happylife

The sea congested

Sunday morning, I was awaken by huge sound of ship whistles and looked out of the window. The sky is clear, and there still stay the Tall Ships in English Bay. Lots of boats are sailing around the Tall Ships and others are just enjoying sailing, plus a commercial tag boat is drawing a barge and the aquabuses are coming and going across the False Creek as usual. The sea of False Creek and English Bay is extremely congested and there is no person who controls the traffic like towers in airports. In spite of such a condition, I have hardly heard of ship crush in this sea. I think I can say that boats or ships are very safe means of transportation. The insurance fee for my boat proves it; I pay less than $300 a year. The only serious sea accident in this sea happened a few years ago at one night. The night is coming soon again when much more boats cover the sea. It is the fire works night.

Empty!

When I was driving near the airport, my car suddenly stopped because of out of gas. Sure the gas gage had been indicating empty since one day before, but I had been estimating that it would last at least more than 50km and I had driven only 30km after the warning lamp turned on. My friend said that it is quite natural for American cars to stop soon after the fuel warning lamp turned on. It is quite different from Japanese cars which would run more than 100km after the fuel indicator shows zero. Fortunately as my car was equipped with manual transmission and there was a gas station in a couple of hundreds meters, I could drive my car inertially and reach there. I have to be careful about the fuel from now.

Bibimbap

On the way back from the airport, the traffic was so jammed that I dropped from the highway and went to Yaohan center in Richmond for the first time in a few months. It is a popular shopping mall once managed by Japanese and now by Chinese owner. At one of the take-out Korean restaurants in the food court, I had this bibimbap which is a typical Korean dish of rice mixed with seasoned vegetables, minced beef, and raw egg. It is served in a burnt stone bowl and we can enjoy it always in hot condition from start to end. It cost $6.50 and was not bad except it was too spicy. I don't know why Korean foods are all so spicy. It's good for me because I can eat spicy food but I wonder what those people have in Korea who don't like spicy food like small children.

Tall ships

Several classical tall ships have come to English Bay to stay for a five day exhibition. Tall ship Island is the name in which a couple of barges are tied each other to form a temporary and artificial island. Several tall ships are sailing around English Bay and docking to the island. If you pay some money, you can sail to the island and look inside the tall ships. As I have my boat, I sailed close to the island and watched the tall ships. I heard that the largest tall ship this time is from Russia. It was just a few weeks ago that I saw the Russian luxurious yacht with helicopter in English Bay. Why do Russian people like so huge ships?

Sunset cycling

I happened to see this dramatic view when I was enjoying sunset cycling in Stanley Park. I prefer cycling around the sunset time to noon because I can get more chance to see a beautiful sight. The setting sun lights up things from beside of them creating shades and making the contrast higher. Plus the color of the sun changes variously like white, yellow, gold, purple and red. All these staff contributes to generating spectacular scenes. When I think that there are no two same scenes available ever, I cannot help having deep impression on each of them.

Ick!

Vancouver is a generous city to gay people and we can see a lot of them all around the city like on the streets, holding hands or kissing each other. Soon after I came to Vancouver two years ago, I happened to see two old men hagging tightly and kissing deeply on Davie street which is very famous or notorious for gay people. It was one of my top three shocking scenes I have ever seen. The other one is the scene when I opened a private room door in a washroom and there was a man just discharging. And the other one is my top secret and I cannot say here. Anyway, gay people are so open here that I often this kind of poster in the elevator of my apartment which is never a special apartment for gay people. If this kind of poster was shown in a quite normal apartment in Japan, the residents or PTA [Parent-Teacher Association] would make a claim. I've already got used to this kind of culture, but I can't help feeling ick a little.

Hydrangea

As I am a boy, I'm not so interested in flowers as girls. I know few Japanese flower names, and I know much less in English. I'm shocked to count up my vocabularies of flowers. Cherry blossom, rose, lily, tulip, and that's all! Sure I'm not to work for flower shops but I had better know many more words. As you know "hydrangea" is the name of this flower, which I have never heard in my life while I have seen it repeatedly in the summer season both in Japan and Canada. I assume that "hydra" is related to water and this flower comes out in rainy season. In such way, my vocabularies are gradually increasing.

Pizza

Pizza is the most reasonable food in Vancouver. We can get a slice of pizza from 99 cents. It's not bad, but I prefer this a little bit luxurious pizza which costs $1.50 each including tax. I often enjoy pizza, almost every two days, not because it is cheap but also it is tasty. At this pizza stand on Davie street, we can choose several kinds of pizza such as tomato, mushroom, blue cheese, artichoke, peperoni, potato, Italian sausage, and so on. I like this combination of blue cheese beef and tomato. I wonder why Italian foods are so reasonable and tasty. A pack of spaghetti costs $1.20 at Safeway while a pack of Japanese udon noodle costs $6.00 at Fujiya grocery store. I think both of them are made of the same wheat.

Simple but effective

This is a scene which I often see in Vancouver and scarcely ever in Tokyo. I found it in a closed restaurant near my apartment. By exposing the cash register, the restaurant owner shows explicitly enough that he has no cash here. I think this is a very good anti-theft method because he doesn't have to pay any money to protect his shop from burglars and burglars don't have to spend time and effort on breaking in vainly. Most shops in Tokyo making contract with a security company can save a lot of money by using this method if they are not dealing with high price items like jewelry. I think this is a very typical Canadian way of thinking, that is to say, in order to solve a problem, they try to face to it as simply, easily and reasonably as possible. Japanese style on the other hand is opposite; they prepare a huge system or device using a lot of effort and money. I can't say which style is better because it depends on the problem, however it is a good idea to compare different styles.

Photo Album

I like taking pictures and have been enjoying it more than ten years. I used to use a film camera before because there was no good digital camera until five years ago. A film camera was good but it had two major problems. One is that films cost much and the other is that films are hard to storage and manage. All these problems were solved after digital cameras appeared and I get to take much more pictures with a digital camera. The greatest advantage of a digital camera I think is that I can do try and error as much as I like and confirm the result right after taking it. It means that I can take hundreds of pictures until I get only one successful shot. I'm showing my best photo album on the web and it is my pleasure to make it better by replacing the old shot with the better one recently taken. If I continue this procedure day after day, my photo album would become much better.