blog.erwintang.comDong, where is my automobile?

During the day, I was almost certain two events were going to transpire tonight: I was going to win $350 and Cory Schneider was going to play his last game in a Vancouver Canucks jersey. None of those things came to pass tonight. I didn’t win my $350, though I’ll have as many as three more attempts to get me that cash. Cory Schneider also played an outstanding game tonight, ensuring he’ll get at least one more game as a Vancouver Canuck.

In a perfect world, I’ll never win that bet and Mr. Schneider gets fifteen more wins in a Canuck jersey before he gets traded in the summer.

This evening I went out to dinner with a few people. One of them was a woman whom I had attended high school with. Let’s call her LaQuisha. She had married someone who got into the games industry and her husband was at dinner as well. By virtue of marrying into the industry, it meant I saw LaQuisha and her husband a lot more often than most people I had gone to high school with. Anyways, it had been a few months since I’d saw them.

LaQuisha told me that there was another high school reunion planned for this October. She wanted to know if I had replied to the invitation yet. This was the first I had heard of this. LaQuisha insisted that I had already been invited via Facebook but I knew this to be not true at all. I knew nothing of the details so she filled me in on what she knew. It appears this reunion will be a lot fancier than the last one, which was held in a small and old church hall. We’re scheduled to meet at a suburban hotel this time which already means this thing is about 100x more classy than the last event.

LaQuisha didn’t go to the last one but years ago I had relayed to her what went on since I attended myself. I’ve written this before but I can only continue to laugh at what transpired at the last reunion. It happened in the summer of 2002 which was a bit of a transitional period for me. I had just quit my testing job at EA because I was entering grad school in less than two months. At the time, I was about to move into the graduate residences at UBC so I was still living with my parents. So when people at the first reunion asked me what I was up to, I couldn’t really lie and the truth was, I was jobless, ladyless, still lived at home, hadn’t worked at any job for more than a year and a half, and had to borrow my father’s car to drive myself to the reunion venue. There were people there who were just genuinely happy to see me and didn’t really care about my situation but I wonder if some others went home and felt sorry for me. “Man, that Erwin had so much potential and look how he turned out.” Hilarious! I can laugh about it now because my life got wickedly awesome essentially right after that. From the first day of grad school to basically now, I’ve been pretty pleased with my life.

I’m pretty sure I’ll go to this next reunion but not because I want to show people how much my life has improved, just because I think it’ll just be really interesting to see everyone again. And also because LaQuisha told me whom among all the girls from high school are still really pretty and single.

On the weekend, I discovered that the president of the company I work for bought a desk from a friend of mine who was a roommate from my undergrad days. I’m still not sure of all the details behind the purchase, like where my friend posted an ad and how the president found it. What I do know is that my friend texted me about the president, which I thought was weird since I hadn’t told him about the details of my workplace. My friend did know the name of the company so I believe they must have had a conversation of some sorts where the name came up.

I wish there was more to this story, like how the desk contained gold or something but there isn’t. So, um, yeah.

So I’ve written in many of my posts, the retail portion of my apartment building has been taking shape, albeit incredibly slow at times. The first two levels of the mall have been opened but the third level and the most interesting to me, was still blocked off to the public until last week. The third level is now open though only on the south side, the northern part of that level is still off-limits. What was open though revealed the opening of two stores. The first was a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. The second was an Ardene clothing store. I’m not really familiar with Ardene since I’m a dude and Ardene appears to only sell clothes to young women.

I was able to see the other storefronts, some of which were leased but had absolutely no work done on them yet. I was finally able to look into the windows of the movie theatre. It seems like it still needs a ton of work to be done but I have heard rumours that the theatre will be open on May 11. I was also surprised to see that the third level will contain a visual effects school. I’m not so sure about that one.

In any case, I’m looking forward to finally seeing movies just steps away from my apartment.

I’m on the verge of completing my second week at work and for better or worse, Fridays now mean something to me again. When you’re unemployed, everyday is a weekend, which I absolutely loved. If you think about it, I kinda had a four month long weekend. It was all unpaid of course but that was ok.

I’m looking forward to the weekend and sleeping in on Saturday morning.

As I did last year, I placed a bet with an online sports betting operation before the NHL playoffs began this evening. I made a bet that the Los Angeles King would defeat the Vancouver Canucks in the first round of the 2012 NHL playoffs. Now some of you may call me a bad fan for betting against my team but it’s actually a shrewd move. I can’t lose. If the Canucks lose the series, I win several hundred dollars and I’m sure that will erase whatever disappointment I might have. If the Canucks win the series, then I lose a few bucks but I’m happy with the satisfaction they move onto the next round.

Should they get to the next round, I’ll repeat the whole thing again. Last year, I lost a bit money as the Canucks went right to the finals. I did get a fair chunk of my change back, thanks to the Boston Bruins. Given that the Canucks lost tonight, it looks like my payoff might come early this year. Can’t lose!

In every household you can generally find things that are common to households everywhere. I would put items like writing instruments in such a category. Last week, I found myself in a situation where that was not the case for my household. I wanted to write something down after I read an article on the Internet so I went looking for a pen or anything really that I could write with. Now I had brought a pen with me to my trip to New York. The pen, unfortunately, exploded on my way back from Manhattan. I guess there was air trapped in the cylinder that holds the ink. Of course that air was at a higher pressure than the cabin air so the thing just popped a seal and started to leak ink everywhere. I made a mess filling out my custom’s card and had to go to the washroom to wash off all the ink. I wound up dumping the pen inside my barf bag and I just left it my seat pocket.

That pen turned out to be the only pen that I owned at the time. I didn’t realize that until I needed to write something down in my apartment. I couldn’t believe I didn’t have a single working pen, pencil, marker, or piece of chalk in my entire home but that indeed was fact. I was in school for twenty-one years if you count public school and university and for all those years, I had all kinds of writing instruments, different coloured pens, pencils with different graphite hardness, highlighters, the list goes on. I’ve now gotten to the point where I don’t even own a single pen.

The situation rectified itself when I went to the Auto Show last weekend. I picked up a free pen from a booth. That’s the only pen I currently own, a promo pen. School me would be really disappointed with me right now.

I got a haircut this evening. My stylist said my hair was quite long in the back. I’m not sure if it was mullet long but it felt long. Don’t tell anyone but my stylist has been selected to play in the Canadian Lingerie Football League. She actually plays a decent game of football. I’m really proud of her!

I replace my shower curtain this evening as well. I like my shower curtains plain and simple. My mine is see through with no artwork on it. I don’t like shower curtains that block out all the light, leaving you to shower in dim lighting. I’m not afraid of knife-wielding maniacs while showering, I just like to my bits and parts properly when cleaning them.

On Saturday evening, the NHL 2011-2012 regular season concluded play, which determined the final matchups for the opening round of playoffs which will start this Wednesday. As many of you know, I follow the trials and tribulations of the local professional ice hockey team in my city, the Vancouver Canucks. On Saturday, the Canucks were awarded the President’s Trophy, as the team who garnered the most points in regular season play. This was the second year in a row that they were able to claim this accolade. Of course, this accolade is virtually meaningless in the realm of professional hockey as the Stanley Cup is viewed as the only real and true prize.

As with almost every spring, I write a short post about how I predict the playoffs will go for the Canucks. Despite their tremendous season last year, I honestly did not believe the Canucks were on the verge of winning the Stanley Cup at all during their impressive playoff run. Winning the Cup is so unbelievably difficult that it’s foolish to think a team has wrapped it up until literally seconds before the horn blows at the end of the final game. As some of you may recall, the playoffs ended quite tragically for the Canucks last year.

I am predicting with some confidence that despite my best wishes, the Canucks will not be able to find their way back to the Stanley Cup Finals for 2012. On the surface, yes, they were, by virtue of points, the best team in the league in the regular season. Things are completely different this year though. In 2011, the Canucks were the clear leader of the pack, winning the President’s Trophy by a country mile. They had accumulated enough points well before the end of the season that the NHL had enough time to send the actual trophy to Vancouver and present it to the team because no other club could catch them. This year, the Canucks barely won the trophy on the last day of the season and they needed two other teams to lose (which they did). The playing field is much more even this year.

Last year, the Canucks won many of their games by simply dominating their opponents, denying them goals while scoring many of their own. Many a night, the term “ass-kicking” was an apt one to describe the outcome of a game. This year, the Canucks were in many more tighter games. They scored less and they gave up more goals. Many victories were by one goal. Now many in the Canucks organization would probably counter that a win is a win. Technically yes, but is that really true? By beating teams so handily last year, the Canucks were gifted a psychological advantage, as most teams knew the Canucks were more than capable of winning in a very convincing fashion. This year, the tighter games meant that teams probably thought they were able to keep up with the Canucks on most night. Save for perhaps a few unlucky bounces, they might have even beaten them. I don’t think teams fear them as much as last year.

The team’s star players also had less impressive outings this year. The Sedin twins, whom were league points leaders for the last two seasons, were not able to repeat the feat this year. Though, I must admit, Henrik did finish with the most assists in the league with 67. Ryan Kesler who scored an impressive 41 goals last year, scored about half that this year, while also scoring about 20 less points in total.

The team also lost a few players from last year. Most notably, defenseman Christian Ehrhoff bolted for Buffalo for about a billion dollars. He was an offensive talent on the blue line and I wonder if he had something to do with the more limited goal production this year. Though many people think his departure was a non-factor this year, the loss of Raffi Torres meant the Canucks were less tough. Torres brought a real physical presence to the ice, with his hit on Seabrook in the first round as a classic example. Some would argue that his departure was off-set by the arrival of Zack Kassian but with all due to respect to Kassian, he hasn’t done much in the way of anything since his arrival. Not only that, he was injured several games before the end of the season and his status for the playoffs is unknown.

The Canucks also showed an alarming breakdown in defensive play during the last bit of the season. Last year, they gave up the fewest amount of goals in the league but this was far from the case this year. During the last few games of the season, the Canucks seemed content with giving up high quality scoring chances to opponents. If this behaviour were to repeat itself in the playoffs, an early exit would be an easy prediction.

Last but not least, I have to mention injuries. Currently, Daniel Sedin is recovering from a concussion which he received before the end of the season. It’s been almost two weeks since he played last. Now there are reports that he will play on opening night but I have concerns about how he’ll do given his absence for the two weeks. Will he able the same player he was before? Can he take a hit like before. There are also concerns for the hidden ailments that might be plaguing other players. Defenseman Kevin Bieksa was given several days off for “maintenance” which was ridiculous as I’ve never seen a player given more than a day for “maintenance”. What injury was he hiding and how bad is it still?

For the reasons stated above, it is my unfortunate belief that the Canucks will most likely not return the Stanley Cup Finals. They might advance a round or perhaps two but it just seems very unlikely they have the required pieces to get back into the big dance. I will say this though, I am cannot account for the single yet quite impressive intangible factor that exists… Cory Schneider. The so-called “backup” goaltender for the Canucks was phenomenal for the Canucks this year, playing consistently well throughout the season. Could he be the piece that tips the scales in favour of the Canucks? I don’t know.

Still, my feeling is this will be another spring of disappointment for Vancouver Canucks fans.

Hey, if anyone was wondering if a shot of bourbon is a good follow-up to chicken wings, the answer is a resounding yes. By the way, on Wednesdays at the Back Forty, wings are $0.30 each, meaning my twenty wings cost me only $6. This place used to be the Atlantic Trap and Gill but that’s gone now.