Friday, December 14, 2012

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Saturday, December 15, 2012

Great Canadian Craft Fair: Holiday Edition ($7 - 15)
10:00am - 6:00pm Sat & Sun
The Salt Building, 85 West 1st Ave., Vancouver BC
Over 200 Amazing Local Vendors!  Order Discount Tickets Online: http://greatcanadiancraft.jimdo.com/  Special Early Bird Tickets (Entry One Hour Early for Special Early Bird Vendor Deals and Free Gift Bag!)  Children 12 and under FREE! Face Painting and Caroling! Children's Story Time! Visit from Santa! Door Prizes! Food Drive for The Vancouver Food Bank!

Christmas in Kerrisdale 
11:00pm - 4:00pm 
Kerrisdale, 41st Ave & West Blvd, Vancouver BC
Free horse & carriage rides, Santa and roving quartets all set in the beautifully decorated village.

Blim Holiday Market - by donation
12:00 - 6:00pm
Chinese Cultural Centre, 50 E Pender Street, Vancouver BC
60 Vendors, hot food by Open Sesame, BLIM gift certifiate raffle, DJ set by Darwin Myers. Entry by donation.

Dundarave Festival of Lights: The World Christmas
12:00pm - dusk
Dundarave Beach, 2438 Marine Drive West Vancouver, BC
The World Christmas, unique to the Dundarave Festival of Lights, celebrates the richness of Canada's cultural diversity.  From the Francophone roots of our country, to the heat of Mariachi and foot stomping Celtic chords, the World Christmas brings you the season as you may have never seen it before. 

Halo King of the Hill Tournament
2:00pm - 5:00pm
EXP Restaurant + Bar, 309 W. Pender Street, Vancouver BC
Another amazing, exclusive gaming tournament EXCLUSIVE to G-List members: the country's finest "King of the Hill"-style Halo 4 tournament in downtown Vancouver, BC.  Special appearance by Electric Playground and Reviews on the Run's, founder and co-host Victor Lucas!

Official Tree Lighting Ceremony at Burnaby Village Museum
4:00pm
6501 Deer Lake Avenue  Burnaby, BC
Bring your family and join us for the official lighting ceremony of the tall sequoia Christmas Tree near the Carousel Pavilion.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Great Canadian Craft Fair: Holiday Edition ($7 - 15)
10:00am - 6:00pm Sat & Sun
The Salt Building, 85 West 1st Ave., Vancouver BC
Over 200 Amazing Local Vendors!  Order Discount Tickets Online: http://greatcanadiancraft.jimdo.com/  Special Early Bird Tickets (Entry One Hour Early for Special Early Bird Vendor Deals and Free Gift Bag!)  Children 12 and under FREE! Face Painting and Caroling! Children's Story Time! Visit from Santa! Door Prizes! Food Drive for The Vancouver Food Bank!

East Van Bazaar Holiday Edition
10:00am - 6:00pm
The Waldorf Hotel‎, 1489 East Hastings Street Vancouver, BC
The East Van Bazaar is a new monthly market that will be happening at the Waldorf. To launch it, we’re having a special holiday shopping event on Sunday December 16. Each sale will tons of great quality handmade products from a huge group local vendors. Products you will find at the East Van Bazaar will include clothing (new and vintage), jewelery, art prints, stationary, beauty products, aromatherapy products, vintage and new home decor, artisanal food products, children’s toys and much more.

Kerrisdale Gliding on Ice
3:45pm - 5:30pm
Kerrisdale Arena,  5670 East Boulevard, Vancouver, BC
Free community ice skate at Kerrisdale Arena sponsered by the Kerrisdale Busines Association. Live music on the ice and rentrals & free refreshments

Geeks Versus Nerds is a funny themed debate show that happens once a month that pits well known pop culture icons against each other and celebrates the local geek, gamer, and comic book nerd subcultures. Originally from Halifax, this show made it to Vancouver when Chris Nyarady, a debater on the original show, moved here and did not want to leave this fun show behind. Which is good for us Vancouverites! I was invited to watch the Episode 4 on Tuesday at Yuk Yuk's, which featured Sub-Zero vs Mr. Freeze and Jack Skellington vs The Grinch.

 A fairly sized audience gathered to see the show.

Jenny Burgesse of Geek Sweets is usually there selling cool themed cupcakes before the show. $3.50 each.

Super cute Jack Skellington and the Grinch cupcakes! I thought it was very creative to use a strawberry as a Santa hat!

Though the Grinch was the popular choice, I went with the chocolate Jack Skellington cupcake. Yummy!

Chris "MooMan" Nyarady is the host and producer of the show and he is hilarious! His enthusiasm is infectious and he encourages the audience to participate. And they do! That's the best part.

There are two rounds in each show and the first up was Sub-Zero vs Mr. Freeze. The Geeks had Sub-Zero while the Nerds had Mr. Freeze.

Some of the Team Nerds even dressed up and brought their own props. Though it's not absolutely necessary to know who the pop icons are, it does help. I'm not too familiar with Sub-Zero but the Mooman provides a little intro to the characters and debaters provide lots of facts so by the you'll be able to figure it out before the end. Team Geeks took this round. Winner: Sub-Zero.

The second round featured the Grinch versus Jack Skellington. Team Geek represented the Grinch and Team Nerds represented Jack Skellington.


Team Geeks also won the second round! Winner: The Grinch! They deserved the win since the almost did everything in Dr. Suess style - in rhyme ahaha! The Grinch's heart grew even bigger that day. heehee

After the debates, there were raffle prize draws with the prizes coming from WS Geeks vs Nerds sponsors: Golden Age Collectables, Gamedeals Video Games, The Connection Games & Comics, Geek Sweets.


I enjoyed myself! The debates were really fun to listen to and the participants are so funny. It's worth it to check it out if you like to laugh and are familiar of any pop-culture icons. The next one, Episode 5, which pits Gandalf against Yoda and Magneto against Voldemort, is on January 8th at the Electric Owl on Main Street. Tickets are $10 and shows happen on the second Tuesday of every month. Check out their site and updates for upcoming shows in their website http://www.wcgeeksversusnerds.com.

This restaurant opened relatively recently in my neighbourhood and my family and I visited it quite a few times already. It's actually their third location, having two existing ones in Richmond. They serve choose-your-ingredients-yourself noodle combos and drinks and also other rice combos.



The $8.50 Noodle combo is probably the most popular. You fill in this sheet and get to chose the soup base, type of noodle, two toppings (extra ones are $1.25) and a hot drink.

We usually order Ovatine for our drink. It's ok, not as watered down as other restaurants, which is good.
You can order a cold drink for another $1 or a specialty drink for an additional $2 like this mango slushie. All the bubble tea drinks are made from powder though, they don't have any fresh fruit. 

"Desert Wings with Ginger"

Side orders are available in the combo to ranging from an additional $1.75 - $1.95. You can only order one type of each and a maximum of two side orders per noodle combo you order. We always like to order the Desert Wings with Ginger. They taste so good!

Pan Fried Fish Puffs

These fish puffs are also an option to be put into your noodle soup. The side order comes with a sweet and sour dip.

Soup base: Watercress and almonds fish soup. Toppings: fish tofu and beef balls. Noodle: Vermicelli (thin)

I tried both the Watercress and almonds fish soup and the Parsley & Century eggs fish soup both of these soup types come with cilantro, green onions, Chinese cabbage, bean curds and mushrooms. They will just give you more bean curds or mushrooms if you order them as your toppings. They both taste great but I prefer the Watercress and almonds fish soup since I get the extra vegetables without having to order it as a topping. I'm glad that the soup base as flavour and is not watered down.

Soup base: Parsley & Century eggs fish soup. Toppings: Bean curds and fish puffs. Noodle: Flat rice noode

I like this place, it's cheap, the noodle soup tastes great and the bowls of noodle soup are HUGE! I never can finish it, it's enough for me to share with another person with an additional side order. They do get pretty busy around the dinner hour though and you can only make a reservation if you are a party of 5 or more.

A couple weeks ago, I said goodbye to another one of my friends who decided to leave the country for a few years. =( We decided to have a farewell dinner at Fortune Garden on Broadway. They have parking in the back so that's a plus.


The place wasn't really busy even though it was dinner time. In fact we ended up the only table left at the end of the night.



I didn't really write down what we had. But we ordered a Peking duck, which was pretty good.


Soup.

Slightly spicy tofu. I liked this dish.



I always like this type of soft tofu. This dish was simple - just sauce and green onions on top...but it tastes a bit funny since they used a fish sauce.


There were 8 of us and we ordered 7 dishes and finished it all.

Complimentary sweet potato dessert.

The food was ok.

Our family was looking for a place to eat Xiao Long Bao after discovering the new place on Richards Street downtown Shanghai Xiao Long Bao didn't open on Sundays. Then we didn't make a reservation at our second choice Top Shanghai Cuisine Restaurant so was turned away. Suhang Restaurant was near by and my mom has been there before and it was pretty good so we ended up there. It's tucked away in a small strip mall on Ackroyd Road right across from the bigger strip mall Top Shanghai Cuisine is in.

Crispy Rice with Mixed Meat $15.80

The table beside us had ordered this so I wanted to give it a try as well. You are suppose to pour the soupy stuff over the crispy rice but my sister resisted this. So we just poured it into our own bowls. I really liked it; something about the crispiness of the rice in soup appeals to me but soup was just a tad salty. 

Crispy Rice

Pickled Vegetables with Tripe & Soy Beans $15.80

I don't know about this translation. It's a vegetarian dish. The "tripe" is the beancurd. My mom says the beancurd is suppose to represent the tripe. lol This was an ok dish.

Steamed Soup Bun with Pork Filling (Xiao Long Bao) $5.50

Mmm! Yay! The Xiao Long Baos! Delicious pork and soupiness wrapped inside a thin dough skin. It's an art just to eat it. Mmmm. So good.

Szechuan Style Smoked Duck (half) $16.95

The duck was very good! It wasn't salty and had nice flavour to it. My mom was singing praises about this and was telling me to make sure write that in my blog. Hahaha.

Pan-Fried Pork Soft Buns $6.50

I thought we should have ordered something else other than these buns. They taste good but they are basically the same as the Xiao Long Bao but in bun form. The filling tastes the same and they also have the soupiness that Xiao Long Bao has!

Our dinner ended with complimentary dessert. I loved it. It's coconut jelly!

Overall, our dinner was good. I liked everything we ordered and wouldn't mind coming back again to try some different stuff. Our Xiao Long Bao craving as been successfully satisfied.