Tales of a Travelling Techie
I have a couple more restaurant reviews to post, but I have been finding some great video clips on the internet lately that I really want to share!
Check out this crazy stunt that some kids decided to pull off in broad daylight. It looks like it was shot somewhere in Europe from the back ground. It just goes to show you that when kids have nothing constructive to do they come up with crazy stuff like this. A new X-Games sport? The title says it all.
Mar 29th 2007BriceThe Soap Box
People that live in England usually go off that island to get their ski fix, but not this wack job. This guy gets his snow fix by skiing down Europe’s longest escalator on his skis. Talk about no turning back until you stop…. Sort of like that ski jumping stuff. Check it out, what a nut this guy is.
Terje Haakonsen, a Burton Sponsored Rider, is the very first human being to drop this sick sick line. If you are a snow sport enthusiast, you will appreciate the insanity of this line that Terje rides. This was sent to me by a friend a couple months back. I watch it every once in a while… enjoy.
Cheers
-Brice
Mar 27th 2007BriceThe Soap Box
 So a very good engineer friend of mine was in the market for a better MP3 player, as his current RCA MP3 player just wasn’t cutting it. He was telling me stories about the RCA player (only 512mb) would take 3 minutes just to load up when you turned the power on! I mentioned to him about a San Disk unit I sort of liked and then I really didn’t here from him unit now.
I found this email to be pretty funny and indicative of today’s retail environment as I am sure many many of us have experienced such situations. I will try to find the email chain leading up to this email, but if I can’t you will get the idea. I haven’t changed anything in this email. This is exactly like how it ended up in my inbox, giving me a great laugh. This was sent from my engineer friend venting about a couple big boxed retail stores here in Vancouver; that or he just had a really bad day at work! Either way have a laugh…
Cheers,
-Brice
 ***************************************************
To: Brice Wong
Subject: what the hell is wrong with this world
So I returned that RCA piece of shit. Get this, in speaking with the guy at the camera/audio dept. The guy doesn’t even own a friggin’ computer and has troubles with iTunes… only the easiest program on the face of the earth for music storage!! And I think was completely lost when I was describing the insurmountable issues with the device, he said he was going to try it out. Also, apparently you cannot remove the music from that RCA unit. And also is not recognized as an external device 8/10 times… Retarded. I will never shop there again knowing that London Drugs is stupid enough to hire an idiot of that capacity.
So I sojourned to Best Buy because I have heard moderately good things about their policies and such…
Oh my god. Please gag me with a canoe paddle. I will NEVER go back there… for one thing, every three minutes this boppy little numbskull went prancing by with a clipboard humming and singing… I wanted to throttle him. To top it all of as I was checking out some units he cranks this ridiculous Z95 beatoff music on a unit directly beside me… to his dismay, I promptly turned it off as it was ruining my shopping experience.
Everywhere you go for electronics shopping these days is full of irritating imbeciles.
Unfortunately its mail-order from now on for me…
********************************************
Mar 26th 2007BriceThe Soap Box
Today at the day job, I just recieved these fine pearls of wisdom and wanted to share them with you all. I hope you feel the love. Thanks for stopping by and reading my Blog!
Cheers,
-Brice
——————————————————————————–
This is a strictly mathematical viewpoint…
it goes like this:
What Makes 100%?
What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?
We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%.
How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?
Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these
questions :
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
and
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
But,
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
And,
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%
So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that WhileHard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it’s the Bullshit and Ass kissing that will put you over the top.
And in case these words of wisdom are not enough, REMEMBER, SOME PEOPLE ARE ALIVE SIMPLY BECAUSEÂ IT IS ILLEGAL TO SHOOT THEM
Mar 25th 2007BriceTechnology
Yes you read the title right. A waterproof MP3 player! How cool is that eh?
I just finished writing on this very unique MP3 player by a company named Freestyle Audio. This MP3 player (believe it or not) is fully waterproof. You can take if under water! I thought it was sort of strange at first, but my pool sessions now involve me swimming lengths while listening to my tunes. For the full on review, please check it out on Futurelooks. com and click here!
This month has been a great month for good food finds around the Vancouver area. I wrote about my favorite Thai restaurant, Khai Thai To Go, cheap but really good sushi at Kishu Star Japanese Bistro, and one of the best Chinese food places ever, Deer Garden. I just really like food and I like to share it with whoever will listen!
My girlfriend doesn’t really like to cook, so when I visit her, we usually go out to eat, and when she comes to my house, I usually cook. That is why a majority of these restaurants reviews are in the Kitsilano area of Vancouver. I visited my girlfriend last night and we both decided that we wanted some Indian food on this particular evening.
We both really love Indian food, and I have yet to find an Indian restaurant here in Vancouver area that I would call my favorite. There are lots of good ones, but none I can call my favorite quite yet. One of my favorite Indian restaurants is in Old Montreal and I hope to share that with you all later this summer when I get back to beautiful Montreal.
I was hoping that this restaurant we were about to try this even would make it onto my favorite list. It was recommended to us by a number of friends, because they claimed the food was really good, the price was cheap and the restaurant had some character. Sounded good to me, the name of the restaurant was Jolly’s Indian Bistro – 2778 West 4th Ave, Vancouver BC V6K 1R1 . ph – 604-730-6929. The restaurant is right on the corner of West 4th and Macdonald on the South side of the street right next to the bus stop. Click here for the Google Map.
 
I really like the small boutique restaurants with some great character and charisma and Jolly’s is definitely one of these. They have their menu outside in a nice wooden frame and when you walk though the weathered door, you immediately feel like you are stepping in what seems like a restaurant in India. The fine smell of freshly cooked India curry and spices fills the restaurant and the old worn hardwood floors feel like they have been there for a long long time. On the ceiling there are different colored tapestries looped on the ceiling, candles on each table and rich dark brown colored high bar top with a row of burning tea light candles contrast nicely with the mustard colors table cloths and dark brown chairs scatted through out the restaurant. This restaurant has about 14 tables and can seat about 43 including the bar top.
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My girlfriend and I rolled in about 6pm and there were only about 3 other tables taken when we arrived. The setting is intimate, and surprisingly quiet. The menu is one laminated page, double sided; Food on one side and drinks on the other. It was nice to see that the cutlery and water glasses on the table we sat at were clean with no water spots or other dish washer marks.Â
We ordered the Somosa’s to start as an appetizer and for entrees, my girlfriend had the Kolkota Kofta – Potato dumplings in lentils and fried onions, and I ordered the Veggie Thali – Pakoras (Vegetable fritter appetizer with mint and tamarind chutney), Mango Lassi (Indian yogurt drink) and a combination of 3 vegetarian curries and a papadum (thin baked Indian bread). All entrees come with a homemade naan bread, basmati rice, and fresh salad.
Somosa- As you can see from the picture, the Somosa comes on a plate with a bunch of chick peas and sweet mango chutney. The stuffing inside the Somosa was outstanding and the sweet mango chutney and the chick peas were to die for!
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Kolkota Kofta – Potato dumplings in lentils and fried onions . My girlfriend’s entrée was outstanding. The 3 potato dumplings had such a smooth rich flavor they just melted away in your mouth when you ate them. I’m not sure what kind of curry sauce they were sitting in, but whatever it was it was damn tasty. Surprisingly the mix of potatoes, lentils and onions was not dry, just the opposite, it was pretty moist. Full of flavor and tasty Indian spice, my girl friend and I both agreed we would order that dish again. On top of the 3 potato dumplings, you have a monster baked naan bread, basmati rice and some salad. I would note that the naan bread they serve at Jolly’s much different than the naan bread I have had at other Indian restaurants. Typically naan bread is soft with large bread bubbles in it. The naan here at Jolly’s is sort of baked and slightly more on the crunchy side than the soft maluable side like that of other Indian restaurants. Either way, just a bit different but still very good.
Â
Veggi Thali – My entrée was massive. I got the big platter with 3 different vegetarian curries:
a-Punjabi Palak Paneer – Spinach Curry with fresh Indian cottage cheese
b-Chick Pea Masala – Chick peas boiled in black tea with Jolly’s special blend of spices
c-East Indian Gobhi – Cauliflower in mustard seeds and turmeric
along with the naan bread, papadum, basmati rice, salad, Pakoras appetizer and a Mango Lassi.
I didn’t think this thing was going to be so packed full! The waitress suggested this dish was a good way to sample a bunch of different curries all at the same time and that sounded good to me at the time. My camera ran out of batteries and the only picture I couldn’t get was the picture of my Pakoras appetizer.
There was certainly a lot of food on my dish and I would have to say out of the 3 curries on my plate, I would order 2 of them again. I really like chick peas, so the Chick Pea Masala was an instant hit; Nice mild flavors, with smooth, perfectly cooked chick peas is a winner anytime with me. The other one I really like the flavors and textures of was the East Indian Gobhi. I don’t like Cauliflower on its own, but with the curried sauce containing the mustard seeds and turmeric gave the cauliflower a really addicting taste. The one I wouldn’t order again would be the Punjabi Palak Paneer. If you like Spinach and cottage cheese, you will love this dish. I am just not a fan of mashed spinach and cottage cheese. I found this dish a bit runny and when I eat spinach I don’t eat a lot of it and I rarely eat cottage cheese so both of these put together was not a hit for me. The cottage cheese was very good though. Nice buttery texture with a mild flavor.
Mango Lassi – Is an Indian yogurt based drink. Unlike other Indian restaurants I have been to, this Mango Lassi was no sweet and not thick. Other Indian restaurants tend to make their Lassi’s too sweet or too thick like a smoothie. The Lassi here was pretty good, it tasted just right and went down really easy.
As mentioned above my girlfriend and I rolled into Jolly’s about 6pm. When we left at 7:15pm the restaurant was getting busy and full. If you go and don’t want to wait for a table, definitely go by around 5:30 or 6pm.
Surprisingly the service this evening was just OK. There were only two waitresses on shift, and when we got there it wasn’t busy at all. It just seemed like we waited a long time for our entrees to come to the table and at times it seemed like the waitresses were disorganized and confused. When we were there, only about 8 other people were in the restaurant. Maybe there was only one cook on this evening? It happens. People make mistakes, no big deal. At least the waitresses were really friendly. Â
You have all seen the pictures of the quantity of food. The food is good and surprisingly the cost is super cheap for the quality and amount of food you get! Our bill came to a whopping $17.98 with tax. Granted we did have a $9.00 off Entertainment Book coupon. If we didn’t have the coupon our bill would have been $26.98 CDN with tax. So with a 15% - 20% tip your looking at about $32 for two. That is really reasonable and cheap for such a hefty hearty meal!
Regardless of the slow service this evening, I would for sure recommend this place to anyone that likes Indian food. I would definitely go back and try their other dishes as they all sound really appetizing to me.
Ranking (out of 5 stars)
Food – 4.50
Service – 3.50
Washroom Cleanliness – 3.50
Restaurant Ambiance – 4.00
Plate/Cutlery Cleanliness – 4.00
Value – 4.00
Overall rating: 3.91
On March 17, I posted an article about my Therm-ic Foot Warmers and my cold feet problem. Today I actually got to use them for the first time and I would like to follow up with my initial post.
I just have to say, my footbeds are in my boots and they are not coming out anytime soon; Thus no pictures to illustrate my points
Due to my flat feet, I have no arches in my feet (typical Asian syndrome) , and so I use Superfeet Outlast Winter insoles in my snowboard boots. If you have ever used Superfeet insoles you know they are awesome, but you also know they are not FLAT. They have an articulated arch and heel cup to provide comfort, support and stability. The Therm-ic foot beds as per the picture in the original post are flat. So cutting them to size to place on top of the Superfeet was not an easy process and more so a royal pain in the ass.
It took a long long time, and I made them larger than the Superfeet on purpose because the last thing I wanted was to feel a ridge from the Therm-ic foot bed because I made them too small. I eventually managed to get it to a size where when I forced the Therm-ic insole onto of the Superfeet, there was no bulging anywhere, but trying to get these out with a fight? Good luck. They are staying in.
Whistler / Blackcomb is about 2hr from Vancouver. A friend and went up to day and checked out the snow. The temperature was a chilly -11 Celsius with a bit of wind. I started with the Therm-ic on the 1st setting (lowest setting) and surprisingly I was good till pretty much 1pm. After 1pm I decided to try the 2nd setting (middle setting). Talk about toasty feet all day long!
The heat you feel from the Therm-ic isn’t like sweltering heat. You actually can’t even feel the heat that much on the 1st setting. You just know that your feet are not cold but they are warm. At no time did my feet feel excessively warm or sweaty. These foot beds just provided just enough to make my feet not feel cold. Although I have only used these foot bed for day one, I think they will be money well spent! They felt comfortable, I didn’t really have any fit issues or technical issues with the cable or battery packs and my feet didn’t get cold!
Thanks for reading my ramblings. Talking about skiing,  check out this video I found. This guy is gonna need some serious TLC.  You need AUDIO for this one. It’s soooo funny!!!!!!!!
Mar 18th 2007BriceThe Soap Box
Sorry about two blog posts so close together. I almost forgot it was St. Patrick’s Day and I remembered that when I was in Chicago last year, someone told me about some wacked out tradition that happens every St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago.
 Most places around the world, St. Patricks Day is just another reason to throw a party, wear some green and have a good ol’ piss up, but the people of Chicago take it about 1000 steps further. They throw the big party and parade, but they go a bit further and really get into the spirit by turning the Chicago River green.
Yes you heard it, they dye the entire river green. How nuts is that? Check out some of the pictures I found online. They come from Lynn Becker’s Website.  Lynn’s website also gives some interesting bits of background on this strange, yearly event! Â
I must have some really bad circulation in my body, because my hands and feet are always cold. This is especially true when I go snowboarding. Lately I have found that it doesn’t really matter what the temperature is when I am on the mountain, my feet and hands are always cold!
In efforts to solve ½ my problem, I decided to tackle my cold feet issue. A friend of mine told me Mad Dog Sports in Coquitlam was having a closing out sale and everything was minimum 40-70% off! He went in there a few days ago and bought some stuff and told me there were these heated foot beds you could slide in your boots on sale for 50% off. That sounded like a pretty good deal to me. I went down to Mad Dogs in Coquitlam and he was correct, the entire store was on sale.
I found the heated foot beds my friend was describing to me. There were only 2 packages left. Regular price was $200.00 CDN, I picked them up for $100CDN plus tax! What a deal.
The foot beds are called Therm-ic Footwarmers. As you can see from the pictures, they consist of 2 flat foot beds with a flat electrical cable that gets plugged into a battery pack. You charge the battery pack with the supplied AC adaptor, set your settings and away you go.  Hopefully this will help with my cold feet issue. I just got them and I haven’t tried them out yet. I will keep you all posted and let you know how they work.
Either way, If you need gear and live in the Tri
Mar 16th 2007BriceTechnology
I patched a call through to Mr. Dot Com Mogul himself Mr. Stephen Fung. I have to give Stephen all the credit in the world as he has helped a total newbie at blogging (me) setup my blog and try to explain stuff to me that comes in his sleep. I know he must pull his hair out at times when I ask him all sorts of stupid questions about my blog.Â
Our most recent conversation was in regards to setting up the Technorati and then mybloglog thing. The conversation then rolled into Stephen asking me if I am on the train? Like a kid in school that was suppose to do their homework, I had a dumb founded response along the lines of , “ On the Train? What are you talking about?â€
Like the very patient teacher Mr. Fung is, he tells me to click on the “blogging†link and look at his Stephen Fung DOT NET’s My Name is My Domain Train post. He tells me that if I want to get some traffic happening to my site and help others in the process, to get on the train as I (Brice Wong) qualify for the train.
After about a 1/2hr lecture about the rules and reading his post, I still had no clue what I was doing. The idea was something along the lines of finding out how many vain bloggers there are out in internet land. Stephen tells me the premise is an easy one. I’m calling this the My Name is My Domain List Train Experiment , ’cause I really have no idea how this is going to turn out!
Stephen said the instructions are easy:
a) Give Credit to the blog that you found the idea on – That would be www.stephenfung.net
b)Â Find 3 bloggers with domain names that are their names and add them to the list.
c)Â Follow the simple copy instructions below
***Start Copying Here***
1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.
2) COPY the ENTIRE List below and add it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.
3) Take “My Adds†and move them onto the bottom of the “My Originals†list.
4) Add 3 Brand New Narcissistic Bloggers with domain names that are their names that want traffic and add them to the list.
My Adds:
Bob Bushkirk
Shawn Knight
Nathan Hanning
My Orginals:
Gary Lee
John Chow dot Com
Nate Whitehill
Stephen Fung DOT NET
Michael Kwan
Jeff Kee
Stuart Hannig
Hannes Johnson
Nomar
Nathan Drach
Saman Sadeghi
Brice Wong
Leo Chiang
Tyler Ingram
***Stop Copying Here***
In the words of the great guru Stephen Fung, “ In the interest of being fair, I have to call Ed Lau and Kumiko Suzuki on not meeting the criteria thus I’ve removed them from the list. Ed’s blog isn’t “EdLau.com†or “EdwinLau.com†and neither is Kumiko’s. She uses “BlogSpot.comâ€. Otherwise, I’d have to include MyNewChoice or What’s The Fuss too. Sorry guys! Tyler almost didn’t make it because he was using that weird “Tingram.ca†thing. Good thing I bugged him enough about it to get him to change! Remember, it’s a requirement for Dot Com Mogul Status .â€
This should be an interesting experiment to see if more traffic comes to my blog! Stephen also mentioned something about this driving Technorati nuts and the possibility of getting banned from it??I’m gonna plea ignorance, I have no idea. All I know is this experiment is going to be an interesting one to see if more traffic comes to my blog. Don’t miss the train! Get on board and hang on for the ride!
Cheers,
-Brice Wong – Blogger Newbie
I have been to many many good and bad Asian restaurants in Vancouver, its suburbs and elsewhere in the world. If you want a recommendation for a good authentic Chinese restaurant in a suburb outside of Vancouver pay attention and read on. I share with you a hidden gem is suburbia.
The name of this place is Deer Garden. They have 2 locations, both about 30 minutes in opposite directions from downtown Vancouver. One of the locations is in Port Coquitlam the other Richmond. I have only been to the Port Coquitlam location, so everything I say here is in regards to the Port Coquitlam location.
Unless you are at a “fine†dining Chinese restaurant, most Chinese restaurants are not known for there cleanliness, or service, but more importantly their food quality and quantity and value. You know you are at a great Chinese restaurant when it is packed all the time with Chinese people.
I went there this past weekend with eight members of my immediate and extended family to celebrate a late Chinese New Year dinner. Usually we order off this killer dinner combo menu that offers combo meals for 2, 4, 6, or 8 people.
If you order the combo for 2, you get to choose a selection of 2 dishes from a list of 100. The dinner combo’s all include Rice, Soup of the Day, Tea and Dessert. The prices for combo meals for 2, 4, 6, and 8 people are $22.80 (2 people), $45.80 (4 people), $68.80 (6 people), and $88.80 (8 people) respectively.
We ordered the Combo dinner for 6, and because it was Chinese New Year we ordered an Alaskan King Crab. I haven’t had Alaskan King Crab in a long time, but I have to say Alaskan King Crab is my favorite type of crab next to the ever so tasty West Coast Dungeness Crab.
Our first dish was the complementary soup of the day. Wintermelon soup with pork bone soup base I believe. Whatever it was, it was warm, soothing and full of flavor.Â
The Alaskan King Crab at Deer Garden did not disappoint, and it seemed like every other large table around us was having it as well. When we arrived to the restaurant around 7pm the crab tank was full, and when we left, the tank was half empty.
The Alaskan King Crab that was plucked from the tank for our table was about 11.5 pounds and it was served to as 4 different plates.
The first plate was a bunch of crab meat chunks quickly deep fried with some spicy jalapeño peppers and other spices.
The second crab dish was a large platter that had the crab legs sliced in half, steamed and served with some sweet soya sauce and shredded green onion.
The third crab dish was similar to the second one, but instead of the sweet soya souce and sliced green onion on top of the crab meat, there was soya sauce and minced garlic on top with fresh green onion cut in rings on top of the crab.
The fourth dish, was a crab fried rice. Get this, the crab fried rice was served to the table in the head of the crab shell! This fried rice was excellent!
The Alaskan Crab was the first 4 dishes, and the next dishes were the Dinner Combo for 6 that we selected from the 100 different dishes. We ordered:
1-Stir Fried Pork Cheek with String Beans. This is dish is one of my favorites. The beans are cooked to absolute perfection. Every time I have these beans, they have the same great taste and are just the right crunchiness. The cooks must have the temperature and timing just dialed as I can’t get my beans at home tasting like this.
2-Sweet and Sour Pork . I’m usually not a big fan of Sweet and Sour Pork, as usually the sauce is too think or too runny or the taste is off or the pork is too dry and cold, but here at Deer Garden the sauce is bang on and the pork is hot, tender and moist. The fresh pineapples had a great sweet flavor and the bell pepper and white onion had the optimal crunch.
3-Curry Boneless Chicken – What can I say about this dish? This dish is just awesome. One of my top 5 dishes here at Deer Garden. If you like curry, you will love this dish. The bowl is massive and overflowing with tender, juicy, marinated boneless chicken. I have no idea how they get such the flavors, but this dish here at Deer Garden goes down as one of the best curry dishes I have ever had; both homemade and from a restaurant. The curry sauce is just KILLER on the rice!
4-Assorted Seafood Hot Pot – If you like an assortment of Seafood cooked in a hotpot style, you will like this dish. The pot came to the table still steaming from the heat. I’m not a big fan of mixed seafood dishes, so I picked for the fish, tofu and other recognizable pieces of food from this dish. The gravy is something to note and very good on rice. Everyone else at the table really liked this dish.
5-Steamed Cod with Tofu in Black Bean Sauce – Hands down this is one of the best dishes at this restaurant. I love steamed cod, and I love tofu. The combination of these two with soya sauce and fresh black bean sauce topped with crisp circular cut green onion is to die for. One scoop of this dish onto your rice and you will be sold forever. If you go here, get this dish. The fish and tofu are cooked just right and if you don’t like tofu, don’t worry about it, because the tofu doesn’t even taste like tofu it is cooked so well.
6-Chinese Gai Lan with Mushroom, Carrot and Chicken – Yet another perfectly cooked vegetable dish. The Gai Lan had just the right crunch, the dish wasn’t greasy and the other accompaniments were just savory.
 
Dessert- So after the soup, 10 dishes, and some rice we had some dessert. The dessert that is included in the meal is a Hot Red Bean style soup, but it really wasn’t Red Bean Soup. I can’t remember the name in English of Chinese, but all I know is this is one of my favorite after dinner dessert dishes. Served to you piping hot, this mixture of red bean, coconut milk barley and black rice is a perfect cap after a big dinner. I love this dessert! I just wish they had it every time I ate here as they change up their desserts every night.
As mentioned above, Deer Garden is a great place to go if you want authentic Chinese food that is consistent, tastes outstanding and an awesome value. This place is always packed full of Asians which is a really good sign that the food is great. Lots of Asians don’t eat at a place if it isn’t good!
Don’t expect the waitresses to wait on you hand and foot as at times, the service is non existent because this place is so packed and busy. On this particular night the service was pretty good, but I have been here on some nights where getting service isn’t very good and you are always waiting around for someone to come by.
This is one of those places where if you want something, you had better wave your hands in the air and flag someone down or go up to the counter and ask. Although the service is at times slow, once you have your order in with someone, the food is amazingly quick to come to your table. I have never waited more that 5-8 minutes for the first dish to hit the table after I have ordered. After the first dish, the rest just keep coming at the right times.
If you are a big “ambiance†type person, don’t come here expecting the most romantic or trendiest place on the planet. The interior is pretty boring and the high pot lights and the single yellow lights over the booths, with the hand written florescent poster boards don’t help at all. There is no fancy entrance, swank bar or back ground music.
Our bill for 8 people that were all very hungry was  $282.16 CDN plus tip. $195 of this was the crab dish. We were all super full at the end of the night and even had a full bag of left overs to take home. Like I mentioned above the crab was a bit of a treat due to the special Chinese New Year celebration. $282.16 averages out to about $35.27 per person. Not too bad considering we just had a 12 course meal including soup and dessert. Usually we would have ordered the Dinner Combo for 8 and that would have averaged to about $11.05 CDN per person before tax and tip.
If you are looking for a no frills, authentic Chinese food restaurant in the Coquitlam suburb of Vancouver this place is it. I have taken many of my non asian friends to this place and they all love it. This place focuses on good, plentiful, excellent value food and will keep you coming back time after time after time.
Ranking (out of 5 stars)
Food – 5.00
Service – 2.75
Washroom Cleanliness – 2.50
Restaurant Ambiance – 2.00
Plate/Cutlery Cleanliness – 3.50
Value – 5.00
Overall rating: 3.46
I find myself in Kitsilano regularly as my girl friend lives out that way and if you like Thai food, I guarantee you will like this recommendation. Khai Thai is the real deal, owned by Thai people they cook the goods. It is just like eatting Thai food from Thailand. This restaurant is one of my favorite restaurants on the Kitsilano side of Vancouver. The prices are relatively cheap, the service is good, and the portions large and the people very friendly. The name of this restaurant is Khai-Thai to Go-located on 2184 Cornwall Ave. Kits Beach Vancouver BC, V6K 1B4. Tel 604-677-6767. Click here for the Google map.
Khai-Thai to Go- does Eat In - Take Out - and Delivery in the area. Their prices are super reasonable (actually really cheap for the quality) and ordering is stupid easy as their menu is right on the wall behind the cash register posted as a bunch of really well taken photos. If you don’t know what the Thai name is for the dish or don’t know what to order, don’t worry about it as the pictures on the wall make everything look appetizing.
 
Last night I did take out for myself and my girlfriend, but I have eaten In here in the past and the service has been awesome and of course the food outstanding. The restaurant has a handful of tables where you can choose to eat in. In the summer, the big sliding door is open and you watch all the beautiful people make their way to the ever so popular Kitsilano beach.
 
Their take out business must be very successful, as every time I do take out, it is literally ready in 5-10 minutes. The service is so fast, it is unbelievable. Last night I ordered a Shrimp Pad Thai, Tofu/Vegetable Red Curry and rice for two. My bill came to under $21.00! Look at how much food I got for $21.00! Both my girlfriend and I were super hungry, but we still had some Pad Thai left over’s!
The food is plentiful, but more importantly the food is quality! Take my word for it, the food here is an awesome value and the flavors of what they serve here are authentic Thai. I have traveled to Thailand numerous times and outside of Thailand, this is the next best thing if you are looking for authentic Thai food.Â
When I was waiting for my order, I chatted with the lady I have seen here before. I asked her if she was the owner and she replied yes. Her name was Mrs. Autchara Khaikaew. She is the one behind the cash register.
 
Along with her husband, Mr.Chaiyan Khaikaew, they opened this great establishment in August 2005. She told me that her and her husband are both Thai and from Bangkok. I motioned to the man just behind the counter cooking my dinner and asked if that was her husband. She told me no, but the guy back there cooking was Mr. Kumsorn Saengngam. Mrs. Khaikaew, told me that Mr. Saengngam was an executive chef from Bangkok. Executive chef I asked? She went onto tell me that Mr. Saengngam was the executive chef at the Marriot in Bangkok. Wow!… no wonder the food is outstanding here!
Mrs. Khaikaew also told me that she just opened a new location downtown on 809 Seymour St. The phone number there is 604-682-7000 and they have 2 chefs from Bangkok as well. Ms Sudkanya Nganyanwai and Ms Vanichaya Pienpijit.
Take my word for it, if you want good authentic Thai cuisine at a great value, go and visit Mrs. Khaikaew at Khai Thai to Go on Cornwall street in Kitsilano and say hello, or try the new location on Seymour street;Â you won’t be disappointed.
Ranking (out of 5 stars)
Food – 5.00
Service – 5.00
Washroom Cleanliness – didn’t go in this time
Restaurant Ambiance – 3.75
Plate/Cutlery Cleanliness – did Take Out this time
Value – 4.00
Overall rating:Â Â 4.4375
Mar 6th 2007BriceThe Soap Box
Around 10:30pm last night I was having a really late dinner of pot stickers, noodles and broccoli. Seeing as I was eating alone, my company over dinner was my laptop on the dinner table. I had good intentions on contributing some content to my blog and doing a bit of internet research.Â
All was good ’till about 10:45pm when all of a sudden my “Local Area Connection -Network Cable Unplugged-” warning kept flashing up like a strobe light. It flashed up so frequently that I ended up pulling the network cable out of my computer it was so annoying.Â
Of course the content that I had written on my blog was already lost due to my loss of connection. This made me a bit pissed because I knew I should have copied and pasted the text to a notepad document when I had it on the screen; Stupid Me.
Anyhow, the time was now about 11:00pm. I called our local ISP - Shaw Cable- expecting to be on hold with them for at least 20 minutes. Every other time I have called them in the past, the wait time has been painfully long after sifting though the really long and annoying voice prompts.
I was very surprised yesterday evening how quickly a live human got on the phone. I hit about two number keypad presses until I had a very friendly “Hello” on the receiver. The lady on the phone asked me a couple questions and quickly went into troubleshooting the problem.
She asked me to unplug the wireless SMC router from the cable modem to figure out if it was an ISP issue, or modem hardware issue. It turns out that there was no problem with the ISP or modem, but the issue was in my SMC wireless router as taking the router out of the equation gave me an internet connection and then adding the router back to the equation gave me no internet.
The Shaw Cable lady suggested I unplug and replug in the SMC router to see what would happen. Her suggestion was a good one, but unfortunately for me my router was still not working. The time was now about 11:20pm.
Before I hung up the phone with the Shaw Cable lady, she asked if I had SMC’s tech support number handy. I told her I didn’t have it and she was good enough to Google it on her end and give me the 800 number. Wishing me luck with my router problem, I ended my call with the Shaw Cable lady.
I have to say, my experience with Shaw Cable last evening was a positive one. The lady was very friendly and tried to help out as much as possible. I got no attitude, no vague answers, no trying to get me off the phone quickly, nothing like that, just some quality customer service. I can’t remember the lady’s name, but I have to give kudos to this Shaw Cable technical support lady for her help late yesterday evening.
My next call would be to SMC’s 24/7 toll free 1-800 number. My router in question is an older SMC 2404 WBR wireless router. The time was about 11:30pm. Getting the tech support people on the phone at SMC is pretty easy, and I was talking to someone in about 1 minute.
The guy asked me the standard issue questions; name, phone number etc, and then he asked me what model of SMC product I had. I told him I had the SMC 2404 WBR wireless router and described to him the issue. He immediately launched into a speech about how my router was older (yes I knew that) and they no longer manufactured it (I sort of figured that out too) and because of the age of the router and the fact that they no long manufactured the router, they would no longer provide support for the product.
I understand that technology changes over time, I’m good with that, so be it. The guy on the phone didn’t even offer to try and troubleshoot the issue. He didn’t suggest anything to try, even something quick! He just repeated his schpeal, and then told me that IF I wanted technical support for my router, he could connect me to a 3rd party technical support service that would charge me for trying to help me out with the problem.
I told him that if I paid for the time to talk to a 3rd party technical support company, it would be cheaper, less hassle and a better use of my time to go to the store and buy and brand new router. His comment to my answer was something along the lines of,” We appreciate you wanting to purchase a new SMC router, that new router will have warrantee service. Would you still like to be connected to the third party technical support company?”
Nice answer eh? The time now was about 11:45pm ish. The 15 minutes this guy spent asking me for my information and going through his “out of warrantee†speech, he could have suggested I do something with the router I had. I thanked the guy for his time and his last words to me were “Thanks for supporting SMC products and have a nice evening.”
I have been in the customer service industry for a long time, and after service like this from the SMC guy, does he really think I would purchase SMC products again? Like the analogy of a bad restaurant, you are going to tell lots of people about your bad eating experience and suggest to them not to go there. Purchasing consumer products is very similar. Like the bad restaurant, I am sharing my SMC experience with an unknown number of people on the internet. SMC will likely not be my first choice in consumer hardware after an experience like this.
11:55pm, I call Futurelooks.com Editor in Chief Stephen Fung (www.stephenfung.net) and tell him my experience with the lady at Shaw and the guy at SMC. Stephen, “Mr. Technical Guru himselfâ€, tells me to get a paper clip or something like that and push the reset button on the back of the SMC router.
Reset Button? I didn’t even see a Reset button. Stephen goes on to explain a bunch of technical blah blah blah, and usually doing a hard reset back to the default factory settings would solve my problems.
I plug the router back into my modem and tried the hard reset as Stephen suggested. It sort of worked as I could get internet via a hardwire to my computers with the router hooked up to my modem. I thanked Stephen for his suggestions and I mentioned to him that all the SMC guy had to do was to suggest the Reset procedure instead of his stupid speech!
Unfortunately for me, my router really wasn’t working. I could get wired internet through it, but I couldn’t access the router via the IP address to set the WEP key and firewall settings. I tried and tried, and even researched online reading tech forums and other tech sites for answers and hard resetting a few more times, but no dice. The time was nearing 12:45am and it was getting to the point where it wasn’t worth my time as I need to get up at 6am each morning to go to the day job.
So my solution after almost 2hrs of troubleshooting was to purchase a new wireless router. Will it be an SMC? NOPE. I bought a Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router. Hopefully I will have better luck with this one!
Two thumbs up for the tech support lady at Shaw, and thanks to the SMC guy for eliminating on of the products on the shelf and pushing toward the Linksys!
Whenever I come across a great recipe, I have to pass it along to all my friends. Now that I have this blog, I get to share it with the world. My mom is a great newspaper clipper, and she came across this recipe back in January. Only recently did she actually make it and ask me to try it.
Sweet Potato Pecan Tart? Didn’t sound very good to me, and really it didn’t look that good at first either. I am SURE glad I tried it, because after that first bite, I was sold! These Sweet Potato Maple Pecan Tarts are AWESOME. If you are a fan of pumpkin pie or sweet potatoes, you will LOVE these tarts.
The recipe came from the January 22 -2007 edition of The Province Newspaper. From the LiveIT, Food, Fashion, Fitness, Trends section. That is all the information I could gather off the newspaper clipping I stole from my mom.
To describe the flavour, I would say these tarts have the same texture as a pumpkin pie, but not the full, spice flavour of pumpkin pie. The sweet potato maple pecan tarts, have tasteful hints of maple and the soft crunch of the pecans with the smooth whipped texture of the sweet potato make tart will make a sure winner in any family. They will disappear quickly as people will devour them, so make lots and make often. ENJOY!
Recipe as per the paper:
1-Medium Sweet Potato (about 12 oz)
2-Tbsps, butter melted
2-Eggs
1-Cup Maple Syrup
1/2-tsp Vanilla
Pinch salt
24 frozen tart shells (3inch size) thawed
1/2-cup toasted pecans
-Scrub sweet potato and trim ends, pierce with knife in several places, microwave on high 6-8min or until tender, turning over halfway through
-cool enough to touch, and remove skin, mash with fork until smooth, measure 1 cup and put in bowl
-Whisk in butter, eggs, maple syrup, vanilla, and salt until smooth
-bake tart shells on baking sheet in 375 degree Fahrenheit for 5 minutes and remove from oven
-sprinkle in pecans among partially baked shells, gently pushing down any puffed up pastry
-divide sweet potato mix among shells
-bake 20-24 minutes until filling is slightly puffed, almost set and pastry is lightly golden.
-let cool on rack
Nutrients per serving:
-176 Calories
-2g Protein
-10g fat
-21g carbohydrates
