Author: Erwin

THE TRIP OF HIS LIFETIME

It’s less than two weeks before Christmas and I’m chatting over MSN with my friend, let’s call him “Don”. Don tells me his company is sending him to CES in Las Vegas for business. Don works in the high-tech industry for a hardware manufacturer somewhere in the Lower Mainland.

CES? My virtual ears perk up. Partially because CES is the largest consumer electronics show in the world but mainly for another reason. It’s a suspicion which I go to Google to check. I am right. I tell Don my findings.

“So you know that CES is held at the same time as the Adult Entertainment Expo right?”

There’s a flurry of excitement on Don’s end as he checks schedules and hotel bookings. Don is far from a pervert running around in a raincoat but he’s a got a healthy appreciation for hetero porn. I accept that part of him and respect his interests.

Returning from his checks, Don informs me that his trip will partially overlap the AEE by about two days. Within the hour, we’ve figured out how to buy him a ticket. It’s all set. Don is scheduled to attend the largest and most influential adult entertaiment convention in the world.

Over the holidays, I coach Don on what he needs to bring and do at the AEE. Digital camera? A must. Memory cards? Several gigs worth. Batteries? Enough juice to power the Strip. I stress to him since I won’t be there, his pictures and possibly videos are the only thing he’ll be able to share with me. Like an attentive pupil, Don soaks in my mentoring.

The second week of January arrives and Don is off to Vegas for business and, hopefully, a whole lot of picture taking. Before he goes, I bid farewell to him on MSN. I wish him well and I tell him I know he’s going to make me proud.

Several days pass as Don does his work at the CES. Then, the magical day arrives. It’s about 11am and I’m at work with an Xbox 360 controller in my hands. My cell phone rings. It’s Don calling from Vegas. He tells me he’s in line to enter the convention centre at the AEE. I hear nervous excitement in his voice. He says he’s minutes away from getting in. I wish him well and remind him to take lots of photos. We end the call.

Just after noon, I get my first of a series of text messages from Don. The first one reads:

“I just met Jenna Haze!”

Ms. Haze is a big favourite of Don’s, so this was a real treat for him. Less than an hour later, I get another message:

“This is the greatest day of my life”

Wow, you can’t beat that. How often does one get to say that? Ten minutes later, I receive my final text message from the AEE:

“I am about to meet Tera Patrick omg omg omg”

Ms. Patrick is another favourite of Don’s and also a superstar in the porn world. That’s the last I hear from Don at the AEE. The next day, Don is sporadically on MSN as he utilizes the hotel Internet connection. We don’t have long but he tells me he’ll be home sometime on Saturday.

On the weekend, I get a smattering of his pictures from the convention floor. We agree to have dinner on Wednesday night where he’ll give me a complete summary of the trip plus a DVD with his photos. I am also told he has a goodie bag for me.

On appointed evening, we meet at an undisclosed location for dinner. I get Don to lay it all out in great detail. In short, Don tells me it was a life changing experience. Everywhere you looked, there were hot porn stars. He said it was kinda depressing to go back to work where everyone wasn’t a hot porn star. Don mentioned it was extremely cool to see performers in person that he’d been um, “downloading” for years. It was also interesting to see that most female peformers are rather short. Don isn’t a super tall guy but he said he towered over several ladies.

In general, he had a great time and plans on going again next year, and he wants me to go with him! Don then took out my goodie bag, which I opened right there at Denny’s. In a large white envelope was an oversized t-shirt advertising for Vengeance XXX DVDs. Neat, something I can’t wear anywhere in my life. Don also got me two free sampler DVDs. One was from a company called Pink Visual and the other was from Digital Sin. I also got two blue condoms which had packaging promoting some company. There was also a hefty program guide from the convention. It’s a real treat to read. Last but not least, Don got me an autographed photo from Katsumi, one of Don’s all-time favourite female performers.

He was also nice enough to burn his photos and videos onto a DVD. I have received permission from Don to post select photos and a video on my site. To maintain his privacy, I covered his face in some photos. Before I supply the link to the gallery, I must mention you might want to think about if this is the kinda thing you want to be looking at work. While there is no outright nudity in the photos (it’s not allowed on the convention floor), the photos do show large screen LCDs which are playing porn flicks in the background. To be honest, I think I might have seen one nipple at worst. Anyways, you can find the gallery here. Be on the lookout for Don’s photos of Jenna Jameson and Larry Flynt. The video is the last item on the last page.

Thanks to Don for making the trip and sharing his materials with me and you, my readers!

TOP OF THE SEVENTH

As if it didn’t need saying, the weather in Vancouver is and has been downright awful and depressing. Today, was another great slushy day in our fair city.

While the weather might make us wish for a multitude of things, like sunny beaches, I am craving for a slightly weird activity. I want to toss a baseball around. I miss the carefree sunny days where I’m standing on a beautiful lush green field with a slight breeze. I’ve got my well-worn Cooper lefty glove with me. I wind up and casually toss an MLB regulation size baseball to my compatriot across from me. I think it might be Reggie Jackson but it’s more likely to be my friend Rhonda.

Throwing the ball around is a classic summer activity. I just wish I could do it now. Maybe I’ll go put on my boots and find a slushly field this weekend.

SO IS THAT LIKE… A LOT?

So last week, I was having lunch with a former co-worker and a current co-worker. We’d all worked at Backbone but now had moved onto other companies. I’m not sure how the discussion turned towards finances but here we were talking about money.

I mentioned how expensive it was to live in Vancouver. I told my friends that because I live in the boonies, I’ve been able to save up $9K since the beginning of June. Later, I went back to my spreadsheet and discovered, I’d saved about $1400 a month. I thought that was alright but one of my friends said that wasn’t a large amount at all.

I was kinda surprised because while it’s not spectacular, having your bank account grow $1400 a month is pretty good in my mind. My friend didn’t think so. The weird thing is, I’m pretty sure my expenses are lower than his and I’m almost certain I make at least $10K a year more than him. So, he’s gotta be saving less than what I’m capable of.

Millionaire stock brokers and bankers aside, is $1400 a month in the bank really a pittance? When it comes to money, I’m about clueless with that as I am with women. Could someone enlighten me?

WOK HEI

Having grown up in Canada but having Chinese parents, I feel like I’ve received the best of both worlds in many respects. Cuisine is one of those things. I am just as comfortable enjoying a nicely prepared roast as I am eating chicken feet (and there are a lucky few who’ve seen me do both).

Living in Vancouver, many of “Western” friends have tried many Chinese dishes as well. I applaud them for their experimentation but there’s a lot more to Chinese cuisine than just egg rolls and sweet ‘n sour pork. Like many other ethnic cuisines, there are some fascinating peculiarities associated with Chinese food. I will describe one of them here in this post.

As a child, my mother explained to my sister and I the concept of wok hei. Roughly translated into English, it means the “breath/air of the wok”. Most of you have probably seen a wok before, it being the rounded cooking implement used for centuries in China. While not everything in Chinese cuisine is stir-fried in a wok, a significant portion of dishes are prepared in such a manner.

There is a considerable amount of skill in properly preparing food in a wok. First and foremost, is the ability to enfuse wok hei into any dish. What is it exactly? It’s a bit abstract, but the wikipedia article does a fairly good job of describing it. In short, it’s the ability of the cook or chef to sear and impart the flavours into the food using the wok at extremely high temperatures.

If you think this is some product of hokey mumbo jumbo, I can assure you wok hei does exist. You can taste the difference in dishes prepared by chefs of varying skills. You can take the exact same ingredients, put them in the exact same type of wok, and on the exact same burner. The only thing that differs is the ability of the chef. One might impart wok hei into the food while the other fails.

How does this manifest itself in taste? It’s really hard to describe in words. The best I can do is that there’s a certain zing or pop to the food. I don’t mean spicy or anything like that but the food is almost alive with flavour. It’s isn’t bland, the flavour jumps out at you.

I suggest you try it yourself. Chinese restaurants are known for their quality of food and if the word around town that the chef knows his wok hei, that could easily mean extra business. In my experience, the stir-fried noodle dishes are the easiest ways to discover if the chef has brought his or her “A” game. In particular, try the beef chow fun or the Shanghai thick noodle.

If you like to know more about the wok hei, I encourage you to read a book that especially been written on the subject.

GOAT CHEESE

This is the post where I’d love to tell you how exciting and refreshing my weekend was. I can’t do that however, since I worked both days of the weekend. The highlight of my weekend, sadly, had to do with food.

When I arrived at my new job at EAX/EA Vancouver/EA Blackbox, I asked around about the quality of OT meals. When someone told me, I realized things were a step up here compared to my old job. That’s not to disparage my old company, they did fine with food, and I even had an awesome steak one time for dinner. It’s just that EAX did things a bit different.

I got to work a bit late on Saturday but I went upstairs to see what lunch consisted of. It was a scrumptious feast that was a combination of lunch and brunch. There was sausages and bacon. Pastries and tarts. There was fruit on a silver platter and none of that cheap fruit. We’re talking pineapples, kiwi fruit, strawberries and kumquats. In one tray was an omlette chock full of meaty things.

I cursed myself for having lunch at home. I was there for dinner, so I got the full meal deal then. There was a dessert platter featuring tiny cakes and other little tarts. The fruit plate made a return with more exotic fruits. There was a delightful little salad. The main courses were some vegetarian dish and a tray full of roast chicken. I think they might have been game hens, not too sure.

Today, I arrived a little late for lunch, but I made sure I didn’t eat anything before leaving home. My strategy worked well. What greeted me in the lounge was another feast. First off was a terrific green bean salad with Alaskan king crab legs and prawns the size of small lobsters. Another plate had a selection of not one but two kinds of smoked salmon. In the warming trays were a kickass lasagna and a meatloaf that defied description. The fruit made it’s return as did the pastries, tarts, and little cakes.

For dinner, the main courses were eggplant (yuck) and a tray full of tender roast beef with mushrooms. The roast beef might seem like the highlight but you’d be wrong. For me, it was the salad. Yes, you read that correctly. The salad wasn’t complicated, with simple greens but the addition of goat cheese and a world-class raspberry vinaigrette made it my favourite. The fruit and pastries also made a return… blah… blah…

I went back for the salad three times during the evening. The last time, I picked out the goat cheese balls from the salad and spread them on some french bread we had lying around. Man, thems is tasty!

I might work OT tomorrow and that’d be a shame but if I do, at least the food will be good.

QUESTION

I’m just wondering how many of you out there have a myspace page. The reason I ask is that I think myspace pages represent the worst in web design on the Internets. It boggles my mind how popular myspace is.

Have you seen a myspace page? First, it allows users to embed a song that plays automatically when someone visits their page. That’s just awful. And the backgrounds people choose for their pages make it impossible to read the text. The formatting in general makes it a usability nightmare. If Jakob Nielsen were dead (and he’s not), he’d be spinning in his grave right now.

So let’s see ’em. If you’re on myspace, let’s take a look. I’ll show you my myspace page if you reciprocate.

THE WEATHER

If you live in the Lower Mainland, you no doubt were aware that we got hit with another snowstorm last night. I, for one, cannot remember a time when Vancouver has had so much extreme weather. Between the rain, the gale-force winds, and the blankets of snow, this has been a pretty miserable winter.

I wouldn’t mind it all, except for the fact that the weather causes a lot of problems city-wide. When it gets windy, the power goes out. In the last three months, I think the power has gone out more times than in the last three years combined. The last incident happened last week, where the power was out in my area for twelve hours. There was no heat, no hot water, and no Xbox 360. The wind also caused trees and light poles to topple. On one very particular windy day, it took me two hours to get to work. Who ever heard of traffic delays due to wind? Also, when it gets windy, they tend to close down the Lions Gate bridge. That means all traffic goes to the Second Narrows, along Hastings Street, which is of course, the route my bus goes along. It all makes for a great commute home.

Back to the snow though. This morning, my bus never came, leaving me to stand at the bus stop for about half an hour. The only thing that made it half-bearable was that I shared the bus shelter with this very attractive young lady. I finally had to take the Skytrain instead, which was actually not crowded at all this morning. I only was late perhaps 25 minutes or so to my surprise. While the snow seems to have stopped this evening, temperatures are supposed to drop way below freezing level overnight. The resulting ice should make it awesome for commuting and walking tomorrow morning.

How much longer will this weather last?