we spring forward again in March.

Last week, I realized, through various means, that more people from my work have read my blog, more than I currently thought. I’m not exactly sure how they find this little dog and pony show but I’m sure putting a link on my Facebook profile helped a lot. Also, there’s always the good old stalker stand-by, the Google.

The interesting thing is, even if every single person on my team read my blog (and I’m certain that would never happen), I wouldn’t really change what or how I write. There’s a few reasons for that. First, as many of my long time readers would attest to, the stuff I pen here is pretty mundane and non-controversial. Oh sure, once in a while, I’ll report on wang-files but for the most part, this blog struggles to stay one level above this one. Second, I’ve been doing this since 2002. I’ve had a long time to witness the emergence of how blogs can affect people and the world. I’ve duly noted the times where people’s blogs and workplace collide in a non-awesome manner. As such, I’m very careful about what I write pertaining to work and my colleagues. That hasn’t stopped me from writing about my job though. As you can tell, a lot of my posts are about work and I’d like to think some of them are even entertaining. Also factor in that at times, I have to tiptoe around intellectual property disclosures and you can see there are lots of areas where if I strayed into, things would get messy for me.

I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll write it again, thanks to all my readers, from whatever demographic they come from, for reading and supporting this little endeavour. I’ll let everyone know when I’ve mailed out the et.com keychains to you.

I am currently trying to decide if I should go to Vegas before Christmas this year. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know for the last several years I go to Vegas in December to meet up with some grad school chums.

There are a few reasons for going. First, I haven’t really taken a vacation this year at all. I didn’t go anywhere this summer and I didn’t even travel locally. The last time I was on a plane was coming back from Las Vegas in December of 2008. I think it’s healthy to get away from your normal routine, if only to get perspective on said routine. Also, with the US economy sucking bad still, Vegas is cheaper than last year and we all thought it couldn’t get any cheaper. It’s possible to get four nights on the Strip at a 3-star hotel, return flight, fees, and taxes included for less than $500. You’d be hard pressed to find comparable hotels in Vancouver for four nights at the same price and that’s without factoring in a flight. It would also be nice to see the boys again.

There are also reasons for not going. First, this was my first year living at my new apartment. There were a ton of associated costs beyond the purchase price itself. I had to buy a TV, furniture, Slap Chops, housewares, a bed, just basically everything you need to make a home, a home. Let’s not gloss over the fact that I went from being comfortable debt-free to in debt close to $200K. I owe a lot of money to people. Last year, I spent a lot of money in Vegas and didn’t care one bit because I didn’t really have anyone to answer to, other than myself and that dude was totally cool with it. This year, I’m thinking maybe I should use that Vegas money to pay down my mortgage. Last but not least, the Vegas package deals on Expedia fluctuate in price on a nearly daily basis. Sometimes it’s cheaper by $150 but then it goes right back up again. It’s difficult to know when is the right time to book.

No matter what, I better decide quick because the next few days and weeks are going to fly by.

So we have this contest at work. The details involve who can have the best holiday-themed decorated work space amongst the team. Apparently there will be judging and prizes. It all gets decided on December 17.

I’m thinking about making a real run at the grand prize (yet to be announced). You know how they have these specialty Christmas decoration stores that pop up around this time of year? Yeah, I’m thinking about going to one of those and just buying lots of big, loud, and flashy decorations. I’m envisioning many strands of blinking lights, animated Santas and elves, tinsel, coloured foil, lit up candy canes, and much more. As you can tell, I’m going for gaudy rather than refined and tasteful. There’s a chance this will all backfire on me and I’ll lose out to someone who decorates their area with a few simple but classic and classy set pieces. I’m willing to take that chance though.

My secret weapon though will be nearly unstoppable. I am thinking about renting a department store Santa for one hour on the day of judging. Who ever this jolly actor maybe, I would procure his services for exactly one hour where he would pose for photographs with people on my team at my desk. After getting their photo taken with Santa, people would receive a candy cane courtesy of me. I’d love to have sexy elf assistants help with the process but I believe that would be too much.

The one thing that would make this hilarious is if I decided to spend all this money and effort and the grand prize turns out to be a $10 gift card to Starbucks.

http://g4tv.com/lv3/43032

I have not seen nor read such critical reviews of a AAA title in long, long time. It’s very unfortunate considering how the first three games in the franchise were above 90 in meta scores.