10 years ago...

Amongst the election hubbub in September, I forgot to note an important occasion.

I've known Daorcey for 10 years.

I know, round numbers are a big deal to our brains when it could easily be 12 or 6 that are big deal numbers had we evolved to have just 12 or 6 digits. Anyways, yes, 10 years. And I can tell you exactly the first time I met Daorcey.

It was Sept. 6 on the pages of the Gauntlet sports section in Adobe PageMaker, probably very late. Exact, eh? I think I can even picture where the computer was.

I was laying out this story and I asked Jan, the co-EIC at the time, who was this Day-orcey kid? I mean, his name's all funny and he's from Edmonton. The piece is well written, but he's kinda odd. She explained he had written for the Gateway but was coming to Calgary to do his degree.

If you click on the story, you can see the illustration and this is going to sound really odd. I thought for about two weeks that's what Daorcey looked like.

So that's how I met Daorcey for the first time.

We ate LA: Good Stuff

Umm... so it's been a while since we posted. I blame The Review Crew, but it might also be fair to blame a bit of laziness. Either way, I'm sure you've been wondering about that cliffhanger we dropped on you with the last post: what was that good food they ate in LA?

It's notable that our trip to E3 was filled with either horrific or boring food not worth mentioning. Sad, really. But I guess that's what you get when you spend the vast majority of your time in convention halls. To stave off malnutrition, we were treated to Cliff Bars by the lovely ladies of the media room. Those little bars were nice at first, but even free food becomes less enjoyable as you eat it for more than one meal a day.

But let's get back to the tasties.

Two days sit in my memory as the most flavourful. The first was our only free day as we walked down Melrose Avenue. Our goal was to see Darth Vader helmets, but we ended up doing a rather full day of shopping and walking in the LA heat.

As the hours passed, we realized it was get fed or get cranky time, so we decided to search out some chips and salsa and perhaps a drink. A store clerk recommended a place eight blocks back toward where we came, so we turned around to make our way up the other side of the street.

And that's when we saw the fruit stand.

Well, not really a fruit stand in the "BC Cherries" sense of it. Rather, it was more like a cart with a bunch of fresh fruit and veggies. As we walked past, a couple came up to the cart's owner and asked for a regular bag. And in a flourish of knifery, the owner chopped up a whole bunch of stuff, put it in a bag, added fresh lemon and lime and a few dashes of chili spice.

When you see something like that, how can you not get it yourself. So we ordered the same thing (orange, coconut, watermelon, apple and a few other things I can't seem to recall). It was just the right amount of sweetness, spice and sour. Ridiculously tasty and refreshing.

A "regular" sized bag of fruit.

(Since we've come back to Calgary, we've tried to recreate this masterpiece. We've not been completely successful yet, but a new chili spice was just given to use today. Perhaps this is the detail we've been missing.)

So while we're scarfing down a full bag o' spicy fruit, we look just half a block down the street and see something we've NEVER seen before: a Korean BBQ taco truck.

Intrigued, we move closer to the truck with our bag of fruit. Not only was this truck the home of the never-before-discovered kimchi tacos, but it was also the maker of vegetarian-friendly tofu kimchi taco. I don't care if I have a massive bag of fruit in my hand, this taco is about to be consumed!

And, yes, it was awesome.

It's possible we were getting a little full by now. The fruit and tacos were digesting as we moved further up the street. And then we came upon that Mexican restaurant that was our original destination. Well, maybe we'll just pop in for a quick visit.


An hour later, we'd consumed more than our fair share of some excellent homemade salsas and guacamole. As we nibbled away, we watched the foot traffic travel in front of us on the street. It was a pretty great ending to our mini-marathon of food.

Two days later, we found ourselves with an evening partially free enough to let us go out for a nice dinner. A quick Yelp search from the convention centre turned up Beverly Soon Tofu Restaurant. Because of this experience, I will never doubt the value of Yelp as a restaurant recommendation engine.

Sure, our half-hour walk to the restaurant into Little Korea was a bit, um, unsettling as the sun set and the streets became not so busy, but once we found Beverly Soon Tofu, we realized the sketchy trip was worth it. If you ever get a chance to get there yourself, I strongly recommend it.

Since we had no idea what to order, we asked the friend waitress to help us out with my vegetarian needs in mind. The result was a cheap meal that had us filled to the brim with flavourful appetizers (all of our appetizers--which were included in the meal--are in the photo at the top of this post) and main courses including the following:

Tofu "steak"

Tofu Soon

Tofu appetizer

Kimchi

Yeah, that was a pretty tasty trip.

We ate LA: Bad stuff

I had two meals I had to eat while in LA.

1. A Double Down. It's KFC sandwich that has two fried chicken filets instead of a bun. Inside are four different types of cheese, a sauce of unknown provenance, and some bacon.

2. A pancake layered with cheesecake. At IHOP you can have a pancake-cheesecake-pancake creation or a pancake stack with the cheescake embedded in the pancake.

We achieved both and were poorer for it.

IHOP Pancakes

I didn't have high hopes other than to be full and slightly grossed out. Mission accomplished.

This is what it should look like. It's "close". Also we opted to go for four pancakes instead of the two. Even with the extra pancakes it was only $6. The taste? Well, the cheesecake adds a creamy heavy flavour. None of us who were brave enough to order this were able to finish. Also, I don't think we ate again until dinner.


The Double Down

Our last full meal in LA we went to KFC for the infamous Double Down. Sadly, it didn't live up to the hype. I didn't even finish mine as it's just a bunch of chicken breast with some stuff in the middle. One of group ended up eating my half in addition to his full one. He later paid for it in the bathroom.

Daorcey didn't have many options at KFC. He settled for two corn cobettes and a bowl of coleslaw.

Our next post will detail the good food we actually ate.

Five years in the adventures of two geeks

Wow, that went by quickly.

Five years ago this morning, Arone and I were running around Canmore picking up flowers, putting up directional signs, and being mistaken for groom and groom (yup, that was awkward). We stopped in at the spa where the girls were getting their hair and makeup done so Arone (not me, 'cause, you know, that would be against "tradition") could drop off my surprise gift of a diamond necklace to Natalie. Upon doing so, Arone was mistaken as Natalie's fiance (also awkward). That was an interesting day with a few stories that could be told years later. Maybe that's for another post.

So, a half-decade has passed--what are my thoughts on being married for that time?

Twelve years ago, I was standing by myself in the gardens of Versailles. It was a cold spring day and the full garden wasn't in bloom, but some of the flowers were out. Despite doing that trip with a school group, I had spent a lot of time on my own getting lost and exploring. This was one of those times.

I wasn't feeling particularly lonely (I actually don't mind being alone), but I do recall that I was suddenly struck by the urge to share this experience. This didn't mean I was to return to Canada intent upon finding a partner, but it was a moment when I realized an important requirement for future relationships: sharing is good.

Since that time, we've been to Versailles together. But, we've also been to other places and had shared experiences we'd never expected. From a Canadian cemetery in Belgium to a gamer-filled conference hall in Seattle to an ancient forest on Vancouver Island to a Viking settlement in Sweden. All ridiculously cool experiences made even more unique and important to us because they are shared.


It's been five-plus years of experiences that make this adventure a great one. But it's not just travel that I cherish. It's the shared experiences of daily life: playing video games, reading our iPhones in bed, and even writing together are important. Our recent hobby of writing about games and gadgets with The Review Crew has been a lot of fun. Of course, the trips to Vegas and LA were cool, but even just writing beside each other on our computers at home or on separate laptops from the comfort of a hotel room is unique experience I wouldn't want to give up.


In five years, we've grown together through our experiences that we've had as a couple. I guess this is a predictable process, but it's something you tend not to consider while it's happening.

It's an odd experience to reflect on five years. Time has moved quickly, yet there's been a definite progression in our relationship. We continue to learn more about each other as we grow individually and as a married unit.

I can definitely say that life together has only become better the more time passes. We first came together as friends and now we continue along as even better friends. I've often joked about how being married is just like an extended sleep over with late nights, movies, video games, good food, and hanging out with friends.

It's more than that, of course, but it's still a good, fun time nonetheless.

Happy Canada Day

Living in China for three months was obviously a cool experience for a variety of reasons. One of them was I looked like everyone else pretty much--minus my toque and bike helmet.

But I felt like I was missing something--it wasn't homesickness--and I couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't until I flew back and was chilling in Vancouver for our Calgary flight. I saw an Indian-Canadian couple. The woman was dressed in a sari and the man had a brightly-coloured turban. When I saw them, that's when it clicked. I missed seeing the faces of Canadians.

It's something Douglas Coupland wrote in his first Souvenir of Canada. He went to Scotland to a little town where pratically anyone could have been his relative which he found creepy.

"And this is the point where being Canadian really hits home, because what you want, and what you're missing, is the variety of people you see in Canada... I know we're all supposed to love being multicultural and all of that, and we all know how that works and how to play the game and talk the talk--but to crave it and feel deprived without it is another sensation altogether. It's one of those things that lumps your throat and makes you realize that things will probably work out in the end."

And then we watched hockey playoffs and drank beer.

So, happy Canada Day. I'm extremely glad my parents decided to move to Canada.